Your Water Is Her Blood, Part 1B
Title: Your Water Is Her Blood
Author: riais
Rating: R
Warnings: language, for now
Characters: Harry, Perry, and Harmony
Disclaimer: Don’t own it, never will
Summary: He wants to say he would never do such a thing, but does he know himself well enough to know he isn’t the bad guy? After all, how can you say you didn’t do it if you can’t remember the last eighteen months of your life, let alone last night?
Case/Amnesia!Fic in which everyone is convinced that Harry might have actually killed an innocent.
Author's Notes:
Any and all comments and critiques are very very much appreciated. I want to know what you think, so please tell me how I might improve (especially in the grammar department).
Previous Chapter
Part 1, B:
In which even the characters that usually know everything seem inexplicably lost
“Wake up, Princess, I need you conscious for this.”
Slowly (painfully slowly), he opened his eyes to find someone lightly slapping his cheek. The light pierced his sensitive eyes, eliciting a groan. He scrunched his eyes up tight again.
“Wake up,” the voice said impatiently, slapping his cheek a little harder than necessary.
“You’re some prince,” Harry said weakly.
“Well, you aren’t exactly Sleeping Beauty,” the man said as he leaned over Harry. There was a click and-blessed hallelujah, the seat belt was gone.
“I think I should resent that.”
“No, you shouldn’t. Give me your arm.”
More taken than given, Harry’s arm was wrapped around the man’s neck as an arm was slipped around Harry’s waist.
“Can you stand?”
Harry scrutinized the face that was now next to his, goatee and all, “I don’t know,” he said honestly to the blond haired man.
“Try. I’ve got you.”
“Hmm,” he said in response. He didn’t move. He didn’t really want to find out how much pain he was actually in. As long as he stayed on the other side of reality, he wouldn’t have to find out. He let his eyelids droop again.
“Harry.” The name in his ear was like a command, loud and clear. He fought the urge to say ‘yes sir.’
“What?” He griped as his eyelids snapped open.
“Up,” the voice commanded.
“Screw you,” he said. Authority issues? Apparently.
There was a sigh from next to his ear, “It’s going to hurt a lot more if I have to drag you in by your arms,” and he seemed perfectly prepared to do just that, it seemed to Harry.
Harry gave a wordless consent and the voice spoke again into his ear, “On the count of three. One, two, three-Up…there you go.” He rose on shaky legs with some (well, a lot) of help. They stood still a moment before Harry’s knees buckled beneath him and he slipped from the man’s shoulder.
“Easy,” he said, catching Harry, “One step at a time.” They took a small step, and then another, but when Harry bore down on his right leg, he cried out in pain.
“Fuck!” he said, pitching backward in a desperate attempt to remove the weight from his leg, “Fuck!” He followed that with a string of ‘shits’ and a ‘goddamn.’ He leaned more weight against the man’s shoulder.
“Shit,” he whispered. It was so low that the man probably didn’t hear it. He slumped against him.
An exhaustion swept over his entire body. Even with the help of the larger man’s frame beside him he wasn’t sure how much longer he would be able to stand. He couldn’t be sure, but maybe it was because he had noticed just how much pain he really was in.
He could feel it. It pulsed and pounded through him with every beat of his heart. Shallow breaths lodged themselves in his throat as he tried to gulp for air and the world swayed like it had just been knocked off its axis of rotation.
The bottom dropped out: his head was so light and the world was becoming so dark. White and black spots clouded his vision.
“Harry?”
His head dipped down to his chest and he scrunched his eyes up tight.
Pain.
Pulsing, searing, drumming, throbbing pain.
His hands released their grip and his muscles slackened.
“Harry.” He felt the slap on his face again, “Harry!”
“…right here…” he said quietly, but could hardly hear himself over the roar of the pain. A beast had taken him and was in the process of devouring him whole. He shook his head side to side to ward it off.
But the beast came anyway, carrying darkness in its jaws.
The world faded to black completely.
---
A door opened slightly, creaking.
A woman’s voice chimed out from far away, “I’m in here.”
Did you bring it?” came a familiar voice from behind.
“Yeah, I have it here, but I really don’t see why you…” The voice came closer and suddenly dropped off.
Clunk
“Oh my God. Oh God-Harry! What the Hell happened to him?”
“You think I fucking know?” the voice from behind asked, “Get over here and help me out.”
“What?”
“What do you mean ‘what’? Help me, will you? He’s sturdier than he looks!”
He was tilting and falling and tilting some more. Finally-
“Shit, he’s heavy.”
Cushions. He sank down deep in them, groaning.
“Harry?” said the man’s voice hesitantly, pulling away from behind his ear. Now he had to be standing above somewhere.
Silence filled the air for a few moments.
“Harry, are you awake?”
“This sure as hell isn’t a hospital,” Harry said at last.
“Harry, what happened to you?” asked the woman’s voice as soon as he had spoken.
Harry cracked his eyes open the smallest amount to see the man grab her forearm and pull her back slightly, “Don’t,” he said quietly.
She turned on him, “Why not?” she asked, her voice rising, “I want to know what kind of bastard did this to him!” She pulled her arm away from his grip and pointed at Harry. Her eyes were still focused on the man, “If he’s awake enough to talk, he’s awake enough to tell me what happened.”
