Isabella Swan watches as the waves rise higher and higher, the buildings getting swallowed by the unforgiving water. She watches as one of the skyscrapers breaks under the pressure and begins to crumble and feels a foreboding sense of chaos.
Idly, she wonders where he is. Voldemort, he's begun to call himself.
Bella does not call him that. She knows that he hates that she knows his name, his real name, hates the vulnerability that comes with it.
She has heard the whispers, has heard all about the mysterious being rising rapidly to power. The Dark Lord, some call him. Bella hadn't been too worried, seeing as this is not the first time he's awakened great fear for the future of the world, but now, with the ghostly beings levitating around the town, she feels a type of unease she hasn't felt in centuries.
The sky is black, the midday sun nowhere to be seen. The only sources of light are the burning buildings and the occasional crack of lightning rattling in the air. She knows that Tom must be somewhere in here, can feel it in her chest, the familiar buzzing underneath her skin that comes with his presence. And even if she were unable to feel it, the unnatural storm clouds swirling in a vortex above the crashing waves would make it clear just who is the one wreaking havoc in the city.
She rises the stairs to the roof of the building and watches as the first five floors get buried under dark water. The building doesn't crash yet, unlike the house next to this, even though the pressure of the waves must be rattling the walls. She hears the windows break as water rushes in.
She watches as the skyscraper next to this one burns. The top floors are lit on fire, the smell of ash thick in the atmosphere. She can do nothing but watch as the building is swept into destruction, her body rooted to the spot until there's nothing left of the skyscraper.
After, she finds herself wandering back inside. It doesn't feel like a conscious choice of her part. It feels like she's sleepwalking, even though she doesn't remember what sleeping feels like. It's like there's a fog inside her mind, thick enough that she doesn't know what she's doing anymore. She doesn't know when the skies will clear, or whether the sun will ever shine as bright as it used to again.
Dimly, she registers the white walls and the grey furniture of the room she's in. She's not quite sure how she ended up here, but the metal of the chairs seems off, like it's not supposed to be there. She looks out the window, but before she can decide her next course of action, she's swept off her feet so hard that she doesn't know what hit her.
The building must have collapsed, she thinks. She finds herself getting lost in cold water, the waves hurling her violently from one place to another, and despite being stronger in every way than humankind, she is unable to stay afloat. The physical sensation of coldness doesn't bother her, but the indisputable wrongness of the masses of water makes dread seep deep into her bones.
The water throws her this way and that, wrenching ver away just as she's close to getting back to shore. The more she fights it, the more violent the waves gets, and the further she strays from the shore and from the buildings. The water burns her skin, even though it's colder than her body. As she sinks to the bottom, she wonders if he cursed the water.
She stops fighting it, at some point. It's no use, and she knows she won't die, either way.
It's then that the waves carry her into a building.
She has no recollection of how she got inside, but suddenly she's in a brightly lit room, shaped like a large square. Walls of pale wood surround the large interior of the building. She's standing in a balcony of some sort, she thinks, and under her grows grass that seems too green and flowers that seem too blue. There are no windows, no doors, nothing that lets sunlight into the building, yet there is no dark spot in sight.
On the other side of the room, maybe a hundred meters away from her, stands him.
Tom is wearing a dark cloak, his face shadowed by the fabric. Yet she recognizes him immediately; that buzzing beneath her skin is amplified tenfold the way it only ever is when he's this close.
When he's near, that thing in her chest feels tight, uncomfortable in way that makes her unsure of whether she wants to run away as far as she can, or find him and have him close enough to touch. When he's close, like he is right now, the buzzing intensifies until she feels like she'll burst. Yet on the times she has stepped even closer, close enough that she could reach her hand out and let it graze his face, the thing inside her quiets to an almost pleasant background noise. On the times when she does touch him, few and far away in the past, the thing inside her sings. And she hates it, hates how pleasant it feels. She hates him, but the wretched thing inside her recognizes him as someone who understands.
"We meet again." He doesn't bother to raise his voice; he knows that Bella hears him. She can't make out his face, covered by the hood of his cloak as it is.
"So it seems."
"Have you come to stop me?"
Bella considers it. She didn't technically come here to stop him, she came here to observe the gravity of the situation. After seeing what she has today, though, killing him might be the only choice she has.
She walks slowly around the balcony that surrounds the insides of the building, hand trailing along the wooden railing. She stops only when she the buzzing beneath her skin quiets, that thing inside her chest recognizing its kind. "Isn't that what I always do?"
