Reticent (h.s fanfic, punk Harry)

Chapter 38

Harry's POV

Louis was tired, too tired to care about me lounging on the floor with Blondie purring on my tummy. He'd just gotten back from a twelve hour shift at the supermarket, and only found three minutes' spare to sit in the break room and rest his eyes while two coworkers argued about who was getting the new raise, not him for sure. More than once he'd been warned to take frequent breaks on such shifts, surprised that he'd even be granted them, but when presented he latched on like a leach, always bitching about the fact that the fridge was always empty.

He made a straight beeline to the sofa that had a blanket draped over it, and without bothering to move the fabric, jumped on and started to snore.

When I inhabited the body of a nine year old credulous child, I remembered my mother coming home from work at such ungodly hours of the night smelling like stale eggs, and roasted coffee. Sometimes she took me with her, and sometimes I spent time with the neighbor's, an elderly couple who would turn the channel to the old news and let me watch while they slowly drifted off to dream land, and while they slept, I'd turn the channel to a cartoon network and watched while the blaring box made my eyes sting and my head hurt. My mother never gave me any trouble about it, instead, she'd let me rest my head on her lap and massage my scalp with her weary hands, not peeping out a complaint. Her weak hands would move my hair this way and that until my eyes closed, and my body turned off. Only then would Anne let herself scour for food.

Thinking back about my mother now, I've learnt that death is a very unknowable place, on both ends. At the breach of the rising act I could see the serene yet fearful look in my mother's green eyes, her swollen pupils almost begging for a few more hours, and yet still asking for a quick passing. I can't explain what it may feel to die, but I suppose it's the same as watching a bird take flight for that first time, the wings flapping for the first time, and like hope, it falls. Maybe it's when you grasp that you are dying, and at the same time, can still feel the presence of other beings around you. I don't understand what heaven and hell may be, but I can only let my imagination run wild, and pretend to admire the design of both chaos and calm.

Laying on the floor now, I tried to let sleep come, as it had completely avoided me the night before and let me toss and turn, missing something I was only given a taste of. But then again, I could never sleep when I wanted to, no matter how exhausted I was, my mind, at those times, would always wander in some direction, leading me astray from my original plan to snuggle and let rest overtake.

Sometimes I didn't want rest to come, I wanted to stay awake forever. I'd been continuously dreaming about her every night. Twelve. I'd dreamt about Anne twelve times since her death, and the twelfth time everything seemed to change. It twisted into something painfully fearful that by the end it, had me jumping up and panting like a dog. The room seemed darker when I had woken, the sheets seemed twisted around me to the extent of pain, and the world just seemed too much for me. On that night, she was alone in the garden and she was dying. The borders were gone, the flowers, the grass had all gone leaving in its wake just dirt and glass. She was laying on the ground, lost, scared and near death. I watched her, but there was no way to get to her, and so I stayed where I was and watched as she died alone, twisting herself in a ball, calling out to me.

That twelfth day, in the snow blizzard, I let myself out to defrost the flowers with the hairdryer she kept, she was never in need of that useless technology, but Anne, being Anne, wanted it to seem like hope was around the corner and her hair would grow. Of course the universe had other ideas, and plans for her. After I'd defrosted the flowers, I got around to cleaning the deserted porch of any leaves or twigs that had fallen in my absence. In a mere two hours it was all clean, but the flowers were dead and starting to freeze up again, and there was no way I could stay there all day and continue the same routine just to keep them alive. So I told myself if I couldn't take care of them out there, there was always room in the house.