"I'm sitting here eyes wide open and
I got one thing stuck in my mind.
I can't help but feel numb,
Even after all this time."
***
1 MONTH LATER.
The room is dark and empty. There's a light in the middle of the room, a figure standing right beneath it. I make my way towards it slowly only to see the blonde hair and bright blue eyes.
"Niall?" I call out.
He doesn't answer. He only picks is head up, his eyes meet mine. I run to him and hug him tightly.
"I was so scared. I thought I had lost you.." I say to him with my head on his chest.
I pull away from him when he doesn't say anything in return. I place my hands on his cheeks as I say, "Hey are you okay? I missed you so much I thought you left me. I was so scared.."
He smiles lightly as he says, "How can you miss me when you were the one who caused it all?"
"W-what?
"It's true Elizabeth. It is what it is. You are responsible for my death. If it weren't for you, I wouldn't have come all the way here. If I wasn't trying protect you and helping you escape, I might have been alive, Eliza."
"N-No. Niall I didn't.." I remove my hands from his cheeks only to see his blood on them.
I stumble back from him a bit, staring at my blood covered hands. I look up from them to see Niall's body laying on the floor, blood gushing out from his neck, forming a pool around him.
"N-no, no. No, Niall!" I run towards his body and sit on the floor, taking his lifeless body in my arms as I scream.
"I- didn't. I would never-- want you to be h-hurt. Niall get up!"
I keep yelling but to my dismay, his eyes are lifeless as he lays there in my arms. I rub my blood covered hands on my face as I scream loudly, crying because there's nothing else I can do now.
It was never my intention but I'm the one who's responsible for his death. His blood is on my hands. I can feel the guilt creep in.
"Not sure if Niall will forgive you. But the real question is, will you ever be able to forgive yourself over this?" Harry's voice echoes through the room, breaking me out of my thoughts and I see him standing in front of me.
My breath starts hitching as I look back at Niall's body in my lap and then to my hands.
"NO! NO! NO!"
~
"ELIZA! Wake up! It's just a bad dream! Wake up!" I hear Harry yell as he shakes my shoulders harshly.
My eyes shoot open as I sit up in the bed. I see him sitting at the end of the bed with an unrecognizable look on his face. I don't have the time to process what happened or whether it was reality or not before I run up the stairs of the old basement, breathing heavily.
Before I can even process what's happening, I find myself in the bathroom, scrubbing my hands under the water as harshly as I can to the point where my skin turns red, tears blurring my vision and Harry has to come up from behind me to pull me away from the sink.
He keeps a tight grip around me as I thrash around yelling profanities and different things at him. After a few minutes, when I calm down a bit, he sits onto the floor, dragging me down with him.
I don't put up a fight. I'm too weak and lonely. I need someone to hold me.. So I put my head on his chest and hug him without even thinking about it. My screams turn into small whimpers as he keeps me pulled into him, rubbing his hand on my back to comfort me.
I keep repeating the words, "I never wanted this to happen. I didn't do it. I never wanted to. I didn't do it."
In return he just whispers in my ear, "Shh, baby. Calm down. You're okay. Deep breaths."
He pulls me away from his body as he holds my shoulders, "Look at me. Deep breaths. Otherwise you're going to have a panic attack. Look at me, match your breaths with mine."
I do as he says and I finally calm down after some time. We keep sitting there in silence after he lets go of my shoulders. I move a bit back to lean back up against the wall and stare at the ceiling.
"How are you feeling?"
"Numb. I can't feel anything at all," I answer him without moving my gaze from the ceiling.
"What happened? Was it a nightmare again?" he asks referring to the incident in the bathroom.
"Ahan. Today marks one month since I held his lifeless body in my arms.. his blood on my hands. It feels as if it just happened yesterday. I can't get the image of having his head in lap while blood gushed out of his neck out of my head. Screaming, mourning, but doing nothing helpful," tears fill my eyes but I blink them away.
"Well if you think about it, there was nothing much you could do after him being shot. I mean- he did get shot because of you in the first place. But- look my point is, the more you keep thinking about the series of events happening afterwards, the harder will it get to get over."
I'm not sure if he's trying to comfort me or making me feel even more guilty.
"Do you really think it's that easy to get over witnessing a death first hand right in front of your eyes? Being covered in the blood of the person dying in your god damn arms!? Not to mention that person being your best friend!?" I could feel myself getting infuriated as I remove my head from the wall to look at him.
"Hey, calm down. Just because I haven't been that hard towards you lately doesn't mean you get to test your limits, Eliza."
He was right. Ever since my breakdown right after Niall's death, Harry had been gentle towards me. He would always try to calm me down after a nightmare. But I really hadn't talked about the incident or hugged him for comfort until today. I kept it to myself until it was too much to handle and I really need to talk about it with someone or I'll go insane.
