Please please make sure you have read chapter 51 before you read this chapter!
adkjfadfhadfhadkfj THIS ONES A DOOZY FOLKS:):):)
Chapter 52
"We are all broken by something. We have all hurt someone and have been hurt. We all share the condition of brokenness even if our brokenness is not equivalent. I desperately wanted mercy for Jimmy Dill and would have done anything to create justice for him, but I couldn't pretend that his struggle was disconnected from my own. The ways in which I have been hurt—and have hurt others—are different from the ways Jimmy Dill suffered and caused suffering. But our shared brokenness connected us."
― Bryan Stevenson, Just Mercy: A Story of Justice and Redemption
The air is warm beneath her wings as Illini circles her clearing far above, the pale morning light lending her cover as she moves in and out of low hanging clouds. Even at such a height she can smell the human-cub Florence, can see the small, brown figure leaning upon the boy-tree, magic-tree holding the bitter smelling brown water that she brings with her often. The wind ruffles her feathers, her tail whipping through the air behind her as she begins to angle down just slightly, moving in slow, gentle loops towards the ground.
There had been a time when Florence-cub did not visit, when the land had cried out for her song, but whether it was one year or fifty Illini does not know. Time means little to the Piasa who knew this land before people of any kind were upon it, when there had been other creatures like her to tame the skies and cull the other animals of the forest. Now there is only her, and Florence-cub has begun to visit once more.
She is not even halfway to the ground when she feels the first fringes of Florence's mind, and there is a rumble in her chest at the grief she finds there – cloying and gag inducing, like a stray bone caught in her throat or a splinter in her side. Florence-cub's mind had been this way ever since her return, and although Illini had tried to understand, the fleeting emotions of humans that seemed to change with such rapidity were hard for her to grasp.
"Cub," Illini remembers calling the first time Florence-cub had returned to the clearing. She knew the signs even if she did not understand the meaning – dark eyes, pale skin, the smell of uncleanlinessabout her. The cub still looked young, perhaps only a few years older to Illini's estimate, but then again humans were so fragile she struggled to tell. "What has happened."
"He's dead," Florence-cub's voice wobbled within her mind, and Illini's chest rumbles with a growl as the depths of darkness in Florence's mind become known to her.
"The one you brought to me? The one who's magic lives in the tree?"
"No, my husband," Florence-cub had responded, and she'd pressed a thin, long-fingered paw to her mouth in a vain attempt to stifle the strangled sounds that escaped her lips. "Although Tom is dead too."
Illini remembers now the last visit they had shared many moons ago, Florence-cub telling her that she was leaving the farm, that she had found another. Her mind had sung with a sense of wholeness Illini had not felt within the human-cub for many years, and she'd said the name – Forest? Forsythe perhaps? – like it was dear. So he is goneIllini had thought, laying her head before the heaving, sobbing cub, her chest aching with a pain she has not felt for many years because in a solitary life, there were few who could move Illini to grief on their behalf. Adsila-cub had been the last.
"Dragon pox,"Florence-cub continued before Illini even thinks to ask. "They wouldn't let me near him…the medi-wizards couldn't understand…they kept saying he was in the prime of his health."
"Cub…" Illini had growled, and without thinking the Piasa had used her tail to press the human-cub to her front paws, curling around the tiny thing like she was nothing more than a hatchling. Illini could not remember the last time she touched another living thing that was not a kill, and yet the instinct had been there, the aching in her cavernous, white chest increasing.
"He helped save my life, and I could do nothing but watch him waste away, Illini." Florence-cub had trembled like a leaf against her body, and Illini had held nothing to say in response. Humans were frail, but this fact would not ease the sadness that expanded in ceaseless ripples from the mind before her.
Illini remembers all of this as she touches down upon the ground before the current-day Florence-cub, the dew upon the early morning grass wetting the fur of her stomach. The visits had continued after the first – often silent, each time the cub's mind riddled with a heaviness that Illini could not lift. Sometimes they spoke of Florence's life – she'd moved back to the house-beneath-the-hill – but most often Florence sat beneath the boy-tree, magic-tree and drank her bitter, brown water.
