Interlude [h.s]

seventy-nine

"A promise?" Harry sounds lost—like he wasn't expecting it. Alouette doesn't blame him. Who would there be for Alouette to promise anything to?

"I promised Amina I wouldn't leave again."

Harry frowns, and betrayal flashes through his eyes, disappearing as fast as the crack of thunder comes after lightning. "A promise to a five-year-old child."

There it is. The crack is breaking the ground under them deeper. The line is telling exactly why they are so radically different—raised to be different, raised to be apart. "A promise to my sister."

He flinches. She figures out why just a moment too late.

"Harry, I didn't mean—"

He blinks a couple of times, then turns around and takes the hoodie from the bed but doesn't put it on. "Of course," he says, but he doesn't sound like he's reproaching her. His voice is plain, but not threateningly so. It sounds like he's trying to make her believe her words haven't touched him, though Alouette knows they must've. "I don't have to explain why it isn't beneficial to you to organise your life around the promises you make to children though, do I?"

Alouette sighs. "I get where you're coming from, but it's my sister, and I promised."

"Some promises are meant to be broken. It would be a useful life lesson—the world hardly caters to people's whims."

"How could you say that?!" she hisses. "You don't break your promises either! You gave up on going back to the Palace nearly two months ago because of a promise you made to me." She's so angry she can hardly think, which is why she lets her mouth chase her thoughts carelessly. "Besides, she's my sister. Wouldn't you do all you can to keep a promise you made to your sister, too?"

Harry tenses up. Alouette freezes. For a moment, neither of them moves. He stares her down, and she has all the time to regret ever speaking before he goes in the bathroom and slams the door. The lock clicks, and the shower is turned on. By the time Alouette reaches the door, every sound on the other side is drowned by the running water.

She folds in on herself, her knees to her chest, her hand on the door. There's a lump in her throat, but she doesn't cry. She can barely breathe, the weight of the things she said and heard is smothering her.

When her legs start aching, she stands up. She considers leaving the room, but not being here when Harry comes back would make her seem weak, and she can't let it happen. She can't fight with one of the few people that are actually on her side in this place.

"Fuck, Alouette," she mutters under her breath, sitting on the bed. How is she supposed to fix this? Is it even hers to fix?

She feels so lost. In truth, she's been feeling like this ever since she got back to the Revolution with Harry, two weeks ago. Everything seemed so obvious, so linear, that a quiet, hidden part of her couldn't help but think it was wrong. In her experience, whenever things seem too easy, they never are.

She'd thought she could be at the Revolution alongside her father and still keep seeing her mother. She was wrong.

When Amina was born, she let herself believe she'd have her family back, but she was wrong. Her mother disappeared, and her father died.

She thought Asher could come to a deal with Harry back in February, but even then she was wrong.

She's wrong, wrong, wrong. Life does not care about her expectations. It doesn't care about making things quick or easy or less painful. So, when she saw the future she let herself dream of lined up straight in front of her two weeks ago, she knew it wouldn't be that easy. She couldn't let herself be fooled. Maybe that was why she made that promise, even though, deep down, she knew Harry would bring her back with him. Maybe it was her way to mess things up so that life wouldn't step in and do it for her. It was the most harmless way she knew to bow down to that eternal rule of existence that has whipped her around like a ship at the mercy of a tempestuous sea ever since she was born. Maybe, she thought self-sabotage would hurt less. Even then, she was wrong.