Broken Strings || Niall Horan [AU]

p r o l o g u e

PROLOGUE

The boy on the streets was numb.

Set the scene: a Friday night in early April; nine o’clock, to be precise. Icy sheets of rain came falling around his body and a raging chill pulsed through his veins, but the only thing he felt, the only thing he knew, really, was a vast sense of nothingness. That and the occasional pang of sorrow, which would wedge itself into his heart before fading again, leaving behind a dull, familiar ache.

Whether it be a result of hypothermia or crippling starvation, he knew that he’d soon be dead. It was just a feeling, a sense of knowing that gripped him from the inside and warned him to try and make the most of his last few minutes; a feat that would clearly make no difference, because nothing in the world could make things better in these last moments of life, nothing on Earth besides perhaps his mother coming back to him or a millionaire walking by and dropping a roll of cash at his sodden feet. But no, the first was impossible and the latter would only ever happen in a world different to this one. So, perhaps the boy should simply wait. Wait for heaven, or for hell – the second being more likely, because he hadn’t exactly done good in his life; incidentally, the regret of all he’d done sat heavy in his heart, like a stone, a constant reminder of his abundant mistakes – or for whatever truly happens when you pass into the afterlife (if there really is such a thing; he hoped there wasn’t, because he wasn’t fond of the idea of having to deal with this pain and guilt much longer).

He was slipping in and out of consciousness, and seeing things before his eyes, colourful blurs and distorted images from his past colliding with visions of everything that could be happening right now and in his future if he wasn’t so screwed-up. He wondered if this was what death felt like. He waited for the peace, the blackness, all the while knowing that he deserved it. He deserved the rain around him, the sickening numbness of his mind contrasted against the silent ache in his heart, the ice-cold feeling in his fingertips and the desperate growl of his long-empty stomach. He deserved everything he was getting.

Crumpled up like fragile paper, his body smaller than it had been in years. Skin like tissue, clinging helplessly against his bones. Skeletal. He was a pathetic pile of bones and skin, no muscle, nothing of worth. All rational thoughts had now drained from his mind, and suddenly he was thinking of cheese sandwiches and grass, ice cream and his mother’s chicken soup. Now he was thinking of her eyes, those blue eyes; everybody always said he had her eyes. Right now, he was too weak to even miss her, but he still felt it. He always felt it.

He let out one final, strangled sob, which ripped at his throat on its way up like a piece of jagged metal. His cheeks were wet with tears and rain. Something flashed before his eyes: a prediction. Some unlucky passerby, finding his body, curled up and cold and hauntingly still in this little alleyway. He couldn’t help but hope that it was a nice person, an old lady perhaps, or a middle-aged man; nobody like those teenage chavs, who used to beat him for little money he had, cycling off on their ridiculous too-small bikes and chortling profanities at each other.

There was movement around him. At least, he thought there was. Things were still a little hazy. But it wasn’t the movement of the wind changing direction, or of the rain. It was the movement of a person. A boy about his age. He knelt before him, wrapping a heavy jacket around his shoulders. “It’s okay,” the boy said calmly, and he kept saying those two words over and over again, as if reassuring not only the boy on the streets, but also himself. He was holding an umbrella, and the pattering of rain on its sheer plastic was oddly comforting.

The boy on the streets -- Niall Horan, his name was; he often forgot that he had an actual name, because he often forgot that he was an actual person of actual worth – was hauled to his feet, his fingers gripped tightly around the handle of his guitar case, which he’d forgotten about until now. But he was still holding it as if his life depended on it, his knuckles white, the solid case banging heavily against his already-bruised legs on the way up. He almost collapsed again, but the taller boy supported him, half-carrying, half-dragging him along the dark, wet streets. The ground was shiny, dappled moonlight bouncing off the paving slabs, and the footsteps of the two were muffled by the sound of reverberating rainfall.