patricide is like falling in love (tom riddle, probably)
~inspired by a moodboard thing I saw on here where TMR says murder is like falling in love~
Read from the beginning at FFN | AO3!
âYou are my son,â Tom Riddle chokes out, his gaze roving helplessly over his dead parentsâ bodies as he clutches a crucifix, dangling from a small silver chain.Â
His voice is wrecked from the pain.
Weak.Â
âI made you. Youâre a monster.â
Tom laughs. âNo one made me, father. I made me.â He feels his head tilt, his eyes focus. âYouâre sixteen years too late to claim me, now. You left me. I came for you. You see?â
âYour mother bewitched me!â
âThat may be so,â says Tom, twirling Morfinâs wand and laughing as his father shrinks back. âSheâs dead. Died giving birth to me. In Woolâs Orphanage, London. My poor, dead mother stumbled into the orphanage, weak and starving on the coldest night of the year. They couldnât stop the bleeding or the fever, and she only lived long enough to name me.â
âIâm sorry,â says his father, though Tom doesnât want his pity. He hates pity. He hates his pathetic, neglectful, sobbing father.
How could two weak people produce him?
âThis is wrong, Tom!â
âThere is nothing either good or bad, but thinking makes it so. Shakespeare.â Tom points his wand at the battered copy of Hamlet on the bookshelf, laughing. It catches on fire.
âWhat do you want?â He sounds tired.
âNothing much, father,â says Tom sweetly. His father, who left him, like everyone else. His father will never read him a bedtime story or wipe the sweat away from his face when he is sick or hold him when he is sad. (Not that he needs any of those things â he doesnât.)
His father is the reason he is broken. Broken from birth.
It doesnât matter, because Tom is something better than human now. (There is only power.)
âDaddy,â he says, like a small child. He has never said the word before, and it rolls off of his tongue with surprising difficulty â the agile tongue that pronounces Parseltongue, Latin and Arabic spells, and Ogham runic chants with ease. âWhy did you leave me?â
âShe bewitched me â she lied to me, you donât understand how violatedââ
âI want to see the light leave your eyes,â whispers Tom, in a tone that befits a love confession more than a death threat. âI hate you.â
âI grieve for your soul,â says his father, trembling with fear. âRepent, demon. Show some remorse, for your own sake!â
But Tom doesnât intend to meet judgment. Tom intends to live forever.
He is burning, burning, he has never burned like this, he is so full of exquisite hatred that aches so good, and all Tom has to do is to let it all go.
âAvada Kedavra.â
Now, Tom is sitting on the floor in the Riddlesâ dining room. He is running his fingers through his dead fatherâs hair, handsome, just like him, admiring his frozen, horrified expression.Â
Tom sits in his grandfatherâs chair and cradles his dead father, like the PietĂ , with two more dead bodies strewn at his feet. His head tilts gracefully down, mimicking the Virgin Maryâs silent compassion and suffering, but feeling none of it. Tom Riddle is gone. He is dead. Tom lays his head on his fatherâs chest, but there is no more heartbeat, no more breath.
His brown eyes, just like his sonâs, blown wide with fear. Lips parted in surrender.Â
He leans forward and kisses his fatherâs forehead sweetly, presses two chaste, cold lips to still-warm skin, like a priestâs blessing.Â
The twilight sky is darkening, turning dark violet like ink has spilled on it.
It is beautiful. It is perfect, yet the despair is not gone. His heart still beats with anguish, and Tom Riddle is left more broken than ever and aching for more.
It is like falling in love.
















