Downfall [Punk Niall Horan]

26

Everything blurred past me, mixing into twisted dark blacks and greys. Somehow I managed to put one foot in front of another despite the tornado twirling through my mind and body. Acidic, charred smells tinged my sensitive nostrils, making my eyes water even more than they already were.

Niall's grip on my arm never loosened one centimeter, continuously dragging me behind his livid frame. When I started to stop for even a fraction of a second thinking I couldn't take another step, he swept me up onto him without even stopping or hesitating for a moment.

I didn't even have enough strength to carry myself anymore. I was just a completely blank stone statue, all cold and unmoving. At this point I might as well could have been named an inanimate object.

My legs wrapped around Niall's long torso, and I wound my arms tightly around his dirty neck. Even though everything was burnt around us, and Niall's neck was covered in grime, he still smelt like cinnamon and mint. Somehow the scent alone calmed my raging thoughts and soothed my aching bones.

Never in my life had I been so grateful for someone before, and who would have thought that it would have been the guy I despised the most.

Dropping my head further into his neck, I sighed deeply against it. Niall's strong arms squeezed around my back as he tried to comfort me the best he could while we were fleeing from my despicable father. The one that issued an order to kill his own daughter.

I felt like a complete child right now as Niall carried me like this while I was incapable of moving my own frail body, and I couldn't help but wonder if my Father was right all along. Was I just a naive adolescent who didn't know her wrong from her right?

At the moment, it felt like it.

Short even, deep pants parted my hair caused by Niall's open mouth. In the past month I had dropped down to hardly nothing from not eating, and I wasn't even sure I weighed over 120 at the moment. I felt bad for Niall having to carry me like this, but I knew he wouldn't have done it if he didn't want to. Niall never does anything that he does not want to do.

Plus, I didn't really care about anything at this bloody moment. Images of a burning and bloodied Harry flashed behind my closed eyelids, making my body quiver with sadness. Squeezing them tighter, I prayed for the vision to go away to the back of my mind and never resurface again. But one universal question kept twirling around like a carousel in my mind.

Was that how Harry died?

Did my father actually drop a bomb where he knew his son and a bunch of his other soldiers would be? Without a doubt, I knew my answer now without even doubting myself for a second. Of course he did because that was just the person that Jim was now. His own children didn't mean anything to him, and he did not give a damn if they died or not. Hell, he issued a decree that if I were to be caught to kill me on the spot.

It hurt. Much more than I thought it would at this point in time. Those words felt like a crumpling blow to my chest, knocking out any hope I had left for my Father to be on the right side of things. My world had gotten a shade darker than it already had been, leaving it completely cloaked in darkness. and many memories seemed to be crumpled and thrown away like useless paper.

So many years, years of loving my father and worshiping him for the ground he walked on even. All of this was for absolutely nothing, and it sucked horrendously. Everything was so massively screwed up, and I didn't know if I would ever be the same again. But I also didn't think that anyone was going to come out the same after this. That is, if we do make it out of this in the first place.