~I'll wake up at midday and marry my bed,

I'll kiss all the women,

Get punched in the head~

Modest probably should have expected it after Niall's defiance of the rules. But he didn't. And it was easy. All Niall had to do was sit around in his cell with the fake locks that the warden had still let him keep, wait until the shift change, unlock his door, and run.

It only took him ten minutes to pick the door open. Without any help from Declan. A happy emotion rushed through his body, but it took him time to beat it back. In all his Thursday nights of sneaking out, and just being in this prison in general, Niall knew where most of the cameras were. Each and every single one of them he passed on his way out of the side doors got a peace sign or a nice show of his middle finger.

That's what screwed him over last time, and he was long from caring this time.

Niall's logic was that being on the run for the rest of his life would get some adrenaline back into his body. That fire he used to seek out every second of the day. Now it would always be with him. And nothing mattered anymore to him. There was nothing left. So maybe he would make a new life out there. Find his own family, friends, and a place in the world.

The idea of starting over filled him with such relief that it powered his legs as he ran through the backwoods with the sounds of sirens and dogs behind him. After a while, his lungs gave out so he rested briefly, stripping off his jumpsuit to continue running. One of the only items he had with him was an envelope that had accompanied the boxes of locks. Inside the envelope was the leftover money for Niall's savings account. Warden Modest had apparently felt uncomfortable spending all of it, so there was still $500 in it. It hadn't been touched since then - not for drugs or contraband, despite the fact that Niall would have died for a Snickers.

The city was far, but he didn't allow himself to stop. Brain alert, legs dead, lung's worse for wear, he continued. It was dark by the time he reached the first houses. And dark in the summer meant late. These houses weren't exactly that. And the land he stood on wasn't exactly a subdivision. Niall was in a trailer park. And lucky for him, because of the lack of access to a laundromat around here, people line-dried their clothes. Even the night air was hot, so he stole some jeans and a t-shirt, rested for a minute on someone's back porch, and he kept running.

Niall was unfamiliar with the area. The anger levels reached new heights when he found no bus station in town to get him to the next part of his plan. Well, his plan wasn't really much of a plan. Just a loose construct of jumping from city to city until he was far enough away that he could bury himself in a hole and not emerge for a couple months, at the least. His only advantage, he thought, was the fact that he photographs terrible. So maybe people wouldn't connect him and his mugshot. That was the least he could hope for.

He walked all night. When the cops came tearing down the road, he slid into the bushes along the side of the road. He always kept in sight of something he could hide behind, and ran when there was absolutely nothing. After a while, he passed out with his back against a tree. Allowing himself to sleep for just a few moments.

An uneasy sleep, since they were out there, looking for him. Were the dogs still locked onto his scent? If he got into a car, would they lose the trail? But Niall wasn't about to steal a car! There was still nothing violent on his record - breaking someone out of prison, breaking himself out of prison (and out of his cell on occasion). Nothing to hurt another human being, so he wasn't going to start now. There was still a sense of morality in his system.

When he woke, he began walking again, farther away from the road as the sun rose. And it was just his luck that the next city he rolled into had a bus station and could take him far away. "One to Philadelphia," Niall spoke - the first thing in hours, to the lady at the counter, who smiled at him widely.

"What time, honey?"

"Have something around ten today?"

"Eager to get out?" Another wide smile. She wasn't pressing a panic button under the table. No employees were phoning the cops in the booth behind her. He was fine.

"Just had a fight with my girlfriend. I need to clear my head and get out of here." The woman looked sympathetic as she handed him his ticket and took the money.

"Hope everything works out okay," She said, noticing his ragged state. Niall turned and walked out of there, and just a block away to the gas station. He needed to fuel his brain and his body. A sandwich for the main course, chips for the side, and a soda for dessert and energy. All of the food was for energy, but the caffeine would really get him going. As he drank it, looking at the nutrition label, that's when it popped into his head. His favorite thing in the entire world. What was Niall without it really?

Iced coffee.

Throwing all of his trash, including the half-drank juice to the side, Niall stood up off of the curb and dashed inside to speak to an employee. "Is there a Starbucks here? Any coffee place?"

The man looked at him, confused at the urgency in which he spoke. "Um, at the end of town. Three miles from here."

"Great!" He screamed and dashed, not checking the time. Three miles was nothing. He could make the ten o'clock bus, couldn't he? That was only a six mile ten trip. And besides, it was only eight.

---

Niall barely made it. On his speed run/walk to Starbucks, he managed to buy a backpack so he wouldn't look that suspicious on the long trip. Of course, it would be empty except for the envelope full of money and the set of lock picks, but maybe he'd buy something else on the three mile run/walk back to the bus station.

Once the large drink was in his hands, all self-control had left Niall's body. It was gone in three sips. There would be no savoring today. Just consumption. But what he did taste was like heaven on Earth, and he felt like Before Prison Niall. But whenever he referred to himself like that in his head, he became Before Declan Niall. They were one and the same.

The bus trip to Philadelphia was calm. It finally felt like a safe place for him to rest. And he was surprised when he awoke to find them at the empty bus station. No cops or ambush waiting. He knew he wasn't doing anything special to avoid capture. Was the state of Illinois just inadequate?

Getting off the plane, Niall put his jacket into his mostly empty backpack and decided that a trip to Target was in order. After all, one of the first things escaped prisoners did was change their appearance. And the only place he was going to find a reasonable range of hair color dye was Target.

Walking into the store, he felt he was too noticeable in a big place. Surely someone would notice him. He grabbed a cart and walked with his head down. And although he had spent a lot of his money at this point, he needed hair dye and a toothbrush at least. Maybe some cheap clothes, but this wasn't Wal-Mart.

Just an hour later, he was in a gas station bathroom with a pair of scissors, cutting his hair short just before dying it dark brown. He had been far too picky, standing there so long in that aisle that he became paranoid that everyone was watching him, so he zoomed through the rest of the store quickly grabbing random items before checking out and leaving.

And he was terrified that he wouldn't have anymore money after buying a ticket to New York, so he got one to Jersey instead. A lesser price, and a cute suburban place near the ocean with plenty of crime for Niall to dive into. On the bus, he looked in the bag. The hair on top of his head was horrifying, and the dye stained his neck. Now he had a toothbrush and toothpaste and a package of granola bars. No new clothes yet, sadly. The Wal-Mart in whatever city he was headed to would change that, hopefully.

---

There were too many questions that he had to answer. Where would he stay? Where was he going to get new money? Those were the things that plagued him as he sat peacefully on the bus to who knows where, the coffee long-gone from his veins. Niall couldn't afford to buy any more, surely. There were only a hundred dollars left.

Leaning his head out into the aisle, he caught himself staring at the back of a man's head. Then his gaze traveled down to this person's hand. There was a scar, perfectly straight down in the space between their pointer finger and thumb. The same scar Declan had there.

Niall stood abruptly, causing the bus driver to yell at him. He calmly sat down again, not wanting to cause any trouble. But that was his dead friend. And the depression and anger and grief was there, because that couldn't be Declan. This was just some random man on a bus to New Jersey.

He buried his face in his jacket and sobbed, glad that there wasn't anyone sitting next to him.

When Niall Horan arrived in New Jersey, the first thing he did, fresh off the bus, was buy a notebook from the bus station. Some little tourist thing that cost too much, but was all too necessary to his mental health.

The first thing he wrote in it was "Dear Declan,"