No matter how many times he repeats it to himself in the next few days, it doesn't magically start making sense.
Harry hasn't gone back to the manor since Niall's revelation, hasn't been able to face Louis with the weight of what Niall has found out hanging over his head. It's the first time he's missed one of their meetings since they started, and it feels wrong, but he's too... confused, too overwhelmed, to see Louis yet. Whatever he is, whatever it means.
Because Louis Tomlinson isn't dead. All this time they've spent looking for what happened to him, all those hours wasted at the library, all those trips to the Yorkshire Historical Society, all those damn pages he highlighted... All the lies he told while he was trying to get himself ready for the big reveal... It was all for nothing because Louis William Tomlinson is still fucking alive.
"Fuck," Harry mumbles, turning around on his bed and hiding his face into his pillow. His head hurts, and his heart hurts, and nothing makes sense.
He knows he can't keep ignoring the boys and reality for much longer, but it just seems easier this way. Because he got used to the idea, you know? It hurt to think of Louis as someone who was gone, but Harry was used to it. He was used to Niall's ghost babbling, and Zayn's skepticism, and Louis' ignorance of the whole fucking thing. And now? Now he doesn't know anything. He doesn't know what it means.
He only has Niall's voice in his ears repeating what Doris said over and over again, like maybe if he goes over the scene in his head one more time, it will stop being so confusing.
"What?" Zayn laughs, and of course, he laughs even though Niall's joke wasn't particularly funny.
"That's not funny," Harry declares, feeling a bit sick. He misses Louis sometimes. He's the only person in the world who can see him, but he misses him because he knows that Louis is dead. Niall can't come in like this and start sputtering nonsense. It's not fair.
"I know," Niall replies with a bitter chuckle. "I know it's not funny, but it's the truth."
"Doris told you that?" Zayn asks, brows furrowed and both hands joined against his face. If Harry didn't know better, he'd think he was praying.
"Yeah."
"Well she's old," Harry argues. "I mean, fuck. How old is she? She's probably just confused as hell. You called her and you... you confused her."
"He's not dead," Niall insists. "She's not confused, Louis is still alive."
"Stop saying that," Harry says through gritted teeth, tightening his right hand into a fist against his knee.
"It's true! He's in a nursing home in Doncaster. Has been there for the past few years."
"Niall, he can't be alive," Zayn tries to argue rationally in a soft voice, rubbing his hand soothingly against Niall's forearm.
"Do you think I want him to be alive?" Niall asks and for the first time since they've met, he actually sounds mean. "If he's alive, this whole operation is a sham. If he's alive... whatever Harry saw, if it's his imagination or an echo, or... whatever the fuck it is, it's not a ghost. It's not a ghost and I'm nowhere closer to proving what I have believed in. So no, Zayn. I don't want him to be alive. I think it's pretty damn inconvenient that he's still alive. I wish Doris was confused. I really, really do. But she's not. He's in fucking Doncaster, in a fucking nursing home, busy with being the second oldest man in Britain."
Zayn and Harry exchange a look when Niall starts laughing again.
"Finally, a corporeal apparition, and he's born in 1900, you'd think that's pretty safely a ghost. But no! He's still alive, and according to his nurse some days his memories isn't all that good, but overall.... Pretty healthy dude."
