Interlude [h.s]

thirty

Harry enters his apartments and slams the door behind himself. He takes off his jacket and throws it on the couch before walking into the other room, barely paying attention to the automatic click of the entrance being locked.

"Fuck!" He shouts, slamming his hands on the desk. Why did she have to say that? Why does she have to be so maddeningly innocent and absolutely devious all at once? Does life get some sick pleasure from torturing him in such a way?

His fingers wrap around the handle of the knife on top of the table tightly. He can still remember a time in which it would've profoundly disgusted him to touch a weapon, and the clash of those memories with his present leaves him breathless.

He forcefully throws the knife at the other side of the room and it gets stuck in the large painting that's hanging on the wall. He raises his head and looks at it, and his heart rate picks up when his father's dark eyes stare back at him from it.

"Why do you haunt me even when you're dead?!" He screams at it, despising every inch of the face he's learnt to fear over the years.

He's never cared about him. He never mattered to him. He was always a weight, a disappointment whose behaviour had to be fixed. He tortured him for years, physically and emotionally, and now he can't even recognise himself. He's gone too far and lost his path, his mind has become a strange place he doesn't know whether to fear or cherish.

He thought he was past it when he chose to have that damned painting moved from his father's office to his rooms, but he hadn't taken her into consideration. How could she be so pure and so shameless, how could she say those things to his face?

The worst part is that he can't get mad at her, because she doesn't know. She doesn't know that sentence, so light and so innocent, almost childish, kills him inside.

I don't like violence.

How sheltered does she have to be to say such a thing at her age? How unaware of the way the world works, how hopeful about his nature?

He used to be like that, too. He used to hate violence. He used to cry every time his father made him do every wicked thing he came up with. He used to hate himself for it, to remind himself he was much better than that. He used to tell himself that person wasn't him, and yet that's exactly who he's become.

At twenty-six years old, that's who he is. That's the only thing he is.

He's a murderer. A manipulator. He got the leading role, but at what price?

He takes another knife and throws it at the painting, this time around it gets buried in between those dark eyes so deep that it surprises him he hasn't hit the wall.

"I despise you! You ruined my life!" He shouts.

The emptiness inside of him is aching, he feels like screaming. He wants to throw himself to the ground and scream until his voice is raw and his throat aches. He wants to claw his heart out just so that the void in his chest can be justified.

He clenches his teeth, his eyes burn but tears don't fall. He never cries. There would have to be some humanity left in him for him to.

"I'm glad you're gone," he says, staring into that cursed dark gaze. "And you know what? If I could go back to that night..." He scoffs, an inexplicable irony in that situation. "I'd kill you all over again."

An unsettling calm has settled into his mind, that same calm he's come to know and cherish over the years. It's the one that comes to his aid when he's about to lose himself, the one that reminds him of who he is and the position he holds.