I'm procrastinating by posting this, but that is literally nothing new.
THANK YOU FOR ALL YOU REVIEWS ON THE LAST TWO CHAPTERS! We're in the home stretch (well sort of - still a chunk to go)
I'm blasting my Nutcracker Vinyl and having a great day. I hope you all are as well!
Chapter 53
"Sometimes it's exhausting for me to simply walk into the house. I try and calm myself, remember that I've lived alone before. Sleeping by myself didn't kill me then and will not kill me now. But this what loss has taught me of love. Our house isn't simply empty, our home has been emptied. Love makes a place in your life, it makes a place for itself in your bed. Invisibly, it makes a place in your body, rerouting all your blood vessels, throbbing right alongside your heart. When it's gone, nothing is whole again."
― Tayari Jones, An American Marriage
She stares at him. She stares at him shamelessly, his limp form cast across the sofa in one of her sitting rooms where she'd levitated him, because what else can she do? He's dead. He's supposed to be dead. But he is not. Tom Riddle is lying upon her couch, his chest rising and falling in an undeniable sign of life, his mouth parted in sleep such a familiar detail to Florence that again she fights the urge to vomit.
June had ignored Florence's protest and placed a pillow beneath his head, smoothing the chocolate curls across his forehead before draping him in a spare blanket from the cupboard. She'd then returned with a steaming pot of tea and a singular cup and saucer a few minutes later, as if not a day had passed since Tom was last in her home, since Tom was last alive. Florence stares at the teapot when staring at his face becomes unbearable, somewhere in the back of her mind wondering when the house elf had restocked on the forbidden item.
Florence cannot help but notice how young he looks – face unlined, skin smooth as dove's feathers. He appears close to the same age he had been the last time she had seen him, perhaps twenty or so, the hair that curls beneath his ears a giveaway despite the erasure of the bags beneath his eyes, his face fuller than the emaciated state in which he'd propositioned her. Despite the fact that he should not exist at all, Florence is amazed at how healthy he looks, his clear visage a stark reminder of the shadows that had haunted him in their final years.
What have I done to deserve this she asks herself for the hundredth time, but only the steady sound of Tom's breathing answers her.
It is hours later, the light outside the window having moved so that the shadows spanning the floor are long and narrow, that Tom shifts awake. Florence is curled into a ball so tight in the chair across from him that she could not release herself even if she tried, and so she watches with a wide-eyed stare as his eyes flicker open, his face falls to the side peering around the room. At once his gaze is upon her, Florence's chest constricting to the point of pain.
It is a small mercy that he does not smile at her. She does not think she could bear it.
Tom sits up slowly, wincing and pressing a palm to his chest as if the action pains him greatly, but at last his feet are set upon the floor, elbows resting upon his knees. He pulls the blanket from him, eyes lifted to Florence's in a question, as if asking did you do this? She remains silent, unflinching, not trusting herself to speak. What have I done to deserve this she asks herself again, but again there is no response.
"Tea," he croaks at last, and something inside Florence seems to give way at the sound of his voice, a sign to her frenzied mind that he is truly there – that against all reason Tom Riddle is alive and in her home. When his eyes meet hers again with the same questioning stare, Florence shakes her head slightly.
"June's doing."
"I see," he rumbles, pressing his palm against his sternum again. He stares at her unabashedly, and Florence feels a trickle of cold sweat along the back of her neck, a vague nausea in her stomach. "Could I trouble you for some water?"
For a moment she reels at the request, but then she moves with more speed than she thought possible, suddenly desperate to escape the room where he lay. Out in the hallway, Florence leans against the wall. Tom Riddle – mass murderer – is alive in my sitting room. The thought is so overwhelming that Florence has to fight the peel of hysterical laughter that threatens to bubble up her throat and tear her lungs apart. She stumbles down the hall several deep breaths later, fetching a pitcher and tray and tapping it once with her wand to fill. Florence can feel her body shivering as she pulls a cup from one of the cabinets, levitating the tray before her so that she will not have to approach him when she returns to the room.
