Speaking in Tongues

Please don’t go.

Tom stilled, his vision swirling red and pink. The emptiness around him was unheard and unseen, his body floating in the shadows as if being carried away by prowling creatures of the night.

Droplets fell from somewhere above him. They splattered, the soft ping sliding across glass, dragging along the smooth surface of his mind.

All that he knew was red. The pink swirls along his vision and the bright crimson in his mind’s eye were all that he was capable of understanding. Nothing else mattered. Registered.

The fine streaks were everything now.

How...strange that was.

The world had once been colorful. Greens, blues, and yellows had once danced along his gaze. He’d scoffed at them, considered them a waste of his own energy. For what did it matter to him? Color in a sea of numbness? Color in a world where none saw what he saw, understood that there was so much more than the pairing of lavender hues with gleaming gold?

How silly it had all been to him, and now there was only red and—

A voice that screams above your head, that calls and calls for you in the hopes that you’d listen. Like a long lost friend, a lover that you’d once held in your arms before casting them away from something nameless…

A blistering pain tore through him at the thought. Heavy pulsations and acidic bile bubbled along the back of his throat, beating wildly with the slow rhythm of his heart. It was unyielding. It was only thing Tom could discern through the heaviness of his eyelids.

Tom blinked, but there was only red. He breathed, and there was iron coating his tongue.

Please don’t go.

That voice again. Tom strained to listen further, but it faded too quickly for him to capture. It was as if his fingers were rummaging through sand, reaching into the grainy particles for a kernel of something that refused to be found.

It was irksome. Frustrating in a way only Tom understood because he had never known denial. There was no “no,” it was only ever “yes” when he demanded it. Answers came easily. Mysteries unraveled before his eyes in the same way a flower unfolded and became a bloom in the spring.

But this was no flower. There was no answer to the nothing. There was no solution to the ennui that threatened to overcome him; the darkness coiling around his neck to strangle all the air that managed to seep through the cracks of his teeth.

There was only nothing.

Please don’t go.

Tom wanted to ask it where. He wanted to know where it was that he was going because he was here. Wherever here was. He was unmoving. A stone dropped into a watery basin in the loneliest cell. A haven bathed in crimson was all that he was allowed to see.

T-tom wake up.

A sharp sound rattled in his head like the jingle of coins in a glass jar. His teeth ached, his fingers curling into themselves until his nails cut into the skin.

He was on a cloud with no means of coming down. The higher he went, the louder the rattling was. The colder his soul, the harder to listen it became, and Tom didn’t know when he had resigned himself to this. When that voice had ceased to be charming and had become a thorn in his side.

It pushed, and pushed, and pushed—

Tom.

His name reverberated in the chasm as though a thousand men were chanting his name. Amusement curled in his stomach, foreign and unwanted, in response. A thousand men chanting his name, how many evenings had he spent dreaming of that day?

Only for now, for it to mean absolutely nothing. What did it matter if you were worshipped without true loyalty? What did a name matter when no one would dare utter it behind closed doors? What was a title when no one would recognize it years down the line...and the only one that listened was the voice in one’s head?

A sharp smile curled on his face, his lips nearly tearing from the effort. How easy it had once been to pretend, to be the person that everyone dreamed that he would become. It had all been for a cause, he had told himself. All the chips would fall as they may, his rule definite in the grander scheme of things.

How wrong he had been. Now all that remained was red and pink with the occasional cry of his name in the chasm.

Come back.

Tom laughed, only to choke seconds after. It was a dry, hacking sound. Throat aching, his chest swelled with the effort that it took to reign it in.

Return to where? Where would he go when it all was nothing and would remain as such? Perhaps when he had first fallen into this darkness, he might have entertained the thought of acting. He might have debated, considered the idea the voice posited.

Those days had long since passed.  

Tom did not have the energy to do it any longer. He had lost his strength, had lost his will to move when everything had been wrenched away from him.

His hopes and his dreams? Tom laughed, and laughed_, until his sides ached. He laughed until his chest was ready to burst, lungs pressing against his rib cage in protest of the abuse. His stomach quivered, trembled and fought against his efforts. His body had no desire to obey, no will to yield to its master’s whims.

Obedience.

It hadn’t been the case for some time. Would not be the case for as long as Tom existed in this amorphous plane.

Ping.

A droplet fell on his cheek, and Tom exhaled.

Then another and another rained against his skin. The thick stench of iron consumed him, his eyes blinking repeatedly through the storm raging above him.

The droplets doused him in red. The baptismal waters of his sins and his undoing slapping against him without delay.

Ping. Ping. Ping.

Tom didn’t know how long it went.

Then it all abruptly fell silent. Even the current of water had stilled.

There were no breaths. All that remained were the thoughts oozing through his mind, the slick sensation of viscous red on his bare skin.

Tom. A voice whispered, hesitant.

P-please don’t leave me. Listen just this once, damn it. Listen to me.

Tom sunk into the warmth surrounding him, into the waters clinging to his skin, to the slickness undulating around him like the moon pulling against the ocean. Waves lapped at him now, the stillness erupting into swaying.

Then, drowsiness. The same oppressive weight of it settled on his shoulders, curled around his waist and bled into his flesh.

Tom let himself be carried, the voice growing fainter and fainter. The nothing now more welcoming than the voice that seemed to know his name, than the voice that begged him so sweetly to escape the comforts of the abyss and fall into the unknown.

