A beautiful vase shattered as it made contact with the wall. Porcelain and expensive but now a worthless heap of trash. With a wave of wand, he could turn it back to what it was before; one perfect vase.

Very much unlike their relationship.

He didn't want to repair that vase.

He wanted it gone, out of his sight and mind. It was Tom's favourite vase; a present from the president of MACUSA. He wanted it shattered and destroyed. He wanted everything in Tom's life burnet to crisp. He wanted Tom to feel very miserable.

He wanted Tom destroyed and dead.

But did he really? Could he bear the pain of seeing someone he loved so much, far more than his very own life, unmoving and still? Would he weep for him to come back to life? Would he feel pain at the sight of the sightless eyes of a dead man he once called his heart?

Or would he be glad that Tom is no longer there to make him feel like he's not good enough?

But it no longer mattered. He wouldn't be able to end Tom's life without destroying a piece of himself.

Their story had come to an ending. And it was neither happy nor good.

Now he feels nothing at all. It all feels like he's looking at all of this from the eyes of a stranger. It feels like he's just a person totally unrelated to and observing this mess of a situation.

"What am I to you, Tom?" Harry whispers across the room, hands clutching into the bedframe desperately as if he would fall over if he lets go. Tear tracks on his face and his eyes red-rimmed and full of unshed tears. His hair a messy birdnest and his clothes rumpled.

But his eyes, the green eyes that Tom once said to resemble the colour of his Slytherin locket, are so hollow and devoid of everything.

"What am I, Tom? Another one of your stepping stone? Or a bedwarmer? A fucktoy?"

Tom is in his suit, all perfect and handsome. Not a hair out of place.

Of course, the British Minister For Magic is always neat and perfect for he can never look terrible. He's always charming and perfect. Everyone likes him. The only thing unnatural about him right now is his slightly widened eyes and slacked jaw. He is obviously surprised and extremely irritated by the turn of events.

He had never seen Harry like this. His Harry was always gentle and soft-spoken.

Even in his hardest times, the times when he had to endure the weight of the eyes of the Wizarding World, he had never looked like this. Right now, Harry looks like Great Aunt Cassiopeia after the death of her secret lover, whose name nobody could figure out to this day; broken beyond repair.

Harry looks like a madman.

Great Aunt Cassiopeia survived the heartbreak and the grief. She's a Black through and through.

Harry is a Potter. Even if he feels numb to the core, he doesn't know whether he will survive or break apart after this.

"Darling. Harry. Calm down." Tom has a very beautiful voice; it is like the chiming of a thousand bells in the distance.

His voice is so calming; a soothing sound that lured Harry back to sleep when he woke up from nightmares. That sweet voice once whispered the things Harry wants to hear most but Tom never meant them, did he?

It is that beautiful voice that made Harry trust Tom with everything he has. It is that voice that Harry prayed to hear everyday to the very end of his life. It is same voice that is breaking what little trust Harry had left for him.

Tom is still speaking. Harry barely hearseany

"And whatever you're saying, I have no idea. You are not making any sense right now."

Lies Lies Lies. Was he always lying? Did Harry never see this? How didn't he see that all of this is but a pretty lie?

"...You just need to calm down and have a rest, my darling. I'll bring a glass of water for you.."

Tom is trying to calm Harry down. He's trying so hard to lure Harry back into his webs of lies. He still thinks that Harry would trust him again with no questions asked like he had before. He still thinks that it would work on him once again.

It doesn't.

"Stop it, Tom. Stop faking." Harry is whispering again as if someone might overhear them. There's only them in the room.

"I already knew that you don't care about me." Harry accuses his dearest husband, the ever-perfect Thomas Riddle. He shakes his head and wipes down his face.

"You don't even care about her, or anyone, or anything. You only care about yourself, Tom."

Tom suddenly turns pale at Harry's accusation.

"Her?"

He is frowning; his hands clenching and unclenching at his sides. His eyes move away from Harry and he would look perfectly normal to others but to Harry who has been looking at all the miniscule expressions of his for nearly twenty years knows instantly what is shown on that face.

Gulit. The confirmation he doesn't need.

He looks guilty and Harry suddenly has the urge to laugh out loud.

There's a hint of surprise too as if his little affair with Bellatrix Black would stay uncovered forever.

Well, nobody would actually think that the Light's supporter, Minister For Magic who is married to the Light's very own golden boy, would have a secret little dirty affair with a daughter of a very influential and an ever-dark family.

If someone said this to Harry two years ago, he would have laughed out loud. It sounds too unbelievable, too funny of an idea.

But not now. No. It's a reality now. A reality that Harry must face.

Do not think that Harry hadn't tried to ignore it.

