Scandal // h.s au

twenty: "My dad."

He sat by her, looking at her serene figure, taking in how her eyes didn't falter, almost as if she would never awake. How her lips weren't curved in any specific direction, simply formed into a rested line. How her skin had paled, almost losing all sense of color to it, except for that angry looking bruise surrounding her eye.

He stared at her, until it got too much. Then he put his eyes to the ceiling, praying to a God that he didn't know if he believed in anymore. He'd do anything to have her be okay again. And he didn't know why. He was no longer bleeding but he still hadn't washed up or actually got looked at. Every single part of his body felt like it was caving in on him, but he couldn't afford to leave her, because he didn't want her to wake up alone and scared. He didn't want her to wake up with him being any place else. After all, he could barely pull himself out of bed every single morning, so how did he expect her to return to that world, he desperately wanted to escape?

She slowly began to wake up. Eyes heavy, body sore - so sore, she barely managed to move the fingers that Harry held between his own. She barely managed to blink awake, before he was rising to his feet, worried green eyes looking down upon her. Her chest was heavy, she felt like she couldn't breathe, and every time her chest rose, she thought it would collapse on its way down. He was there. Bleeding and speaking and worrying over her. Her features crumbled in grief at the sight of him, and she felt the urge to hide away, to disappear. She didn't want to be anywhere in that moment. She didn't want to have to be at all.

She was overcome with something vicious that refused to let up, to allow her some dignity. She moved her shaky hands, burying her face into them. The first sob of many rocked through her, as she willed her heart not to give out on her. Her hands were unable to muffle the dreadful sounds breaking through her, her chest was unable to hold any of it in, as it all drowned her in ways she felt she would never be able to break through the surface of again.

He stared at her, not knowing what to do, before his hand fell onto her shoulder and held on, as if that would collect a few pieces of her, hold them together until they made sense again.

" It's okay, Aimee, you're okay." He breathlessly spoke.

She shook her head, at loss for all words. At a loss for everything. She couldn't tell him that she had lost all sense of okay-ness, that she didn't think she'd ever be that again. She couldn't tell him that she understood, how he turned into what he now was. Finally, she didn't blame him for shutting down and having that dark outlook on the world, because now, she could feel herself coming undone, shattering under the weight of it all.

He could tell it was more than the case and the crash and the incident with the father. He could sense the sudden depth of her brokenness, and the dark shadow that seemed to have dimmed her everlasting light. Something was wrong, and he didn't know if he'd ever be able to fix it.

" What's wrong?" He asked, although every fiber of his being wasn't prepared to find out.

" My dad - he -"

No. His head shook, trying to deny what he was hearing until he didn't have to know it anymore. She didn't have to say it for him to know. He knew that look, he knew that desperate choked sob, the sob that carried such grief that would never fade away, such wreckage that could never be put back together. The sob of loss always had a different sound to it, and only people who had felt it before, could sense the deep sense of its sorrow. Memories he had desperately attempted to bury away into the darkest chambers of his being began to resurface, and he felt selfish for allowing himself to feel it all over again.

This was her loss, her pain, her agony, her pieces breaking apart from her being, one piece at a time. This was her time to carry the unbearable weight of it all, that was to take her down to a place that he knew, and had sunk to all those years ago.

He felt his own chest shaking with something it was desperate to release, but it wasn't the time to let any of his own shit seep through. She was crying, gasping for air, and he feared that her lungs would collapse all together, because if anyone knew how it felt for the breath to be taken right out of you, he did. He didn't want her to feel that. He didn't want her to have to turn into him. He found himself wishing he could have gone through it all again, if it meant sparing her. He was all gone anyway.

He stood by her side, watching as she fell so far apart from the woman he knew her to be. He slowly circled his arms around her, pulling her into his chest, holding on so tight, wanting to ride this out with her. The empty space on the bed was too small, but somehow, he managed to lay beside her, putting her face into his chest and completely enveloping her. His lips rested against her forehead, planting tender kisses, in hopes that they would do something to ground her. The harder she cried, the tighter his grasp was. He didn't know if it was comforting or suffocating, but as long as she wasn't trying to push him away, he would cling on as hard as he possibly could.

She tried to tell him about the phone call she got right before the accident; about her mother's intense accent as she cried out that her father had passed. She wanted to tell him that she didn't understand why she was wailing over someone she'd lost long ago. That she didn't know why she still owed him the grief and the sadness. Or why she didn't just hang up on her mother, told her to go screw herself, find someone else to share the loss with. She thought she cried most of it out, right into his chest, and he didn't do much but let her. He allowed her the space to be as angry and as irrational as she needed to be. He allowed her the time to cry for as long as she needed to.

Harry hadn't allowed himself to feel so much all at once in so long. He hadn't allowed his suppressed devastation to resurface, but now it was all coming back, and he didn't know if he was grieving his own loss, her father's, or hers. Since he knew that she would never be the same again.

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a/n: hey guys, it's been a while, but I'm still incredibly blocked and I haven't been able to write a single word for months now, if not more, so I'm sorry, but bear with me please, I'm doing my best.

anyway, thank you to all those who are still reading this and commenting/voting because it sure helps so thank you :)

till next time, ily x

ps: if you're having trouble understanding anything, just message me and I'll try to explain it without spoiling any future events.