Thersites. Prithee, be silent, boy: I profit not by thy talk: thou art thought to be Achilles' male varlet.
Patrocles. Male varlet, you rogue! what's that?
Thersites. Why, his masculine whore.
--Shakespeare, Troilus and Cressida

Tom has little sense of time. His room has no windows, but when they open his door, the door that only opens from the outside, ruddy torchlight spills in and lends color to his dim demesnes. When the door is shut, the only light comes from the marsh gas lamps, an eerie, ectoplasmic green-gray that renders pink as gray, red as black, until he thinks he's gone early to his grave.

At first he tried to mark the days on the wall by his bed, but he lost count. It hardly matters now. What would he do if he escaped? His future has been robbed from him by a snake-faced man who stole his name.

Lord Voldemort. Blood-hot tears spring up when he remembers, angry and ashamed and so helpless to do anything about it. It's his name, his, he dreamed it in the dark and hot of human breath, pressed together in fear beneath London soil while the city burned. What right has the snake-man to it?

The snake-man says they are one and the same, past and future, and Tom screams.

When he sees the snake-man, when he really looks beyond bone-white skin and red-hot eyes, he sees fire. He sees Nero fiddling as Rome burns, and the face of the young god is his own. He burned out the stain of Muggle blood, but that wasn't enough, so he burned out the humanity, and then the love and passion and life and all that is left is the snake-man, who laughs a high cold laugh and hates Tom more than anything, more even than Tom ever hated himself.

That's the root of it, why the snake-man who Tom refuses to call by the name that's his has locked him in a room and taken his wand and books. Tom was going mad for a time, nothing to do so he was locked in his own head.

And then Draco began to visit him.

He wasn't supposed to, never supposed to, but he did because Draco always broke the rules. Tom was half-crazed the first time the boy came. They were of an age, Draco a head shorter and almost seventeen. Tom can't remember how old he is, but Draco thinks he's only a month or two younger.

It was a diary, he explained, when Tom had stopped crying with the joy of seeing another human face. The diary Tom had made when he was sixteen, that Draco's father who Tom had never met had slipped to a girl as red-haired and penniless as the Weasleys Tom had known, that the little hero had destroyed, and when the snake-man (Draco called him Lord Voldemort and Tom bit through his tongue) came back he told them there had been another diary, an earlier one, an experiment, and Lucius found it and brought Tom out of it and the snake-man shut him in the room and kept him almost as a toy.

Draco had watched him cry with concern and distaste warring on his pale face, and then he stood as if to go and Tom was at his feet, holding him around the knees and begging in terror, please don't leave don't go stay with me I'll go mad help, help, help, and Draco relented and held Tom in his arms.

All Tom cares about now is getting out of here and making the snake-man pay. Draco will help him. Draco is a good boy, and Tom uses him shamelessly, affecting weakness and clinging to him and making Draco love him.

Autumn comes and Draco whispers that he has to leave, and he'll miss Tom so, but he's brought him books all summer and Tom will have friends in the books, at least, and Tom nods and smiles and whispers he wants a piece of Draco's hair to remember him by. Draco blushes pink and goes and comes back with a little knife. Tom hold him gently and says he wants to cut it himself, and Draco kisses him and smiles and then turns his head so Tom can cut.

And Tom does. He take Draco's little knife with the death's head handle and he digs it into Draco's pretty, pale neck and twists and Draco's screaming, screaming, and pumping his blood out onto Tom's hands and arms and Tom watches his eyes go dull and then he takes the little knife and cuts off Draco's hair and lays it over his own, silver-gold strands lying among black.

The next time someone comes, he can leave. Tom is sure they will think he is Draco.

When his half-blind, half-mad eyes look in the mirror, he can see no difference.

End.