It was dark when she woke up.
It took several long minutes to figure out where she was, and another still to realize that Tom was there, seated next to her hospital bed. She was in a private room, at least. All the excessive, distorted sensory input had dissipated, leaving her wiped out and…strangely empty.
"No, I would not be pleased."
There was a solemnity to his tone that jolted her out her torpor.
"What? I.." she trailed off. For some reason, she suddenly wanted, no, needed to see his face. As if in response, the room blossomed with soft light. She scrunched her eyes shut for a minute, waiting for them to adjust. "What are you talking about?"
A jolt passed through her when she took in his appearance. He was haggard, unshaven, wearing the same clothes he'd worn in the café. His eyes, though, regarded her with a bright, piercing intensity that made her shiver. "If you died. I would not be pleased."
The moment hung suspended in thick, choking silence.
Something was very, very wrong with him.
Her mind still felt sluggish and disconnected as she struggled to process his words.
Was he saying-?
No. He was lying, she thought savagely.
It was delusional to even consider for an instant that her life was meaningful to him. He was utterly incapable of relating to anyone on a remotely human level. There was no normal, no standard of measurement to even define what he was. He did not feel. Whatever connection they had shared, however fleeting, however passionate or magical, had been an illusion. A chemically induced artifice.
It wasn't real.
Still, he'd always looked after his things, hadn't he? She was nothing more to him than a toy, a puppet to move and make dance upon the whim of his cruelty, and this- yet another game of Mind Fuck.
The realization left her enraged, but also inexplicably bereft, the tautly wound coil of her emotions finally frayed past all endurance, and suddenly she was crying, heavy racking sobs that hurt, the muscles of her torso painfully tender.
He didn't move; he simply continued to study her with that same, too intense gaze.
She wanted him to move, to do something.
Maybe goading the Dark Lord wasn't the wisest course of action, but a rapid swell of hysteria was building, bubbling through her; she was thoroughly unwound beyond her ability to contain herself.
"Fuck you, Tom! Just...Fuck you!"
The expected backlash to her outburst-scorn, vicious taunting, death-did not materialize. He stood up, mechanically, turning from her and stepping to the window and sliding open the curtain.
The sun was pale distant disk of orange creeping over the rooftops.
"The melancholy is merely an aftereffect. It will pass." he intoned flatly.
His listless demeanor was unsettling, disturbing in a manner utterly unlike anything she'd ever witnessed from him, even those instances in battle when he'd harnessed the full measure of his nearly unimaginable power.
But she was done; he could kill her now, if he chose. She would not keep silent any longer.
"Damn you! Is this your twisted fucking way of saying that you care? When every meeting, every single one was nothing more than an exercise of your ability to terrorize me? For months my entire life has been held hostage. By you. Well, I'm not..I won't be your fucking entertainment. N-not anymore."
She was breathing hard, as if she'd been sprinting, nerves on edge, awaiting his response.
A long minute passed.
He continued to stare blankly out the window.
"You've earned that, I suppose."
All the breath whooshed out of her then as she was seized by a single, horrific notion: His mind has snapped. That must be it. He's gone, and what's left here is this...this shell.
It was too much, too much...
Her tears stuttered to a halt as she gaped at him in dawning comprehension.
No.
He hadn't snapped.
She would not be alive if he had.
He was held as tightly in the throes of post euphoric dysthymia as she was, only it was worse for him, wasn't it? It must be, given that his lack of an emotional framework to draw on likely amplified the intensity of the experience for him tenfold.
Yet in the midst of all of that, he'd brought her to the hospital. Whatever his motives, he had gotten her help. She wasn't sure what to think of that.
That he'd safely apparated them both three times while under the influence of the potion was a stunning testament to the incredible power of his magic.
"I expect you are wondering about my sanity at the moment."
"It wouldn't be the first time."
"When I first spotted Weasley, I surmised that you'd finally tried to orchestrate some inept, misguided attempt to capture me."
"I never told anyone about the meetings."
The look he gave her was indecipherable. "Yes, I know. Why is that, I wonder?"
Why, indeed.
At first it had been easy. She'd wanted to protect her friends, protect Harry- she'd assumed Tom's motive had been to use her as some sort of lure..but at some point along the way the waters had been muddied.
If she was honest, she could no longer truly identify the reason for her secrecy.
On some level, had she been protecting him?
Protecting the one single hour every week where she felt...alive?
Was she really that selfish?
"I don't know," she answered quietly.
"I confess, I did not anticipate we'd both been drugged until you began to exhibit symptoms."
"But what happened wasn't real. None of it was real," she emphasized.