Tom is where she left him, his gaze fixed upon the myriad of paintings along the wall, his porcelain skin drawn in what can only be a look of distaste. Against her better judgement, she wonders if he is in pain, or if something else is bothering him. Never before has she seen so many expressions upon his skin, and it unnerves her now to do so, to be able to easily read his thoughts without the presence of one of his many masks. In her hysteria, she almost wishes for the impassivity that he'd once bore, if only to still her racing heart.
The tray lands on the table beside the teapot, and Tom takes to the water like a man starved, not even stopping to thank her. Florence watches as he pours glass after glass of water, paling slightly as she notices droplets that run over and down his face, landing upon the black material of his pant leg. With another silent flick of her wand, she refills the pitcher when it is empty. Tom watches it fill with almost maniacal greed, midnight eyes nearly popping from his face, mouth parted in obvious desire, but before he moves to refill his cup, his eyes move to hers, face rapt with what can only be described as exaltation.
"Thank you," he groans, pouring another glass before draining this one too. Florence's gaze watches his adam's apple bob with each desperate mouthful of water, consuming the cool liquid with such gusto she wonders if he will be sick.
"Slow down," she commands from across the room, her skin too hot and then too cold as she watches him, her body still unsure of how to respond to the presence of the man across from her. Tom's eyes, his fucking midnight blue eyes, meet hers, and it is a sin that he can look at her in such a way – it is a sin he can look at her at all since he is, by all accounts, dead. "You'll get sick," she adds, her voice loud in a room that abruptly feels too small.
"Alright," Tom agrees, setting down his glass, leaning back against the sofa with an air of confidence that stabilizes Florence slightly. This is a Tom she remembers, self-assured in all matters, direct and perceiving, and the familiarity of his arm stretched languidly across the back of the chair calms Florence's mind. Silence stretches between them, but Florence has never backed down to Tom Riddle – not in their private lessons as a schoolgirl, and certainly not now when he had invaded her home, defied the laws of magic and reality.
"You were dead," she states, staring at his face for any flinch, any movement at all.
"I was in limbo," Tom corrects, and the corner of his mouth turns up in the faintest hint of a smirk. Rage surges through Florence then, that even now after all this time he would dare to make her feel small, to ridicule her for something she does not know.
"Explain," she says, her voice shaking as she crosses her arms before her chest.
"My soul was split, I was trapped in a liminal space, unable to move into the Beyond, unable to return to the world of the living," Tom states. His eyes are glowing, as if daring her to challenge his assertion, a mockery of the debates they had once held in the Hogwarts library. Florence hates him for it – for his ability to stir such a reaction within her now after so long.
"Then how are you here," she hisses, and her hands are fists and her mind is swimming, and she does not know if she wants to run the back of her finger across his cheek or punch him.
"Illini brought me here," he says, and this comment causes his mouth to turn downward in a frown. Again, he presses his palm to his sternum. "She gave her soul to repair mine, she…mended me…and then merged me with the residues of magic in our tree."
If Florence had been standing when Tom's statement reached her ears, she knows she would have fallen to the floor. As it is, her vision turns black for a moment, her chest heaving with its sudden inability to bring in air. She falls back against the cushions behind her, mind struggling to comprehend the unfathomable claims that Tom has lobbied. She gave her soul to repair mine. As far as Florence knew, souls were not a transferable item – and yet, Illini was a magical creature, who was to say what the Piasa was capable of? Who was Florence to challenge the power of such a being?
The second realization of Tom's statement hits her like a blow to the stomach, and unbidden tears prick her eyes.
"So Illini?" She whispers, her eyes fixed upon the ceiling. "She is gone?"
"Yes, she is gone."
"Why you?" Florence spits, rocking forward so quickly that she sways in her seat, threatening to topple to the floor. Tom's eyes are wide before her, one hand raised as if in defense, but Florence could care less. She has only the capacity for her anger now, fury rippling through her in such waves that there is no question that Tom can feel them. "Why would she give her life for yours – after everything you did to me – she knew how it ripped me apart, so why? You didn't deserve it, you don't deserve it."
