AN: Hey! Finally a new chapter. Sorry for the long waits but I've been super busy with work and the holidays. This chapter isn't really a pick-me-up but I really do like it. Its quite long and I didn't even realize how long until I was ready to post it. I hope everyone likes it and I appreciate the reviews I've gotten and always love to get more. I'm trying to work diligently on the next chapters to come. Lots of drama and excitement ahead. Maybe even something good will happen since its been all down hill for a little while.
Well, I'll stop babbling. Enjoy!
.
Chapter 61
Are We Back Yet?
.
The entire ward of the mental institution was allowed to stay up late to watch the Grammys. Harry insisted. Bonnie was visiting to watch it with him, Sophia was with her grandparents, though the baby was probably sleeping, Lily and James would both be up watching it with Cameron and Mrs. McNeal, Hermione, Ron, Ginny, Sirius, Jackline, Remus, Tonks and . Mason was also asleep.
Since Bonnie had come to see him that first day she had not broken her promise to come back to see him again, and since she had no job to keep her busy she kept that promise by coming in to see him every day. They started off as short visits and the more time they spent together the more they missed each other when Bonnie left. Harry always missed her so it was more the change in Bonnie than it was in him. She realized that, while she may be over the moon pissed at him and still hurt, she was still deeply in love with her husband and still very much wanted to be near him and hear his voice and talk to him.
So by this point she was at a hand holding stage with her husband as they sat together on what was usually his sleeping couch in the blue room at the hospital. Harry had enlarged the television to a very large flat screen that the whole room could watch and be impressed with.
They all applauded, as they knew they were supposed to, when Fish and Kacy arrived on screen.
"Shut up, I want to hear them talk," Harry ordered. Everyone hushed and listened to the interview.
Fish was standing off to the side as the band was shuffled up to E News, Kacy beside him holding excitedly onto his arm.
"We are here with the band As A Bee now," says Ryan Seacrest as the group was ushered up to him and Giuliana for an interview. "Up for a Grammy nomination for Best New Artist. How are all of you tonight?" he asked.
"Great," Fish answered for all of them. "We're very excited."
"And this will be your first time on the red carpet, right?"
"Yeah, we've never been nominated for anything except the Grammys yet. I'm really looking forward to the MTV awards," he joked. "Even though we don't actually watch MTV."
"And you all look fabulous tonight," Giuliana added. "Kacy, who are you wearing?"
"Nina Ricci. Bonnie and Mrs. Potter actually got be dressed this morning. They did my hair and my makeup. I think they may have been more excited than I was." She turned to wave at the camera. "Hi."
"Bonnie? As in Lady Potter?" Giuliana asked.
"Yes," Fish confirmed. "She dressed all of us, actually, if you were wondering why we all look so beautiful this evening. She and Harry are probably watching, as is the whole family." He turned to wave at the camera along with the band.
"And who did she put you boys in?" Giuliana asked.
"Well I am apparently wearing Armani, as is Lex," Fish said.
"And we are wearing Gucci," said Jack, motioning to Mark.
Bonnie gasped excitedly. "They mentioned me on TV. If I don't get invited to be on Vanity Fair after this, I am going to sue them."
"You should," said Melony beside them, who was Emily at the time.
The band was sent to other interviewers but they weren't able to watch every one of them on every channel but they asked basically the same questions. Sometimes Fish would be missing as he encouraged Kacy to have a good time of her own, meeting her favorite celebrities like Cindy Lauper, but they were always pointed out in a smaller square in the corner of the screen, getting their photo taken by photographers and meeting other musicians. Finally, the moment came to go into the ceremony.
Fish and Jack were asked to present the award for Best Pop Solo Performance, won by Katy Perry who was very excited to meet them both.
A half an hour later, Harry very bored by the rest of the show, the band performed two songs, the majority of the second song cut off by commercials that Harry and the other patients damned to hell.
Finally came the moment for the Best New Artist. The nominees were shown in their seats, Fish paying more attention to his wife then the fact that the camera was directed at him.
"And the winner of the Best New Artist award goes to…." Everyone crossed their fingers. "As A Bee."
Everyone cheered, including the audience that had voted for them and the people in the hospital. The camera focused on them, the three boys getting up as Fish leaned over to kiss Kacy before following them toward the stage. They shook hands with the presenters and they each accepted their Grammy award as they got up. Fish went up to the podium first, to speak. "I'm going to say my thanks really fast because I know the guys want to say stuff to. I would first like to thank St. Jimmy. If you had been able to play the guitar then I probably never would have picked it up and who knows where we would all be today. Also, thank you to Hell's Angel for dressing me tonight and for being supportive in everything that I do, despite my not being very nice to you. I would also like to thank my parents, for giving me something interesting to write about, may you both continue rotting eternally in Hell. And thank you to my lovely wife Kacy, for loving both my music and me."
.
There was an after party that the band, Kacy and Fish attended. Fish doted on her entirely, to make sure she was still feeling well. But she was in a very bright mood the entire night, doting on him back. She hardly felt ill at all, it was almost as if she had forgotten that she was terminal. With Fish around her, holding her and touching her hair and dancing with her despite the fact that she danced like a crazy person and then staring at her like a precious jewel, it was hard to remind herself that it would all be over very soon. But she didn't let that lessen her mood. She would enjoy every moment she had with him, take in everything and let nothing pass her by. She may have been a bit embarrassing in that sense during the red carpet and the party, insisting that Fish and the band introduce themselves (and her, of course) to other famous people that she wanted to meet. Fish just smiled and patted her head, once cracking a joke that she was like an old woman considering how very not self-conscious she was about what she said. Then he pulled her forward to kiss her forehead, making sure that she didn't take offense.
