Surrender

Epilogue

Hi guys! Well, this is it. This is the end. Surrender is officially over. I started this story in March and it's taken me 7 months to finish, BUT! I did finish and I am honestly so happy. It's all because of you guys, and I love you all and I just wanna thank you for leaving such wonderful comments and actually sticking around this long! Comment your thoughts, I reeeealllly wanna know what you're all thinking. Enjoy! (: (:

-Whitney xx

6 months later

December 25th, 2014.

Psyche Ward of the Boston Memorial Hospital

Louis' POV:

The doctor's decided to start moving her to the chair by the window as a way to "boost brain activity" which is just their way of saying, "We're running out of ideas", so I sit in the chair in front of her and wait. I wait for a smile, maybe her lip to twitch, or her hands to move, anything. When she was first admitted in June they said she needed a couple months to recover from all of the trauma she experienced but here we are 6 moths later, on Christmas for fuck's sake, and there's been no change. She'd had some sort of mental break after they brought her into the hospital and slipped into a catatonic state, which basically resembles a coma but she's awake. I was sedated for a week after they brought me in, the stab wound perforated my bowel and after surgery and as much recovery time as they could get out of me, I woke up and had to deal with the after math... alone. Harry bled out on the scene, and even if the ambulance had gotten there right after it happened, the damage done internally would have killed him in surgery anyway, so we're supposed to find the silver lining in that, but honestly that's just bullshit. Death is death, there is no silver lining in it anywhere. Cal and Gemma were a mess for weeks, and at Lorraine's request, both of us were flown out and admitted here at Boston Memorial. My mom came to visit a few times, but we never talked about Harry, I try to avoid that conversation as much as I can, it's just not something I can face, not while Rae is still the way she is.  I don't even know if she knows we're here, and sometimes when I yell at her for hours, begging and pleading with her to blink or move a finger, I want to gloat and tell her that I did get her to come to Boston with me after all, that I won, and she can't run anymore. But she is running, from me and from herself.

The day of Harry's funeral I didn't come in to see her at all, but rather, I sat outside her room all day, that was back before her silence, but when all she could do was scream and cry. I'll always remember that day, the darkest day of my life. That day I buried my little brother and found out that my fiancée was in fact carrying my unborn child, but had miscarried earlier that day. She had suffered so much trauma and her body had undergone so much shock, the baby couldn't handle it, Rae couldn't handle it, and I'd be lying if I said I'd handled it. Before that day her surface was just cracked but then she just...shattered. That was also the day they moved her to the Psyche ward, strapped to the bed, screaming in agony like she was breaking from the inside out. I didn't see her for a month because they had declared her "unstable" but now I know every nurse by name and a few of their children's birthday's. This is my life now.

These days she just stares out of the window unseeing with her hollow eyes that somehow seem black at all times. I stare at them and wish I could see their familiar rich, brown color and the way they would shine every time she saw me, but there's nothing now. I'm a stranger to her. I don't even know if she hears me when I speak to her but I can't help myself, she's the one person I always want to talk to, and if by some miracle hearing my voice pulls her out of this, then I'll keep talking.

Most days I come in here and do the crossword, telling her the ones I can't figure out, waiting for her to get out of her chair, walk over to me and lean over my shoulder, furrowing her brow as she reads the question. Her hair would fall into her eyes and I would kiss her neck, my scruff making her laugh. God I longed for that laugh. I set down the paper, which is about a week old, and leaned forward, staring directly into her eyes that are, as usual, looking right through me.

"Rae," I say, reaching for her hand. It sits limply in mine, her thin fingers a sickly color of gray against my skin, "Merry Christmas." It's our first Christmas together and she isn't even really here. I drop her hand and sit back in my chair, my mind trying to find something or someone to blame, and my mind always comes back to the one person responsible for all of this; Peter. He's still out there, they never found him. There's a warrant out for his arrest and after a couple months of searching the case was closed. And that's all we know. We're suspended in time, waiting for something good to reach in and start the clock again, to make things the way they were. I stay up nights wishing I had gotten there sooner, or never left in the first place. If I had walked through that door 20 minutes earlier, 30 minutes earlier I could have saved them both. Harry would be alive and Rae... she'd be with me and I could have convinced her to keep our baby, we could have gotten married and everything would have gone the way it was supposed to. But like I said, this is my life now.

We sit in silence, or I should say, I sit in the never ending silence.

Her silence.

The silence that she finally surrendered to.