Birds || (One Direction; BxB/AU)

Chapter One

Life is about the way that you handle situations; life is about the way that you take the time to realize that you are not your mistakes. You are not the ways that people have hurt you, or the things that you've dime. You're human, and once you realize that, that's when you'll start living.

JANUARY 2012

"Raise your hand if you've ever left alone." Again, the same question asked every week at his meetings. Close your eyes, raise your hand, do you ever feel like this, do you ever feel like that... No one can see your answers, this is purely to get things off of your chest, it's okay. I promise you that you will feel better if you do this.

But he wouldn't.

Niall knew that it wouldn't. Maybe, once or twice in a state of weakness, or maybe it was the fact that he actually thought people cared, he had raised his hand. It had shot up at the promise of feeling better, but the feeling never came. It's the same old shit but a different day, Niall thought with a mocking smirk set on his lips. It's what they were doing, weren't they? Mocking him, ridiculing him and making him feel lower then he did before all, before any, of this.

"C'mon, Niall, don't you want to raise your hand?" The voice of his doctor echoed in his mind. To some, the tone may have been comforting, but to him, it was taunting. It was almost as if he had freedom dangling on a stick in front of Niall's face and every time it was in grasp, it was wrenched away. Painfully wrenched.

He just shook his head. Niall just wanted to go home, he wanted all of this to be over, so he could go home. But he hadn't been home, hadn't set foot in his home, for 3 months. And wouldn't be, until they released him, until he "got better."

That's what they did to people who tried to end themselves. That's what they did to people, that were crazy. That's what they're doing to Niall Horan.

Most days when he felt like this, he would sit and talk to Zayn for hours on end. I can't when I'm locked in this room, can I?

SEPTEMBER 2011

He was on a tight restriction here, only able to talk on the phone for an hour a day and only about to text with people overviewing. Even the phone calls were listened to, for suicidal content, as the doctor put it. But that was bullshit. He knew that no body cared. He didn't like it, but he knew.

"I miss you, baby," the only voice of comfort rang through the receiver of his 'room.' It wasn't much of that, though. It was more of a holding cell, as Niall liked to call it in his head. Of course, he'd never say it out loud; he didn't want to talk more than absolutely necessary.

"I miss you, too." His words were choppy, a stutter on the tip of his tongue between his vowels.  His stutter was involuntary, it was one of many things that he disliked about himself, aomething he had picked up when he was young, due to people teaching him words when he was a toddler by syllables and soon, sounding the words out, caused more damage then it did, helpful.

Niall knew everybody was tired of his shit and so was he. He was tired of this little room; he had gained a tight feeling of claustophobia by it. He was tired of being called a freak. He was tired of stuttering. He was tired of all of the doctors and people who just want to help. He was sick and tired of it all. Mostly, though, he was tired of not feeling good enough. Not being good enough to himself and to others as well.

"Stop with that awful stutter, Niall James Horan. That's why you're there, to make it so you don't have to be a freak anymore." His voice pierced through Niall's mind, cutting through his nerves. He swallowed heavily, trying to ignore the way that it had hurt him coming from