What Rough Beast

by Meredith Bronwen Mallory

Mrs. Riddle gave birth to her only son in a ditch, on the side of a road somewhere between Little Hangleton and Newcastle.

AN: Should it worry me that I wrote a Tom Riddle piece? Oi, oi-- but it came out so easily. Took me less than two hours to write, with pauses to check my info. I'm worried that it's cliche or stupid or... *shrugs, frustrated with herself* Needless to say, I'd really appreciate any feedback you care to give. As always, I thank you for bothering to take a look at this in the first place-- I hope you enjoy it at least a little. Spoilers through OotP, with major thanks to the Harry Potter Lexicon for having such a great collection of details for me to reference. All characters belong to J. K. Rowling, save Sais, whom I doubt anyone will want. I do want to warn you that this may be a little gross, but in a strictly non-sexual way.

Love,

Meredith

"Everywhere the Ceremonies of Innocence are drowned.

And what rough beast, it's hour come round at last,

slouches towards Bethlehem,

to be born?"

-"The Second Coming" by William Butler Yeats

==========================

What Rough Beast 1/1

by Meredith Bronwen Mallory

mallorys-girl@cinci.rr.com

==========================

(You must never tell anyone the story I am about to tell you...)

Sais Riddle gave birth to her only son in a ditch, on the side of a road somewhere between Little Hangleton and Newcastle.

It was only after she was able to distinguish the pains of her contractions from the little, oh-so clever claws tearing at her heart, that she regretted not knowing what day it was. Her feet knew the number of steps she had taken since

(no, don't think about it. makes it hurt worse, you know-- just look away, turn your head, and maybe it will vanish, like all the other things you see out of the corner of your eyes.

Oh, but _his_ eyes-- those dear, well-loved windows of brown--! How they burned, like the wood who's color they mimicked, so dry with anger and quick to catch.)

but numbers could not give a name to her child's birthday. Her stumbling and faltering on the country road had been interspersed with bouts of nausea and dizziness, and for a while she had lain under a tree until the far off rumble-growl of a Muggle automobile slipped into her dreams and urged her away.

Time mattered not-- time was the sun, jaundiced and bleeding into night, hanging in the sky. The stars, still vague and milky in the fading light, looked down on her curiously, gleams and slivers of illumination from so far away that it rent at the imagination. Numbers, though-- numbers worked, a thousand steps, a million stars, a billion miles in which there was no Thomas Riddle to sneer down at her with sharp, uneven teeth and cut through her love as if it had never existed.

("Unnatural!" he'd cried-- oh! she'd never seen anyone look like that, not _ever_!-- hand tearing into the illusion of a rose she'd conjured. "Demon-thing that dares to look like a woman, invades my home and eats my bed and lies with me..." He'd turned his angry fingers on himself then, pulling at his skin as it was a spoiled garment, "God, I'll never be clean again!" She could just imagine her husband, kneeling in the old family chapel, ripping all her kisses from him, all her tender touches. He would rock back and forth, crying out to the pale, waxen, cross-nailed figure that always befuddled Sais, making her vaguely afraid.

He'd shouted, "Away from me!", but she had only drawn closer, unable to stop the shaking of her hands or the belief running in her blood that she could somehow make him understand.

She'd said, "Thomas, please--!" and his slap had left the stain of his self-inflicted bloodletting on her own cheek, jarring the wand from her hand so that it clicked and rolled on a parlor floor, the sound of bone on bone. )

"Don't think about it," Sais whispered to herself, trying to be firm, trying to keep walking, to keep not thinking, as the night closed in around her ankles. As far as the dusty, country road stretched, there were only sparse bushes or strangled trees, bent like terrible question marks, offering no protection. Merlin, when had the last road-sign been? Some one million, three hundred thousand five steps ago, but how many Muggle whatever-meters were there in one witch's terrible flight? Vainly, she gathered a pitiful fist full of magic within her body, knowing she could not Apparate, knowing she could do nothing but wander the earth like a beast.

("Slouches towards Bethlehem," some Muggle poet had said, "to be born." She hadn't known he was talking about her, at the time, hadn't ever considered that her hour would come.

And her wand--

Her wand, in Thomas' hand, and then in the fire. At school, they'd said that if you lost a wand like that-- a wand that knew each curve and swirl of your hand-- you would die, but Sais knew the worst part was that you lived. Lived through the burning that seemed to be a part of you, lived through the loss of something your magic ran through the way your blood ran through your veins. There'd been the popping burn of her beautiful length of willow-wood, and then she had been sure she'd never breathe again, with the smoke of it and Thomas' awful laughter crawling down her throat.)