"Wasn't it?"
"As real as any psychotropically induced hallucination can be, I suppose."
Quickly he swept over to her. "You know what little regard I hold for human emotion, Hermione. But there, in the forest, I felt what you did. I experienced that connection, that sense of being one microscopic part of the greater whole..and at first..." A bitter, disbelieving laugh escaped him, "it was excruciatingly awful."
She stood riveted, unable to speak.
"I felt wholly insignificant, small and helpless in a way I haven't felt since I was a child, since before I discovered my magic. And do you know what my first impulse was?"
He fixed her with a look.
She knew. God help her, she knew. Without hesitation, she answered, "to kill me."
"I thought if I killed you," he repeated dully, "if I watched the life drain out of you, I could reclaim some semblance of power, once again exert some measure of control over my own existence." He reached up then, stroked his fingers through the long curls laying across her shoulder.
It took all her self control not to flinch.
"But I couldn't do it. To my shock, I found I could no sooner end your existence than I could end my own." He pressed a soft kiss to the top of her head. "Do you want to know why?"
She drew a long, shuddering breath. She truly wasn't sure she wanted to hear what was next. "Why?" she whispered.
"I was adrift, Hermione. After everything I had done to secure my immortality, to achieve dominion over others, all my power...it all meant nothing, nothing compared to the indescribable, eternal vastness of the universe. I, Lord Voldemort, was calling into question my very place, my role in this world. And then, as I hovered on the edge of oblivion, I sensed...I sensed you, Hermione. I felt your magic. It was a beacon in the darkness."
He dropped his head forward, so that it rested in the crook of her neck. She didn't resist the contact. Tentatively, she brought her hands up to his shoulders, and laid her fingers lightly against the fine weave of his sweater. "There's more..isn't there?" she murmured.
"I entered your mind."
She froze, barely suppressing the instinct to shove him violently away. Her muscles trembled with unreleased tension, but she held herself still.
"You became my tether to this world." Tom raised his head, and met her eyes. His expression was unexpectedly tender, intimate, so much so that her breath caught in her chest. "Through you, your memories and emotions, I found my way back. I came to understand what I have been, and what I am."
"And what is that?"
As he spoke, his posture straightened as he seemed to finally begin shaking off the frightening lethargy that had seized him.
"I am a catalyst, a bringer of profound change. I am the Tower."
"Transformation through destruction," Hermione murmured, understanding, before shaking her head. "But you also inflict pain, and bring chaos. You harm innocents without regard."
"Nature is a cruel mistress, Hermione. Hurricanes, earthquakes, tsunamis-they create tremendous upheaval, destroy lives just as surely, yet you don't rail against their existence. My role is just as integral to the function of this world. The fire of destruction cleanses away the old, the decayed, so that new things can emerge. Without darkness, there is no balance, Hermione."
Clearly his ego is as intact as ever.
"You can't honestly legitimize your actions as simply part of the natural order."
One corner of his turned upward. "You don't have to like it. Just accept it," he said wryly.
"I don't accept that. I won't," she replied fiercely. "It's ridiculous. You're a conscious entity, not a-ah!" she shuddered, gasped as he moved suddenly and pressed the tips of his fingers to her cheek. It was like electricity coursing through her flesh, every nerve ignited and buzzing.
She dragged her eyes up to his face. His eyes were half closed, mouth curved in a pleased smirk. He looked...intoxicated. "How-?" she managed, her brain quickly spiraling into sensory overload.
"I wasn't sure until just now," he rumbled.
Snaking his free arm around her waist, he yanked her forward until her body was molded against his, then leaned down and kissed her soundly. The hard length of his erection pressed against her abdomen, and as he sucked gently on her lower lip she moaned into his mouth, rocking her hips against him. He reciprocated with a groan, tightened his grip around her. His hand drifted down her face, his thumb caressing her jaw.
She disengaged from the kiss, panting, her eyes squeezed shut. "Not..right...to..interrupt...me."
He chuckled softly.
Brushing his lips to her ear he whispered, "Feel me, feel how I want you."
Without loosening his hold, he maneuvered them the few steps over to the bed, all the while planting moist, sensuous kisses down the side of her neck. His arousal was like a living thing, roaring through her senses.
She threw her arms around his neck, twining her fingers through his hair as he swiftly lowered them down onto the narrow metal hospital bed. When he wordlessly vanished their clothing, her brain shut down completely
A/N- Okay, so I lied. There will be a short third part, because OF COURSE I decided to tinker with the end. I'll tell ya, this started out as humor, and just seriously veered into I don't even know what. If you enjoyed it, please leave a review!