Eye for an Eye
Jun. 3rd, 2004 01:36 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
harahelI wrote a Riddle story for a friend. It's...it's not slash. I know, I know. I was in shock too. Read it here if you wish.
Eye for an Eye
In which a story is told, a point is made and there is some disscusion about riddles. R.
Let me tell you a history, cleverly disguised as a story. Listen, child....stop squirming so, it won't take long.
That's better.
Now. There was a young lad, like yourself. Smart as a whip that likes the taste of the welts it raises on pale skin. He was born in death as few are these days. His first milk was the cooling blood off his mother's thighs, it whetted his appetite for revenge, the first strike of a blade against the stone. Still mewling, he was carted off to an orphanage.
In wizard tradition it is said that at the loss of innocence, a magical child releases a strange smell into the air, a cloying perfume of decayed flowers and rain. The smell hung around the boy's bassinet as he was set down on the doorstep of the orphanage.
No great hero begins his life with two living, happy parents. Unhappy childhood is the crucible in which great men emerge, free of attachment. Just like you child.
Abandoned in his first breaths, the boy quickly learned to stand alone. He had allies, but no friends. His studies engrossed him and he had soon read through the small library available in the orphanage. Some read for pleasure, some read to know things. The boy read because he was devoid of the things others take for granted. Greedily, he tore into the books, tearing out their fleshy hearts, consumed what they had to offer and then moved on. He never read the same book twice.
The hard women who ruled over the gaggle of unwieldily boys watched him with no particular interest. He was removed, but others had been removed. He was smart, but others had been smart. They had a job to do and they did it efficiently and without complaint. Their favorites were the ones who ached for a mother figure and would gladly peel off their own skin for a moment of their attention.
Sometimes, the boy wondered if he should similarly crave such fleeting affections. The hard edged women left a bitter taste in his mouth. Submission was not built into his character. The lock of his mother's hair that someone had seen fit to send with him to orphanage stayed in his pocket. He felt no particular sentiment when he held it up to the light. He kept it, nonetheless.
Some would say that the boy hated the orphanage, that it turned him cold inside. He was born into the frost of death, he was never warm. He did not hate the orphanage anymore then he hated anything else. His passions were glacial, moving with destructive, meticulous precision. The mere environment did not move him to any particular feeling.
A miracle came to pass, he was invited to go to a great school of magic where he would be trained to be a wizard. The other boys watched his passage with sullen jealousy. They didn't know about the magic part, of course, only that he was getting out. Going someplace with better food and the promise of work at the end of it. The boy was not surprised. He had known that something was different and when the letter came, he had already started to pack.
The boy took everything about the school in stride. As other first year students stumbled about in awe and confusion, he stared up at the stars in contemplation. No one spoke to him. From that first day, the small minded brats had already begun to sense the power that rolled off of him in a thick fog.
The House of the Snake took him in. It didn't take him long to read their worth. The finely breed pure bloods, their noses pointed firmly in the air and eyes glittering with greed. The lesser mixed breeds, who formed secretive groups in the night. The three muggleborn, who clung tightly together, fiercer then any of the others, aware that even in the slumbering delightful school, a hint of death ran chill in the air.
He joined none of them. Instead, he watched and studied them until they were as thoroughly gutted and digested as his books.
Teachers he studied from diligently. They held knowledge, the practical kind, that couldn't be found in books. The gaping darkness demanded always more. It wasn't worth the petty satisfaction of coldly squashing them. If forced to remember years later, the professors would grudgingly admit that they hadn't thought the boy capable of evil. He had been unfailingly polite to them.
Heroes, strong from their birth, must got through a training time. They will have a master. They will have a friend. Here do they divide from the great villain. A villain needs no tutor. They will teach themselves. A villain takes no friends. They are a liability. You've learned that lesson too well, child.
Don't be smart with me.
Are you ready to listen now?
Do stop whimpering, it's most irritating.
Where was I...you've made me lose my place again, you have. Right.
The boy made allies. Not friends mind. But he worked deep into their minds. He chose the purebloods. Because he had a weakness for pretty things. Later, they would say it was his bitterness at Muggles, his fanatical hatred of them thanks to his abandoning father. Armchair analysts all of them. The boy liked the alabaster boys and girls with their perfect hair and pink/blue veins sitting vulnerable on the surface.