Tom stares at her silently, one palm facing her, the other pressed to his chest, the first of his trademark blank expressions sliding onto his face. The sight of it does not bring Florence relief, instead throwing her into a deeper rage. Who was he to deserve a second chance? Forsythe had been good and kind and he had died like everyone else and Florence had been forced to watch – so why was Tom afforded even one more night under the sun? What had Illini been thinking?
"Why?" she demands again, and her voice cracks slightly. Why me she does not add.
"I do not know," he murmurs, and Florence can see the line of tension in his jaw at having to admit his own shortcoming.
"How do you know how she revived you, and yet not know this?"
"Our spirits connected, during the magic – during the transition. As I became aware once more, I felt what was occurring," Tom says through another frown, and Florence wants to slap him until his voice is as hysterical as her own. "She was thinking of you."
"No she wasn't," Florence hisses. "If she had been thinking of me, she would not have done this. Subjected me to this."
Tom shrugs as if to say if that is easier to believe but he does not speak. Silence stretches on again, and Florence watches as Tom finishes the second pitcher of water before finally pouring himself a cup of tea. The sight is almost too much, and Florence must close her eyes to stop herself from watching the way his fingers curl around the saucer, his lips pressing to the demitasse cup.
"Do you remember?" Florence finally asks, her eyes peeling open only after she hears the telltale sound of the saucer being set once more upon the table. Tom's face is still, not one curl out of place.
"Yes," he murmurs, his voice raw as he forms the word. "All of it. Hogwarts, you, the years in between, the thing that I became."
"The thing that you are," Florence accuses, her throat tightening.
"No," he counters. "The thing that I was. I have a new soul, Florence, I cannot be the same."
A small sigh escapes her as she feels the onset of a headache forming around her temples. It is confounding magic – as confusing as anything Illini had said to her in life – why would she not be confounding in death too? Florence feels exhaustion beginning to seep into her bones, any residual adrenaline from the initial shock of Tom's existence finally leaving her system. She meets his gaze, but no longer has even the energy to be amazed by his presence.
"Tomorrow we will leave for the Lodge," she says after a moment, her eyes never leaving his. "No one can know that you're back, and I won't risk anyone else's life until I know what you are."
"I've told you what I am," Tom frowns, leaning forward slightly. "And you know who I am, Florence."
"Forgive me if I don't believe you," she mutters, getting to her feet. She calls for June and Cash, who appear a moment later with simultaneous cracks. Cash lets go of June's hand having held onto the house elf to guide her through apparition.
"June, Cash," Florence calls to them. "Please escort Tom to one of the guest rooms. I would like for you to lock all windows and doors, and under no circumstance is he to exit the room this evening. You may bring him dinner at seven tonight and a self-refilling water pitcher, but nothing more. Speak to no one outside of this house of his presence – tomorrow we leave for the Lodge."
Her voice does not quiver, nor do her umber eyes stray from his obsidian as she speaks. She feels like a rabbit with a snake in her warren – at any moment he could lunge for her, sinking his teeth in and ripping her to shreds. Any sign of weakness he will surely use against her – that is what he did before, weaponizing her feelings for him until she was a shell of a human, longing only for him. Tom, for his part, does not flinch. He meets her gaze, getting to his feet at the conclusion of her speech and following June without a word from the room. She can feel his eyes upon her with every step until at last he disappears into the hallway, severing their connection.
It is only when Florence hears the door to the guest room close above her that she allows herself to weep – for Illini, whom she loved, for Forsythe, whom she misses, and for herself and the situation she finds herself in.
.
.
.
That night she takes herself to Illini's copse. The clearing is deserted, the full moon turning the grass silver as Florence listens to the quiet rustlings of nocturnal animals around her. There is a weight in her throat as she steps beyond the tree line, her eyes searching for what her mind has already accepted she will not find.
Slowly, her gaze moves from the star riddled sky down to the copse once more, circling about the clearing, inspecting each branch for signs that something has changed. It takes one full circle before she sees it – or truly the lack of it.