The man paused, looked over at Harry, and drew a deep breath, “He…” he paused again, thinking over and biting back a response. He looked back at the woman. Harry, though he couldn’t see well between half-closed eyelids, could not help but notice the way the man wrung his hands in such a hesitant gesture.
“Let’s patch him up, first,” he said finally, his voice taking on an air of authority. The girl didn’t question his now apparent confidence in the situation (but Harry was quite certain it was a bullshit front. He probably didn’t deal with dying amnesiacs every day, did he?).
“Ok,” she said, mouth pulled into a determined frown as she looked at Harry.
“Ok,” he echoed, also glancing down at him, “Get the supplies.”
---
He tried to scream. He really, really did try to scream. If they hadn’t tied the dishtowel around his head as a gag, he most definitely would have succeeded, too.
The girl got behind him, holding his arms back behind the arm of the couch. The man brandished a very intimidating pair of what looked, to Harry, like pliers.
But the resulting pain from the pliers ripping the bullets out of his chest didn’t hurt near as bad as what happened next (of course it still hurt, though. Ripping anything out with pliers is going to hurt). He thrashed madly about, screaming through the gag. The dishtowel was dry and lumpy, and he quickly began to lose his voice from lack of moisture.
“Hold still, Harry!”
“Fumph phu!”
He suddenly found his hips straddled by the man, “I know what you’re thinking, Harry,” the man said from on top of him, wielding a steaming clothes-iron, “It’s going to hurt, a lot. Trust me, I do know, but we don’t have a doctor and we can’t go to the hospital. We have to close your wounds. It’ll be over soon, Chief; you just have to tough it out.”
Well, Fuck. He didn’t want to trust him; he felt like the two of them were trying to murder him. But he did trust them. For some inexplicable reason, he trusted them both. He sighed heavily and closed his eyes as tight as he could manage.
Of course he couldn’t keep from screaming when the iron touched raw skin, but he tried to be as still as possible (which wasn’t very still, but at least he wasn’t bucking too hard).
Somewhere in between the closing of the second bullet hole and the stitching on his side, Harry managed to pass out again. He never knew what they had to do to his right leg, but later, after finding it splinted, he was quite glad he hadn’t been awake for it.
The darkness wasn’t complete, though.
He felt like he was sinking-not physically, of course. He was sinking mentally into some weird dream-like thing that reminded him of that one movie where the guy keeps falling and falling and falling in the dark… Or perhaps Alice as she fell down the rabbit hole; but he didn’t see random objects attached to earthly walls. He saw the dark, or perhaps, he didn’t see anything at all. He saw a lack of things, so he guessed that meant he didn’t really see anything.
Oh, but he could still feel pain. He could feel it around him, as if it were an almost tangible force. He wasn’t falling of course, that was like a metaphor or a simile (he couldn’t really ever remember the difference between them). No, he was certainly, actually, physically somewhere.
But not really. It was a dream-thing, of course…or maybe a memory, because it felt so real.
It was dark and stale, like the air he was breathing hadn’t moved in years. There was a pounding in his ears and a throbbing in the back of his skull. He hoped to the God he really didn’t believe in that he didn’t, like, get a fucking aneurysm or something.
His hands were bound behind his back so tight that he could barley feel the blood flowing down his palms. He had started to lose feeling in his hands but everything else was on fire. Fuck, he could feel the knife wounds in his side as blood leaked out of them.
He realized then that he was waiting for someone. He couldn’t quite place the name, but he knew there was someone. He knew that any second he would break in, guns blazing. And, after all the smoke had cleared and everyone else was dead, Harry would be carried off to the hospital (towards the sunset) over the man’s shoulder.
He’s allowed to believe in fairy tales, right?
But how can you believe that everything’s going to be okay when the thirteen year old girl curled up on the cold concrete beside you says its too late?
“They’re saying he killed a girl, Harmony!”
He awoke with a start.
The two them were yelling at each other somewhere in the house, perhaps around the wall behind him.
“Then tell them the truth!”
“I don’t know what the truth is!”
There was silence for a moment and then the woman’s voice rang out in an accusatory tone, “You think he might have actually done it.”
“No, that’s-that’s not what I said.”
She screamed a sort of choked up scream of rage that didn’t really make it all the way out of her throat. There was a crash and then a bang.
“This is your fault, P-”her words were drowned out by another crash. Something shattered, “You’re the one who got him into it!”
“Stop throwing shit at me!”
Another crash.
“Hey, don’t you dare throw that!”
There was another crash and the tinkle of broken glass. From the sound of it, they were probably in a kitchen.
“Goddamn it, Harmony, Stop! I’m fucking bleeding!”
“You don’t deny it?” the venom in her voice was almost as shocking as the comparative quietness of it, “You know it’s your fault.”
“Not all of it,” he said after a short pause, “I’m not the reason we’re hiding from the cops. I’m not the reason we’re here in this safe house. I’m not the reason that girl is dead. Whatever he did, he brought it on himself.”