She couldn't go back, she could never go back, and-- oh!-- what she wouldn't give for just a glimpse of the Muggle city called Newcastle. The birds cried with the calling of the sun and, though she couldn't open her mouth, she cried with them-- a long, low sound, the wail of a fanged mother, a creature of vengeance. They'd warned her, her own Mother and Father, and, if she wasn't beyond feeling anything the cold and the absence, it might rankle Sais to know they had been right. Where was the love she had so valiantly defended, that tender, dove-soft feeling she'd been so certain of on the night Thomas made her his wife.

"Are you forgetting what our people have gone through, my child?" Mother's voice had been soft, in her ear then and in her ear now. "Salem. The girl called Joan. The kindling of human flesh. They've done it before and they'll do it again. Sais, don't you see?" And Sais did, only now that her vision was swallowed by tears. She leaned in, as if to be embraced by the memory of her mother's firm, loving concern-- and because there was nothing to hold her up, she stumbled and fell and rolled down down down.

"I was wrong, Mama," she wept at the bottom of the ditch, rocks digging into her back. Her swollen belly ached with the fall, she soothed and caressed it with her thin hands, feeling wonder that it was there at all, when she felt so much the child herself. "Mama," she called into the mud and the night-leaves and the itching grass, "I'm sorry. Please..."

Please take me home, she wanted to say, but knew there was no one to heard her, no matter how desperately she might want it. The only soul that knew her cries did not require her voice, for the baby was inside her and a part of her and understand her through and through.

'My darling,' she crooned inwardly, 'my sweet, lost child.' For endless spaces between the beatings of her heart, she lay there, until the contractions came to nuzzle against her like an animal seeking warmth. She thought, 'It's really going to happen,' and forced herself up, twigs and blades of yellow, dead grass clinging in her thick, dark locks. Her Muggle costume, the dirty green dress, soft jacket and torn stockings seemed to irritate her skin as she moved, but she moved restlessly in an unknown direction.

Sais shoved a gloved hand in her mouth, knowing that if she started laughing now that she would never, ever be able to cage it again, and wanting to laugh because the only thing she could think of at the moment was 'boil water'. How useless! She was no healer or Mediwitch-- Transfiguration had been her talent at Hogwarts-- and anyway, the saying was a Muggle one. Water-- whatever for? Stupid, stupid; but still she looked, eyes useless in the dark, listening for any telltale sound. In the sky, the clouds were mere wisps and looked like the totem of her house, serpents sliding through the dark. She tilted her head up to watch them, and when she finally heard the trickle of a pitiful creek, she at first thought it to be their hissing instead.

The snake-clouds parted ever-so briefly, the moon was wink of silver, and she could see that the water was dirty. A newspaper soaked through and clotted against a near by rock, a myriad of junk rising like strange shapes in the grass. The smell of waste was thick in her nose and mouth, so that she coughed and then could not stop for several long minutes, bent over on the murky shore and feeling each shudder of her lungs shake the baby.

'Sorry, sorry, my love,' she soothed with mind and hand, thinking of that bundle of soft flesh and soul, safely wrapped in her womb. But not for much longer. Standing straight again hurt, but everything hurt, so she continued to move amongst the refuse, until she found an iron pot with the rust only creeping up the outside, dipping it in the creek. How pointless, she thought, even as she labored to carry this new weight, but it was strange how determined she became to do something when there was really nothing to _be_ done.

About anything, about anything at all.

("You'll have to tell him someday," Mother had said, frowning over the lengths of white satin and pearl strewn lace that composed Sais' muggle wedding-gown. "Shoulda told him when you took his ring. Should tell him now, 'fore you walk down that isle."

"It's never been the right time," Sais remembered saying, eyes focused on her mirror image as it donned an expensive diamond necklace, which felt cool and wonderful against her skin. A Riddle family heirloom.

"I don't hold with this," Mother said, voice warbling through sudden tears that seemed to shock Sais as much as they shocked the woman shedding them. "I should'n be here. What kind of mother 'elps her own daughter to suicide."

Touched and offended and more than a little afraid, Sais embraced the other woman, so small now even though she'd once towered as high as the sky.

"Mama," she'd said, leaning down to press her face to her mother's bosom, "it will be alright." As if through her belief could make it so.

Because wasn't that the way magic worked? Wasn't that what she'd been taught all along?)

Starting a fire was a simple enough spell without a wand-- simple, but terribly wounding to Sais, who was tried and only now thinking vaguely that she didn't know how many days it had been since food had touched her cracked lips. By the time she'd lined a few stones around the flame, her contractions were so hard and heavy that she no longer thought about boiling her sought-after water. The iron pot lay a ways away from her, from where her body lay sprawled in the dirt and yellowing grass. How funny she looked down there, like a broken toy or doll-- she stood above herself, gazing with apathy, until the next rolling wave of pain shoved her back down and occupied her with the business of childbirth.

