𝕬 𝕯𝖆𝖗𝖐 𝕷𝖔𝖗𝖉 𝖎𝖘 𝕭𝖔𝖗𝖓 | 𝑇𝑜𝑚 𝑅𝑖𝑑𝑑𝑙𝑒 |

Chapter 3- I'm Not a Doctor, I'm a Wizard

Ever since the incident with Billy Stubb, Frankie was glued to Tom at the hip. Whether he liked it or not, she was his friend now. All the kids believed her a cursed creature as well, so no one dared to try and talk to her. The girls now liked to whisper things about Tom and her as partners in crime. Every other day at least the two were rumored to be starting fires in the kitchen, putting rodents in children's beds, calling upon Satan to steal the younger ones in the middle of the night. Their imaginations went positively rampant, as usual. The boys, however, weren't as creative. They would often toss blocks at Frankie and call her a freak, whenever she dared to cross them. Frankie was deemed to be the easier target because of her sex, despite the fact she could be just as deadly an opponent. While the lot of them were clearly no experts on such a bizarre and obscure subject matter, they were a bit more keen then one might expect them to be. For example, with Tom, the boys of the orphanage had learned at the very least how much they could get away with before he fought back. But, they had absolutely no idea what Frankie's powers could do. She could shuffle the functions of their faces, for all they knew, and turn them into horrible, disfigured messes. Did they really want eyeballs where their mouths were supposed to be and ears where their eyes were supposed to be? However, the orphanage boys had made a brilliant discovery about Frankie that put an ease to their childish fears. It'd been made clear that she wouldn't allow herself to use her powers against them again.

While everyone at the orphanage called Frankie his partner, she didn't actually take part in Tom's incidents. She hardly ever used her powers in the public eye. She only liked to use them when they were alone together. In her opinion, it was a special thing between them and was meant to be seen by no one else. Although, she certainly had the potential to rival his destructive abilities, Frankie enjoyed sharing with him the simple magic she created. One of her favorite things to do was create little magical fireworks in her hands to try and distract Tom from his reading. She also enjoyed making flowers bloom before their time and levitating objects around the room. The most harm she'd ever done to anyone, since Billy, was one time when she accidentally turned one of the orphanage worker's hair bright pink. Tom had let out a small chuckle upon seeing it. Although, Frankie didn't realize it at the time, the gesture was kind of a big deal considering he hadn't laughed at anything other than physical pain in the last two years. Her magic may have been for the most part harmless and she didn't have as much control over it as Tom did, but he still thought it was a pretty extraordinary thing. So, he kept her close beside him and was currently the only one worthy of even a shred of his favor.

In spite of everything, she remained at his side through the worst of things. Even though he'd previously claimed he needed no one else, Tom felt like he needed her. They were most likely the only two kids in all of London with powers. It'd be foolish to push away the first and only person that he would ever meet that was just like him. The meeting was pure fate and, for the first time in his dreadful life, Tom considered himself to be quite lucky.

Over their first few years together, she started to feel more and more familiar to him. It was as if he'd known her far longer than the orphanage. Sometimes Tom had dreams about Frankie sitting in a hospital bed with bandages over her eyes. It was the most impossible thing. Tom had only been to the hospital a few times after Billy "fell" down the stairs and he certainly would've remembered seeing something so disturbing. In another one of these strange inexplicable dreams, he was sitting outside in the garden and heard her laughter coming from the bushes. This was a little more possible, but just as confusing. Tom had stopped going outside before he met her because there was too much laughter to read in peace. For a brief period, he thought these visions might be trying to warn him about her. The cheerful, headstrong girl was nothing but trouble, and his primal instinct was to push her away. Run. However, he was far too disinterested in trying to truly decipher the dreams and eventually they became less frequent. Tom felt a connection to her, yet he still wouldn't even call them friends, after nearly three years together. They didn't have much in common. Her upbeat personality was obviously his complete opposite and yet he didn't push her away. Tom greeted her in the morning, sat next to her at breakfast, and they would spend their day together reading books, or practicing their magic together. Tom couldn't describe his feelings for her, besides saying that he didn't hate her anymore. But even he didn't know what that truly meant.