Chasing the tesseract

Chapter 42

"You look absolutely terrible." I blurt out as my feet collide with the soft carpet of Stephens room in the Leaky Couldron. On the far side of the room, Stephen is sat on the edge of his bed with his head in his hands. Bags have formed under his eyes and his hair is a mess just like his creased clothes.

"Abi?" Stephen asks as his head finally shouts up from in his hands revealing the redness of his eyes. He quickly pulls himself up off the bed as he stands into the centre of the room finally allowing to see him completely. The scar that was left behind by the memory spell the last time I saw him is now fainter but still visible to me.

"Can I come in?" I asks him as I smile weakly and look towards the small wooden chair tucked under the desk in the corner of the room. Following my gaze, Stephen glances at the old chair that's paint is peeling off before he turns back to me with a small smile.

"Maybe the bed would be comfier." he chuckles as I step across the floor and power myself onto the small bed, the springs creaking slightly as Stephen sits down beside me. "You came back? Why?" he asks as I look up from the floor where my eyes were fixed before and into his eyes.

"Sometimes it's better to let go together rather than apart." Reaching across the bed, I take his hand in mine and squeeze it gently in an attempt to reassure him that everything's okay. Stephen glances down at out hands causing me to withdraw my hand as the paranoia that everything's not actually okay takes over only for Stephen to grab my hand again and hold it in his.

"My memories are fading quicker than I thought they would." he tells me as he smiles at me, this time his smile bigger than when I first entered the room. As the bed groans underneath me, I shuffle closer to Stephen and rest my head against his shoulder as he wraps his arm around me. "I don't think I have much longer left."

"It's going to hurt you know." I tell his as I stare at the photo of the two of us on his bedside table. It's the one Rue took when she stole my phone and was playing around with it back in the arena. Stephen is sat on a log as I stand behind him with flowers in my hand. Rue is holding the camera as she takes the selfie, a huge smile on her face as a flower crown lies on the top of both her head and mine. Stephen looks as though he's shouting at Rue to put the phone down whilst I laugh behind him and drop some small purple flowers into his hair. He looks so pretty. And happy. We both do. "but you don't have to worry about it. I might not be able to stop it but maybe, I can reduce the pain."

"So you'll stay?" he asks me as he presses a kiss to the top of my head and squeezes me a bit tighter than before. Sitting up, I look him dead in the eyes to see if he's joking or not. When I notice he's been serious, I lift my hand to his cheek and close my eyes as I rest my forehead against his.

"For as long as you want me to." I whisper to him before I open my eyes again and sit back up straight and I swallow down the emotions that begin to build up. I have to stay strong. For Stephen.

"I'm not ready to say goodbye yet." he admits as he stand up, the bed sinking a bit beneath me as he marches across to the room and begins pacing back and forth. After opening my mouth to say something only to find nothing comes out, I push myself off the creaky bed and walk across to where he stands, his back to me.

"Then we'll say hello again." I whisper as his head shoots up. His shoulder rise and fall dramatically before he turns to face me and takes one of my hands in his, his fingers lacing in between mine.

"And what happens after that?" he asks me before he grimaces and closes his eyes against the pain. My hands fly to the sides of his head, my fingers resting against his temples as they begin to glow a bright yellow.

Images begin flooding into my brain as I dive inside Stephens head and begin to feel the searing pain in his skull. Darkness surrounds me as images or rather memories of me and Stephen begin to burn away. One memory stops dead in front of me, the edges of it dark as I reach out to touch it, the memory rippling under my fingers as they brush against it. In the memory, Stephen lays on a bed as I stand I front of a mirror, a dress held up in front of me. Stephen says something behind me that's inaudible outside the memory cut clearly something sarcastic as I turn around, grab a pillow from the chair in the corner of the room and throw it at his head as he laughs at me.