Title: Peccavi
Summary: For when things don't turn out like you planned. For when regret is all you know. For those times when you wish you could turn back the wheels of time. Mea Culpa, my love.
Peccavi – "I have sinned"; usually an acknowledgement of offence or an expression of confession.
Mea Culpa – An acknowledgement of one's own error or guilt.
Author's Note: Because I was feeling depressed and hollow and all sorts of things that I suppose I shouldn't feel all at once. Because I needed to write something and this just came out on the paper. Because I didn't want to do something I'd regret.
Two different things entirely, two distinct sides with a thin line of separation and no shades of grey between them, yet Chiara still wonders vaguely which path it is she follows.
She doesn't tell the others about the attack, even though she knows it's coming. She doesn't tell them who will be there. She doesn't even blink when asked to stand guard this night, knowing that she probably can't stand in the way of the Death Eaters when they swarm up the steps to number 12, Grimmauld Place.
Knowing that she won't stop them.
But she hasn't told because she won't betray Tom Riddle. Maybe she knows the difference between Tom Riddle and Voldemort; maybe she won't acknowledge it.
She doesn't know why.
Chiara's hair is thin, russet, and limp. Her grey eyes are dull. She hasn't bothered with appearances for a while. She hasn't had the need to.
Chiara never resists lapsing into memories of her fiasco in her first through third years at Hogwarts, the strong sense of loyalty she feels for Tom Riddle, and the sense of longing she tries to deny whenever these memories surface.
Chiara also doesn't want to face the fact that Voldemort is her Tom. She doesn't want to know they are the same person.
Nevertheless, she won't go against Voldemort. She won't resist when she sees him walking down the street from the front window.
She doesn't want to see him this way. She recalls a promise from long ago to Tom, a promise that would bring them back together, to seek him out and find him waiting for her when she came to him who knows how many years later.
But if this is how he waits for her, she won't keep her promise.
Her heart hadn't broken when Dumbledore had told her privately that the man she'd met was Voldemort's younger self.
It doesn't break now, when she sees the truth for her own eyes because it can't break twice. Because Chiara had known from the second she'd left the past what he was. She had realised in that moment what she could have done for him.
What she would never get the chance to do.
Chiara opens the front door of number 12, Grimmauld Place as the Dark Lord stands gazing at it in completely hidden perplexity, not seeing what is before his eyes despite the fact that Chiara sees him perfectly.
"Tom," she calls softly. He looks up sharply, sees her and, in the same instant, the secret building, the headquarters for the Order, which had been deemed safe to move back into and use only months before.
He sneers.
She wonders if he doesn't remember.
Maybe he doesn't want to.
He sweeps up the steps ominously and pauses directly in front of Chiara, staring down at her with cold, lifeless red eyes.
Chiara can't tell whether or not she is afraid. She might even be relieved that her Tom and this monster don't bear the slightest resemblance: from Tom's thick, dark hair to Voldemort's bald head; from Tom's pale but healthy and smooth skin to Voldemort's motley grey complexion; the brilliant, warm brown eyes she had adored to the chilly red slits that now serve the man.
But she doesn't know for sure. She is distracted:
He had stopped, but his Death Eaters had rushed passed, silent as the midnight breeze billowing in their cloaks and her hair.
Chiara doesn't want to think on it too hard; they will kill her friends.
Ignorance is bliss.
She can't stop them. She smiles.
Perhaps she doesn't want to.
"Tom," she whispers again. Her feelings sort themselves out slowly and a strange mixture of regret and relief flood her being.
There is no fear.
"Would you kill me, Tom?" she asks softly when he doesn't respond.
Voldemort remains silent and still. This woman from his deeply buried memories has given him access to his greatest barrier in taking over the world, in achieving total immortality.
But this woman has betrayed him.
"I'm sorry," she murmurs as though reading his thoughts. He realises that she has been looking at him, studying the countenance that she does not know and trying her hardest to find a trace of the old Tom Riddle in him. "I never came for you. I didn't even try. I broke my promise."
Anger boils in Voldemort's veins.
You broke your promise.
He raises his wand.
This Chiara is still so young, despite the pronounced scars of stress and the wear of the past few years within the depths of her pale grey eyes, yet she was hardly changed from the Chiara he had known as a boy at Hogwarts. His Chiara. She smiles understandingly.
"You betrayed me," he hisses.
Chiara does not believe this voice is his real voice. In her head she hears the soft, dulcet tones of her lover.
I know.
She nods. "I shouldn't have," she elucidates sadly. It is as though he is a complete stranger and she is simply relating a tale about her life. "I know that now. I knew that then. I couldn't bring myself to find you, Tom, not after what you became."