“That’s bullshit and you know it.” He was quiet again and didn’t interrupt her as she continued, “You know he can take care of himself…barely, but he can. Whatever you got him into got us into all of this. Don’t act like he deserved what happened to him because he screwed something up. For all you know-and I’m starting to doubt you know anything-he didn’t do anything wrong. Events have a certain way of playing out whether they are helped along or not.”
He muttered something, but it was too low for Harry to hear.
“Believe what you want, I guess, but I know better,” there was a rattle of keys, “I have to work, so I’ll be back later,” there was a clicking of heels down a wooden-paneled hallway and slamming of a door. She had gone.
About fifteen minuets later a new set of footsteps made their way down the hall, but instead of going out the door they arrived at Harry’s couch. He didn’t bother to adjust his gaze; all he saw were a pair of shiny black shoes positively ruined with blood splatter.
“Harry,” the man said, “we need to talk.”
“What will it matter?” he mumbled dishearteningly. He just continued to stare at the floor.
A hand came into his field of vision as it scooted a stool across the floor. The man sat on it and Harry cold see business slacks splotched with blood-probably his own.
“I need to know what you remember,”
“Why?” Harry scoffed, “So you can hand me over?”
“What? No, Idiot. You know I wouldn’t do that to you.”
“No,” he responded quietly, “I don’t.” The man looked at Harry with a hint of pain in his expression.
“You really don’t know me at all?”
Harry turned his head to look directly into the man’s face.
“No,” he said simply, without any ounce of hesitation.
This time the mask fell completely. The man stood abruptly from his stool and turned his back to Harry. He mumbled something unintelligibly as he massaged the bridge of his nose.
Should he feel sorry? He couldn’t bring himself to care, but when he realized this, he began to feel like a jerk. He couldn’t apologize though, of course. This wasn’t his fault.
“Did you tell her?” His gaze drifted to the door.
“No,” the man sighed, “and I hope I won’t have to.” He turned around again, completely composed, but did not sit back down.
“She probably won’t be very happy when she finds out you kept it from her. Obviously I should know her.”
“You do know her, Harry, you’ve known her since you were kids.”
“What?”
“Harmony Faith Lane? Embry, Indiana?” The man spoke as if bored, “Think, Harry, she was only the one that got away.” He finally sat back down on his stool.
“Harmony…” he whistled, “Well I‘m one lucky bastard,” he paused and gestured to himself, “I mean, of course, relatively speaking.”
“You aren’t together, smart one.”
“And why not?”
“She slept with Chook Chutney and you haven’t felt the need to chase after her since she told you.”
“W-what?” he sputtered, “She told me she wouldn’t!”
“Apparently he looked sad.”
“Sad?”
“Sad.”
Harry huffed some and sputtered some more, but quieted down rather quickly by his own standards; perhaps it was the way the man was staring at him. He was waiting for something.
He took Harry’s silence as a cue to continue, “What do you remember? You have to tell me everything you can-sounds, colors, anything.”
“Last thing I can remember…” he bit his lip, “I was with Richie…I think we were stealing some shit,” he paused, nodding his head, “Yeah, that was the first time he came with me. All he did was watch for me, but he was just excited to be there. I don’t know…I don’t remember what we were stealing or even where we were. I wonder how he’s doing-”
“Harry,” the man said, “focus.”
Harry’s eyes flicked toward the man and the away again, off into space, “There are other things, sure, but they don’t make much sense. Kinda like someone else’s photo album when they aren’t narrating it to you, you know?”
“Sure,” the man said, “I get the simile. Keep going.”
“Well,” Harry raised an arm to scratch the tip of his nose. His eyes focused on the long band of crooked stitches running up the length of his forearm, “Did you do this?”
“Does it matter?”
“Not really.”
“Then continue.”
“Um…well, I can’t really describe the images because they don’t make sense and are so quick in succession that I can’t really keep track of them. But,” he took a long breath through his nose, “I can feel things, like sensations. And, yeah, there’s sounds, too.”
“There are,” the man said
“There are what?”
“Sounds. There are sounds. You…never mind. Continue.”
“There are voices, mostly. A lot of voices of people I can’t put a face to. There are,” he paused, a ghosting of fear flitting across his face, “there are gunshots, too. Those are the clearest.”
He put his head in his hands, completely hiding his face.
“Oh, God,” he moaned, leaning forward, ignoring the pain, “It’s so dark and cold. She’s crying so hard and I want to help her but I can’t…and there is so much blood.”
The last words came out in a hiss of heart-wrenching pain. The man visibly stiffened.
“Harry…”
“What happened to me…” he forced out a raspy breath and then drew one back in, his voice hitching in a sob. His field of vision blurred. He blinked rapidly to clear his eyes of the unwanted behavior. He looked out over the top of his fingers at the man sitting beside him, “What happened?”
“I was hoping you could tell me that, Chief”
“Fuck,” he muttered. He angrily wiped the moisture away with the back of his hand.
“Do you need a hug or something?” The man looked at a loss as for what to do. But while the sentiment was nice, he didn’t want a hug, especially from someone he didn’t know.
Harry shook his head, completely avoiding eye contact.
“Okay, well,” the man stood up and awkwardly placed a hand on Harry’s shoulder, “I think you should get some rest. If you need anything, just holler, I’ll be next door.”
