enigmatic |t.r.|

24.

i think i owe you a compliment.

she said out of the blue one day, or was it a night? time never really mattered to her anyway. it stuck on her shoulders like salt after diving into the sea, sometimes falling off, sometimes blending into her skin until she was nothing but time.

ah yes, our first meeting. you seemed to be quite upset about people not giving me the right compliments, if i recall.

just curious.

go ahead then.

she looked at him, really looked at him. he was made of contradictions. dark curls touching the pale skin of his forehead, dark eyes just below. a dark soul underneath all. so beautiful, so irresistible, so absolutely dangerous.

she looked at him and found traces of herself everywhere. his long fingers were mapping her body just moments before, because the definition of physical contact was something they both had in common, touch was about pain, not love.

if i fell in love with you, she thought, i would never touch you again. touch keeps pain away, like an illusion, a dream you have at night but remember briefly the next morning. love is very different when you touch. it makes it all real.

she looked at him and saw herself mirroring in the dark pools of his eyes, coal and acid at the same time, polluting and burning her with every look.

yes. yes hurt me please.

she looked at him and found her freckle, the little dot that was always hers and only hers. she found it near the corner of his lips, threatening to enter his mouth and be swallowed by his big words and lies and she quickly kissed it away, saving it, keeping it hers forever.

she looked at him and saw nothing at all.

you are so enigmatic. people think they know you and they do but they really don't. they know who you are and what you look like, they know what you let them know, they know what you make them believe. people think they touch you but your skin vanishes with every caress. people think they talk to you but words move around you like air, like they're touching you but not really, not enough to make a difference. olive thinks she kisses you but you don't kiss, you suck the soul out. she thinks you are interested in me, but you're not, you're suffocating me. you've built this beautiful, massive lie about yourself and it's so nicely made that you almost believed it yourself. but you hate liars, tom. people don't know who you are but you do. it's the only thing you have left.

ugly pause. tom for a moment thought that he heard a heart beating but he knew that his had stopped beating years ago, when he made his first horcrux, and meredith's was dead ever since she was born.

maybe it's a clock ticking. maybe it's a bomb. someone is going to die either way.

you know too much.

he whispered, as if he was actually scared of this naked pale girl who hated herself enough to continue suffer from his hands.

oh, do i? you're an enigma, tom. i know everything you want me to know, nothing more.

they were skin against skin and yet somehow they didn't touch.

the air in the room felt already used, it was the air that came out with tom's breathing, air than meredith gladly took in because it felt familiar.

i have your air inside me.

a hand found its way around her neck, a necklace made of flesh and bones and blood. moments like this, she felt like royalty.

should i take it out?

questions like this made her heart beating faster. questions like this were meant for her only.

please.

he squeezed her throat, fingerprints leaving marks that would be visible the next day but she didn't care, she would love a purplish reminder of her pain and their intimacy.

tears rolled down her cheeks and created a path of wishes from her eyes to her lips and she tasted every thought she had ever made and suddenly her mind was empty and her mouth was full of lies and memories and wishes and she brought her hands to the back of tom's neck and pushed him towards her.

and she kissed him.

and everything she had ever been, everything she wanted to become, blended with his own lies and air.

there you go.

she managed to say, with every last piece of air she had.

now you have me.

this kiss tasted different.

meredith didn't know then but she does now.

it was liberating and relaxing. it felt like a hug, like lips touching her forehead oh so softly. like a promise. like love.

it was the last kiss.

tom removed his hands from her neck and meredith was free.

freedom turned her broken spine into wings and her pain into dust.

freedom turned tom riddle's questions into answers.

•••
hello.

this is the end but not really because does pain ever truly end or do we just learn to live with it better?

everything can happen after the last sentence and how can i narrow down to one?

the epilogue will be up soon.

thank you for being here with me.

i appreciate every comment, every sweet message that you sent about the story. i hope you liked the ending as well and aren't disappointed.

i would like to write another tom riddle story one day, who knows.

for now, i just updated my remus/wolfstar fic. check it out if you want.

thank you for everything, this whole experience was a pleasure.

all the love, con xoxo