"Good morning, Illini," Florence-cub murmurs as Illini tucks her wings into her side, adjusting slightly her stance. So this was to be a talking meeting, the Piasa muses, kneading the ground beneath her paws and claws.
"It is early, even for you, cub."
Florence-cub's mouth wrinkles in what Illini knows through their attached minds is supposed to be a smile, but she does not show her fangs.
"I couldn't sleep, although I find that I almost never sleep through the night anymore," she explains.
"Do you dream of your mate?"
"Yes," she agrees, and her voice is soft as it echoes through Illini's mind. "I can't understand why even after all these years since his death the pox didn't take me too, why I've been cursed to live on after him. Time itself hardly affects me – I did not care when I had another to share my future with, but now I dread each day as much as each night when I will see his face. I cannot understand what magic holds me."
"The land sings in your veins, cub," Illini hums across their bond. Human time was so short, so brief, she could not comprehend the suffering Florence underwent, only understanding that it wassuffering of a kind. "And time is very different to the land than to humans."
Florence-cub is silent after this, her mind a shifting pattern of memories that move too quickly for Illini to grasp any of them. Illini does not mind, most of her existence has been spent in silence.
"I dreamt of Tom last night," Florence-cub says at last, and her voice is quieter still between their minds, as if somehow the thought is un-pure, like rancid meat or termite eaten wood. "I spent fifty years with a man who made me happier than any one person has a right to be, and yet in my weakness I remember another, and I miss him and I cannot understand why."
Illini lets out an involuntary hiss at the surging anger that ripples across their conjoined minds. It is thick and clouded and deep running, like the taproot of a tree – long-lived and never entirely cured. She cannot understand the anger Florence-cub feels for herself. Illini herself had multiple mates long ago when the land was still young and there were other Piases upon the horizon. It was a sign of strength to take many, and she cannot grasp the human insistence at one-life-one-mate. She remembers even now the ties that had bound the human girl to the boy-wreathed-in-shadow, even if half of his spirit had been gone, and it makes perfect sense to Illini that Florence-cub might dream of the one called Tom.
"Those who are struck by lightning and survive do not forget the pain and brilliance of the moment, no matter its brevity."
"But I didn't miss him. For decades I had Forsythe and I was happy and never once did I truly long for Tom because I had built something new, something beautiful," Florence-cub insists, and her voice is high pitched and whiny, like that of a begging dog. "But now I am alone again and it is him I think of. Am I a monster for it, Illini?"
Illini snorts slightly, her gaze fixating upon the figure before her, the way her cub's long-fingered paws shake around her cup, knees pressed to her chest in a cocoon-like manner. Illini thinks of Tom-cub often too, even when Florence is not present upon the clearing. The existence of the boy-tree, magic-tree makes him hard to escape, the memory of his mangled spirit, of his accusations that burned in Illini's mind the way little else did after the centuries.
"What would you know of loving or giving?" Tom-cub's words ring in her mind as she recalls the way his pale face warped in the moonlight. It had been long since someone challenged her. "You, Illini, who live alone, who exist outside the confines of time, who's reality is only that of a winged shadow. Who are you to judge me? What have you given?"
What had she given? Illini had never found an answer, and more than one night was spent restlessly rolling these words about her head. She'd given Florence access to her clearing, a spirit to share her pain with, but peering down at the human before her, for the first time she questions if this is enough. Another wave of Florence-cub's grief washes over their mind connection, and Illini feels her claws sink into the earth.
"He touched your spirit, my cub. That connection is not so easy erased."
"But it didn't used to hurt, it was nothing at all when I had Forsythe."
"No two rivers are alike, Cub. They take different paths, winding or straight, steep or shallow, but just because one river reaches the ocean first does not mean that the other shall not also reach the same destination," Illini rumbles. "The presence of one river does not negate the existence of the other."
Illini watches as Florence-cub's eyes flicker closed, her head rolling back against the boy-tree, magic-tree as Illini's words roll through her mind. She does not move, her bitter brown water forgotten as the steam rising off of it slows and then ceases. Finally, the human stands and bows in Illini's direction before turning and making her way back down the hill, carrying with her the grief laden thoughts until the connection is severed.
