A Chance Meeting

A Light in the Dark

"Okay, here it goes" Harry told her as he prepared himself to tell his story.

He took a long breath as if to calm down and then looked at Jemma. Her face was lit up in anticipation to hear about the wonders of the magical world and the adventures of the Boy-Who-Lived as any little kid would be.

But she had no idea just how dark his story actually was. Maybe he could lighten it up in parts, make it more children friendly.

"So you want to hear the watered down version or the long drawn out version?" Harry asked her to prolong the inevitable.

Jemma just gave him a little smile and said, "You really do not want to tell me, do you?"

"It is just that for me, now, what happened in my life feels like a very painful story from a time long past gone. I can think of it as the life that someone else had lived. I do not want to revisit that life I had before coming here. Telling you about it would make that life very much a part of my reality."

Harry was trying to keep a smiling face but the hurt he felt must have been clearly shown on his face because Jemma got up from her chair, came up to him and gave him a hug.

"I am sorry," she told him after releasing from the hug.

Harry smiled at her and said, "That's the first time that you hugged me. I had forgotten what it felt like. It's nice."

Jemma smiled back at him and said, "It's okay if you do not want to tell me. But bottling it up won't do you any good. It would be good to talk about it to someone else."

For the first time, since she had met him, Jemma's eyes were completely open to a realization about her friend. She had always thought of him as a happy and easy go person, who had fallen into a very a bad set of circumstances that had led him here. Now she could see the truth.

Standing before her was a broken man. He just was very good at hiding it.

She didn't know exactly what had happened in his life, but she could hazard a guess from the little things that she knew about him. After all, he himself had told her that he had tried to kill himself, the very first time that she had met him.

She was brought out of her muse when Harry started to talk again.

"For the last three months, I have been living a very bizarre life. For the longest time, my deepest wish was to not get noticed by people, and now that wish had come true in the cruelest way."

Harry stopped himself to try and compose himself.

"What kind of life is this?"

The question wasn't directed at her, but Jemma still felt compelled to speak.

"It is not that bad is it?" Jemma asked him.

Maybe that was the wrong thing to say because Harry just started laughing. But he was not laughing in joy or amusement. This was the hollow laugh of a person who had been beaten down at every turn in his life. This was the laugh the of a person who had tried to escape the pain that was his life by ending it only to find out that he still lived like a cosmic joke. This was the laugh of a man who had reached the limit.

"Not that bad Jemma?" Harry asked her.

"Look at me Jemma. I do not even have a body and the only bloody person who can see me, are you."

That came out as an outburst rather than an explanation and Harry regretted it immediately. Jemma reeled back from him in shock at the outburst.

"I am sorry, that was uncalled for," Harry told her.