~Well I'll drink 'til it's empty,

Stay out 'til it's day~

Weeks passed. The money had been safely received into the hands of Warden Modest, as the two of them were given a formal note via one of the guards. In the correspondence, he said that the research for the items would take time, as he was a busy man, and the shipping would take weeks, if not a month or more. So time passed, as it usually did.

And it was two and a half months into Niall's prison sentence when the fake locks and tumblers arrived. The guards placed them in the cell when no one was around, and it was a glorious surprise to return to after lunch was completed. Declan and Niall were stir crazy by the time the items seemed to magically appear in their cell. They had kept true to their word and not snuck out of their cell once, but the handcuffs had come off numerous times when they weren't supposed to.

Technically, prisoners were not supposed to be handcuffed during any part of the day except for doctor's visits and transfers, like from cell to outside. It was tedious and messed up, but that was the prison system. Underpaid and understaffed. Niall couldn't count the number of times that the handcuffs he was wearing had blood. And he could now get them off in fifteen seconds of them being put on. The guards expected it, as they waited to take the cuffs off - for Declan Seward and Niall Horan to hand them the cuffs, instead of them having to be removed like everyone else's.

Niall was an amazing student under Declan, and the two of them were the best of friends. He had not made any other friends in his time there, but there was no need to. Declan and him were together every second of every day. Eating, sleeping, talking, or picking locks and opening fake safes.

In a week, Declan had mastered all of them. He did them again and again to keep up his skills and to avoid boredom. When Niall was drifting off, he could hear him down there doing the hardest one again and again. By the first month of having them, Niall still had a few left to try. Declan's teaching skills required starting a lock and not doing a different one until there was mastery achieved. After all, it is better to open one lock a thousand times than to open every lock one time.

And it was lucky for Niall that Declan started with the hardest ones in his "lock school", because their time together was coming to a close. Niall didn't know it, though. No one could have. But it broke Niall anyway to come back to their cell one day after lunch, one of the only times he had eaten without Declan there besides him, to try and shake his only friend awake only to find blood on the sheets and a sharp lock-picking tool in his hand.

He screamed loud enough to alert the nearest guards. A real horror movie scream, because nothing could have prepared him to see a sight like that. To experience something so real as to see the only person you had left in the world dead, having killed himself.

Niall was put in a holding cell, hands covered in blood, screaming and crying for hours before he puked and passed out. When he woke, the bed underneath him was a hospital bed. An I.V. ran through his arm, full of vitamins and saline to get him feeling back to normal. But what was normal in this place without Declan?

After the first few days of shock, the crying and nightmares subsided to give way to a depressive funk. Alone in his cell every night, he experienced the other four stages of grief as he repeatedly picked the locks, just like his cellmate used to. Would he sit here, just like this, in the dark, and think about it? About offing himself?, Niall wondered.

He stopped eating. Stopped sleeping. Stopped doing everything except picking the locks and doing what the guards told him to do. Niall was a ghost. A fragment of who he had become again under Declan's wing. When Declan was there, he was the real Niall again. The outgoing, bubbly, jokester who could never keep his mouth shut. Now he was before prison Niall again, but in prison.

Without his protector, Niall found himself in a lot of trouble. His mouth was still too snappy when the anger jumped out, and there were too many nights where he was in too much pain, physically and emotionally, to sleep. So he started sneaking out again. Wandering the halls listlessly, just for a different background. To see a different place. But it didn't help. Because all Niall thought about was Declan. The two of them lived in the same small area for five months together, and never once was Declan anyone less than himself. He admitted when he was having a bad day, needed to sleep in, get more rest, take it easy. Declan wasn't depressed.

So why did he kill himself?

The sneaking out came back to the warden's attention, and Niall once again found himself in the office with the strict man, who would be nothing less than that this time. No compromises.

"I understand you're depressed, Niall."

"Probably," The man admitted, arms crossed. He really wanted to get back to his cell. It was very early in the morning and he wanted some time with his locks.

Modest furrowed his eyebrows at the reply. "But you have got to stop opening the cell door."

"I can't sleep."

"Okay, we'll send you to the therapist for some pills."

"Great," Niall said, not caring.

So he got sent to the therapist. And he didn't talk once during the entire session. But there were pills in his hand by the end and he was being told to take them. Antidepressants now, sleeping pills later. And once the medicine started to kick in, he started to get angry at the minimal amount of better he felt. Then the mental breakdown hit, and he wasn't thinking about that anymore.

All that was in his mind now was how everything had changed from six months ago. Then, he was sitting on the other side of that therapist table, ready to help someone. Anyone. He helped Connor. And he had since come to the realization that the man was anything but what he said he was, and that was more than enough to keep Niall up at night, he didn't need the role reversal. But there it was.

He took the sleeping pills. Then he threw them up. And walked the halls again. By morning, he was in isolation with someone to make sure that the pills went all the way into his stomach and dissolved. And damn if he didn't sleep good that night with the pills. Probably the best night's sleep he had had since high school.

And when he woke up, he decided that he was going to break out.