Surviving Fate // Mattheo Riddle ♣️

Chapter Twenty-Two - Inner Forces

Word Count: 2,524 words. 

Warnings: None. 

I was sitting in the Great Hall. At least, my body was. I didn't need to be asleep anymore to be dragged into the depths of my mind. One minute I was nervously picking at my food and the next I was sitting in front of her again.

"What do you want?" I asked, looking around me. I couldn't see Credence or Ariana.

"They're fine," she explained, looking up. Three chains. That was all that was left. The only thing separating her mind from mine. "They're just taking a nap. I want to talk to you."

"Alright. Speak."

"Let me out," she started. "Please? I regret it all. Everything I did, just let me live."

I perked a brow, watching as she tried to act genuine. "If I thought you were capable of remorse or regret. If I thought that there was a single part of you that wouldn't try to kill me once I let you go, I might just do it."

She didn't let go of the emotion she tried to feed. The curse looked just like me, but she wasn't.

"Have you ever heard of Tuberculosis?" I posed.

She shook her head gently. "Lyra, please..."

"It's a muggle disease," I began to explain. "Most muggle diseases last only a certain time and then are either cured or eradicated completely. No one's seen the Spanish flu in fifty years, but Tuberculosis had been around for centuries. The Egyptians and the Greeks called it phthisis meaning 'wasting' and it was called the 'white plague' in the Middle Ages. The white plague. Did you know that there were hospitals in which every room and every ward was just for patients with Tuberculosis?"

She didn't answer me, only shaking her head lightly. The pleading look was beginning to fade as she sat back on her heels.

"You know, diseases usually target certain people. Sometimes it was the old and frail. Other times, the young and susceptible. The poor, the rich. The healthy, the already sick, btu not this. This plague hit anyone it could. It pushed its way into body and mind, first making their body so weak so that they couldn't fight them when it started to suffocate them. That's what you do. You don't care who you hurt, why would you? Death means nothing to a parasite that can't die."

Her eyes dropped, mouth snarling slightly. "Let me out of here," she ordered.

"That's more like it," I commented, smiling. I leaned back on my head, dropping my head back to look at the ceiling. "You may break those chain and you may attack me harder than you have before but I will still fight you. I will die before I let you live."

"Let me out," the Obscurus' voice was stronger.

"No," I replied softly, looking at her again.

"Let...me...out." It was rising in both anger and volume.

"No." My voice stayed the same.

"Let me out!" she screamed rushing towards me. The chains stopped her.

I didn't flinch, our faces now inches apart. "You don't scare me anymore," I told her.

She snarled. "That's a lie. I terrify you."

I shook my head. "You stopped scaring me when I realised I wasn't alone. You failed the first time and the second and how many other times before that? You will fail again because you're fighting your fate."

The curse laughed. "Isn't that what you've been doing. Fighting your fate to die? To kill Dumbledore? To be used as a weapon?"

"You can't fight fate," I explained to her. "You can only hope to survive it."