The Dittany tree she had planted all those years ago is gone, just like the Piasa.
.
.
.
Florence does not sleep that night. She spends the early hours of the morning packing, her frazzled mind sending her back and forth between her closet and bathroom and to various other rooms in the house as she thinks of things she may want over her stay. She does not know how long they will be gone, nor does she know what to do with Tom once she gets to the Lodge, she only knows that he is a threat as long as they stay upon the Allman property, and she will not be responsible for any more of his murders.
She is seated upon the back porch when Tom is escorted through the screen door by a smiling June, her tiny hand fisted in the black material of his pants. Vaguely she wonders if she should offer him new clothes, but then she remembers that Illini is gone because of him, and the offer dies on her tongue. He stares at her, and Florence feels her stomach twist, thankful that he does not attempt to move closer.
"Are you hungry?" She forces herself to ask.
"Not particularly," Tom responds, and his voice is closer to the voice she remembers – smooth and solid now that he's had water and food to balance his system. Florence shivers, and looks out over the fields.
"Then we're leaving now. June, you'll escort Tom through the Floo."
If Tom is annoyed by having the two house elves tailing him, he makes no sign of it, his face as blank as ever as he moves down the hall and into the main parlor where a fire is already roaring in the grate. Florence watches the two of them step into the green flames and disappear, following soon after to resurface in the dark, wood paneled room of the old family hunting lodge. It was hers now, a gift from Eudora Allman herself in her mom's will that had shocked Florence into muteness, and the perfect place to retreat too if she wanted to isolate. The nearest home was not for miles around.
With a flick of her wand to close the Floo network – we don't want any unsanctioned return trips Florence thinks privately – she crosses the room, heading towards the stairwell and her bedroom where she intends to try and make up for her lost sleep. At the doorway, she halts, looking over her shoulder at Tom who is the only figure remaining in the room. His eyes are bright as they trace over Florence's body, and against her will she feels herself flush, seventeen years old again under his gaze.
"You may go anywhere you like in the house or on the property," she tells him, fighting to keep her voice void of emotion. "I'll be erecting wards to notify me if you try and leave. And," she adds, her voice dipping dangerously low as she recalls a slip of Philip's tongue all those years ago about a dead client of Borgin's and a house elf. "If you so much as raise your voice at either June or Cash, so help me god I will rip your arms from your undeserving body, do you understand me?"
Tom stares at her, the impassive gleam within his eyes the only reaction he manages to give before Florence has swept from the room, fleeing up the stairs.
Days pass.
Florence manages to avoid Tom for hours at a time, the benefit of a large home and a private staff that is willing to bring her meals to her bedroom suite. She knows somewhere in the back of her mind that she is being a coward, that she is running from a conversation that must be had, but the idea of speaking with him makes her feel trembling and weak and feverish all over. He's not going to stop being alive just because you ignore him a clinical voice at the back of her mind reminds her at night when her brain keeps her from sleeping.
Tom, for all of his natural brilliance, seems to sense that she is avoiding him and he does not press her. Florence does not even know if he wants to see her. If he is to be believed, Tom did not intend to return to the world of the living, and he certainly did not intend to stumble once more into Florence's life, and yet she cannot forgive him his presence because whether intended or not, he ishere and Florence must deal with the repercussions of this fact. How he spends his days she does not know, but she spots him from her window meandering through the English garden once morning, and other days she finds half read books open in the library.
She flips through the titles of these tomes, unsurprised to see that they cover a variety of topics, floored to find children's tales and wizarding novella's in the mix of texts. Against her better judgement she finds herself wanting to ask why he's chosen these particular works, a strange need to know if this Tom Riddle who appeared from the mist is the same as the one that ripped her still beating heart from her chest, or if he is – as he has stated himself – different.
