A brilliant flash of illuminating green light, brief, searing-hot pain and then...nothing. Crimson eyes blinked open in confusion to see…
Not a body-ridden battlefield, nor pearly-white gates, or even red, smoldering flames and the screeches of the damned but…
Wool's Orphanage. He was back.
It was just as he remembered it, yet...not.
The nearby trees and the grass beside the sidewalk was dead and yellowed, as it always was, despite how much it used to rain, and the towering building was just as dark and gloomy as it had always been. But—wait, that couldn't be right. He knew for a fact it had been destroyed ages ago and replaced by another business—so why-?
"Ah, so it's your time, then?"
Voldemort whipped around, reaching instinctively for the wand he kept on him at all times, hidden away in his robes, but there was nothing there.
Anger replaced confusion and he turned his searing, reptilian-like gaze to who had dared confront him.
His eyes landed on his sixteen-year-old self, the same, he knew, that had been inhabiting his old diary, the one that pesky Potter child had destroyed.
Confusion shoved itself to the forefront of his mind once more, and the anger was reduced to simmering embers. His old self stared calmly back at him, dark eyes assessing him like he was a fascinating new creature to document. He didn't even flinch when the Dark Lord took a step forward and - wasn't that an odd thought, trying to intimidate his former self from the days before his first Horcrux. He would have laughed if this were any other situation - and asked in the same tone he did that commanded fear and respect from his Death Eaters, "What are you doing here?"
Tom Riddle - Riddle, he decided - raised a brow, but did not falter at the question. "I am dead, same as you. Well- no, I suppose 'dead' isn't the proper word, but shall we say 'in Limbo'?"
Voldemort hissed at the obvious mockery from Riddle, and if he still had nostrils, they would have flared at the audacity-
"What the hell are you talking about?" he snarled harshly, "Where are we?"
Riddle didn't look impressed; more like he was dealing with a rather troublesome toddler demanding sweets. "It's as I said, in Limbo. Surely you haven't forgotten what making a Horcrux meant?"
Voldemort opened his mouth to retort and, really - he would've been surprised at his lack of composure, but, as a small part of him had accepted, deep inside his mind, he was dead - what could he say to that, and closed his mouth.
Quirking one corner of his lip up, Riddle almost looked amused at his future-self struggling to come to terms with what was happening.
And then it hit him like one of those horrid Muggle vehicles- he had lost.
Voldemort's eyes widened impossibly wide in his skull as the thought finally processed, and he spun around. Now that he wasn't focused on his past-self, he noticed there was a distinct lack of Muggles, or anything, really, on the streets, in the abandoned cars parked along the road, and in the windows of the buildings around them.
The trees surrounding the orphanage were as tall and gangly as they've always been, but not a single leaf adorned the bare branches. Broken children's toys scattered the property inside the gates of Wool's orphanage, and heavy, dark clouds blanketed the sky in a gloomy way, allowing no sun to penetrate or any way of telling the time. Hell, there wasn't even a breeze to shift the trash scattered in the streets.
Not a single anything anywhere.
Something horrible clenched around Voldemort's shriveled Grinch heart as it finally sunk in. I'm dead.
A tide of defeat and exhaustion crashed down on him in that moment, and for the first time in a very, very long time, he didn't know what to do.
The great Dark Lord Voldemort, one of the most feared and strongest wizards of all time, didn't know what to do. He didn't want to fight, didn't want to plan and scheme and kill, didn't want to wreak havoc on others, didn't want to do anything but find a small, dark corner to hide away and sleep.
All because of that Potter child.
In his mind's eye, his memories replayed like a movie reel and he saw the exact moment everything went to shit and he was doomed to fail years later down the line. That night, in Godric's Hollow, when he killed Lily and James Potter and tried to do the same to their infant son.
Another flash of a sickly-green light, a hot pain in his chest and cold, cold fear snaking through his mind as his Avada Kedavra spell rebounded back at him. A small part of his soul being hacked away to attach to the child - not that he was aware at the time, or he would've tried to recruit the boy long ago - and the last bit of soul still in his body left and fled for safety, trying to live to fight another day. How humiliating.
If he had known how that Hallow's night would have ended, he would have done anything different.
Voldemort heaved an exhausted, heavy sigh. He was just so tired.
He turned slowly, allowing his eyes to rake over Wool's Orphanage once more, and settled his gaze back on Riddle.
"Was it worth it?" he asked.
Voldemort felt the tension drain from his shoulders as all the fight and spite left his body, and he sighed again, turning back to the orphanage and sitting on the rusted bench next to the gate as he accepted his death and defeat.
"No," he said. "No it wasn't."