Invisible || h.s.

43: Faces

Harry

It was dark, save for the thin strip of light pouring through the crack underneath the door. After days of being locked up, the steady dripping of the water somewhere in the cell had become a ringing echo in my head. Tap, tap, tap against the dirty floor, creating a haunting sound… Nearly drowning out the weak puffs of breath my ears still picked up from the other side of the room. 

It was the only thing I cared for anymore; the only proof that she was still alive. 

The first few days after our capture, she had cried, begged. Not yet resigned to her fate, she didn't fully understand the hopelessness of our situation. Now, it had been hours since she spoke last. 

Each passing hour, I wished she would have told me one of her stories: the ones I had initially despised, but grown to love. I missed her voice, her laughter, her smile. This girl, whom I was supposed to protect with my own life, was slowly fading away… and I was powerless to stop it. 

The room erupted into light as the door to our prison cracked open, and in came a man holding a single candle in his hand. 

"Before this candle burns out, she will be gone."

I said nothing, not wanting to give him the satisfaction of witnessing the turmoil he had caused within me. 

"Today, you will watch her die. This image will continue to haunt your dreams until your very last breath," I could feel him move closer, nearly hovering over me. "But you… You will live, Styles. In your case, death would have been an act of mercy." 

With my eyes firmly focused on my feet, I stubbornly refused to look his way. The shadowed outline of his figure now appeared on the floor beside my feet. My wrists, sore and bleeding from the harsh restraints, weakly attempted to get free just one last time. But then the man kneeled next to me, roughly grabbing my chin and angling my face in the direction of the girl. 

"Look at her," he taunted, "You killed her. It's on you." 

I felt panic bubble in my chest at the sight of her tiny, broken frame huddled in the opposite corner of the room. The bright butterfly print on her sundress—her favourite—was now caked in days worth of dirt, much like her once porcelain skin. All at once, I felt as if the ground had been ripped from underneath me. 

And then, her eyes snapped open. Dark hair turning blond, brown eyes becoming blue. 

"You did this to me!" she screamed at me in Hope's voice. 

I sprung upright in my bed, nearly falling off the plush mattress in the process. My hair spilled around my face, having fallen out of the bun I had worn to sleep. The loose strands clung to my skin—coated in sweat both from the unbearable heat on the island, and the nightmare I had just experienced.

Exhaling a heavy breath, I aggressively ran my fingers through the damp hair on my head. This was not the first time my dreams were flooded with those images, but Hope's appearance at the end of the sequence was a first. Maybe it was my mind projecting our current hostile relationship into my dreams, or just a warning of what could happen if I let my feelings cloud my judgement again. Either way, her presence there made it so much harder to move away from the feeling of helplessness raging inside my chest. 

I let myself fall against the mattress again, but the stifling humidity in the room was not helping me slow my pounding heart at all. I knew that there was only one place where one could get temporary relief from the heat on this bloody island: the beach. The temperatures would drop significantly at night, and the breeze caused a pleasant chill against the skin. With that thought in mind, I slipped out of the bed and made my way outside.