Yet despite the size of the house and the limited number of guests which occupy its walls, Florence cannot avoid him indefinitely. It occurs most often around meal times, Florence or Tom happening upon the other in the dining room or kitchen, freezing upon the spot as they watch the other pause mid-bite. Other times they pass each other in the hallway – Tom always stepping to the side so that Florence can move by without risk of touching him, her footsteps carrying her hurriedly away from the figure she has to fight not to look back upon. And on a few rare occasions, Florence happens upon Tom in one of the sitting rooms, long legs crossed, his pale face staring out the window with an undeniable expression of disquiet.
His eyes follow her like a tracking hound when they do meet, two burning embers pressing into her skin at all times saying more than his mouth ever could. It is a look one shade off of accusatory, and Florence finds herself loathing him for it, for the way she cannot escape the feel of his eyes on her body even when he is gone. Who was he to make her feel guilty? He had murdered in cold blood countless scores of Wizards and NoMaj's alike, at yet one blank stare from him was enough to send her running, tail between her legs back to her bedroom. Those who are struck by lightning and survive do not forget the pain and brilliance of the moment, no matter its brevity Florence remembers, and she lays awake at night wondering if Tom is lightning or a curse or some dark, perverse dream.
But it is in the mornings when she drinks her coffee and pretends not to feel the biting cold on the back step that Florence feels guiltiest of all, because she has never been able to lie to herself, and she certainly can't now when it takes all of her metal fortitude to even get out of bed. Guilty because she doesn't hate him at all, guilty because she knows what he is and who he became and how he hurt her, yet something in her heart thunders to a stop every time she sees him. Guilty because Florence wants to ask him of the magic that made him real and of the magic that she is terrified binds them still.
Guilty because she feels again the stirrings of inevitability that had haunted her since that first meal at Hogwarts, because she wants to know what will happen if she touches him – if he touches her.
But she ignores these thoughts, utilizing self-restraint that she had learned over her abnormally long life, ducking through doorways and looking over her shoulder and always careful never to linger in one room too long. Her voice goes hoarse from lack of use, her nerves skittish to every sound, every creak within the wooden house. The barn she quickly realizes is the only safe space – a territory Tom Riddle despised – and so she takes to long rides through the snow or in the indoor ring and tries not to think of Tom Riddle at all.
.
.
.
Her boots are soft on the concrete, rubber soles providing only the slightest of thuds with each step as she makes her way past the stalls. Idly she taps her crop against her thigh, her finger tracing the brim of her helmet which is stowed under her arm, unable to keep still even as she moves through the barn towards where her own horse is kept.
Turning around the corner, Florence's eyes latch onto the stall door where she keeps her young colt Dolon, a fiery gray male who fought for every yard but jumped like something from a dream. She is halfway to his pen when she realizes that the door is open – in fact swinging wide – and without thinking her helmet hits the floor as she sprints the final few steps, screeching to a halt in the open doorway, adrenaline making her blood pump faster than her body can process.
Tom Riddle stands before the horse, one hand upon the colt's head, the other running down Dolon's neck in what was obviously meant to be a sign of affection. Florence watches transfixed as Tom meets the blinking brown gaze of the horse, never once backing away when the colt gave a magnificent snort, stamping a hoof the size of a dinnerplate into the sawdust with enough force to break a foot. After several deep breaths, Tom turns to look at her, his face still impassive as he takes in her flushed face, her heaving chest.
"What…" she splutters, her mind still reeling to comprehend what she is seeing. "What are you doing?"
"I am visiting the barn," Tom replies with a tone that suggests this is the most natural occurrence in the world. He raises one perfectly sculpted brow at her in question, again daring her to challenge him. Florence feels her face redden even further because how does he manage to make it all feel so familiar, feel as if not a day has passed.
"You hate horses," Florence remembers, and then she flushes because Tom Riddle had once hated horses, but maybe that had changed. Maybe everything had changed.
"I do," he agrees with a smirk that grounds Florence more than anything else, and his hands fall from Dolon's body. "Glad to see that you remember."
"Then what are you really doing here?"
"You have been avoiding me."
