"So... sir?" Alouette murmurs after some moments, shooting Harry a hard look. An outer observer wouldn't be able to pick up the sharp edge in her voice, but she knows he can. He doesn't let anything slip by unnoticed.
Harry side-glances at her. "Am I not allowed to have some fun?"
The stubbornness in his reply makes rage blaze in her chest. "You—" She closes her eyes for a second and reminds herself where she is. She has just escaped from the Palace guards bringing their dear President with her, and they're likely being chased in this very moment. There's no time to get mad at him.
He seems to notice the same thing, because the ghost of a smile curves his annoyingly red lips. She isn't sure she'll survive another car ride with him, he'll make her go crazy by the end of the day.
Alouette's hold tightens on the steering wheel. "You know, you had me worried for a second there." For an hour, her mind corrects her. He pretended to be enjoying her demise for more than an hour. She knows it was all a ruse, now—a predictable one, at that. She should've known he would've found a way to play her since they first made their deal. It was only a matter of time.
"I'd never," Harry replies, and Alouette rolls her eyes.
"We both know that's not true."
He hums. "You deem me to be so heartless, Lark."
"That's because I know how you think by now." She doesn't miss the fake outrage that flashes on Harry's face. "Don't pretend to be so innocent, Harry, I know you aren't and you do too."
A troublesome little smile is on his face, now. "I kept my part of the deal."
"You forced me to use your part of the deal," Alouette corrects him, "when it suited you the most."
"You asked for a wish, did you not?"
"You know that's not how I intended to use it."
A wish. In truth, a wish can be a troublesome promise to keep. Most people would never risk getting tangled into something so thorny, so unpredictable. But Harry isn't most people, and he's the only person in the country that has the power to make any wish come true. He knew that, when he accepted the deal. But having power doesn't mean he wants to use it, and he saw how dangerous the bargain he fell in was from a mile away.
In a sense, it was Alouette's fault. She should've known Harry wouldn't have left her the choice to choose her wish. To anyone else, what he's done might look like madness, but to him, it was a simple move of convenience. Letting her escape with him in her power was much better than letting her claim any kind of influence over him, and so he drove her to the brink of desperation. And when she was hopeless, one step away from the edge of despair, he threw her a bone. Maddening, but brilliant.
Alouette hates him.
"There's no telling what the future will bring," Harry says. "If you didn't want me to win, you shouldn't have let me."
"And let myself get dragged to the Palace?" Alouette laughs. "You wish."
"You could've thrown yourself on my mercy then, I can be quite forgiving after a glass of wine or two."
"I'm afraid not even a whole bottle would be enough to wash away my sins."
He smiles. "Then I would've thrown you into the dungeons."
"You actually have dungeons?"
Harry tilts his head. "I don't, but I have a couple of cemeteries. It can't be that different, can it?"
It most definitely can, Alouette thinks, but she doesn't say it. She isn't in the mood to teach a quite spoiled son of royalty that murder and imprisonment aren't quite the same thing—especially when he's the one with three university degrees to his name.
She'll have to find another way to tie him to her. She came too close this time, and now she's lost her only advantage. The world she tried so hard to build is crumbling around her, but she won't give up so soon. When there's a will, there's a way, and she will find that path through the adversities before her or die trying.
"We'll have to stop to buy some things," she states. "We lost everything."
"It's risky," Harry replies.
"It'll be riskier to get on the road with nothing to eat." They need to drive as far away as they can—to the opposite side of the country, if it'll come to it. "There's a small town not far away from here, we can stop there. If we're fast enough, nobody will notice."
They get to the town only about fifteen minutes later. It's a small thing, not more than fifty buildings put together, dilapidated as if they belong to another century, a small train station and a mall.
That, according to what Alouette has read about it when she was still in the Revolution.
As soon as their car drives through the first houses, she realises that something is wrong.
The windows of the lower floors are smashed. The shards of glass hang from the frame like sharp teeth, the ones on the street crinkle under their wheels and glint in the light of the setting sun before them. The fragile wooden doors are falling from their hinges, there's stones and bricks blocking their path. The people are on the street, shouting to each other, swiping up the glass, trying to fix the damage as they can. The cameras are destroyed, gunshot holes have blackened the pixels of the three advertisement screens they come across.
Alouette stops the car. "Stay here, I'll go take a look around," she tells Harry. She gets out of the vehicle without waiting for a reply on his part and locks the door. She looks at him as she does that, waiting for him to give her any sign, but he doesn't even flinch.
She turns into another street. The mall was completely raided, all the doors are broken and lying on the floor. Wherever she looks, there's just destruction and desperation. Nobody pays attention to her, they walk around her as if she was invisible, trying to fix the disaster they're standing in. But this cannot be fixed—it's like the aftermath of an earthquake, but the bullets in the buildings make it clear that this was no natural disaster. She wants to stop someone to ask what in the world happened, but she can't risk being recognised, not here.
Alouette goes back to the car and gets inside. "Let's go, we won't find anything here."
