Primrose Path (A Harry Wells x Reader Insert)

Chapter 20

A/N: We're sorry we keep doing this to you guys, but the next chapter will be the turn-around, promise! xxx

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Harry gasps for air when he wakes up from his nightmare. It was the worst one he could have ever imagined.

It was about you again. You stand there before him with wide eyes, in shock. You were about to be shot, only not by James this time.

It's the nightmarish gunshot blast made by his own hand that wakes him up.

Sleep seems futile at this point. It's gotten him nowhere and he's missed days of meetings and deadlines because of this. Because of what his dreams represented, Harry had unwittingly led you down the primrose path. If it weren't for his team that night, you would have been killed. You would have died because of him and the choices he's made. You would have been a cold and lifeless body down by the docks - a place where he's been known to hide a few himself.

Throwing the covers off of himself, Harry's feet hit the floor and he walks downstairs in search of something to dull the recurring image of your petrified face flying through his head.

Grabbing the bottle of scotch he keeps on the counter and pouring himself a generous glass, he looks around the living room. One of your cardigans sits on the back of the couch that he still hasn't moved. He can't get rid of your things. He figures that when you need your clothes back, you'll ask one of the Inner Circle to drop them back. He just can't be in your life anymore.

He downs the amber liquid in one go and it burns his throat, but he quickly pours another one and takes it across to the couch. He picks up the cardigan and holds it between his fingers, stroking the soft fabric. Bringing the garment up, he inhales your scent and gets lost in the memories that it brings him.

Harry doesn't even bother pouring another drink and instead takes a swig straight from the bottle while still clutching your kept belonging. His hand starts to shake when he lifts it up, but when he brings it down from his lips, something catches his eye in front of him.

You.

Or rather, a hallucination of you.

"Why did you have to do it, Harry?" the imaginary-you asks him. Harry watches unblinkingly. "Why did you have to love me?

"I..." he falters.

"I was so innocent until I met you."

The mirage vanishes.

Harry throws your cardigan over his face to create darkness. The metaphor is not lost on him, even in his intoxicated state. But all that the darkness brings Harry is only a clearer imagination - a clearer memory - of that last image of you in that damned hospital bed. It had killed him. It still does, but he has to do this.

I have to do this.

***

You stay at the hospital all that week, barely speaking to the medical associates. Neither to the nurses nor the doctors, and only giving one-word answers in acknowledgement as your heart remains torn in pieces. You completely close yourself off from anyone that you gradually stop speaking altogether, nodding and shaking your head with a mundane expression in response to the nurse's questions. Not even the knock at your door can break you out of the trance that you seemed to be continually floating in.

"Heeey, (Y/N)," Caitlin says, peeking in. You haven't spoken to her since before you took on her responsibility of delivering the cash for the supplies. "How are you doing today?"

Looking down at your bedsheets, you don't answer her. You suppose Caitlin might think she had a part to play in you getting hurt and subsequently losing Harry, but you don't have the energy to assure her that was not the case. She comes into the room and sits down next to your bed. You barely look up at her.