A/N: I would like to thank all of you who reviewed and favorited my first story. The really put a bounce in my step :) So here's another angst type story. In my opinion, they always tell the best stories.
*WARNING: I do not promote this kind of behavior or any other graphic part in this story.
Haruhi had never been one to lie. She would always tell the blunt truth, no matter how much it could rip apart the person. Telling a lie was like lighting a match. First there's a little flame, but if you misplace it, it could burn everything and everyone in your path until it got too out of control and there was nothing you could do.
You can extinguish small parts of the flame, but it will always spread. Sometimes, people lie to keep the person protected. Some do it because they are afraid of the truth, and aren't truthful to themselves. While others do it because they feel like they can handle the problem on their own.
So when Haruhi met this nice young gentleman at the park, she told her friends the truth. She knew they weren't happy that she had acquainted a man who was two years older than herself, so when they met him, she tried to keep away the fights that she knew were starting to inflame.
She only spent her Sundays with him, and he was always a proper gentlemen to her. Hold a door open. Always offer her his coat when she felt a chill. And always made sure she was having a good time.
Secrets, Haruhi knew, were slightly different then lies. With secrets, you never told the person anything, so it wouldn't be considered being truthful or lying since no words were spoken. But you can only keep so many secrets before you blurt one out, since it's so engraved into your mind that you forget why it was a secret in the first place.
So this was why she never told the hosts that her relationship with the mysterious man had been bounced up to the next level. She knew they would be furious, something she didn't need to deal with was breaking up a fist fight between whichever host threw a punch at her lover.
It was a couple months before she was honest with them about her relationship. There was yelling, fists contacted with walls, and without her knowing, a flame had lit.
Soon the hosts came accustomed to the man, who wore leather, that came to pick her up after club. They watched as she unconsciously slipped her hand in his, and gave him a peck on the cheek. The hosts would leave in an angry fashion, their hearts burning for the natural host.
Days turned into months, and the months turned into a year. Haruhi's relationship was growing stronger, the flame of love completely engulfing the couple. Though she soon became annoyed at the hosts stubborn decision of not spending time with her and her lover. So when they declined her offer of going to the movies, followed by another snide comment on her relationship with the man she had come to dearly love, she had been angry.
Instead of going to the movies, Haruhi had something other in mind. Something she had wanted to wait before she did it. But as she crawled into the bed with her lover, crashing her lips on his, those thoughts burned away in her mind, and all was left was ash.
After that night, her lover became more demanding. She wanted to tell him it hurt. She wanted to tell him to stop. She wanted to tell him to stop being rough. Where had that sweet, mysterious man, that she had fallen in love with, gone?
Another lie was added to the pile. And it burned and burned, and soon her throat began to feel like it was on fire whenever she told the hosts another fable of how that bruise on her arm was because she bumped into a wall. How the reason she was so tired was because she hadn't slept due to studying. That it hurt to sit because she had slipped down the stairs, injuring her tailbone.
The fire began to grow, and it welcomed the lies that it was being fed by the girl with the short brown hair. The hosts felt like their hearts were being ignited again, and again, every time they saw her come to club with another injury they were forced to pry out of her.
Soon her lover just didn't demand sex, he demanded that she have a whole new makeover in her second year of college. So she grew her hair long, it swaying in the wind before it came to rest on the middle of her back. Wore short and tight clothing, because he liked to appreciated the many curves of her body. Applied make-up just to please the man she knew, deep down, still loved her for her, and not the sex.
The hosts caught wind of her change, and it nearly blew them away. But the wind blew on those bright, heated flames. It grew bigger, and bigger, until it found an explosive area, and soon blew up.
Haruhi had cried in her revealing dress, as she held her lovers hand as he was whisked away to the hospital, from the bar they were currently partying at. She cried for her lover, who was punched and kicked so many times, she had trouble making out his facial features. She cried for those hurtful words she had screamed at the ex-hosts, as they each took their turns pulverizing her partner. But mostly, she cried at how she let her little jar of lies catch on fire, and burn everything in it's path.
Her partner made it out of the hospital with only a few broken bones, and Haruhi made sure to tend and care for them. She ignored the visits she got from the ex-hosts. The calls she got. The e-mails she deleted. Not because she wanted to, but because she knew that she would lie to them again about her situation, and that flame would start up again.
