There's a song that hasn't been written about a boy named Sue.

It has a rugged, rough, twanging sound that you don't hear in songs today. Like jazz but without the brass and the coolness, in the clear voice of every man, of any man. In it is the sound of wheat, the country, the casual violence of the common man's life.

It's amazing the things you know and the things you don't. There are so many things that I can't fit inside my head but I know that sound and I know those lyrics and every once in a while a catch myself humming along to a tune that Mr. Cash has yet to write.

"My daddy left home when I was three

And he didn't leave much to ma and me

Just this old guitar and an empty bottle of booze

Now, I don't blame him cause he run and hid

But the meanest thing that he ever did

Was before he left, he went and named me 'Sue'"

I was almost a girl named Tom.

It wasn't my father, my father has been absent since the day of my conception, and my mother took the more permanent exit of death through childbirth than simply leaving but it's close enough to make a ballad out of it.

It's amazing what you remember and what you don't and what you should and what you shouldn't.

I remember everything, but it was like watching a play for the first couple of years. I was me, standing outside of myself, and that crawling helpless thing was Elizabeth Mary Riddle.

(I'm getting ahead of myself, I promised myself I wouldn't do that.)

I need to go back, to that girl named Tom.

Merope Gaunt walked into Wool's orphanage in the cold December of 1926 too weak with childbirth and despair to go any further. She collapsed on their doorstep and was taken in and there was debate over seeing a medic but her water had already broken and she was deep into labor. So a younger Mrs. Cole told an assistant to go fetch water and "hurry it up the woman looks like she's going to die right here on the floor", and there was much talking of pushing, and staying strong.

Eventually, almost near midnight, I came out.

Only, like I said, it was like I was watching me at the time. I felt the terrible cold, the noise, the color, and the light but I was able to step back from myself as if it was some surreal dream. It was me, I knew it was me, but it didn't matter.

David Lynch doesn't exist yet either and neither do the films and television shows he directed but those early periods of my life (and the majority of my dreams themselves) are like a scene from a David Lynch dream. Everything is separated from reality, kept apart, and you walk through distantly knowing that it isn't real but going along with it anyway. You make assumptions, like you're in the audience and told that this man is named Hamlet and he's going to die, and based on those assumptions you move forward and you don't question them. Even when you know they're wrong.

So I was the baby and I wasn't the baby and I decided to accept that because that's how the dream called life was going at that particular moment.

There was a towel wiping me, wiping off bodily fluids, and I fussed and cried in Mrs. Cole's arms.

"It's a girl." Mrs. Cole said, looking relieved that I'd made it out okay or perhaps that I looked like a healthy normal baby unlike my pale, sickly, and uncomely mother.

"I…" Merope said, her eyes glassy, she was still pushing though not quite done and she tried to speak through the pain and the tears, "I…"

"Mrs. Cole, I think she's having twins." The girl assisting Mrs. Cole said, her eyes alarmed, still urging Merope to push now and then so that the other baby could join me in the land of the living.

"I… I want you to name him Tom… Like his father." Merope bit out, before letting loose a cry causing the women to soothe her, "And… And his middle name… Marvolo… for my father."

She started again, letting out a cry, the other baby was becoming visible but Merope didn't even seem to notice even as Mrs. Cole and her assistant told her to push, push, and keep on pushing. For a while she didn't speak, only screamed, as my sibling entered this world alongside me. I could only watch with blurred vision that refused to focus and somehow knew in spite of this that Merope was almost glittering with the sweat.

Only when the other baby was out, when it seemed as if she was done for the night, did she smile and say, "Tom Marvolo Riddle."

And then only a few moments later, before Mrs. Cole got a chance to interject and insist that the first (the one she'd named) was a girl, and that there was a boy who'd needed naming too she died, right there on the floor in the mess of her own afterbirth.

Maybe my mother had known the second twin was a boy, but somehow I think that if I was the only one in there, then she'd still have insisted. At any rate there were two of us and my brother took the name Tom Marvolo Riddle and I wasn't given any at all by my mother but instead was labeled Elizabeth Mary Riddle by Mrs. Cole.

So you see, I was almost a girl named Tom.

I think it's this 'almost' business that gets me, that really gets at the heart of what I am and what's wrong with me, because I'm almost that girl named Tom. I think the almost is why I'm a little different than everyone else, a little different even than my brother, who is in turn even more different than me.

Tom and Almost-Tom, that's what we are.

But I'm getting ahead of myself again.

I want to talk about memory.

There's a few different kinds of memories. There's the things you remember about yourself, like a day at a park, or a specific incident. There's the things you remember out of repetition, like you always liked ice cream and hated cats. And then there's the things you just know but don't remember how you learned it or where it really came from.

I have memories of a lot of things, useless small things, a lot of songs by Mr. Johnny Cash, the Na-Na-Na's of "Hey Jude", the life times and death of Jean Valjean, the name of Harry Callahan's gun in "Dirty Harry", and so many more.

