FIC: Glittering Sons
Title: Glittering Sons
Pairing: Merope/Tom Riddle Sr.
Rating: about PG-13
A.N. Written for redcandle17. The title is from `Eden Bower` by Dante Rossetti and refers to Adam and Lilith's inhuman children.
Disclaimer: Don't sue, it all belongs to JKR!
i.
The grass is damp with dew, the hemline of her skirts hangs wet and heavy about her ankles.
But the sky is golden above her head, and somewhere, a bird is singing. And in the little cottage on the horizon behind her, a handsome man is sleeping in her bed.
On the edges of the next field, beyond the yellow rapeseed that shivers in the warm breeze, Merope can see a cluster of poppies, like a spattering of freshly spilt blood. They hide in the undergrowth, but the silver blade is sharp in her grip, and it aches to taste them. Merope needs them, and they should understand that it is a worthy sacrifice she asks of them.
She kneels beside them, and finds a tune upon her lips. It's sweet and lilting, and she doesn't know from what forgotten days of her childhood it springs. A swallow sweeps over her head. The world is perfect.
Her knife slices through the stems of the poppies, one two three, enough to tide her over for the next few days. She stows them away, taking particular care of the swollen, jade-green heads. Merope remembers how the snakes used to twist beneath her brother's hands, how they used to plead and curse; she is always respectful of nature.
She turns and makes her way back to the cottage, the knife sated and the purses of the poppy seeds moving against her leg through the thin material of her skirts as she walks.
ii.
Three weeks ago, he came for her in the night, rapping at the door as she had sat tending the sulking fire. He'd thrown the door wide, and sworn he'd have her. Whether she willed it or not, she was his, he'd said. Said he'd die without her.
And she'd been cursing herself as a failed witch, who couldn't brew a love potion though her heart depended on it.
She remembers his greedy mouth on her dirty neck as she wrote her farewell to the House of Gaunt. She remembers how he pushed her ripped shift up about her milk-white thighs as she signed her name as Marvolo's daughter for the last time.
She remembers how the withered snake, still pinned in its place, shook as the door slammed shut behind them. She remembers the hissing of the wind through the leaves on the trees as Tom carried her off on his horse.
iii.
Tom is still asleep. She knows this before she reaches the cottage because he has not come looking for her.
She creeps into the cottage, passing from sunbeam to sunbeam that slant across the gleaming floorboards, making her way through the motes of dust that shift and swirl like souls in the air. So silent.
Tom is stretched out on the faded cotton sheets, dark and beautiful and precious. Her stolen husband. But oh how he loves her now! And she's good to him, very good. Why'd he want anyone else when he has Merope at his feet?
His chest rises and falls, breathing in the fragrant spring morning, the scent of dawn and birds and love. Merope doesn't wonder what it is he dreams of, he dreams of her. Always her.
The poppy heads are wrapped in a shred of old silk and hidden away in a drawer, along with the plait of Veela hair she begged from the halfbreed at the market last week and the sprig of dried mistletoe that she's bound together with pink thread. The next night she can pry Tom's arms from around her - the embrace of a drowning man - she will take her cauldron and work beneath the stars to bottle another week of Tom's drugged kisses.
But for now, her cauldron is for porridge. Smooth and fair, it bubbles upon the stove. She ladles it into a crude bowl and sets it upon their table, where it steams gently in the rising sunlight. It's only been a few days, but already it's second nature for Merope to take the little bottle from its hiding place behind the cracked brick of the fireplace, and let three drops of the rose-coloured potion fall. Done in a matter of seconds. Discreet and forgettable. How can such a tiny act have any significance?
She lays her stained apron to one side and approaches her next wifely task with a smile.
Tom looks so fine, such a beauty when he sleeps but she wakes him to give him another bite of the enchanted apple. It will lodge in his throat, poison him with sweetness and stop his breath unless he uses it to speak words of adoration.
His eyelashes flutter against his cheeks, the sheets rumpling about his narrow hips as he stirs. He opens his eyes, looks at Merope's sallow face, and smiles.
She coaxes him to the table, when all he wants to do is pull her astride him. He's insistent, but so is she. He looks down at the porridge and pokes at it with his misshapen spoon.
"I'm not hungry," he says at last.
Merope drapes herself over his shoulders.
"You have to eat, love," she tells him. "You need your strength."
Reluctantly, Tom takes a spoonful. It almost reaches his mouth, then he tips it back out, slopping it back into the bowl like a naughty child.
He smiles at her, all charm.
"I've no appetite for porridge," he insists and pushes the bowl back.
Eat it or you'll kill me, Merope wants to cry, if you don't eat it, you'll break my heart.
"Eat it up, Tom. If you love me, eat it all up."
