espionage [h.s.]

FIFTY EIGHT

A.N. just thought i'd let u know i wrote the majority of this chapter while i was ill and drugged up on painkillers, so excuse any mistakes. however, i think the first few paragraphs may be my fave writing i've done, so maybe i understand why stephen king takes acid when he writes his books

HARRY

Every day seems to pass by in a long, indistinguishable blur. From the moment I wake up in the morning to the moment I lay down in bed at night, I feel completely exhausted from dragging myself through the day, but even then I'm never gifted with the solace of true sleep. Perhaps my insomnia has contributed to this strange sense of reality I've been living in the past few days, where every conversation around me sounds like a monotonous hum, where every face slowly fades out of focus, even when it's right in front of me, as if I've simply been plucked from the earth and forced to watch myself move through the world from a wholly detached perspective. I'd like to say that this feeling has nothing to do with Rochelle's absence, that her leaving didn't drain all the colour from my life and leave me with a bleak dullness in its place, but that'd just be a lie.

The memory of her presence and the pain of her absence are equally as debilitating, their effect only worsened by the strange phenomenon of their coexistence, somehow surrounding me all at once. I've been avoiding my apartment as much as I can, as well as other parts of the institute which trigger an influx of painful memories of her. I realise this is rather stupid and futile, because the memory of her is not just some physical entity that I can attempt to run away from, it also exists within me. Images of her play on a constant loop inside my brain, each exhausted brag of my heart seems to echo her name.

The memory of her is ubiquitous. She's inescapable, because the simple fact of the matter is that whether I like it or not, parts of her still linger inside me, and I think they may stay there forever. Sometimes, that thought makes me want to tear my skin off, but other times, it makes me want to preserve every single inch of it so my body never forgets the feeling of her touch.

Due to this weird state of nothingness I seem to be living in recently, I can't really remember what I've been doing lately, but judging from all the trainees' surprised looks when I walked into the gym this morning, I clearly haven't been in training for a while. Or maybe their expressions were something to do with the fact that none of them have seen me since Rochelle left, which, on reflection, I realised was probably the reason. Louis' reaction was from true surprise, because he's been knocking at my door for days, trying to coax me out, but due to the fact that I changed the code months ago so he couldn't walk in on me and Rochelle, and the fact I either ignored him each time or shouted at him to fuck off, he hasn't been very successful.

Unsurprisingly, I haven't really done much in training, in fact I've shifted my usual active role into a more passive one, spending the time stood against the wall in the background of the gym, pretending to observe everyone training when really my mind couldn't be further away. That is, however, until I begin to overhear a nearby conversation, and while I usually couldn't care less what the trainees are talking about, this particular conversation captures my attention because it just so happens to mention the name of the person I'm currently trying hard not to think about. I left it up to Louis to decide whether to tell the trainees about Rochelle or not, and he ended up telling them because he thought they 'deserved' to know. Unsurprisingly, they were all quite shocked by the news and apparently haven't shut up about it since, but surprisingly, Rochelle being a traitor isn't what the two trainees are talking about right now.