all we can do is keep breathing

twelve.

held together just enough to stay alive.

||✚||

There are only a handful of times in his life that Harry remembers being utterly speechless. The first was when he was twelve years old and he was told that he and Gemma were to be split up into separate foster care homes. Thankfully it didn't actually pan out that way, but Harry remembers feeling a dreadfully paralyzing panic rendering him without words for hours, commandeering his whole body.

It didn't happen again until quite a few years later when he found out his sister was terminally ill, followed by the disconsolate moment he was told of her passing, drudging up that same god-awful numbing feeling tenfold. Of course, the same happened when his daughter was initially diagnosed and again when she fell unconscious. He found himself speechless in the sense that not only was it impossible to form intelligible words, he also couldn't form thoughts or even basic commands to get his body to function on any level. And it's such a specific, precise feeling that he can pinpoint every single time he's ever experienced it within his lifetime. Including tonight.

Tonight Harry was rendered speechless not by the picturesque view of the late night skyline, not by the understated majesty of the scattered stars above or how the incandescent light of the moon kissed everything it saw in a lucent, magical glow. Instead Harry was left speechless by a boy. A sweet, lovely boy more beautiful than all the dazzling stars in the sky or the lustrous moon combined, a boy with a heart bigger than anyone, a boy that Harry watched shatter into a million unrecognizable pieces right in front of him.

Harry had absolutely no idea what would happen by coming up here again, returning to this place, this beautiful, secret place that holds a myriad of lost memories for them. He had no idea what would happen when he spread himself out on the dewy grass next to Louis. But he sure as hell didn't expect this.

To be completely without words, held at a standstill, with a total loss for what to do next.

He hasn't yet moved from the spot, feet cemented to the ground only staring out at the narrow opening in the thick forest where Louis disappeared through. There was not a single part of Harry's body that didn't want to go after Louis, need to go after him. And the only thing that stopped him was the cracked lilt to Louis' voice as he begged him not to, a horrible sound that continually reverberates against the walls of Harry's mind. Or the way he looked—Harry can't begin to get over the forlorn look of utter defeat in Louis' eyes, the heart-rending distress pouring out from his teary gaze. All the agony that has lain dormant behind the clear blue of his eyes all this time, now dismally exposed.

And to watch on like a bystander, fully knowing the role he's played, aware of all the ways he's at fault in all this, but powerless to do a single thing to make it right, is the most damning part of it all.

Gradually, Harry settles himself back down onto the grass beneath him, finding his unsteady legs weary. He pulls his knees up to his chest as he sits on the ground, locking his arms around his legs as he tries to make some sort of sense out of things. There is so much to process, but Harry doesn't know where to begin, finding himself continually overwhelmed. Utterly stunned. His mind races with all that just happened, correlating key snippets of past conversations with Louis along with flashes of old, distant memories. And overlapped with the current series of events, a bigger picture comes into focus and more and more begins to make sense. If there is one person that he has always understood, it's Louis. But after tonight, Harry knows that he has never understood Louis as much as he does right now.

Louis just showed every single bruise littering his skin and bared every scar that he carries to Harry. It damn near tore Louis in two, but somehow he did it and even as he cracked and broke, he was still nothing but a tower of unending strength in Harry's eyes. And Harry's heart can do nothing but tragically break for him.