They taste of fine things which he also likes. He grows expensive tastes and glories in his ability to manipulate these fine young people into inviting them to their palatial homes. Their parents are reluctant to let him in, which adds to the rebellious spice of keeping his company. He eats these stuffy parent's food, steals some of their fine silverware and in the quiet of the night, he takes their children into his bed and learns them so thoroughly, they are left exhausted and gutted on their silky sheets.
By his last year, they adore him. He should appear plain, even drab, but for his arresting eyes, so intensely green that any comparison to something in the natural world would be preposterous. One admiring girl once whispered to him that his eyes were the color of death. He had grinned then and sent her shivering away to her giggling girlfriends. Hair, dark as midnight, threw his average features into dark relief. He honed his voice to weapon perfection.
The purebloods, golden and blue, fawned over him. He was Head Boy, he made the House of the Snake proud.
His power fed on itself.
You know how that can go. You learn more, it grows and teaches itself until you find yourself doing things that are beyond your own imagining. Few are granted power like that. Even fewer ever use it. The boy, now nearly a man, used it.
There was one, who he feared. A great wizard, who held the secret to immortality and called it a pet. A great wizard, who among all the teachers, kept an eye on him. The young man left the school, but he did not forget about the great wizard.
Instead, he gathered his followers together, pressed a finger to their lip with a wink. He branded the golden children with a mark as black as his hair and he gave them a silly name. Names had power, he learned long ago. The fluff headed children, who thought themselves so sly and cunning would want a dark name.
But in his mind, he called them pawns.
For years, he played little games. Heroes rush in, blades drawn, battle cries raising from their throats. Villains don't have the luxury of impulse. They must plot and be careful spiders spinning their webs. The young man spun out reams of sticky thread, snared in his followers. They grew. They had children and their children were fanatical in their adoration.
Wipe away those tears or I shall give you something to weep about.
When everything was in place, he set forth and began to unravel his great plans. How sweet the taste of victory! How glorious to succeed. Getting what he desired filled the empty void within him. He used his mother's lock of hair to make a series of Polyjuice potions. He walked, young and pretty, among the towns he slowly devastated. He watched his old teachers wither in fear.
Tasting the sweet juices of success, he became bitterly aware of his own mortality. Already his skin was beginning to fissure and his hair slowly grayed. His plans unfolding effortlessly, he threw his energy into finding immortality. It eluded his every grasp. It was his worst enemy. Far worse then then anything the great wizard could threaten.
You know of his downfall. The first and the second. You breathed the same air as he did, smelled his failure and turned it against him as a babe. Easily you thwarted the ghostly remains of him and laughed with your silly friends about it afterwards. You thought yourself safe as any child still nestled in the womb would.
You sent him from this plane of existence, to what all believed to be death. The great wizard, now bent with age, patted you on the head and fed you sticky sweets. The two of you were the only match for the man in life and you sat about drinking tea. You planned to spend your life playing a silly game.
But he did not die, child. I see in your eyes now that you can feel him near. He is always near. One silly girl said his eyes were like death and in that other realm they agreed. You sent him there without thought or caution. Impulsive heroes. But a villain plans and he weaves more then one web.
A cloaked man with no face greeted him. With no ceremony, the robe unfurled to rap sinuously around our villain's body, draping him in the black confines, hiding his ruined face. A scythe fell into his hand, fitting his palm. Only his eyes, green as the killing curse, glittered out from the black hood. He came back to the world with purpose and new power.
It is only a story. A historical story. A history.
There is a moral, would you like to hear it?
Smart boy. The moral is this: that the hero only ever appears to win.
You don't like that moral, I can tell. Well, listen well child, it is time to grow up. The man that you hate, that you repeatedly try to murder will never be dead in your life time. Even if you destroy him and spread his ash to the wing, another will take his place or perhaps two.
And even if you should defeat them all, you are already learning the truth of good and evil. You and Riddle, you can balance on the edges of your scales, ebony hair and death eyes, but there are multitudes of others who stand between you. Grayscale, boy.
When Death comes for you, his eyes will glitter green and you will not know if they are his or your own, reflected in the mirror of your own end.
