Hello Everybody!
This…is depressing as hell. But beautiful. I wanted to challenge myself to write something shorter, since all of my stories seem to be kinda long. And this is what came out. Still not very short. Damnit, EB, write something happy for once! Argg!
I wrote this while listening to Alexandra Burke's Hallelujah on repeat, which is where the title and the bit at the end is from. Please, read this along with the music. You'll get the full effect if you do.
Disclaimer: I do not own Hanna is Not a Boy's name, nor any of the characters/locations therein. I do, however, own the story.
A Broken Hallelujah
For as long as he could remember, Hanna Cross had been lonely.
At first, there had been his parents – his mother and father. They had been a family, a real one, and the three of them had been happy together. But even the love of family couldn't drive away the pain of having no one to play with in school, no one who wanted to talk to him because he was different. His name, his hair, his glasses, his over-enthusiastic love of all things fantasy or fairy-tale, everything that made him who he was also made him an outcast. The odd one out. The weird one.
And then the safe haven of his family cracked, shattered, fell to pieces around him, lay crumbled to the earth about his feet. He could feel his heart burn and his insides twist into nothingness. It was one of the memories that he clung to, desperately trying never to think about but at the same time too afraid of what would happen to forget. Like an old, dusty photograph that had been crumpled up and tossed away, only for the pain-wracked owner pull it hastily back out of the trash can and delicately try to smooth the wrinkles. Lovingly held once again before being hidden away in a dark drawer somewhere.
He remembered sometimes, against his will, how he had stood out in the rain, watching as the pallbearers slowly carried the long, black boxes that held his only family. He had been too numb to cry, too much in shock to scream in pain, in soul-ripping agony to the dark skies. But he had wanted to. He had wanted to do anything as long as it meant doing something that wasn't just standing there like a shadow while his parents were lowered into the ground. It seemed unfair, somehow, that two people who had once been so warm and loving were now condemned to spend the rest of time in the cold, uncaring dirt. They didn't deserve to be laid to rest in such a place.
Hanna wanted to die.
But he had promised, long ago, that he would carry on when no one else could. And so he put himself through the rest of high school, cripplingly alone. Now when he went home, there was no light, no welcoming faces to greet him and make everything all better. Now there were only the ghosts of memories. Old pictures in dented frames. When it became too much to bear, he put them away in a corner of the closet where he couldn't see them, couldn't silently break down every time he passed by the frozen smiles captured on the glossy paper. He just didn't have it in him anymore.
He staggered through his life, not really caring about anything around him. Sometimes, he thought that just maybe the reason he threw himself into danger was because he was secretly wishing he could alleviate the emotional pain with physical. Maybe he allowed himself to injured, just so he'd have an excuse to visit Worth and Lamont – the only people who would even talk to him on a regular basis. The only people he could consider to be some sort of friends.
His soul was starved for love; any kind of love. Familial, romantic, companionable. Anything at all. He had never even had a girlfriend, no one to open his heart to. And so it sat in his chest like a block of stone. At night he wanted to cry, wanted to grieve, to relieve the pressure on his scarred chest, but it never came. The tears just wouldn't fall. All he could do was bite his tongue and curl into a tiny ball on his ragged mattress and pray his sleep was dreamless. He was never rested when he woke.
And then Galahad had showed up at his door. The dead man had seemed nearly as lost as he was, searching for things that he couldn't even remember. Hanna envied him a little, but still he was too afraid of letting his memories go. He let the zombie into his home, let him stay, let him keep him safe. But his new partner seemed almost emotionless and Hanna could never be sure if he was sincere or just tolerating him. The thought stung, a new scratch over a jagged old wound. Too much scar tissue to do any real damage, just deep enough to hurt like hell.
The night the ghost of Lee Falun stole the older man's body, he had asked a question that Hanna had been unable to answer.
What are you to a dead man?
And he didn't know. He really didn't. The words clung to his soul, made him cold from the inside out. That night, after Galahad had gone for a walk, thinking he was asleep, Hanna sat in the corner where he had been. He sat and stared at the tiny origami crane held loosely in his fingers. The zombie had defended him. Carried him to Worth's after he had been injured. Made sure he was alive.
Why?
The door opened, barely registering to him. A soft orange glow, an even softer voice calling, "Hanna?" He didn't look up, even when his partner crouched down beside him. "Are you alright?"
He remained silent for the longest time. Then, voice tired and weary from years and years of emotional exhaustion, "Why?" No response. His eyes flicked to the other man's face.
"…What?"
"Just…why? You're so nice to me; you got your arm ripped off trying to help me, got possessed because of my mistake. Most people would be fed up with my crap by now, but…" He looked away, unable to face anything but the bleak indifference of the cracked walls. "Why haven't you left yet, like everyone else?"
Silence.
"Hanna, Hanna look at me."
He did, and what he saw struck him dumb. Instead of impassiveness, instead of apathy, there was emotion. Countless numbers of them, concern, sadness, gratitude, hope, kindness, all swirling together behind the light that emanated from those eyes – or were they the light themselves?
"I stay because I don't want to leave." He gave a gentle smile, face softening. "You took me in, gave me a purpose, something I haven't had for a decade or more. Hanna, you're the most important person in the world to me. You're my best friend."
Hanna stared at him, mouth slightly agape. His brain wouldn't work. His entire life, no one had ever said anything like that to him. Never. And he had wanted to hear those words so badly that it had made him ache inside. But now he was hearing them and he couldn't process it, couldn't comprehend that it was, in fact really happening. Then something broke.
It was like a weight had been lifted from his heart, like someone had breathed life into his hollow existence at last. He could feel the chill leaving his bones, leaving his soul. And the tears came. He wasn't even aware that they were falling, wasn't even aware, at first, that the hot salt water was rushing down his face in torrents. He just stared.
"Hanna?"
Like a lost spirit finally finding the light, Hanna threw himself forward and wrapped his arms around the zombie's waist. He buried his face in the fabric of the orange shirt, sobbing out years of pain and loneliness. The dam had finally burst. Everything that he had ever held inside, unable to release, flowed out of him. Misery, sorrow, all of it. And he couldn't make it stop, even if he had wanted to. "I – Thank you. Thank you, so much. I can't – nobody's ever said that before. I just…thank you…" He felt arms encircle him, returning the awkward embrace and it just made him weep harder because, dead or not, it was physical human contact and he couldn't even begin to remember just how long it had been since he was last hugged.
His baffled roommate pulled him tighter against his chest, hugging him just as fiercely. He didn't say anything. He didn't need to. They stayed there, just like that, until the last of the tears had dried and fallen away and the sun began to break over the horizon. A new dawn.
Hanna slept peacefully for the first time in what could have been forever, safe and happy in the arms of a friend. His friend.
It's not a cry that you hear at night,
it's not someone who's seen the light.
It's a cold, and it's a broken hallelujah.
Hallelujah…
Musical Muse: Alexandra Burke – Hallelujah