The Short Stories of Harry Styles

The Assignment: Part 9

"There is no possible way those memories are real. There are too many similarities between what she said and mine."

"So what, you don't think that we could have known one another? That we were partners before all of this?" My tone was annoyed, something I wasn't used to feeling but it seemed around him that something was happening to me beyond my control.

"I KILLED HER!" He shouted suddenly and I felt my palms twitch to reach for my knife or gun but pushed down the instinct as I realized the panic in his eyes.

He was scared.

"I fucking killed my partner. I remember it." He croaked out and finally brought his eyes back up to mine. Those mossy green eyes were shining in a way I'd never seen before. Harry's breathing was erratic, his chest puffing in and out quickly in anxiety and I felt, for the first time, like I should be comforting him....but I didn't know how.

"I remember killing mine too." I whispered into the profound silence, looking to Don once more who was now leant forward, elbows resting on his knees as he studied the floor in contemplation.

When I looked to Harry again, I felt something stir inside of me. Something tickling at the back of my mind. A detail that I had noticed about that specific memory. Harry must have noticed my musings because he reached for my chin to pull my face back up to look into his. The touch of his fingers against my skin were like little licks of fire.

"What is it?" He asked gently and I frowned as I recalled the information that seemed out of place in that specific memory.

"When I killed my partner...I looked at myself," it was his turn to frown in confusion and I straightened up, his fingers falling from my chin and I felt like I could breathe again, "none of the other memories are from a point of view outside of myself or in a way where I literally look into my own eyes...it seems like it isn't a real memory. I mean, I think the voice is real...but more so as a warning." The brown haired man looked at me skeptically, not completely buying into my theory but then Don spoke up.

"His memory is exactly the same," Harry shot him a look that screamed for him to shut up but Don continued, "he said he looks into his own eyes at the end. I've told him that in a memory, a true memory, you can't look into your own eyes like that. A memory does not happen from a different point of view outside of yourself." Harry wouldn't look at me. He just kept staring at Don like he'd betrayed him.

"I killed her. That is a fact and there is no way," his green eyes turned to me then and the denial was embedded there, "that she is my Karenna. I don't care what either of you say. You are not her," and with that he stalked off into his bedroom, slamming the door behind him, leaving me there wondering how it could be so impossible for him to imagine that I might be who he'd been looking for....that we'd found one another after all of this time...

...and that we finally weren't alone anymore.

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The realization that our memories might not be fake had us both startled...but no one is more startled than Harry. It seemed he had banked on the fact that those memories of himself as a child were figments of his imagination. Something concocted to make him feel not alone. "Fail safes" as he'd put them.

It was even more unrewarding that our memories specifically....had too many things in common.

I looked out of the bathroom, my hair soaking wet from the shower I'd just taken, and saw Harry sat at the edge of his bed looking out of the window. The moon was hung brilliantly in the sky, a giant iridescent ball that haloed the night sky in a stark whiteness that shined down upon the man looking up at it.