She didn't.
At the end of the night she followed him up to the apartment with the boys, all of them disappearing to their separate rooms with tired goodnights. Kacy quickly pulled down her hair and started to untie her dress so that she could hang it up in the closet. Before she was able to change into her nightgown, Fish came up behind her, still fully clothed in his dress shirt and pants. He wrapped his arms slowly and softly around her waist, his fingers touching each small stretch of skin as they made their way to her stomach. He rested his head softly on her shoulder.
Kacy waited for a joke, a teasing remark about her lack of clothing or a trail of kisses up her neck to initiate more sex, which she was more than willing to carry out. But nothing came.
Silently and softly he nuzzled the back of her neck, in the crook between her shoulder and her throat, but never kissed her skin. To be honest it was almost scaring her, she waited for him to tell her something awful. She could only wonder why he was being so very quiet, why his hands tightened around her, why she had to be the only one in her bra and underwear, but the rest of his body stayed so relaxed against her back.
"B?" she asked softly.
She heard and felt him breathe in deeply, like a breath of fresh air. "Kacy?" he asked softly, his voice muffled as he spoke behind her back, his forehead on her shoulder.
"Yes?" she questioned, very confused as to why he was being so strange and why he wasn't facing her.
"I want to admit something, something honest. And I want to make that clear so that you know that I'm saying it because I mean it and not out of…" He paused and sighed dramatically. "Pity."
"B. You don't have to-"
"I love you."
"B."
Fish took her hips and turned her around, holding her against the wall to face him. "Please don't say anything about my feelings not being real just because I know this relationship has an unavoidable conclusion. That's what Josh told me and I know that he's wrong. I've analyzed my feelings for months but I've known since that first night we shared together. When we made love and you told me to tell you that I loved you, even if I didn't mean it. But I did mean it, I knew that as soon as I said it and I know it for certain now. I just wanted to make sure that you knew how I felt, before it was too late. Before I ran out of time to tell you and regretted it for the rest of my life.
"I love you Kacy."
Kacy smiled at him and reached up to stroke his hair. "Oh B," she mumbled.
"Please don't respond like that," Fish said, with a roll of his eyes.
"Like what?"
"Like you're humoring me. I have a short amount of time left with you and I want you to know that I have loved you and will love you all the time that I have you and long after that."
Kacy put her fingers softly to his lips to be sure he didn't interrupt. "B, I want you to know how I feel as well. So I hope you remember the feelings I expressed when we met because they will be the only ones I will express to you. I will admit that I…do." She tried to express her meaning through her expression and Fish understood. She felt the same. "But I won't say it aloud. Using words and saying them aloud, to you, while you're holding me, would just make it all so very, very real. And knowing exactly what I am going to lose will make it that much harder to accept what I have already prepared for."
She put her hand to his cheek and let it fall to his strong jaw, so relaxed and yet frustrated at the same time. "I hope that what I can give you is enough."
Fish sighed heavily and leaned his forehead against hers, closing his eyes. "Anything you have to give me is more than I could ever deserve." Before she could respond in any way he captured her lips in a kiss. She responded enthusiastically after a moment's hesitation, a moment she would have used to retaliate had it been offered. Fish put his hands to her shoulders and let them fall down the sides, dragging the straps of her slip down until the fabric slipped around her curves and fell in a puddle around her feet. In one swift movement he lifted her up into his arms, holding her shape close to his body and moved her to the bed, laying her down on it as he laid over her.
He made love to her, expressing it in words and actions, expecting no such words in return. He could feel her express it though, and if it was all she could give without hurt, then it was all he could ask for.
When it was nearly dawn and they were both snuggled together under the dark fabrics of his bed, Kacy fast asleep and Fish wide awake, Fish told her things he couldn't say allowed to her. "I'm going to pray for you my love. I'll believe in God if it will make you well, if it means that I can have you, if he'll let me keep you longer, then I will accept my position as St. Jimmy has." He pressed his lips to the back of her shoulder, her dirty blonde hair in waves pulled into a tie at the nape of her neck. He breathed in the scent of her skin. "I've saved this wish for you."
.
Harry tried to move as little as possible, the longer he stayed still the longer Bonnie would sleep, in his arms, head rested on his shoulder. It was amazing that he hadn't noticed but she had fallen asleep sometime after the red carpet, curled up at his side, nuzzled up to his arm and he would die right then and there if he ruined the moment for himself by waking her up.
She looked so comfortable, the stress of being near him that usually lined her expressions was gone and relaxed. It was almost like going back to a period in time when she didn't distrust and hate him so much.
He tilted his head, resting it on top of hers and breathed in her scent. The smell of home-made rose water permeated his thoughts.
He heard footsteps nearing. He lifted his head and glanced over the back of the couch, saw an orderly trying to sneak up on him or simply being quiet as he went to say something but he was in no mood to listen. He was the closest to his wife he had been in months and he wasn't going to let the moment pass him by.
