Legendary // H.S

51.

TW: domestic abuse, trauma, violence 

also: please do not leave comments about other fanfics here. i get there's inevitable similarities with every story,  but i'll be honest, i find it really annoying when details i've thought of have been completely brushed away because of another story. just a thought. love you all. 

*

'Shall we look at the moon, my little moon?'

*

Harry

It's dark. Cold. Lonely.

There's a slight knocking against the floor that haunts me, pulling me out of my sleep and forcing me into reality. My eyes begin to scan around the room, finally landing on the source of it, but it's the last thing I expected to see.

Not this, anything but this.

'Get up, boy,' he orders, voice horse from the cigarettes he's smoked over the years, body reeking of cheep beer. The same scent that I remember, lingering around me like a candle in the wind. It will never leave me, despite how hard I try to wash it away. To replace it with sweeter scents like that of lilies. They're too pure for this world, I think to myself sometimes. They'll wilt if they're met with the smell that emits from his pores again.

Despite his words, I cannot move. I am paralysed. Incapable of escaping or obeying, just like I always have been. Try as I might, I'll always be trapped in this cycle; these are the cards I have been dealt.

It doesn't stop him from hitting his stick against the floor again, using more force behind his arm now so it echoes around the room. This isn't where I fell asleep. This is where I grew up. A home that became a prison, a bedroom that became a shelter until he found his way in and demolished it.

This is how it always happened. I would go to bed early in hopes he wouldn't bother me, until it reached 8pm and he pulled me out of my pillars of protection and forced me into the living room where the people I care most about in the world shook in fear. When it first started, they would look at me with hopes that I'd be able to help them, run to a phone maybe or get out the house to alert someone of what was about to happen. He was always faster than me, though. Stronger. Smarter.

After a while that look changed to pity and forgiveness. They were sorry I had to see it but forgave me for not being able to end their suffering. Until it was my turn to hurt them. Then it changed to terror. I never thought I'd have to do it; I'd naively convinced myself that I'd be able to escape before it was my time. Run away and take Mum and Cara with me once I was old enough to know better. Start a new life and never look back.

In some ways that did happen, but only because he died. Only because someone else took it upon themselves to murder him before I could. I should have done it years before, but I'd been conditioned to be quiet, to listen, to obey. In my mind, I had convinced myself not even the swiftest bullet could kill him, not even the sharpest blade would stop him. Until it did. There was no remorse when he died, only relief.

Yet, I still find myself being visited by the man I have hidden from since then. At night, when I try to rest my body, it is his face that I see. And every time it feels just as real as the days it happened. Like I'm back in the room, feeling the warmth of the central heating on my skin,  the experiencing the sting of the harsh lights that swung in the hallway, hearing the crackle of the fire in the corner. It's not just a memory, it's history repeating itself.

I'm not sure what made him this way, why he felt it necessary to punish us despite our familial links. Perhaps his own father made him endure it; a right of passage in the Styles family. Passed down to each son as if it will consolidate their place in the line. A draconian heirloom. Regardless, there are no excuses for it.