Wool's Orphanage 1st January 1934.
(This is continuing from Display: Send to Back, when Tom dropped Y/N off outside Mrs. Cole's office)
"Please, you need to keep her alive, if word gets out, we'll lose funding." Mrs. Cole cried.
"For Christ's sake, I'm not wasting good medicine and resources on a corpse." Tobias Smith threw his research onto the metal lab tables.
"Hey, it's your jobs on the line as well," Mrs. Cole huffed. "You better keep this one alive, this is not going to happen again. Not after last time." He pushed the now unconscious Y/n's clothing aside and examined her wound. It was worse than yesterday when he treated her injuries. Her pulse was weak and inconsistent. He wrapped her wounds again and treated them with minimum amounts of medicine that he sucked up with a used syringe from a near-empty bottle. He then taped a small piece of cloth, just enough to cover her wound, with sticky tape.
"Only a matter of time now," he sighed.
While the children were eating breakfast, Tom Riddle scanned the room for the silver-haired girl, but she was nowhere to be seen. Parts of him didn't care, but the other parts were disappointed. He still had so many questions and things to investigate.
Why was he so drawn to her?
Why does he get a draining feeling in his stomach, as if it's sucking up all of his life? His thoughts were so tangled up in her imagery had he lost all of his appetite for the cardboard like, mush of a chicken roast from last night.
A redheaded girl's whining drew Ms Smith's attention. He saw the chance, and without much strategic planning, he slipped out of the dining room and ran down the hallway towards the only metal door in the corridor. A faded green cross sign presented the 'sick bay,' and reeked a pickled sour odour.
He thought about it, today is Monday, but it's only eight in the morning, so the doctor won't be here for another three hours.
As Tom approached the door, the same guttered feeling returned. He placed his hand on the cold metallic handle and leaned into the door to push it open and saw exactly what he expected.
He saw the girl...but the wondering eyes of the man in a now yellowed lab coat made him froze. Tom was shocked. He was shocked to see himself wrong.
"Here to say goodbye to your little friend aye?" Tobias Smith said as he spins back towards his research which spread all over the creaky aged, wood table. Over on the metallic table laid the girl, pale as ever. "Better make it quick, don't know how long this one's gonna last." Tom slowly stepped towards the girl, however, conscious of making sure the door is still open. He analyzed the room and located the scalpel and took a sneaky step closer to the bench and hid the scalpel in his hands.
When he finally approached her still body, his mind which stormed of escape plans in case things go south disappeared. The gutted feeling became stronger as the thought of her dead repeated in his mind.
What a shame.
"Is she dead?" Tom asked, his eyes glued to her peaceful face as he gripped the scalpel. He wanted to cut her open to see what's making him feel this way.
"I don't know, maybe," Tobias said. "I'm going to get a shovel. Say your goodbyes, and we'll bury her somewhere," he said and walked out.
The girl laid there. Her fingers twitched as the pain tore her apart. Her breathing would stop for a minute, only to reemerge like a drowning victim coming up for one last breath. He watched as any breath could be her last. He didn't even realize the breath he's holding back. She was almost silent and almost gone.
He stared. He wasn't scared. He has seen death before.
It's pathetic.
It's man's greatest weakness and he wanted to be a person of no weaknesses.
Her chest puffed up as she drew a deep breath and her eyes flung open as she sat up. She finally let out the breath she held captive inside her and lets her eyes to adjust for a bit...and through the corner of her eye, she saw the figure next to her.
The dark-haired boy.
There was something about the boy, something miraculously inhumane. His familiar scent brought her back to when she was held in his arms...
To Tom, she was unreal. A mere second ago, she could've had her last breath, but she refused to give in. She escaped the grasp of death. In the world of darkness and monsters, she was the fragile beam of light that he ought to possess and hold tightly onto in his tiny little hands.
"Hello..." she said half-consciously as her lips turned up into a small smirk.
He stared at her calm features.
He studied the shape of her eyes and how it's large and slightly downturned form contained the emotional currents in her sapphire blue eyes. Her pale cheeks finally surfaced a peach colour, magically appearing as though she didn't just nearly die. His fingers travelled to her soft arms that still had dried muck stuck to her. He felt her warmth and he couldn't get enough of it...he wanted to feel the texture between his fingers within his hold, so he pinched her skin...creating immense pain which caused her to jerk her arm away.
She stared up at the boy with furrowed brows and a thin layer of tears glossed over her eyes.
He didn't say anything but instead gave her a smile. As smirk more like, but to Tom, that was considered a smile...He could feel his eyes widening but curving upwards as his curiosity and interest peaked. It gave him a twisted satisfaction.
A/N: small edited ehhe
YOU ARE READING
The Monsters in Our Heads || Tom Riddle x Reader
Fanfiction...these contents are not for the faint-hearted. Tom Riddle didn't like to believe that there was a god, that there was someone more powerful than he is no matter how hard he tried. He didn't like how one's power was limited to where one was born...