He growled, deep in his throat; a natural, animalistic sound that instantly made the man back off and head back in the direction that he came.
Once he was sure that the orderly was gone he rested his head back on Bonnie's and continued to breathe deeply so that every breath he took smelled faintly or wholly of her. While the seconds passed he cautiously, everything cautious, ran his fingers over her hand and cupped it in his. For a long moment he stared at the ring that still sat on her finger, right where he had slipped it into place in church after saying his vows.
He realized, talking to Dr. Ross, that what Ganelle said to him was true. She tortured with honesty and that's why it hurt so much. She wasn't just mocking him when she was explaining what his life had become. Formerly a Savior to the world and an all powerful and sometimes feared man of only nineteen, he had maybe forty more years of life to live out and nothing to do with it. He was trapped in his house; content.
And after twenty-years of passion, adventure, fear and near death experiences to keep him going, years of fighting and training and drama, contentment and even happiness just didn't really feel like enough. It felt wrong, too simple. As though he wasn't doing enough with his time. He couldn't sleep because he wasn't tired. How could he be tired if he wasn't running for his life or beat into unconsciousness? It didn't come so easily anymore.
But Dr. Ross explained that it was just him. It was just his experiences that changed his perception of reality. He could sleep, he was just too focused on not sleeping. The definition of insomnia. But Dr. Ross promised he could help him fix that problem. As for boredom, that was just something Harry would have to come to terms with. Everyone got bored, sometimes there just wasn't enough to do. Hence, the word hobby. Some people called them obsessions. Obsessive cleaning, scrap booking, writing, reading, sex, eating…Of course, resorting to scrap booking wasn't going to make the Savior of the World and a "self-proclaimed" warrior for God feel any better about the lack of excitement in his own life. Dr. Ross suggested writing, reading (as he had been) and maybe some kind of sword fighting club or a gun club. Perhaps the army.
Harry snorted aloud, forgetting the blonde on his shoulder, her hand still in his. He looked down to make sure he hadn't woken her up and was unsure whether he was disappointed or not when her eyes flickered open and she mumbled, "Harry."
Harry smirked, cautiously, at her. "Hey, sleepy head.
She sat up slowly, much to Harry's disappointment. She touched her hair to check it as she squinted in the bright hospital lights.
"You stopped paying attention right after the red carpet. You missed Fish's awesome performance."
"I'm sure he'll forgive me." She tugged her fingers through her curls and then glanced up at him, finally. "Sorry for sleeping on you," she said gently.
Harry shrugged. "I didn't mind."
Bonnie smiled softly. She looked down to find him still holding her hand, his thumb running over her engagement ring.
Harry slowly slipped his hand away as she continued to stare, feeling like he was going to be in trouble for touching her while she was sleeping. Then he saw her smile turn into a smirk and she took his hand back in hers.
She looked up at him. "You can hold my hand Harry. I don't mind." She put her other hand on his thigh and pushed herself up so that she was kneeling beside him. "You could even kiss me if you wanted to."
Harry raised his eyebrows at her. "Last week you didn't want me to sit too close to you."
"That was last week. The more I see you the more I want of you." She sat down on her heels and titled her head like a puppy. "Don't you want to kiss me?" she asked.
Without another pause he reached up and wrapped his palm around the back of her neck and pulled her forward to press his lips to hers. In a second she was in his lap, both of them kissing passionately, which Harry couldn't help but think was strange. "Bonnie?" he said softly against her mouth.
"Ashley," she muttered back, leaning into him again.
Harry pushed her back in surprise. "What?" he asked, staring up at her where she straddled his waist.
"You said Bonnie," she told him.
Harry felt like he was on drugs, or maybe Bonnie was delusional.
"I know I said Bonnie. What are you saying?"
"My name is Ashley." She touched her hair, the tips of her fingers grazing her cheeks and as she pulled her hand away from the strands her face slowly transformed, like rain drops sliding down the window revealing new glass. Her hair was dark, her face the features of Ashley but somehow not the same. Her expression was all wrong.
She leaned forward again to kiss him but he pushed her off and stood from the couch, taking a few steps away from it and turning back to look at her. She rolled her eyes and leaned back into the seat, waiting.
Harry took a deep breath, trying to compose himself, rationally. "This is…its not real. Its a dream."
"It could be a hallucination, but does it really matter…Harry?" She smiled cheekily and leaned forward. "How come she gets to call you that and I don't?"
"She's my wife. Get out of my dream."
"You can't kick me out. You don't control anything here," she told him.
"Its my dream. I control everything."
"Is that what your doctor told you?" she smirked, mocking. "Poor St. Jimmy. Crazy as a loon as they say." She stood slowly, going toward him as he went back. "You'll never escape you know."
"Escape what?" he asked curiously.
She smiled devilishly, as though she knew something he didn't. Thats when he realized who's expressions Ashley was assuming. She transformed again, this time to Ganelle, the process gradual and disturbing.
"This is really going to get annoying," Harry muttered to himself.
As though his mind was accepting that Harry wasn't affected by this dream state the area shifted until he was going through lapses of time that had never actually occurred. Flashes of moments passed by his mind's eye just long enough for him to take them in.
Ashley and him outside her parent's house in Surrey, smiling and laughing in their black clothing, drinking coffee and listening to the radio.
Ashley and him at his parent's house, at dinner with the rest of the family, Fish included, Jackline not.