Harry nodded and leaned back against the cushions. The man left, his footsteps retreating into the hall. It was only afterwords that Harry realized that he hadn’t learned the man’s name.
What would he holler when he needed his help?
---
Perry paced, back and forth, in front of the bed. He stopped, and rubbing his eyes with one hand, held onto the bed stand for support with the other.
“Fuck,” he muttered.
Fuck
It wasn’t supposed to happen like this. He sank down on the floor, his head in his hands. Harmony was right, the entire thing was his fault and he’d screwed up.
He’d screwed up big time.
Harry had been missing for exactly a week. At first he’d thought nothing of it. Harry would disappear for days at a time and neglect to even inform Perry what he was doing. After a few months of living and working together, Perry had lost interest in worrying so much about what happened to Harry when he wasn’t around.
He wished he hadn’t now, though. If he’d tried to track Harry down right away, maybe all of this shit wouldn’t have happened.
Who was he kidding, though? He had combed over every lead for days and nights on end, and in the end he hadn’t found Herry; Harry had been the one to contact him.
The guilt he felt rising up like bile in the back of his throat did nothing for his severely shaken nerves. Not only had brought it all on Harry, he wasn’t there to help when the man needed him most. It could well all be his fault-the cops, the safehouse, the fact that he couldn’t even take Harry to a fucking hospital. He’d had to pull out the bullets and close the wounds himself.
All that blood. God, if he didn’t stop thinking about it, he was going to be sick. The way it lapped at the couch like the fucking tide coming in made him shudder. He was secretly grateful that it wasn’t his new couch or his new carpet at home taking the damage and very glad he had thought to have a house bought under a different name.
He groaned at that thought.
I’m such a bastard.
He needed a distraction. He raised his face up over his hands and looked around the small room. His eyes fell on the dresser.
His cell phone rang. ‘Hotel California’ trilled from his pocket.
Shit; it was Brennan, his police contact.
He stood slowly, reaching for the phone in his pocket. He flipped it open and held it to his ear.
“Van Shrike,” he said with a fake air of importance. He needed to sound like he always did-cocky, and not at all suspicious.
“I’ve been calling you all day, Detective. When you left in such a hurry earlier, I couldn’t help but wonder where you were headed.”
The voice on the other end was deep but cracked with age. It was a humorless, serious voice that Perry knew especially well. Ever since he’d broke into the P.I. business, Ed Brennan had been the one Perry always turned to for information, and vice versa. Brennan never really minded helping Perry out because he would often return the favor.
“Well,” he answered, “I did have something important to take care of.”
“Obviously,” the old man drawled. The line was silent for a few moments.
“Look,” Perry asked, as frustration found its way into his mood, “is there something you need?”
There was a low chuckle on the other end, “I was hoping you might want to inform me of your friend’s status.”
Perry swallowed hard, “I’m not sure I understand what you’re implying.”
“You don’t have to understand me for me to understand you, Detective. I know how much you worry over him and I wouldn’t be surprised if that phone call had something to do with his condition or whereabouts.”
“It wasn’t- ”
“Of course it was, Detective, and we both know it,” he said calmly, “You would never leave a case like this up to us unless you had a very good reason.”
Perry practically growled at the phone in his frustration. He had enough to worry about without suspicions being raised. He didn’t really know what to say to the old man.
“You don’t have much time, you know. If I were to find out that you were hiding him, I would have to arrest you both.”
“When you found me.”
The old man chuckled again, “Of course. Yes, I would have to find you first.”
“Van Shrike,” he said, “You need to keep in mind that we aren’t friends.”
“I know that.”
“And since we aren’t friends, I can’t tell you that the evidence we currently have against him is so tight that he would, without any doubt, be convicted. So if you plan to clear his name, you better do it quick.”
“He didn’t do it,” Perry said without any tempting, “It couldn’t have been him.”
“I’m not sure you believe that.”
Shit, the old man had a penchant for picking people apart.
“If I were you, I would gather everything necessary to do your investigating with. It won’t be long before you have people with suspicions on their minds of what you might be doing behind the law’s back. They’ll be looking for you soon I’m sure, so you wouldn’t want to be around when they knock on your door. If you need to go home, I’d advise doing it quick.”
“Of course,” Parry said.
“And Detective?”
“Yes?”
“I hope you find what you need.”
“Thanks.”
And with that, the other line went silent. Perry stood a moment, contemplating his actions when his eyes, yet again, fell on the small dresser in the corner of the cramped room. He strode to it and opened on of its drawers.
---
He lingered a moment after he put the clean clothes and fresh towels on the stool. Perry wouldn’t blame him for waking up and wanting a shower; the poor bastard was positively gross. His expression softened then and he turned away.
He couldn’t look at him without feeling like a fuck up, without that guilt rising in his chest. He needed to take his mind off it but he knew he wouldn’t be able to. Instead, he resolved to take a shower and then do some work on his laptop.
He figured he wouldn’t be able to sleep, anyway.
---
~To Be Continued~
---
Ah, I hope that angst worked out and got across okay. I’ve never really done much of it before.
I also found myself struggling not to slip into present tense during this chapter, so if you see any mistakes, please let me know.