"You don't have to." Tom's voice is quiet, almost deadly. They've been over this a thousand times already. Tom will try and convince Bella to stay by his side, like a powerful tool for him to use whenever he feels like, easy to mold and manipulate into whatever suits him at the moment. "Give in, Bella, we both know the world you wish for is beyond saving."
"We can skip this part. This is endlessly tiring, and you know I will never believe what you believe." Bella sighs. Perhaps a small part of her had longed to see him, had craved the closeness she feels when he's with her. Nevertheless, that does not mean she doesn't despise him and everything he does.
"As you wish." He shrugs. "The offer still stands. Come with me, and you won't have to worry about the issues in the human world."
"The time for that has long since passed."
"Why plague yourself with them? The humanity doesn't care about you."
For as long as she's lived, nobody has ever quite known how to get her as irritated as Tom does. Centuries have passed, and still he continues to spout the same bullshit he always does. "I am never going to– to join you, and let you destroy what little beauty is left in this world."
"Oh, but you forget," Tom's lips curve up. If this were anyone else, it could almost be called a smile. "I am not destroying this world, I am merely reshaping it."
"Just stop. I care little for this world, but I know it would be better without you in it."
"Yet you have not killed me."
To kill him is to kill herself. It goes unspoken, because they both know it, and perhaps that is part of the reason why she has held out for so long. She is a selfish creature: if there exists even a slight chance she could kill him and remain alive, she would find it. And after years and years of searching, she found a way around it, a way around the death words.
Tom doesn't know it, though. He seems to believe she's going to sacrifice her life along with his. This murder takes two, after all, and as long as she lives, so does he, for one cannot die while the other remains alive. Similarly, one cannot stay alive if the other is dead.
A wind seeps into the room, and suddenly Bella notices the flurry of people in the ground beneath them. Were they there the whole time? She doesn't think so, thinks she would have noticed them if they were.
Tom raises his wand, and all at once the people start to scream, a wave of children flowing in from somewhere above them. She doesn't see where they're coming from, but she knows that they're real, knows that this isn't one of those illusions Tom so likes to plague her with.
"What have you done?" Bella hears the shouts of horror from below them, a jarring contrast to the brightly lit room. She doesn't need to look down to know they're dying, an aura of wrong, wrong wrong, filling the air.
It is only when Tom aims his wand at her that Bella knows for certain what she must do. She remembers the words that aren't the ones he's waiting for, and can only hope they'll work.
She has killed before and she will kill again. Yet the mindset of not being a killer will never leave her completely. Even now, in the face of the person who leaves nothing but destruction in his wake, she hesitates.
Perhaps she would not hesitate if it were someone else. But it is him, and he's been an irrevocable part of her long not-quite life for as long as she can remember, and wiping him off the map will inevitably change her essence, whether she likes it or not. Even if she won't die, she will not stay the same after.
She mutters under her breath, voices the curse she knows will end him for good.
It is not mere wizarding magic that she uses. No, it is something more ancient, something she needs no wand for. A magic that no wizard can summon, a magic only a few vampires know the depths of. She raises her hand and traces a circle in the air and seals the spell, determined that this time, he will be gone for real. This time, he will stay away.
His face looks surprised for a moment, brows raised minutely, before he settles his face back in that careful mask. Oh, he was not expecting Bella to use this curse.
"You–" the voice trails off as Tom withers away like smoke in the air. She watches as he raises his wand one last time and casts a curse that makes the ceiling of the building disappear, the storm raging outside breaking in.
"Goodbye, Tom." She watches as his body flashes an electric blue color, and for a moment she sees the outline of the person he was when they first met, many centuries ago. A moment, and then he's gone, leaving only the black fabric of his cloak behind. She watches it drop to the ground.
***
The forest in the evening is dark and more quiet than is normal. Bella sits on the tree next to Edward, their feet hanging off the branch. There are unusually few animals around, but now, it's as silent as if they were sitting in a desert.
It's okay for them, though. They're not here to hunt.
They watch as Alice comes into the view, her pale skin glistening in the low gleam of the moonlight. It's been a while since the three of them have seen each other.
Bella jumps down from the tree and gives Alice a quick embrace. "What is it? What did you see?"
"Straight to business, I see," Alice teases, a smile curving on her pretty lips. She waves up at the tree. "Hello to you, too, Edward!"