Ashley at Hogwarts with him, near the final battle, in the library while they searched for a spell to kill Voldemort. A spell that now laid behind glass in a book on Da Vinci now belonging to a man named Richard French.
Harry standing before Voldemort, green light shooting out of his own wand and coming back at him from Voldemort's.
Harry in the dark, feeling death's breath on the back of his neck and leaning in toward the bright, emerald green light with eagerness.
.
Harry awoke screaming, feeling the light on his skin.
In the rush of trying to escape it he fell out of his bed and collapsed on the floor, still screaming, trying to push the green light off of him as it tried to absorb into skin and finally destroy him.
"Please, not again. Not again. I don't want to die. Don't let it take me. GET IT OFF!" He felt someone's hand on his shoulder but it didn't calm him, believing that it was death so close he was able to grab Harry to take him. He pushed the hand away, hearing death shoot back and hit the opposite wall.
There was a rushing of footsteps that came into the room but they all stayed at a distance.
.
The orderlies stood in the doorway and stared, one of them pointing out Harry's roommate collapsed beside his bed. Two orderlies took him and removed him from the room while another stepped over toward Harry. "Sir?" he asked loudly over Harry's screams. "Calm down. We're here to help."
"Its going to kill me," Harry yelled at him. "I'm dying!"
"You're not dying. No one here is going to hurt you and there is nothing wrong with you. You just had a nightmare."
Harry slowly stopped screaming and as he calmed he looked up at the orderly and stared quietly at him, breathing heavily and then looking down at his skin.
The orderly held out his helping hand to Harry. "Come on Sir. Lets get you back into bed. We'll get you some melatonin to help you sleep and you can discuss it with Dr. Ross in the morning. Everything will be okay."
Harry stared down at himself, the parts that he could see, and accepted that he could have been having another nightmare. He used to see the green light often, before he knew what it was, before he repressed it. But since the wall had come down it was the first time the sight of the killing curse had made itself known.
He didn't take the man's hand but stood back up and let the man usher him back into bed. "If my roommate, Ryan...if he wakes up, please tell him that I'm sorry that I knocked him unconscious."
"I'm sure he'll understand that it was an accident Sir but I will be sure to let him know," the orderly said. He turned to take a small plastic cup with a pill in it from another orderly who had just re-entered the room and handed it to Harry. "Melatonin. Place it under your tongue and it dissolves quickly."
Harry did as he was told. He didn't ask very many questions when they handed him his medication anymore. He had read enough books at school to understand how they all worked but it didn't lessen his dislike for them or make him appreciate their usefulness.
The rest of the orderlies left leaving behind just the one, who was always the one to come and find Harry. His name was Alan, or so Harry had heard. He had been there the longest.
He curled up back in his bed, facing the wall, now used to being watched as he fell asleep. Quickly enough the melatonin started to work and he dissolved into a dreamless sleep.
.
The next morning Bonnie came to visit, per usual, at the usual visitors time because if she came at the proper time she knew she wouldn't have to wait to see Harry. She came promptly at nine thirty-one, when group therapy ended. Harry would be led out of group into the visitor's area to meet her.
She took her seat at the little table and set Sophia up on the floor with her toys and her mat and waited.
And waited.
And waited.
She checked her phone and after five minutes had passed someone finally came in to speak with her. The orderly that came to check on Harry whenever she visited for long periods of time. "Mrs. Potter."
"Yes?" she asked.
"Your husband is going to be in group for a little bit longer. They had a lot of talking to get out today."
"How much longer?" she asked.
"Only about ten more minutes."
"Alright," she said hesitantly. "I'll…be waiting here."
The orderly nodded and left the room. Bonnie made the mat bigger and got down on the floor to play with Sophia while they waited.
Harry arrived a little over ten minutes later, led into the room by the same orderly. Bonnie noticed the same smile crawl over his face as he saw them both there for him but it was a little more pained than it usually was.
He kneeled down on the floor beside them both as the orderly left the room and he leaned over to pull Sophia into his arms. "Hey Sophia. You get prettier every day." He pressed a kiss to the top of her head and then looked up at his wife. "Hey, pet. Sorry I was a running a little late. I…I um, had a nightmare last night that I decided to discuss in group and I don't talk in group a lot so they all wanted to hear and tell me their input."
"Its fine. We've been playing," Bonnie explained. "Are you feeling better?" she asked. "Now that you've talked to them."
Harry shrugged. "A little."
"What was it about?" she asked softly.
Harry just shrugged.
"Was it about me?"
"Parts of it…" He paused and Bonnie continued to stare at him for the rest. "Parts were about Ashley."
"Oh."
They were silent.
"Do you want to tell me about it?"
"Do you want to hear about it?" he asked curiously.
"I don't know. It depends on what you and Ashley were doing."
Harry shook his head. "It wasn't like that." He spoke slowly. "Before you started visiting I had a different dream about Ashley, that portrayed a life I never had but would have had if you had never come back from France. If I had chosen Ashley because I couldn't have you. And it was okay.
"But my dream last night, it wasn't as okay. It was…missing things."
"Missing things?"
