The Heart of a Villain (a Tom Hiddleston fanfiction)

Pursued

[Tom]

Tom feels constricted. He’s vaguely aware that there’s a reason for it but his brain can’t seem to focus enough to pull the thought out into the open. It’s as though the thought sits just on the other side of a door, a wall, some sort of barrier that serves to block access. He can hear it knocking at the walls – taunting him – or is that his own attempts at testing the barrier for weaknesses?

Hard to tell.

Moments of empty sleep are blurred by fragments of thought. Something needing to be done, but the moment the thought occurs it melts away again and is gone with another pushing into its place. Then nothing. It had been mostly nothing at first, but gradually other things are fighting their way forward.

The nothing might’ve been preferable to the rest.

The first thing that really locks into place is pain.

Pain. All over. Pain.

With it comes the image of a lighthouse. A lighthouse peeking out at him through the darkness in his mind. It means something, that lighthouse, but his mind is dragging him elsewhere. He is forced to watch the image of the lighthouse fade from view, something else coming up from the depths for him to examine – unidentifiable at first – then a form starts to take shape – then a face to the form.

The reason for the pain.

Hadley. And with that acknowledgement comes flashes of blows dealt. This time though, within his mind there are strings extending from Hadley’s limbs. Strings that trail through the darkness as the room vanishes. Strings that lead to the last thing he wants to think about right now.

Ben.

Ben’s unflinching look, a twitch of a smile, and then a hard yank on one of the silver strands.

It was all because Tom was trying to stand in the way of something Ben wanted. Because Tom, for all his blind obedience, had found something that set him at odds with his mentor.

An echo of Rose’s voice comes softly at his shoulder, so close it makes him jump. Whispers of his name. Whispers of their love, of their son. Things spoken to the man she loves.

Ben’s growl of disapproval drowns out Rose’s words.

Rose isn’t there when Tom turns his head to try to spot her. His movements feel delayed, sluggish. All he sees are the thin silver-white strings crossing through the pitch before his eyes.

He feels another sharp jab before being swallowed by the darkness again.

The rattling noise returns. Knocking. Rapping. It breaks through in waves; a quiet taunt reminding him something else is there in his head. Tom tries again to remember the lighthouse and what it means. The lighthouse isn’t just to battle this darkness, nothing as abstract as that. No it is a real place, a destination. Andrew’s. That is why his mind is clouded in a fog. Andrew drugged him against the pain inflicted by Ben’s pull of the strings. Drugs that must be wearing off.

Pain.

He wakes in a haze, the room titled at an odd angle as he forces his brain to process his surroundings. The sporadic clack and rattle has followed him from his dreams into this near waking state. They don’t lessen as time passes. He twitches, keeping his eyes closed to try to convince himself the creeping feeling of being watched is all in his head, or the product of the drug induced dreams – if he can classify them as such rather than nightmares.

It takes him longer than he’ll ever admit to find a way to turn his head and not see stars. Every little movement echoes through his body. The pain registered by his slow-on-the-uptake brain stills all but necessary movements. Even breathing threatens to break him.