She feels guilty as she drives away and leaves the city behind, but she knows there's nothing she can do. The police should be alerted—the army, the Palace. But none of them will answer to the call, because their President is sitting right beside her.
The sun has disappeared behind the horizon, by now. She's driving fast, and they're so far away from the cities that they can see the stars in the sky. Sirius blinks down at them from the inky darkness shrouded above them, bright and blue and true. She hasn't been able to spot it since she left for Northfair.
She drives into the night. The silence that has fallen above them since they left the city is still dominating the inside of the vehicle. She wonders what Harry's thinking about—does he not care because it's a small, poor town, or is he cursing her name because she's the one that's keeping him from doing something about it? She doesn't dare asking.
When the digital clock of the car shows they're close to eleven, she turns into a side street and parks in a secluded spot in the middle of nowhere. She makes sure the doors are locked, and then lowers her seat.
"We're going to have to sleep here," she announces. "We'll stop in another city tomorrow morning."
Harry lowers his seat as well and turns to his side to look at her. "What makes you so sure I won't escape, with my guards so close?" he murmurs in his usual teasing tone, his voice low.
"The doors are locked," Alouette replies, her eyes closed.
"I could open them."
"I'll hide the key."
"I'll wait for you to fall asleep and find it."
She opens an eye. "True," she gives in. "Then I'll have to make sure you won't run away." She sits up and climbs over the handbrake.
"What are you doing?" Harry asks, faint urgency in his voice. It's the first time she hears a hint of panic from him. Good.
"I told you, I'm making sure you won't escape," Alouette replies. She gets on his seat and makes him lie down. One of her legs finds its resting spot over his, and she lies down next to him. in the little space of the seat, she's almost lying on top of him, her head on his shoulder. "Now you're trapped," she whispers in his ear. Truthfully, it's her tiredness speaking, but she doesn't miss the way his breath hitches all the same.
She closes her eyes. The car is turned off now, and the cold from outside is seeping inside the vehicle. She's wearing a jacket, but Harry isn't. She hopes she'll be enough to keep him warm.
She can hear his shivering breath now, in and out from his parted lips, so lightly that she wonders whether she's hearing it at all, or simply perceiving it. One minute goes by, then two, then ten. He doesn't say a word, and she falls asleep.
She wakes up a couple of hours later.
She can't tell what has woken her up, at first. The stars are still up in the sky and the world around them is void of human presence. Even the car is still off and she's in the same position she was in when she first closed her eyes. Her neck hurts a little, now.
It takes her a couple of minutes to realise that she isn't the only one who's awake. Harry's breath is a little louder than before, his chest is going up and down a little faster. Not enough to be concerning, but enough to tell her that he definitely isn't asleep.
"Harry?" Alouette asks faintly, not lifting her head from his shoulder. Her hand is on his chest, she can feel his heart beat fast under her palm. He shouldn't be awake, but she doesn't even know why she's so surprised. Even at the Palace, he hardly seemed to sleep. She shouldn't care about it... but she does. And she doesn't want to keep watching it happen in silence. She rubs his chest gently when he doesn't answer. "Talk to me."
"I've never needed anyone by my side," he murmurs. She knows it's an overly polite way to tell her to mind her own business.
"I understand."
He tenses up. "No, you don't."
She lifts her head to look at his face. He's glancing out of the window, and doesn't let her eyes meet his. "Will you let me, then?" she asks.
He clenches his jaw. "That bridge's long burnt."
"Does it really have to be?"
Harry sighs.
"You need to sleep, Harry," Alouette tells him, "more than just a couple of hours per night. You're exhausting yourself." Her eyes travel over the dark shadows under his. "If this is about your safety, I promise you I won't do anything to you, and I won't let anything happen to you. But please, just sleep."
"Don't flatter yourself so much," he replies, but the harsh words are dampened by him resting his hand on her waist.
She tries to ignore the way his touch burns into her skin. His arm is wrapped around her, and she feels oddly safe. Oddly, because she knows that, if he could, he would ruin her without a second thought.
"I don't have nightmares, if that's what you're wondering," Harry continues, his voice barely above a whisper. "I don't dream."
Alouette gives him a curious look. "Never?"
"Rarely. When it happens, it usually isn't pleasing." He frowns. "I can't remember a time in which I was able to sleep through a whole night." His voice is low, his words fast. His touch moves up and down her arm, but she suspects it's more to soothe himself than her. "The first time I fainted from exhaustion after becoming president, I was prescribed sleeping pills. It was the only way I was able to sleep without having to run myself into the ground for days just to get through a whole night."
Alouette frowns, worry bubbling up in her heart. She's never heard anything about this before. Now, she wonders how she missed it. "Why can't you sleep?"
His fingers still on her arm. "I think it's instinctive," he says after some moments. He doesn't clarify, and she doesn't ask him to. He presses on her arm unexpectedly gently. "Go to sleep."
