Purge (Larry Stylinson au)

Chapter 2

1 month later

Something changes inside of you when you lose someone you love. It's like this dull ache that never really goes away even when you're not thinking about them, but then as soon as they enter your mind, the ache turns into a sharp pain. It chokes you, twists your heart, and sends a waterfall of tears down your face.

Everything around you reminds you of them.

You go outside, but they loved the outdoors, so you think of them.

You try to eat dinner, but you're having pasta that night and it was their favorite food, so you think of them.

You try to sleep, but they used to share this bed with you, so you think of them.

Harry knows this all too well.

It's been a month since they had the funeral for Louis. They didn't even have a body to burry and that destroyed Harry more than it would have otherwise. Louis deserved a proper ceremony, but they couldn't even do that. By the time Liam and Zayn went back to the battlefield to try to recover his body, it had been taken away, probably disintegrated in one of the Purge's human furnaces.

Harry has barely left his room since the funeral. Niall's tried to get him to come out, telling him that he needs to move on, the Resistance needs him. He and Louis were their best fighters, and with Louis gone and Harry isolating himself, their forces are struggling.

Harry doesn't care much. All he can feel is grief. All he can think about is Louis.

He sits in his room all day, trying not to remember, sobbing, and screaming. Sometimes he kicks at the walls, or slashes his pillow with his knife, imagining it's the man who killed his boyfriend. He's put on weight around his stomach, but that makes sense as he does nothing but sit and eat all day. His usual strict training regime has fallen apart and he can't find it in himself to care.

The stomach bug he had contracted a month or so before Louis died has come back as well. Harry's nauseous all the time, and always exhausted. He hates it.

Now, he sits slouched against the wall of his bedroom, trying not to stare at the spot on the bed where Louis used to sleep. It's quiet. He likes the quiet. He wants it to be quiet forever. 

He wants everything to end so he can just drown in the quiet.

Unfortunately, however, the silence doesn't last.

"Harry?" comes a knock at his door. "Can I come in?"

Harry sighs and stands. He opens the door to reveal Niall standing there with a piece of bread in his hand.

"I come bearing gifts," Niall says, smiling slightly.

Harry says nothing, just opens the door wider to let him in.

"Listen mate," Niall begins, handing Harry the bread, "I think you should go see the base nurse."

"I don't need to-"

"You've been puking nonstop for weeks, Haz, that's not healthy." Niall looks at him firmly. "I know you're sad, and grieving, and you don't want to feel anything or whatever it is that you're doing holed up in here day after day, but I care about you and you're really sick, whether you want to admit it or not."

"I'm not sick," Harry protests, but of course, as soon as he says that, a wave of nausea washes over him and he turns to the wastebasket in the corner of the room, emptying the contents of his stomach into the bin.

"Not sick, eh?" Niall smirks.

"Shut up."

Niall sighs. "Just come with me to see Rose, okay? I just want her to make sure you're okay. Please?"

Harry gets to his feet shakily, protesting only slightly when Niall takes his arm and guides him out of the room.

On their way to the infirmary, Harry nibbles on the piece of bread Niall offers him, muttering a quiet thanks for the food. He knows he probably wouldn't have found the motivation to go down to the mess hall to retrieve his own dinner, so the sustenance is quite welcome.

When they reach the infirmary, Niall finds Rose, the Resistance base's best doctor, and explains Harry's symptoms. Harry feels like he's back at the doctor's office with his mother, watching her answer all the nurse's questions for him because he didn't know the answer to any of them. That happened at every annual checkup he ever had and he smiles slightly at the memory of his mum.

But then Rose is guiding him to a bed covered in white sheets. She begins to work on him, taking his blood and checking his heart rate and blood pressure and reaction time.

"I mean this in the most loving possible way," Rose says, lifting Harry's shirt, "but you seem to have gained quite a bit of weight since I last saw you. But only around your stomach, which is a bit strange."

"Well I haven't been training much since..." Harry trails off, unwilling to talk about Louis just then.

Rose nods. "I understand. I am going to feel around there a bit though, just to make sure everything's okay. Is that alright?"

Harry nods and Rose presses her gloved hands to his belly, feeling the shape of it, pressing against it to determine if they should be worried. Her eyebrows furrow as she works and she eventually pulls her hands away.

"Harry, I wanna do an ultrasound while your bloodwork is being processed," Rose says then. "I have a theory, but I wanna check if I'm right."

Harry nods and lies back against the bed, raising his eyebrows at Niall, who shrugs from his place in the chair beside the bed.

Rose pulls out a old looking piece of equipment on wheels with a screen and controls. She grabs a bottle full of blue gel and begins to squeeze it onto Harry's belly. He shivers at the cold liquid, but then Rose pulls out a wand of sorts, attached to the machine beside her.

"It's a bit crude," she says, gesturing to the ultrasound equipment, "but it gets the job done."

She then places the wand on his belly and begins to spread the gel around with it. Images appear on the screen in fuzzy black and white. It all looks like a bunch of blobs to Harry. He doesn't even know why they're doing this. It's just a stomach bug.

Then, suddenly, Rose stops. Harry looks up at the screen and sees a blob that looks a bit different than the others.

This one looks almost like a human head, with a half developed body attached to it.

"No way," Rose breathes.

"What?" Harry asks, although he's starting to understand. "What is it?"

"I-" Rose says, but a little device in the corner of the room beeps. She drops the wand and the image disappears. Rose rushes over to the equipment in the corner and pulls up a new window on the screen attached to it. That was where she had taken his blood to be tested.

She comes back with an unreadable expression. Harry isn't sure if she's smiling or frowning or somewhere in between. All he knows is that something big has happened.

"Harry, I don't know how to ease you into this news, so I'm just going to say it," Rose begins, looking at Harry and Niall, who has made his way over to his best friend, taking Harry's hand in his own.

Rose takes a deep breath before uttering the words that Harry knows will change his life forever.

"Harry... you're pregnant."