Rupture // h.s au

46. "You're not coming."

Harry

She was sitting there, eyes casted outside the dirty window, head rested against the chair, with her arms crossed, and a frown settled on her features. She was wearing clothes that weren't mine, and I couldn't help but feel unreasonable jealousy flaring within me. I had to remind myself that I had no right feeling that way, that I should feel so many things for her, but none of them should include jealousy, or care, or need, or lust. Which was exactly what I had been feeling, seeing her so close, but being unable to touch her in any way.

I had to will myself to look away. To not reach out and run my fingers through her hair. To not hold her hand, every time she winced through a bump in the road. She was still in clear pain, but she could move around it now, unlike the dreadful week she spent in bed, literally losing consciousness to escape the waking agony of her healing injuries.

I couldn't help but think of my mother; the pain she had to have been feeling for a while now, only to go unnoticed by us all. The pain she had to be battling against, as we wasted precious time, attempting to get her the only cure, that could still, not heal her. I could still see her; paled features, lifeless eyes, dry skin, stiff limbs. I could almost feel her own pain, settling into my chest, along with all the accumulated hurt of the years. I almost couldn't bear it. I could feel myself crumbling under the weight of it all, but I had to push through, to get back to her, and get her better. Maybe then, I'd break, and she'd be the one holding me together, the way she had always been.

I stopped the car a bit far away from their camp, considering we couldn't approach their borders with a car, because that would most likely expose our unwelcomed presence. She was leading the way, her posture firm, although her figure was tense with the pressure of the circumstances. Occasionally, she'd turn to me, putting a finger to her lips as if to silence me, although I hadn't found it in me to speak a single word since the start of our mission.

She suddenly made an abrupt stop, hiding behind a small house, that seemed to have been built of some sort of metal, giving it a much harder exterior than our rooms back home. She leaned by its walls, squeezing her eyes shut, like that would somehow hide her further.

" What is it?" I finally questioned, imitating her posture.

" Guards. We're getting close, but I know one of them, so they probably know me as well."

" You're the daughter of their leader. Of course they'd know you."

" Fuck, okay, we need to stay quiet. Maybe they won't see us."

" They're literally walking in our direction, they're going to separate ways, for one to check the front, and the other, the back, and they'll find us."

" Alright, what do you suggest we do?"

" If they find us, we have to be quiet, so I think we need to kill them. No guns, just knives, and no fighting either, because that's bound to draw attention to us."

Her eyes only squeezed tighter, her chest moving with frantic breaths, and I wondered why the familiar concept of killing, now seemed to cause her such distress. She breathed out, ever so slowly, before giving me a single nod. I twirled around the building, hiding by its front side. As soon as a guard passed in front of me, his eyes widened, his mouth opening, probably to call for someone, and that was all I was given time to see, before I put my hand over his mouth, quickly sliding my knife against his neck in one clean cut. He fell onto the ground, and I held the weight of his body, until it had completely gone unmoving in my arms. I sighed, wiping the forming layer of sweat away from my forehead. Just like that, he was drowning in a pool of his own blood, a life lost, for no clear cause, just for existing in the wrong place at the wrong time. The heaviness of the loss weighed me down, but I willed it away, as I moved against the surface of the house, returning to where Autumn previously was.