I mean is this an alternate reality? I'm posting again and i'm as floored as you are.

After long last, we're getting back inside Tom's head. It was strange to return to his thoughts, it felt like putting on an old sweater and finding it was one size too small. Familiar...and yet...not.

Hope you all enjoy! Thank you for the outpouring of love on the latest series of updates. I am a broken record, but each day I am amazed anew by all the things you guys notice and say. I am the luckiest author!


Chapter 54

"'I feel terrible, like there's a weight on my chest.'

'A heart's a heavy burden.'"

― Hayao Miyazaki, Howl's Moving Castle


Tom sits in a wide leather chair before the fire, one leg crossed over the other, reveling in the warmth that washes over his skin. It was not until he had been remade that Tom realized exactly what his old body had lost, how little he'd been living at all, but now he thrills at the simplest of things, like a child in a candy shop. The welcome embrace of heat across his skin, the bitter joy of tea exploding upon his tongue, the first few flickering moments of wakefulness because he can sleep now, he can actually rest his mind. Tom's hands tighten around the armrests of the chair reflexively as another wave of the fire's warmth permeates his body, and he smirks at nothing. At the abilities that his body now possesses that are so average, so human.

Tom settles slightly deeper into the chair, allowing his mind to stray to where it always did after he'd staggered from her gardens only a few weeks ago – he's thought of little else. Tom has to fight the increase in his pulse as he remembers his first sight of Florence, standing on her back porch like his own personal savior, angelic and pure and beautiful even now after all these years. He will never forget it, but then again, he's never forgotten anything where Florence is concerned.

He hadn't seen her in two days – not since their discussion? Argument? It was to be expected he supposed with how skittish she had been around him from the start, and at least she had given him things to think about. Tom could only read so many books to forget that Florence Allman was only a room away, and he didn't like going for walks now any more than he had before his remaking.

Tom hadn't wanted to talk to her about love, or at least that had not been his intention when he'd made the distasteful choice to seek her out in the barn. He'd only wanted to talk with her, to have the comforting weight of her chestnut gaze upon his, maybe to rile her into a state that was closer to the Florence of his memory. But like everything that had ever involved her, she had left him stumbling, adrift, caught up in her presence, and as a result drawn forth thoughts and questions he had never wanted to share.

Do you think you could ever love me again he'd asked her, and Tom winces at the foolishness of the question, the petulance there. How did she always manage to reduce him to his most base desires? Before him one of the logs in the fire pops as if in mocking laughter at his neediness,and he watches as sparks waft up the chimney and out of sight. Florence hadn't said no, which in turn had breathed traitorous life into his new, pulsing heart, a flame that once lit, Tom found himself terrified he would never be able to quench. And yet, she had not said yes. What would happen to him if she never grew to love him, if she couldn't forgive him for what he had said and done and the hundreds of ways he had hurt her?

And what had happened to him – to make him care to the point of pain? There was a constant weight between his ribs that he could not ever remember experiencing. What would you know of having a functioning body Tom reminds himself. It has been so long. It infuriates him – the number of things he does not know – that after all his years of travel, all of the power that had at one point been at his fingertips, he could sit here like a newborn, constantly famished and furious at the world for the way it constantly changed.

His eyes scan around the darkening room as he reaches for the half-consumed cup of tea beside him. Outside the window, the final vestiges of sunset were visible along the western horizon, the stars already arrayed in brilliant patterns across the sky. Here, far removed from Muggle and magical community alike, the sky was bright even at night with rarely seen constellations, and briefly Tom remembers stories Florence had once told him of the gods – how they had arrayed the most beautiful mortals in everlasting stars.

His perusal of the sitting room brings his gaze at last to the series of framed photographs beside him on the table. Tom cannot stop the rumble of displeasure that passes through him as he observes the myriad photos of a beaming Florence standing alongside the towering figure of Forsythe Blount. The pictures move in silent joy – bear-like embraces, easy smiles, heads thrown back in laughter, and although the two figures in the center of the frame seem never to age, Tom knows that the photos span over many decades from the variations in color and clothing. Tom has come to think of it as a shrine to his greatest rival, and more than once he's found himself sitting next to it, forcing himself to look in the eye all that he had pushed away, what he had lost through his choices.

