Blackbird

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The world seemed to work against me back at that time. If I went out of my room, I would find my father staring at me with a disappointed look on his face, I would see the servants throwing curious looks at my direction, I would be able to see the real world that waited for me just outside my door… The same world that had made me hide myself in my room for days.

I looked at the outside world sometimes, of course… I looked to outside the window, saw our snow-covered garden and started to imagine what would had happened to Merope Gaunt, saw the gates of our properties and asked myself if one day I would be able to cross them without fear once again, saw the gardener taking care of my mother's roses and wondered what he was thinking about me. To look at the outside world didn't help, it only made me even more scared of going out.

But to stay inside was beginning to become a torture. Everything I did in my room was to stay curled up in my bed, trying to ignore the millions of thoughts that appeared in my mind each second… I had tried to get up and do something else, but everything I had managed to do was to sketch some nonsense things on pieces of papers or stay staring at my own reflection at the mirrow, noticing how horrible my appearance was, how my face gave out that my mental stated was not the best, how my eyes screamed that I was almost having an emotional breakdown…

It was in the middle of that mess of darkness and doubts that my mother decided to do something. I knew Mary Riddle very well and knew how protective she was. It was only a matter of time for her to decide to do something with me… And I thank God that she did it.

It was the best thing in the world to see that she didn't look at me with disappointment, shame or fear but with worry and love… The same look she gave to me during all my life and, I'm afraid, she'll give me until the end of the days, after all, for her it didn't matter if I was five, ten, fifteen or twenty years old, I would always be her son and would always deserve her protection, no matter how old I was.

I remember that she didn't say anything when I started babbling nonsense and neither when I started crying in front of her. Everything my mother did was to put her hands on my shoulders and pull me closer to her, making me lay down my head on her lap just like I used to do when I was a little boy… After a while her fingers started to comb the mess that was my hair and, for last, her words showed up.

She wasn't ashamed or angry, she was worried, her gentle and precise words made it clear. She was afraid that I would never be the same again, afraid that her son had been erased from the world by the hands of the Gaunt girl, afraid that the boy who was desperately crying on her lap would not have enough strength to face the world… She wanted her son, her Tom, to get up from that bed, raise his head and walk out of that room with the same self confidence he had before all that fiasco.

She knew it wouldn't be easy, but also knew it wouldn't hurt to ask me to do it for her… And, as I said, I thank God she didn't give up, didn't stay in silence, didn't let me be by myself in that room forever… and did whisper, so quietly it was almost impossible to hear her voice, the words that made me find my way out of that maze of doubts and fears:

"Take these broken wings of yours and learn to fly again, Tom."

A/N: Tom Riddle Sr... again. This one was not corrected by anyone and was written during a terrible writer's block D: So it must be freaking badly written, cliche and everything else, but okay XD

Inspired by The Beatles' song, Blackbird.

Hope you enjoyed it (; Reviews are highly appreciated ^^

Ari.