"I'm not seventeen, and this isn't Samhain, Tom," Florence whispers in the face of words that bring forth a mountain of memories within her. Holding the door open and motioning for him to exit before she bolts the door to the stall behind them, Florence whirls on him, feeling the telltale tingling of rage at the base of her spine, the pressure behind her temples that he would go so far as to invade the barn – the one space she was certain she was free of him.
"Isn't it thought, Florence?" Tom asks, and for the first time she sees the tension in his jaw, sharp enough to cut through a block of ice. His hands form into fists by his side. Good, get angry she thinks recklessly, knowing fully well that Tom didn't need a wand for magic. "You're angry with me, angry over a truth you cannot change no matter how much you wish it wasn't so," he spits. "I am alive, by no choosing of my own, and I am with you, so why can't you even look at me?"
Florence feels her mouth open and close, unable to miss the way his hand flinches toward her as if intending to reach for her and then thinking better of it. They are mere feet apart, but Florence can feel it, the tendril of heat that passes between their bodies, the rumbling within her chest like the waking sounds of a dragon long at slumber. Fear seizes her at the betrayal of her body, at her inability to look away from the vein pulsing on his forehead.
"I don't know what to do," she says at last, allowing her gaze to trace the planes of his face without remorse. He was still beautiful, painfully so, like staring into the sun until your eyes stung and tears streamed from your face.
"What does that mean?"
"It means even if I could undo Illini's magic, I wouldn't," Florence admits. "I don't know why it was her choice, but it was her choice and I have to respect that, I have to live with it."
"So you're not going to kill me," he sneers, crossing his arms and leaning against the stall in a very good imitation of a preening pure-blood.
"I, unlike you, am not a murderer."
"No, you're just a coward," he hisses back, and his midnight eyes feel like bullets piercing her skin over and over and over again.
"What do you expect from me, Tom?" Florence demands, throwing her hands in the air beside her. "The last time I saw you, you burned my fields to the ground and told me I was nothing. You broke my heart a thousand times over and then you left to become the darkest-wizard the world has seen in a century. Do you honestly expect for me to throw my arms open and welcome you back? You're smarter than that."
His eyes narrow as she speaks, his jaw chewing slightly on words she knows will be layered with venom when he says them. The pressure in her temples increases, and Florence rests her hands upon her hips, waiting for him to speak.
"You didn't stay broken hearted for long, if you ever truly were," he finally whispers, and his voice is slippery and snakelike. "How soon after I left did you marry him? How many kids did you bear him over the years? How much did you tell him about me, did he know he was second?"
"How dare you," Florence shrieks, taking a step forward so that she can jab her finger under his perfectly angled chin. Florence does not think she has ever been this angry in her life, her vision is flickering, every muscle in her body spasming. "I mourned you for an entire year, but what was I supposed to do, sit around and wait for you to come back? You'd made your choice. Your dreams over me, and so I made mine."
"I would have taken you, had you come to me."
Florence's head falls back in laughter, at the sheer ridiculousness of the idea.
"And where would I be now? Dead most likely, or in a dungeon rotting away. Perhaps in Azkaban if I was lucky," Florence hisses mirthlessly. So he is the same, I should have known, should not have hoped…
"You said you loved me," he taunts, but his face is gruesome with rage, brows warped, mouth a snarl. Florence turns her face to the side and laughs again even though everything inside her feels as though it's breaking, her chest is nothing more that the slamming of wave after wave against a rocky shore, deafening and cruel.
"So you want to talk about love do you?" Florence asks, and the ache in her chest grows. "Ever figure out what it was? Did all your years of searching, all your power give you any answers?"
"It seems I did not need an answer, you found yourself a lapdog after I left—"
"Shut. Up." Florence screams, and she doesn't care if she rips her vocal chords, if she rips every hair from her skull or her eyes fall from her face. She feels spit fly from her mouth, a strange surge of electricity that races through her as she suddenly becomes aware of the spirits of the air and the earth around her. Tom steps back, a mask sliding onto his face so that she can no longer read him.