He wants to be furious with her the way she is furious with him – for moving on, for making any decision that did not prioritize him – but he cannot forget the expression on her face when she'd told him how she loved her late husband. Florence's voice had been soft, almost as if she was speaking to a baby, tender and still and gods he wanted that for himself, he had never been able to bear the thought of sharing her – he'd never known torture until he'd stood in that barn and been forced to listen as Florence fucking Allman told him how deeply she had cared for Forsythe Blount, that Tom had no right to even speak the other man's name. He wants to hate them both for what they shared together while his dreams came burning to the ground around him, but instead he remembers how Florence's hair had gleamed with lightning, her face glistened with tears as she told him she was barren, that she'd watched her husband die, that he loathed herself for missing him – Tom– over the years.

It is this last note that confuses him the most, why she feels the need to fight the emotions that pertained to him. He'd awoken from his remaking, surging into knowing with equal parts fear and pain, and yet one look at Florence across the grass and he'd felt the same certainty he'd felt at eighteen – Tom would burn the world for her, he'd write her name in the stars and he'd launch a thousand ships if that was what it took. He'd give up those dreams of immortality and ultimate power that even now nagged at the back of his mind if that was required, if that was what she needed.

He tries not to think about how weak thoughts like these had once made him feel.

Tom is ripped from his constant musings by the sound of footsteps moving down the hall and the unmistakable voice of Florence Allman drawing closer. He stiffens slightly in his chair, opening his ears to hear her conversation with what can only be one of the house elves.

"I'm going to be baking a few pound cakes for Yule tomorrow, Cash," she says, and her voice is growing louder, her footsteps closer. "Once I've got them wrapped, would you and June mind delivering them to Owen and Albion, oh and one for Luis and Tallulah as well?"

Tom manages to hear the elf's squeaky affirmation, and then his gaze is filled with the bronzed skin of Florence Allman, the fluttering of caramel waves, and his chest constricts with the heaviness of her gaze which moves to his with such speed he idly wonders if it is a form of magnetism. Her footsteps falter and then halt, and Tom watches as a flush appears across her face despite its blank expression.

"Good evening, Florence," he calls out before she can scamper away into one of her many bolt holes. He can feel it already, the electricity that races through his system at the mere sight of her, and something inside him tightens at the idea of her being near.

"Hello, Tom," she murmurs, and Tom has to fight the frown that threatens at his lips because her voice is still too stiff around him – too formal. He wants to break every wall she's built between the two of them over the past fifty years until she is once more putty in his hands.

"Would you care for tea?" He nods toward the tray on the table before him.

"I don't drink it."

"I can call for something else?" He suggests. Tom presses his jaw together, annoyed with small talk, hands itching to leap across the room to her, to press his lips to hers and discover if the same music will dance across their skin at the touch.

"I'm not thirsty," she counters.

"Then sit down and talk to me," Tom grinds out, his words a command instead of the question they had been in his mind. His gut tightens as he notices the barest flicker of her lip, the slightest hint at a smile, and the traitorous flame of hope in his chest leaps. Florence stares at him for a moment longer, and then at last she moves to seat herself on the chair across from Tom, tucking her legs beneath her. She is as he remembers, perhaps changed only in that her hair was a shade darker, her face bearing the smile lines around her mouth of a woman in her early thirties. Tom swallows, amazed by the secret he carries still – that it was his modified Dittany Concentrate that has wrought this slowing of time, as if somehow his past self had known what was to occur, saving her for this.

Who was he to squander it?

"Who is Luis?" Tom asks after the silence has grown too long between them, Florence making no attempt to broach conversation. This time he is certain that she is smiling, his unintentional admission of eavesdropping turning upward the corners of her mouth.

"My nephew – Tallulah's eldest son," Florence explains before adding: "he runs the farm now. The Blount farm."

"I see," Tom murmurs, at last comprehending why she had been in her old home when he'd found her, not upon the estate of her late husband. Florence's gaze turns to the fire, the smile fading from her lips. Tom feels a light pang within his chest at the loss of the expression.

