AN: Thoughts? Hate? Indifference?
In the night, Tom Riddle would sometimes see his regrets piled sky-high to form a face of utter loathing from the shadows. He would remain awake, face intensely screwed into concentration to welcome sleep and block out the voices. Like echoes in a cave, he thought of the glistening future paved before him to block out the pawing of rabbits' feet and the shudder of thievery that seemed to greet him from his closet door.
But what regrets could a tyrant-to-be harbor in his ice tormented heart? His soul would later paint history in blood. Blacker than the night, it would seem, merciless and glinting as a scythe.
But Tom was as much a representation of balance as anyone. Not harmonious equilibrium, perhaps, but possessing of a light as well as a dark familiar to anyone. And sometimes, just sometimes, the humanity in him appeared to merely turn in its own slumber and remind him that the blood coursing in his veins was just like any other who breathed hope and exhaled failure.
Pain isn't a concept only known to you, dear orphan, his conscience seemed to say. The stirrings only seemed to reopen old wounds, however, and bring torrents of bitterness that only guided Tom Riddle to softly plant a foot on the cold floor and express his displeasure by adding to his mountain of times where he submitted to his true self.
Going against one's nature can only last so long, after all.
And as the years went by, the torrents of rage and despair soon melted into a raging waterfall of what was more fearsome—indifference. He sealed his heart and its bleeding way and dished out his very soul on platters over-spilling with the little boy who had mourned for a mother and father. Like proud turkey, it seemed, until he was whittled away to a grinning skeleton of cruelty personified.
Later, it was hard to see Tom behind his cool red eyes, of the monster who had evolved from him. And if roles were reversed, perhaps it would have been hard to see Voldemort behind Tom's intelligent brown spheres of knowing. But for all his knowledge of dark magic and manipulation, there was no acknowledgement of the hungry monster eating away at his essence to rob a schoolboy of life and landing death in its place.
And now, it was certainly difficult to see the similarity between himself and the defiant young man standing between him—The Dark Lord and a wave of those who regarded love as the all-bending master. Harry Potter…
Both shadows of tragedy, buds from the same branch. Yet at the mere moment they touched, their paths had already cleared to opposite horizons.
The Boy Who Lived to the skies… The Boy Who Died to the cool earth…
It was indeed an etched tragedy in any fairytale, in need of a dark-eyed shadow to make the light blind in its brilliance.
The only problem was the young, lonely boy who evaporated into oblivion.