The Mad Ones (A One Direction Fan Fiction)

Chapter Eleven - Always Come Back

            I looked away from Gemma, noticing my surroundings for the first time. I was in a forest, like everything I’d seen in that reality so far. The difference was little house, more of a shack really, perched next to us. Smoke was billowing from a cut out in the roof; a sweet scent came from the doorway.

            I could make out a form from within the shack, right through it’s doorway. It was tall, hunched over a table.

            “I’m not sure how much you remember other than my name, but I’m a doctor,” she told me, and a flash of Gemma, a different Gemma, went through my head. She held multiple pills in one hand, all in a single paper cup. In the other hand she held a water cup. But then the Gemma with green-rimmed eyes appeared, watching me more like a physiatrist than a physician. “The boy who’s with you is my brother,” she added, “younger brother.”

            “Why did you want to talk to me alone?” I asked, running my finger across soft skin of my inner wrist. My skin stung, and the ligaments connecting my hand to my arm strained to move.

            “I needed to make sure you weren’t faking this,” she told me, lowering her voice, and locking her eyes with mine. “If my brother heard me asking this he’d laugh and ask me to stop. I’d keep on asking and he’d get angry. I’d still ask though, because it’s important.” I gulped, and spit out a response.

            “Why would I be faking it?”

            “That’s the million dollar question,” she muttered, eyes never wavering. “Maybe you’re working for the red queen now. Maybe you’ve been brainwashed. Maybe you’re so traumatized that you can’t handle telling the truth.” She stopped talking, but her brain didn’t stop working. I could see the thoughts running through her head as she watched me, like I was an open book, although that’s anything but what I felt.

            I cleared my throat, running my reply over in my head before saying it. “I’m faking it,” I told her, not sure how I could prove it. “I’m scared,” I told, and as she flinched I noticed how much emotion I’d injected those two words with. My voice cracked on the second and my voice wavered on the first.

            She paused, lowering her eyes to the ground, where she moved dirt around with her forefinger. It seemed so childish, moving dirt into a pile, and I vaguely remembered doing it myself as a child. The memory was fuzzy, and watery though. I could see it clearly through the two filmy layers it hid behind.

            “I know,” she said finally, popping up like a jack in the box. Her eyes didn’t meet mine, but I saw the glassy look to them. “I’ll go tell Harry to come out,” she told, running a hand through tangled waves, “and I’ll go grab you something for that wrist of yours.”

            I looked back down at my wrist. I hadn’t said anything aloud to Gemma about it, but I guess she really was more of physiatrist than a physician.

            “I’m back, and I got you an apple,” Harry announced, and I looked up to see a blue fruit right before my eyes. I smiled and took it from her hand, taking a bite into it. Despite the odd color it tasted fine, even better than any apple I could reminder tasting.

            “Thank you,” I said in between chewing, and Harry nodded in his own version of ‘You’re welcome’. He settled down on the ground in front of me, crossing his legs, and watching as I took another bite of the peculiar fruit

            For a second we just stared at each other and a flash of a Harry from the other reality flickered in Wonderland Harry’s place.