"I couldn't bear to be there, after everything," Florence admits, resting her chin upon her hand. "I tried to run it, but it wasn't the same, and I was never as good with azaleas as I was with Dittany." Tom is surprised by the admission, recalling how once her face had burned red at even the slightest blow to her pride. It has been decadeshe reminds himself, unable to stop his eyes from flickering to the gold band on her finger that makes his body shake with repressed rage. He wants to tear it from her skin and cast it into the depths of the ocean. What else about her has changed he wonders. What else have I missed?

"So you did leave your farm in the end?" He asks. Tom cannot stop the rush of heat that moves through him, clenching his hand into a fist momentarily to relieve some of the anger. He'd ripped himself apart waiting for her and it still hadn't been enough, but she'd been willing to move for him – the pathetic farmer. Florence turns to look at him, and Tom weighs the pleasure of her gaze with the knowing look she gives him, that she can read him still, and that she loathes the thoughts that just passed through his mind.

"Of course I did," she says calmly, her face so still Tom has the strange sense that they have traded places – Florence in control of her reactions while Tom leaves himself open to be seen.

"So you would give him that, but not me?"

"He gave up his dream of a family for me," Florence counters. "We gave up things for each other."

"The two of you were already married at that point, he gave up nothing. There was nothing he could have done."

"He could have left," Florence hisses, and he does not miss the accusation there. Tom leans forward almost imperceptibly, entranced by the stirring in his gut, the pulse of energy that he feels flowing between his own body and hers as they verbally spar. She cannot deny thishe thinks, a rush of savage pleasure moving through his form as he allows his eyes to follow the curve of her lips. To his frustration, Florence returns her gaze to the fireplace without so much as a flicker of recognition to the surging magic between them.

"You also gave up your own dream for a family," Tom points out in what he thinks is a winning argument. To his fury, Florence shrugs.

"It wasn't the same, I never had any great desire to have kids," Florence tells Tom. "I would have done it for him, of course I would have, but I was more devastated by the failure of my own body, to have the choice ripped away from me."

Tom has to look away, biting the inside of her lip to stop himself from saying that her body was anything but a failure. He remembers how she danced before the fire of Samhain, how her body had floated through the air as she flew, the flush of her skin in bed, and Tom is certain that there has never been a human physique more remarkable.

They sit in silence for a moment, and Tom feels a bubble of anxiety bloom in his throat as his mind searches desperately for conversation, terrified that she might leave if he cannot distract her, lure her into remaining in his presence. Some part of his mind curses this new heaviness within his chest for revealing all of those things he had never needed before – human interaction, conversation, touch.

"Did you return to work on your family farm, after you left?" Tom asks at last.

"No," Florence admits, and Tom who is watching her face like it is the surface of the ocean, changing with every moment, notes that her face flushes, a telltale sign of her embarrassment. "I did not have the…motivation."

Tom remembers how hungry she had once been for magic, and the thought that she had willingly stepped away from the source of her power troubles him more than he cares to admit, even to himself. He looks at her, truly looks at her, willing himself not to see the woman he is desperate to pull into his grasp and never release, but Florence as she is.

There are lines around her eyes, a downturn of her brows that he had not seen before – details he is certain that no person would notice if they had not devoted themselves as he had to the study of her features. Her hair, as he'd already noted, is a shade darker – burnt caramel instead of laced with gold – but he suspects now it is a result of years spent indoors, not simply a fact of aging. Before he can complete his perusal, Florence turns to look at him, and her eyes are soft and tired and Tom loses every train of thought, trapped within her gaze like a bird in a cage.

"I saw your wandless magic," he says without thinking, unable to look away, drinking in the sight of her as if she might vanish at any second. He says it as a statement, but Tom thinks it may have been intended as a compliment. "In the barn."

Florence smiles at his comment and she is the sun.

"I'm surprised I haven't found you doing any wandless magic, weaponless as you are," Florence replies.

"I did not think I would be allowed too," Tom says carefully, feeling his interest peak as the topic of magic is raised between them. He'd been careful not to attempt anything that might trigger wards – Florence had set up a perimeter, but he was sure there were other protections she had put in place. She might even have one of the house elves following him at all times for all Tom knew, although he'd never caught either of them watching him. His suspicions, of course, hadn't stopped him from performing simple magics in his quarters to clean his singular set of clothes or summon books from across the room, but he had kept it painfully simple. The thought of using his abilities for something greater left him panting.