And of course, any and all comments are appreciated.
Author: riais
Rating: R
Warnings: language, for now
Characters: Harry, Perry, and Harmony
Disclaimer: Don’t own it, never will
Summary: He wants to say he would never do such a thing, but does he know himself well enough to know he isn’t the bad guy? After all, how can you say you didn’t do it if you can’t remember the last eighteen months of your life, let alone last night?
Case/Amnesia!Fic in which everyone is convinced that Harry might have actually killed an innocent.
Author's Notes:
Any and all comments and critiques are very very much appreciated. I want to know what you think, so please tell me how I might improve (especially in the grammar department).
Previous Chapter
Part 1, B:
In which even the characters that usually know everything seem inexplicably lost
“Wake up, Princess, I need you conscious for this.”
Slowly (painfully slowly), he opened his eyes to find someone lightly slapping his cheek. The light pierced his sensitive eyes, eliciting a groan. He scrunched his eyes up tight again.
“Wake up,” the voice said impatiently, slapping his cheek a little harder than necessary.
“You’re some prince,” Harry said weakly.
“Well, you aren’t exactly Sleeping Beauty,” the man said as he leaned over Harry. There was a click and-blessed hallelujah, the seat belt was gone.
“I think I should resent that.”
“No, you shouldn’t. Give me your arm.”
More taken than given, Harry’s arm was wrapped around the man’s neck as an arm was slipped around Harry’s waist.
“Can you stand?”
Harry scrutinized the face that was now next to his, goatee and all, “I don’t know,” he said honestly to the blond haired man.
“Try. I’ve got you.”
“Hmm,” he said in response. He didn’t move. He didn’t really want to find out how much pain he was actually in. As long as he stayed on the other side of reality, he wouldn’t have to find out. He let his eyelids droop again.
“Harry.” The name in his ear was like a command, loud and clear. He fought the urge to say ‘yes sir.’
“What?” He griped as his eyelids snapped open.
“Up,” the voice commanded.
“Screw you,” he said. Authority issues? Apparently.
There was a sigh from next to his ear, “It’s going to hurt a lot more if I have to drag you in by your arms,” and he seemed perfectly prepared to do just that, it seemed to Harry.
Harry gave a wordless consent and the voice spoke again into his ear, “On the count of three. One, two, three-Up…there you go.” He rose on shaky legs with some (well, a lot) of help. They stood still a moment before Harry’s knees buckled beneath him and he slipped from the man’s shoulder.
“Easy,” he said, catching Harry, “One step at a time.” They took a small step, and then another, but when Harry bore down on his right leg, he cried out in pain.
“Fuck!” he said, pitching backward in a desperate attempt to remove the weight from his leg, “Fuck!” He followed that with a string of ‘shits’ and a ‘goddamn.’ He leaned more weight against the man’s shoulder.
“Shit,” he whispered. It was so low that the man probably didn’t hear it. He slumped against him.
An exhaustion swept over his entire body. Even with the help of the larger man’s frame beside him he wasn’t sure how much longer he would be able to stand. He couldn’t be sure, but maybe it was because he had noticed just how much pain he really was in.
He could feel it. It pulsed and pounded through him with every beat of his heart. Shallow breaths lodged themselves in his throat as he tried to gulp for air and the world swayed like it had just been knocked off its axis of rotation.
The bottom dropped out: his head was so light and the world was becoming so dark. White and black spots clouded his vision.
“Harry?”
His head dipped down to his chest and he scrunched his eyes up tight.
Pain.
Pulsing, searing, drumming, throbbing pain.
His hands released their grip and his muscles slackened.
“Harry.” He felt the slap on his face again, “Harry!”
“…right here…” he said quietly, but could hardly hear himself over the roar of the pain. A beast had taken him and was in the process of devouring him whole. He shook his head side to side to ward it off.
But the beast came anyway, carrying darkness in its jaws.
The world faded to black completely.
---
A door opened slightly, creaking.
A woman’s voice chimed out from far away, “I’m in here.”
Did you bring it?” came a familiar voice from behind.
“Yeah, I have it here, but I really don’t see why you…” The voice came closer and suddenly dropped off.
Clunk
“Oh my God. Oh God-Harry! What the Hell happened to him?”
“You think I fucking know?” the voice from behind asked, “Get over here and help me out.”
“What?”
“What do you mean ‘what’? Help me, will you? He’s sturdier than he looks!”
He was tilting and falling and tilting some more. Finally-
“Shit, he’s heavy.”
Cushions. He sank down deep in them, groaning.
“Harry?” said the man’s voice hesitantly, pulling away from behind his ear. Now he had to be standing above somewhere.
Silence filled the air for a few moments.
“Harry, are you awake?”
“This sure as hell isn’t a hospital,” Harry said at last.
“Harry, what happened to you?” asked the woman’s voice as soon as he had spoken.
Harry cracked his eyes open the smallest amount to see the man grab her forearm and pull her back slightly, “Don’t,” he said quietly.
She turned on him, “Why not?” she asked, her voice rising, “I want to know what kind of bastard did this to him!” She pulled her arm away from his grip and pointed at Harry. Her eyes were still focused on the man, “If he’s awake enough to talk, he’s awake enough to tell me what happened.”