"I wanted you so badly," Sais told the baby, using her voice. After all, it was leaving her body, and perhaps would not be able to hear her thoughts as well now, like the sound of someone shouting as you walked out the door. "I never wanted anything more than you, I think. What a dream-- your father was a dream, a boggart, a thing made of smoke and my own wanting. Some Slytherin I am, being outfoxed. Too trusting, too loving--" and she would have said, 'stupid, naive girl', but she needed to focus on breathing. She forced herself to drawn up and sit on her knees, pushing fruitlessly, baring down. Her muscles pulled and strained without conscious effort on her part, so she simply stayed like that, a suspended puppet, thighs aching and blood flowing like a river. A whole river of blood, and she dreamt/saw/imagined that she could hear people screaming-- thousands upon thousands-- and she knew from their voices that they were muggles, each and every one. Their voices were so high and pained, so eager for death; Sais found within herself no compassion or pity, instead listening to them with a sort of satisfaction.

(Her baby should have been born in Riddle Manner, while it's father paced with nervous anticipation in the parlor and she herself laying propped up in their marriage bed. She'd have help from her own mother, and from Lady Riddle-- her baby would be wrapped in warm, soft swaddling and she would hold it in her arms, gazing down with wonder and thinking, 'I hardly remember any pain a'tall, now.'

Thomas would smile and love the baby, dote upon it hopelessly and kiss her flushed and happy cheek. He would--

"Shoulda, woulda, coulda," her mother was fond of saying.

But oh, there's no going back, now.)

The screaming seemed louder, now-- she was too delirious to realize it was her own-- and Sais searched within herself frantically for love. Where was the love she had felt for Thomas, when she'd seen him that day in Oxford Circus, so charming as he offered to light her a cigarette?

She'd said, "Oh, I don't smoke", and he'd said he didn't much enjoy it either, but liked carry a lighter and a pack, since it was courteous to be able to offer one to a lady.

He'd talked to her about plays and music and about his God-- she'd thought him such a wonderful marvel. So exotic, maybe a little barbaric as well. To think, nailing people to crosses and rising from the dead. Even wizards didn't do that! She hadn't feared the thorn-crowded figure and it's vacant eyes, not the first time he'd shown it to her.

She _shoulda_ been afraid.

If she had known, she _woulda_ done things differently.

Maybe she _coulda_...

No, no, no, no, no.

She found no love inside herself-- no love for Thomas, only for this baby she bore in such pain. She could only care for it, and barely for herself; she wished the world to hell and gone, squatting in the empty field as the sun prepared to rise. Let them scream-- let them all scream. Beyond her body, she towered above them all, laughing and telling them she did not give a damn.

("Out witch! Out devil!" Thomas' voice, and that of his mother and father-- all raised and condemning and they pushed her out the door and she almost fell down the steps and...

No, she didn't give a damn at all.)

Sais started back to the real world-- as real as any world was-- feeling the baby's head breech. Instinctually, she bent over to guide the skull into her hands and let the rest of the body fall into her arms. So quiet!-- but then it made a strange gargling sound, coughed blood and mucus and howled. For a long moment, she just stared at it, at it's red face and closed, baby-bird eyes, arms flailing and already so angry at the world. Then she looked down, fumbling past the white, surprisingly hard coil of the umbilical cord, and saw that it was a boy.

"Tom Marvolo Riddle," she said, having decided on a name long before she'd let any secrets slip past her lips to her treacherous husband. The name had become so firm in her mind that she could not take it back now. "That is your name," she informed the squalling bundle, so small she wasn't quite sure it was human. But then, her little Tom opened his eyes, such a dark magnificent green, and she knew he was the best and most beautiful thing that had ever happened to her. "That is your name," she continued, "for now. I can't take it back, and I'm sorry-- but you have your own name, the secret one you can't even tell me, and someday you'll use that instead."

Heedless, the baby continued to cry, stretching its tiny arms towards her voice, and Sais realized that she would have to cut the umbilical cord herself. It was strong, this last thing that connected her to her son, and she was loath to break it-- but it was something that was done, and... She reached for one of the rocks by the fire, though the intense heat shivered against her hand. Leaning over with the baby in one arm, she pierced the cord between the rock and the ground, grunting hard. It took her three tries to find a rock hot enough and sharp enough to do the trick. Her dress was bloodied beyond all hope-- indeed, red was still splashing down along her legs. Was that supposed to happen? Light headed, Sais pulled her hair-ribbon from the mess of her locks and tied off the baby's end of the cord with it, fighting each round pearl of laughter in her throat, because her little Tom looked like a present, and he was exactly what his father didn't want.