Illini curls upon the mossy hilltop, intent upon sleeping, but her mind will not still and her eyes warily shift and focus upon the silver tree that she'd agreed to plant so long ago. What have you given Tom-cub's voice echoes in her head, and Illini considers the question, peeling away moment by moment through the never-ending years of her life, seeking an answer to his demands. What have you given she asks herself, but there is only silence.
Illini thinks of Florence-cub who is one of the last two-legs to sing with the land, who remembered the old ways of the people who had worshiped Illini like a god, and she mourns for herself. Who after Florence-cub would she have? Illini may be beyond the confines of time, but always there had been at least one other being…but now? Time itself hardly affects me – I did not care when I had another to share my future with Florene had said, and suddenly Illini understands, further disquiet seeping into her heart.
Thousands of years and never once had she questioned what it was all for, yet now Florence-cub's grief and Tom-cub's questions weighed upon her mind like an inescapable cloak of darkness. Illini growls, but the sound echoes around the clearing and there is nothing to answer beyond the indignant squawks of waking songbirds. Without thinking she shuffles forward, bringing her head closer to the boy-tree, magic-tree.
Illini can feel it – the traces of magic that had oozed from the Tom-cub's body – just as she can hear the song of her Florence-cub, the two swirling within the very sap of the tree. There is again a pang of sadness within her on behalf of the last creature who would love her. It didn't used to hurtFlorence-cub had said, a plea for an end to her agony.
What have you given?
Illini's nose inches closer to the bark of the tree, and she can feel the blood that thrums through her veins, the air that swirls within her great lungs. To forgo death is to sacrifice life– how right she had been, for the Tom-cub, but for herself also. A sense of finality settles over her, a purr emanating from her chest – she does not know what she has given, but Illini knows what she will give.
Her nose touches the bark of the tree. Illini takes one deep breath and then another, the metallic scent of Dittany filling her nostrils, the vaguest recollections of the bitter, brown water still perfuming the air.
There is a rush of wind in her ears, the thrill of magic within her, and then all is white.
{{{}}}
Florence pulls the blanket around her shoulders a bit tighter, watching as the first few rays of sunrise peak over the fields of Dittany to the East. Behind her, she hears the telltale creakof the screen door, and then June is there – round eyes nearly white with cataracts – sliding a tray of coffee and biscuits onto the table beside her. Florence pats the elf's head, inviting her to take the seat next to her, and then pours herself another cup of coffee.
Talking with Illini never relieved Florence's anxiety, but it did lessen even if just for the briefest of moments the nauseating sense of isolation that permeated every hour of her waking life. It had been three years since she'd moved back onto the Allman estate, since she had trained and finally passed over Forsythe's family farm to Tallulah's oldest son Luis, and she'd had little human interaction since then. Albion and Owen stopped by occasionally, but the differences in their visages, the obvious lack of effect time had upon Florence's body had made their relationships strained until they had finally broken. Albion was preparing to pass off the major farm operations to his eldest daughter, and Owen had a deadline to meet for his second, highly anticipated text on the intricacies of nuclear transfiguration, and Florence…And I'm a widow Florence thinks with a streak of bitterness so wide that for many minutes she can think of nothing else.
She'd tried – truly tried to run the Blount property after Forsythe's passing, but how could she be expected to walk upon land that made her chest feel as if it was bleeding and her breathing cease with suppressed sobs? They had built something together, and now one half of her whole was gone. She'd written to Tallulah, and with her sister-in-law's blessing and Luis' willing desire to take over the Estate, Florence had spent a year training him and then vacated the land that she'd learned to love more than perhaps she loved herself.
Peering out over the sunrise, Florence notes that the pink camellia's that she and Forsythe planted have just begun to bloom, the Wisteria trellis already at its peak beauty with long purple flowers forming nearly a quarter mile long archway. When she'd awoken before the sun, she'd looked out to see mist swirling beneath the arch, and felt thus compelled to visit Illini. It wasn't often that Florence felt urged to do anything anymore, and so she'd cast the quilt from her form, pulled on some dirty clothes from her hamper, fetched a cup of coffee, and set out.
