Split (1)

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"Tom," she said, watching him rustle back and forth across his bedroom floor. "Tom, listen to me—"
"I found them," he said, not looking at her. "The Potters. This prophecy is all but finished, and I'm going to take care of it tonight."
"The entire thing is a thorn in my side," he muttered, his hands curled in frustration. "I've died and come back to live, I've ruled uncontested and without any conceivable opposition, and now I'm being threatened by a child? The whole thing is—"
"Tom," Narcissa interrupted, taking his face in her hands. "I have a secret for you."
He paused, glancing down at her.
"You do?" he asked.
"You told me once that your greatest fear was dying at the hands of someone who cared nothing for you," she reminded him, and though he didn't respond, she knew he still feared it, tension evident beneath her touch. "And you also told me you thought I would destroy you."
He stood still for a moment, contemplating her.
"Those aren't secrets," he said eventually and she gave him a small, tepid smile.
"The secret," she said, "is that you were right. And therefore you have nothing to fear, Tom," she murmured, "because when I destroy you, I will do it with pain and with love. I will destroy you the way that I have adored you; with passion. With sacrifice. With meaning." She paused, feeling him stiffen, and brought him...
"Narcissa," he said gruffly. "What are you—"
"Breathe," she instructed, waiting.
"Good," she said, and when she knew he would have argued, she kissed him firmly instead, not letting him waste a moment; permitting him only the freedom to hold her in his grasp.
Their last time was frantic, half-clothed; it was panicked and restless, a tumultuous crash, not unlike the waves outside. She wondered if that was all they'd ever been; a crash of tides, always ebbing and advancing, desperately fighting their way back.
"Narcissa," he said when it was over, his hands still tangled in her hair. "You are a storm."
"We are both the wreckage," she promised him, and closed her eyes, committing him to memory.
She took everything, bone and blood and thorns, and buried it outside his castle.
She waited for the earth to stake its claim.
"I love him," she said, sparing her final secret as her most important sacrifice; the closest to her heart. "I love him, and I can no longer allow him to love me. I know he'll come back," she whispered, half to herself, half to the waves that rose up against the rocky cliffs. "I know he'll come back, and I'll be waitin...
Good, she thought, satisfied.
She waited until she heard the news that he was gone.
Nobody could explain it, they said. Nobody knew where he had gone, or how, or why a boy—a baby, younger even than her own son—had survived; but he was gone, and slowly, gradually, they exhaled their captive fear in his absence.
Instead she went to his castle and made her way to the battlements, letting the wind whip her memory around along with the tousled waves of her hair.
I know better than anyone what you're made of, he'd said to her once, and she heard his voice now, as clearly as if it carried on the wind.
"In the end," she whispered to him, "you never really knew, did you?"
He was gone now.
She was the one left standing.
"I won't let them destroy what you built," she said aloud, and true, he'd never asked her to make such a promise, but she felt she understood him by now. The castle would be seized by the Ministry, and she knew he wouldn't abide it; wouldn't be able to stand the thought of someone else possessing what he'd crafted hims...
She could feel his familiar pulse in the stone beneath her feet, and she bent her hand to the cobbled ground, letting it recognize her touch.
"Time to go," she told the castle sadly. "Only he was meant for eternity."
There was a crack, then.
A foundation that sank, and she watched the pieces of his creation fall into the water one by one, diminishing to rubble and dropping into the restless sea below, burying his fallen kingdom under the waves.
When the only structure remaining was the stone beneath her feet, a narrow platform raised high above the sea, Narcissa closed her eyes, taking a breath and letting it out.
With her eyes closed, she could almost feel him.
With her eyes closed, she could almost pretend.
Pairing: Tomione (Tom Riddle x Hermione Granger)
Universe: muggle AU
Rating: M for sex
It's 3 A.M., I hope you're home
I wanna be with you
Just let me in through the window
The too-chipper song sounded tinny through the diner's tired speakers, blaring from somewhere over Hermione's head. The heat was beginning to form in beads of sweat down her back; she wiped the moisture from her forehead with the back of her palm, ignoring the saturation in her hair. The short black wig was especially ...
Then he walked in.
"The usual, please," he said, smiling at the waitress and seating himself in the booth nearest to the door. Hermione slid lower in her seat, glancing at him over her menu. Tom Riddle, recently acquitted. Accused of seven murders and released on a technicality, known throughout the county as the Pretty Boy Killer. No am...
"Thanks," he said to the waitress, calling her by name and asking about her girls when she sat the cup of coffee down in front of him. She touched his cheek, affectionate.
He smiled gratefully in return as Hermione's innards twisted. What was wrong with the people in this town? Good people didn't get accused of murder, much less seven murders. No amount of alleged evidence tampering or witness leading could make her believe Tom Riddle wasn't guilty. He was a bad man who needed to be take...
Like the others had been.
His lips slid over the porcelain of his cup and she reached for her near-empty glass of water, recalling the sticky heat between her legs.
She slunk a little lower in the booth, grimacing. Humidity was a bitch.
I had a dream we fell asleep
And woke up in ecstasy
What makes a dream come true?
