"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 h e r e w a s a stillness Tom knew now that was different than any other. He had never seen that of a rabbit who had ventured too close to a wolf, but he knew it looked a lot like how Evelyn got sometimes.
This unmoving silence made him think that she had never left the memories she showed him. That they played in her head whenever she wasn't doing something to muffle them. Even now, he watched the way her breath hitched to show she would not become the next victim. And as much as it could, it broke Tom's heart.
Evelyn, this woman of unwavering confidence and strength, was nothing more than that scared little girl who cowered in her own house. She just knew how to hide that wretched weakness, as if the character she played was her only truth.
And to think she had to be strong even now, in the school that had become her home because of cowards like Albus Dumbledore, who had watched and known and had never helped. He had the power, he had the influence, and yet, he had let her be sent to her room to clean off blood that was not her own. It took everything in Tom not to march to his office now and eviscerate him as Evelyn had done to that man.
Tom often forgot how little he knew of high society, whether muggle or wizard, but surely this wasn't what it was always like. She had been treated worse than him, who had been abandoned in an orphanage. He wondered now if she was somewhat jealous of him in the way that he was powerful, and yet, he had chosen to become that way himself.
"Evelyn?" Tom whispered, afraid to break her stillness too harshly, but she didn't seem to hear him at all. "Evelyn, dear?"
She looked out the window as if she could see all the way to her family's house. As if she had never left the confinement of its walls.
"Evelyn?" Tom tried again, but she still did not move. He reached gently across their space toward her. The moment his fingers grazed her wrist, she jerked back so violently that it startled Tom back into his chair.
"I'm sorry," Evelyn said, her voice timid and so unlike itself. "I just– I've never shown anyone those memories before. I didn't know they would affect me like that."
"Of course, they would," Tom scolded and then felt guilty at the baffled blush that came over Evelyn's cheeks. "I just mean, it's okay to feel so bothered by them. I'm sorry."
"You didn't do anything," Evelyn said. "I've never heard you apologize before, even when you have done something to deserve one."
"I just don't know what to say," Tom confessed as he looked anywhere but at her. "It's something that I thought deserved some kind of apology from someone."
Evelyn dipped her head, and Tom wished they had something to move them forward from the darkness they found themselves in. As though the room had read his mind, two glasses appeared before them, along with a large bottle of fire whisky.
