Dose of Darkness | Tom Riddle |

Chapter Twenty Three: Beginning of the End

"Trauma is personal. It does not disappear if it is not validated. When it is ignored or invalidated the silent screams continue internally heard only by the one held captive. When someone enters the pain and hears the screams healing can begin."
- Danielle Bernock

○○○

January 20, 1945

The salty air was suffocating and sickening. Everything lurching up from her stomach set her mouth on fire and she thought she would die before it stopped.
In the stagnant air where not even the sound of the waves could be carried through, she clutched on the grass until she came face to face with the black stone that she continued to claw at.

There was something chasing her. Well, not something. Someone.

No sound passed through her ears as if she had lost the ability overall but that scent to the air still choked her. The taste of iron lingered on her tongue as she continued to cough, her ringing ears covering up even that.

Finally, her eyes fell on something beyond the black stone and she seemed to be looking over the edge.

"My Eleanor..." a voice cooed as soft as the wind yet definitive with its strength.

She turned slowly from the large drop beneath her and saw Tom, his hand extending out to her, his face not as smooth as his voice were.
But even as his lips moved she could not hear anything, only blankly stare at his longing gaze that was filled with greed.

The sound of the raging waves crashing against the cliff finally hit her ears in a loud way that scratched at her ear drums. There was no control of her own movements and the pain she felt all of the sudden. All she could do was stare down at the gray abyss of water that slammed against the wall beneath her.

"Come with me, Eleanor. It's where you belong." his voice said, reaching her through the gusting winds.

But there was no will for her to speak for she has felt the push by someone else and was no longer sitting upon a surface.

Eleanor's body turned in the wind she fell against, staring down at the gray waters that opened its mouth like the monster it were, and she felt the surge of fear hit her like it did that day before all had went black.

Eleanor woke up with beads of sweat glazing her skin.

The salty perspiration was caught by her tongue as she licked her lips and there was no doubt that it sickened her.

It was a Monday morning after breakfast where she decided to nap in the commin room before her class at noon. But now her breakfast sat in a small bucket she summoned to her as she threw up, the salt that suffocated her in her nightmare feeling more real than ever when she woke up.

"Eleanor?"

Marcella had been sitting there to her surprise and she jumped, quite embarrassed now. Even Percy was approaching her.

"I'm fine. I think it was the food." she lied immediatley, laying back down as the nausea swirled in her head.

"It's absolutely not fine. That's your second nightmare since you've been back. You're lucky I'm the only one who caught it."

Eleanor wasn't one for trauma.

Nightmares were the worst part of it for her.

Sometimes she couldn't tell which was worse: the dreams where Tom could not hear her screams or the ones where Grindelwald reveled in them.

Of course, no one would be if they had the choice. There was no doubt that she was traumatized though whether she wanted to admit it or not and the worst part about it was having someone else know about it. With a heavy sigh, she sat back up in bed, feeling the sickness come back.