"Tell me what you saw, Alice. He is not back, is he?" Bella questions. Realistically, she knows Tom is dead, but that thing inside her refuses to accept that. That awful dread has not subsided, and she still finds herself looking over her shoulder despite knowing that she would hear it if someone approached her. The only one whose footsteps are quiet enough for her ears not to catch are his.
For the first time in as long as she can remember, she finds herself afraid of the darkness.
"No, he is not back. At least, I don't think he is."
Bella knows that Alice has had difficulty seeing into the future where he is concerned. Similar to how it was with the werewolves, back when they were young and naïve. She's able to see little glimpses of him, Alice has told, but never quite enough to form the full picture of what is about to happen.
"But you saw something?" Bella prompts.
Just as Alice opens her mouth to respond, Bella feels him. There is no mistaking what it is; she's lived long enough to know that something in her will always recognize Tom, no matter how many centuries pass. Impossible, yet the feeling is unmistakable.
"I can– I can feel him. He's here, somewhere."
Edward shakes his head. "That's impossible. He's dead, Bella."
She doesn't catch what Alice is saying as she rushes towards where she is sure he is.
She runs through the woods, the wind ruffling her hair. Closer and closer she goes, past trees and bushes, and it is only after too long that she senses the inherent wrongness of it all.
This is not Tom.
She does not know what it is, but she knows that it feels like Tom. Only her chest aches in a way that's far too painful compared to that thing that signals her when he is close. It is him, she thinks, but at the same time it's not.
The murderous impulse to hurt comes so suddenly that she comes to an abrupt stop next to the treeline lining a road. She surveys the shadowed dirt road, and that fog is back in her mind. Maybe not as thick as it was before, but there is no mistaking it: control is slipping away from her fingers dangerously quickly.
She needs to kill. She need to rid the world of that thing resembling him.
Distantly, she can hear the sounds of Alice and Edward somewhere behind her. She pays them no mind; only cointuniues forward towards that wretched monster. She hasn't run this fast since she was newborn, which should be a sign in itself. She needs, she needs, she needs to kill it.
The lack of control is another thing that resembles the way she felt when she was a newborn vampire. Perhaps she was even then more in control of her body than she is right now. She can't control the determined way she lurches forward on the road until it is right there.
A car has crashed into a large rock beside the forest road. One side of the car is crushed, the red metal cracked and bended so much that if there were people sitting on the passenger side when it crashed, they would have had no chance of survival. Yet, there is a sound coming from the car. She hears what sound like a baby crying inside the car, and she knows.
It is eerily silent, save for the sound of a weeping child. No other person is around, and when she checks, the red car is empty except for the baby. Wrong, wrong, wrong, her head chants, the off-putting aura of the car so strong that she can't stop herself from leaping inside and finding the baby.
It all happens so fast.
First she finds herself wrenching the partially ruined door open and seeing the baby that won't stop crying. The next moment, she's on it, and then the baby is on the ground, its head ripped off of its body.
If earlier she felt as though she were walking in a fog thick enough that everything was a blur, then now the air has cleared. Now she can see, see everything, as if she's finally woken up, the mist inside her mind evaporated. She sees the baby. She sees that it is no longer crying, sees the head lolling to the side.
The coppery tang of blood is heavy in the air but she barely registers the burning in her throat. Rivulets of blood pours from the thing's neck, so much for such a little creature. It is not cleanly severed off: layers of skin and muscle and bone are jutting out from the head. She sees its spine, sees the splinters in the places where she ripped its head off.
The torso is still, finally, finally still, as rivers of crimson rush our from the arteries to the ground.
The awful being is bleeding profoundly, but the offness of it won't fade, and neither does the frantic need to kill it, and so she crashes its skull to the ground until it's barely recognizable as a human. A lot of liquid, bone cracked and tissue scattered around. She sees an eye, and she must break it, because the eye sees, it sees, itcansee–
She watches the eyeball crumble on her fingers, hears the popping sound it makes as it shrinks. She sees the clear liquid inside mix with blood and watches it pour down. The offensing aroma of the blood only spurs her anger on. It smells poisonous, which may be why it is so easy to resist sucking the thing dry.
She turns to the offensive torso next. The baby's clothes are soaked red with blood, but it has stopped pouring freely to the ground, lessened to a drip, drip, drip, as it drops down. She wrenches the torso up by its hands and sewers its fingers, bone by bone breaking its hands apart. The burning in her throat is gets harder and harder to resist, but in the centuries she's lived she has learned excellent control of the bloodlust.
