antebellum [t. riddle]

lix

february 1945

the following days were increasingly stressful for sicaria. while she continued to struggle with the danger of her upcoming "mission", tom (in his ever-present talent of being the center of attention) did nothing to alleviate her worry.

in fact, he continued to add to it.

"do not ask davies to the ball."

"hm, why?"

"why do you think?"

she gave him the briefest of glances as they continued in their path down the hall toward professor slughorns classroom. her tone was a whispered hiss, to ensure that the passing students did not hear the details of their conversation. she truly had no idea why tom had waited so long to bring this topic up. "you don't get to do that again. if you have something to ask me, then ask."

ask? no, no. tom didn't ask for things.

especially not things that were already his.

i am not a thing, he imagined her saying, but that did not negate the fact that she was his.

tom was unnaturally possessive over sicaria. from the very beginning, she was his prospect, his mystery, his obsession, and eventually his witch. he wanted to own all of her— every inch of her body, every ounce of her soul, every moment of her time.

why?

tom didn't quite know himself.

it was not as though a switch had flipped— it just took him some time to differentiate his desire to kiss her from his desire to hurt her. it took him time to realize which one he liked more.

perhaps it was the fact that she was one of the few things that he could not control. she was a "student", yes, but she did not fear him in the way the other students did. she was in his circle of companions, but she did not answer to him in the way the other knights did. sicaria answered to politicians thousands of miles away, who held both her life and her freedom in their hands. there would always be a part of her that needed to appease them before anything else in her life.

but everything that those politicians did not control, tom wanted.

he wanted her heart, her soul, her passion— everything that they couldn't take from her.

he only knew that she was extraordinary, and extraordinary things needed to be kept in the right hands to meet their full potential. macusa didn't know how to use her properly. dumbledore didn't know how to use her properly. in tom's mind, he was the only person fit to help her reach her full potential, and vice versa.

he had learned much from her. that made her special.

he'd sooner let another man handle his wand before another man laid a hand on her— to linger in her mind the way he did.

tom grabbed her arm to stop her from walking away from him. "sicaria."

"tom," she said blankly, looking up, knowing to give him the attention he craved when he was acting petulant.

"don't mock me," he hissed. "don't go with davies."

she wrenched her arm away. "i can go with whoever i damn well please."

this was the second ball at hogwarts that he'd demanded her attention but refused to actually ask her.

sicaria was tired of letting tom have the easy way out. she wanted him to confront his feelings on his own without making her do all the work for him. if he was still struggling with the fact that he felt things for her, then that was something he needed to work out on his own rather than forcing her to spell it out for him.