A/N below.
The Roots of This Tree
Chapter Nine
She's going to die.
Oh god, she's going to die.
She sees herself — dying, that is — a vision through his eyes. Dying, again and again, over and over: splayed on a rug, trapped in a bed, spread out in a field. Blood and guts and human stuff.
A fragile body, and a frightening mind.
The visions rush past, compressed and looping — sallow skin, wracking lungs, a person-shaped husk. Brittle bird bone ribs and a noose-like rope of purple scar tissue.
The images happen simultaneously, and it's her her her. Dead and dying.
She can't, though.
She can't die. Didn't die and won't.
It's not real.
Or, it's real, but only to a certain point; a twisting hinge of fate.
Her body on a table. In a lab.
A shell. A mistake. Such an utter, utter waste, and she is clambered over and uncrumpled, then, on the cot, and two long fingers fumble, feeling along the juncture of her chin and throat, and oh, but there is such an overwhelming urge to push.
Hermione reels back and goes nowhere, like she's just thrust her head under a waterfall and tried to open her eyes. There's water, and there's pressure, and yes, surely it's wet, but can she see?
It's a deluge.
There's a snake in the grass. A bird in the hand.
A voice is screaming, and it isn't hers.
A wardrobe, then a toffee tin. A dusty old harmonica. A thimble, crushed and thin.
Underneath, a shiny black ring, and inside, a body. Two of them.
Why? Why does he always get the broken things?
It isn't fair, this feeling. It's too much. Time. Memories. Blood.
Too much blood, and it doesn't stop.
Some boundaries are not meant to be breached, no matter how possible it may be to do so.
Memories, thoughts, feeling. It's not one thing happening after another in rapidfire sequence. It's everything — everything happening all at once, all the time. Layers upon layers.
She wonders if this is how it always works — Legilimens. (Occlumens.)
She doesn't think so. It shouldn't, from what she's read. From what Harry said of Professor Snape. It's more so memories that play out like movies, convenient little tapes that treat a train of thought like a sequence. A scene. Admittedly, Harry hadn't exactly said much, but —
And then it happens.
And there she is. Again, in a silvery swirl.
Small wrists slammed to the ground by larger, paler hands. There's a crunch of grit and dirt. A touch that flares. An overmastering sense of rightness. Of want. Like calling to like, what it is to be, wholly — but not quite. So close to whole that it's never been so far.
And at the same time, all the time, there is a bottomless aching feeling that gnaws as it oozes, black like ichor. The watery fetid discharge of a wound that's spreading, swirling. Expanding in the most dreadful, fearsome way.
Fear as a motivator is nothing new. Study harder, read more, run faster. It pushes, and it bends. She knows it. Recognizes it quite intimately. But this?
This isn't fear. It's terror.
Death is coming. Death is here.
And oh, it swells like the rising tide.
Hermione grasps at this kernel of truth like a buoy in a maelstrom. She pulls, as if maybe — just maybe — she can heft herself out of this torrent and finally see, finally breathe, instead of just being beaten, battered and submerged.
And then it happens.
And there she is. Again, again, again, in a silvery swirl. She rises, out and above.
In a breath, there's Tom, tall and straight-backed like a soldier. His hair is combed. His white shirt is immaculately pressed, the sleeves rolled to a neat, elbow-high cuff.
A glistening bead of sweat trickles down the nape of his neck, pooling with countless others at the lip of his collar. Similar lakes form, saturating the crease of his arm and the small of his back. It is a regrettable inconvenience of the summer, this heat — and, in exchange, his response to it — but ultimately a small one. One he studiously ignores in favor of something so much more and so much worse.
Down and before him is a small and sunken thing; the anatomy of an impossible mistake.
It is stripped bare, naked save for strange floral underclothes and a truly disturbing amount of blood.
Tom's face gives away nothing. Sure, there are bags under his eyes, as if he hasn't slept in days, and his lips are dry, peeling slightly. His nose, too, is a notable marker, though it is of the past, not the present; once perfect, it's now swollen but healing, a glaring yellow-y purple bruise.
No, there is little outward interest on his mask of a face. His hands, though — they tell far more. They tremor, shaking with a barely concealed something.
Anger, perhaps. Exhaustion, certainly.
Weakness, regardless.
He glares at the tremors for a long moment, rotating his hands before him. Then somehow, either by magic or sheer force of will, the shaking stops.
His hand, as still as any surgeon's, extends down and plunges into a bucket of cool water. A sodden strip of white cotton cloth emerges. He wrings it out with slow precision, twisting and tightening it like a hand around a neck.
He will fix it. Will get rid of the mess.
His movements are utilitarian and practiced; punctuated by frequent wringing, tightening twists.
Oh, he is furious.
He pivots the body when necessary, lifting a leg or turning an arm, like it is merely a cauldron that needs scrubbing. He is thoroughly methodical in his approach.
Time collapses.
The cotton rag is a dripping, gummy pink.
The body is clean.
Tom quivers, a cage that barely contains.
His fingers shake and slide almost-but-not-quite over the body's midsection, ghosting along its side, counting the too many too-visible ribs.
"This is what I'm stuck with?" he whispers. "This, whatever you are."
Remnants of pinkish water dot his hand. Another shake, and one dot drips from the tip of his index finger, splatting on the skin below. There's a sharp, hiccuping intake of breath.
He snatches his hand away like a person caught.
What a pitifully frail thing.
A ragged wheeze comes from it, reverberating through the room, as present as an aftershock. He sneers and steps back.
He grabs the bucket of water and hauls it to the cabin door. When he returns, there is more white fabric bunched in his hands, which are now clean and dry. He wastes no time when he returns, carefully lifting the body up by the shoulders. He guides limp limbs through sleeves of white cotton crepe, through the nightgown that he liberated from the other house, and it is a trial, truly, more difficult than expected to dress an uncooperative body. To achieve a modicum of presentability.