"Oh, asking permission now, are you?" Florence asks, and her smile widens, revealing a perfect set of teeth.

"Of course not," Tom scoffs, sitting back in his chair, crossing and re-crossing his legs. "But if you have wards set up to deter me, I would rather not test your defenses. I am newly alive."

"As if I could stop you from doing magic," Florence says, and now she is scoffing at him. Tom feels himself preening at her words, pleased that she believes him capable, remembers him how he had been with magic humming in his veins. She is right, of course, but the new heaviness within his chest tells him to tread carefully still, not to push her away.

"You did once," Tom muses, recalling the storm she had summoned that day to quench his own fires, the power that had radiated off her in near seismic waves.

The words have hardly left his mouth before he regrets them, whatever openness Florence had melted into over the course of their conversation vanishing in an instant behind a look that could melt steel. Fury passes through Tom again, that she is the same and yet so changed, leaving him floundering at her feet, that she sits upon the other side of the room out of reach, that the fucking ache in his chest has still yet to cease.

"I wouldn't call that a victory," Florence murmurs, getting to her feet. Tom watches, his hands clenching around the chair as she moves to leave, her face hidden to him behind a curtain of burnt caramel hair. In a moment she is gone, and Tom sinks back in his seat, no longer aware of the fire's warmth or the pleasant sensation of a full stomach, comprehending only that Florence Allman had looked at him, and he had managed yet again to drive her away.

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He doesn't even pretend that it is a happenstance meeting when he walks into the kitchen the next day to watch Florence bake her Yuletide gifts. He had tossed and turned restlessly throughout the night, and awoken with a hunger in his stomach that only the sight of her could satisfy – like an addict chasing a perpetual high that lived somewhere in her smile, in the coffee that lingered on her skin.

Florence ignores him as he takes a seat on one of the stools in the corner, watching with rapt attention as she measures obscene amounts of flour, sugar, and butter, adding them into a large mixing bowl. June brings him a platter of tea and Southern style biscuits, the bread lathered generously with honey and raspberry jam. Tom eats like a man starved, gulping down the water he'd been served and moving through the pot of tea as if it was air, all the while his eyes trained upon Florence and the deft, sure motions of her hands.

"So you learned how to cook," he states at last when the sight of her is no longer enough to satisfy the still aching need that burns in his gut. He wants her voice, her attention too – Tom has always been greedy.

"No, only to bake a handful of things. Forsythe's mom had an old family pound cake recipe that she taught me," Florence responds evenly, her face screwed up in concentration as she stirs the enormous bowl of ingredients. Tom wants to ask her to bake him something, the thought of eating anything she had made making him positively lightheaded with desire.

"It seems it is a good thing then you still have June and Cash to keep you fed," Tom murmurs at last, thinking again of his secret, of the command the two house elves had been following throughout the years.

"Even if I could cook, June would never relinquish control of the kitchen," Florence says with a fond smile towards the tottering house elf who is busy preparing Tom another pot of tea. "She can be quite single-minded."

"I cannot fathom where she could possibly have learned it," Tom says with a smirk, at last drawing a look from Florence, a slight flush moving across her cheeks. Energy burns through him at the sight of it.

"Have you decided what you're going to do with me?" Tom asks as Florence reaches for a carton of eggs.

"Do with you?" She asks, her tone brittle enough to shatter glass. He observes as she cracks the eggs into a smaller bowl, checking for broken fragments of shell before pouring the final ingredient into the bowl of dry components.

"Are you planning on turning me over to the authorities?"

"And be accused of necromancy?" Florence ridicules, pinning him with a glare that would have made her mother proud back in the day. Tom does not flinch beneath the withering look, determined to force conversation if only to keep himself sane. "Illini is gone as is our tree – I have no discernable evidence to validate any of the magical claims that you have made, and I don't fancy being accused of harboring mass murderers."

Florence's voice is detached as she explains her rational, yet Tom hears none of it, his mind still reeling over her phrasing ofour tree, that it had been something they shared no matter what had become of the two of them. How could anyone replace you she'd asked him in the barn, and Tom wonders again how she can possibly fight the stirring of magic between them that makes Tom feel drunk and burning and desperate all at once.

