espionage [h.s.]

FIFTY SIX

HARRY

I don't know what to do.

What am I supposed to do? Do I just continue to sit here on the floor, waiting for my tears to dry and trying to avoid looking at the gun discarded on the carpet a few feet away? Or should I get up and do something, go somewhere? But I can't. I can't move, I can't speak, I can't breathe. I can't do anything, because Rochelle's taken everything from me. Everything that I was, everything that I am, everything that I wanted to be. She's taken it all.

I've never felt like this before. I've never felt this much unbearable, pure pain. It's so different to physical pain. When it comes to physical pain, I'd be inclined to describe that as a burning, a stinging, depending on the scenario. But this isn't like that. This pain is a deep, profound aching that I can feel right down to my bones. It's a type of aching I've never felt before. It's a type of aching I didn't know was even possible to feel until now.

Physical pain, I've had my fair share of. I've suffered fight injuries, sprains, broken bones, burns and cuts that take ages to heal. I've been shot in the chest, and then I had that bullet pulled out of my chest with bare hands. It was actually Rochelle's hands who took that bullet out of my chest. In fact, it was because of Rochelle that I even had the bullet in my chest in the first place, because I instinctively threw myself in front of the gun to protect her. All I've done is try to protect her, keep her safe like she asked, like I had promised. But all she does is bring me pain. Maybe that's all she ever did. Maybe I was just to blind to see it, too pathetically happy to notice that the more time she spent in my arms, the more she was destroying me from the inside out. The more I let her into my heart, the more intent she was on breaking it to pieces.

I gave her so much. I gave her more than I've ever given anyone. I sacrificed my own friendships for her sake, I defended her always, no matter the personal cost to me. Whenever Louis questioned me, or her, or us, I shut him down every time, thinking that he was a little jealous, or maybe just bitter about how his relationship with a trainee turned sour. But now I realise that he was just trying to warn me. My own mind was trying to warn me too, telling me it wouldn't end well, that nothing could be so easy, so perfect. Not for me. There were big, red warning signs flashing at me from every direction, but I just closed my eyes and carried on, blindly walking down the path leading to my own destruction.

I made space for her in my home, in my heart, and she moved in, ripping the wallpaper to shreds, tearing down the walls, throwing out the furniture. And when she decided she was done redecorating, she walked out the door again, leaving me derelict and empty, an abandoned building now left to crumble to pieces over time, a heart left with shaky foundations.

I can hardly even bear to keep my eyes open, but memories of her exist in every crevice of my apartment. She's curled up asleep in my bed, one leg sticking out of the duvet and her hair falling across her face. She's perched on a counter in the kitchen, drinking coffee and smiling as she watches me make us breakfast. She's in the shower, her warm body wrapped around mine, or the sound of her quiet singing drifting out of the bathroom, which always used to make me smile. She's in the living room, drunkenly dancing to a Bon Jovi record. She's on the couch, her limbs entangled with mine and her head on my chest, listening to my steady heartbeat thumping in sync with the rhythm of her breaths. She's stood in the doorway, her brown eyes wide with the realisation that I know what she's done.