"If I had ended up with Ashley people would have been without things. Jackline for instance, Sirius would never have met her and they wouldn't have had a baby. I never would have gotten that book by DaVinci containing the spell I used to defeat Voldemort. I would have been forced to use the killing curse to defeat him and when it crushed a part of my soul I wouldn't have been as willing to live. If it had been Ashley, I would have turned to reach out to death, because that's what I've always wanted. So says Dr. Ross and I have to agree. But when it was you…." He paused and smirked a little. "Well, I had a beautiful blonde waiting, a ring in my pocket and a proposal to make. I chose you twice. Ashley was always just second best. And if I had died then Severus wouldn't feel so free to marry and move on with his life and Draco would still have the Dark Mark on his arm as well. You would probably be married to Jacobie, his current wife would be having awful sex with someone who doesn't appreciate her, Fish would…I don't know where he would be."
Harry's eyes widened as Bonnie leaned across the small space between them and pressed her lips softly against his. Harry slowly responded, lifting one hand to hold her cheek and run his thumb along her cheek bone.
A moment later she pulled back again, smiling.
They were quiet as Harry regained his thoughts. "Does my babbling make you want to kiss me?"
"Sort of. Most of what you said was very strange and kind of irritating, but a lot of it was sort of sweet."
Harry just nodded, looking down at Sophia but glancing up at his wife from under his eyelashes as she watched the two of them together.
The next hour they spent chit chatting about what Bonnie had been up to when she wasn't visiting and playing with Sophia's toys with her.
"I took more of Kacy's blood this morning," Bonnie told him in the midst of a moment of silence. She nibbled on one of the crackers she kept in Sophia's designer diaper bag. She took another out and handed it to her daughter. "She wasn't doing very well…another bad day. And while its awful, the worse she is the easier it is to see the disease and to analyze it." Her frown deepened, she looked down, abandoning her cracker and sighing heavily. "But the longer I go without figuring it out the worse I feel and the less I'm able to look at Fish when I visit her. I'm always taking more and never giving any good news."
"You're a potions genius, not a miracle worker Bonnie," Harry reminded her. "Fish understands."
"I don't think he cares what I am, he's just hoping I can do what I hope I can do. Its ridiculous how abnormal her blood cell count is. One day I'll check and its high and then the next its low." She pointed an irritated finger at Harry. "Your God is freaking messing with us I know it."
"You think I don't know that?" Harry asked, raising a hand to gesture to the visitor's area they resided in.
"You followed a crazy girl to her car and drank from her water bottle and then cheated on your beautiful wife. This you did to yourself."
"A girl took off her pants while I was tied to a chair. What was I supposed to do?"
Bonnie glared at him hatefully. "Its still too early to make jokes Harry."
"I'm sorry," he apologized immediately.
Bonnie shook her head as she saw Harry's frown turn into a smirk which he attempted to hide behind his hair. Bonnie smiled threateningly but amused back at him. "If you were not holding our ten month old daughter I would smack you."
"I'm sorry."
Bonnie just shook her head again and looked down at her half eaten cracker. "If the doctors are right she only has a month left and…even if she didn't make Fish so happy she's really nice and I don't think she deserves to die. Where was God when we were trying to kill off Voldemort?"
"Well, humankind was made in his image and people are starting to really turn into lazy bastards, don't you think?"
"I just don't think a month will be enough time to cure her, not this. And I'm so frustrated because I've never had a problem like this before. I cured cancer in seven class periods with some chewing gum and spare herbs. I cured Lycanthropy in three months and no one was close to death, just really grumpy around the full moon. But this…" She sighed heavily and put her face in her hands. "Its just too much. I can't believe Fish could be handling this well at all. If this were you I would be falling apart at the seams."
"Fish doesn't really express his anxiety in the forms of loosening seams. Its more of a…over-protective, stalker, obsessive watching pose where he thinks if he misses the last moment of her life everything will fall apart."
Bonnie sighed heavily again. "When did our lives start being so difficult?"
"Well my difficulties started halloween night, the year of my first birthday. Yours most likely began the day you met me."
"Do you think we'll ever have a moment where it isn't so complicated?"
"I remember having a few of those with you, but in the future?" He shrugged and hugged Sophia close to his chest, looking down at her. "Maybe a few."
.
Fish knelt down beside the bed and handed Kacy another glass of 7-Up. "This really helps, huh?" he asked as she took the glass from him and he stroked back her blonde hair.
She swallowed heavily and shook her head slightly so she wouldn't make herself dizzy. "Not really. I just really like it. It makes me happy." She glanced at him and smirked. "I'm sorry I'm not much fun today. I felt fine last night."
"Don't be sorry. Its not your fault."
"But you told me you had so many things planned today," she frowned, feeling guilty.
"Nothing that can't be rescheduled. I swear." He leaned forward and kissed the top of her head. "You just focus on feeling better."
Kacy just turned her head up to smile at him. "Do you want to lay with me?"
"I don't want to make you uncomfortable."
"You won't," she said, reaching her hand over to pat the empty side of the bed.
Fish walked over and crawled into the bed and laid down on his back beside her, taking her hand in his.
Kacy slowly turned her head to look at him and smiled. "You know when I first got the phone call from the foundation I was lying in bed, just like this, but I was looking up at your picture on my ceiling. That's where my friend put it."
Fish cracked a smile at her. "Sure."
"She did. She's a funny one."
"I remember from when she came to visit. She kept pinching my ass. You and her spent a lot of time talking about our sex life."
