The Beast (Harry Styles)

Chapter Eight

Adeline's dark day has come and gone;

She stayed up crying until dawn.

But two more days have passed alone in her room;

And Harry was also sharing her pain and wounds. . .

~.~

In The West Wing

Harry sat there, staring at the canvas. Two days have passed since the disaster dinner. He had been so rude, so vile, so repulsive, so....beast-like to Adeline. He knew it wasn't right; he knew he was a terrible person. But with his pride bigger than his guilt, how could he make it up to her?

Harry sighed picking up the Pain Brush, the name of his paint brush which only seemed to portray its namesake, that laid on the easel. He carefully dipped the tip of the brush into the paint then brought it to the canvas. Closing his eyes, Harry let his emotions speak through the Pain Brush. All of his frustration, sadness, and repulsion come out on the canvas. 

He couldn't cared less as to what came of the piece of art: never once did he care.

Yet he showed obvious talent for the incredibly hard skill. His strokes were perfect, his blending spotless, and his figures realistic. 

Harry had taken up the past time when he first came to America a few years ago and used the ability to display colors that correlated to his emotion as a therapy of sorts to help escape his past life.

Red screamed his anger and passion; blue sang with his sadness; yellow lit his happiness; green cried his despicable envy and desire; black mourned with his emptiness; purple turned its nose with his pride; orange remembered the end of a day, end of a chapter; and pink, his favorite, reminisced a simpler time where everything was easy. 

Now nothing was easy.

By the time Harry could finally think straight, he had painted the same face he had created the past two days.

It was the same girl, her light brown hair was down to her shoulders, illuminated by an unknown sun. Her eyes reminded him of an aquamarine stone, wide with shock. Her mouth was slightly agape, looking taken back. There was a pink tint to her cheeks, as if she was embarrassed.

Harry felt an anger boiling up inside him; he couldn't paint anything else even if he tried. All he could paint was Adeline: Adeline smiling, Adeline laughing, Adeline crying, Adeline in shock, Adeline angry. . .nothing more than the face of his beautiful prisoner.

He took a deep breath. Harry, now calm, removed the canvas from the easel and gently put it with the others he has painted in the past couple of days. For today, he was done painting. It was only causing him pain and causing him to face his mistakes, something Harry tried not to do.

It wasn't because he didn't want to take responsibility; Harry tended to blame himself for things that weren't his fault. Other's mistakes felt like his own, and therefore he made them his own.

Despite how he acted, Harry himself knew how Adeline felt; he knew how it was to want to be alone, to be placed in a spot where you have to do the thing you know isn't the best for yourself, but best for someone else.

And that's what he had to do with Isabella.

He loved Isabella; but Isabella had become a prisoner to her own mind. Harry couldn't free her from the hands that held her because they weren't his own that held her captive. He tried to free her, he tried to cut the ties of the bond that held Isabella to her instability, yet Isabella had begun to enjoy the danger and newness her prison gave her.

This Stockholm Syndrome slowly infected every part of her. The man who whispered all the sweet little things, the Devil himself, had used and abused his sweet Isabella and created a monster who enjoyed pain.