Lennon.
"Hit me."
"I'm not gonna hit you."
"Lennon, hit me."
"Harry, no." I retaliated in the same manner. Zayn was watching the interaction between us with amusement written across his face.
Harry refused to move from his position, his body pressed in between my legs which were dangling off the medical table. I had wires hooked up to my temples, spine, collar bones and across my chest - under my shirt. The only attempt at a solution Zayn could conjure up was reversing what they did, by doing the same thing. He did warn me he wasn't completely clued up on what to do. He researched it, on the internet, in books and even spoke to several medical professions - not like he gave them a choice however. But no one had a cure, it wasn't exactly something which had been done before apparently.
"Please just hit me," Harry whined. "Raise your left hand and just.." He continued speaking, mimicking his words with playful actions. I drew out a long breath and raised my fist.
"If I hurt you, don't hold me accountable."
"You won't hurt m-" he didn't finish the sentence because I accidentally winded him.
"Shit! Are you okay?"
"Fine," he managed to reply through a series of staggered breaths. His hand clutching firmly on his stomach where my fist had made contact.
"It didn't work." I spoke quietly. Harry's sorrowful eyes met mine, pleading me to hit him again but I refused. Hurting him emotionally was enough, I didn't need to physically hurt him too.
"Try again." Harry demanded harshly. I sat straight up right, rubbing over my guilty knuckles.
"No Harry, it's not working and I'm not just going to keep hitting you."
"Zayn, turn it up."
"Harry, it's not safe to keep sending impulses through her brain, something could happen..." He trailed off, but it was clear what he was indicating. Too much could easily kill someone in one shock. I started pulling the wires off my body, but Harry's hand slapped over mine and stopped me.
"No, try again!"
"Harry it's not working!" I shouted back at him in the same tone, reiterating my statement.
"You're not trying hard enough!"
"I'm trying my best, I can't do anymore!"
"Don't turn it off Zayn!" He yelled at the startled man. Zayn blinked several times but his hands didn't move towards the button.
"Haz we'll try again tomorrow." Zayn tried to contemplate.
"And then what? Fail again and keep waiting and waiting!" Harry was pacing back and forth, running his hands through his hair and down his sweat coated face.
Harry's theory seemed to be, if my left hook became atrocious again - I'd be fixed. But that didn't change, I could still take out a six foot man with one hit and my emotions were still non existent.
"I'm not hurting her." Zayn snapped, he aggressively pulled the cable attached to the laptop out of the side of the device, picked it up and left, slamming the door behind him.
"Why won't you just try for me?" Harry was facing the window, only looking around when he waited for my reply.
"I am trying, believe me! I don't know what you want me to do!"
"Feel something! Anything!"
"I know how much this is hurting you right now-"
"No!" He stopped me abruptly. "No you don't. You have no idea what it's like to see the person you love act as if you don't matter."
"Of course you matter! I wouldn't be back here otherwise!"
"I just wish you loved me back." His voice trembled as he refused to even look at me.
"I do love you." I stumbled out.
"But you don't feel that, you're just saying that to make me feel better."
"Harry-"
"And I don't know whether that will ever be good enough."
"What are you saying? You're giving up? On me? On us?" I felt a lump rise in my throat and it wasn't because I felt sick, but because I felt something. It didn't last long, the feeling vanished as quick as it appeared. Harry was walking towards the door silently, his eyes fixated on the floor.
"Something like that," his small chuckle he let out sent a chill down my spine.
The argument was only one of many, but it was certainly the worst. Harry normally stops himself getting too angry, but after three straight days of no hope, he was clearly losing hope himself. He wasn't the only one. I was starting to become accustom with my new wired body. Maybe I could live perfectly fine without any feelings. There's so much I could do without having any strings attached.
I didn't really know what to do with myself when Harry chose to ignore me. I didn't have a job, a proper house and I couldn't even tell if I had a boyfriend anymore. The others made me feel welcome as always here, but with Harry losing his temper every other conversation maybe I wasn't so welcome. But I didn't have an escape route - I had nowhere to go, nowhere to run or hide. I couldn't face living with Emma and her slob of a boyfriend, I had more self respect than last time around. I couldn't live with my mum, the last time the care home rang, they just wanted to tell me her memory was slowly getting worse. Could she even remember anything at all? It might have been a good thing, the things Axel had put her through and then me... I was no angel either unfortunately.
The house seemed quiet, oddly quiet but I ignored the peculiar ambience and crept slowly up the giant staircase. The hallway upstairs was even quieter, there was no dull buzz sound coming from the TV in the front lounge up here.
Harry's laptop password wasn't anything surprising. He had the word and number tattooed on his body - he wasn't exactly conspicuous. Although, he had told me it before because I insisted I needed to search something important on the internet. According to him 'Dylan O'Brien shirtless' is not important and plain weird. But he can't talk, I've seen his web history.
His laptop was the same model as Zayn's but it didn't run nowhere near as fast. I tapped my fingers against the desk as the website loaded. My heart felt like it could barely take the shock I put it through when I scanned over house prices in London. I couldn't afford a bed sit on the outside of London, let alone a house in the middle of the city. I still wanted to be close to everything and everyone I knew but I was too oblivious to wake up to reality. It was a one in a million chance I managed to live so close to the centre when I was Emma.
I was too busy scrunching my face up at the screen that when someone knocked on the door I screamed in a really high pitched voice. Niall poked his head through the door as fast as I slammed the laptop shut. His eyebrows rose assuming the worst, but he raised his hands up in innocence, the smirk appearing on his face didn’t exactly defend his actions.
