In the land of the hopeless [Harry Styles AU]

1. The day Harry met Aya

Music always sounds better when it comes with a story. Words aren't just words anymore, melodies don't just fade, and lyrics stay stuck in our heads.

That's what she was always told. Everything around her had taught her that feelings were always best outspoken. When they don't just are, but are a secret kept by more than one. Once we do this, we will find ourselves in a state of awareness with only two possible outcomes: our feelings may become bigger after our confessions, but there is also a small chance they will seem irrelevant; too stupid, too small. That is why it is always best to speak, to show. Even if we don't want to talk to another human being, there will always be the comfort of writing, of the slowly unwinding as words grow into sentences, and sentences into stories that are not just floating around lost and confused bodies. There is a certain therapeutic sense to it. It definitely helps.

But not for her. She always left words unspoken, feelings hidden. Not because she couldn't show them, not because she was scared, not in a tragic way. Tragic was exactly what she wanted to avoid. It was more of an act of rebellion. She figured, in a world in which everybody was whining, constantly relating to things, always trying to find comfort in something or someone else, it wouldn't hurt to have one quiet human being. She didn't want to think about her feelings, because they were what they were. Period. No self-loathing.

Music was to write and to hear for people who had stories to tell or were in search of stories to relate to, and she didn't have any. That is why she always thought of herself as a bad musician. She wasn't a real musician to be honest, she just covered random songs that sounded good, but it paid the bills.

She had arrived to London a year and two weeks ago; the reason behind it was she simply wanted to. There wasn't an actual motive for it, no heartbreaking explanation, no running away. She just felt she needed to live alone for some time, although she had always been somewhat lonely for as long as she could remember. 

Her name was Aya, and although she was nineteen years old, she felt much older. She tried not to think about it, as she did not know how to change it. It was just a sense of responsability that she wasn't expected to have at that age that surrounded her and consequently made her look at least five years older, and a lot more serious than she really was. She wasn't the type of person who you would expect to have a heart to heart with, but she was incredibly kind and weirdly funny, and could definitely listen. She spoke too much, she didn't give a lot of thought to what she did most of the time, but she could also enunciate whole books of reasons why she believed in the things that she did. She never complained, and wanted to experience everything there was for as long as she could manage to. This was the reason she did most of the things she did. Because she was certain life had fixed a date for her passing, and although she wasn't certain when, she knew she wasn't going to make it to see her grandchildren.   

Aya started working at Patty's bar on her eighteenth birthday. Patty was a man she had now known for about a year after he had found her at her most vulnerable state, lost and crying, shadowed by the corner she was hiding in. It was winter when it happened, and she was trembling, though he would never know if it was because of the freezing London air, or because she was overwhelmed by her own worries. She looked so small at the time, so scared and helpless.

It was the only time he had seen her that way. Once he had asked her who she was and what she was doing all alone in the middle of the night, he offered to buy her some hot chocolate in the hopes it would slightly calm and comfort her. She slowly recovered, and when warm blood rushed through her veins again, Aya returned to her usual self.

Since the first time he saw her, he knew there was something about her that stuck weather you wanted it or not. Aya wasn't exactly pretty, at least not in the common sense of the word, but she was incredibly attractive. She had a beauty that didn't fit a pattern, and that was what made her so special. Her nose was too big, something especially noticeable when she smiled, matching big, full lips. Her eyes where big too, slightly pointing downwards at the ends, filled with a very light brown shade, almost yellow-looking when the sun hit them. But she was pure, raw, dirty looking. She looked like herself, and that was what stood out the most about her; that was what made her so unique.