You will wake in a sweat now, I'm sure and cradle your pretty pink lover until the mean old nightmare goes away.
I have discharged my duty and had pleasure doing it.
)*(
He woke alone.
He didn't like company in his house. In his bed. He haunted the corridors of Sirius' ancestral home, another wraith in a cracking dying place.
It was the fourth time this year he'd had that dream.
"Come for me then!" He challenged the shadows.
A stink of decayed flowers and rain hung in the air over the bed.
The storyteller's identity had been hidden before. Always, it had been right on the tip of his tongue and then gone again. He suspected multitudes in the those dark robes and punishing hands. Who hated him enough to send him such prophetic ugly dreams?
Voldemort was safely dead. Maybe. Possibly...but he would not send such a dream.
Lucius Malfoy was in Azkaban, his wand in splinters as well as his mind.
Draco was comatose which didn't necessarily rule him out. It was too subtle for him really.
Snape had proven loyal.
For days after having the dream, he would nag at the feeling that it was someone he knew.
Now he knew. Tonight he had seen. He hadn't known sending messages from the future was possible.
Madness lay in taking dreams for truth, but Harry had long ago realized that madness was his last salvation. A bitter, angry version of himself had taken great pains to warn him of Voldemort's ultimate return. And also the futility of fighting.
Tell me a riddle, he once asked a friend, still all unknowing of the significance in that tiny word.
How is a raven like a writing desk? Was the snickering reply.
He spent all day puzzling over it, eyebrows knit. When finally he caved, desperate for the answer he got.
It's nothing like a writing desk, silly! And a tremendous laugh.
The hollow feeling that had struck him then, returned now. His life was Riddle without answer.
Exhausted and bewildered from endless nights of nightmares and insomnia, Harry stared at himself in the mirror, wondering who was staring back at him.
It was fortunate, they all said, clucking their tongues all the while, that Ron had chosen that morning to visit. Or surely Harry would have bled to death. The whole business was such a shame. The Boy-Who-Lived blinded at his own hands. Fingers were pointed every which way.
Harry heard their whispers, but smiled them all away. Now, when the end came, he wouldn't have to look into anyone's eyes. Wouldn't have to see himself staring back, hero and villain both. There would be only a delicious black and swift end to the long book of his days.
Finis.
Eye for an Eye
In which a story is told, a point is made and there is some disscusion about riddles. R.
Let me tell you a history, cleverly disguised as a story. Listen, child....stop squirming so, it won't take long.
That's better.
Now. There was a young lad, like yourself. Smart as a whip that likes the taste of the welts it raises on pale skin. He was born in death as few are these days. His first milk was the cooling blood off his mother's thighs, it whetted his appetite for revenge, the first strike of a blade against the stone. Still mewling, he was carted off to an orphanage.
In wizard tradition it is said that at the loss of innocence, a magical child releases a strange smell into the air, a cloying perfume of decayed flowers and rain. The smell hung around the boy's bassinet as he was set down on the doorstep of the orphanage.
No great hero begins his life with two living, happy parents. Unhappy childhood is the crucible in which great men emerge, free of attachment. Just like you child.
Abandoned in his first breaths, the boy quickly learned to stand alone. He had allies, but no friends. His studies engrossed him and he had soon read through the small library available in the orphanage. Some read for pleasure, some read to know things. The boy read because he was devoid of the things others take for granted. Greedily, he tore into the books, tearing out their fleshy hearts, consumed what they had to offer and then moved on. He never read the same book twice.
The hard women who ruled over the gaggle of unwieldily boys watched him with no particular interest. He was removed, but others had been removed. He was smart, but others had been smart. They had a job to do and they did it efficiently and without complaint. Their favorites were the ones who ached for a mother figure and would gladly peel off their own skin for a moment of their attention.
Sometimes, the boy wondered if he should similarly crave such fleeting affections. The hard edged women left a bitter taste in his mouth. Submission was not built into his character. The lock of his mother's hair that someone had seen fit to send with him to orphanage stayed in his pocket. He felt no particular sentiment when he held it up to the light. He kept it, nonetheless.
Some would say that the boy hated the orphanage, that it turned him cold inside. He was born into the frost of death, he was never warm. He did not hate the orphanage anymore then he hated anything else. His passions were glacial, moving with destructive, meticulous precision. The mere environment did not move him to any particular feeling.
