Rupture // h.s au

70. Epilogue.

Harry

The room still smelled of her. Her hairs were still caught in her favorite brush. Everything she'd knitted laying by her pillow, in case she became restless in the middle of the night. The ingredients she used for cooking scattered around the shelves.

It had been well over three days, and the room was still so incredibly hers. But I had to take it all away. Box her belongings and store them for the next owner of the room to settle in without feeling her ghost in every corner, without hearing her tired snores every time they dared close their eyes. I had to scrub away every last trace of her mere existence, even if it broke my heart. Even if it broke me all together.

I hadn't looked inside myself since I'd found her lifeless body in her own bed; paled, stiff, peaceful. I hadn't dared search for the impact it had on me. I was too scared. But I was certain there was a hole inside me. I could feel it. I could feel the cold night's air rushing through it. I could feel hands and arms and embraces going right past me, every time someone tried to console me somehow. I could feel it sucking everything else, taking away bits and pieces of myself.

I started thinking of black holes in the sky, absorbing universes whole. I thought of vortexes in the ocean, swallowing ships and drowning empires and ending lives. And I wondered how I ever thought I could survive the downward spiral inside myself. How I ever assumed anything around me could not be sucked in, could be somehow saved from my disastrous pull.

I've witnessed more ends than beginnings. More losses than gains. More goodbyes than hellos. I've lost so fucking much, that I felt like my life was one big full stop, laid in front of other people's sentences, and simply putting an abrupt end to them. I felt like a bracket; that held onto something, taking it with it to the grave, and nothing could ever exist outside that bracket. I felt so much, and it hurt. It always hurt.

A knock on the door sounded, taking me out of my own head, and throwing me into the world that was still adjusting to her loss. As was I.

" I'm not done yet. I'll be out in a while." I willed the words past my lips. It felt like if I'd stayed silent any longer, I'd forget how to talk at all.

" Harry, someone is here to see you." I didn't know who exactly was speaking to me. The sound was familiar, but it wasn't fully breaking through the shell I'd built of myself. It sounded like I was under water, and all sounds that weren't her own, were a bit of a blur.

" Not now." I just wanted some peace and quiet. I just wanted to be left alone. I was willing to beg for it.

" Trust me, you'd want to see them. Just open the door, come on, please." I sighed, feeling drained by the little conversation I held. Shaking my head, I fell against her bed and waited for it to swallow me whole. I was almost certain it'd hurt something terrible. And it did.

" Harry?" Just like that, all the pain faded away. All the holes inside me filled up, except for the one she'd left when she willed me away, that very last time. All the shaking and trembling and exhaustion molded into a consistent ache for her.

I knew that voice. I'd heard it for months upon months, and every single time, it broke something inside me, to not find her there. I could still hear it, echoing a goodbye that never seemed to end. Whispering an I love you that I failed to say back. Always talking to me, keeping my company, keeping me sane. Or driving me insane. I couldn't really tell.

" Harry, it's me." Another knock. Her voice again. I couldn't understand. She'd been gone for a year and a half. I was barely becoming at peace with it. Growing accustomed to the void, to the pain, not minding it as much. I was barely put together. This couldn't be.