The presence of one river does not negate the existence of the other the Piasa had said. Florence snorts at this comment. Leave it to Illini to give me vagaries like that. She didn't even know why she had talked about Tom, but like everything else that had ever concerned him, she hadn't thought at all – the words had just sprung forth like a stream from a leaky faucet.
The memories of him had pushed her to illness when they'd first started to resurface, nights spent feverishly tossing and turning, awaking in the morning severely dehydrated, mouth like stuffed cotton. Why him, why now she'd think over and over until the room was spinning and she had enough wherewithal to call June or Cash for some water. In the early days, she'd hardly had the energy to leave her room, terrified by what else might remind her of midnight eyes and a radiant smile and a voice of caged thunder when all of her senses seemed to be betraying her.
It had started in her dreams, but soon it was everywhere, replacing the nightmare of Forsythe's absence with the nightmare of remembering. I want whatever it is you are. Magic has made your soul for mine. I will carve your name into time itself. Hadn't she forgotten those words? She had burned them, she'd scorched every reminder of his presence from her physical life, and yet some mornings she woke recalling the touch of pale fingers on her skin and the thrill of conquest when he'd compliment her spellwork, and then Florence would sob – for being weak, for remembering at all.
Forsythe felt like a beloved childhood story – pages paper thin from years of use, creased and smudged, a familiar weight within her mind knowing the ending, that it could in some way be returned to – at least in her memories.
Tom felt like a half finished novel, a symphony without the closing crescendo, and her body and mind betrayed her as they longed for the end – for closure she had not considered nor thought of in over fifty years.
Illini believed he had touched her spirit – is that why pressing her palm against the Dittany tree that rang with his magic still sent a pulse of electricity up her arm? Or was it just that she was lonely, finally driven insane by a life of such turbulent highs and lows, a life that showed no sign of ever ending. Florence had kept the copy of the Wizarding Times, reading in her moments of fear the headline: Lord Voldemort's Reign of Terror at an End! How Wizarding Boy Hero Harry Potter Saved a Civilization. He was gone and Forsythe was gone and her parents were gone and no amount of frenzied dreams or phantom longings would change that.
Florence's gaze strays back to the door when she hears it swing open once more. June – in her age – had ceased to apparate everywhere because she often overshot her destination. Florence had asked her to retire nearly weekly for a time, but the old house elf had finally turned and hit Florence on the back of the leg with a frying pan and threatened to serve her only collard greens day in and day out for a year, thoroughly ending the conversation.
"Would Missy Florence like eggs and bacon?" June calls from the door, her small frame nearly quaking with excitement at the prospect.
"That would be lovely, thank you Junebug," Florence calls in response. She wasn't hungry, but she'd hated the broken expression upon her friend's faces when she turned away meals, and so she ate for them even if she did not have the stomach for food herself.
"Will Mister Forsythe be wanting breakfast this morning?" June asks, smiling serenely from the doorway. Florence feels a layer of ice wrap around her heart, and her next breath is deep and rattling. This was not the first time the elf had forgotten in her age what had become of Florence's husband – she like Florence had been kept from Forsythe's room during the final weeks for her protection – and yet each time the elf spoke the name it was like experiencing it all over again. Florence closes her eyes, the memory resurfacing against her will.
Forsythe smiled at her from their bed, his tan skin covered in a layer of sweat, the greenish tinge ghastly against the red sores that covered him. Florence hovered in the doorway, prevented by the magical barrier erected by the Medi-wizards from entering her own room, her hand pressing against it helplessly as she tried to return his smile.
"How's the land?" Forsythe asked, his voice a far cry from the deep, steady tones that had kept Florence company throughout the decades. She swallows, blinking back tears, and attempts another smile. It was rare Forsythe had the energy to talk these days, and Florence didn't want to ruin the moment by crying.
