where your heart is

uno

Chapter 1

Chapter Notes

See the end of the chapter for notes

My body is a cage, racked with pain

My mind is filled with rage

I seek an escape that I can not see

Oh, my body is a cage, it keeps me in my place

It tells me what I can and cannot do

- J. Allen Wilson, My Body Is A Cage.

"You're okay, baby. You're fine. You're going to be fine..."

A nine year old Louis Tomlinson sits up in bed with a jolt in his spine and sweat on his skin. The left side of his face is red and his hair is messy from the position he's been sleeping in; and there's a mild headache tiptoeing across the back of his head.

He lies on a corn-coloured duvet. Prying his eyes open, he blinks, allowing the light and his surroundings to seep in. His sight arises as a weird, icky blur before settling-- showing a blank, white room all around him, and alerting him to a placid clattering of rain against the window. It takes him a minute to remember where he is.

"I know it stings, baby. I know, I know."

Memories from hours before rush into his head and he curses, mentally, before drawing his legs from under the duvet and tucking them up to his chest. He didn't mean to fall asleep; but the pain relief he's given in times like these has always made him drowsy, and he often finds sleep a more peaceful alternative to crying. When you're asleep, you don't have to respond to the attention of the people around you.

When you're asleep, you forget how different you are.

"Be careful, Boo. You could get hurt."

Hah. If those words aren't the running theme of his poor excuse for a life then he doesn't know what is. It's not like he hasn't heard that sentence a thousand times already in his short nine years of life. It's not exactly like he has the luxury of being reckless.

He's always careful, alright?

Always.

It's just that occasionally, there are times when he isn't so lucky.

Times when he forgets. Times when he tries to be normal.

Times that leave him with his forearms covered in bandages because he held his baby sister in his arms.

It all happened so fast. One minute, his mum was turning her back, grabbing a diaper from the shelf and humming along to a song on the radio, the next, Fizzy was tumbling off the side of the changing table and there was a baby in Louis' arms. And then, a hot, searing pain ripping open his skin, causing him to cry out in agony and fall to his knees.

His mum was by his side in seconds, reaching down to relieve Fizzy from him but Louis couldn't let go. He couldn't open his arms, couldn't release his grip until she was safe on the floor, and oh

god the heat the heat the heat oh god oh god oh god ---

Next thing he knows, he's in a hospital bed. Which, really, brings him to now.

He looks down at his bandaged arms. He remembers he had been wearing short sleeves earlier, almost like a defiance thing, almost like he could, almost like the false confidence they bring would protect him from the rest of the world. There's some kind of irony in it, he thinks, but is in too low of spirits to dwell on it now.