Disclaimer - I own nothing you recognise.

Written primarily for .Xanda, for the October Fic Exchange. I tried really hard with this, it's totally new for me, so I really hope you like it :)

also written for the Getting Around Challenge.

This is AU. Harry is 17, and Dumbledore is still alive.

Come With Me

It was nothing like Harry expected. That seemed to be the most important point, as he stood with his wand held loosely in his hand with no intent to protect himself from the hell that was surely about to be unleashed upon him. His head tilted to the side, somewhat like a curious child, he waited for the green light that would ensure his death.

The cloaked figure before him made no move to kill him. Harry couldn't even see his face, though it didn't really matter in the long run, but he was surprised that his scar wasn't burning like it usually did when he stood before this man.

Even while every instinct in him shouted out for him to run, to hide, or to at least try and fight, Harry remained motionless and relaxed. He wanted this, he reminded himself. He'd come for this. He didn't want to fight anymore, especially for the hypocrites that wielded him as their own personal weapon.

He was done.

Tom kept the cloak firmly over his face, sure that this was a trick orchestrated by Dumbledore in an attempt to lull him into false security. The last thing he needed was news of his regeneration to go back to the old man. Yet still, there was something... almost pathetic about the young man stood in front of him that screamed for Tom to investigate before he killed.

His mind firmly protected behind shields he'd taken years to build, Tom nudged his way easily into Harry's mind. It was a mess of jumbled thoughts and memories, swirling around in a tornado of surprising misery. Surely the Boy-Who-Lived would want for nothing? What could Dumbledore possibly have gained by making his weapon feel so... empty?

A specific memory passed by Tom four... five times, and it drew his curiosity. He reached out with his mind and fell into the memory, listening at a closed door along with Harry as Dumbledore spoke candidly about ensuring the young man died - at the right moment, of course.

Suddenly, it all made sense. Harry knew he had to die, and rather than waiting for the moment Dumbledore chose to throw him out into battle, he was choosing his own way, in his own time. Tom slipped from his mind, though he still kept his hood up.

A world of possibilities had suddenly opened up, and Tom wasn't as willing to give Harry what he seemed to crave. He wasn't willing to kill him.

Harry's impatience to die was beginning to show, he knew, but he tried to keep his face calm as he waited. He'd felt the intrusion in his mind, but he didn't care. Let Voldemort take what he wanted, Harry wouldn't be alive long enough to really care after all. If there was information in his mind that would help defeat the light, then so be it.

It really didn't matter anymore.

They knew. They all knew. The Weasleys. Remus. Tonks. Harry wondered briefly if Sirius would have known but he shook that off. No matter how unhinged his godfather was, he would never have sent Harry out to be killed like a pig for slaughter. Sirius loved him.

In the end, that was all Harry wanted. To be with people who loved him.

"You are here to die?"

The voice was surprisingly gentle, and Harry noticed it seemed to be missing the hiss he remembered so horrifyingly in his nightmares.

"Yes."

"And if I don't want to kill you?"

"You've wanted to kill me since I was born. This makes everyone happy."

"I doubt that. Surely Dumbledore wouldn't be happy to know his little weapon was dead without his say so?"

So that was what Voldemort had seen in his mind. Harry shrugged. "He'll get over it, I'm sure. I don't honestly care."

"Even with what you heard, I'm surprised you're here. From what I've learnt of you, you're not the type to just give up."

Harry angrily wiped away the lone tear that escaped onto his face. "I'm tired of fighting. I'm tired of living for everyone else. I'm just fucking tired."

"Maybe there's another way."

Still not completely convinced that it was reasonable to not just kill Potter where he stood, Tom took a few steps closer and summoned his wand. Harry let it fly from his hand, not even trying to capture it back. Tom felt an unfamiliar yearning for the younger man. He felt... familiar. He felt like someone Tom had once known and loved and lost.

Tom wanted Harry for his own.

"What do you mean, another way? I don't want another way dammit, I want to die."

"Come with me. Let me look after you. Let me take care of you and show you the world as it should be seen. Let me help you live your life the way you want to."

Harry shook his head and Tom could see the suspicion in his eyes. "What's in it for you?"

"The prophecy. Tell me the prophecy. If it says what I think it says, you being alive will ensure my continued survival beyond anything that Dumbledore can possibly attempt."

"So I'll be a tool for you, instead of a tool for him. No deal. Kill me."

