"And do you regret it?" he asks, but Tom might find him sounding a bit distant, a bit...

Pete's being kind of a dick. Actually, he's being a sarcastic, acidic ass to this guy. This guy who........ would be Lord Voldemort if he were in Hogwarts but...

...he is not in Hogwarts, actually. And he's not Lord Voldemort. He's a teenager. And more to the point, he isn't a teenager who deserves the kind of scorn Pete's been directing his way, with the information someone else in Pete's shoes would have. Sure, the Pevensie boys think he's the devil, and he has been a rude fuck to all of them including basically calling Pete a dumb slut to his face, but if Pete hadn't gone down the fast track towards trusting them because they're the Kings of Narnia and the opposite track because Riddle is Voldemort, then...

"I don't regret things," Tom's saying. "But it's there to regret, if I take up the habit."

Tom Riddle is very charming.

...Pete thinks that that person would still be very suspicious of Riddle, sure, but that person would—well, he supposes it depends on who that person is. A version of Pete who is still a Mary Sue and has the powers he does but who hasn't read the original canon these characters are from would conclude that Riddle probably is someone he is meant to Fix, but he'd do so by trying to figure out what it is that he's meant to fix. By trying to understand who Tom Riddle is, why the Pevensies hate him, why he seems to hate them back, or at least to enjoy needling them. Why he's kind of an insufferable, charming dick.

Pete should LARP that person.

And not just LARP that person, actually. He needs to feel less, less...

...contempt. Hatred, even. Hatesex would be fun, probably, and a game of cat and mouse in which they're trying to fuck each other over and catch each other out without showing their hands too much would too, but where does that story lead? Does it actually end well, does it end happily for them? Maybe it does, maybe if he keeps doing this something will happen to make it work out anyway, but is that really the story he wants to tell? Him and Tom trying to destroy each other and failing due to narrative happenstance?

The thing here, Pete is realizing, is that the story he wants to tell isn't that.

Because I Can Fix Them is about pulling people out from the darkness with the power of love.

"What did you do to piss off the Pevensies so much?" he blurts out, noticing that he may have spaced out for kind of a long time, there. He's not sure Time Enough For Love would cover it, but maybe it doesn't need to. "...sorry, that was kind of abrupt and plausibly personal, you don't need to answer if you don't want to."

"If I don't tell you, are you going to ask them instead?" he asks quietly.

"If you ask me not to, I won't."

"Then why ask?" he wonders. "If you care so little about the answer."

"...it's not that I don't care about the answer, it's that it's not really my business and I'm not going to poke someone else's sore spots just to satisfy my curiosity when they don't want me to. Sorry, forget I asked, it was thoughtless."

"Ulyana Danylenko. In third form. She was... very intelligent, and did well with limited resources. I liked her."

"It didn't go well. Pevensie and his think it was my fault."

"And nobody could ask her."

Did you kill her probably not and also that is not at all something the character he's playing would be thinking so he decides he did not think it. What is he thinking instead.

...well, it's obvious.

"...oh. I'm. I'm so sorry." Aaaand now he's feeling like an asshole for asking or his character is he shouldn't break kayfabe and also he's not even sure to what extent Tom is even lying here. Even his canonical backstory had... rather a lot of suckishness and people being horrible to him? He's... he's still a person and still worthy of love and compassion and understanding and...

...stop breaking kayfabe. From the top.

It did not occur to him that it would be something like this and now he feels like an asshole for asking.

Tom smiles politely. "Don't say that to me ever again."

...shut up libido nobody's talking to you.

"Right. I won't." Wow he didn't actually predict the amount of awkward this would turn out to be.

Tom nods. "You may, at this point, ask a Pevensie for details. I really don't care. But I'd like my books back."

"R-right. Here." He's feeling horribly guilty and like he should apologize or do something to unruffle feathers but probably what he should do right now is flee?

Well, Tom's turning to go into the building just ahead. So he is spared, at least, that indignity.

Yeah. Uh...

(Should he only play that character around Riddle? ...probably not, actually? He should just do it all the time, for consistency and habit formation.)

...onwards to his next class.

A couple of classes go by without much narrative attention.

As lunch approaches, his phone buzzes.

monika declines to text you directly at this time but told me to say she will receive you now

i do not really know why she is like this

people explore their personalities and figure out who they are as teenagers and that is why we're all weird whackos

so I should go to her room? which one is hers?

fleischer hall, 217

To Fleischer Hall, 217!

The door opens, and the girl behind it... stares at him.

Then she laughs. "You're Tintin's assistant, huh? Come in, don't mind the mess -" (the room is spotless) "- I didn't know I was gonna be entertaining or I'd've gotten my face together, man, this is embarrassing."