Words as powerful as Avada Kedavra. Tom eats it all without further complaint. He pauses a moment as if thinking, and then kisses her.
Merope can almost taste the magic on his lips.
iv.
Under the setting sun, his eyes are red when he looks at her. Seas boil in his hiss of breath as he pushes her down onto the bed. He glows in the night because he's made of heat and fury.
There's a storm in his touch that scares her. There's a wildness that not even Merope herself - Circe reborn so plain and meek - can control.
His twitching hands seem to long to strangle, but choose instead to stroke. His kisses threaten to suffocate her; his dark eyes remain fixed unblinkingly on her face as she gasps for breath. He bears her down beneath him, gorging himself on her as she pleads and moans for tenderness.
He doesn't listen, doesn't give, doesn't relent; he's too in love.
v.
It devours her from the inside. Its venom eats away at her flesh, letting it slide from her body like melting wax. Its hissing is as steady and maddening as a swarm of flies over carrion. It coils and pulses through her bloodstream.
Finally, once there is nothing human left of her, once she has been picked dry, it slides from her skull, between her bone lips like a profane blessing.
In the middle of the night, she wakes. She looks at Tom, who smiles even in his sleep, and tells herself she has nothing to feel guilty about.
But something is stirring deep beneath her skin.
vi.
Three strands of Veela hair, tied in a love-knot.
"Merope!"
A leaf of dried mistletoe, crumbled between forefinger and thumb.
"Merope!"
One handful of poppyseeds, sanctified with her own breath.
"Merope!"
Into the cauldron and stirred seven times widdershins. Bubbling in the sour red wine. A stroke of the silver blade over her palm, and three drops of her own precious blood into the brew, sparking and spitting as it is devoured.
"Merope!"
She thinks at first it is the snakes calling her name. They do sometimes, but she pretends not to hear.
But it grows louder, more desperate. It is not the soft-edged slide of a serpentine voice. It's Tom.
A corpse called from the grave, he lurches out of the darkness towards her. Naked and tearful, he stands in the briar, where the thorns draw bloody lines across his alabaster skin like the mark of claws. His feet are filthy, and he shivers in the cool night air.
He's never woken before when Merope is working. He's always slept 'til she creeps back to the cottage, and though she's always been so careful not to let the bricks grate too loudly as she hides her handiwork, or to let the cauldron clatter as she places it back on the stove, he's never stirred.
But he felt her absence tonight, and stumbled through the woods and fields to find her.
"Merope," he moans, holding out his arms for her as though he were a frightened child. "I woke and you were gone. I thought you'd left me. I thought I'd lost you."
It's over a month since he first fell under her spell. The potion is running thick in his veins by now, coagulating into sugared canker.
Merope looks at him and realises that he doesn't see her anymore. Blinded by love, he sees only the vague shape of a goddess he knows he must love, because she created him.
vii.
It never sleeps now. It shifts in her belly, fretful and greedy.
Merope sits in the chair by the cold fireplace, staring at the shards of broken glass that glisten slickly in a pool of spilt potion. She twists her apron strings and waits for Tom to wake.
The sun is high, high in the sky before he starts from his bed. Merope has reheated the porridge, over and over. She's prayed that he will wake before it grows too cold for her magic to mend.
Like a marionette with frayed strings, Tom stumbles across the floor and sinks into the chair. He stares down at the porridge, looking for answers in its bland surface. Wondering if it will be sweet enough for Tom's taste without the potion, Merope sprinkles a spoonful of sugar onto its surface, where it crystallises and sinks in, as the dull realisation does on Tom's face.
He lifts the misshapen spoon, and gazes at his own distorted image looking back at him.
The spoon hits the floor, ringing a death-knell through the cottage.
"Witch," he says.
When he stands, he sways on his feet. But he does not fall.
"Witch!" he snarls.
Merope realises then what an ugly word it is.
viii.
Merope waits for Tom to return.
The porridge is thick sludge in the bowl, the spoon on the floor shines through sunlight and starlight. Moths crawl over the ceiling, and spider-webs appear over the windows. She notices, for the first time, the new, unnatural roundness to her belly. It's a face on the horizon with noonday light behind it.
But Tom does not come back.
And the snakes outside are calling her.
ix.
Merope has dreamt this dream before, she thinks.
The field is a sea of snakes. They sweep in like waves from the edges of the forest. They glitter under the heavy, green sky and swarm about her ankles.
She stands like a cowering scarecrow, caught in the stillness of the air and living pulse of the serpents.
There's a storm coming, and she's standing in its eye.
It doesn't hurt, the first bite. The throb of venom in her blood is hot and disorientating. The next bite doesn't hurt either, nor the one after, or the one after that… It's a soft surrender when their poison robs her limbs of strength; her knees buckle and the snakes seethe over her, burying her in their shifting coils.