"And," she adds, pulling several round pans with holes in the center from the cabinet beside her. "I cannot imagine your testimony would count for much in court, considering you once attempted to bring down the British Ministry."

"So I'm to remain your prisoner?"

"Do I treat you like a prisoner?" Florence asks, and her mixing stops as she turns to fix him with another stare. Her face is open, eyes wider than they have been all morning, and her arm shakes slightly as she reaches for her mug of coffee. Tom's smirk broadens.

"I've been given a singular pair of clothes, I live in a home I cannot leave through magical or Muggle means, and you have made no attempt to replace my wand – an action I can only assume you have done out of your own self-defense as my warden," Tom rattles off, his smirk growing with each item. "Understandable, of course, but unnecessary considering we both know I do not require a wand to perform spells."

"Do you honestly believe I should just let you wander free?" She asks, ignoring completely his accusations.

"It would not matter if you did, where else would I go?" Tom asks, and he has to grip the edge of his stool in order to still the increase in his pulse, to reign in the magic that is practically tearing at his skin from her proximity.

"Anywhere, everywhere," Florence replies, her umber eyes fixated upon his with such an intensity that Tom wonders in the back of his mind if looks can puncture skin, draw blood. "I'm sure even you have places you never managed to go, magics you were incapable of mastering."

"It doesn't matter, Florence," Tom repeats, and his next words slide from his lips before he can stop them, desperate to escape his lungs, to be shared with her. "You are here, there is no place else for me."

It is the truth – the only truth Tom knows. He can feel the certainty of it rattling in the cavern in his chest, the hole that Florence Allman had formed within him that in his second iteration at life has grown only deeper, more insatiable, frenzied and frantic. He will chase her to the ends of the Earth this time if that is what it takes. He'd had immortality, and he'd died wondering what it was all for, but he wouldn't make that mistake again. He was too smart, too brilliant to blunder in the same way.

Before him Florence's face remains still, but after a moment, as if the words had needed an instant to sink in, her face glows with a rosy hue that makes everything inside of Tom tense. She's beautiful he knows, and something gnaws at the inside of his stomach that she could be so and yet not be his.

Florence finishes her baking in silence, Tom watching from the corner as she places the pans in the oven and sets about charming the dishes to wash themselves. It is a simple spell, but it makes Tom smile at nothing to remember how once something so menial would have stumped her completely, enraging her to the point of emitting red sparks from the end of her wand.

It is sometime in the afternoon that he returns to the kitchens to request a bowl of the beef stew that June had made the day before when he spots a small, almost miniature version of the larger cakes Florence had baked for her family resting upon the countertop. It has been plated and dusted with a sprinkling of powdered sugar, and before it rests a small slip of paper, upon it only a singular word.

Tom

The cake is delicious – he considers eating the entire thing in one sitting, but he restrains himself, determined to spread it over as many days as possible. But even with this decision made, Tom licks his fork clean, collecting the crumbs with his fingers as he once had when he was a child in Wool's orphanage. He keeps the slip of paper with his name, tucking it between the pages of his book so that he may admire her script with every flip of the page.

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Florence does not run away from him when he joins her in the library the next day, her location known to him courtesy of the renewed tracking charm he's placed upon her. Some habits, it seems, die harder than others – but he will not begrudge himself the comfort that the nagging line of magic informing him of Florence's local at all times provides him, a reminder that in a world that is entirely new to him, this one thing remains. She remains.

Florence makes no effort to stop him from joining her in the mornings when she sips coffee out on the back porch, shivering under a light jacket in the freezing winter air, small clouds of steam trickling from her mouth. It is a sight Tom finds so uniquely arousing that he must excuse himself before he has even finished his pot of tea, running to his bathroom for a cold shower like a pubescent boy, terrified by the workings of his body, incapable of feeling anything else but desire for her.

Some days they talk, others they sit in silence, taking turns to stare at each other intermittently in a new game between them. Sometimes she wins, smirking as she looks up from a book to see his eyes upon hers, knowing that his mouth has fallen partially open at some point as he drinks in the sight of her. Other times Tom is the victor, lips peeling back in a feral smile as he glances out of the corner of his eye to see her gaze locked upon his figure. The resulting flush that spread across Florence's face is better than anything he ever achieved as Lord Voldemort he realizes, and not for the first or last time he curses his foolishness, for squandering what could have been between them.