I-I love you. I love you. I wish I had told you before you—

What?

Tom’s insides curled, and he jerked. His body was shaking now, the droplets growing cold, ice and winter stroking his skin.

The words sliced through him, into him. An unwanted recognition bled through the nothing that he did not wish to name. For what was more dangerous than naming the unknown? Was not the giving of a name the most powerful act?

The voice went on as if Tom were not struggling, writhing, bending, to make it stop. It was as if he were fighting against a rip current, pushing against the waters in the hopes that he would not drown, become another sailor swept away by the caprices of a cruel ocean.

I wish you would come back. I wish you could hear me now, that you could t-touch me the way you used to when I was on the verge of falling asleep in lessons. They told me that maybe one day you might wake up, that you might—

Pain thundered through him. A flash of green exploded behind his eyes, the wave of red falling away.

Forests. Emeralds. Slytherin.

Tom’s spine bowed, his eyes glazing over.

Black. Caramel. Sweat. Red. Gold. Gold. Green.

A cold sweat broke out along his brow, his teeth gnashing on his tongue. Iron gushed into his mouth, but there was nothing or no one to stop the images flashing behind his eyes.

Calloused fingers curled around his hair. Pink lips parted into a wide gasp. Tears and dewy green eyes focused on—

Harry.

The name came unbidden.

Tom choked, hands uncurling to wrap around his throat, to stop the pressure depriving him of air. He couldn’t breathe, couldn’t tell which way was up or down, not when everything was swirling.

The world around him trembled, his skin blistered and melted. The shadows fell away, bright light eating up the nothing as horror overcame him.

No.

The world heaved one last time before it all went white.

Light exploded around him, heat and horror chasing closely behind it.

No.

Everything that he’d planned, that he’d sought was coming apart. His memories, his everything was returning back to him. Images of a world he’d once known, of a future far more concrete than he remembered oozed into his pores, through the crevices of his eyes, and the openings of his ears.

His failure. His title. His reputation.

It had not always been nothing. It’d been stripped from him, taken from him when he’d least expected it.

How had he forgotten this? How had he forgotten that—

“Tom.”

A familiar voice murmured above him.

A chill swept through him, and it took him longer than he wished to open his eyes to witness for himself the true reason for his bedridden state.

Tom had not fallen into the unknown by mistake. He had lived in nothing out of choice, not because he had lost his ambition along the winding path. He had sunken to the bottom of this pit, become one with the shadows, not because he had been imprisoned there but because there was simply no other way or means of escaping his fate.

He’d been given no choice.

Tom blinked slowly, repeatedly, and the world slowly flickered into existence.

Green flashed, and then caramel. A head of dark hair and pink lips curled into an easy-going smile that was no less deceptive than it was charming. A haunting image Tom never thought he’d witness again.

There was an endless sea of white on all sides, like molasses in the back of one’s throat.

Tom blinked, and the blurred edges sharpened with each one. His unease mounting more and more when it all finally came together.

Tom awoke in a depilated clinic.  

Fear lodged itself in his throat, sharp and bitter.

There was a slow rustling sound before a boy slipped from underneath white linen sheets, dark hair and shocking green eyes leaving little doubt as to who this person was.

Harry Potter hovered above Tom, the depilated surroundings forgotten. It was always easy to forget the world whenever Harry walked into a room. The boy’s presence was magnetic. A flame that drew all that wished to be bathed in its heavenly warmth.

If only Tom had known that Harry was not who he seemed. If only Tom had known that the flame he’d been captivated by had the potential to burn even those favored by Harry Potter. It was chaos. It knew nothing of restraint. Brazen and unrefined, a formidable creature that Tom had quickly lost control of.

Tom made to move, to leap off the bed to reach for his wand—he’d left it right by his side before falling into a deep sleep in the hopes that he’d never be found—but it was no longer beneath his pillow. The pale yew was absent. The comforting weight of its magic non-existent, as if it’d been stripped of all of its magical properties.

Harry must have gotten to it first before he’d bothered to awaken Tom. It was what Tom would have done had their positions been reversed.

“Welcome back to the world of the living.” Harry purred before lowering himself, his body pressing flush against Tom’s, lips nearly brushing Tom’s, eyes focused entirely on Tom’s wide gaze. The hairs on Tom’s arms stood on end at the affront.

Man was perfectly predictable. Tom had learned this first hand. Tom knew how to read them, how to dangle before their eyes their greatest desires. He’d mastered this art early on through his unfortunate upbringing, but that would do little for him here. Man was predictable, easily coaxed into doing as he wished, but a beast...a beast was far more unpredictable.

This boy was not human—had not been one from what Tom had uncovered during their last duel many moons ago. This boy was a monster, a being that could not conceivably exist but did. For what man, what beast, could survive even a Killing Curse? What entity lived, even without its head? Without its heart beating in its chest?

No creature that Tom knew could survive that.

“How I have missed you.”

The boy smiled at him, a small and disarming gesture that did nothing to soothe the mounting terror in Tom’s gut.  

Master of Death. Master of All. Master of You.

The Tales of Beedle the Bard had not been mere fiction. The stories had been real, had been a warning and promise woven into one. The means to acquiring the Hallows, to acquiring immortality, had all been there.

And they all belonged to Harry Potter.

The boy that refused to die, the boy that lingered in Tom’s shadow, waiting for him to lower his guard.

An absolute madman.

“It’s been far too long.”