The man paused, looked over at Harry, and drew a deep breath, “He…” he paused again, thinking over and biting back a response. He looked back at the woman. Harry, though he couldn’t see well between half-closed eyelids, could not help but notice the way the man wrung his hands in such a hesitant gesture.
“Let’s patch him up, first,” he said finally, his voice taking on an air of authority. The girl didn’t question his now apparent confidence in the situation (but Harry was quite certain it was a bullshit front. He probably didn’t deal with dying amnesiacs every day, did he?).
“Ok,” she said, mouth pulled into a determined frown as she looked at Harry.
“Ok,” he echoed, also glancing down at him, “Get the supplies.”
---
He tried to scream. He really, really did try to scream. If they hadn’t tied the dishtowel around his head as a gag, he most definitely would have succeeded, too.
The girl got behind him, holding his arms back behind the arm of the couch. The man brandished a very intimidating pair of what looked, to Harry, like pliers.
But the resulting pain from the pliers ripping the bullets out of his chest didn’t hurt near as bad as what happened next (of course it still hurt, though. Ripping anything out with pliers is going to hurt). He thrashed madly about, screaming through the gag. The dishtowel was dry and lumpy, and he quickly began to lose his voice from lack of moisture.
“Hold still, Harry!”
“Fumph phu!”
He suddenly found his hips straddled by the man, “I know what you’re thinking, Harry,” the man said from on top of him, wielding a steaming clothes-iron, “It’s going to hurt, a lot. Trust me, I do know, but we don’t have a doctor and we can’t go to the hospital. We have to close your wounds. It’ll be over soon, Chief; you just have to tough it out.”
Well, Fuck. He didn’t want to trust him; he felt like the two of them were trying to murder him. But he did trust them. For some inexplicable reason, he trusted them both. He sighed heavily and closed his eyes as tight as he could manage.
Of course he couldn’t keep from screaming when the iron touched raw skin, but he tried to be as still as possible (which wasn’t very still, but at least he wasn’t bucking too hard).
Somewhere in between the closing of the second bullet hole and the stitching on his side, Harry managed to pass out again. He never knew what they had to do to his right leg, but later, after finding it splinted, he was quite glad he hadn’t been awake for it.
The darkness wasn’t complete, though.
He felt like he was sinking-not physically, of course. He was sinking mentally into some weird dream-like thing that reminded him of that one movie where the guy keeps falling and falling and falling in the dark… Or perhaps Alice as she fell down the rabbit hole; but he didn’t see random objects attached to earthly walls. He saw the dark, or perhaps, he didn’t see anything at all. He saw a lack of things, so he guessed that meant he didn’t really see anything.
Oh, but he could still feel pain. He could feel it around him, as if it were an almost tangible force. He wasn’t falling of course, that was like a metaphor or a simile (he couldn’t really ever remember the difference between them). No, he was certainly, actually, physically somewhere.
But not really. It was a dream-thing, of course…or maybe a memory, because it felt so real.
It was dark and stale, like the air he was breathing hadn’t moved in years. There was a pounding in his ears and a throbbing in the back of his skull. He hoped to the God he really didn’t believe in that he didn’t, like, get a fucking aneurysm or something.
His hands were bound behind his back so tight that he could barley feel the blood flowing down his palms. He had started to lose feeling in his hands but everything else was on fire. Fuck, he could feel the knife wounds in his side as blood leaked out of them.
He realized then that he was waiting for someone. He couldn’t quite place the name, but he knew there was someone. He knew that any second he would break in, guns blazing. And, after all the smoke had cleared and everyone else was dead, Harry would be carried off to the hospital (towards the sunset) over the man’s shoulder.
He’s allowed to believe in fairy tales, right?
But how can you believe that everything’s going to be okay when the thirteen year old girl curled up on the cold concrete beside you says its too late?
“They’re saying he killed a girl, Harmony!”
He awoke with a start.
The two them were yelling at each other somewhere in the house, perhaps around the wall behind him.
“Then tell them the truth!”
“I don’t know what the truth is!”
There was silence for a moment and then the woman’s voice rang out in an accusatory tone, “You think he might have actually done it.”
“No, that’s-that’s not what I said.”
She screamed a sort of choked up scream of rage that didn’t really make it all the way out of her throat. There was a crash and then a bang.
“This is your fault, P-”her words were drowned out by another crash. Something shattered, “You’re the one who got him into it!”
“Stop throwing shit at me!”
Another crash.
“Hey, don’t you dare throw that!”
There was another crash and the tinkle of broken glass. From the sound of it, they were probably in a kitchen.
“Goddamn it, Harmony, Stop! I’m fucking bleeding!”
“You don’t deny it?” the venom in her voice was almost as shocking as the comparative quietness of it, “You know it’s your fault.”
“Not all of it,” he said after a short pause, “I’m not the reason we’re hiding from the cops. I’m not the reason we’re here in this safe house. I’m not the reason that girl is dead. Whatever he did, he brought it on himself.”
