H A R R Y

The sky is more purple than it is orange. Harry is sitting crossed legged like everyone else; splayed out on healthy green grass like a child.

There's a guy across from him. He thinks he introduced himself as Zayn. Zayn genuinely seems upset with the world around him. There's a blonde kid next to him, Niall, he thinks he told them. He seems like the total opposite.

Although it looks like he's uncomfortable, Niall's eyes fall to the grass under him like he wants to hold it in hands and stare at it; like it means something. He has scratches along his wrists and a small smile on his lips, Harry wants to ask why he doesn't give himself time to heal before adding more cuts to the thin skin that's still bruised, but he stays quiet, eyes running over the next person.

The next guy looks really excited. He has laughter in his eyes and a twitch in his fingers as he runs them through his artfully tousled hair. Harry thinks his name is Liam.

They've been sitting on the grass for a while now. Watching each other.

The girl next to Liam makes Harry almost fall forward. His hand slips for just a second, catching Niall's attention for just that moment before he looks back down at the grass again, twirling it between his fingers.

The girl is very beautiful, he notices, though her gray eyes seem scared as she looks at him with a tilted head. He feels like he knows her somehow. Like sitting here alone in a sea of grass wasn't how their legacy started. He feels like those eyes of hers haven't just now met his own, and then he thinks of water and ice and something in his head screams about that city that sunk into the ocean. Something in his head screams Atlantis and it must be so loud because everyone looks at him. She doesn't tear her gaze from him. Harry ignores everyone else. "I know you," he finally says.

The girl offers the faintest smile. It gives him goosebumps. Harry isn't used to cold temperature. "Do you really?" She asks, hugging her sweatshirt to her chest tighter.

"Yeah." He tries to remember where he's seen her, but is left with colors that bleed through his mind. All he comes up with is red, white, and blue, and that's not enough. The colors aren't enough because they aren't gray and they aren't cold and why do they keep coming back? And in the sea of red, white, and blue, he remembers water. Definitely water, but it's not moving. It's not moving, but he looks at her again and he hears his voice before he knows what he's saying. "Cecily."

She stops moving. Which is weird because she doesn't move much anyway, but when she does, she moves like her body is heavy. She moves languidly. But she stops moving right now and her eyes keep his hostage.

Something passes over her glossed eyes and Harry espies recognition in the crevices of her strangely dull irises and he thinks maybe she's remembering him too. Maybe she thinks he's worth remembering.

"You gave me your sweater."

His eyebrows furrow in confusion. He looks over at her sweater and wants to think it looks familiar. It's black and faded and the front has a logo of a white tree with a circled frame around it. He wants to think maybe she's right, but doesn't think he's ever seen it before in his life. "You have the wrong guy. We met on a dock."

"Harry," she says. He's surprised she knows his name but he doesn't show it. He just watches as she hides her fingers in the long sleeves of the sweater. "I don't go near water. But there was a party I was at one year, and you gave me your sweater because I was cold."

Harry looks away to find Niall watching them both. His hands have paused in the strands of grass, though some of them are still curling around his fingers and nudging the skin behind his nails. His split wrists are hidden, facing him instead of everyone else. "Are you okay?"

The fake blond tilts his head to the side and hums. "Fine."

"Oh," comes another voice. Harry turns to look at Zayn. "You're not mute. I was pretty sure you were mute, mate."

He pretends the semi-dead grass around Zayn isn't some kind of warning. Pretends the hazel-eyed guy doesn't bother him. He does, though, and when he sees that Niall's taken it upon himself to move a little backward, it becomes an even bigger problem because Niall doesn't seem like the type to start trouble or engage in it. "I'm fine," he says again.

Harry wishes Zayn would look at him so his glare goes noticed. He doesn't know that Cecily is smiling because of it, but he does notice the smile when he looks at her again.

She looks beautiful. A bit broken, but still very beautiful.

Cecily is beautifully broken. At least Harry thinks so. He thinks her pale, faded eyes are more beautiful than any eyes he's ever seen. She moves like she's cast underwater, slowly and softly. And she's so beautiful. Beautiful things are always important.

