Silent Cries ☾N.H.S

16| human tendencies

❝ i am the one who loved you when you went insane.❞

A/N: remember when harry did a solo bc i'm still crying, like DON'T LET ME GO 'CAUSE I'M TIRED OF FEELING ALONE

☾ 16 ☽

"Did you even think this through?" I asked, my boots crunching loudly on twigs and branches as we made our way to the mental institute.

He didn't reply right away, instead he grabbed my elbow and steered me away from the path I was walking in. Walter pointed at the large tangled plant I was about to begin walking in.

"That," he said, "is poison ivy. Grab my shirt, for God sake, you don't look where you're walking."

With my pointer finger and my thumb, I held onto the hem of his shirt, my eyes only seeing the back of his head as we scuffled through the forest. Then a thought popped into my mind.

"Wait, if I'm dead, how can poison ivy affect me?" My grip on him tightened.

He sighed. "It's the power of belief. You believed you were alive so powerfully that your body adapted to the prospect."

"What happens now?" I asked, feeling a pang of hunger, as my stomach bellowed loudly.

He flicked his hair at me, the corner of his eye catching mine. "Well, now that you believe that you are dead, you will start loosing your sense of touch and become like me, lingering."

"How do you become lingering?" I bit my tongue because maybe the subject would hurt him to think about, but then again, he had been dead for centuries.

"If you didn't have enough time alive, you linger around, your soul still stuck on this goddamn earth." His footsteps were getting angrier.

"But you can leave, right? Go to Heaven or Hell or-"

"-no! Not until you fulfill what you felt was meant to be done when you were alive!"

He stopped and turned to me, his eyes blinked rapidly, as tears threatened to fall. "I can't leave! I'm sorry."

"Why are you apologizing?" I asked, watching as he brought his face into the palms of his hands.

"I brought you into this- when I was alive the only thing I craved for, was for you to love me!" He was hiccuping, and I was just standing there, completely confused.

"Goddamn, we're both lingering because of my selfish desire for you to love me!" He began twirling his finger around, his habit, a tortured look on his face.

My knees felt unstable, but I just closed my eyelids tightly and wished to escape this dream. Maybe if I pinched myself, I would wake up and there would be Niall, his laughing face as I we found my puppy, Harvey, licking the cake batter we had prepared, his little face smeared with joy as he looked up at us. We had to throw out the cake, and instead we settled for a store bought one.

"But you were too busy running around with Carter!" Walter was still talking, but I was hardly paying attention.

What if one day I could have had a family with Niall? Instead of Harvey, maybe it could've been a little boy, with light brown hair, a mixture of his parent's, and ice blue eyes like his father. He would be dressed in green and probably named something like Peter. I hated the tears in my eyes because I knew they only came when I knew I had failed. But right at this moment I wanted Niall so bad, it made heart ache.

"-and I've become just like Carter! He was my demon when I was alive and now it seems like I'm yours."

Now that I was dead, and slowly becoming a ghost, how was I supposed to touch Niall if he was still alive? I would never be able to kiss him again.

"Halo?" Walter asked. "Halo?"

I had failed to realize that Walter was shaking me slightly, a pale look on his face. When I nodded, he exhaled and let go of me.

"I'm that girl right?" I asked quietly.

He looked at me with a baffled expression. "What girl?"

"I'm the girl you tried to save centuries ago, aren't I?"

"I tried my best," he whispered.

"What the fuck. First you, then Niall," I said. "People should stop trying to save my ass."

We drifted into silence, and then he asked, "is that enough explaining?"

Through all the pain, I smiled slightly and asked, "why is the sky blue?"

He chuckled. "I painted it for you, do you like it?"

"You missed a spot," I said, pointing at the only cloud in the sky.

"It's art," he whispered, leaning into me as though telling a secret. "You're supposed to feel it, it doesn't matter what it looks like."

Just then, as if on queue, the unpainted spots on the canvas began leaking. "Walter, you jinxed it!"

The rain fell down on my shoulders in large, fat droplets, and I shuddered, a cold feeling sweeping my barely alive body. When I tried to move my feet, I couldn't. The rain was coming down harder, and all I could think about was that one time I found Walter in the corn, acting the part he thought he played- a demon.

In that moment though, with me shivering, and replaying the horrible memory, Walter scooped me up and began running. I could tell that he had to materialize to carry me, because his clothes soon became soaked, just like mine.

"You still have human weaknesses, like getting sick. You can't just stand there and get pneumonia," he scolded me.

"I'm sorry," I said silently.

After running another mile or so, and with me waking up from my sleep, he slowed down and stretched his legs. I didn't feel like talking, I didn't feel like doing anything at all. I suddenly felt all the emotions I should have been feeling as I sobbed into Walter's shirt. He looked down at me briefly, his eyes softening.

"We only have a mile or so left, hang in there." He was about to begin running when I saw a Jack In The Box to the side of the road.

My stomach grumbled as I pointed at the building. "Wait, I'm starving."

He paused and then gave me a guilty look. "We can't go where anyone can report us."

"What?" I asked, still imagining a burger with fries.

"Um- I-I sort of kidnapped you, is that alright?"