Marked • Tom Riddle

His Love

An aria for the last recitative 

~~~

   Slughorn had departed only moments ago, after having told Tom the news of his wife's state. She was unstable and her future was uncertain. What was to come, whether she would live or die, depended on if she could make it through the night. Merlin, she had to make it through the night. 

   Tom sat on the floor of their dark bedroom, his back against the bedframe with a bottle of whiskey as he drank away his sorrows. Holding Karina's lifeless hand close to his chest, he looked at her wedding ring. He had bought it, a pricey little thing, with no real intention of ever loving her at all. She was meant to be a promise, given to him by Grindelwald, of the most powerful legacy all the wizarding world had ever known. Later on, the ring came to mean that he had won her mind, body, and soul, a goal he had set out to achieve all those months ago. However, that was a different time, as he had foolishly been under the notion his desire to possess her was synonymous with love; that he could return the love she put out for him with lust, desire, and greed. 

   Merlin, he had been so wrong.  

   "I haven't been good to you, Karina. I see that now," he said, holding her hand close to his heart. "And if you're going to die," his voice broke as a wave of agonizing sadness crashed over him, pounding his sanity against harsh rocks of the reality that she might actually die. "I need you to know, even if you can not hear me."

   He took a couple of large swings from the bottle in his hand. It was not simply for the pain or the stress that her current state was causing him, but rather the mere embarrassing fact that he could not physically get himself to talk about things from his past without enough chemicals numbing his senses. Even after all these years, after his wounds had turned to invisible scars, the pain they had left behind still lingered.

   "I know I was not kind to you first came to me, here, in my home, but the place I grew up in had no room for kindness. It had no room for love. I was beaten, humiliated, and alone for the entirety of my childhood and it seems pieces of me were lost within the cold walls of the orphanage. I treated you the only way I knew how, Karina."

   He recalled holding her against the table as she cried in fear, scouring her mind for all her thoughts and memories until she was bare for him to control and torment. Merlin, she used to be so frightened of him. Still, he recalled, that did not prevent her from trying with him, even after he abused his power and took away her right of having privacy within her thoughts. God, what was wrong with him? 

   "I grew up a scared and angry child, even during Hogwarts. Dumbledore could see it. Merlin, he saw right through me, and he knew what this kind of fear could do to a person; what kind of monster it could turn me into. He saw it and tried to nurture it out of me. And when I killed him, something inside me clicked. I understood, love was weakness. That there is only power and those too weak to seek it. Follower after follower, war after war, I understood this was the man I was meant to be. This was the monster I had to become so that I no longer had to be afraid of anything or anyone. To be the most powerful meant that no one could touch me." He took another large swing from the bottle and looked around the room, at the portraits, at the tapestries, rugs, and artifacts. He had accumulated much over the years, pointless, priceless objects to fill the empty corners of his home. So many things to fill up the space.

    "The funny thing about getting what you want, Karina, is that all you can do is focus on what you do not have. The more power I gained, the more I realized how isolated I had become. No one mentions that about power. It is a lonely venture. Oftentimes, it felt like I had never left the orphanage, I had simply changed roles with my abusers; I was in charge now. Even here, in this mansion I had built for myself with all these empty rooms, and for what? An empty orphanage with one child. Alone. It soon became very apparent to me that the thing I desired above all was someone to fill the aching hold of my loneliness. Yes, I want my bloodline to continue with a powerful legacy, but I want much more than that," he said, staring at the bottle while his vision blurred with unspilled tears. Even the alcohol could not prevent him from thinking of the mother who had abandoned him with his abusers.

   "You must know, Karina, with Mila it was never about the child itself. I simply wanted what I never had; a family of my own. I thought I could get this by having children, who I could raise, and father; children who had no choice but to love me, but then you convinced me otherwise," he thought back to when he had first felt something for her. It was the most simple and thoughtless act that had gotten to him, on one of their first nights when she had stumbled into the kitchens, hungry after he had frightened her half to death at dinner. She had brewed him a tea for his insomnia that night. Why she had even offered to make it for him after the way he had treated her, he would never quite understand. But as she poured it, she had looked up at him, although only for a quick moment, with the most hopeful eyes that what she had brewed might actually help him with his ailment. Those eyes, they had infiltrated something within him and they stuck with him for many sleepless nights after that, where he lay awake thinking about what on earth could have possibly persuaded her to help him. He did not believe kindness was a selfless notion, but rather that it came from a place of greed. He still did not quite know the answer to his question, but he had learned the truth behind his reasoning was that he had been too alone to be shown any real kindness, the kind that was truly selfless.   

   "Alone is all I've ever known Karina. Until you came along, this innocent thing amidst all this darkness. I didn't know what to do with you, how to behave, or what to say. You were just this presence inside my empty home that I did not understand. So, I tore through your mind trying to figure you out. I could not have the person I was supposed to spend the rest of my life with blocking me out, but I could not figure out a way to get close to you either. Stealing your thoughts was the only thing I could think to do to understand you better, but after what you pulled for Mila, I realized it only made you more afraid of me," he drank again. He would need another bottle before the night was up, because he knew he would not sleep a wink, not until he knew she would make it. "I do not blame you, Karina. I understand fear better than most people, it drives us to survive even in the harshest environments. You did what you needed to survive with me. So, when I took your memories, I understood I had to stop infiltrating your mind without your permission. That I had to have some trust in you so that you could trust in me."

   Sighing, he pushed himself from the ground. The room spun, the liquor taunting him for thinking he could consume as much as he had. The spinning was not of much bother; his world was already falling apart. Still, he took a seat on the edge of the bed to stabilize himself, and carefully placed Karina's limp hand against the mattress. He looked at her chest rise and fall, finding some relief in the fact that she was still alive. He looked at her hair, her arms, and hands, her body, but he could not get himself to look at her face. 

   "Then it was a matter of keeping up an act. I needed you to love me, Karina. Truly love me so that you would never leave. In the midst of the ruse, I ended up falling for you. Me, in love. Although I promised myself I would only ever love half of you, I can not keep lying to myself. I love your entire being, Karina, even the part I am too afraid to face. Every day it eats away at me, the knowledge of the memories I stole from you. I think about returning them to you sometimes, but I am a coward who can not risk losing you," he said and cursed himself for not being able to even glance at her face. He had done this to her and now he was too afraid to face the consequences. He had never stopped being a coward, he had simply learned how to hide behind his power. But he had to admit it to himself, he had to face the truth, he at the very least owed her that much for saving his life. 

   So, forcing himself to gaze upon her pale face, he admitted to himself that he was the reason she might die. He, alone, was the reason that the most priceless and valuable thing that he had ever known, a beautiful woman capable of loving a beast, might not live to see the light of day. The damn he had built to hold the pain inside him cracked with each passing second until it broke entirely, and everything came pouring out. He sobbed openly, like he had when he was a child inside that orphanage begging God for someone to love him. Only this time, he had that someone, he had gotten his wish, except he had taken it for granted. 

   "I thought I wanted children to fill the void, but I now realize it is you that I want. I am a coward, Karina. I worked my entire life to never be afraid again. But now, I am more afraid than I have ever been. Every morning I wake up next to you, I am reminded of what I stole from you. I am so fucking terrified to lose you. I can not lose you, Karina. I don't want to be alone again. Please do not leave me to be alone again," he cried loudly. "I love you. My god, I love you."