As the days pass, it grows harder to physically distance himself from her, certain as he is that magic still binds them. How can she bear it Tom wonders at night as he tosses and turns, arms desperate for the feel of her inside them. He remembers what it had been without her, eight – eight– mangled pieces of soul crying out for her, crying out to the remade version of himself to take her, to hold her as they never could.

But Florence does not try to bridge any gap between them, even if she does not flee upon the sight of him anymore. She selects chairs where he cannot even dream of brushing against her, careful at all times to maintain a distance that he cannot breach, like a moat of air between them – Florence the impenetrable castle, Tom the invading army. He wants to resent her for it, for her strength in resisting him in the face of his own desperate need, but Tom being the addict he is, he will take what fix he can get, even if it is only to share a room with her.

He flounders for a way to break the barriers between them, stumbling through stilted conversations that most often devolve into impassioned staring, trailing after her like a whipped dog when she goes to ride in the barn so that he can watch from the stands, leaving books out upon tables in precise locations that he hopes she may happen upon later. Once or twice he finds the texts have been shifted by some hand that is not his own, and everything inside of him leaps at the thought that her hand may have brushed it, her mind bent towards something he'd chosen for her. Rarely does Florence incite conversation, content to listen, to make small talk that he detests. The weight within his chest that is like a lump of iron tells him with some newfound intuition that his presence is harder to accept for her, that while for him it is a second chance, for her it is a reminder of all that she'd lost.

The differences in their mental states is thrown into sharp relief every time he happens upon her in a private moment. The first is after a dinner of something called chicken and dumplings when Tom discovers a teary eyed Florence upon the back step, her gaze riveted upon the sky as if answers might be written in the stars.

"That was his favorite dinner," Florence had told Tom in a rare moment of honesty. He hadn't needed to ask who she was referring too. "June keeps forgetting he's not here anymore."

And then there had been the evening where he'd entered the main parlor to find her staring at the shrine to her late husband, umber eyes again brimming over with tears that, if possible, only made her more beautiful. Tom had left the room in a hurry, desperate to escape the look she'd given him that had asked the unanswerable – why you, why not him? Tom doesn't have an answer, and he's not sure he wants one.

He doesn't want to acknowledge this: that some part of her lived inside another, that there is a part of her he can never have, that fucking Forsythe Blount had been able to stir those emotions he had wanted to monopolize within Florence. That on some level, it is his fault he'd had the opportunity too in the first place.

But at all times he remembers her challenge, the words that have been branded into his skin: Prove it. Tom gnashes his teeth and pulls at his hair, blasting pinecones in the snow with wandless stunning spells to expel energy. He has no idea how to prove anything to her except to try again for menial conversation that makes his head spin in circles, to follow her around like a second shadow and hope that one day she might look at him as if her world began and ended with him.

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Over a month has passed since the four of them had arrived at the Lodge, and the sight of the black slacks and white undershirt he'd been remade in make Tom want to gag with frustration. He's cleaned them magically every night, and yet the idea of pulling on the same set of clothing for what feels like the millionth time makes his skin crawl. He'd asked June for additional garments, but the not-altogether-there house elf had only brought him a few extra pairs of socks and Florence's warning on behalf of her elf companions had left him to stew in silent frustration at this turn of events.

It is on a particularly cold afternoon that Tom decides he has had enough, and he sets off down the hall to the bedroom he knows Albion once occupied on his visits to the Lodge, curious to see if any old clothes still remain. The room is spotless despite its ill use, a sign that the house elves are meticulous in their cleaning despite their age, and he moves across the dustless floor to the wardrobe with purpose filled strides. The wood is like ice beneath his bare feet.

Something akin to ecstasy passes through him when he pulls open the wardrobe door to find an entire rack of men's clothing. It's all there, the stiff, denim jeans, lightweight button down shirts stained from sweat around the collar, and even an old hunting jacket. The clothing smells faintly sweet as he tugs them from their hangers, ripping his old clothes from his body and stepping into the new with a deep-boned sense of relief. They are far too broad for his narrow figure, but with a mere pulse of his magic he transfigures them, content to have a different material pressing against his skin. The last thing Tom takes from the rack is the jacket before he snaps his fingers and his previous garments fold themselves, floating into his hands where he will drop them off in his room.

