-Chapter 36-

It all feels very familiar, the way the bottle hurtles through the air from my balcony. We'd waited for the sound of glass shattering last time but it didn't come. It does now, shards of green glass splintering out onto the pavement with a sound I can only call finality. Like something's been in the air and falling for a very very long time, only just now hitting the ground.

"You dick!"

It's my voice, but I'm struggling to keep up with it and the words just slip out. Below, he stumbles, avoiding the glass with an amused huff and then looks right up at me.

Six weeks of separation isn't nearly enough time to forget what somebody looks like, but he has shifted a little in my memory. Between the near-constant barrage of Other Harrys and the freckles on my brain, I've found myself building up picture that is flatter than it ought to be. More fixed like a photograph or a poster than the real life thing below.

Seeing him is like drowning from the inside all over again.

His whole face is everything we went through together, every tip and turn of his bone structure speaks like a chapter in our brief and bloodied up history. Even if his hair were longer, even if he wasn't thinner than is considered healthy I'd be able to pick him out of all the clones in the world. One Harry out of hundreds, mine.

"Yep," he says, briefly looking down at the smashed bottle, violently opened up and abandoned like a murder scene. "This is going about as well as expected." But then he's smiling.

His hair's grown since I saw him last, becoming this dark sprouting scrubland, he looks cleaner, dressed in a dark t-shirt, a jacket and jeans that actually fit him- bought with him in mind and not just stolen or scrambled together from things belonging to other people. But his voice and his smile is just the same. And I've missed it so much. I feel the hole in my heart that he'd left behind, only now realising how big it's been these past few weeks.

I chuck another one of Joey's old beers off the side, needing some way to force the overwhelming crush of emotion and energy out of my body, needing to hear something shatter.

"Hey- Would you get down here, you nutter," he says, opening his arms out a little, like I'm just going to fall back into them after six whole weeks. I want to, I really really want to. But I'm terrified of closing the distance between us, reminding myself what it's like to kiss him and touch him only to have it all go away again.

Once again, it turns out I don't have a bloody clue what I want. All that talk to Joey about wanting to see him once to say goodbye. What utter bollocks. I can't bear this. I'm laughing and crying and shouting, feeling more things that it should be reasonably possible to fit into my body.

"Just as soon as I've run out of bottles," I shoot back, chucking another.

He laughs softly now too. "Pop a top on and come down," he says. Calm as you like against the raging storm I'm kicking up. "Come and have a brew with me."

I look down at myself, I'm still just in my bra. I must look flat out deranged to an onlooker; topless, yelling and throwing things. Not how I'd pictured this going either. Because, I admit it. I have imagined it. I've tried not to. Tried to tell myself that it wasn't going to happen and that was fine but at night, or quiet moments by the river or in the bath I don't really think about anything else.

"You utter dick," I say shakily. "I haven't seen you in nearly two months and now you're here...talking about getting tea."

"Something boring and normal, just the two of us...."

As he speaks the car behind him opens and someone gets out of the driver's seat.

"just the two of us and Norris," he corrects, sounding intensely unenthused.

Norris? What the fuck is a Norris?

I don't have to wonder for very long as a man in his early forties, blond, dressed in an old black parka and an ugly green jumper and jeans steps onto the pavement. All pretty innocuous but for the fact he's enormous, broad shouldered and built like a brick shithouse,  his posture too stiff for the clothes he's wearing- like he belongs in a suit.

He touches the clear earpiece he's wearing and lays a hand on Harry's arm, saying something in a low rumble that I can't make out from all the way up here.

"It's fine...she's fine," he tells this Norris person. "Honestly. You're fine aren't you, Tish?"

I look from Harry to this massive bloke, another bottle in my hand. Jerking my head a little from the large man to the bottle, I wait for a signal that means I have to knock out Norris. It doesn't come. In fact he shakes his head just slightly at me. I'm none the wiser as to what the fuck is going on, but Harry doesn't look worried or threatened or like he's been taken hostage. Doesn't stop me being overtaken by a stab of panic that he's going to be dragged away from me all over again.