“That’s bullshit and you know it.” He was quiet again and didn’t interrupt her as she continued, “You know he can take care of himself…barely, but he can. Whatever you got him into got us into all of this. Don’t act like he deserved what happened to him because he screwed something up. For all you know-and I’m starting to doubt you know anything-he didn’t do anything wrong. Events have a certain way of playing out whether they are helped along or not.”
He muttered something, but it was too low for Harry to hear.
“Believe what you want, I guess, but I know better,” there was a rattle of keys, “I have to work, so I’ll be back later,” there was a clicking of heels down a wooden-paneled hallway and slamming of a door. She had gone.
About fifteen minuets later a new set of footsteps made their way down the hall, but instead of going out the door they arrived at Harry’s couch. He didn’t bother to adjust his gaze; all he saw were a pair of shiny black shoes positively ruined with blood splatter.
“Harry,” the man said, “we need to talk.”
“What will it matter?” he mumbled dishearteningly. He just continued to stare at the floor.
A hand came into his field of vision as it scooted a stool across the floor. The man sat on it and Harry cold see business slacks splotched with blood-probably his own.
“I need to know what you remember,”
“Why?” Harry scoffed, “So you can hand me over?”
“What? No, Idiot. You know I wouldn’t do that to you.”
“No,” he responded quietly, “I don’t.” The man looked at Harry with a hint of pain in his expression.
“You really don’t know me at all?”
Harry turned his head to look directly into the man’s face.
“No,” he said simply, without any ounce of hesitation.
This time the mask fell completely. The man stood abruptly from his stool and turned his back to Harry. He mumbled something unintelligibly as he massaged the bridge of his nose.
Should he feel sorry? He couldn’t bring himself to care, but when he realized this, he began to feel like a jerk. He couldn’t apologize though, of course. This wasn’t his fault.
“Did you tell her?” His gaze drifted to the door.
“No,” the man sighed, “and I hope I won’t have to.” He turned around again, completely composed, but did not sit back down.
“She probably won’t be very happy when she finds out you kept it from her. Obviously I should know her.”
“You do know her, Harry, you’ve known her since you were kids.”
“What?”
“Harmony Faith Lane? Embry, Indiana?” The man spoke as if bored, “Think, Harry, she was only the one that got away.” He finally sat back down on his stool.
“Harmony…” he whistled, “Well I‘m one lucky bastard,” he paused and gestured to himself, “I mean, of course, relatively speaking.”
“You aren’t together, smart one.”
“And why not?”
“She slept with Chook Chutney and you haven’t felt the need to chase after her since she told you.”
“W-what?” he sputtered, “She told me she wouldn’t!”
“Apparently he looked sad.”
“Sad?”
“Sad.”
Harry huffed some and sputtered some more, but quieted down rather quickly by his own standards; perhaps it was the way the man was staring at him. He was waiting for something.
He took Harry’s silence as a cue to continue, “What do you remember? You have to tell me everything you can-sounds, colors, anything.”
“Last thing I can remember…” he bit his lip, “I was with Richie…I think we were stealing some shit,” he paused, nodding his head, “Yeah, that was the first time he came with me. All he did was watch for me, but he was just excited to be there. I don’t know…I don’t remember what we were stealing or even where we were. I wonder how he’s doing-”
“Harry,” the man said, “focus.”
Harry’s eyes flicked toward the man and the away again, off into space, “There are other things, sure, but they don’t make much sense. Kinda like someone else’s photo album when they aren’t narrating it to you, you know?”
“Sure,” the man said, “I get the simile. Keep going.”
“Well,” Harry raised an arm to scratch the tip of his nose. His eyes focused on the long band of crooked stitches running up the length of his forearm, “Did you do this?”
“Does it matter?”
“Not really.”
“Then continue.”
“Um…well, I can’t really describe the images because they don’t make sense and are so quick in succession that I can’t really keep track of them. But,” he took a long breath through his nose, “I can feel things, like sensations. And, yeah, there’s sounds, too.”
“There are,” the man said
“There are what?”
“Sounds. There are sounds. You…never mind. Continue.”
“There are voices, mostly. A lot of voices of people I can’t put a face to. There are,” he paused, a ghosting of fear flitting across his face, “there are gunshots, too. Those are the clearest.”
He put his head in his hands, completely hiding his face.
“Oh, God,” he moaned, leaning forward, ignoring the pain, “It’s so dark and cold. She’s crying so hard and I want to help her but I can’t…and there is so much blood.”
The last words came out in a hiss of heart-wrenching pain. The man visibly stiffened.
“Harry…”
“What happened to me…” he forced out a raspy breath and then drew one back in, his voice hitching in a sob. His field of vision blurred. He blinked rapidly to clear his eyes of the unwanted behavior. He looked out over the top of his fingers at the man sitting beside him, “What happened?”
“I was hoping you could tell me that, Chief”
“Fuck,” he muttered. He angrily wiped the moisture away with the back of his hand.
“Do you need a hug or something?” The man looked at a loss as for what to do. But while the sentiment was nice, he didn’t want a hug, especially from someone he didn’t know.
Harry shook his head, completely avoiding eye contact.
“Okay, well,” the man stood up and awkwardly placed a hand on Harry’s shoulder, “I think you should get some rest. If you need anything, just holler, I’ll be next door.”
