FATE BREAKER

CHAPTER TWO

LIES AND NEEDLES


Lucinda Hitchens had a seizure in the mess hall the next morning.

Not an entirely unprecedented event at Wool's Orphanage.

But for once, Tom had nothing to do with it.

He usually didn't have a problem with his fearful reputation—often, he enjoyed the power it afforded him over the others—but in this instance it was…inconvenient.

"I swear on my life, I didn't do anything to her."

That fool harridan, Mrs. Cole, had no idea what this admission meant to him, of course. It was a curious feeling to actually be telling the truth, he noted, not without a sense of irony. Not unlike how slipping on someone else's skin would feel, he imagined. Perhaps for the first time in his life, he had nothing to hide, and the sensation was…unnatural. Unpleasant, even. Like stumbling at the top of the stairs, having imagined the extra step.

He didn't know what was wrong with the stupid girl.

Moreover, he didn't feel in control, and that was…irritating.

At the woman's persistently distrustful perusal, Tom insisted, "Ask anyone—they all saw it—I didn't lay a finger on her!" He gestured impatiently to the girl on the bed, who'd proven to be even more troublesome than he'd initially expected. "Ask her, even."

But oddly enough, though she seemed chatty and fond of talking Tom's ear off, Lucinda hadn't spoken a word since the incident. She merely stared down at her hands in her lap, and very deliberately, Tom observed, she did not look at him. For a wild moment, a volley of pure rage shot through him as he wondered if she wasn't doing this on purpose to implicate him. To anyone looking, which included that spiteful hag, Cole, it would appear for all intents and purposes that he had traumatized the girl. But no, he reasoned, thinking of Sherlock Holmes as he scrambled for any kind of cause, or motive.

She had none.

He truly hadn't done anything to her!

And therein lay the crux of this perplexing puzzle…

The old bag gave him another suspicious glance but decided to follow his directive nonetheless. Approaching the girl as one might approach a wounded animal, Mrs. Cole perched herself on the stretch of bed in front of her and gently took her hands to get her attention. Slowly the girl looked up with glazed eyes that struggled to focus, as if she was having trouble really seeing either of them.

"Lucinda, dear," she said in her most cautious tone, reserved for squalling children, "can you tell me what happened?"

Tom glared at the girl's head, fervently willing her not to say anything that might implicate him further in this mess. He could've drawn on his 'little tricks,' but he very much doubted that would help his situation…

In that moment, Lucinda's eyes regained some clarity and darted to his side of the room with what was clearly the same sort of dread the other orphans reserved just for him. And while Tom would have normally found this pleasing, he knew for a fact he'd done nothing to deserve it yet. He'd taken the hag's threat to revoke his library privileges seriously, and had been on what, for Tom, constituted as his best behavior. And why not? The girl had nothing he wanted that he needed to threaten her for, and she hadn't annoyed him overly too much. He'd even found her a little amusing as she followed him around, listening as he ordered her about, doing the bulk of the chores assigned to them without complaint. He'd begun to suspect she'd taken a bit of a grudging liking to him as well, though he'd gone to no effort to be especially charming, which was a pleasant surprise; he was sure he could use that somehow.

So why the sudden change?

Had some of the others said something to influence her opinion of him?

No, no, she'd been stuck to his side like a particularly sticky glob of glue since the previous evening. Not fond of socializing, that one, he learned—which worked out just fine for Tom, as he'd earned a little helper out of it. That left him with more reading time, and a possible accomplice in any revenge pranks, or, more likely, a scapegoat if necessary. But that was all dashed now. She was more trouble than anything else at this point… And he still didn't know how she'd come to be afraid of him!

It was going to bug him until he figured it out, he just knew it.

"I…" she trembled out in a choked voice, not meeting any of their eyes. "…The doctors called it Epilepsy. We thought it had gone…years ago…"

She was lying.

He knew it in his bones.

It didn't matter that the lie got him off the hook—Mrs. Cole was clearly eating up everything the girl told her—now he wanted to know why.

There were just too many odd questions without answers for his liking this morning. The more he learned about his unwanted roommate, the more questions seemed to pop up, and he was starting to hate that trend.

