Not About Angels (A Tom Riddle Story)

Chapter 97

It reached out, spread itself across his whole body, mind, soul, and consumed him whole in the moment. 

He opened the door. He has had enough. 

"Kill him." he said to Arnold Benard. "KILL HIM!"

He ran. 

Arnold Benard nodded, and entered the room, closing the door behind him. 

........................................

"He's dead." Gabriel said to her. 

Her eyes widened at first, but then they spelled out the most profound sorrow and disappointment he had ever seen.

She couldn't breathe anymore. 

Her heartbeat quickened, and her breath stopped in her throat.  All the air had been drawn out from her lungs. 

"Y-You killed him?" She asked, her voice barely a whisper. 

He looked away. He couldn't look at her anymore. 

"I made the decision. I don't expect you to forgive me...but know that I had my reasons."  

She let out a sharp cry, and swiped the contents of the table before her onto the floor in a violent rage. She was angry at Gabriel, yet at the same time, her rage wasn't for him. 

How could she blame him for what he did?

She could not.  

She really could not. She knew that if she were Gabriel, she would have made the exact same decision. 

But the thought of Tom Riddle, forever gone, hit her like a lightening bolt. 

Her greatest love, gone. 

Her guiding angel, gone. 

Her poison, her drug of choice, her lifelong addition, sobered. 

He was a part of her just as any other. No. He was the greatest part of her. He was her heart. He was her mind. He was her soul. 

He was the single reason, the end-all and be-all, for everything. 

She did not know what life was without him. 

She crumpled onto the ground, her sorrow flowing like a river down the cold hospital floor.  

Gabriel could not bear to look.  

"I'm sorry, Abi. I'm so, so sorry." he cried. "I never wanted to bring you into this."

"Don't be sorry." She said quietly, her voice scarily flat. 

"I know you hate me. You have every right. You can hate me...but please, please be kind to yourself from now on. I'm going to leave now...please take care of yourself." 

"How could I hate you?" She cried. "I couldn't. You did the right thing. You did the right thing...." She sobbed into the floor. 

When she closed her eyes, forehead pressing against the cold floor, all she could see were those dark eyes. 

"I'm Tom Riddle." He said, introducing himself. 

He opened the doors of the orphanage, and his eyes held an infinite amount of sadness in them.  

Those were the same eyes that haunted her dreams over and over again. Those were the same eyes that peered into hers when they made love. 

Those eyes were so beautiful. 

She held his hand, and they traversed the world together. 

They were two orphans with nothing to hold onto expect each other's hands, as they escaped the monsters, again and again. 

They lived for each other.  

He held her hand as they walked across the beach together, watching the waves splatter across the jagged rocks in the distance.  

"What's up there?" She asked him, pointing at the stars. 

"Space."

"What's space?"

"It's where the stars are, stupid. It's very, very far away."

"How far?"

"Millions of light years away."

She looked at his face as the wind whipped a strand of his black hair into his eyes. 

But he wasn't a million light years away. He was right there. She grabbed his hand and warmed it with her own. He didn't pull away. He didn't want to, anyways. 

She opened her eyes. 

Gabriel stood by the doorway, wanting to leave and stay at the same time. 

Anna started to cry in her crib, and the wails of the newborn accompanied the silent orchestra of sorrow playing their ode to a love that was cursed from the very start....