Extra Ordinary (Riddle Era)

Chapter 19

Tom hated himself for staying up that night. Or rather, he hated himself for why he stayed up. He'd planned another night of pouring over books and papers in the dungeon sideroom he'd claimed as his own, the entrance helpfully disguised by a door that helpfully preferred to pretend it was a solid wall. He'd added his own enchantments as well and now it was a safe haven, littered with stolen books and records and manuscripts that ranged from the relatively harmless - if mortifyingly embarrassing - genealogies he'd collected tonight, to extra reading for his classes to help him stay ahead, to the more sinister books he'd grabbed from the restricted section on all the topics his teachers couldn't be bothered to teach but which he found endlessly fascinating.

This place was where he studied it all, crammed it into his head until his brain felt like it couldn't hold anymore. This was where he dropped the smiling, confident persona and buckled down. This was where he focused.

Or, at least, it was where he was supposed to focus. Because right now, he very much wasn't.

He couldn't honestly say it was the first time. But even since Lucy Steele had slipped into his life with that easy, lying smile and those obnoxious, inscrutable looks, this was the worst it had been.

He kept playing that conversation he'd overheard on repeat, like he could find some new explanation for her wasting such kindness on a nobody. On useless, moping, moaning Myrtle Warren. And he kept coming up empty.

There was no reason, none at all, to bother with Warren if her goal was to gain status. Or recognition. Or to preserve any sort of reputation. There was no point if she wanted admiration or reward or gifts. There was no reason except the painfully obvious one that kept staring him down even as his thoughts danced circles around it, unwilling to look it in the eyes.

And yet... and yet it was undeniably there: the plain, impossible option. That Lucy Steele was just... kind. Simply and unabashedly kind. That when she looked at Warren with that still face and those eyes that looked through more than at, she was calculating nothing more or less than how to help. That when she tipped her head and gave those smiles that were so far from mirthful, she wasn't covering a far more sinister smirk, she was covering a sigh. That when she spoke words like they meant more than they should have, the more wasn't a threat or a motive she would rather have disguised. It was a worry. A concern. A care.

And it was insane. It was stupid. It was a wonderful, horrible, impossible idea that he should not have allowed himself to linger on.

And yet here he was, her words running on repeat. Her sentences, old and new slipping through his head, looping around and blurring over each other.

From that first disaster of a conversation:

You don't have to do that, you know. Pretend, I mean.

From their discussion of Olive that had somehow felt like a discussion of more. Of him.

Everyone has a reason, Tom.

That stubborn non-answer before break that had felt like mercy when it should have been an insult:

I don't think you want to know the answer to that.

And then just the other week, those words spoken with a conviction that had almost made him believe her. Almost.

I'm not a liar.

Over and over and over again. And, mixed in with them, painfully and inexplicably,

I'm not leaving you to deal with this alone.

He should not be thinking of those words. Shouldn't be imagining that she might say them to him. Shouldn't be considering the way she would say them. With that soft smile he still didn't trust. That tip of her head that was becoming so familiar and detestable. With a little crease in her brow and little narrowing of her eyes and that look. Like she could see all the way through him. To all the broken bits he had taken such care to hide. To that core of himself that was small and shriveled and branded by the mother who had never wanted him. The family who had never come looking. Like she could see all of him. And might still say the words anyway.