Hello, my friends. I am doing something I rarely do right now - writing in Riddle's era. Anyways, enjoy it.

V

One, two, three, four, five times he kisses you, because for some reason you're sure you can walk all over the fire that no one can tame, because that's just who you are – you'll rub blood between your thumb and your forefinger and you'll try so hard to break diamonds beneath your bare feet.

The first time he kisses you, you can swear in that moment you two were infinite, and you just keep wanting to go back to the start.

His name begins it – Riddle, because that's what he is; and Tom, because that's what he's not. And you just know that you could be the one, the one to place a lithe pinkie finger into the heart of a flame no one else is quite brave enough to touch, so you try and you hold your fingers in the blaze and he kisses you five times. It tastes like toxin.

IV

One, two, three, four secrets that die on cracked lips. You speak to him, fingers entwined – his hands are hard, cold – and you watch something die.

And he tells you the tendrils of your hair are like snakes and he's still a Riddle, but you're holding your hand in a torch for longer than anyone else ever has. You can forget the blood that keeps showing up on the walls.

Clenched hands and fingers that ache from gripping and holding on so hard. Four seconds in which he lets you breath as you climb this cliff. Four blinks, four breaths, four secrets that make their way to the tip of his lips and then he slaughters them, cracked and dry like a broken mirror or a rose left alone in the dark too long.

And you should be afraid, so afraid, because your blood is as dirty as anyone's and the last few who have frozen are just as dirty as you. But you can walk amidst a field of dead flowers, dried petals crunching beneath your feet, between your toes, and if your own Riddle is there than you can only see a world that once was and is long gone. Fleeting, running, run for your life, it's coming. Run, run, run as fast as you can. Because petal dust is washed away just as easily as dirty blood.

III

One, two, three new bodies in the hospital wing and they are statues and you think they're marble like Toms lithe fingers. One, two, three sets of eyes closed like windows with bolted shutters, and Riddle won't speak of them, but he swears he'll find who's done this to the mudbloods. Three times he tells you he will find the one who writes death on stone walls with rooster blood. Why? Because, because Tom breathes in time with the cobblestones on the floor of the castle, because if he leaves he will lose his lifeline.

And he tells you he thinks it's the bumbling giant, but you don't care about one, two, three statues in the hospital wing so long as you don't end up like one of them.

So, you make him walk – look at you, walking on fire – and you walk with your ivy green tie, and your fingers smudged with ink that will burn away in the fires. Three asymmetric blemishes, three spilled ink pots, three stains on the floor like black blood – dirty blood. Look at you, walking with, breathing with, trusting fire – Tom Riddle, the fire no one can touch but you. You root around in his soul, or you think you do, like a mirage full of innumerable things. Hairs, stars, minutes, seconds, blood cells on the stone.

He must be hiding something, but you don't care because that's all just part of the Riddle. The Riddle with dark shining eyes and a glazed, raging light burning somewhere in their depths, scanning out from some unknown internal mess of fire and ice that you tread on oh-so-carefully with your moccasin feet. You are not the effervescent people – you are not boiling over. You two are fire and ice but no water and you just repeat in a vicious cycle because there can be no catalyst.

You're still starving yourself from the world, just by being with him.

II

One, two eyes closed that will never open again. Two eyes blanketed by thick glasses and heavy lids. She was named for a plant – Myrtle. And it doesn't make sense because myrtle is flowery and Myrtle is plain and trampled by fire and ice and moccasin feet. Myrtle growing in the grove will die under the pressure of two bloodstained fingers.

And now Tom, your precious indiscernible Riddle, speaks to the headmaster and you are only just behind the wall and you know your Riddle is going to turn the bumbler in and good riddance.

Two short breaths of toxic fumes and two glances at an ugly, dirty-blood girl whose eyes won't ever open again.

It all comes to a head.

They're going to make you all leave – a great migration and this will crack the Riddle unless someone, anyone stops the madness…

And so the giant leaves and you can stay safe and sound here with your precious Riddle that you're almost forgetting to solve nowadays. You used to try to understand him at least twice a minute, but now you relax and you are still and quiet in not knowing and not understanding. Like a little child, you are.

I

One. One glance at two reptilian eyes of molten amber. That's all it takes. Just one.

One fleeting look and you understand everything. One split-second and you realize that what Riddle told you was "us against the world" was really Tom against the world. And you are a part of that world he's against, but you didn't realize it until now when it's too late and you're joining dead Myrtle in the grove as the second victim.

And in the eternal moment before death you realize that you cannot walk on fire and ice in only moccasins and you cannot stick your hand in a flame without ending up burnt.

Because no one will ever unravel that Riddle. You kissed him five times and saw four of his secrets and felt no pity for three dead bodies he caused. You saw Myrtle's two closed eyes and now your one glance has killed you and this was the way he wanted it all along.

When you die, his toxin taste is resting on your lips like poisoned honey. Lithe fingers, broken mirrors, crusted dried flowers.

And when the moment's gone you've lost your life and you have no more time left to try to solve the Riddle of fire and ice and blood on cobblestones. None. Gone.

Nihilum

I feel that needs a little bit of explanation. I had a bit of inspiration at midnight a week or so ago, and this is what happened. I was assigned Riddle's Era for Round Three (I think it's three, maybe two) of Fanfiction's Next Top Writer, and thankfully my muse cooperated. As you could probably tell, this fiction was very stream-of-consciousness and that was the way it was supposed to be. FYI - nihilum means 'nothing' or 'none' in Latin. I know I deviated a tiny bit from canon in that a girl other than Myrtle died, but it made sense and it just had to happen - it made so much sense! Sorry. I'm so weird. But anyways, I'd love you forever and give you food if you reviewed. *le gasp* Have I really resorted to bribing people for reviews? Oh dear, I suppose I have...well...I don't feel bad...Please R&R!

Love always,

Lily