The Armor (Prince Harry fanfic #1)

Chapter Twenty-Two

With the celebration from the night before, there was no school today, which Harry was happy for but the lack of sleep gnawed at him. The light streamed in from the cracks within the slum, and his mind focused on the shadows. Something moved in the shadows he was sure of. Something moved around him, but it wasn't Lucy. The warmth got to him, and he threw off the non-exist covers. The air was too thick and consuming. The heat ate at him from the insides. When Harry's eyes closed, all he saw was Lucy lying in her own blood, all those people dead.

His eyes flashed open after maybe an hour of rocking sleep, and he remembered the news report well: fifty-six dead and one-hundred-and-eighteen injured, the deadest school shooting in the history of the U.S., and still nothing had changed in America. It was no wonder that Lucy had gotten out while she could. Her words had been, "You never think it'll happen to you, and then it comes. And you're left wondering what the hell happened." Harry understood those words all too well.

Rolling over, Harry watched Lucy intently, how calm she was, the thin cloth over her body, almost liked she belonged in a morgue. Her face straight in the air, nose high, her back only slightly arched. She could have been dead if he didn't know better.

Lucy begged for no pity, no change in how he looked at her, which surely everyone changed who they were already her after they knew; she didn't want Harry to be another one of those. But Harry changed when he heard her story, how he looked and how he acted around her. He swore to himself that it wasn't bad but rather great because they had an understanding. But he knew she didn't want to get to close to people, only to lose them, only to have them disappear. One day those people were there, and then they snatched from you.

Harry waited patiently, thinking that maybe Lucy would rise in the light, in the calm panic she made most nights, but she never rose, maybe because of the light or maybe because she was comfortable with him. She slept, exhausted from the long night.

Closing his eyes and diving deep into his memories of the night before, before she told him what those scars really meant, when they danced, and he touched her ever-so-gently. The music swirled around him in dancing bodies. Her skin was cold, stuck in wherever she came from, a place she didn't name. However, Harry knew now, the name of the city and the place where she flew from. When they danced, there was a relaxation about her, so graceful in her movements, years of dance practice. He desperately wanted to keep up with her, so he tried just as hard. Lucy flew in the air, so light on her toes, and he wanted to go with her. Her cold skin covered in scars, burned his fingertips, a special kind of heat radiating off of her. He wished to touch her again.

Harry didn't know how long he slept because he woke up with Lucy standing in the doorway of the slum, the door cracked open as she watched outside. Quietly as he could, he moved from his bed, which Lucy noticed immediately. Her eyes wandered over to him before she turned back to the outside. The sun was high in the sky, mid-day, as Harry reached her. He wished to touch her again and he did. His fingertips brushed along her skin.

"You're hot," he whispered.

"I try." She winked. And like that, Lucy was back to her old self, or to what Harry saw from her before. He would never know what she was like before, way back then.

But really, Lucy burned up under Harry's fingertips, like something stirred underneath her skin, pumping through her veins. Her eyes focused outward, but when Harry looked, he saw nothing exciting. People were out and moving around, but her eyes were focused past that, upon the horizon, perhaps across the world.

"Are you waiting for something?" Harry asked.

"Aren't we all?" was her only response, but there was something in her words that struck a cord with him. Lucy pulled her hair back into a pony and smiled to herself. "In nine months or so, there will be a lot of births."