She doesn't want to leave Harry alone in the night, but his touch on her side is soothing and his body is warm under her, and her eyes close again by themselves.
The next time she opens them, it's raining.
Droplets streak down the windows of the car in a continuous soothing song that makes her want to go back to sleep. But the sky is grey, not black, which means it's day. They need to move if they don't want to risk being caught.
She slowly sits up, and discovers Harry is sleeping under her. She doesn't know when he fell asleep but remembers the conversation they had the night before, so she carefully makes her way back to her seat. Even though she wants to drive away, she forces herself to cuddle up against her seat instead, not wanting to accidentally wake him up by turning on the engine.
It isn't long before Harry wakes up as well. She studies his movements as he pulls up the back of his seat again, and comes to the conclusion that he has to have gotten at least four hours of sleep. It isn't much, but it's better than nothing. She's a little less worried than she was last night, now.
He doesn't mention their conversation, and neither does Alouette.
• • •
The next city they encounter, thankfully, hasn't been attacked. Alouette makes use of the credit card Harry has so kindly taken from one of his guards—the shiny silver one, issued by the Palace—and empties it at the first bank she sees. It's way too easy, especially when Harry knows all the security codes. She only gets some hundreds from it, likely the money the guard was given to go on that mission, but she knows the money will last a long while.
After that, it's a race against time. It won't be long before the Palace is notified of the transaction, so she buys some food, some drinks and new clothes as fast as she can. In under half an hour she's back into the car, and they're speeding out of the city. And of course, she makes sure to change direction—she won't make it so easy for them to follow her anymore.
"Who do you think it was?" she asks Harry while driving. "The town from yesterday, I mean."
Harry shoots her a look.
"You know it wasn't the Revolution," Alouette replies, glaring at him. "I'm not one of your clueless citizens, spare me the 'Revolution is the enemy' speech."
"Well, it wasn't the Palace," he simply says. "There aren't many other options, are there?"
After that she doesn't ask again, fearing she would end up abandoning him on the side of the street if she heard him badmouth her father's organisation one more time.
They go from city to city in a similar fashion for four days.
During the hours of light, that become fewer and fewer with the arrival of the cold season, they visit city after city, sometimes finding them whole, sometimes finding them raided. Alouette keeps track of the names of the cities she discovers were attacked, but doesn't dare to stop anyone to ask if they know anything about it.
During the night, under a starry sky they could only dream of in Northfair, they talk. At first it's trivial things, like the food or the moonlight or how tired Harry is of Alouette dragging him around with no purpose, and she of his antics. Harry is usually cutting an apple with the knife she gave him as they argue. He puts slices in his mouth without sparing her a second glance as she complains, and she's sure she's about to scream.
They don't talk about that afternoon they kissed in her father's apartment, but strangely enough, it doesn't feel like they've taken a step back. Maybe it's because, after that first night, Alouette finds her way to his seat a couple more times.
As the days go on, their conversations start to deepen. Harry doesn't like to share, and he hardly does. But still, Alouette discovers he misses the Palace, because it's all he's ever known. He misses his expensive whiskeys, and she his equally expensive strawberries. She can't call that becoming closer, she's quite sure of it, and yet it helps her start to understand him better. It doesn't matter how hard he tries to hide it, he's a human just like her. The longer he spends away from the Palace, the easier it becomes to separate the person from the role, the President from the twenty-six-year-old.
"A secret for a secret?" Harry says one night.
A secret for a secret?
The question strikes her, hard. She remembers the first time he asked her that, on the balcony of her room at the Palace. Back then, when she was just starting to play with him, to discover what made him jump, what made him react. Now, their situation is so different that she almost wants to laugh.
She raises the apple she's eating. "This is way too watery and I regret spending so much on it."
Harry lets out a chuckle, that warm, dark but pleasing sound that's just his. "I regret not letting my guards take you back to the Palace. We could've had a... most pleasing evening there."
Alouette lets out an outraged sound. "What kind of secret is that?!"
"One as bad as yours." He leans over the handbrake, his face inches away from hers. "It's most definitely not a secret that I would love to have you back in my room."
She scoffs and looks away. "I don't like this game anymore."
Harry doesn't falter. "Give me a good secret, then."
She presses her lips together. "What kind of secret?"
"A good one, if you want a good one in return."
"Let me think." It's a dangerous game, but the temptation is high. She could tell him about Elijah, or about her sister. She could tell him about her family, or about how betrayed she feels by what Ezra did. By the way he had her attacked in broad daylight, after all she risked for him, for them all. As if she wasn't a Ivenhart, but a stubborn enemy. How dare he? How can she trust going back to them, after the way he threatened her? How can she trust him with her family? She believes in her job, and in the Revolution. She wants to be with them. Maybe that's why it stings so much. "I'm thinking of leaving the Revolution," she whispers.
"I can't stop thinking about that afternoon," Harry whispers back.
Alouette can't tell which secret hits the hardest.
Sorry for the little delay! I hope you enjoyed this chapter. x
Miki