“It’s not what it looked like?” I spoke quickly, although I wasn’t exactly sure what it looked like.
“I didn’t say anything sweets,” he grinned playfully.
“Yeah but you were definitely thinking something.” I dead-panned right back at him, watching him grin like an idiot again. I rolled my eyes and fully spun around on the chair to face him properly. “Anyway, what do you want?” I quizzed, narrowing my eyes at him.
“Have you seen Harry?”
“Not since this morning, why?”
“No one’s seen him since then either, he hasn’t text or called either.”
“It’s only been a few hours.”
“He left the house in a right huff though, I think I even saw a few tears fall.” He replied tentatively as he bit down on his lower lip, shuffling on his feet.
“Wait-what?” My reply was slightly shocked. “Why did no one tell me?”
He shrugged his shoulders, “We assumed you knew.”
“No.”
“Did you two argue again or something?”
I sighed heavily, “Yeah, but I think it cut deeper this time.” I mumbled, standing to my feet and strolling fiercely towards him. He stepped back out the way and let me through the door.
“Where are you going?”
“To find him.” I spoke as if it was the most obvious thing. I heard him spin on his feet and his footsteps soon followed mine down the stairs. Most of the others were gathered in the foyer, Zayn was stood against the wall, his arms folded across his chest as he watched Louis pace up and down. He stopped moving around when he caught sight of me.
“What did you do?” He yelled towards me as my foot hit the bottom step. I was taken back by his tone, even more so by his speed at closing the distance between us. I’d never really thought he was tall, but with his body looming over mine, his finger pointing down at me, I felt only two foot tall.
“I didn’t do anything.” I spat back, pushing his prominent finger out the way.
“Exactly and it’s driven him to the point of insanity.”
“I don’t know what you want me to do!” I cried out, a lump rising high in my throat. “I’m trying my best, what else do you want me to do?”
“Try a little harder!” He sneered into my face.
“You think shouting a few words in my face is going to cure everything? Well listen up mr-I-think-I'm-so-tough, Zayn couldn’t even fix me so what makes you think you can by shouting at me?” I could have easily been more mature with my response but his short tempered words riled me up.
“Excuse m-“
“Okay you two, you need to both take a breather,” Liam stepped in the middle of us, breaking us apart. Louis turned around and huffed, unsatisfied with not being able to get the last word in. My hands were balled up at my sides as my fingernails dug deep into my palms.
“Lennon how do you feel right now?” Zayn’s calm tone quickly caught my attention.
“Um,” I paused so I could think. “Angry?” I asked rhetorically. Zayn grinned, striding forward but silence flooded the room. “Where’s Harry?”
Louis tutted dramatically, no doubt rolling his eyes too.
“Just tell us where he is,” Zayn sighed heavily. Louis mumbled something under his breath before tossing his phone at Zayn. He caught it effortlessly, read the screen and chucked it back to him. “He’s not gonna do anything dramatic is he?” I looked up immediately when I hear his words. Louis looked a little lost for words.
“He told me not to tell anyone where he was going, he wants to be alone for a while.” Zayn shook his head at Louis’ reply before he grabbed my arm, pulling us towards the front door.
“Where is he? What’s he going to do?” My voice laced with concern.
“He’s not in a good place apparently and you’re going to stop him doing what ever he thinks he’s going to do.”
The whole car ride there I couldn’t sit still, my legs were bouncing up and down and my fingernails were practically nonexistent. It was pitch black outside, the stars were completely hidden by thick clouds looming over the city. Rain was hitting the car windscreen so violently the sound of the radio was barely existent. The window wipers could barely keep up with the rapid rainfall. Central London was still heaving with traffic at this time of night and with the rain coming down as harsh as it was made getting anyway a lot harder.
Zayn still hadn’t told me where we were going, his hand gripped the steering wheel so tight it was turning ghostly white. Suddenly the car jolted and I was yanked back in my seat by the seatbelt. I turned to him to ask what was going on but he was already turning the engine off. I looked up and out of the car and gulped several times.
“You felt anger, now tell him how you really feel. Speak from the heart and for the love of god, don’t fuck this up.” I nodded quickly and clambered out of the car. He had already pointed out where to go, as if this was a common place for Harry to be hiding. He’d never mentioned it to me before, but I guess we all have things we keep in the dark. I wasn’t afraid of heights, but with the rain soaking me as I stepped only feet away from the car, I could feel my heart sink into my stomach just thinking about climbing the ladder up the tower of the bridge.
“Oh Harry,” I whispered under my breath, shaking my wet hair away from my face.
The climb up the bridge was a terrifying experience. I slipped on the bars several times and clung onto my life more times than I could count. I kept counting to ten in my head and eventually I reached the top. Tower Bridge was no where to be hiding in the middle of the night, it wasn’t open to the public but clearly it wasn’t well guarded. Luckily there was railings in place and I had some hope of survival even if I slipped on the wet floor towards the middle.
At first I couldn’t see anything through the storm that was taking place but as I stepped further and further across the bridge, high above the river Thames, barley in my vision I saw the silhouette of him. Curled up tightly, his knees pressed to his chest and his head buried in between. His hair soaked and stuck against his skin as his body shivered under the heavy rain. I didn’t think I would ever see Harry like this, let alone because of me. I wasn’t even close to him when he looked up, sensing my presence. The redness around his eyes tore apart my heart and the lump in my throat was threatening to spill from my mouth.
He stood up quickly, sliding around on his feet as his hands clung tightly to the rail on the side. I shook my head fiercely, pleading him not to even look over the edge but his eyes wouldn’t focus on me, only the choppy water below.