Kacy carefully moved herself closer to him on the bed. "She's still a good christian virgin, unmarried you know."
"Aren't you both supposed to be proper young southern belles, all proper and that."
"Yeah, but I'm dying so I can do whatever the hell I want and she's decided that when she's around me she can to. You should have seen her at school, before I started getting really sick. She told everyone off." She giggled before continuing with something she thought was funny. "She took Gary Driver to the back of the school and let him touch her boobs for five minutes so he would agree to do our homework the rest of the semester. She said I shouldn't have to waste my time doing homework and she wasn't going to waste her time doing it either, but she didn't want to waste time in detention for not doing it either." She turned to look at him. "She said it was totally worth it."
"Hmm," Fish mumbled. "I would never do any girl's homework a whole semester for five minutes."
"What about mine?" Kacy joked, smirking at him.
"Well I would do anything for you," he reminded her, reaching over to tuck her hair behind her ear. "You probably wouldn't want me to do your homework though. I'm not even good at the English language most of the time."
"I think you're very smart," Kacy said, taking his whole arm and holding it against her body, his hand in both of hers. She scooted closer and turned on her side to snuggle up to him.
Fish chuckled as she did so and shook his head. "You like me for my body, I just know it."
"I like you because you're talented, you're sweet, you're a very good person and because you're a wonderful and devoted lover." She looked up at him with her sweet blue eyes and her thin eyelashes, peppered with yesterdays residual mascara. But there was so much love in her eyes that Fish stopped breathing a moment. "I feel more than just lucky for having even met you and privileged for being allowed the chance to be with you…especially to be loved by you." She sighed, as if the thought was breathtaking. "I'm honored to be the one."
She leaned up slowly to kiss him but he turned away and pulled back from her. He coughed quietly, a very obvious fake. He pulled his hand away. "I'm gonna go to the bathroom Kace," he said. She noticed his voice was kind of strained as he said it. "I'll be back in a minute, K?"
Kacy just nodded slowly, worried. He must have noticed since he leaned over quickly to kiss her forehead before rushing out of the room and into the bathroom.
Kacy sighed heavily and sat up a little, carefully, and sipped some more of her 7-Up.
.
Fish made sure to wave his wand and sound proof the room before he dropped to the floor, leaning up against the tub and collapsing into a heap of sobs. He put his hands to his face, trying to hold back the tears with his fingers but failing. He dragged his hand through his hair and dragging his nails down his skin, over his neck to his chest where he clutched at his heart as it beat erratically in his chest like it would implode on itself.
He felt like the world was ending, though the walls could be falling down around him, pipes exploding and such and he wouldn't even notice because he was in so much pain. He didn't understand why it had to be her. He and Harry had to track down and murder the five boys who hurt his sister and Ann but wonderful people like Kacy he strikes down and torments with disease.
When he could breathe again and the tears were simply falling non-stop down his face he crawled across the floor to the cabinet under the sink and pulled out the stacks of towels, soaps, shampoo and spare toilet paper and reached into the back to pull out the hidden candles. Three, thick and tall white candles that he arranged in a triangle pointing to the door that lead back into the bedroom where Kacy was. He grabbed an old rosary from the back and a black marker before pushing all of the bathroom accessories back in the cabinet. He lit the candles with his wand and turned off the lights. He kneeled at the base of the candles, clutching the rosary wrapped around his wrist to his chest, rubbing his thumb over the beads. He sobbed more, leaning over to press his forehead to the floor. He reached over to grab the black marker and scribbled on the floor in latin like St. Jimmy had taught him. When he finished the script he threw the marker toward the tub and tried to collect himself. Using his hand that clutched the rosary he opened his palm, the cross tightly sealed to his skin like it was glued, and put his hand down on the candle over the flame and let it burn him.
He closed his eyes and prayed.
"God…give her to me. I know she's a good person, pure and beautiful and St. Jimmy said that you need people like that behind heavenly gates but…I need her to. I need her more than you do. I know Harry and Bonnie are doing fine and Harry will recover so I'm only going to ask for this one thing, this one thing ever.
"Let me take care of her. Give her to me and I'll keep her safe and healthy and happy, I promise. I'll repent for all of my sins if that's what you want, I'll give up smoking, for good, if I can keep her. I love her. Doesn't that mean something to you? Please let me keep her, make her healthy and let her live, even if she doesn't want to stay with me when the sickness passes. I just want her to be alive in this world for a very long time."
.
Kacy woke up to Fish crawling back into bed with her a little white later. She rolled onto her side to curl up by his chest. "What were you doing in there?" she asked, annoyed. "You said a minute."
"I decided to take a quick shower. Sorry," he apologized, stopping at 'sorry' after realizing that his voice was still shaky. He ran the back of his hand under his eye again to make sure he got all of the tears. He turned to her again and pressed his lips to her forehead, then her cheek and her neck. He leaned over her, looking down at her as he held himself up on his forearms. He ran his fingers through her hair softly.
"Mhmm," she agreed, knowing that he looked a little tearful when he was headed into the other room and the edges of his eyes looked suspiciously red and swollen. She reached up to put her hand gently to his cheek and told him softly, "You know its okay to be sad Fish. I'm going to miss you to."
Fish just shook his head, willing the tears to stay back. H leaned down slightly to brush his lips lightly over hers. "Just…don't give up yet, okay? Please?"