"Wait right there, I'm coming down. Don't you dare go anywhere."

I throw on the wet shirt and my running shoes as opposed to the heels I'd been planning to wear to the interview and head out of the flat. My heart is pounding like someone has a gun to my head, my legs are working like I'm being chased as I take the steps two at a time.

Please be there, I repeat over and over. No more hallucinations, no more dreams, just be there.

I'm barely out of the building when we collide.

Crash. Splinter in each other's arms.

His smell, his hands, each element of the meat, blood and bone reality of him gives me whiplash. Even his breath is beautiful; coming out ragged and warm against my neck. He noses at and flickers his lips against the thin skin there, squeezing my back tight enough to rob me oxygen. I feel out every edge of him, shoulder blades and spine, relearning it all.

"Are you alright? Nobody hurt you did they?" I whisper. He just kisses me,one hand in my hair the other pressing me closer and closer to him. His heart is beating fast, clashing against mine- two jerky rhythms that can't seem to synchronise. We buzz all over like faulty circuits; messy and erratic but oh so electric.

"I was beyond worried...." I try to get out, my words just fragments slipping out in the brief moments his lips aren't firmly against mine "I was....I was actually starting to.... think I'd made you up inside my head.... like a crazy person."

I don't even realise I'm crying till his fingertips tiptoe along the damp path of my fallen tears. His kisses move from desperately frenetic to something slower and deeper. Something that feels like drowning but also like breaking up from under the surface of the water. Something that hurts my chest but heals my heart. Until I hear from behind Harry's shoulder a gruff voice,

"I think that's enough."

I feel the tickle of frustrated huff against the corner of my mouth "I'm keeping a low profile," he whispers. I barely listen to what he's saying, just savoring the way he says it. Thick and deep, his chest and my skin humming from it. "No scenes, Harry." Pulling away, he looks at me, hand on my face, fingers in my hair and swallows thickly, Adam's apple bouncing like a buoy on a rough sea "You're alive."

"We're going," says Norris and I ignore him. Harry's eyes shimmer a bit and I take his hand in mine, moving it down to the centre of my chest, as if to prove my position as living and newly whole.

"I hope I'm alive. Otherwise that whole thing just a minute ago would have been very awkward."

I get a laugh for that, Harry's hand right near my breast. Last time I'd seen him he'd been thumping hard here, acting as the beat of my dying heart for me, the only thing keeping the blood pumping through my body and I-

"-Car. Now."

Oh my god, fuck off Norris.

Harry pulls away, but I ball my hands on the material of his shirt, forgetting that he's invited me for this cup of tea. After two months not knowing if I'm mental or he's dead or if that was it, full stop, end of the story, I'm terrified not to feel at least some part of him near my fingertips, to just get to listen to his breathing, terrified of the moment I blink and find myself in another place altogether, like falling asleep on a train that's going far away from him.

"In terms of not making a scene I'd say that was about a one out of ten," says Norris from the front seat as we slide into the back.

"One whole point though. How come we didn't lose it?" Harry asks.

"Because at least no one's going to recognise your face now she's eaten it clean off."

I start to dislike Norris intensely, Harry lets out a vaguely embarrassed snigger and pulls a face at me.

"Norris is MI5, he's here to make sure the North Koreans don't get my body. Or anyone else who wants it for that matter. " Don't I just know it. "He's doing a grand job," he explains.

"I try my best."

Communist dictators and the fact that Norris works for MI5 and could probably quite easily snap my spine in half like a twiglet aside, I sort of feel like I'm fourteen again; being given a lift home in the back of my date's dad's car after a trip to the cinema or something. There are a thousand things to say, a thousand ways I want to touch him, a thousand questions to ask to fill in the dark spaces that occupy the time between dying in his arms and now- but all we can do is sit in silence.