The sky is still early through the windows as Tom makes his way down the main stairwell, his mind at once distracted from the view of snow covered fields by the flicker of movement at the base of the stairs. Florence is staring at him, her eyes wide as she takes in his new raiment. Tom smiles at her, self-assured and pleased as he recalls how once pants such as these had reduced her to a simpering, fantasizing mess for him.

"Where did you get those clothes," she asks, and Tom feels his smile falter at the harshness in her voice, each word like the crack of a whip.

"Albion's old quarters," Tom explains in what he hopes is placating tone. They'd spent nearly the entire day yesterday in the library in companionable silence, yet he feels at once as if he is walking upon ice floats. One wrong step would send him into the frigid depths below.

"Who told you that you could take them? Was it June? Cash?" Florence hisses, and if possible her eyes are wider, her face reddening by the second. Tom stops at the bottom of the stairs, his mind whirling to keep up with the woman before him. He raises both arms before him in what he hopes is a pacifying gesture, but this seems only to incense her further. "Who, Tom."

"No one, Florence, I found them –"

But whatever else he had intended to say is drowned by an enraged scream.

"Take them off! Take them of RIGHT NOW!" Her chest is heaving, eyes bugging from her head, and at once he can feel the stirrings of her magic in the air, the very element that they breathe reacting to the undeniable rage cased within her. Tom remains frozen as her magic tears at him, flinching beneath what feels like the attack of a thousand nails upon his skin.

"I said take them off, Tom," Florence repeats again, and if possible her voice is even more shrill, her face even more wild.

"Florence, what—"

"Christ, TAKE THEM OFF!" She howls, and then she lunges, moving with such speed that it is a miracle Florence manages to stop herself in time. She stands before him quivering, her hands opening and closing around open air, entire body trembling as if lost out at sea. He can tell she wants to rip the clothes from his body, but a flash of revulsion crosses her features seemingly at the idea of touching him, and Tom swallows. Up close he can see her face, and there in the dilation of her pupils, living between each panicked breath, is fear.

Unsure what else to do Tom pulls the jacket from his shoulders, setting it on the ground between them, pulling the shirt over his head and stepping out of the pants until he stands in nothing more than his boxers. He moves back, up two stairs so that there is distance between them, and he watches as she crumbles to the ground, burying her face in the clothes at her feet. It is several moments before Tom realizes that her magic has stopped attacking him, and several more before he realizes that Florence is sobbing into the shirt like nothing more than a despondent child.

"They're Forsythe's," she moans, and he hears the distinct sound of her inhaling followed by a redoubling of her tears when he assumes she finds the smell that had lingered upon them is replaced by his own. "I had June remove them from my closet when we arrived."

Tom does not say anything, trapped between anger and guilt, resentful of the first emotion, nauseated by the second. He watches her shake on the floor for several moments more, and then he turns and moves to go back up the stairs, to put on once more the clothes he despises more than any other item in the home. He has nearly disappeared down the hall when he hears her voice from below, low and soft and yet unmistakable in its coldness.

"Do not go in there again, Tom."

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It is three days later that Tom opens the door to his room to find a large package wrapped in green paper, a silver ribbon encircling it. Tom feels a prickle of excitement move down his spine as he recognizes the handwriting upon the card, and without hesitation he reaches for it, peeling back the envelope with something nearing reverence. The cardstock is thick between his fingers, and the handwriting is like a familiar face from the past. His mind reels as he realizes that the letter is made of multiple pieces of parchment, and leaning against the doorframe, he sets to reading.

Tom,

Rarely in my unnaturally long life have I found myself at a loss for words, but ever since the death of my husband, I have found my life lacking in purpose, my voice strangely silent. Your return to me has only rendered me further speechless, highlighted to a greater extent the listlessness that has consumed me over the past few years because I cannot help but remember the person I used to be once upon a dream when we first met, and I find that it is hardest to speak to you of all people – you, who at one time I felt I could share anything – because I cannot understand the magic that brought you too me, nor what steps in my life I am to take next now that you are here.