"Singing," she murmured. They had rearranged the bedroom so that Forsythe could stare out the window at the fields without turning his head. When he wasn't asleep – which was rare – Florence would sit in the doorway and watch his flickering, sightless gaze sweep over the rows. "The land is singing – it misses you."
"Good…good…" he'd murmured, and Florence wondered how much of him was truly there. His gaze hovered somewhere just over her head, and Florence knew he couldn't see her at all despite his head being turned in her direction.
"Tallulah's on her way from Mexico City with the kids, Forsythe," Florence tells him. Her throat is getting smaller, each breath bringing in less and less oxygen. Again the gentle, easy smile that had accompanied Florence for the better part of her life spreads across his face and there is a swooping sensation in her stomach because even now, fevered and ill and unable to see her Forsythe is more handsome than anyone has a right to be.
"Lu," he whispers, and his voice is like the wind through the trees. Florence feels tears spill over then. "Maybe we can go walk in our fields later, Flor," Forsythe said a moment later, and Florence has to bite her lip to the point of drawing blood in order to answer him.
"I'd like that," she chokes. Forsythe is squirming under the blankets now, his face running with a new layer of sweat, and she watches as the smile on his face grows tight and drawn.
"I think you're wonderful," Forsythe said, but Florence knows he is no longer in the present with her, his head tossing side to side, copper curls plastered to his forehead as his mind recedes into memory.
"Forsythe," Florence calls, and she cannot keep the hint of urgency from her tones any more than she can stop the stream of tears leaking down her face. His squirming turns to thrashing, and Florence reaches for the mirror that will summon the Medi-wizards, whispering desperately into the glass, summoning them with all haste to their home. "Forsythe, honey, the Medi-wizards will be here soon." She presses both hands against the invisible barrier, but it is unmovable as stone.
Foam begins to form in the corners of his mouth, his entire form shaking like a leaf in a tornado. Florence calls his name, she calls it until her voice is hoarse and the house elves have come running to see what has caused her distressed, but still the Medi-wizards have not arrived and Forsythe's body thrashes with an internal fire no one can heal.
And then suddenly as it started, the trembling stops, and Florence watches his chest rise in one rattling breath.
"What about Mr. and Mrs. Forsythe Blount?" He whispers, his head falling to the side so that once more so that she can see his eyes, the flickering of something resembling knowing deep in their sage depths. Florence lets out a sob, her entire body convulsing with the promise in his words, fifty years flashing before her eyes in an instant. Somewhere in the back of her mind she hears several sets of feet moving down the hall downstairs, anxious and hurried.
"Yes," she whispers. "It's perfect."
Across the room Forsythe's face relaxes in a smile, and then she sees the air slide from his lungs, the way his chest decompresses, and his eyes flicker closed. The Medi-wizards are there to stop herself from causing bodily harm when she throws herself repeatedly against the barrier, as she scratches her skin bloody in a vain attempt to reach him, even though she knows the truth.
Florence shudders from the memory, her mind resurfacing in the present where June waits dutifully beside the door for an answer. Every nerve within her body is on fire, but Florence forces herself to smile weakly, to forgive the creature who had no idea the pain her question inflicts.
"No, Forsythe isn't hungry this morning, Junebug. But thank you."
When she is alone again, Florence turns back to the field of camellia and wisteria, considering again her idea to plant orange azaleas between all the rows. There wasn't much space for them, but at least it would give her something to do, and maybe it would provide enough distraction from the thoughts that haunted her.
Florence reaches for her coffee, and there is a spasm across her face as she remembers for a moment Tom seated beside her, his marble etched face flushed with delight as he was presented with a cup of steaming black tea. Shaking her head, Florence gulps down the burning liquid, wondering morosely if she is truly going insane. She grieves for Forsythe – for what they had – and she grieves for Tom – for what might have been, for those choices that had ripped them apart. She grieves for herself to be alone, aging as if in brine, time moving forward around her and leaving Florence behind.
She is staring unseeingly at the wisteria trellis when she see first notices it.