For instance, she was now lying through her teeth (about this so-called 'Epilepsy') almost as well as he could. He hadn't known she had that particular talent, having come off as rather candid with him. And what's worse, she knew how to press the cute-and-innocent-little-girl factor to her advantage almost expertly. Tom had his good looks and silver tongue, of course, but girls had a natural ability to manipulate that would always escape him simply due to his being born a male. If a girl acted helpless and pathetic enough, there'd always be a man stupid enough to come to her rescue, where if a man acted as such, he'd merely get laughed at. That she appeared to be perfectly aware of this double standard, and highly knowledgeable about where to apply it for her best advantage, irked him to no end.

But more importantly was the question of why she was lying in the first place.

Tom had almost gotten in trouble because of her, and he still hadn't forgiven her for that. And so when the old bitty finally left with a promise to call on Lucinda's cousin, Tom figured he was more than deserving of a proper explanation. But when the silence in the room had gone sour, and she still would not look him in the eye, he saw that he was going to have to be the one to take the initiative.

"Why did you lie?" he asked frankly, taking care to sound grown-up and authoritative. He found this combination often yielded better results more often than naught. If it didn't, he could always resort to intimidation tactics.

Unfortunately, his approach only afforded him a mixed sort of reaction. A dumbfounded look was better than no reaction, though, he reckoned.

"I told you about my little trick," he reminded her. "I can always tell. You can't hide anything from me, so don't even think about trying it." He added a properly menacing, "Or else," at the end, just to up the ante a bit and see how it panned out.

She scrutinized him, looking him up and down as if seeing him for the first time. The fear and bewilderment were still there, which may or may not have been helping him at this point, but it seemed more muted with something that resembled…was that fascination? He then glimpsed the most incredulous spark of amusement.

"I am a four-hundred-foot-tall purple platypus-bear with pink horns and silver wings," she confessed to him flatly.

And after a moment of silence in which he could only stare at her, at a loss for words for what may have been the first time in his life, she burst out spontaneously into hysterical fit of laughter. It was then that he saw her cry for the first time. He couldn't tell if it was because she was laughing so hard, or if she was genuinely upset. But it was the latter, then why was she laughing? There were so many emotions on her face that even Tom couldn't pull them all apart.

This was precisely why he hated girls…

"Have you gone mad?" he wondered, aghast at her perplexing behavior.

She shrugged flippantly, throwing her hands up in an irate gesture that belayed her true upset though she giggled out, "I think I must have. I'm sitting here, in an orphanage, talking to Voldemort—can't get any madder than that." She snorted and added, "Not unless I was wearing a high hat, of course. It's common knowledge that any proper mad person must own a high hat."

She burst into giggles again.

He scrunched his brow at her, trying to sift through the insane babble for anything substantial, but all he could arrive at was, "…Voldemort? That sounds like a disease. Is that what's wrong with you? Is that why you went ballistic at breakfast?"

For some reason, it only made her laugh harder.

"Yes, actually, you could say that is exactly what's wrong!" She grinned widely at him through her hysteria, though it was more a bearing of her teeth than anything else. "Well done, Tom—truly good show. You're so clever! Has anyone ever told you that?"

He knew he was clever—he didn't need anyone to tell him that. Especially not a half-mad giggling idiot who wouldn't give him a straight answer!

He was beginning to get seriously irritated. Enough so that he even began to feel tingling at his fingertips of whatever it was that made odd things happen around him. He was hardly even aware of his own actions as he stood from the chair and strode towards the girl, barely even registered raising his hand, and then—

Slap!

The laughter ceased immediately.

Tom wasn't sorry in the least bit.

When she looked up from where her head had jerked to the side with the force behind the strike, he could see the fear in her eyes again, and he was relieved. The fear was something familiar. Fear, he could deal with. The laughter, and hysteria? That was almost enough to make him afraid, and he didn't like the feeling at all. He contemplated weather or not Lucinda could truly be a madwoman, and decided that if she wasn't, then she was almost as good an actor as he was.

"That really hurt," she groused at him, a flash of anger muting the fear in her face as she rubbed her reddening cheek.

"Good," he answered, satisfied that he was in the right. "Maybe it will help you think clearer, and you might provide me with a proper explanation for this—" He wrinkled his nose in disgust at the entire situation "—maudlin travesty. I don't normally abide by girlish melodrama. Do try to keep it to yourself and stop wasting my time."

Looking incensed, her nostrils flaring in indignant rage, she grated out, "There are so many things I could say to that, but words just don't seem good enough for you, Tom Riddle…"

He'd made her angry. Excellent. Perhaps she'd let something slip.

