Introduction: For Who the Bell Tolls

"For who the bell tolls, time marches on."

Before was the void, behind was the void, All around infinite void and naught else. He recalls there used to be more, more of everything. He thinks that maybe there had once been a time where more was here, a voice to his left and lights reflected as afterimages of people moving ever onward. There were so many at some points and vaguely if he could care anymore he could recall some of those lights beckoning to him. Loved ones that once upon a time he felt within his heart before all had been consumed with the numbness that sometimes buzzed in its place.

Before, when there had been more, he knows that the void above had been filled with breeze that whistled through leaves of green things long since gone. He knows because he used to hold the vision to him jealously, afraid that if he left go but an instant that he could never retrieve it again. Eventually, he let it go and it never came back. He knows that once upon a time there was a world here, one he sorely missed in times when the numbness receded, but the numbness had not lifted in so long now.

Sometimes he can almost believe that the void around and the one inside reflect all his despair left for a world that no longer existed. Be it him that believes such to be the ego, and in the nothing he knows no more tears. He has no more to shed at the bitterness that coats the thoughts when they come. Not enough emotions remain to feel for the tears.

Once there had been more, Once he had been more.

When he first realized he was stuck in the place he had been so young. He tried to walk through to the other side but never could cross into it. He was always harshly tugged back to this space just beyond the reach of all others. For years he tried, and for years he failed. He raged, and cried out, beat his fists on pavement that used to exist before the station itself crumbled. It didn't make any sense, he wasn't the one cursed, he didn't commit the evil the other had so why... WHY?!

His anger simmered for decades as he'd watch his sons each leave the world after years of life and yet he could not follow them. He was powerless to do anything but to watch the mortal world erupt into apocalyptic wars, chasing souls into the afterlife and to him. They always knew him but eventually he could no longer recognize any of them.

Time and blood washed away the lives of the world, time smoothed him out and emptied him of all. His rage, despair, love... it all became faint traces until the numbness set it. Gripping him in tendrils that held him in place. He knew, subconsciously, that the numbness muted all of it and saved him from the eternal insanity he was sure would have consumed him. As the world crumbled and fell away he knew no more sadness or anything else, just The Numbness.

The Numbness felt achingly familiar, as if a friend's hand in his. It left him lukewarm in the frozen expanse. It comforted him in a way he vaguely could have recalled had he been a child again and locked beneath the stairs on cold...cold nights. If he could love he would have fancied it was The Numbness that earned it. He somehow figured that it knew that and felt pride in it.

Now though, it had become muted. He knew nothing else since the last of the stones crumbled from King's Cross Station. That had been ages ago, watching mute as the last soul fled the void. Now, a thousand years into The Nothing he recalled that there had once been something. Now, a thousand years into The Nothing, he heard a voice speaking to him from within. A voice he knew once upon a time and so long... so long ago. It crooned his name. He wept. So beautiful was the idea of someone else. To not be alone anymore, to hear another voice besides his own dead one.

"Harry Potter..."

The Numbness lifted itself from his heart but he couldn't will himself to fight it to stay. He could only feel himself crumbling under the voice inside him, all around him. It echoed through the chasms of The Nothing and he screamed. He wailed and gave sound to the void. His fingernails raked at his face where blood should be dripping but couldn't be any longer.

It was so beautiful, he felt so full so suddenly and it was so much. Too much! Without the Numbness holding the void at bay, all came rushing in. He could not bear it on his own, drowning in so much of everything. His knees buckled and he fell upon the ground. A ground that shouldn't be there but now was. He pounded it with fists until flesh and pain were all that existed upon it. Pain he could feel again for the first time in eons. Dead things that had been gone for so long now. So long now. So long now!

His wails fractured into joy, joy so immense it burst forth from him so wild was it. He opened his eyes and light burst forth from within him, echoing into The Nothing and painting it with all that he was and had ever been. He felt the ground soften and witnessed it turn green and lush like the garden in Aunt Petunia's yard. So Perfect that he fell upon it and rolled into its green, smelling the earth he so missed.

