the seven virtues [tom riddle]

chapter twenty-nine

THE ANATOMY OF OPHELIA EVERGREEN - THE MOLE

CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

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Be advised that this chapter contains multiple potentially triggering themes.

For one year, she had done nothing but gawk at a white wall, eyes glossed with some profoundly implanted madness that transversed her body until she twitched in her restraints. The ivory paint was spotless, as not to leave room for any sort of visual stimulation that might have otherwise triggered an emotional response out of her. They wanted Ophelia to be as senseless as possible, lucidity a long-forgotten paragon that decomposed beneath her skin.

Her locks had started wasting their shine two months in, and by the end of her first year locked in the asylum, she was not sure it could even be considered hair. Akin to sandpaper, they scratched the nape of her neck until her nights were spent stirring, twitching in the pressed and itchy coverings she had come to know as her second skin.

Void was a detrimental thing. The human mind was nothing without its imagination, neurons firing up from constant stimulation of multiple receptors, and when the stimuli were excluded from the scenery, the pathways that led to mundane reactions wasted away.

It only got worse after her lobotomy. Still, she found herself lucky—the patient across the hall from her had entered delirium in the early morning after his surgery, no longer more than a nameless face. Ophelia, at least, had only become slightly more disconnected from reality, until she stopped perceiving social cues, and habitual patterns of human behavior became odd to her. She learned by imitation, mimicry, and created versions of herself based on her research, until the Evergreen heir had stopped existing, replaced instead by something inhumane.

Towards the end of her first year in capture, her doctors had decided to perform a second lobotomy. They prepped her for the surgery, dressing her in a hospital-like gown that felt like stitched carbon on her epidermis, then chained her to a moving bed, hands and legs immobilized so that she would not put up a fuss. Her temperament had stayed consistent throughout her time in Sweden, a flare for the dramatic and outbursts, and so even in their grasp, Ophelia made sure to trash around madly. If they wanted a lunatic, she would give them one.

By then, part of her had given up on her hopes of a rescue. Grindelwald had not reached out to her, not even after Evergreen had devoted her teenage years to his movement and had let her stay behind the bulky walls of the asylum, like a lost cause.

That night, rain had poured down from the skies in heaps of cold liquid, hitting the building as if it were set on tearing it down until the rumble of dust created waves. The sound of lightning was the only one that broke through, amplified tenfolds by her lack of auditory stimulation. Ophelia had not even heard when they had broken in, ravaging the holding cells for her.