"Normally," Tom drawled out in disdain, "I'd be thrilled to hear you say that, but you see, you still haven't answered my questions."

Growing bolder in her anger, she snapped, "Why should I!? It's none of your business, you nosy parker! I'll tell you where you can shove your sodding questions—"

No, no, this was getting him nowhere…

Tom took a menacing step towards her, an act to intimidate, and warned, "I would reconsider that statement if I were you…"

"Or what?" she seethed. And then she laughed—laughed—mocking him, before reaching dismissively for her needles. With an indolent lowering of her heavy eyelids, she said, "Go away, Tom Riddle. I'm not afraid of you."

Who was this girl?

More importantly, who did she think she was?

An uncontrolled electric current crackled over his skin with how infuriated she made him. It was the first time in a very long time he'd been out of control of anything, and he hated it. He hated it, he hated it, he hated it—

He wanted to hurt her, he realized. He wanted to shake her. He wanted to see her bleed, and cry—with no laughing involved in the slightest. He wanted to make her scream. More than that, he wanted to take the things she loved and rip them apart. Not afraid

"You might live to regret that," he grated out, a malicious sort of glee curling his lips as his hand darted out, quick as a striking serpent, to snatch at her ridiculous stripey creation.

All it took was a quick tug for it to slip right off the needles and come unraveled, he noted with some fascination; he'd always enjoyed taking things apart.

"Nooo! No-no-no—you—you're ruining everything!" Lucinda cried out in abject dismay as she fumbled across the bed for her work, grasping for it with panicked, clumsy hands. But Tom had the string twined between his long fingers, and with joy in his heart he pulled

He found the way the yarn—crinkled, tangled, and all but unworkable now that it had come undone—so closely resembled the texture of her kinky locks was bizarrely fascinating. It was as if she'd put a piece of herself into her work, and he, Tom, had been the one to defile it. The thought made him unprecedently pleased with himself, as he'd watched her work on the project long into the night, and just imagining how many hours she'd put into it stirred something in him that felt almost giddy. And the ridiculous, heartbroken look on her face was the final, finishing touch. Perfect, he remembered thinking.

He wondered if she'd cry.

"I—you—" she stammered, for the first time, at a loss for words.

Still no tears, he noted with some disappointment, but he found himself rather fascinated as he watched her cheeks turn a vivid shade of red…

"…You evil bastard!" she exclaimed. "I'll kill you!"

Of all the things Tom had expected to hear come out of that girl's mouth, it had not been that.

Not even Mrs. Cole was so vulgar, and she was chained to the bottle.

"Don't be absurd—" he began.

But then he felt something hurtle past either side of his face, and a sharp burning that erupted in his cheek astonished him.

A moment later, he slowly turned his head to see Lucinda's needles—all five of them—buried deeply into the door behind him. When he turned back, it was to see the girl staring at him with eyes as large and wide as saucers, anger fleeing from her face as quickly as the color drained out of it.

It was then that a knock on the door made both of them jump, and Mrs. Cole promptly poked her head in.

"Lucinda, your—" Abruptly, when her eyes fell on Tom, her speech sputtered to a stop and her face took on a similar shade of white as the girl's. "Good gracious, Tom dear—" And when she opened the door fully, taking in its new adornments she sputtered out. "…What in the world happened in here?!"

A strange feeling began to make Tom feel woozy, and he felt something hot and sticky sluggishly dripping down the side of his face. Upon touching his fingers to it, he looked down to find them coated in crimson. At the change in the tilt of his head, more of the stuff trickled onto the floor at a startling measure, quickly forming a small pool at his feet. Time seemed to become distorted somehow, and he could almost hear the ticking of the clock pounding in his ears in unison with his pulse. The whole world tilted at an odd angle…and then the ground was rushing up to meet him.

The last thing he saw before he blacked out was that girl's face.

And even then, unpleasant as it was, he found he was satisfied because of what he saw gleaming upon it.

Tears.

'Finally,' he thought as his eyes grew heavy, peculiarly content with the state of the world.

TBC...


A much shorter chapter this time; my apologies.

Please let me know what you think of Tom's POV. I was very nervous about it. I hope it turned out true to his character.

NEXT TIME: We are back to Lucy's POV and we get another cameo from her mysterious (or not-so-mysterious-if-you-know-your-Harry-Potter-characters) cousin.