And the name of Mother is on every forked tongue.
END
Pairing: Merope/Tom Riddle Sr.
Rating: about PG-13
A.N. Written for redcandle17. The title is from `Eden Bower` by Dante Rossetti and refers to Adam and Lilith's inhuman children.
Disclaimer: Don't sue, it all belongs to JKR!
i.
The grass is damp with dew, the hemline of her skirts hangs wet and heavy about her ankles.
But the sky is golden above her head, and somewhere, a bird is singing. And in the little cottage on the horizon behind her, a handsome man is sleeping in her bed.
On the edges of the next field, beyond the yellow rapeseed that shivers in the warm breeze, Merope can see a cluster of poppies, like a spattering of freshly spilt blood. They hide in the undergrowth, but the silver blade is sharp in her grip, and it aches to taste them. Merope needs them, and they should understand that it is a worthy sacrifice she asks of them.
She kneels beside them, and finds a tune upon her lips. It's sweet and lilting, and she doesn't know from what forgotten days of her childhood it springs. A swallow sweeps over her head. The world is perfect.
Her knife slices through the stems of the poppies, one two three, enough to tide her over for the next few days. She stows them away, taking particular care of the swollen, jade-green heads. Merope remembers how the snakes used to twist beneath her brother's hands, how they used to plead and curse; she is always respectful of nature.
She turns and makes her way back to the cottage, the knife sated and the purses of the poppy seeds moving against her leg through the thin material of her skirts as she walks.
ii.
Three weeks ago, he came for her in the night, rapping at the door as she had sat tending the sulking fire. He'd thrown the door wide, and sworn he'd have her. Whether she willed it or not, she was his, he'd said. Said he'd die without her.
And she'd been cursing herself as a failed witch, who couldn't brew a love potion though her heart depended on it.
She remembers his greedy mouth on her dirty neck as she wrote her farewell to the House of Gaunt. She remembers how he pushed her ripped shift up about her milk-white thighs as she signed her name as Marvolo's daughter for the last time.
She remembers how the withered snake, still pinned in its place, shook as the door slammed shut behind them. She remembers the hissing of the wind through the leaves on the trees as Tom carried her off on his horse.
iii.
Tom is still asleep. She knows this before she reaches the cottage because he has not come looking for her.
She creeps into the cottage, passing from sunbeam to sunbeam that slant across the gleaming floorboards, making her way through the motes of dust that shift and swirl like souls in the air. So silent.
Tom is stretched out on the faded cotton sheets, dark and beautiful and precious. Her stolen husband. But oh how he loves her now! And she's good to him, very good. Why'd he want anyone else when he has Merope at his feet?
His chest rises and falls, breathing in the fragrant spring morning, the scent of dawn and birds and love. Merope doesn't wonder what it is he dreams of, he dreams of her. Always her.
The poppy heads are wrapped in a shred of old silk and hidden away in a drawer, along with the plait of Veela hair she begged from the halfbreed at the market last week and the sprig of dried mistletoe that she's bound together with pink thread. The next night she can pry Tom's arms from around her - the embrace of a drowning man - she will take her cauldron and work beneath the stars to bottle another week of Tom's drugged kisses.
But for now, her cauldron is for porridge. Smooth and fair, it bubbles upon the stove. She ladles it into a crude bowl and sets it upon their table, where it steams gently in the rising sunlight. It's only been a few days, but already it's second nature for Merope to take the little bottle from its hiding place behind the cracked brick of the fireplace, and let three drops of the rose-coloured potion fall. Done in a matter of seconds. Discreet and forgettable. How can such a tiny act have any significance?
She lays her stained apron to one side and approaches her next wifely task with a smile.
Tom looks so fine, such a beauty when he sleeps but she wakes him to give him another bite of the enchanted apple. It will lodge in his throat, poison him with sweetness and stop his breath unless he uses it to speak words of adoration.
His eyelashes flutter against his cheeks, the sheets rumpling about his narrow hips as he stirs. He opens his eyes, looks at Merope's sallow face, and smiles.
She coaxes him to the table, when all he wants to do is pull her astride him. He's insistent, but so is she. He looks down at the porridge and pokes at it with his misshapen spoon.
"I'm not hungry," he says at last.
Merope drapes herself over his shoulders.
"You have to eat, love," she tells him. "You need your strength."
Reluctantly, Tom takes a spoonful. It almost reaches his mouth, then he tips it back out, slopping it back into the bowl like a naughty child.
He smiles at her, all charm.
"I've no appetite for porridge," he insists and pushes the bowl back.
Eat it or you'll kill me, Merope wants to cry, if you don't eat it, you'll break my heart.
"Eat it up, Tom. If you love me, eat it all up."
Words as powerful as Avada Kedavra. Tom eats it all without further complaint. He pauses a moment as if thinking, and then kisses her.