A black speck moving through the purple blooms, Florence knows it is undeniably alive simply because every few steps it sways to the side as if unsteady upon its feet, and there is no plant that moves in the wind that way. Perhaps a deer Florence thinks, blinking a few times to clear her mind, but no – it was well past sunrise now, and deer in these parts were nocturnal. She watches, taking another sip of her coffee, as the speck becomes a figure – a human figure. Did one of the staff get hurt? Perhaps they were dragging themselves back from the field after a long night of agony. The thought forms a pit in her stomach, and Florence gets to her feet while simultaneously reaching for her wand.
She watches with mingled fear and anticipation as the person moves closer, stopping every few stumbling steps to catch their breath. Florence considers calling out, but something within her urges for silence, an animalistic sense that whatever was approaching may possibly be dangerous, and so she stands and waits, her eyes never leaving the steady movement of the figure up the pathway.
The person has nearly reached the edge of the trellis, surfacing into the light when Florence feels her chest shudder, a ripple of energy throughout her entire being that she has not felt for five decades. Her mind kicks into overdrive, piecing together the undeniable truth before her, the details her memory has stored away over the years despite her attempts to erase them. It is not possible… it cannot be…she thinks, but her spirit which feels as if it is leaping from a mountaintop confirms what her mind and eyes cannot accept.
There is only one person who has ever moved in such a way – predatory, even stumbling, like smoke incarnate. Florence has not seen it in half a century, and yet she cannot forget the undeniable grace, the fluidity with which he moved that had at all times rendered her speechless – which renders her speechless now. Inside her, everything is screaming, her head light and knees weak and her skin itching because it cannot be. But, it seems, it can because the figure takes the final steps forward and Florence feels bile rise in her throat as a face of priceless porcelain, as eyes dark as midnight slide into view, and her entire world slides out of focus.
Tom Riddle stares at her across the grass, one hand wrapped around his ribs as if each breath pains him, the other hanging limply by his side. His stance is staggered as he stumbles forward again, and in the early vestiges of hysteria, Florence thinks of watching a baby take its first steps, the wobbling uncertainty with which they move.
Tom Riddle moves towards her, his eyes never leaving her face, his pace remaining constant despite the discomfort that obviously courses through him with each step. Florence is glued to the back porch, burning beneath a gaze she had not thought to see again, a gaze that she had never forgotten, which even now reduced her to ash and tears and a shaking, quivering mess. It cannot be, but it was – her tongue tasting the metallic ring of magic – his magic – upon the air, her eyes drinking in against her will the flawless skin, the delicate fingers which press into his side as if stymieing an open wound.
Tom Riddle stops at the foot of the stairs, his face upturned to hers, midnight eyes gazing upon her face as if she is a well in the middle of a desert, and Florence ceases to breathe at all. Florence wonders what she did in a past life to endure this, what atrocity she must have committed to look once more upon the face of a man who had committed genocide and feel excitement – no – a leaping in her heart as if she'd been hit by a shooting star. One breath passes, and she considers vomiting, remembering the last time they stood like this he'd called her nothing, he'd burned her trees to the ground.
"Florence," he croaks, and his voice is thunder despite its dryness and Florence knows she must be in hell because no one has ever said her name like a song, no one has ever made her want to hear it again and again and again.
"Tom," she whispers in return because what else is there to say, and three steps below her the sagging figure of Tom Riddle smiles, broad and blinding, his face warping with a joy she has never seen there even in their happiest of moments. Florence stands transfixed for one electrifying moment, every nerve in her body burning, and then she watches as the smile slides from his form and his body tips backward, Tom Riddle crumpling to the ground in a faint.
WHOOMP
I have been writing nearly 300,000 words for this moment? Are you in shock? Do you hate it? Are you screaming into the void? I've been dying to tell you Tom will be back, but I didn't know how to say "I'm staying cannon compliant but also Tom's not gone" without giving up the entire game. Do things make sense now? Are you still furious?
I confess to be shaking a bit as I type this AN cause I have no idea what I think all of you readers will think, but i am incredibly humbled that anyone will be reading this at all, so THANK YOU from the bottom of my heart. So much more to come, almost done with chapter 54 and there is still lots of plot and angst and our favorite broody boi is back and i'm THRILLED about it :)