"It's hard to sleep... I don't even sleep most nights because I'm scared I'd get a nightmare and would have to live through the series of the same events all over again.."
"What happens in them?"
"They always start in a different way; with some sort of memory with Niall or something.. but the scene always changes and in a split second, I look down at my hands and then at Niall's body laying in front of me..." I move my gaze back at the ceiling to get away from his intense stare.
"You holding a gun, and me holding his body in my arms. They always end with me looking back to my blood covered hands.." I close my eyes as I tell him almost everything from my night terrors. Talking about them makes me feel like I'm living through them again.
"I.. I don't really know what to say.. but you have to stay strong Eliza.."
"Why do you call me that?" I ask out of the blue, looking back at him. Even though it was something I had always wanted to ask him but right now I was just trying to get my mind away from the nightmare.
"What? Eliza?" he asks confused by my question. I nod my head in return.
"Well.. I don't know. Elizabeth is your real name, everyone calls you Liz. I just wanted to use a term of endearment which no one else did."
So that means it was totally a coincidence between him and my hallucinations?
"O-okay."
"Why do you hate the name?"
"Well I also hate you, but you never ask me why. Oh well, it's something you call me, I just hate being called it, that's all," I shrug and try to cover up my uneasiness.
"What was it..? Alan..Axel.. or was it Alex?" he looks lost in thoughts.
"W-what are you even talking about?" I ask trying to act oblivious.
"One night you said that someone else called you that. I think the name you said was Alex.. who is he?" His expressions turn a little hard as he reaches the last part of his question.
"Uh- no one. I don't know what you're talking about," I lie.
"Eliza, I'm gonna need you to be honest with me. I know that you know someone named Alex, so might as well tell me. You do know that I'm not going to let it go," he raises his eyebrows.
I sigh and decide it will be better to tell before he gets mad at me for no reason and throws me in that suffocating basement again.
"H-he was a hallucination. That's why I didn't believe you were real at first. I was a very lonely child before Louis and Christina. Liam used to visit every once in a while when he could. My parents were always busy with my younger brother.."
I take a deep breath and continue, "So, I created this imaginary friend named Alex. He was supposed to be an imaginary friend but then he turned into a hallucination.. an imaginary friend appears when you think of it but he just won't seem to go away.. it turned worse as the time passed. One day Liam found me in my room, curled up against the wall, covering my ears and yelling to make it stop as I cried."
I stop for a moment, memories of my past rushing through my head. Memories which I had buried a long time ago.
I can't help but notice him getting a bit relaxed on finding out that Alex wasn't a real person.
Did he really assume that Alex would be some ex?
I tell him everything about Alex, leaving out the part where he appeared in my nightmares and in one of them he morphed into Harry.
"There you have it. Anything else?"
"Uh-No.." he says keeping his gaze towards the floor.
"Well that's not how it works. You have to tell me something in return too."
I don't know why I'm acting like this with him.. as if we are friends, even though we are far from that.
He's my damn kidnapper but I haven't had a normal conversation in so long that it feels like such a foreign feeling to me now. I guess it's my only option now. Either try to talk to him and pry a bit or rot in that basement all alone and go insane eventually.
"Fair enough. I don't like talking about my past so I'm not going to do that. But if we are here playing a game about telling fucked up facts about each other, then I guess I have one."
Well, I'm damn sure there's more than one.
I just nod and he lets out a sigh as he moves his eyes away from mine.
"So, whenever I get very angry, I seem to blackout in anger. I can't control my further actions. I end up doing something horrible. Eventually when I return back to normal, I have no idea of what I did but when I find out, I certainly don't regret it," he shrugs lightly and gets up from the floor, starting to walk away.
So much for having a normal conversation Liz.
My mind is bombarded with numerous amount of questions at his confession but he doesn't give me a chance to ask as he has already reached the door.
"W-wait! Harry! Does that mean you were blacked out when you shot Niall? You didn't actually mean to shoot him?" I ask the very first first question that pops in my brain.
He stops in his tracks and he turns his head to the side, I can see the smirk appearing on his face as he answers,
"Yeah. I blacked out when you stepped in front of him."
"So you weren't actually going to shoot him?" I inquire further.
"Well I was originally planning on blowing his brains out but I blacked out and he most probably moved at the very last moment."
With that, he leaves.
-_-_-_-_-
A/N:
Peekaboo!
Not sure if I want to
give you a moment to recover from Niall's death
or hit you with another thing..
Let me know which one's better.
Thoughts on Harry blacking out?
Love you! Stay safe!
-A.S.
-_-_-_-_-