"My gift," Sais murmured, peeling off her stockings and remembering the dark fairy of Briar Rose's tale. "My gift is my own blood, my sweet little Tom. Blood that carries magic. My gift is fear-- not for you, but for others. Fear _of_ you, my son." He lay so lovely, there against her swollen breasts, he opened his little mouth and she led him towards a nipple, he suckled and sighed like a small baby lamb. She was filled with a love for him so fierce that it brought her to crying all over again. Sais let them fall without notice, dipping her stockings into the chilly, dirty pot of water to wipe away some of the blood. Her vision sparkled black, she knocked the pot over, and as it lay there with the water soaking into the dirt, she realized she was dying.

Little Tom drank from her still, and she found she didn't mind. Tearing off her slip, she wrapped it about his shivering form and switched him to the other breast, encouraging him to feed.

"Take it all," she cooed, a twisted nursery tune, "I'll not have anything else to give you, my smallest love. But you can take everything from me and I won't mind at all." He opened his eyes, still suckling, and in those deep, enchanted forest depths, she saw a wordless love that struck down her soul. It was greedy, it didn't understand a separation of herself and the baby, but that look made her exultant. "Oh, I love you," she said, voice breaking, "I love you more than anything in this whole, thrice-damned world."

She laid down on her side, carefully cradling her Tom close, brushing her lips against his blood-matted down of hair.

"Don't forget me," she caressed his little, puppy-fat cheeks, counted the ivory bones of his back. She couldn't keep her eyes open-- it got very cold, and stopped being cold at all. Her last breath whispered in Tom's tiny ear, and then she lay utterly still.

"The world is a terrible place..."

#(#)#

They found Sais in the fullness of morning-- the furtive, anxious trio of Lord Riddle, his Lady, and Thomas, their son.

"Good, good," said Lord Riddle, nudging the prone form with his crane. "We'll dump the bodies in the creek. If her--" he spat, but elegantly, "-- parents come looking for her, we'll say she ran away and we never saw her again. Always best to put some of the truth in a lie, eh?"

Thomas Riddle bent down to inspect the bundle of things that had once comprised his wife, but could make her up no longer. "She was a devil," he said with the barest remains of doubt. Carefully, disgustedly, drawing her long hair away from her body, he fell back into the grass with a startled cry.

"What--"

"It's still alive!" Lady Riddle said, behind a pale white hand, "Her spawn."

"It'll drown or starve if we leave it," the Lord shrugged, "no matter."

"Don't be a fool!" his wife clutched at her breast, looking at her own son sorrowfully. "The worst thing you can do is hurt the barin' of a witch! She'll curse you for sure, grave or no! Don't you know that the strongest hatred, the strongest grudge, is the one you're holding onto when you die?"

Lord Riddle tried to look more exasperated than pale, "Well, what do you want me to do, my Lady? Surely you aren't suggesting we take that _thing_ under our God-fearing roof?"

"No," she said, and was echoed by her son.

"We'll give it to the orphanage in London," Thomas said, clearing his throat. "We'll say it's a bastard. You've plenty of money, father-- no one will dare to say a thing."

It was Lady Riddle who-- visibly gathering her courage-- pried the baby from the arms of its mother's, and it was Lady Riddle who made the mistake of looking down into the child's eyes as she passed it to the Orphanage Head. Such a dark and desperate green, those eyes-- they clutched her soul, and her lips parted allowing a dead woman to catch her tongue and-- unwilling even in death to let her baby be cheated-- speak the boy's name.

#(#)#

Tom, three years old and desperately alone in the cot at the farthest end of the room, rolled over and lay blinking up at the dark ceiling, filled with nameless images that were not his own. The nightmare gave its final shudder through his body and passed away-- he turned his cheek into his pillow and listened, unable to cry. A touch came-- shadow only, fingertips from far away, but he did not stir, letting the soiled cot cradle his body as coughs echoed around the chilly room. A kiss, so cold but wonderfully loving, was pressed against his forehead, as substantial as the memory that birthed it.

"My poor, sweet Tom," a coo, the echo of a ghost's sigh, "I'm so sorry, my little baby boy." A clatter, bone on bone and burning-- but she was tender to him still. "I'm so sorry, so you make them sorry, Tom." He loved her with a desperate greed that could not differentiate between her and himself. She was the only person he would ever be able to love.

("The world is a terrible place...")

"My darling Tom. Make them _all_ sorry."