Part

He knew he should be working. Papers waited, lessons, all the things that went with his time at the school. Resolutely he turned his gaze back to the window and stared out onto the grounds. Off into the distance, beyond the dark forest and the extensive warding lay the rest of the world and a war that remained unacknowledged by far too many people. His gaze shifted ever so slightly left and the itching tingle of the mark gracing his skin increased.

//I'm not bound to you

Will you wither with the rest?//

Funny the thoughts that crossed his mind sometimes. He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named, You-Know-Who, the Dark Lord, Voldemort, for something that was once a man and struck terror into the hearts of witches and wizards everywhere there were just so many ridiculous names. There had been no ceremony, no formal binding between them of any kind, just a single mark that was placed there by a grim accident of casting. At the edge of the forest a single dark figure vanished into the woods, the sweep of his robes unmistakable. With the sudden banishment of the Dark Lord the ranks of the Death Eaters had faded away to nothing. Supposedly.

Now the creature that wished to gain immortality and the wanton killing of all who did not fit into his philosophy was back. The followers that had slipped away into silent obscurity or highly public acts of charitable high-mindedness had reappeared with him like flowers that bloomed and faded with the changing seasons. Only these flowers concealed thorns dipped in poisons.

//Will you loosen your grip

As you fade into the sunset?//

Pain and that maddening itch increased as the call intensified. Sometimes he didn't know which of their deaths he hoped for more. His own would bring to an end the torment he lived with daily, guilt and physical pain wearing at him like the waves wear away the shore. Vengeance was a call he also responded to. Perhaps he could never completely regain his innocence or humanity from the darkness it had vanished into the moment he first heard the name 'Voldemort', but he could get his revenge for the loss.

//Well I want to leave you

Shattered on the floor//

Pieces of him now lay scattered about, dignity and self-respect among those irretrievably lost sometime between the first rise and fall of Tom Riddle. He could also feel eyes boring into the back of his neck as he hurried into the forest, eyes so disturbingly like the man that had given him the mark resting on his arm in the first place. Watching from Gryffindor tower as he made his way into the forest and past the edge of the wards, those eyes frightened him and made him lash out. They all thought it was the father that made act so. Only the owner of those terrifying and knowing eyes seemed aware that his fury was not related to childish torment and that awareness only served to heighten his fears.

//Will I do anything to

Have you forevermore?//

Yet the life debt between them kept both from acting. Aware of the call and the torment, all either could do was play a silent game and hope chance would end it. The bond between the mark and its creator lent a connection that left one wondering about what would happen when it finally snapped.

//I really miss you

I didn't want to

Now it's too late//

Aching for the old days he hurried past the tree line. Not the torture, the games, indoctrination or even the tempting hours lost in the delicate construction of deadly and complex spells and potions, but the beautiful simplicity of knowing where he belonged and who he was loyal to. There was a joy in knowing he was where he belonged and he missed that sense of certainty. He knew the owner of the eyes that were still following him through the bond studies of occlumency had wrought, he knew that sense of perfect belonging was missed by him as well.

//You're tattooed on my skin

Don't know where you end and I begin//

Vanishing into the darkness of the forest, he could no longer trace the figure's progress with his eyes and so he switched to other means. Intertwined by a connection with a crazed megalomaniac intent on living a dream of hypocrisy the link between them, caused by his lessons with legilimency and occlumency, was stronger than most between student and teacher. Bound by hatred for Him and each other he could follow his teacher all the way to the meetings.

But his tie to the darkness was not merely magical or psychic. He was marked as much as the Death Eaters had been and the similarities between the two of them linked them in ways not apparent even to Albus Dumbledore. The old wizard saw more than most and still he missed the connection that trapped the two of them together.

//You're tattooed on my soul

Are you the part that makes me whole?//

Like the flip sides of a coin, one light, one dark, they circled each other from a distance, twin pulsars connected by a force invisible to all others.

//The uncertainty keeps me on my toes

I'm so undone by what I'll never know//

And that frightened him as he raced through the forest, his stride speeding up as the pain in his arm increased. The likeness between one set of green eyes and another set that were once green sent a horrifying certainty up his spine that he would never know the truth of what was behind those shuttered emerald orbs.

//(Never know)//

So unlike a Gryffindor.

//Your confusions make sense to me

But I'm afraid that this won't always be//

Yet he could be read. Like a Gryffindor always could by the naturally more subtle Slytherins. But sometimes he could catch those eyes in an unguarded moment. Unguarded being a relative term. When no one was watching, that guileless gaze darkened and could not be read amidst the layers of darkness flickering there. Anger still sparked openings, but those grew fewer with age.

//I really need you

Want to believe that

You need me too//

An identity wrapped up in the association with another was never a good thing. You could never tell what was truly yourself and what was merely a reaction to the presence of the other. You could sometimes see it in twins as they wondered if they were truly one person split between two bodies. Like those teenagers dressed in whatever was the precise opposite of the latest style for no other reason than that it was the opposite. Did that dark man they fought need them to provide his opposite? Need them to offset the amorality his plans and give a reason to exist?

Sometimes he hoped so, sometimes he hoped the world was less existential than that.

//You're tattooed on my skin

Don't know where you end and I begin//

Darkness that was literally branded into his skin burned and the feeling of a lethifold creeping beneath his skin, a black tar spreading through his veins with every second the mark seared there. A direct line to the Dark Lord marked every inch of his being.

//You're tattooed on my soul

Are you the part that makes me whole?//

His reason for existing was the effort to bring down, destroy, betray Riddle. His Reason. Without it he had no purpose. No dreams, family, desires. They knew the truth of persecution for what they were. It was a visceral knowledge that twined through his veins.

//I fall hard, fall fast

Know it won't last

I should leave before it's gone

But I'm not that strong//

He fell for it. The words of the so-called 'light' side. Hook line and sinker. Pausing alone, he wondered about this ambivalence that infected everything he did to battle Voldemort.

//You're tattooed on my skin//

Was it the mark that connected them? Was it the sympathy he could feel for the persecuted boy that had entered Hogwarts so many, many years before? Were they so intertwined in life, reputation and experience that they could never be apart?

//Don't know where you end and I begin//

Was it the similarities between them? The way Slytherins were treated? The way muggleborns were treated? Was it the way he could be seen in his followers and his adversaries?

//You're tattooed on my soul//

There was a stain on his soul that would never wash away that was not guilt, sin or betrayal. It was something that cut deeper.

//Are you the part that makes me whole?//

It was other half waiting for a tardy potions master, watching the man through the eyes of an idolised, abused youth.

It was the other half waiting for a green eyed boy's protectors to fail, watching through the eyes of a Slytherin house head.