He spent at least fifteen minutes in the canned food aisle, checking for god knows what on the labels before piling dozens of them into his cart. Hermione watched, frowning, as a young woman struggling with a baby passed from behind him and he paused her with a word, something Hermione couldn't quite hear from where sh...
"It's so hard doing it alone," she said, and Tom looked sympathetic.
"Can I help you with anything?" he asked her, the two of them chatting as if they were acquaintances, or perhaps neighbors. After about four minutes of small talk, Tom revealed he was collecting the cans for a food drive held by the local parish. "I try to do what I can," he said, and the mother's face softened.
"You're a good man, Tom," she said. "Those things they're saying about you are just terrible."
"Well, can you blame them?" he replied, shrugging. "When you're born low, they want you to stay low. Nobody likes to see an orphan profiting from someone else's wealth," he lamented, playing with the woman's baby for a second before making his apologies, heading to the cashier.
Hermione frowned, following him. She half expected that the mother would be his next victim; after all, she was alone, young and pretty, an easy target.
Instead, he piled the cans in his old car and drove away.
It's Friday night and we're alive
And lover's lane is open wide
We'll get there when we arrive
There were certainly a good number of people who mistrusted him, pulling their children out of the way when he approached. It always caused a little crease of dismay in his brow, though he never said anything. Never got angry. Never seemed to have much in the way of negative emotions at all. After two weeks, Hermione h...
He knew all his neighbors; knew all their life stories and their likes and dislikes. He was helpful, always going out of his way to lend a hand when he could. She watched him get turned down by countless employers, sometimes shoved out of their shops and restaurants and shouted at as he went. He had been a community or...
She waited for him to lose it, to go after someone from pure frustration, but he never did.
He stepped outside the public library as she ducked behind a tree. A young teenager was walking at his side, brows furrowed in contemplation.
"—really think so, Tom?"
"Of course I do, you have a bright future. Just stick to the work and you'll be fine. Someone told me that once when I was your age, and that's what I did."
The boy hesitated before saying, "But... Tom, aren't you—"
"It'll pass," Tom said firmly, presumably referring to his post-trial ostracization. "Listen, people will give you every reason not to succeed, so you just have to do the work and prove them wrong. Nobody's going to put you up there; you have to reach for it yourself. Understood?"
The boy nodded.
"Good," Tom said. His sleeves were rolled up past his forearms; he slid a hand back through the damp roots of his hair, pushing it away from his forehead.
Fuck, it was hot in this town.
Your balcony's a limousine
Your bed's a yellow submarine
Ride off to the great unknown
"Tom," the woman moaned, rubbing herself against him where she'd pinned him against the wall. "Tom, please—"
"We shouldn't," he said, but Hermione could see he was struggling, teeth dug into his bottom lip. "You're married now, Bella, we can't, I told you—"
"It was supposed to be you," she whispered, and after another moment of tortured hesitation, Hermione watched Tom give in, leaning forward to snatch a kiss from the woman's parted lips. He spun her, lining her flat against the wall, and wrenched her thigh up, sliding his hand under her dress, out of sight. By the look ...
"Wait," he growled, shifting away, or trying to. "Bella, wait, no, no—"
"Tom," the woman gasped, her fingers clawed into the back of his neck. "Tom, just one more night, he doesn't have to know—"
She dropped to her knees, fumbling with his zipper. Hermione watched, swallowing, as Tom's spine went rigid, his hands shaking when they buried themselves in her hair.
"Bella," he choked out, forcing himself backwards. "We can't," he said, but even Hermione could see he was giving in. "We can't," he repeated, and the woman smiled slowly, thinly. Carnivorously.
She shoved him onto the bed, tearing his shirt from his shoulders and yanking his trousers to mid-thigh. It was pure, raw, animalistic. Bella, the woman, yanked her dress up and straddled him; he flipped her on her back, his mouth traveling over the swells of her breasts, tearing the fabric open.
Tom slid his tongue slowly over the pearl of her nipple, sweat glistening from his shoulders as Hermione watched. The muscles of his back, exquisitely sculpted, gleamed in the low light, a perfect contrast to the creamy skin of Bella's calf where it wrapped around his hips, her heels dug into his bare arse.
"Oh god," Bella shuddered, "oh god, Tom, Tom—"
She came with a whimper that grew to a scream, and Hermione swatted a mosquito away from the sweat at the back of her neck, fingers slick.
Then she slid her palm down the span of her torso, under the lip of her too-short shorts.
None of the others had been like him.
No one needs to know
I will come in through the window
"Are you new here?" he asked, joining her in the diner's front booth. "I don't believe we've met."
"Oh, I'm a journalist," she said. "Just here for a few days."
"A journalist," he echoed softly, tongue slipping between his lips as he contemplated it. "I don't suppose you're covering a murder trial, are you?"
"Nope," she said. "I write for a travel magazine."
He arched a dark brow. "And you think people should travel here?"
"With the infernal summer you're having? Absolutely not," she said, and he laughed, the sound of it floating richly between them. "But you do have a wonderful collection of antique stores in the area."
"True. Borgin's is a fantastic store, and you'll love the owners if you haven't met them already."
"I haven't, actually. Just got to town today."
"Oh, did you? Am I the first to welcome you?"

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