"I don't care what you think of me, Tom Riddle. You can call me a coward if that makes you feel like you've accomplished something with your undeserved second chance at life," Florence screams, and her eyes are starting to sting as tears threaten. "But do not ever talk about Forsythe as if you knew him, you have no right…you have no idea what you are talking about."
"Then tell me!" Tom shouts in return, and his voice is thunder and lightning and it sucks the very air from between them. "How can I possibly ever understand if you won't even fucking speakto me, Florence?"
"What would you like to know then, Tom," Florence sneers, and vaguely she is aware of electricity crackling in her hair, of purple bolts of lightning that jump between her fingers. Tom steps closer, now only a hair's breadth apart. She can see the gleam in his eye, the greed that sits there because miraculous, powerful Tom Riddle loves knowledge, and he thinks she will give it to him.
"Everything," he whispers, and his lip trembles, his face is flushed.
Florence's smile is feral. He always wanted the world she thinks.
"Fine," Florence thunders, and she begins to pace before him, moving horizontally across the breezeway where Tom can be always before her. "Fine, since it was always on your terms, I'll tell you." Florence wonders if she will start to fly. It has been a long time since her feet left the ground, but she feels angry enough now to summon a hurricane, to level a town. "What would you like to know first, Tom. Maybe I'll tell you that I bore him no children. That I am barren, that I had to watch his dream of a family crumble before my very face, to cope with the fact that as a human specimen my body is a failure," she seethes, and Tom's eyes widen slightly. "But I bet you knew that, I bet you kept tabs on me from afar. After all, that's why Lizzie stopped writing and Pyrrhus never came to the wedding – but no matter, it's in the past."
Her feet are frenzied as she moves across the concrete, her breathing sporadic as she meets his gaze, forcing him to see and to hear those facts he considers himself worthy of even though he'd been on the other side of the globe, torturing muggleborns.
"Maybe you'd like to know that I watched him die? Hmm, this man you seem to think I cared nothing for – he contracted dragon pox and they set up a magical barrier to prevent me from getting too close. I had to watch as he wasted into nothingness, Tom," she tells him, and her voice cracks, a few tears rolling down her face. "Would you like to know I gave myself a concussion throwing myself against the barrier? That I watched him seize upon our marriage bed? Or maybe that his last thoughts were of our wedding. Are these the things you'd like to know?"
"Florence—" Tom murmurs, but she cannot stop, her tongue a whip now that it had been unleashed, intent to make him understand those things he thought he knew.
"Or best of all, perhaps you'd like to hear about the fact that I seem to age at one tenth of the rate of a normal witch or wizard." She knows she must sound mad, her hair falling loose from her bun, her skin feverish and her voice quaking, but she cannot stop. "That my own brothers are terrified of me, that I cannot visit my nieces and nephews, that the entire city of Spectre thinks I have dabbled in dark magics for the sake of immortality."
"Florence, I –"
"What else do you want, Tom? What else could you possibly need to know?" Florence is beginning to feel lightheaded, the air around her growing warmer still as her magic is agitated. "You want to know about love? Yes I loved him. I loved him, and the most monstrous thing of all is that after everything we shared, it's been you I dream of at night for the past year," She's crying now, the barn no more than a blur as she presses her palms into her eyes, desperate for the pain in her chest to end, for something to release her from her misery. "After everything you did to me, all your lies, the hurt you inflicted upon myself and others, I still missed you – I missed what could have been if you had chosen correctly, and I'll never forgive myself for it."
Silence at last reigns between them, punctuated only by Florence's heaving sobs and sharp sniffles. She takes her face to her sleeve, but it does little to halt the river of tears that move across her cheeks and down her chin. Through watery eyes she sees Tom before her, his hands shoved into his pockets, his narrow face pale and contemplative as he observes the wreckage of her emotions.
"You really did love him," Tom says, and it is a confirmation, not a question.
"Of course I did," Florence hiccups, batting at a fresh wave of tears. "We built a life together, but it doesn't mean I didn't love you."
"I don't –" he begins, but Florence cuts him off with a low, pathetic laugh.