Next comes its heart. She pushes her fingers inside and breaks its ripcage, pulls the bones apart until she can see the heart inside. To her relief, it has stopped pumping, no longer maintaing the flow of the rivers of blood in its veins. The red muscle is so tiny in her fist as she rips it from the baby's chest.
She crushes the heart in her hands, but he is still here. Or, no, not him, because his presence has never felt this awful, has never awakened this terrible feeling of wrongness. No, his presence feels right, as loath as she is to admit it, and this feels wrong, like some version of him that's not hers.
She rips the torso apart. Bone by bone, muscle by muscle she tears it down until she can't feel his presence anymore.
It's only when the only thing remaining of the being is a pile of blood and gore next to the red metal of the car that she comes back to herself.
She sees her pale hands slick with blood, warm against her permanently cold skin. For the first time ever, she doesn't have the urge to drink it. Instead, she's hit with the uncontrollable urge to wash it away, get rid of the evidence of what something that's not quite him does to her.
What do I do now? Burn the body?
Just as she's had the thought, the idea of fire makes her lurch away from the baby's remains. She cannot burn it, not fire, no fire–
She doesn't know what hits her. She's never been afraid of fire before, and suddenly the thought of burning the baby into ashes, the logical solution, makes panic strike her gut so hard that she's tempted to run away and never look back.
No fire.
The thought floats into her brain as if it's sent from above. Water. She must drown the thing. Is that his voice she hears?
As she concentrates, she can hear the sound of a river flowing somewhere not far away. It takes longer than usual to catch the low sound of what feels like a powerful stream, but she faintly, she hears it. Closer to her, though, she catches the sound of two pairs of footsteps, and oh, Edward and Alice are here.
Alice stops a few feet from the remains of the corpse. "Oh, Bella," she sighs, bewildered, "what have you done?"
"I need water."
"You need… water?"
Bella shakes her head, exasperated. "There is– a river, I can hear it. I need to take this there."
Edward comes into view, a horrified look on his face. "Oh, you–"
"Quiet, Edward. I need to go."
Bella scrutinizes the pile of skin and bone and blood. She looks to her left to Edward and the dark green raincoat he's wearing. "Give me your jacket, Edward."
"Why–" he starts, but stops short when she sees Bella's expression. Slowly, he strips out of his jacket, handing it over to her.
Bella picks it up and lays it down to the ground next to the car. Methodically, she begins to gather the bloody remains of the baby into the jacket, the light interior of the coat quickly turning into a deep red.
Her hands are sticky with drying blood and other bodily fluids. It feels like it'll never end, as she continues to pile wet tissue and cracked bones onto Edward's ruined jacket. Alice watches silently beside her, and Bella thinks that Edward has left to wait somewhere further away. In any case, she does not pay attention to them. She thinks she sees a piece of an intestine, and then there's mucus, but she gathers it all until there's nothing left on the ground but a puddle of blood. She digs a bit of the reddened sand and throws it into the jacket, just in case.
When she's finished, she tries her best to tie the coat up into something she can carry without any of the things inside spilling over. She's determined in this. They can not spill over, no, she must carry it all into the water.
The rain jacket is a lump of brown and red, and Bella takes it into her hands. It's so small, she observes as she prepares to take the trip to the river. Such a small creature, left alone in the crashed car. She doesn't let the attempted innocence fool her.
"I'm going. Do not follow me."
Alice does not question her. Perhaps she has already seen how this goes.
She cradles the jacket with the offensive dead being to her chest and runs. She feels the wind against her cheeks, feels the blood drying on her skin. She passes through the forest in a flash, and it is not long before she can hear the sound of the stream loud and clear.
The scenery is brighter in here. It is the middle of the night, but the sky is clear and the stars are out, casting the riverbank in a faint glow. The water flows languidly, as if it's in no rush. It will reach its destination when the time comes, and there is no use for hurrying.
She strips out of her boots and steps into the cool stream. The water is clear; she can see her toes in the bottom of it. She can also see when the blood from all over her body starts to flow away, coloring the water faintly red for a moment.
Gently, she lays the jacket into the river, away from her so the weak current will carry it away. She holds onto the jacket until all of the human remains have disappeared into the water, then throws it back into the riverbank.