Tom stepped closer still, close enough to reach a hand out and stroke Harry's cheek with one finger. "Tell me the prophecy, Harry."

Harry glared at the still hooded figure, hating himself for leaning into the caring caress on his cheek. "You've proved you can enter my mind, Voldemort. Take it. I don't care anymore."

Harry felt the intrusion, but it was soft and gentle, so unlike those Snape forced on him over and over in the horrific Occlumency lessons. He fetched the memory of the prophecy to the forefront of his mind, allowing it to play in full. He knew it off by heart, and he could have recited it, but he was tired of it. Tired of all of it.

When Voldemort left his mind, Harry watched him step back. As the man lowered the hood covering his head, Harry couldn't stop the gasp from escaping him. In front of him, where he had expected the monster from his nightmares to be stood, was an older version of the man he remembered meeting in the Chamber of Secrets in his second year.

Tom Riddle.

"How... I mean..."

Voldemort... Tom smiled at the shock on his face, and Harry was almost ashamed to admit that he liked that smile. It made his whole face light up, and Harry suddenly understood why people would never have connected Tom Riddle to Lord Voldemort. The man before him looked nothing like the monster that murdered and tortured and reveled in chaos.

"I was correct in my assumptions of the prophecy. As long as you live, I live. As long as I live, you live," Tom told him quietly, his eyes resting on Harry's face.

"I don't want to live."

"And I don't want to die. So we find ourselves at a stalemate."

Tom watched Harry slump to the floor. He felt an almost primal urge to reach out and stop him falling, an instinct of protection that he couldn't fully explain. He thought briefly of the blood that flowed through both of their veins, but no blood magic he'd ever heard of could instigate these feelings suddenly flaring up. There had to be more.

For a third time, Tom entered Harry's mind, this time searching for an answer to the connection between them. Perhaps Dumbledore had insight on the matter that Tom was unaware of.

He found a memory that looked promising and stopped shuffling around.

"Unless I'm much mistaken, he transferred some of his own powers to you the night he gave you that scar. Not something he intended to do, I'm sure..."

"Voldemort put a bit of himself in me?

"It certainly seems so."

Tom pulled out suddenly, his mind whirling. He left a piece of himself behind that night in Godrics Hollow. It made sense. His protective urges, his feelings of want... Harry was his Horcrux.

Harry sat on the floor, at a complete loss as to what he was supposed to do now. Gryffindor as he was, he didn't have it in him to commit suicide, as near a thing as going to Voldemort unprotected was. He couldn't turn his wand on himself, and he wouldn't jump from a great height or take a poison. The torture of his life threatening to go on forever was the last straw. He didn't want to be immortal.

He'd never wanted that.

"Harry."

Shaking his head, Harry refused to look at the handsome man calling his name. He didn't want to be manipulated into wanting life. He didn't want to be fooled into thinking that someone could want him for anything other than a weapon to be brought out only at the right time.

"Harry, look at me please."

He could feel the magic of the other man, because he no longer looked like a monster, no matter what Harry wished, swirling around him, and he was surprised to find it comforting rather than suppressing, familiar rather than frightening.

He felt a gentle hand take hold of his chin, turning his head to the left where Tom sat beside him on the floor.

"There is much that I need to explain to you, and I only hope that you are willing to listen. First, I wish to make you a promise. Will you listen to that?"

Harry nodded, unable to look away from the startling dark eyes that held his own.

"I promise that I will give you everything you've ever wanted. I promise that I'll protect you, and I promise that I'll look after you for the everlasting future we can share. All you have to do, is promise me that you'll stay alive, and more importantly, that you'll live."

"I..."

"Promise me, Harry."

"Anything I want?"

"Anything that won't take you away from me."

Harry sighed, knowing he was going to ask for something Tom could never give him. "All I ever wanted was for someone to love me for me."

Tom smiled then, that same gentle smile that lit his face up, and helped Harry to his feet. "I don't think that will ever be an issue for you again."

Tom wrapped an arm around Harry's shoulders, pulling him into a loose embrace. His poor little wizard. Tom would make him feel good, he would show him what life could be like.

That it ensured his own immortality was an important side-effect, but suddenly, not quite as important as Harry. The foreign feelings made him uncomfortable, but he knew if he embraced them, life could only get better.

With a happy Harry at his side, how could he fail at anything?

"Harry? Come with me?" He asked again, stroking a hand through the messy black hair.

Harry glanced up at him, and Tom was surprised to see tentative hope in the shining emerald eyes. "Okay."