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Riddle angst to comfort

Riddle was not always treated with cruelty. He was pampered the first few months of his life, being treated with care by the maids and the servants. 

He remembered being told that, when he was a newborn, even his mother was doting and affectionate. He was told how she would read him stories every night, she would rock him gently when he was getting too fussy and would whisper into his small ears while he whines and whimpered, small, pale face turning red from the hungered wailing. Oftentimes, he would lie awake at night and try to remember those days, try to feel the way her soft hands would feel as they stroked his chubby cheeks. 

Riddle would find his mind wandering during those endless lessons, racing to find any explanation as to why she'd stopped treating him with such care, why she'd decided that she would no longer act as a mother, but as a tyrant.

Even as a child, he would hold his own hands up to his face and caress his own face, trying to desperately pretend that they were hers as he rubbed up and down his skin. His own hands even felt too cold against his face, the chill sending shivers down his spine. 

It was all wrong. His hands were always too small, and his shoulders ached from how long he held the comfortable position. His thumbs would never run over his forehead in the way he'd imagined hers to, and his hands were far too calloused to even attempt to compare to her own. He would lower his hands to his sides and bunch them in the soft silk of his blankets, gritting his teeth as he stared at the ceiling with blurred vision and muffled sniffles that sounded all too loud in the vastness of his childhood bedroom. 

He would often comfort himself in the way he'd imagined her to, positioning his pillows to resemble a person's torso and resting his head against it, wrapping his arms around the center of it and trying not to squeeze too hard in fear of ruining the fragile fantasy he'd created. He would imagine her playing with his hair softly, tried to desperately imagine the feeling of her chest rising and falling with breaths that would come out as delicate birdsong, twirling through the air with the goal of putting the boy to rest with a peaceful sleep. She would rub his shoulders and back as he cried, hushing him and pulling the blanket tighter around the both of them. He would pretend that the blood rushing through his ears was her heartbeat as it pounded in her chest, that the loose fabric of the pillowcase was her nightgown as he gripped onto it for dear life and tried to muffle his sobs to hide it from any curious ears walking past his door. 

Some days he would even imagine his father coming home late from one of his many business trips and sitting on his opposite side, fixing the blankets and speaking to his mother in hushed, loving tones as Riddle drifted off into a peaceful sleep. 

Riddle had gotten used to laying down on his sleeve, knowing all too well that the servants would notice the dried tear stains and the stains of his runny nose on the pillow when they would clean his bed sheets. He knew better than that. He would lay on his sleeve and cry until his mind and body were too exhausted to continue through the night, then he would wake in the morning and wash off his sleeve before crawling back into bed silently and pretending to be asleep until his nanny came in and woke him up for the day. 

He'd fallen into this same routine at NRC, with an added layer of sorrow when he would pass by friend groups who grew silent at the sound of his heels clicking against the marble. Their laughter would bounce off the walls and would send a mysterious pang that shook him to the core and made his knees weak and his eyes watery. He felt as though he were an outsider to this stranger new world, as though he were a puzzle piece that did not create a whole picture, no matter how much he tried. 

He was lonely, he'd decided. He was lonely and bitter, and so unbearably cold that he wanted to sit beside the fireplace and never leave despite knowing all too well that even the suffocating heat of the flame could not thaw the ice that had settled in his bones.