Like this, what remains of the baby doesn't feel like Voldemort. The faint trace of Tom remains, but it's almost pleasant, like an echo of the happier times. The wrongness is gone.
After, she washes herself clean of the blood and other liquids that have covered her ever since she got her hands on the thing.
The situation doesn't quite catch up, not with the pleasant coolness of the water embracing her so sweetly. The threat is gone, as if it never existed. Bella did what she had to. Standing in the river, she feels at peace.
She is clean, no trace of that thing on her skin anymore.
***
It's near another river that she feels Tom again.
Nearly a decade has passed since she last felt his presence near that baby whose life she took. She has had a lot of time to doubt herself, doubt the curse she used to kill him. After incessantly pondering the question of what she did wrong, she came to the conclusion that perhaps the curse she used wasn't enough to kill him. Maybe there is not a way around their shared destiny.
Maybe, she should have used the death words.
Now, she's standing in a cave of some sort with no recollection of how she got here. The thing inside her aches in a way that reminds her of his presence, signals that he's close.
It's dark again, and she doesn't know whether it's night or day. She's underground, no cracks in the rock where sunlight or moonlight could seep in. She's thankful for the sight her vampirism gives her, for she has no difficulty making out the rapid flow of the river in front of her.
She's been here before.
A long, long time ago, back when she was still human, she was here.
She doesn't remember much about her time as a human. It's been centuries, and she doesn't like dwelling in the past. She doesn't like remembering the people she lost, and with time, their faces have begun blurring, their voices fading away.
Right here, though, she can't escape the past. She thinks it was her grandmother that brought her here, back when she was just a child. It wasn't so dark here, back then. She remembers the line of trees, the curve of the rock in front of her. She doesn't think this place was a cave, back then.
The water used to flow more smoothly and more slowly, not the violent way it's streaming right now. She remembers the mangrove trees lining the river, so at odds with the place. She does not think it is possible for a mangrove forests to be situated in a place like this, but she's seen wilder things. And anyway, she remembers how magical this place felt back when she was a human child, so perhaps this place has never been quite natural.
She remembers falling to the water, her grandmother's arms the only thing that saved her from going to her watery grave. Oddly enough, the memory is not riddled with fear or despair: the only thing she feels is a faraway fondness for the old woman, and the feeling of magic in the air.
This place feels magical still. However, the light aura has changed into dark, and the black magic is unmistakable now that she knows of its existence. This is not the paradise it used to be.
The river is white with the amount of force the water rushes forward, the loud sound echoing through the solid walls of the cave. The mangrove trees that used to be so beautiful are now creatures of the night, the brown wood almost black. The roots are carved like claws, dissappearing deep into the rock, and the leaves are wet and hanging, a dirty dark green color. She does not know how to get out of here.
The only thing she knows for sure that he is near.
"Tom!" she shouts, well and truly scared. She doesn't remember feeling terror like this before.
She gets no response, but her skin is buzzing, yelling at her that he is here!
"Show yourself, you coward!" He is near, he is near, he is here! "I know you're here."
A hard wind flows through the secluded little cave, and she's unprepared for the way it sweeps her up. She falls to the wet ground, the rock hard against her face.
"Stop this."
She hears the wind howl, and if she strains her ears, she can almost hear a cold laugh from all around the air. She doesn't know where he is, but the thing in her chest is screaming that she's in danger, that he is danger.
She tries to get up, but the wind doesn't let her, and she falls again. The mangrove trees are cracking under the pressure of the air flowing through the cave. They almost seem angry, and she scrambles away from them. The wind picks up, and she goes flying, flying through the cave until she falls right next to the water. She scrambes desperately to get up, but the water doesn't let her.
There's nothing she can do to stop herself from being pulled into the violent flow of the river.
***
A few miles to the south, ash is rising in the air.
No animal walks here anymore, the aura of wrongness so strong that every breathing being, and perhaps even beings for breathing is not a necessity, can sense it. The air is eerily still, as if even the wind is afraid.
Burning embers halo the head that rises from dust.
Hacked into a rock is an opening, meter above the ground. There rests a head of a person who hasn't been seen in decades. Its skin looks like its been dead for several years, pale as snow and hard as rock. Where its nose once was, now is only two gaping nostrils left.
When the ashen head turns, the embers cease their light. The forest holds its breath as darkness descens into the soil.
"There was one thing you forgot," the head says, its mouth a bottomless pit of darkness, "you should've said the death words."