He discovered Tom's dirty little secret a year and a half ago.

At that time, he was, funnily enough, worried. He has known of Tom's not-so-secret fascination and secret affiliation with the dark fraction of the Wizarding World for a long time. He had turned a blind eye to the dark artifacts Tom brought home. And as always Tom would claim them as the small trinkets that he collected from his foreign tours.

Tom must've forgotten that Harry had been the one to successfully discover the Chamber of Secrets just because Tom had mentioned him of wanting to find something of his ancestors.

Harry looks like every other light wizard and have no distinguished character other than being a lord of Potter House and the husband of the minister but that doesn't mean he's not intelligent enough to see the difference between dark and light magics.

He's not a dumb six years old Tom can just lie to. Tom forgot that.

Like he forgot so many things about Harry.

Tom forgot how Harry takes his tea. Tom forgot their anniversary because he was so busy at the ministry. Tom forgot to come to their annual visit to the graves of Harry's parents.

He let those things slide the same way he let with the affair with Black slide under the rug. He naïvely thought that it was just a fleeting interest, a small spark of desire for a dark-affiliated witch.

After all, Harry is a light wizard to the core, despite being a Slytherin in his school years, and Tom must've been dissatisfied with that.

Harry actually dated Cedric Diggory before he fell in love with Tom and he thought whatever Tom had with Bellatrix was just a small matter that would be over in a short time.

He was wrong. So utterly wrong.

After all, Tom is an obsessive bastard with an inflated ego. It took him too long to accept that. Took him too long to see that harsh truth.

The dirty little affair still wasn't over after two years and it won't be over for a long long time.

Harry was so naïve. He won't be anymore.

"Surprised, Tom? I know of you and your dear Bella's affair. Is it so shocking that I know of it?" Harry taunts, an ugly sneer on his face, a perfect indication of his disgust and loathing.

He turns away from his husband and walks towards the wall, where the muggle oil painting of them on their wedding day is hung. Harry hates magical paintings as he firmly believes that illusions are just illusions and not a reality. He didn't even let his parents be painted in an magical portrait since they won't be able to stay with him anyway.

He would and did mourn for them. But he wouldn't and didn't live with 'what ifs' and illusions.

But he did live in lies, didn't he? The honey coated lies of his husband.

How laughable.

One of the broken pieces of the vase stabs his feet as he approaches the painting of Tom and him. He faintly heard Tom's alarmed call for him from behind.

He winces as he felt a flare of pain shot up through his leg and he almost laughs at the pain. Somehow he could still feel physical pain. How strange. He actually thought himself numb all over.

He traces the outline of Tom in the painting. He's smiling in it, happy and content with what he had; an influential husband and a firm position in the ministry as the Head of DMLE.

How different he looks from his Tom across the room.

Tom, the real one, is not smiling. He looks seconds away from shouting his lungs out in exasperation at the mess Harry had made. An ugly frown on his forehead and gritted teeth making him look more intimidating than usual.

Harry knew all of the flaws Tom has and he still ache at the thought of his Tom being something other than perfect.

His Tom is greedier than the man Harry had married at twenty. He's egotistical and manipulative. He's a poisonous snake with fox's heart, always willing to use people as stepping stones. As long as he could be what he wishes to be, he would not hesitate to play the others like chess pieces.

Harry perhaps is just another one of his too many chess pieces, ready to be moved and sacrificed for his purposes.

His Bellatrix probably is the same. Who knows.

Nothing really matters at this point.

"Leave me, Tom." Harry tells his husband as he turns his gaze away from their wedding portrait.

"I know that you had always wanted to explore the world and I'm the one blocking your way to your desires. I'm just a burden to your ambitions. Leave me." He sits back down on their bed, staring holes at his bloodied footprints.

"...Is that what you want, Harry?" He hears Tom asks. He felts the stinging of tears in his eyes but he doesn't look up.

"Yes. I want you to leave, Tom."

After a few minutes of silence, he hears the movements of a wand, Tom packing up his suitcase. Then he leaves without a word.

It doesn't take long for Harry to sob into his hands, his muffled cries the only sounds in their room. No matter how numb he feels, it always hurt to let someone who you wish to hold on to forever go.

He sits there for a long time, crying his heart out. After that, he still sits there, reliving the old memories, getting a little too lost inside his head.

He sits there for a long time that when he comes back to himself it has already been four hours.

In just four hours, his life has turned upside down.

How strange. It's just a few hours and everything has changed.

Maybe this time it's for better. For the both of them.

Harry is just standing up, wiping his tears, to begin his life once again, albeit alone, when he hears an explosion and he is knocked back by the force of it.