Harry thinks she's so beautiful and broken at the same time, but all masterpieces come from sadness and frustration, life in general really, and she's so, so beautiful. He catches himself staring at her for a while as they sit across form each other.

Her head is down and her hands are hooked with each other. She slowly turns them and rubs them together, trying to get warm, maybe, but then she pauses to take a sharp breath of air. Harry's eyebrows raise then, and he can't bring himself to look away when she locks one of her hands with the other one tightly.

She uses her fingers as a bracelet that looks like it cuts circulation of her blood. He moves forward a bit before realizing that he doesn't know what it is he thinks he can do. Her left hand travels the expanse of her right wrist; slim fingers holding on to herself so tightly that she winces.

A part of him wants to protect her from her own thoughts. He wants to reach over and grab her hands before she can do more damage to her skin. He winces a bit as she drags the nails of her left hand to her right wrist, digging them further and further until she pulls away and holds onto the wound. He glances around the group and looks over at Niall whose eyes are set on Cecily, gaze dragging over her hands, studying her like Harry had done seconds before.

And then Niall frowns before using his fingers to pull down his sleeves and cover his hands. Harry really just wants to help them, but he isn't like that. He doesn't know how to deal with things like this, can barely even keep himself alive. How can he possibly keep two other people alive?

He can't protect them from what he doesn't know, can't play the part of a white blood cell. But that's what he wants to be at this moment as he watches two very quiet people ruin themselves. He wants to be a while blood cell and fight off what doesn't belong, wants to keep them from conforming into the disaster they keep feeding into.

"Harry," a voice pulls him from his thoughts of being a hero, poking holes into his thoughts of being a savior- or at least someone who can offer the least of help. The voice pulls him out of a lost cause of a daydream and he looks ahead at Liam. Not because he's the only one looking at him, (because that's definitely not the truth since he feels everyone's eyes,) but because it's been his voice that spoke his name.

"Yeah."

"Are you okay?"

He nods once and then hangs his head forward. It's pulsing and throbbing and hurting. The side of his neck is burning. It feels like a bunch of knives are piercing the skin there, lodging themselves in his neck and making a home. He sucks in a breath and clutches onto himself. "Shit."

"Hey," he hears Cecily's voice, quiet and soft and slow, and very much worthy of belonging to a princess under the sea. Despite the pain, he manages to catch her eye and offer a lopsided smile before frowning all over again at the pain. "Guys, guys, he's bleeding."

He hears, "Oh god, what's happening?" but it sounds distant. It sounds like it's coming from his head and breaking through to his ears. His fingers press into his neck and he feels a searing pain travel across his neck and end at the back of his head.

"Hook his head up and keep it there. Harry, Harry can you hear me?" Zayn. Harry knows it's Zayn.

His eyes open but he's angled up enough to only see Niall with his back turned to him. His blonde hair is covering his neck in a tail that curls around his ears. His head, Harry can see, is shaking back and forth, hung. He kicks his feet once and then Harry curses as someone's hand grazes the back of his head.

Cecily's voice comes once again, only it doesn't sound soft or slow. Instead, it sounds rushed and hard. "Th-there's a um- Guys, he must've fallen or something. He has a gash on the back of his head. He has, oh god there's blood everywhere."

"I'm fine," he mutters, and blinks once before reopening his eyes and looking at Niall who's doubled over clutching the sides of his head. "I'm fine, go get Niall. He-" A scream bleeds through his parted lips, curdling his own blood and causing his skin to go cold, though Cecily may be the primary reason for his temperature drop since she's naturally so cold. He thinks it's the effect of being a beautifully broken masterpiece made by such a broken artist.

Her hands press into the side of his face and he immediately leans toward it, feeling his own blood spread along her palm before that's all he feels. He feels her hand and then he feels nothing. He sees Niall walk away, stumble, really, and then he sees nothing. He's pulled down in his thoughts or sleep, or wherever you go when you faint, and then nothing really hurts.

Nothing really hurts until he wakes up and feels the pain all over again.