A miracle came to pass, he was invited to go to a great school of magic where he would be trained to be a wizard. The other boys watched his passage with sullen jealousy. They didn't know about the magic part, of course, only that he was getting out. Going someplace with better food and the promise of work at the end of it. The boy was not surprised. He had known that something was different and when the letter came, he had already started to pack.
The boy took everything about the school in stride. As other first year students stumbled about in awe and confusion, he stared up at the stars in contemplation. No one spoke to him. From that first day, the small minded brats had already begun to sense the power that rolled off of him in a thick fog.
The House of the Snake took him in. It didn't take him long to read their worth. The finely breed pure bloods, their noses pointed firmly in the air and eyes glittering with greed. The lesser mixed breeds, who formed secretive groups in the night. The three muggleborn, who clung tightly together, fiercer then any of the others, aware that even in the slumbering delightful school, a hint of death ran chill in the air.
He joined none of them. Instead, he watched and studied them until they were as thoroughly gutted and digested as his books.
Teachers he studied from diligently. They held knowledge, the practical kind, that couldn't be found in books. The gaping darkness demanded always more. It wasn't worth the petty satisfaction of coldly squashing them. If forced to remember years later, the professors would grudgingly admit that they hadn't thought the boy capable of evil. He had been unfailingly polite to them.
Heroes, strong from their birth, must got through a training time. They will have a master. They will have a friend. Here do they divide from the great villain. A villain needs no tutor. They will teach themselves. A villain takes no friends. They are a liability. You've learned that lesson too well, child.
Don't be smart with me.
Are you ready to listen now?
Do stop whimpering, it's most irritating.
Where was I...you've made me lose my place again, you have. Right.
The boy made allies. Not friends mind. But he worked deep into their minds. He chose the purebloods. Because he had a weakness for pretty things. Later, they would say it was his bitterness at Muggles, his fanatical hatred of them thanks to his abandoning father. Armchair analysts all of them. The boy liked the alabaster boys and girls with their perfect hair and pink/blue veins sitting vulnerable on the surface.
They taste of fine things which he also likes. He grows expensive tastes and glories in his ability to manipulate these fine young people into inviting them to their palatial homes. Their parents are reluctant to let him in, which adds to the rebellious spice of keeping his company. He eats these stuffy parent's food, steals some of their fine silverware and in the quiet of the night, he takes their children into his bed and learns them so thoroughly, they are left exhausted and gutted on their silky sheets.
By his last year, they adore him. He should appear plain, even drab, but for his arresting eyes, so intensely green that any comparison to something in the natural world would be preposterous. One admiring girl once whispered to him that his eyes were the color of death. He had grinned then and sent her shivering away to her giggling girlfriends. Hair, dark as midnight, threw his average features into dark relief. He honed his voice to weapon perfection.
The purebloods, golden and blue, fawned over him. He was Head Boy, he made the House of the Snake proud.
His power fed on itself.
You know how that can go. You learn more, it grows and teaches itself until you find yourself doing things that are beyond your own imagining. Few are granted power like that. Even fewer ever use it. The boy, now nearly a man, used it.
There was one, who he feared. A great wizard, who held the secret to immortality and called it a pet. A great wizard, who among all the teachers, kept an eye on him. The young man left the school, but he did not forget about the great wizard.
Instead, he gathered his followers together, pressed a finger to their lip with a wink. He branded the golden children with a mark as black as his hair and he gave them a silly name. Names had power, he learned long ago. The fluff headed children, who thought themselves so sly and cunning would want a dark name.
But in his mind, he called them pawns.
For years, he played little games. Heroes rush in, blades drawn, battle cries raising from their throats. Villains don't have the luxury of impulse. They must plot and be careful spiders spinning their webs. The young man spun out reams of sticky thread, snared in his followers. They grew. They had children and their children were fanatical in their adoration.
Wipe away those tears or I shall give you something to weep about.
When everything was in place, he set forth and began to unravel his great plans. How sweet the taste of victory! How glorious to succeed. Getting what he desired filled the empty void within him. He used his mother's lock of hair to make a series of Polyjuice potions. He walked, young and pretty, among the towns he slowly devastated. He watched his old teachers wither in fear.
