"Harry?" I ask as we lay in his hospital bed. He touches my bandages that wrap around my chest and down my torso tightly. He runs his hand over the gauze fabric gently to avoid inflicting any pain.
"Hmm?" He hums keeping his lips closed while I twisted my finger around one of his chocolate brown ringlets.
It was strange that I felt completely different towards him when he was himself. He was a whole other person when H took his form, everything was different. He didn't feel the same as Harry did.
"Where do you go when the darkness takes over?" I ask him wondering if he was going to give me the same answer as H.
"Away..." he mutters to me while I nuzzle myself into his chest. I make minimal movements as to not cause too much pain to myself.
"What does that mean exactly?"
"It feels like I'm being sucked into a black hole, like I'm slowly fading away. It's like my body is on autopilot and I can't take back control," Harry tells me kissing the top of my head ever so softly. I missed his sweet gestures that pulled me in from the start. He was my everything and I couldn't stand to lose him again.
"Can you hear or see anything that is happening?" All kinds of questions circulated in my head. I didn't know if Harry was capable of answering all of them but maybe we could both start to understand what it all meant. I could help him understand what I knew about H and maybe he could shed some light on his perspective.
"Not everything, it's almost like I'm blindfolded. I'm confined to a chair and I'm cuffed to it, I only see and hear what it wants me to which isn't a lot," Harry tells me while I lay my hand on his chest breathing slowly. I feel his warmth and comfort encapsulate me, I missed this.
"Have you tried talking to it? The darkness?" I watch the streams of light illuminate through the blinds and create lines of shadows and light. The dust in the air floats wherever the light streaks stream, my eyes following the flow.
"No, I can't..." Harry tells me in a strained and hesitant voice, as if he were a little boy afraid of his own shadow.
"Why not?" I didn't want Harry to feel like I was prying too much but I was just trying to piece everything back together in this jagged puzzle.
He doesn't say anything and leaves me with silence until I ask a follow up question that may just be the answer.
"Are you afraid?" I sit up to look at him and see his eyes shatter into a million emotions all at once. A twisted mixture of fear, frustration, and anxiety coat his jade green eyes and somehow I can tell that my question confirmed his feelings. I wasn't going to press him hard on answering because I knew he didn't want to say it out loud.
He was afraid of himself.
He was afraid of what he might be capable of.
We are all afraid of the unknown but for him that took on a whole new meaning. He was afraid of losing control to the unknown.
"I never want to hurt you," He tells me running his hand down my cheek and holding my jaw lightly while I lean into his hand.
"You couldn't possibly hurt me Harry, you are too sweet. There isn't a bad bone in you," I want to drill this into his mind as much as I can. I didn't want him to think he was a bad person or that he possessed a trait that could cause harm. Harry was different than H in every way, shape and form.
"Then how come all I feel is bad?"
"Listen to me Harry," I tell him scooting closer to see the sadness dip in his eyes. Shades of blue color him from top to bottom and I take ahead of his soft hands. "It's because you are good. Bad people don't feel bad, you are good Harry. The fact that you asked that tells me that,"
"My mind is broken Elle, I can only see fragments of myself," I hadn't ever seen Harry be so honest with me. Everything he said was laced with raw emotions that I hadn't experienced before. Never have I felt so close to him as I did now.
"I know all of you, and I will bandage what needs to be bandaged but your mind isn't broken. Your mind is beautiful Harry, you just have an extra person fighting to live inside there with you," I said referring to the infamous H.
H wasn't evil even he liked the title. He hid behind the crazed psychotic act but at his root H was just a boy that absorbed a lot of really bad shit. He was abused and protected Harry's delicate mind from all the neglect and abuse but in turn he had multiple screws loose.
H was violent and impulsive, he was self destructive, and controlling. He was all of this because he learned it from the abuse, it was all a cycle. This was a learned behavior, I was going to go as far as to say Harry wasn't born with H. H was created by Harry's mind to cope with the ultra violence he was experiencing at the hands of his own mother.
"I need help Elle, I really do..." His voice falters and a lump swells in my chest hearing his steadiness dissipate. "I'm losing my mind..." his eyes glass over and I take his face into my hands.
"Harry..." I cry breaking down, my palms are pressed against the sides of his head while I kiss his forehead softly. I hold him in my arms and pray that I never have to let go of him. I didn't know how to make him feel better, he was inconsolable and it made me feel helpless.
I let the tears fall and run down my cheeks until they dipped on to Harry's medical gown shoulder. What could I say to him? How could I make him feel less afraid? I didn't want him to feel like he was crazy because he wasn't. He was my sweet Harry that I couldn't imagine losing.
He would break if he knew what H had done. He would never forgive himself if he knew that H took someone else's life with his hands. He would never ever be the same.
I think he would break in half if I told him I was pregnant. I knew it was Harry's baby but why did it feel like I was cheating? It was Harry's body but it was another personality. Did I lie and tell him I was pregnant before all that happened? I wasn't sure how to approach that or even if I should. My time was running out. That's all I knew for sure.
"Don't cry...." I tell him sobbing and feeling his body tremble underneath mine while I held him. Harry didn't often cry so when he did it brought things into perspective, it let me know that he had been severely affected. "You're breaking my heart,"
"I just want to be better..." he whispers holding onto me like a lost boy who lost his parents in the grocery store. "Just make me better,"
"I will baby... I promise you..." the words barely left my lips since the sobs had cause lumps in my throat to clog any words from coming out.
+
I watch as his chest moves up and down slowly while he falls captive to his dreams, the one place he can be at peace. The one place that can take him away from his darker realities.
If only I could lift the hurt from his deadly diseased mind. I wanted more then anything to relieve the internal pain that clawed at him from all directions. The sad dawning reality was, was that I couldn't. I couldn't take away the being that ruled his mind and fought for dominance.
The only solution I had was to try and love and accept H because at least for now I knew he wasn't going anywhere. He was the other had of Harry even though Harry despised him. Harry could make H leave with a snap of his fingers, H was powerful and asserted himself with force.
Harry just needed to learn how to cope with H and H needed to learn to cope with all his violent tendencies. I needed to show him that none of that was necessary, that Harry didn't need the same protection he once did when he was little.
Harry was grown and could protect himself now, he didn't need H to shield him from his mother. H was chained to Harry's mind and demanded dominance but what if I showed him he didn't need to give himself a chain? What if somehow I set H free? Was that even possible?
Even though I never wanted Harry to leave me I did however need H's help. I had these investigators up my ass about the murder H committed, the same murder I was an accessory to. I didn't know what to do with all of that but I had a good intuition that H would know exactly how to fix this.
I was at war with myself with wanting Harry but needing H. I knew H could bail us out of this situation but at the cost of losing Harry for who knows how long. Harry had his strengths but he would be crippled with guilt if I told him about the murder, it would ruin him. I couldn't tell Harry because at that point I risked losing the sweet and innocent man I fell in love with. Sometimes what they say is true, ignorance is bliss and in this case I believed it to be true.
I needed H's expertise and knowledge of the situation but I knew deep down I was risking sending Harry back to the "away". From the way he spoke about it, I wouldn't ever want him to go back but both of us were at risk. I couldn't accept the impending fate if I sit here and do nothing. I can't be put away, and I can't have Harry put away for something he didn't do.
N. I know its been a while I just wanted to have stuff prewritten so I could have a bunch of content built up for when I didn't have a lot of time to write but still being out updates!