The Power Within [Narry]

--Chapter 21--

Niall returns to the booth only to find Damien absentmindedly playing with his food and Harry focused on his phone. He clears his throat for lack of a better way to ease the awkwardness.

Harry looks up at the sound and pockets his phone before slowly rising from the table. He clears his throat and gets out of the booth. "I best be going. I know you're working on a project so I'll let you get to that," he smiles and leans into Niall for a hug. He squeezes for a millisecond and pats on the smaller boy's back before taking his leave.

Damien and Niall finish the last of their meal, and end up at Damien's dorm at a quarter to eight. Niall throws his backpack onto the empty bed that formerly belonged to him and plops down next to Damien, who's pulling out a notebook and pen.

"So what should we base our project on?"

Niall bites his lower lip in contemplation. "Working on something that's controversial would be cool," he offers. He grabs the pen from Damien and doodles a smiley face on the corner of the boy's blank page.

Damien smiles. "That's pretty interesting. So it sounds like we're leaning towards a neurological disorder. Any come to mind?"

"Schizophrenia," Niall blurts. Next to his smiley face, he scrawls a frown before Damien snatches the pen from his hands.

"Sounds like a good choice," Damien hums and jots down the disorder at the top of the page, circling it for emphasis. He taps his pen against his notebook in thought. "Let's start with its origin. Any ideas?"

"Didn't people used to believe that schizophrenia came from demonic possession? They'd, like, drill holes into patients' skulls," Niall provides and shudders at the image of such a grotesque treatment.

"Yeah, it was an early theory that was widely believed to be true for a time," Damien adds on as he reaches for his laptop. "People thought that drilling a hole into a person's head would get rid of the evil spirits. Pretty crazy, huh?"

He googles "schizophrenia" and scans through the first article that pops up, reading out information for Niall to hear. "So the disorder is believed to have coexisted with mankind throughout history but was first distinguished as a mental illness in 1887 by Kraepelin. Documents even date back to ancient Egypt and Greece of psychotic disorders."

Niall nods in mild interest, arranging himself to get more comfortable on the bed and splaying his legs across Damien's. He lazily twirls his wrist to encourage the mole-speckled boy to continue. Niall slowly closes his eyes when all he's met with is the constant tap of the keyboard.

Damien lowly whistles and nudges Niall's legs. "Says here that ancient Greek literature depicted a deity who fed from strife and darkness. According to lore, one of its greatest source of power came from havoc wrought within, kind of like a shadow over the human soul. And with that, mental illnesses came to be." There's a pause in the room when Damien finishes reading and both boys stare at each other to drink in the information.

Niall's curiosity leads him to a question. "Did they have a name for this thing?"

"Yeah, Erebus, the primordial god of darkness in Greek mythology," Damien responds, jotting down the name in his notebook.

Niall nods and taps his finger against his chin. He thinks through the information they gathered and tries to organize the format of their project. "This is some pretty bizarre stuff but we can use it to introduce schizophrenia's earliest origins and work our way to more concrete, scientific findings in the late 1800s or early 1900s."

Damien smiles and finishes, "Then we can have its basic criteria like cause, symptoms, treatment and diagnosis, and maybe some fun facts here and there. Easy peasy!"