He felt genuine warmth as arms encircled him, lifting him into them. Hands soothed his back, pressing them as tightly as they could be. Needing, wanting. Safe.

He clutched to the body before him, enraptured. He pressed his lips to anywhere they could find purchase in between his laughing sobs. Rough skin did little to deter him as he felt and clutched to the vision. Heart pounding, blood warming. Enfolded as he was in this man he knew... knew somehow that this was over, this void filled existence of nothing was ending! He felt love so suddenly and so sharply that it twisted within him as the knives used to do in the kitchen on days when he had been freakish. He was free, oh Merlin he was free!

"I tried to get to you for so long. I watched you ache and despair. Yet I could not reach you. What hell is that?! To know you are here but so far from me. That I could not save you."

He looked upon The Numbness that had become, worshiped him silently, loving him in a way he couldn't have before. This last remaining sliver of a soul stuck in the void with him. His nemesis now his savior. The being that he had fought against in life, and lost, and left here. The soul piece that had been with him on his first death and now waited with him in this void now filling with life and light.

He stared in wonder upon the face of another, that knew him when he was something.

His gaze traced the wrinkled skin so stuck to bone as to be emaciated, darkened as if burned, eyes so red and old that the color itself rusted. So many emotions long dead returned to him and with it, magic. Wonder, Excitement, Desire, Magic. He scoured the man's face with his fingertips. He could feel the softness and warmth of something living and real in the harsh plains under the pads. He quivered with energy, breathing long and steady to take in the scent of his companion. Cold water over earth. This was real, Tom was real!

His voice tore from his throat. He squealed in delight! Feverish in his love that he kissed him time and time again unable to stop, his arms holding Tom to him in desperation, and his heart screaming at him to make sure Tom could never leave. His mouth forming long dead words of 'I love you,'always have, and 'Please,' don't leave me, and 'Stay with me,' I missed you, and 'I will be good just,'...stay.

"He says you are to begin again. I am not. He says this me as I am, cannot."

A voice that to any other could be horrid seems so musical now. Gentle words, wispy, scratchy. For him, and only him.

No! no, no, no, please NO! NO MORE! Please, please...I can't, I can't.

He says as much, begs and pleads and cries. He grips the man tighter in hopes he shan't be parted from him. He has nothing left but him, his last and his only. His always. He struggles against it, crumbling within. He sinks into the grass in despair. Pulls his Tom with him as if somehow the ground is enough to hold him there. It doesn't stop the pain. Fury and sorrow film the insides of his mind and dread sinks heavy into his stomach.. He wails and tears at the man before him, not understanding how it has become this way. His face contorts into grief. He is afraid of the loss and cannot remember any time that sorrow has hit him harder. What had he done to deserve such an accursed existence?!

He stares into Tom's eyes and sees only the truth. He knows nothing he says or does will change this. Whatever is to come is set in stone, the finality of it clear enough. It still doesn't comfort his heart. It doesn't silence his pain. There is nothing he can offer, no fight he can win against fate as such. Hands coax his face to raise and feel the sun and to see. Warmth and light and the solemn face of his savior. Lips touch his eyelids and he is wretched in his grief, inside something is dying and the withered remains sprout anew, it makes him empty and he... he just can't. He cannot endure this. Maybe Tom understands because he soothes the wretchedness away with his cracked lips. He presses them together and breathes deep.

"We do not end here and this is not the last of me or you. We do not end here! Do not ever think that."

Arms around him tighten, so skinny like bones, and clutch him. A face nestled itself into his hair and he heard the grinding of teeth and felt the tension as if just as desperate as he to stay together.. Wetness hit his forehead and he knows his sorrow has ravaged them both. They both tremble feeling the void start to constrict. They both know their time is ending and it isn't nearly enough. He needs more of it, he needs more time. More of this before nothing again, he needs to begin to learn to feel and to think again but Death was never kind. Or maybe fate is the unkind one. The edges of the void come fast upon them. Death encircling them. Listlessly, carelessly...

