—ACT ONE—

sun kissed dreams


i — • on top of the world •


Anastasia never realised just how grey her father's manor was. It didn't seem like it would be, what with all the flowers and the statues in the garden and the fountain at the front, catching pinpricks of light and reflecting them out in effulgent lancets of rainbow.

Yet—yet!—it is here, at the orphanage and on the London streets, dull, marred, and bland, that she thinks she first sees colour.

Life. Joy.

Perhaps it is because after a while, after she learns to numb the unfamiliar discomfort of yard work or washing, after she learns to eat stale bread and learns to slide seamlessly in with the other children, she sees another side of it all. She sees all she didn't have before—all she'd so hoped for.

It is hard, but it is so worth it.

One of those such things is a friend. And Anastasia doesn't quite know whether it is the most appropriate term, for what they are, but deep in the quiescent recesses of her mind, she certainly likes to whisper so.

Anastasia thinks that Tom Riddle has been very aptly named.

He is a puzzle to her.

Every night she feels him lay determinedly on the far side of the bed, face stubbornly set; and every morning she wakes to a tangle of cloth and limbs, his fingers tangled in her hair and her nose tucked into the dip of his shoulder.

Anastasia has never met a boy quite like Tom before.

Stoic doesn't begin to describe him. He is cold, and stiff—yet at the same time he is also hopelessly stubborn and adorably perturbed at the simplest of things.

She has always been affectionate, if at times lacking a suitable outlet. She greets the boy with a hug, always, and feels him stiffen, but at the same time draw towards the embrace like a moth to flame. Is it too forward of her?—after all, she greets none of the other orphans as such—but then again, she sleeps with none of them either.

She has always loved fiercely, too—once she allows herself to care, she cannot back away again. (a curse, some would say, but perhaps it is really only that she has just always wanted to be loved as she loves)

Anastasia feels a startling magnetism, to this boy. Something in him that intrigues her, that fascinates her. That makes her worry, and makes her want to unravel his mask of steel thread by thread. There is a rousing thrill in getting him to react, in learning all his little ticks, like being let into a tight secret.

He fascinates her, she thinks.


Tom Marvolo Riddle is newly eight, and he hates Anastasia Aurelia Emrys.

The roof of the orphanage is a spot that Tom has managed to claim as his. Not openly, for that would defeat the purpose, but it is his either way. He'd found it one day when locked up in the dark, dark attic by Cole. It was pure chance that he'd stumbled upon it, but the light lining the edges of the crooked trapdoor had been a sight too tempting to ignore.

It is shabby, the crackling tiles feel as if they will shatter and give way any day now. In winter you had to move around the chimney to avoid being strangled by the billowing smoke of the fireplace in the foyer—one he, naturally, is never allowed to crowd around like the others.

It is shabby, but it is his.

Where he needs quiet, a moment away from hapless cowards in the yard and the casual cruelties of the matron, this place is his to frequent. A place where he can stand and feel above the world, able to brandish away all his troubles with the mere crush of a heel. A place where he will snarl and spit and vow revenge on all who wrong him now, vow that he will grow to never again be this helpless in the face of them.

Nobody has managed to find him here, before. Nobody knows to look up when searching, after all.

Nobody—but for one girl. A girl who had so shamelessly, flippantly, admitted to following him. An annoyingly persistent girl, like a fly which makes it its life's purpose to annoy you, buzzing around and forever flying out of reach, just when you think you've caught it—or you've driven it away.

She sits now at the cusp of the roof's edge next to him, an entirely unasked for companion, as always. She is dangling her legs over the edge as if fearless—when only half an hour ago she, much to Tom's sardonic amusement, had been tiptoeing stiffly across the tiles, cursing the actual concept of gravity and Tom's own 'wanting choice in abditories', in her exact words.

Another reason why Tom hates the girl. She had been raised in wealth, and it is so sickeningly obvious. From the way she speaks (she even pronounces the 'h' in 'what') to the way she sits (hands folded, back straight, chin up) to the way she smiles (radiant but reserved; honest but graceful; true, but at him); and yet she never needs to flaunt what she had once had for the whole world to know she had had it—even the dullest orphans look upon her with jealousy, awe. But beyond that, what really disgusts Tom is the fact that she almost doesn't care that she had lost it too—one would think that the adage, 'you never know what you have until you lose it' would come into play here, but no!

And Tom will admit that he'd lost control of himself once, in their room, ranting. Asking her how in the name of God did she not care, but the response…—"Why? I'll get it back one day. I'll earn it back myself, brick by brick, bill by bill. There isn't a need to mourn what will eventually be mine once more."

The words had stunned him, for a second. So assured were they, so quiet, so determined—perhaps just a girl's delusion, he had wondered, but somehow she did not seem like the type to delude herself so wholly. Somehow, Tom could not help but believe her when she says it.

Then there comes yet another reason Tom hates Anastasia Emrys when she next asks him, "Well, why do you care?"

And he scoffs and turns away, frustrated and absolutely infuriated to find that the only answer he could find in all his furious scouring was, "You're so much better than the rest of them—yet they treat you the same." Not that he'd actually told her, of course. But he'd been infuriated at himself because—why did he care? He echoed her question in the secrecy of the deepest recesses of his own mind, over and over again until it was more a curse than query.

Still he has no answer for himself.

It has been months since she first came, the season has turned, the days have grown short, and yet he has still not managed to ward her away, he has still not managed to secure his room for himself and himself only. Worst of all, he finds himself increasingly, alarmingly, reluctant to do so. To do something strange and scare her away.

But why did he care? He asks himself in disgust, once again—yet another reason he so hates the girl.

He can think of many more reasons—he hates the rugged patched coat across his back, for example. That is, the one he sneered at—the one which has been laid over his shoulders almost unthinkingly, the one he would deny ever tugging closer, the one which still holds vestiges of another's warmth.

He hates that Anastasia Emrys can look at the sprawling, industrialised landscape of London and seem to see something he cannot. He hates that he cannot help but look over to her as a warm breath curls out from her cherry-red lips with a silent breath, smiling faintly as if awestruck.

He hates that his eyes are involuntarily drawn to her purple ones, ones eyeing the world thoughtfully, pleasantly, as if truly at peace. He hates that he wonders just what she can see instead of the dull, monotonous wasteland of mechanical men travelling to and fro like lustreless clockwork that he sees. Instead of just the fog that ensconces the land in a perfect metaphor of numbness and listlessness, of sheep and of grey, of sickness and of it's clawing, creeping hunger.

He hates that, when a shiver coasts her lithe form, something his chest tightens imperceptibly and—not looking at her so as to avoid glimpsing whatever pathetically naive expression has cast a fleeting shade in her vibrant eyes now—he grumbles and shuffles closer, opening up her stupid coat before he can stop himself He snaps at her when she just sits there unmoving and all that comes of his generous invitation is the chill infecting the remaining pockets of (her) warmth the coat has managed to preserve.

And he especially hates that, when she blinks, tilts her head, and then crawls across the slippery roof—when she draws her knees to her chest and slide seamlessly into the small space between his side and his arm, leaning into him and laying her head half on his shoulder with another little smile…

All of a sudden, he can see what she sees too.


A/N-

heyyyy new chapter for ya'll!

adding this AN in the morning now because i always seem to post at midnight, idk why.

now on ao3 too! search - 'saudade ao3 enethyr' - and should pop up? links and images are just more accessible than trying to somehow slot in a tumblr in my desc.