White. All he could see, think, and hear was white. Am I dead? I don't deserve heaven, if I am. He looked over to see an old friend sitting by him, a man with a long white beard that had saved his soul more than once - a father figure that loved him, or did before this horrible attempt at suicide, by drowning himself in alcohol.
"So sorry... so selfish," he managed to rasp out - his throat was painful and sore, his mouth tasted of bile and charcoal.
The father figure placed a hand on the dark haired man's arm, stopping his babbling and painful thoughts.
"Child, I love you regardless and there is nothing you could do that would ever change that. I'm not angry. It happens, but you just can't do it again," the old man's face cracked into a smile, and he pressed his hand a little harder in reassurance on the pale arm he was holding.
The patient smiled softly - the first real smile that had graced his face in over three months. Three months of alcohol abuse and complete heartache. Three months of feeling guilty. Three months of ignoring himself and those around him. Three months of sinking deep into himself.
The white started to seep into his skin, slowly, so slowly. The smile freed him from his disappointed dreams and finally let some light into the black.
Tears streamed quickly down the side of his face, all of the feeling he had missed in the past twenty years finally coming back to him. He imagined his tears to be black, streaming down his face. The darkness leaving his body in the only way it knew out. His heart began beating in his chest harder than it had before. His thirty something body was no longer feeling ninety.
He remembered her face, the brown haired beauty that had kindly taken him into her heart. She had loved him so truly, how could he have been so cruel? He had no right to harm her like that.
The white finished infusing him, and he no longer felt the pain that had overwhelmed him. He could see, think, taste, and hear the white all around him, but this time, it wasn't suffocating, it was freeing.
He could hear her voice in his head, "I love you," repeating softly in her dulcet tones that were ripe with tears. He tried to shake it out of his ears; there was nothing left that could make up for his mistakes. The sound wouldn't leave him. He opened his eyes and he could see her head shaking on the bed. He touched her with the slightest brush of his fingertips on her arm. So soft, and he smiled when she lifted her head to reveal tear stained cheeks.
"I love you, it's as simple as that. I had to push you away, I was afraid of hurting you..." his voice cracked, "I love you, I love you, I love you."
She wiped the back of her hand across her brown eyes and gave him a smile that cracked the remaining layers on his heart.
He was in love. He no longer held onto his disappointed dreams. How could he with this dream of a woman in front of him?
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Reviews are always appreciated. Inspiration for this fic from the songs "Dreaming with A Broken Heart" by John Mayer and "Let's Not Shit Ourselves (To Love and Be Loved)" by Bright Eyes.
As always - Characters belong to JKR, not I.