Only Angel [h.s] AU

Harry's letter

To my Only Angel,

I don't know if you'll ever get to read this but I hope that you do. It's been a week since you left and I guess part of me wonders desperately if you miss me as much as I miss you. Your absence is damaging and I want to know that you too experience long restless nights due to the thought of me, like I do to you. That there is a possibility that your heart is somehow not beating as fast as it did when you are with me. I want to know that I'm not the only one suffering from this.

I desperately wish to know that I actually meant something to you. That surely you didn't see us as anything more than sexual. Cause the truth is that I needed you. All of you, not just sexually. Like a slow burn you were consuming me. One can not simply stand in front of the fire and not be consumed and that terrifies me. I was never one to love whoever I was with, nobody ever consumed me. I never felt like I should respond to the impulses that I arose in women.

But the truth is, nobody ever consumed me like you did. I don't know what makes you so different, I know it's a god damned cliché. I understand I can be a bit much at times and I often show my emotions through acts of control, but if I don't have control I have nothing. At least that's what my father taught me. My real father. I never thought that I'd be talking about myself, no matter how hard you tried to get it out of me, I never thought I'd also be doing that on a piece of paper but alas, here I am.

When I was five, my father brought home a girl. She couldn't have been any younger than seventeen. He woke me up one night and brought me down to the basement where he had her tied up and suspended from the ground by her arms, her thighs and her neck. She was gagged, she was crying and her body was red from the poor excuse of the bondage. She was a runaway, apparently my father thought she should be part of his demeaning act because he felt like nobody would care about her.

He had sound proofed the basement and forbid my mother to ever going down there. It was only then that I found out he would make snuff films of the girl because he would force me to watch them later on. I remember this one incident with her, me and a bottle of champagne. This time I was thirteen. My father would force me to go down there and attend to her needs, he would keep her in this cage under the mattress he had in there. She was always exhausted and always pleaded for me to let her go. And I remember that I was about to, I didn't care I would take the blame.

It just so happened that when I was about to untie her ropes and she was desperately thanking me that my father came in. I had forgotten about the cameras. He grabbed the back of my neck harshly, broke the empty bottle of champagne and had me pick up a shard. In his eyes; 'if you don't have control, you have nothing'. He forced me to cut her. I can still hear her screams to this day.

He was the one who taught me that thing about privacy because he adored to have it. It gave him a sense of pleasure, to have people see you as a mystery. He demeaned women because he hated his mother for trying to abort him but when she failed, he was abused all his life. When my mother found out, she divorced him and we fled England because he promised that when he came out of prison he was going to find us and kill us. My parents never loved each other, nobody ever taught me. I'm aware it isn't something you are taught but rather that you learn but I never have.

Sex is the consolation you have when you can't have love. I know I have tried, but if I can't even love my own mother how do I expect to love someone else. And that is my detriment, I want to say that you were the one who got me even remotely close to that—but unfortunately, I feel nothing. That's why my rule is important to me, don't fall in love with me because I am incapable of loving you back, not because I don't want to or because I'm scared. I'm not a philophobic, I believe in love—I just don't believe it for myself because in the end, I think love is just people looking for someone that won't destroy them and if we spend anymore time together I believe I would.

It's ironic how our hearts can still get hurt by something that we saw coming. It's a shame that I can't love you even if I tried, you would've been ideal to me. I realize what I'm giving up and I don't expect you to understand the essence of me. Nobody can, not even myself. I guess I'm just so incredibly fucked up that way, I see it and I acknowledge it. I'm sorry you had to find out this way and on your birthday (if you are seeing this then) I wish you a very happy birthday, you marry your goals, remain limited to success and be loyal to your dreams. It's okay to choose yourself first.

Whatever love means, H.