I knew English before I heard a word of it and a neat American accent came with it (I never would manage to master the British), I'd always known how to read and write, and ask me what a computer program is and how to make it print out "Hello World" then I could have it done before you could blink.

I know things but I don't know how or why. It's just always been there, along with awareness, most people forget those first years and maybe even get hazy on the first ten but I've always remembered them and known them.

For the first few years the body was just this thing that I had to keep track of and when it got too cold, hungry, tired, etc. I just raised the alarm and waited for someone to come and take care of it. This probably kept me sane, because I can't imagine what it would be like to actually be trapped in a toddler's body.

For a while I assumed everyone was like this, that they had all this stuff that wasn't real yet rolling around in their heads, and that you just kind of ignored it unless it was relevant. I thought everyone knew that the "Lion King" was really just "Hamlet" the musical but with more action and lions to go with it. It took a decent while for me to realize that I wasn't normal, about the time that my American accent started to surface along with an impressive built in vocabulary.

This is just a fact to accept about me, your narrator, as we go along on our journey. I don't know the why or the how, if there was a me before me and if that me died somehow, if I'm the least melodramatic and one of the most powerful seers to have ever existed, but it's just something you have to roll with while I tell you a story.

The story of how I ended up telling this story to you now and everything that goes with it.

Another fact is that this story doesn't start where I started it and it won't end where I end it. Stories are like that, they're like stations on a railway, you get on at one and you get off at another but you're not at the end of the line either way, the story steams ahead without you leaving all possibilities to be discovered in its future. A good story never really ends, it haunts, it lingers, and that's just how it is.

December 31, 1926 in Wool's Orphanage in London.

Our first stop.

Seven year old Tom Riddle had a rabbit swinging in his hands and was eying the rafters with speculation.

Tom and his sister had always been different, special, even if Mrs. Cole and everyone else tried to deny it.

Lizzie said not to say things like that, she always got this weird look on her face when he brought it up (because it was true and she knew it), and said that it was bad to look down on others just because they weren't like them; like they were supposed to want to be like Billy Stubbs or Amy or any of the other orphans.

He never knew why Lizzie was so insistent about it especially since Tom knew that she knew that he was right.

Maybe it was because she was so bored in school. She knew everything they taught before they taught it, had taught Tom reading, writing, and mathematics long before they even attended. He remembered their first day, when it was clear that both he and Lizzie knew everything he was teaching, he'd just kind of looked at them and told them to keep doing everything the class was doing anyways. Sometimes he'd let Lizzie read her thick books that she managed to get from the library but only after she'd done all the worksheets for the day.

Tom was bored in class, being the second best student, he had no idea how bored Lizzie must be by all of it.

But that wasn't really it though, it was too petty, shallow, something anyone might guess. Lizzie was comprised of layers, you peeled back one and there was always a thought beneath it, until you could go deeper and deeper without ever seeing the heart of her.

Tom had once overheard a conversation between their teacher and Mrs. Cole. It'd been in their first year of schooling, when Tom had thought there was some point to it, and hadn't realized that Lizzie already knew and had told him everything. He'd been coming in from the yard having gotten bored of watching Lizzie stare quietly out at the other children, not in the mood for talking, and had been making his way to the classroom.

It was on the way that he heard voices coming from a room, the door slightly ajar, and inside was Mrs. Cole and their teacher.

The school was for the orphans, so it was small, and they didn't have many resources but it meant that Mrs. Cole was kept well informed of things even if most of the time she didn't really care.

Lizzie said, when she was too tired and unhappy to pretend to play nice, that Mrs. Cole kept a closer eye on the gin in her desk drawer than she did on any of them.

"Riddle, the girl or the boy?" Their teacher had asked, Mrs. Cole must have asked about one of them, Tom stopped in the hallway and snuck closer to the door.

"Either, both." Mrs. Cole said shortly sounding a little frustrated and impatient.

There was a sigh from their teacher as if he'd prefer just to talk about one, "Well, they're both very smart, too smart. The girl at any rate is, not that the boy isn't but… Well, I'm sure you've noticed."

There was a short laugh from Mrs. Cole, "Did you like the Yankee accent she's got? Moment she started talking sounded like that and haven't managed to get it out of her."

"Yes, there's that…" The teacher said, and Tom was almost holding breath, wondering if he was going to say how Tom and Lizzie were so far ahead, how Lizzie had started telling him things about 'multiplication' and 'division' and 'fractions' when they were still talking about numbers and adding in class.

He didn't though, instead the two adults said nothing for a while, leaving Tom to stand outside there and wonder if they were ever going to say anything else. Eventually Mrs. Cole talked again.

"They've always been odd children; the girl and the boy. Never get into any mischief or anything like that but they've always been a bit alarming if you know what I mean. The boy's too quiet, too composed, like a little businessman and the girl… Well, she looks through to your soul, doesn't she?"

