Work Text:
You didn't have to be so cruel.
He raised his head to look into the corner, the joints in his neck and shoulders creaking. He set the hourglass down and flexed his stiff fingers inside the leather of his gloves. "Fine, I'll bite. You've seen thousands of new Phoenixes. What is so special about these ones?"
The ghost let out a hushed sigh, easily mistaken for the sound of the wind through the gaps in the ramshackle roof. They are what we have been waiting for.
"You think so?" He turned his upper body to look out the door through which the new Phoenixes had departed, his back cracking loudly with the twist. It was night now—so he had been working for hours, or he had worked through the next day, too. It could have been any number of days since they were here, really. After hundreds of years walking the daylit world, and a hundred slumbering in a barrow beneath its earth, days were nothing. "They didn't seem like much. I thought the strange one's Talon was almost familiar… but no, it couldn't have been. Though, the Bitter is interesting. Or perhaps troubling..." his mumbling trailed off as he considered the doorway for a long time.
They are the hope. Mine. Yours.
He exhaled his disbelief, half sigh and half scoff.
They are our hope, she repeated, unusually persistent.
"If you insist, my darling." He turned back to his desk and pulled a sheaf of paper from between the pages of a book, ignoring the ghost's stare. When he went to dip his pen, he found his vial of ink long dried. "Fuck."
You're beginning to forget.
"Now, darling, you know what I'm capable of, and not even I could do that." He rummaged through the piles of scrolls, loose pieces of parchment, and Old Kingdom coins on his desk until he found a little crystal pot still half full of serviceable ink.
Do you remember my face?
The pen snapped in his hand.
Do you remember his?
The wooden chair clattered against the floor as he stood and spun. The crystal ink pot shattered against the stone next to the ghost's head. The shards and ink passed harmlessly through her translucent image. She did not move from her place in the corner as the ink ran in dark rivulets down the wall.
"Look at me," he choked.
There was a long, tense moment as he stared down the ghost in the corner, willing her to lift her head. When she finally did, he saw that her features were blurred nearly to the point of unrecognition.
A broken noise escaped him as the rage drained out. He dropped to his knees, head low, gripping the dark stone. A sea breeze came through the door, rustling his tangled hair and the rags of his clothes. When he tried to recall the warmth of her hands, the features of his last face, he found the memories to be gossamer that burned at his touch.
"No. No, please."
His dearly beloved ghost placed her hand on the crown of his head, and he recalled the barest memory of a touch. Hot ichor stung his eyes with relief, dripped onto the dark stone. "Forgive me. Don't leave."
You know I can't.
The stars above Pyre followed their ordained paths through the sky, the waves beat endlessly against the cliffs, and Riddle cursed every name that he had ever had with all the heat of his flame.