After The End: Book 2

52. Gone

Naomis POV

Harry had never been good at sleep. The night of horrors was no exception. He just stared at the mural and shivered. I sought out the thick wool blanket that I knew belonged to Lux and brought it to him around midnight. He paused looking at the mural to look at it as I held it out to him, but then looked away without words. He barely twitched at all when I draped it over his shoulders. His cat surfaced again around the same time and settled just over an arms reach away from him. He didn't look at her either.

Louis had made him shower and change. The blood had been washed off of him, leaving behind a pale and clammy boy with chapped lips and wide terrified eyes. The wound on his arm was covered with gauze and there were several bandaids on the opposite palm.

Even with the blanket he continued to tremble. His hands shook violently every time he tried to remove them from their place on his lap. Louis told us he had been told he had a very minor concussion at the hospital. He told us that he was probably in shock now that the initial drugs and alcohol were likely going to be slowly wearing off on him. He had told me these things right before returning to his own flat. It was bizarre how he'd turned off his own grief to take care of Harry so expertly. He hadn't texted since going back up and I didn't expect him to.

I cleaned up the kitchen the best I could, but the alcohols smell lingered in the air. I found the bag of substance that Louis and Niall had both possessed discarded on the counter and pocketed it before it could fall back into Harry's hands. Then I tried to run the laundry after finding the pile of bloody clothes on the bathroom floor. I was pretty sure it was the end of Harry's favorite cardigan.

I made him take a drink of water at 2 am. Niall had dozed off in the bean bag chair and Harry had begun blinking frequently as if starting to doze, but refusing to let sleep take him. He had started picking at the bright rainbow polish of his fingernails and when that stopped budging he settled for tearing his cuticles to shreds. He ignored me when I offered him water until I physically grabbed his hand and forced the glass into it. He had looked at me as if quite offended that I'd intrude on his disassociation before looking down at the glass.

"Take a drink," I commanded again.

He did as he was told, drinking stubbornly little. Then he placed it on the floor next to him defiantly and looked back at the wall.

"Harry, you're scaring me," I admitted sitting on the ground next to his bean bag. I expected him to ignore me, but instead he blinked. He allowed a soft raspy laugh to escape hollowly and then grimaced as the act brought tears to his eyes.

"If this scares you, then just you wait for what comes next," he said quietly. He allowed his empty gaze to travel back to my face for a moment and then met my eyes. "This is just the beginning Nay."

"It doesn't have to be," I argued. I grabbed for his hand but he pulled away. It was the first time he'd said that nickname to me since I'd left in February.

"I'm going to try," he assured me. "I always try and it always gets worse." I could practically hear the raw pain in his voice.

"Harry," I reached for his hand again and this time he didn't stop me from clasping it in my own. "She wouldn't want you to do this to yourself."

"Are you referring to my dead wife or my dead mum?" He asked pointedly. His eyes were so glassy with tears that I doubted he could even really see me. They trailed in streams down either of his cheeks. "Because I'm certain that neither of them want much of anything now."

I flinched.

"I keep seeing it in my mind," he muttered. His voice broke. "She asked me to sing to her and so I did and then she... she just wasn't there anymore."