Later Mrs. Cole would replace odd with devil-child, when accidents started happening to the other orphans, when they wouldn't shut up and learn their place. Back then though, they were just odd, different, disconcerting.

There was some noise of agreement from their teacher and nothing else. Finally he said, "The other children are doing well, learning to read and write, little Amy's making fine progress…"

And after that they didn't say anything more about Tom and Lizzie.

He told Lizzie about it later, in their room that night, and she'd laughed so hard that she shook the bedframe.

"Too intelligent." She repeated in that drawling accent he'd never managed to imitate, that was so different from his own clipped version of English. He'd always liked the sound of it, that slow casual tone she always took that could somehow be blunt and brusque even while it wandered, "I like that, very polite."

He'd blinked at her, not quite understanding just like he hadn't quite understood when their teacher had said it, because being intelligent was a good thing. He'd known that the teacher had been hesitant to say it, had meant it as something else, but those words should have been a compliment.

Seeing his expression she'd explained with a bitter smile, "Too, Tom, it's the word too. He should have used 'very', 'too' means that it's in excess, like we've crossed some uncrossable line."

Too, he didn't quite get it then, but a few years later and the irony of it sunk in. He and his sister were always too much of something, for normal people anyway, they were too far beyond the rest of them and that made them scared. It was why all the orphans hated them, even Lizzie who said not to look and to just ignore them and wait for them to go away.

"They're children, Tom, they'll grow up and realize they have better things to do than to torment other children. Besides, it doesn't really mean anything." Lizzie would say after she'd find her school book ripped to shreds, all of her assignments and stories torn out and ruined, but her eyes would say more than she ever would.

Her shoulders would hunch over her possessions and when he wasn't looking she'd hold them too close, and she'd squeeze her eyes shut, and it would look like she was fighting back tears. He'd never seen Lizzie cry, only about to cry, and every time she looked close he felt like someone was stabbing him in the chest.

Tom hated church, he used to just dislike it, but now he hated it. If anyone asked him he'd have a few reasons.

One was that he'd realized that God didn't exist, God was a fairytale for people who were too scared to think about dying. If there was a God then there wouldn't be orphans, he and Lizzie wouldn't be trapped with stupid Billy Stubbs and crying Amy Bishop. But they were so there couldn't be a God.

So he'd stand and kneel and stand and kneel and sing hymns thinking that it was so stupid because no one up there was listening. They were singing to a ceiling and it didn't even bother to care.

The other, the main reason, was that he hated the idea of Jesus. Jesus Christ, better than everyone else, the best human there ever was, for three years roamed around the countryside performing miracles, and when he'd done that they tortured and nailed him to a cross and he still forgave them because they're too stupid to do any better. He just sat there and took it and pretends it was all okay when it wasn't, when it couldn't be.

Sometimes, when he saw Lizzie with her ruined books, when he saw the other girls staring at her and giggling to each other like they know some dirty secret, she reminded him of Jesus nailed up on that cross and taking it.

But Tom wasn't going to let her take it, even if she thought that was what was best, because Lizzie might know everything in the world but there were some things she'd never managed to get. Billy, Amy, Dennis, the whole lot of them would never change, they'd always be dirty, stupid, ungrateful, mean, orphans and they'd never be punished like they should.

There was no divine justice.

The rabbit was twitching frightfully in his hand, desperately trying to hop elsewhere with its useless legs. Looking in its eye, at its constantly moving nose, at the way it jerked, Tom couldn't help but think that Billy should learn how to look like that himself. Just like that, that same paralyzed fear, erratic twitching of the limbs, knowing it was the end but trying to run just the same.

It probably had some name, snowball, fluffy, whatever it was Tom hadn't been paying attention he'd just known that he'd finally had the opportunity to teach Billy Stubbs his place. To let them all know their place.

Something snapped, the rage inside him, the rabbit's neck, and it was dangling limply in his hands as if it wasn't anything more than a rag doll. Then concentrating hard, pulling deep within himself, he watched as the rabbit lifted into the air as if hung from an invisible noose, its eyes watching all who passed.

And Tom just grinned wildly beneath it, because surely this was a sign, he and his sister were intended for greater things than this.

Author's Note: Because I have too many ideas sometimes. At any rate as you may have guessed this is essentially an SI fic but with more general weirdness and less foreknowledge about Harry Potter but more into that later as well as what's going on exactly later.

More important, a note on the rating. I rarely write M'fics because it implies things that I don't necessarily write, namely graphic sex. However there are a lot of times where I'm writing something that's fairly borderline T because I want to use stronger language, push that disturbing edge a little further, and just be downright more horrifying. As I usually don't like changing ratings once I have them I'll just make this M from the start and see if it needs to be changed back to T as we go along. Because of this do expect strong language at points as well as creepiness beyond what I usually do. Graphic sex will most likely still remain absent.

Disclaimer: I don't own Harry Potter