.
"It didn't work before," Harry insisted, sitting in his chair across from Dr. Ross, leaned back in one leather arm chair with his feet put up on the other. "Josh tried it before and I wasn't susceptible."
"But your mind was blocking things then. It wasn't going to let someone invade and bring out memories you obviously were trying to hold back, with purpose. But with the wall down and your being more open I think we should at least try hypnotism. You trust me more now that you've been here for many months and I think it would be really beneficial to some things that limit you."
"Limit me?" Harry asked. "I have no limits."
"You don't allow the other patients to wear white anymore."
"They were happy to agree to it," Harry said, rolling his eyes. "Its not like I ransacked their wardrobes and forced them to do as I said."
"Except Veronica."
"She likes to torture me. She's mean."
"I understand that but you still cannot steal from the other patients or exert your dominance over them. This is not battle Sir Potter, this is a mental facility. Veronica, especially, is very fragile."
"Am I fragile?" Harry asked smirking at his doctor, the curve of his lips intimidating to anyone who wasn't treating him or prescribing his drugs.
"I believe the orderlies think of you more like a vicious, caged animal shot with a tranquilizer. Except for Alan, he seems to be starting to like you. But yes, Sir. I believe you to be fragile. Off your drugs and on your own I believe you could snap at any moment."
"I thought I snapped before I got here."
"I think we should try the hypnosis Sir Potter. It can't hurt."
Harry sighed heavily and laid his head back on the chair. "Alright, fine. I'll go along with this if it will make you happy. What would you like to hypnotize me to do because I must let you know I have no troubles fighting off the imperious curse and if you try to make me act like a chicken I'm sure I will have no trouble fighting it off."
The doctor sighed. "No, I thought we would work on your fear of white. It was conditioning that made you fear it, hypnosis would work quite well."
"That's fine doctor," Harry said, leaning back in his chair again. "I'll play along. Just tell me what you need."
.
After group, where he expressed his new excitement, was over he raced to the visiting area where he knew Bonnie was waiting for him. On Tuesdays and Thursdays she left Sophia at Harry's parents so that they could visit her and Bonnie and Harry could be alone.
She was sitting at the same table she sat at every afternoon, waiting, turning her shiny cell phone around in a circle on the table as she waited.
Without really thinking about it and in his extremely good mood he called out to her as he walked across the room and when she looked up at him he had reached her and leaned down to kiss her on the lips.
It was only a peck but she glared at his smile when he pulled away to look at her. "Who told you that you could kiss me?"
Harry's smile fell in confusion. "Well…we kissed yesterday."
"I kissed you. Once."
"Oh," Harry said, looking down at the floor guiltily. "Sorry."
Bonnie just shrugged. "Its alright." She started to spin her phone again. "It was a nice kiss. I mean…I miss it to."
Harry smiled at her and she blushed. He held out his hand to her and she looked up at him confused.
"What?"
"I want to show you something. Come with me."
Bonnie stood and took his hand and let him lead her out of the visitors area. "Am I allowed to be over here?" she asked. "I know that the Grammy's was just a special occasion."
"Its fine Pet. I've cleared it with Dr. Ross." He dragged her down the hallway past the blue room where the patients were reading and others gathered around a heated and monitored football table game. They headed down the creepy hallway to the little dorm rooms. Harry's room was open and an orderly was standing at the end of the hall. "I cleared it with Dr. Ross."
"He told me. Go ahead," the orderly agreed and Harry continued on, stopping in front of his open green door. He motioned for Bonnie to go in. She looked around and back at Harry who just smiled at her, like he was waiting for her to ask an essential question. She sighed heavily and looked closer.
The whole room was painted an ugly light blue color that was a little too close to grey to be attractive. A small closet was open in the corner with a few shirts and pants folded up and two jackets, a little window was in the back wall between the two sides of the room. The two beds on either side were cheap and made of fake wood and very plain, flat and close to the floor, no headboards and tight itchy looking sheets were wrapped around single mattresses. The two sides of the room were exactly alike except that the bed to her right had ugly bluish green sheets and the bed to the left had all white sheets and pillow case. She thought this was strange but figured that the bed on the right was Harry's special bed.
She turned back to Harry with a raised eyebrow. "Did you bring me in here to convince me to make out or to show me that you get special treatment here concerning your sheets?"
Harry smiled at her and pointed to the white side. "That's my bed."
Bonnie narrowed her eyes at him, confused. "What?"
Harry walked to the bed and threw himself down on it, folding his arms behind his head and lying back on it, the bare skin of his arms touching the white of the pillow case. She had never seen him allow such a thing.
She stared at him for another minute, thinking, before finally asking, "What are you doing?"
"Dr. Ross cured me of my fear. See?" He sat up and grabbed the pillow and started rubbing it all over his arms and face. "See? No pain. It does hurt anymore." He sat up and beckoned her to come sit by him and she did so, slowly but willing, slowly sitting down beside him. "Before, at school, they conditioned me to fear the color white and Dr. Ross re-conditioned me to not fear the color white. Thanks to the help of Ganelle's messing with my head and taking down my walls and Dr. Ross's hypnotism skills. The man sure knows what he's doing, I'll give him that."
"Except making you really sleepy," Bonnie reminded him.