The ex-hosts were miserable without her. They missed her smile. The way she tilted her head when she was confused. The way her eyebrows scrunched together when she was in deep thought. Her blunt personality. Her oblivious mind. They hadn't meant what they did a couple months ago, they just couldn't take seeing her being changed by someone who only though of her as a possession. They tried to tell her this by visiting her, calling, e-mails, anything. Though she ignored them, and slammed the door, that was once their relationship, in their faces.
Months passed without an communication between her and the hosts, and Haruhi started to feel depressed. She wouldn't even put up a fight when her lover pulled her on the bed. She didn't slap his hand away when he grabbed her butt. And she didn't call for help when he started to beat her, for reasons that were unknown to her, but very prominent in her lovers eyes.
The hits burned her skin. The kicks knocked the breath from her chest, and left her gasping for air. She held in her screams when he grabbed her hand and forced it onto the scorching hot stove that she just cooked soup on. Tears threatened to fall when he threw a frame containing a picture of the old host club at her head. And she screamed when he grabbed her neck and pushed her body halfway out the window, her phone slipping from her hands and shattering on the ground, as he threatened to push her if she tried to tell anyone about their secret.
Though another flame ignited, as she lied to her husband. She couldn't stand living in the house the reeked of beer and sweat. So when she went to work, she stayed out later and sat in her car, thinking about how her life took a turn for the worst.
A year later, she cried in the bathroom as she stared at the pregnancy test that had showed a pink plus sign. She didn't want his child. Never, would she bring a child into this kind of environment. But when she told him about the baby, he had actually smiled. He stopped the sex, but not the intense make-out sessions. He seemed to stop hitting her, and this were the nine months she cherished the most.
She gave birth to a healthy baby boy, that she made sure she would protect with her life. Her husband cried tears of happiness when he held his son in his arms. Though her life took a u-turn, back into the same lane she was on before her son was born.
Her soul was burning. Her heart was on fire. Smoke clouded in her lungs as she tried to push past the flames, and come into the light. Her three year-old son clinged to her whenever his father was around, and he never looked him in the eyes.
Her son would watch as his mother was slammed into the wall for having dinner with a male client. While she was bathing him, singing him soothing songs, her hair pulled up into a messy bun, as her father barged in and shoved her head into the soapy water while screaming incoherent words at her before she finally kicked him until he let go.
She would hold her son at night, while she brushed the hair out of his face, and whisper that she loved him, over and over. And that she was sorry she wasn't a good enough mother to him.
Haruhi's nerves had snapped a long time ago, and now her hands would never stop shaking. She had been admitted into the hospital many times, and was to shaken up to realize it was one of her many lost friend's
business.
She had enough one night. Why did her son and her deserve this? She could have called for help a long time ago. Told the hospital the truth why she needed stitches for yet another head would. Why she needed burn medicine on her hands and face. So she called her father. She was weeping when she called, holding her son, as they his in the corner of the closet. Though she never spoke clearly enough for her father to understand, before the door was whipped open.
Haruhi's eyes finally became lifeless after holding her son's limp hand in the hospital. After all of these years of abuse, rape, and controlling nature, the strong souled women finally let the flames burn until it almost killed her and her son. This was what finally made her crumble, the injury of her son.
She stood completely frozen as she witnessed her husband pushing their now five year-old son down the metal steps where his head smacked against the concrete. The flames seemed to rise as she struggled to breath through the thick cloud of smoke hovering above her. She screamed and cried, as she fell to her sons side, yelling for help. Her hands pressed against her son's wound, as she cried for help, and desperately looked at her husband who had gone inside.
Kyoya Ootori had suspicions about Haruhi's current living style, and it all became clear when her son was wheeled into the emergency room. A women he recognized at once was in tears as she cried and begged for her son to be alright. Right away, he called the his police force and arrested the husband of Fujioka Haruhi.
She was reunited with the hosts, and she begged for their forgiveness. She told them everything she had lied about, and how she felt so helpless. They listened, and they became guilty that they hadn't know, and anger towards the man they had left her with, knowing that he was a bad man.
The funeral for her son was quiet. Haruhi stared at her sons body, and silently cried as she traced his features. He was so unfortunate to inherit all of his father's features. Her hands shook even harder as she looked at the stitches that failed to keep her son's head together. And she wished he could be here, to see his new father, one that would protect them always.
Soon she was finally able to laugh, and life was slowly flooding it's ways into her eyes, extinguishing the flames. She was able to have three more kids, but she never forgot about her strong son who had told her not to cry and that daddy would soon stop.
She learned to never play with fire, as it could burn a person's soul. Get out of control and cause other things to explode. And burn everything in sight, destroying your life before you could even get an antidote.