The Missing Piece

Four

It's Amanda who convinces Niall to go with the men. She takes his hand and leads him across the room to them where he looks down at the floor and holds his bunny beneath his chin and sniffs.

"I'm gonna be brave," he whispers, eyes flicking up to the two men who're supposedly his parents. He doesn't know what to believe. Everything is muddled and mixed up and a complete mess, and he wishes he could just wake up on his Dad's lap in their living room and for this to be all a dream but — it's not. It's real and he just wants to keep crying until his Daddy comes to get him.

It's the darker man who makes the first move. He crouches down in front of him and smiles, eyes watery but kind, reaching out tentatively to place a hand just beneath his shoulder and the top of his arm. Niall wants to flinch or yell, 'cause his Daddy always tells him the rules when he takes him out to the corner shop or lets him play outside or takes home to work with him — if a stranger touches him, he has to yell or run.

Except these men, Zayn and Harry, they're not strangers. Not really. He sees them and he knows that he's seen them before, maybe just in dreams or maybe in real life, but he knows. He just doesn't remember. All he remembers is his Dad and their house and Ms Jennifer and Bunny.

The thought of going out there now, with these people who aren't strangers but aren't his parents either, it frightens him. Going anywhere without his Dad is against the rules and it isn't safe, and now he's got to break that rule and that means he isn't gonna be safe.

His heart is racing inside of him and his shoulders are still hitching with the remnants of sobs as he peers across at Zayn.

"It's okay to be scared," the man assured him quietly again, thumb rubbing back and forth over his arm. "You don't have to be brave, just...just trust us. We love you, Niall, and we want to take care of you and keep you safe. You're safe with us, alright?"

Niall wants to believe the words so badly, but he knows that they can't be true.

"You're not safe when I'm not around," his Dad's voice echoes in his mind.

He just chews his lip and nods, sniffling as he looks back down at the ground. Amanda lets go of his hand and leads them out into the hallway and then towards the front doors.

It had been dark last night, when he'd been brought here. He'd been curled up in the back of a police car with a thick blue blanket wrapped around his shoulders and his face buried into Bunny, sobbing — he hadn't taken the time to look out of the window or take in any of his new surroundings.

So when the front doors open and everything is bright and loud, a crowded car park before a busy main road filled with queues of cars and beeping horns, he flinches and falls back, not following the two men, the officer and the social worker out of the building.

The tallest man with the curly hair and gentle face, Harry, is the first to notice. He glances over his shoulder then his features soften and he turns around, walking back towards Niall and holding a hand out to him hesitantly. Niall glances at the offering and then up to the man, chest heaving as he tries to suck in a breath through a throat that feels like it's closing up.

"It's okay," Harry whispers; the man that is supposedly his true father looking so honest that Niall almost believes him.

He swallows down his fear and turns his gaze back to the outstretched hand offered to him before reaching up with his own smaller one and wrapping his fingers around the man's palm. Harry smiles and his eyes look all shiny like he might start to cry again, which makes Niall's stomach go all twisty.

"It's okay," the man repeats quietly, and then he slowly leads Niall out of the entrance, into the winterish sunlight that shines on the icy concrete beneath their feet and reflects off the windshields of the parked cars.