You saved me from myself

Chapter One

"Louis please," Niall pleaded. "You can't keep doing this to yourself, it's destroying you from the inside,"

"Go away, Niall." Louis said softly, voice hoarse from days of no use.

"Please, Lou. It wasn't your fault." Niall said. He pained for his best friend, he always got like this during this time of the year.

"Just leave me alone, okay?" Louis dug his blunt nails into his forearms, willing the tears to stop. When it did not help, he banged his clenched fists into the wall. He was so frustrated, he wanted to feel something. He was sick of being numb. He had tried everything, but just as with the alcohol, it worked for a while and then he was back to feeling...empty. Just like a hollow shell, and he despised it.

"Lou, please." Niall pleaded one last time, he was not going to give up on his best friend, but it was starting to feel hopeless. "Don't do this to yourself. It's killing you, seriously."

The corners of Louis' lips tugged upwards in a small smile. A quote he had seen scribbled on a park bench where he sometimes slept to avoid his landlord resurfaced in his mind:

Death is alive and eating you from within.

Louis closed his eyes, but said nothing. He listened to the sound of Niall walking back down the hall towards the elevator. Then, everything was quiet again.

Louis pushed himself up on his feet, leaning against the wall until the world had stopped spinning, then went back to sit with his back against the radiator. It was the only place in his crappy apartment where the freezing November air didn't chill him to his bones, but for how long, he did not know. He had not paid his rent the last two months, he did not have the money, and no less the income, it was just a matter of days now before his landlord would chuck him out.

He banged his head against the steel bars of the radiator in frustration, more angry tears finding their way down his hollowed cheeks. Burning his cold skin. What was he going to do?

...

A knock on his door made Edward look up. In the doorway stood Harry, his by-some-minutes younger brother.

"Yes?" He asked as Harry stepped into his office.

"We have a new patient in for morphine abuse, and I wondered if you have time for a session with her first thing tomorrow morning, check how she's holding up?" Harry asked, straightening out his light blue scrubs.

"One second, I'll check my schedule." Edward clicked up all his appointments on his computer screen. "I should be free at nine, does that work?"

"Perfect," Harry smiled, exiting to go and inform the new patient.

Edward let out a sigh, leaning back in his office chair and rubbed his tired eyes with his hands. They tell you how hard being a therapist is in school, but nothing can really prepare you for the strain on your own mind. But, he and his younger brothers had decided long ago that they wanted to help people, no matter the price. And so the Styles' Rehabilitation for Young Adults, or SRYA, came into existence. It was rather new, just a mere two years old, but already they had helped youths with various problems. They also found out that it really is worth all the hard work when they could say goodbye to a patient who was finally put together after falling apart god knows how many times to go out in the world and re-start their lives.

He stood up, picked up his notepad, and went to meet a patient. This was all worth the strain, he told himself.

...

Louis woke up with a jolt, breathing hard with sweat covering his face and chest. It had happened again, the dream.

He stared wildly around him until his brain caught up with the rest of him, and he realised that he was still laid on his thin mattress with only his threadbare blanket to shield his frail body. He sat up with a groan. Ignoring the rumble of his stomach, he stumbled his way to his small kitchenette to pour himself a glass of water.