"Understand? Of course you don't," she sighs. "You were incapable of understanding then, and you're too naïve to understand now."
"Then explain it to me, help me," Tom begs, and his cheeks have taken on the rosy tone that used to make something in Florence's chest melt. Somewhere in the back of her brain, she registers that he has never asked her for help before. She smiles at him, thin and toothless as at last Illini's final words become clear to her. The presence of one river does not negate the existence of the other.
"I loved Forsythe, fully and completely, but that did not mean I stopped loving you, you idiot."
Tom's mouth opens and closes, his jaw appearing to have become unhinged as a visible shiver passes through his body. The last of her anger slips from her body, and Florence moves to the stall door so that she can lean against it, summoning wordlessly and wandlessly her helmet which lays behind Tom on the floor where she had let it fall. In her exhaustion, she misses the glistening of wonder that passes across his face at the nonverbal display of magic before once more he sinks behind his mask.
"Do you need anything else?" She pants, feeling as if she has run a marathon.
"If I had come back," he asks, and Florence notes that his voice is carefully neutral. "Would you have chosen me?"
"No… I don't know," she sighs. "You're acting like my love for you and my love for Forsythe was a one-to-one, that they were the same."
"Is not all love the same?"
Florence smiles as she leans against the wooden door, listening to the restless trampling of Dolon on the other side. How could he be so clinical about something like this, how had they reached this point in the conversation?
"Do you feel the same way about me that you felt about Lestrange? About any of your followers?"
"Of course not," Tom scoffs as if she had said something preposterous.
"Then why would you assume that I used Forsythe to replace you? How could anyone replace you, Tom?" She asks, and her voice is serious. "Loving you was like getting hit with a meteor, I couldn't avoid it even if I had tried, but we wasted it. We burned too fast and too bright, and in the end there was nothing left to save."
"And For – your husband?" He asks, quickly dropping the name. His voice suggested that he was prepared to take notes on her answer, to hold an in depth study on love and its many faces.
"We chose it, we built it, we made it together," Florence whispers, and her eyes flicker closed. "It wasn't strong because it was inevitable, it was strong because we made it so."
Silence falls again, and Florence's hand itches to pull back the door bolt and slip onto Dolon's back, to feel the wind across her face.
"Do you think you could ever love me again?" Tom asks, and the question makes her stomach balk, her face pale. She opens her eyes, staring at him as if seeing him for the first time – a twenty year old man who was brought back from an eternity of endless suffering against his will. Florence swallows, and then shrugs.
"I don't know."
Tom nods, the motion unfairly graceful for such a simple gesture.
"Do you still want the things you wanted before?" Florence asks after a moment, peering closer at him, searching for the lie he will utter. "Immortality? Power?"
"Yes," Tom whispers, and she can see his throat bob as he swallows. She is unsure, but she thinks his face whitens slightly.
"Then you aren't different, new soul or not."
"I am different," he insists, and his voice is hollow and earnest, and suddenly his mask is ripped away, leaving only a desperate yearning upon his features.
"In what way? If you choose the same things again, you are the same."
"Yes, I want those things," Tom repeats, and is that a tremor she hears in his voice? Are his hands forming fists in his pockets? Florence blinks, trying to clear her mind. "But I choose you, Florence. Over any of it, all of it."
Something inside of her is burning, her mind slowly expanding until the pressure on her skull is nearly unbearable. I choose you. I want whatever it is you are. I will carve your name into time itself. How desperately she'd wanted to hear those words when he'd stood before her, ring box in hand, his magic singing of murder. How long had she fantasized about exactly that while lying in bed beside him, while sitting before the portrait of Atalanta in the middle of the night wondering what had gone so horribly wrong. He'd given her so many beautiful words that haunted her over the years, and in the end they had all been dust in the wind – how was this any different?
"Then prove it," she whispers, pulling back the bolt and stepping into the darkness of the stall, unable to bear the weight of his gaze for another minute longer.
I hope you and all of your loved ones are safe! Remember to drink water!
