"she was the type of person who'd explain how she was going to stab you in the front before she actually shoved the knife in... and you'd let her.
she'd probably even pass the knife to you so you can shove it in your own chest...and you would."
tom...
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t o m k n e w the death of Evelyn's mother would be something that affected her. He knew why she came back hollow after the summers. He knew why there were days that seemed to haunt her more than nights. Yet, when he found Evelyn the next day, it was as if that sadness that occasionally crept into her had become permanent; he had been disappointed.
The snow outside had become a storm. It battered the inn's flimsy windows. The flames of the hearth made the room insufferably hot, but there was nowhere else to go.
He had been afraid last night that this girl would truly be the end of him. But there she was day after day, stuck in bed like a corpse. There was nowhere to take her now. No fields of flowers that he could carry her to. Just the snowstorm outside reminded her that everything she had been protecting was gone.
She had always been foolish. That is what this was. Just another result of someone thinking that love would be enough. That her putting her mother to sleep at the end of every summer would somehow save her. Save the woman that Tom knew was just as dead alive as she was now. Evelyn had been weak to think that there was anything left for her there, inside a woman who had never been strong enough to fight. She died not fighting. Maybe that had been a favor to her.
Evelyn roused from sleep that he knew had not been peaceful, "Tom?"
Her voice was nothing more than a whisper. Nothing more than a weak plea of reassurance that he was still there. In the years that he knew her, he wanted nothing more than to rush to her side and tell her that he was. He would always be there to watch out for her.
But things had changed. Tom was finally able to see that no matter how far he got with Evelyn, she had always had her own mindset about him. He was her weapon that could be disposed of. A weapon she would eventually not need. She had made him exactly what she had wanted.
The entire time he had been listening to her, she was using him. He was always doing what she had advised. Saying what she had laid out for him to say. He couldn't even trust that she had ever not been inside his head.
He was only now realizing because of how fast she had turned. How quickly she had decided to try to kill him, to end him to win the game her way. Was the ring on his finger even telling the truth when it lit with her guilt, or was that just one more thing she was using to manipulate him?
She knew how obsessed he had become with her. That even though he knew she had tried to kill him, he would still turn around and declare that he would lay the world at her feet. She had never once said that she would do the same for him because Tom knew she wouldn't. She would absolutely never bow for him. She would never not be the one with the most power in the room.
And really, wasn't that why she hadn't listened to Grindelwald, to keep something away from him? She was showing even the greatest mastermind of their time that she was a step ahead of him. That she could take what she wanted and not apologize to anyone for it.