And it all goes black.

XxxX

Tom Riddle wakes up to the sound of fire call from his hotel room's fireplace.

He abruptly sits up and walks towards the fireplace. He has a terrible headache that he doubts would go away hours later. After his diasterous argument with Harry, he decided that drinking his frustration away at a pub would be a perfect idea. He didn't expect to actually get drunk; he could handle alcohol well normally.

He casts the Tempus charm only to find that it's been only five hours since he left their house.

Many things had happened in such short amount of time.

He still thinks Harry was being unreasonable. Harry is a very straightforward person, his ways of dealing with problems are direct and cutting. He never thinks beyond what he sees. Harry would never understand that Bellatrix means nothing to Tom. A helpful asset, a useful tool, a pawn to be sacrificed. And nothing more.

She's nothing like Harry, his husband who had stood by him for more than a decade.

Harry had always been there for him. Even at their lowest point, Harry had never left Tom behind; always a steady and unchanging presence by his side.

But now he's pushing him away and it does hurt even though the fault only pays with Tom.

Apparently, Bellatrix Black is a mistake.

A big mistake that made his relationship with Harry goes haywire. Everything is so out of his control and nothing is working the way he had expected. But he will fix it. He will salvage the situation and rebuild everything. He will fix his mistakes and go back to where Harry is.

He will not leave Harry again and Harry will accept him back, surely. He wouldn't know what to do if it's the contrary.

Tom glances over to the fireplace and immediately recoginses the person who is calling him.

Kingsley Shacklebolt. Head Auror and a friend of Harry during his time in the Auror Department.

"Hello, Kingsley." He greets the man a false smile. He can clearly see the surprise at seeing Tom in wrinkled clothes. Not many people had seen him this way before and he feels uncomfortable under that stare.

"Minister Riddle! Oh, Merlin. Where have you been you?" Kingsley asks, wiping his face down, both relief and fatigue evident in his tired voice.

"We had been searching for you for nearly an hour."

Searching? For him?

Tom frowns, gears in his head turning quickly on what could have happened in his absence. Sometimes bad is clearly happening or has happened for sure and it's somehow related to him. It's foreboding in a way, and he feels very unsettled.

"May I come in, Minister? i believe it's better to talk in person."

Something serious, then. "Yes, Kingsley. Come through."

"What happened, Kingsley? Tell me."

Kingsley looks at him gravely, pity and sadness in his eyes,

—and Tom feels the wrongness of all this and oh doesn't he hate this mess—and says,

"There was an explosion at Number 12, Grimmauld Place. Believed to be an assassination attempt."

A bomb is dropped in Tom's heart, and he could explode with the weight of that knowledge.

Assassination Attempt. There's someone attempting to kill him and that might've been successful had he been at home. He wasn't and he is safe, but Harry was still there. He was still there, and Kingsley is here looking as if Tom is someone to be pitied and Tom can guess what had happened even though he doesn't want to he knows what happened.

He prays to whatever god there is up in the sky. He prays to every religious figure he had heard of in his life. He prays to them and desperately hopes that they hear his prayers.

Please. Do not let this happen. Not to him. Not the only person who is undeserving of any kind of pain.

He faintly hears Kingsley calling his name, but he cannot focus on anything at all. Suddenly, there is a large hand on his shoulder and oh doesn't it ground him just a little bit.

"... Minister, breathe. I know you're worried but we're worried, too. Mr. Riddle-Potter is currently hospitalized. He's in the intensive care unit as of now. He is being cared by our best healers and I sent a unit of our Aurors to guard him during his stay at the hospital."

Harry is injured. He is injured and now at the hospital. Kingsley said ICU which means Harry is injured badly enough to receive intensive care and which in turn means Tom could lose him anytime.

Kingsley is still speaking and his heart aches with the pain every word brings forth. "We do not know of his condition. Just that he's fatally injured."

Tom doesn't reply. He couldn't. But he has to. He must. So he steels his heart and tells Kingsley,

"I'll be there." His voice sounds tight with emotions he never thought himself capable of.

'Wait for me, Harry.' He thinks of his beloved. His beloved who is injured and could leave him behind in this world.

No. Unacceptable. Harry is strong. His dear heart is so stubborn. He would not give in to the whims of death easily, would he?

Death. The inevitable.

It's a concept that scares him even on good days. It's his biggest fear and it's coming to take his Harry away. And he's utterly terrified of that. He couldn't live without Harry. He won't be Tom Riddle anymore if he doesn't have his Harry.

So he prays to whatever gods up there. To let his love live. To give him a reason to continue on with his life.

He prays to be by Harry's side. Forever and always.

Tom Riddle prays. He prays desperately.