Harry nodded and leaned back against the cushions. The man left, his footsteps retreating into the hall. It was only afterwords that Harry realized that he hadn’t learned the man’s name.
What would he holler when he needed his help?
---
Perry paced, back and forth, in front of the bed. He stopped, and rubbing his eyes with one hand, held onto the bed stand for support with the other.
“Fuck,” he muttered.
Fuck
It wasn’t supposed to happen like this. He sank down on the floor, his head in his hands. Harmony was right, the entire thing was his fault and he’d screwed up.
He’d screwed up big time.
Harry had been missing for exactly a week. At first he’d thought nothing of it. Harry would disappear for days at a time and neglect to even inform Perry what he was doing. After a few months of living and working together, Perry had lost interest in worrying so much about what happened to Harry when he wasn’t around.
He wished he hadn’t now, though. If he’d tried to track Harry down right away, maybe all of this shit wouldn’t have happened.
Who was he kidding, though? He had combed over every lead for days and nights on end, and in the end he hadn’t found Herry; Harry had been the one to contact him.
The guilt he felt rising up like bile in the back of his throat did nothing for his severely shaken nerves. Not only had brought it all on Harry, he wasn’t there to help when the man needed him most. It could well all be his fault-the cops, the safehouse, the fact that he couldn’t even take Harry to a fucking hospital. He’d had to pull out the bullets and close the wounds himself.
All that blood. God, if he didn’t stop thinking about it, he was going to be sick. The way it lapped at the couch like the fucking tide coming in made him shudder. He was secretly grateful that it wasn’t his new couch or his new carpet at home taking the damage and very glad he had thought to have a house bought under a different name.
He groaned at that thought.
I’m such a bastard.
He needed a distraction. He raised his face up over his hands and looked around the small room. His eyes fell on the dresser.
His cell phone rang. ‘Hotel California’ trilled from his pocket.
Shit; it was Brennan, his police contact.
He stood slowly, reaching for the phone in his pocket. He flipped it open and held it to his ear.
“Van Shrike,” he said with a fake air of importance. He needed to sound like he always did-cocky, and not at all suspicious.
“I’ve been calling you all day, Detective. When you left in such a hurry earlier, I couldn’t help but wonder where you were headed.”
The voice on the other end was deep but cracked with age. It was a humorless, serious voice that Perry knew especially well. Ever since he’d broke into the P.I. business, Ed Brennan had been the one Perry always turned to for information, and vice versa. Brennan never really minded helping Perry out because he would often return the favor.
“Well,” he answered, “I did have something important to take care of.”
“Obviously,” the old man drawled. The line was silent for a few moments.
“Look,” Perry asked, as frustration found its way into his mood, “is there something you need?”
There was a low chuckle on the other end, “I was hoping you might want to inform me of your friend’s status.”
Perry swallowed hard, “I’m not sure I understand what you’re implying.”
“You don’t have to understand me for me to understand you, Detective. I know how much you worry over him and I wouldn’t be surprised if that phone call had something to do with his condition or whereabouts.”
“It wasn’t- ”
“Of course it was, Detective, and we both know it,” he said calmly, “You would never leave a case like this up to us unless you had a very good reason.”
Perry practically growled at the phone in his frustration. He had enough to worry about without suspicions being raised. He didn’t really know what to say to the old man.
“You don’t have much time, you know. If I were to find out that you were hiding him, I would have to arrest you both.”
“When you found me.”
The old man chuckled again, “Of course. Yes, I would have to find you first.”
“Van Shrike,” he said, “You need to keep in mind that we aren’t friends.”
“I know that.”
“And since we aren’t friends, I can’t tell you that the evidence we currently have against him is so tight that he would, without any doubt, be convicted. So if you plan to clear his name, you better do it quick.”
“He didn’t do it,” Perry said without any tempting, “It couldn’t have been him.”
“I’m not sure you believe that.”
Shit, the old man had a penchant for picking people apart.
“If I were you, I would gather everything necessary to do your investigating with. It won’t be long before you have people with suspicions on their minds of what you might be doing behind the law’s back. They’ll be looking for you soon I’m sure, so you wouldn’t want to be around when they knock on your door. If you need to go home, I’d advise doing it quick.”
“Of course,” Parry said.
“And Detective?”
“Yes?”
“I hope you find what you need.”
“Thanks.”
And with that, the other line went silent. Perry stood a moment, contemplating his actions when his eyes, yet again, fell on the small dresser in the corner of the cramped room. He strode to it and opened on of its drawers.
---
He lingered a moment after he put the clean clothes and fresh towels on the stool. Perry wouldn’t blame him for waking up and wanting a shower; the poor bastard was positively gross. His expression softened then and he turned away.
He couldn’t look at him without feeling like a fuck up, without that guilt rising in his chest. He needed to take his mind off it but he knew he wouldn’t be able to. Instead, he resolved to take a shower and then do some work on his laptop.
He figured he wouldn’t be able to sleep, anyway.
---
~To Be Continued~
---
Ah, I hope that angst worked out and got across okay. I’ve never really done much of it before.
I also found myself struggling not to slip into present tense during this chapter, so if you see any mistakes, please let me know.
And of course, any and all comments are appreciated.