Merope can almost taste the magic on his lips.
iv.
Under the setting sun, his eyes are red when he looks at her. Seas boil in his hiss of breath as he pushes her down onto the bed. He glows in the night because he's made of heat and fury.
There's a storm in his touch that scares her. There's a wildness that not even Merope herself - Circe reborn so plain and meek - can control.
His twitching hands seem to long to strangle, but choose instead to stroke. His kisses threaten to suffocate her; his dark eyes remain fixed unblinkingly on her face as she gasps for breath. He bears her down beneath him, gorging himself on her as she pleads and moans for tenderness.
He doesn't listen, doesn't give, doesn't relent; he's too in love.
v.
It devours her from the inside. Its venom eats away at her flesh, letting it slide from her body like melting wax. Its hissing is as steady and maddening as a swarm of flies over carrion. It coils and pulses through her bloodstream.
Finally, once there is nothing human left of her, once she has been picked dry, it slides from her skull, between her bone lips like a profane blessing.
In the middle of the night, she wakes. She looks at Tom, who smiles even in his sleep, and tells herself she has nothing to feel guilty about.
But something is stirring deep beneath her skin.
vi.
Three strands of Veela hair, tied in a love-knot.
"Merope!"
A leaf of dried mistletoe, crumbled between forefinger and thumb.
"Merope!"
One handful of poppyseeds, sanctified with her own breath.
"Merope!"
Into the cauldron and stirred seven times widdershins. Bubbling in the sour red wine. A stroke of the silver blade over her palm, and three drops of her own precious blood into the brew, sparking and spitting as it is devoured.
"Merope!"
She thinks at first it is the snakes calling her name. They do sometimes, but she pretends not to hear.
But it grows louder, more desperate. It is not the soft-edged slide of a serpentine voice. It's Tom.
A corpse called from the grave, he lurches out of the darkness towards her. Naked and tearful, he stands in the briar, where the thorns draw bloody lines across his alabaster skin like the mark of claws. His feet are filthy, and he shivers in the cool night air.
He's never woken before when Merope is working. He's always slept 'til she creeps back to the cottage, and though she's always been so careful not to let the bricks grate too loudly as she hides her handiwork, or to let the cauldron clatter as she places it back on the stove, he's never stirred.
But he felt her absence tonight, and stumbled through the woods and fields to find her.
"Merope," he moans, holding out his arms for her as though he were a frightened child. "I woke and you were gone. I thought you'd left me. I thought I'd lost you."
It's over a month since he first fell under her spell. The potion is running thick in his veins by now, coagulating into sugared canker.
Merope looks at him and realises that he doesn't see her anymore. Blinded by love, he sees only the vague shape of a goddess he knows he must love, because she created him.
vii.
It never sleeps now. It shifts in her belly, fretful and greedy.
Merope sits in the chair by the cold fireplace, staring at the shards of broken glass that glisten slickly in a pool of spilt potion. She twists her apron strings and waits for Tom to wake.
The sun is high, high in the sky before he starts from his bed. Merope has reheated the porridge, over and over. She's prayed that he will wake before it grows too cold for her magic to mend.
Like a marionette with frayed strings, Tom stumbles across the floor and sinks into the chair. He stares down at the porridge, looking for answers in its bland surface. Wondering if it will be sweet enough for Tom's taste without the potion, Merope sprinkles a spoonful of sugar onto its surface, where it crystallises and sinks in, as the dull realisation does on Tom's face.
He lifts the misshapen spoon, and gazes at his own distorted image looking back at him.
The spoon hits the floor, ringing a death-knell through the cottage.
"Witch," he says.
When he stands, he sways on his feet. But he does not fall.
"Witch!" he snarls.
Merope realises then what an ugly word it is.
viii.
Merope waits for Tom to return.
The porridge is thick sludge in the bowl, the spoon on the floor shines through sunlight and starlight. Moths crawl over the ceiling, and spider-webs appear over the windows. She notices, for the first time, the new, unnatural roundness to her belly. It's a face on the horizon with noonday light behind it.
But Tom does not come back.
And the snakes outside are calling her.
ix.
Merope has dreamt this dream before, she thinks.
The field is a sea of snakes. They sweep in like waves from the edges of the forest. They glitter under the heavy, green sky and swarm about her ankles.
She stands like a cowering scarecrow, caught in the stillness of the air and living pulse of the serpents.
There's a storm coming, and she's standing in its eye.
It doesn't hurt, the first bite. The throb of venom in her blood is hot and disorientating. The next bite doesn't hurt either, nor the one after, or the one after that… It's a soft surrender when their poison robs her limbs of strength; her knees buckle and the snakes seethe over her, burying her in their shifting coils.
And the name of Mother is on every forked tongue.
END