SUMMARY: They were two sides of the same coin. Stuck in the same circumstances but choosing to make entirely different worlds out of them. Tommary Soulmate AU

AN: So, in this world, you are born with the first words your soulmate will ever say to you written on your wrist in their handwriting. This story is not meant as a Voldemort and Harry love fest. Canon still happens, but probably with a lot more drama when Harry realizes that his soulmate killed him and his family and that he only felt hate towards the man.

But, I believe that at all stages of his life, Tom would have had mental health issues but he isn't incapable of behaving humanely. I don't think he'd ever be a great person, but I believe, had he been raised with literally any love at all, he might have turned out morally grey? Maybe?

Either way, I am of the strong belief that nobody is born evil or loveless and that DUMBledore exacerbated the problem by not offering proper support to an emotionally damaged kid and antagonized him instead. Like, seriously, he was an eleven-year-old. He wasn't a monster, he was a kid. And yes he hurt other kids, but let's not forget that they often (not always) hurt him first. Most eleven-year-olds would return the favor. I'm not saying he wasn't cruel, just not truly a monster - he was an emotionally messed up child who was in need of some heavy therapy. Are bully children all suspect of being murdering psychopaths? I hope not. Especially when they haven't ever had any healthy guidance in their life and require support rather than condemnation. Sorry, I'm ending my rant now, read on.

One was life and one was death, and they swallowed each other whole with the weight of their destinies. They were never treated like human beings, but soldiers – playthings of conniving men or something to be feared.

They were the same and they were opposites. They were paradoxes and replicates. They were choices and coercions.

They were hate, and they were love.

(They were two sides of the same coin. Stuck in the same circumstances but choosing to make entirely different worlds out of them.)

In another life, they would not know of their connection. There wouldn't be words on their skin illustrating the cruelty of their lives by the hands of each other. There would be no indication that they could have ever loved one another, thoroughly and completely.

No. In another life, they would kill each other without knowing exactly what they were to each other. But in this life, they would kill each other with screams on their tongues and an ache in their heart.

This was important because it hurts in both lives, but in this time, it hurts worse because they know who they are to each other. This was important because it was a violation of their very souls.

This was important because they were two lonely boys killing the only person who could have ever loved them wholly and they knew it.

They would kill each other, yes. But they would die knowing that their soulmate hates them. They would die by the loathing curses of their other halves

They would break and crack and twist under the darkness of death. As they were both opposites and the same all at once.

Life and death, they circled like predators and they ate at each other's lives, hungrily.

Life and death. They were the same. But they were different.

(They were little boys drowning in loneliness and cruelty. They were only ever just boys...)

Harry died and lived again only to kill his soulmate and die inside a little more.

They both knew it could have been different. They both knew that Tom Riddle hadn't always been Voldemort and that Harry Potter hadn't always been the chosen one.

They both knew they were once the same – until they were very different.

Harry was the boy-who-lived, the chosen one, the stain of the Dursley family. He had never once been treated like a normal person.

And he hated it.

(And he hates even more that Voldemort was the exact same as he was in that regard. Because when you're not treated like a human being, you can either lose your humanity or succumb to it.

It's ironic that they both did the exact opposite of the other.)

There was an unbidden amount of pity when Harry realized what words must have been scrawled on the young, abused child's body in that dump of an orphanage decades ago. He thought back to his own youth and cringed at the fact that he may have made it all a little worse. Because who needed people knowing your own soulmate thinks you're a liar before you've even had a conversation.

('LIAR!'

Tom Riddle never had a chance.)

He remembers well the days when Privet drive thought him a delinquent freak rather than a neglected child and how much harder it would be to get help with words like that - he was sure his aunt would have spread it around.

At least Harry's teachers knew he was telling the truth. They just so happened to be unable to find any proof for their suspicions of abuse and supported him as best they could at school.

With words like that he wondered if they would have behaved the same way.

There was also the fact that a lonely boy could not even find comfort in the words on his skin. He must have felt so isolated; so hated. Harry thinks he would've gone mad - to have never felt love or kindness.

Even by his other half.

And it's true, of course - that Tom Riddle's other half hated him. Despised him.

But it quite possibly wasn't fair.

Because Harry Potter was able to trace the lines on his skin ('Avada Kedavra') and imagine a foreign greeting and feel warm inside of his little cupboard and maybe imagine going on a date to a café in a faraway land. He imagined traveling far away from the Dursleys and meeting someone who would understand – who'd care.

It was a sick thing, though: a broken bond that might have worked in another world. But in this one, in this one, it was a thing of fire and brimstone. It was a bond of broken glass and shattered hearts.

His soulmates first words to him were a murder attempt and the words on his soulmate's skin were a condemnation.

How cruel the universe could be to two souls entwined for eternity.

And yet, people said that Tom Riddle was incapable of love. That he never had a soulmate. That it wasn't his past that made him evil but his heart.

He can't help but feel it could have gone differently…

(And he wants to know, he wants to know and he has to –)

He had to know.

It was a difference in time that broke them apart, Harry thought. So he grabbed a time turner and scrambled to create another paradox in his messed up world and went to find his soulmate.

He might have been feeling a little desperate, but in too many worlds they died by the hands of each other - permanently and completely.

(In this one, they'll die by the hands of each other only to live again side by side in a world across time and space.)

Life and death were never so complicated as this.

When Harry reached 1936 in a body long lost and a place far away, he grinned unabashedly and ripped his sleeve up his small, thin arm.

On his newfound, child-like wrist, flowing cursive read 'Who are you and how did you get into my room?'

And he knew exactly what he was going to say.

Later that night, Tom Riddle awoke to a tiny, green-eyed boy sitting on the floor of his room with a large smile plastered on his tanned face. He jolted upright, instantly alert, and spat, "Who are you and how did you get into my room?"

And the boy laughed, his emerald eyes glinting with pure joy, "Well, I'm your soulmate, of course."

And, in this time, this place, Tom Riddle smiled back and meant it. And for once, they both felt a little human.

Fin