I have not been overly gracious toward you this past month and a half, and while I will not apologize for it, I will say that it is simply because you stir within me feelings I have never been able to comprehend. You move mountains inside me, Tom, and I think somewhere along the way you carved valleys within me too. Illini told me that you touched my spirit – I wished for it not to be so, I resented the choices you'd made, the ways that you had hurt me – but even I cannot deny the effect your presence has had upon me these past weeks, the simple magic of your manifestation waking me from a years' long slumber. It has been a long time since I baked a cake or finished a book, and I suspect that I have you to thank for this newfound energy.

I will likewise not apologize for my actions regarding Forsythe's clothing. I know you detest on every level the choices I made after we parted concerning my late husband, but you must learn to accept that some part of me will always love him, belong to him even, just as I will have to accept that some part of my heart has always belonged to you, that you are irreplaceable within my life despite the myriad ways we were torn apart.

Magic has crafted your soul for mine, we were always meant to be as one. Do you remember saying this to me? I do, despite admittedly attempting to forget. You were right, of course you were, and for years I hated you for it. Sometimes I still hate you for it, but it doesn't change the truth.

But whether our souls are one or not is still secondary to this truth: love – destined or not – is only what one makes of it. We made nothing of it in the past, we burned it and fed it to the dogs, and I am nervous – no terrified – of making the same mistake again. Despite my young appearance, I have suffered more love related heartache in my life than I would wish upon my greatest enemy, and you, Tom, even after everything you became, are not my greatest enemy.

I tell you all of this only to ask this in return, please have patience with me. Once you told me that you were not patient, not where I was concerned (you see, I remember this too), but if you will give me time, you're welcome to stay with me for as long as you like. I cannot give you more than that at this time, and while I am warry still to be close to you, please do not mistake my distance as a sign that I do not feel the strange pulling at my magic that only you could ever arouse. You have reminded me what it is to be alive, and that alone is a gift I can never repay.

I remember it all Tom – the good and the bad – and it leaves me feeling as if I am stranded in the middle of the ocean staring down the barrel of my telescope at you, attempting to determine if you are my making or my undoing.

I have always liked the way you say my name, Tom. Please do not stop saying it.

Yours,

Florence

P.S. You will not know what day it is having no awareness of the date upon which you re-entered this world, but I have not forgotten. Not now, and not ever.

Happy Birthday.

He reads the letter once, twice, then a third and fourth time. Every word he cherishes, each line he picks apart until he knows he could recite the entire thing by heart. The monster in his chest roars for her, and he can feel himself shaking, terrified by the weight of her words upon him, buoyed by the light cast upon the dark places of his mind. He stands in the doorway for some time, staring at the letter, a strange thickness in his throat that he can never recall feeling until at last he remembers the package that rests at his feet.

The box is massive, and he has to levitate it into his room because it is too heavy to lift. He tears at the paper like a man possessed, smiling at the color selection despite of himself. It is a detail only Florence would remember, and the place within his chest where she lives sings louder still. At last the wrappings are gone and he peels back the lid of a chest to find stack upon stack of clothes – an entirely new wardrobe. Shirts and slacks and jeans and multiple sets of fine wizards robes and even a pair of winter boots for marches through the snow.

And yet it all pales to the item he finds on the top, the odd stickiness returning to his throat that momentarily ceases his breathing. He reaches for it, cradling it the way he'd once cradled a locket, a dairy, and other now useless trinkets.

It is Florence's childhood copy of the Iliad, and upon it is a note that simply reads:

Perhaps we could finish it together this time.


Gah this chapter was so hard. Writing Tom who is both the same but also has a ~conscience~ now is freaking hard. Like he'd still rip someones fucking head off, but he'd feel bad about it? He'd rip their head off...but for Florence? Idk, not sure if I'm pleased with this chapter entirely but it was important for us to check in with him:) Also i kind of like the idea of Tom's desires not changing, only the order of them. Like - he wants power and immortality still - but before where Florence was third on the list, she's been bumped up to #1 baby!

Stay safe! Drink water! If you are somewhere where you can get vaccinated already, please do so! Call your friends/loved ones! Take care of yourself - we are almost out of 2020, and if someone hasn't told you they are proud of you for making it through this year, please know that I am! :)