Finally, though, it's reached.
The white fabric is an improvement, certainly, though anything would be. Casings matter.
He contemplates cutting off the hair, for there is far too much, and it is in a riotous, perhaps even irreparable, state. Instead, he straightens the gown, pulling it down as far as it will go, then farther.
A twitch. More ragged breathing. A jerk.
The aftershocks weren't aftershocks, after all. Merely foreshadowing. Foreshocks.
And there it goes, and here it comes — a wracking cough, terrible and wet, and his shoulders somehow stiffen further. It's time. Again.
His face contorts.
Rage and terror meet, swelling.
A dozen potion bottles line the bedside table, just out of reach of any haphazard thrashing or ill-timed convulsions. Tom locates a small green one. Unstoppers it.
Death has no place here. He will conquer it. Will cast it out. He knows this, as sure as sin. It will happen, because he wills it so.
The potion is shoved in at the next cough, and his steady, careful fingers stroke across a long, bent throat, somehow coaxing the liquid down.
"You will not die," he commands, voice resolute. There is no response, but he speaks again anyway, flicking away a strand of dirty brown hair as he does. "What an abominable mistake."
He brushes another irredeemably filthy curl aside, this one further up, across the temple. His hand lingers.
Wide, brown-black eyes fly open, wild and unseeing, and clash into his.
She is flung back and falls under the water. A scream rings in her ears, and it is not her own.
A heart beats in her chest. Air courses through her lungs. Light hits her eyes.
Was reality always this... much?
No. Certainly not.
Another ray of light, and pain sings behind her eyes like a pickaxe striking. The light is white, bright and blinding, so much so that Hermione nearly misses Tom's hands flying out to her shoulders and grabbing her by the nightgown.
"Are you stark raving mad?" he snarls. His nostrils flare on a sharp exhale.
Hermione breathes deeply and tries not to cry as the pickaxe swings again. The unmistakable sudden onslaught of a migraine resonates in her, drowning out the scream, before she can be pushed further into the mattress.
It's been maybe a second. Likely a minute.
He is pale and trembling. His eyes are sparking and stunned. (His nose is fully healed.)
"What do you think you're doing?"
So intense, he is, like a spitting cat. Everything is so intense. She closes her eyes.
He exhales raggedly. "That you would - that you would dare - "
"I'm - " she croaks, then stops, voice breaking, not from his brutish attempts at intimidation but because her head is likely to split in two on her next breath.
His hands grip her shoulders tighter, and Hermione can tell he wants to shake her like a doll.
"What? You're what?"
"I'm a person," she says firmly. Tears leak from her clenched eyes. If there was a way to fling this pain from her mind, to cut her head from her body, she would, but there isn't, and she needs to say this to him. To express it clearly. "I'm a person, not a thing. Not a body."
She squints up at him, can see the exaggerated contrast of his dark form against the too-bright light, can see that same dark form rear back at her pronouncement. She continues, pushing.
"I know you have kept and will continue to keep me breathing. But I. Am not. A thing."
He looms over her. "You're a nightmare made flesh."
Nightmare. She nearly laughs.
That's nothing new. She has been called as much before, by Ron and others. It feels so bizarre coming at her from this person in this place. But she thinks this monster really means it — in a very literal sense. She feels the same for him.
"I'm a person," she repeats, "like you."
He bristles, and ignores her. "I don't care what you are. If you try that again, I'll kill you," he says fiercely, in a low, dark voice.
It doesn't scare her. Not now.
"You won't," she says. They both know it's true.
His hands disappear from her shoulders, and he rises in a fury that feels more like a huff than a stormcloud. He stalks off to some corner of the room, out of her awareness, and she can't find it in herself to care because the onslaught of a migraine has turned into the very real throws of a migraine, and she can hardly see for the pulsing behind her eyes. This light will carve her hollow.
She presses the bony heel of her hands into her eyes, which is ineffectual at providing more than the barest whisper of relief, but removing them now seems impossible. Certainly worth any potential damage to her corneas from the pressure. Inundated as she is, she almost forgets him entirely in a fresh wave of pain, and it is of course that second he returns. Of course it is. It wouldn't do for her to focus on something other than him, now would it?
"You try that again," he says, strained yet furious, "and you will kill you."
She does not refute his claim. Her mind is screaming too much to form syllables, much less an argument.
"Do you hear me?"
She clenches her eyes further in response.
Suddenly, his hands grab her wrists and pull them from her face. She groans.
He's leaning over her, so close she can feel his shadow. She opens her eyes.
"Do you hear me?" he repeats, as if nothing in the world is more important than what he has to say. "Attempting that kind of magic, now, will kill you."
His brown-black eyes are wide, and they bore into her own. He is scared, and not for her.
Another stab of pain, and she jerks.
His hands tighten around her wrists, enough they will surely leave bruises, and through the all-consuming haze of pain, Hermione produces a sneer all her own.
"We're all going to die, Tom."
He drops her hands like they've burned him. Looks at her again for a long, hard moment.
"Not you," he says, finally. "And not me."
She wants to vomit and thinks she might.
The pain returns. She turns her head, buries her face in a pillow, and prays for it to end. For this all to end.
For a numberless time since she came to this hellscape, this nightmare, she feels like she is dying.
But she can't die. Not her.
Tom Riddle says she won't.
A/N: How've y'all been this last year? Busy? Me too.
(For those still watching this space, I'm still writing when I can, I can't guarantee timely updates, and I love hearing your thoughts.)
Posting and running. Hugs & love.