You've changed.
"Couldn't or didn't want to?" he demands, his voice rasping harshly.
It doesn't matter.
Chiara smiles, still processing the sound as she would have if she were speaking with Tom Riddle instead of Voldemort. "Didn't want to, I suppose. I always had the capability. I still do. But… you've found me. Go on, I deserve death for what I've done to you."
Voldemort's face remains impassive. "Yes, you do." But he does not fire the curse.
"Does Voldemort ever blink?" wonders Chiara aloud, noticing that he doesn't look away, even in the millisecond it would take to close and reopen those intimidating eyes.
It is then that Voldemort realises why she is so calm. In Chiara's eyes she beholds the younger version of the all-powerful man, the one she knew before when she was in his time, the one she loved before her betrayal. In her ears his voice echoes as the lost sound of Tom Riddle's tones, comforting and relaxing her.
"Can you not look upon me, Chiara?" he inquires softly, nonchalant, playing with her. "Can you not bear what I have become; the power that I control; the ultimate creature standing before you?"
Entertain me.
Chiara continues to smile. For some reason, this infuriates the Dark Lord. "I do not look upon Voldemort, no. Cannot? I can for, as I have said, I possess the capacity. But I won't. I don't want to see what you have become, Tom, because what you have become frightens me. What you have become saddens me."
I don't know you anymore.
Voldemort sneers. "Saddens? Do not tell me you pity me, young one."
Pity is for the weak.
Chiara's smile widens slightly, unnoticeably. Yes, she is still young, especially compared to him. "No, not pity, because to pity I would have to feel empathy. I have no empathy for you now, Tom. I can't understand for the life of me why you're like this."
"Because if you had sought me here I would have been ancient."
How is it that this war has added so many years to your face?
"So you kill for me?" Chiara shook her head, her eyes never leaving his. "I doubt that. You like killing, don't you?"
"Of course." Voldemort reaches out a hand and touches her cheek gently, his jagged nails scratching at her pliable skin. "But tell me, child, does my touch frighten you as well?"
Am I so repulsive?
"No. Because it is not Lord Voldemort touching me. It is Tom." Chiara lets his fingers dance across her skin, her eyes closed peacefully.
"Acknowledge me, child," he insists. "Acknowledge what I have become."
Concede defeat.
"I do. I just choose not to see it."
I already have.
Cold fury rises behind the calm countenance. "Very well."
…
The white walls and soft bed in St. Mungo's are Chiara's only friends. She speaks to them sometimes and receives strange looks from the others in her ward. Since she will not tell anyone what happened, they don't know what is wrong with her. She has been put in the spell damage wing, but no spell has touched her.
Not that the others in her ward are any less strange. The ex-professor Gilderoy Lockhart still can't remember his past, the Longbottoms at the end of the ward are insane but completely silent. No one ever comes to visit her.
She sometimes wonders why that is, but then she recalls the night she met Voldemort and relinquished her hold on Tom Riddle. She gets depressed when she thinks about that.
I'm sorry…
And then she talks to inanimate objects, telling them all about her tale. But apparently the words only make sense to her, because the nurse just gives her a pitying look and moves on.
…
Chiara sits in the window seat in the front room of number 12, Grimmauld Place, the same place she sat many, many years previous, before the war had ended, when she noticed the man strolling down the lane with his crowd of followers. Her eyes are dull and the rise and fall of her chest is the only indication of life. Her comrades are dead, she knows, but she hasn't gone up to check on any of them. It's been years after all; they're probably skeletons by now, if there's anything left at all.
I'm lost…
It really would have been better if Voldemort had killed her, she reasons. Maybe that's why he left her alive.
Will you show me the way?
But it won't happen twice.
Voldemort had conquered. Voldemort ruled.
That is why she is at Grimmauld Place. Because no one could have picked a more suitable place for her to die. She supposes he has either forgotten or repressed their time at Hogwarts when he was younger, when she wasn't mad. In her more logical state in the face of death, she realises that Hogwarts would have been the ideal place to kill her.
Perhaps he doesn't want to face the memories. She knows she doesn't.
The man that steps through the doorway opposite her is not hooded or masked. He is Voldemort, he is Tom, he is nothing, he is everything, and he has all the power in the world over Chiara and would even if he were the weakest wizard that ever existed.
She smiles.
Avada Kedavera.
Author's Note: I wonder what it is about me and my one-shots being in present tense…? Doesn't matter. Ah, the weird feeling isn't out of my system.
Miichiko