Master Mine.

Cold tendrils, no not tendrils, talons. No not talons... Fingers carve into them and in between them. It pries them apart viciously with no remorse for what is to come. The beast pulls and once separated, it throws the spare into the edges of the void. Harry is helpless, can only scream as Tom is unmade. His Tom... destroyed completely. Death does not care however, nor will it wait any longer, not for anything. It rounds upon Harry, leering over him and around him, possessing him. There is no grand struggle, nothing left to struggle for. Death is pleased. It stares into the face of its Master and grins.

He smelled of the end of all things both bitter and sweet and the beginning of life both crisp and fresh. He felt neither cold nor hot, his touch that of worn stones from a river bed and rough from work. He stood immensely tall in the cloak of void or maybe it is all of him that is the void. Yet he feels as small as a sweet infant behind it. On his shoulders there sat the grief of all things. The weight needed to bare it bent his back. In his eyes was the past and all that would be, could be, or should have been through the ages. It was a gaze that burned through to all that one was and yet only saw the surface of the skin. His mouth was a thin line and his cheeks were harsh, his face was a map of every man and woman. His voice was a wisp of the last breath one could have, his words the passing time and the breaking open of worlds.

You shall return now, I have opened the way and unraveled it for you to remake anew. Master Mine you should know that this life I never intended for you. His suffering I never sought to plant within you. Live this time Master Mine as never you had before. Eternity is all I can offer you and there is no comfort in it. It never should have been, but it is now. My condolences.

He could not gaze upon death longer, for all him was chilled and his other was gone, there was little to do or say and he hung his head. For all that he had once burned bright he now was blackness and there was no pride left in him. He turned away from Death only to stare again at him as if he never turned away. This being held no emotion upon him but it flashed beneath his skin as if a face was transparent upon another, upon another, and in each was etched a permanent countenance. All of them shuffling atop one another underneath the blank slate that was Death's first face. The one most prevalent was that of a lost woman weeping.

You can fix him. All things. Master Mine.

The finality of the words was shockingly hollow but there was no time for questions and the Void cracked from one end to the other and floated out in tendrils. It rippled and then pulled taunt, ripped and ripped and ripped until the light of suns broke through and one could see every soul that passed burning in the deep expanse of everything.

The souls, one by one, unraveled, their cries that echoed through time and space a cacophony of pains and pleasures. Emotions of all raged against their unmaking as time and its occurrences became undone. They faded, the void faded, Death faded, and somewhere in the expanse the last shreds of Tom were unmaking, winking out like dying stars. He reached his hands through the space, his screams deafening to his own ears until there was no sound anymore. Yet he couldn't save a single one. The last one burned low and then out. He closed his eyes and fell into the emptiness below. Then... nothing.

When he opened his eyes again there was light, warmth, and a river where Death placed in his hands a Stick. The Stick was a surprising comfort to him and he clutched it to him. Magic hummed inside of him, through him. It read him, and settled about him as a mantle. The smell of lilac invaded his senses and for an instant he could see obsidian eyes looking out a dingy window. Black wavy hair, and a cherubic face washed clean of childish wonder... Riddle. He visibly jumped when a heavy hand fell upon his shoulder and he looked over to see a man. Cadmus, his... brother.

He knew then what was needed of him, and felt for the first time in so long hope and the weight of his heart beating in his chest. Death's smile cracked his face in two, the face of joy overriding the first face into the second that was shuffled into the mass of other faces beneath his first one. Hadrian felt his insides warm and his heart fluttered. He smiled then at Death, nearly thanked him. Instead he turned away and left with his brothers to take on his greatest adventure yet. Behind him Death stood straight for the first time in centuries as the weight eased from his shoulders just a little.