Tasting the sweet juices of success, he became bitterly aware of his own mortality. Already his skin was beginning to fissure and his hair slowly grayed. His plans unfolding effortlessly, he threw his energy into finding immortality. It eluded his every grasp. It was his worst enemy. Far worse then then anything the great wizard could threaten.
You know of his downfall. The first and the second. You breathed the same air as he did, smelled his failure and turned it against him as a babe. Easily you thwarted the ghostly remains of him and laughed with your silly friends about it afterwards. You thought yourself safe as any child still nestled in the womb would.
You sent him from this plane of existence, to what all believed to be death. The great wizard, now bent with age, patted you on the head and fed you sticky sweets. The two of you were the only match for the man in life and you sat about drinking tea. You planned to spend your life playing a silly game.
But he did not die, child. I see in your eyes now that you can feel him near. He is always near. One silly girl said his eyes were like death and in that other realm they agreed. You sent him there without thought or caution. Impulsive heroes. But a villain plans and he weaves more then one web.
A cloaked man with no face greeted him. With no ceremony, the robe unfurled to rap sinuously around our villain's body, draping him in the black confines, hiding his ruined face. A scythe fell into his hand, fitting his palm. Only his eyes, green as the killing curse, glittered out from the black hood. He came back to the world with purpose and new power.
It is only a story. A historical story. A history.
There is a moral, would you like to hear it?
Smart boy. The moral is this: that the hero only ever appears to win.
You don't like that moral, I can tell. Well, listen well child, it is time to grow up. The man that you hate, that you repeatedly try to murder will never be dead in your life time. Even if you destroy him and spread his ash to the wing, another will take his place or perhaps two.
And even if you should defeat them all, you are already learning the truth of good and evil. You and Riddle, you can balance on the edges of your scales, ebony hair and death eyes, but there are multitudes of others who stand between you. Grayscale, boy.
When Death comes for you, his eyes will glitter green and you will not know if they are his or your own, reflected in the mirror of your own end.
You will wake in a sweat now, I'm sure and cradle your pretty pink lover until the mean old nightmare goes away.
I have discharged my duty and had pleasure doing it.
)*(
He woke alone.
He didn't like company in his house. In his bed. He haunted the corridors of Sirius' ancestral home, another wraith in a cracking dying place.
It was the fourth time this year he'd had that dream.
"Come for me then!" He challenged the shadows.
A stink of decayed flowers and rain hung in the air over the bed.
The storyteller's identity had been hidden before. Always, it had been right on the tip of his tongue and then gone again. He suspected multitudes in the those dark robes and punishing hands. Who hated him enough to send him such prophetic ugly dreams?
Voldemort was safely dead. Maybe. Possibly...but he would not send such a dream.
Lucius Malfoy was in Azkaban, his wand in splinters as well as his mind.
Draco was comatose which didn't necessarily rule him out. It was too subtle for him really.
Snape had proven loyal.
For days after having the dream, he would nag at the feeling that it was someone he knew.
Now he knew. Tonight he had seen. He hadn't known sending messages from the future was possible.
Madness lay in taking dreams for truth, but Harry had long ago realized that madness was his last salvation. A bitter, angry version of himself had taken great pains to warn him of Voldemort's ultimate return. And also the futility of fighting.
Tell me a riddle, he once asked a friend, still all unknowing of the significance in that tiny word.
How is a raven like a writing desk? Was the snickering reply.
He spent all day puzzling over it, eyebrows knit. When finally he caved, desperate for the answer he got.
It's nothing like a writing desk, silly! And a tremendous laugh.
The hollow feeling that had struck him then, returned now. His life was Riddle without answer.
Exhausted and bewildered from endless nights of nightmares and insomnia, Harry stared at himself in the mirror, wondering who was staring back at him.
It was fortunate, they all said, clucking their tongues all the while, that Ron had chosen that morning to visit. Or surely Harry would have bled to death. The whole business was such a shame. The Boy-Who-Lived blinded at his own hands. Fingers were pointed every which way.
Harry heard their whispers, but smiled them all away. Now, when the end came, he wouldn't have to look into anyone's eyes. Wouldn't have to see himself staring back, hero and villain both. There would be only a delicious black and swift end to the long book of his days.
Finis.