"Oh, not so much anymore. They've got the amounts set pretty fair these days. At least I think so. Just enough to block out the large man in the corner of my eye but not enough to put me to sleep as soon as I take them."
Bonnie nodded and looked down at her hands. "It sounds like you're…I mean, you seem to be doing really well here."
Harry nodded slowly. "I think I am. I mean, I'm not all sunshine and rainbows or about to lie to Sophia about the North Pole or a large rabbit who delivers candy. But I think I'm coming out of my rut a little bit. Dr. Ross and I are discussing my crises and I think we're dealing with them well. Group is getting better, though Veronica is still mean to me and I still want to strangle Mrs. Diane every time she corrects me when I don't use Ashley's first name and the nightmares are almost daily but I kind of think its a sign of progression. It all has to come out and I have to face it all before I can put it behind me." He turned to look at her. "You know?"
Bonnie nodded, staring at him.
Harry's enthusiastic smile fell from his face as he tried and failed to analyze Bonnie's expression. "What's wrong?"
Bonnie shook her head. "Nothing."
Harry turned on the bed to face her, pulling his leg onto the bed. "Please tell me. I wish you wouldn't block me out anymore. I miss…" He looked away for a moment, nervously and then turned back again. "I miss talking to you."
"We talk every day," she reminded him.
"That's not what I meant. You know what I mean. Every day we talk about Sophia, Kacy, Fish, my parents, Severus, the cure you're working on and my slow recovery. But if you haven't noticed we never really talk about you. You kind of avoid it. For the first couple days when you would back away from me when I tried to touch you. Physically you're here now but you're not actually letting me in. Not really."
"Well you know why that is, don't you?" Bonnie asked, pulling at the hem of her black skirt.
"Not really."
Bonnie turned to look at him and glared, then got up from the bed. "Not. Really? Are you serious?"
"Bonnie." He sighed. "That's not what I meant. I know you're still hurt-"
"Still?" she asked angrily. "What? Like I should be completely over it by now? Am I taking too long, what exactly is the time limit on forgiving your adulterous husband? Did I miss my cutoff period last week or something? I'm sorry if I'm not interested in kissing you or sleeping with you again. I'm sorry if I'm not comfortable with you touching me."
"I'm not asking you to sleep with me Bonnie," Harry told her, speaking calmly to even the tension in the room.
"Of course you're not. Why would you?"
"What does that mean?"
Bonnie just shook her head and backed away more, wrapping her arms around herself. "I'm sorry Harry. I'm really glad that you're feeling better here and that you're overcoming your problems but its not as easy for me." She looked at him, her eyes shining with tears. "I just…I fought for you to Harry. I did. And you slept with my, for all intents and purposes, arch-nemesis. I told my grandmother more than a million times that you were not the guy that she saw in you, that you were a good guy and not a scumbag who was going to cheat on me. I told everyone…everyone that you were the one, that I wasn't making the biggest mistake of my life by marrying the crazy savior. And then, at twenty," she cried, holding herself up with her arms wrapped around her ribs and a hand by her mouth to muffle the cries. "At twenty Harry, you cheat on me. We had been married two years. Just two. And you make me look like an idiot. To everyone. Everyone." She leaned back against the wall and wiped the tears, her breathing strained as her throat tightened up. "Do you have any idea how I feel? Going to my grandmother's house, in France, and reading the newspaper to see you on the cover, every other day, with her. Harry Potter's Mistress. The Savior's Affair. Savior's Mystery Girl. His Poor Wife. How Could He? Who Would Cheat On Her?
"I couldn't answer those questions if I had tried to think about it. And then I talk to Fish and you're sick and I'm wracked with guilt and so I have to come here, because I do love you. I do. That's why this hurts so much. Because every single damn time I force myself to come here, to you, I can't…when I look at you…all I see is her. All I think about is what you did with her, how you touched her, how you kissed her, what you might have said to her. If…how you felt with her was in any way similar to the way you felt when you were with me."
She sniffed and was quiet for just a second but Harry knew better than to interrupt. "I'm sorry if I can't talk to you about myself right now. I'm sorry I can't…let you in. But you really just destroyed the trust that I had in you Harry. The moment you broke my heart and told me that you slept with someone else, that you broke our marital vows for some twat who took her pants off while you were tied to a chair; the trust I had built up toward you since I was seven was gone in an instant. Its humiliating and degrading to me and I just cannot forgive you yet, let alone trust you to love me the way I expected you to, or trust you to be good to me. Its going to take a lot more time and I just don't have it in me yet."
She lifted her arms from her ribs and wiped her cheeks. "I'm sorry. I have to go."
"Wait," Harry cried in surprise, caught off guard by the sudden change in topic. "Please, don't go. Not yet. Can't we talk about this?"
"This wasn't a discussion Harry. This was just how I'm feeling. You don't get to let me in on your opinion of my feelings. At least not now; I don't really care."
She turned and left the room but Harry followed her out. "Bonnie, please. Don't leave now. I didn't mean what I said. I understand your feelings. I'm not trying to push you. I just want everything to go back to normal."
"I'll be back tomorrow with Sophia. We'll talk some more about her," Bonnie told him, then apparated.
Harry stood motionless in the hallway staring at the spot where she had disappeared into thin air, away from him. He felt like a dog. Like time took forever to pass and he was waiting by the door for her to come back, wondering, for all the moments that went by while he waited, if she ever would come back.