Norris whistles the old Frank Sinatra song, My Way, as he drives. Harry has my hand in his and it all feels very timid and chaste, with our intertwining fingers and stolen glances. At a stoplight, I shuffle closer and rest my head on his chest.

He slings his arm around my shoulder, seemingly very casually and I should feel safe and calm and happy but I don't. It's not just all in my head either, with the rest of the paranoia and the bad memories and the freckles on my brain.

It's also in the strange way his heart is beating; fast and terrified like a humming bird.

***

I don't even try to predict where we're going and instead just surrender to whatever curveball I get thrown next. It doesn't disappoint either; the car pulls up outside of a laundrette- in Hackney, I think- that looks like it's been abandoned for the last three decades. The shutters are closed and rusting with graffiti and paint splashed up along them. The flats above the laundrette on the first floor go up two stories, with newspapers over the filthy windows and the pavement in front has cracks all across it.

The front door to the flats, situated next to the laundrette, opens slightly. Harry smoothly exits the car in one very practised motion, walking quickly with his head slightly lowered and I follow. Inside is a dark narrow landing, with old green carpeting worn right down to threads and bare floorboards and a staircase leading up to the flats.

There's another Norris-type by the door- a bit younger and of South Asian descent with a broken nose but still just as massive and jarringly dressed in a tracksuit and trainers. He takes me by both shoulders and attempts to run his hands down my arms, but I jerk violently, shoulders hunched, holding my arms up.

"Hey...fuck off," I snap at him.

"I have to search you."

"For what?"

"Weapons. Microphones. Cameras."

I glare at him, but hold my arms apart to just get the whole ordeal over with.

"I'm pretty sure she's clear. I already felt," Harry adds, trying to be helpful. Of which he is not.

But when it's been established that I haven't tucked a knife in my knickers I get the nod and we go up the staircase and into the flat. There's a main room behind the door, complete with a mildewy kitchenette, dining table with chairs, a military style cot bed propped up in one corner. It stinks of ages old cigarette smoke and chip grease, there are empty Styrofoam takeaway boxes on the kitchen counter, a pack of cards on the table, with them a box packed full of iphones and blackberries, a couple of laptops and a newspaper slumped open at the naked tits on page three.

"Starbucks is different from how I remember it," I murmur. There's another door on the other side of the kitchen, and Harry pushes on it. Norris gets out a book of crossword puzzles and sits down at the table, obnoxiously occupying more space with his girthy body than any person has a right to while the other sits across from him, shuffling cards. Must be a bit of a weird gig for them I think as I follow Harry into the other room, normally their job would be to hunt down terrorists or whatever else it is British Intelligence does, but instead they're babysitting the clone of a popstar.

"You know, as a tip for the future....seedy bedrooms in old squats aren't typically first date material..." I begin when I look around, taking stock of the surroundings. Of off coloured yellow walls with damp like pit stains soaking through the paper, a sort of tangled burgundy carpet, a bed, a desk and a gym bag shoved in the corner next to a rumpled white t-shirt. It's cold and bare and impersonal.

"What is this place?"

"Home since... last Tuesday, I think. Getting hard to keep track of all the places I've been," he says with a casual scratch of his eyebrow.  

"Oh..." I whisper, shutting the door behind me and feeling an ache around my rib cage. All that time in the hospital, handcuffed to the bed I'd been terrified about being put into prison but it was him they locked away. "Harry...."

He winces slightly, shrugging and saying in a low voice. "It's this or world war three."

Suddenly my complaints about not being able to go back to work and being hurt in the wake of everything that happened feel very small.

"It's got all the features you could ever want though," he adds. "Great views," Harry gestures to a filthy window with newspaper taped over it. "Entertainment," to a book behind me on the desk. "Classy decor," there's an empty gold picture frame above the bed. " A travel kettle," he walks over to it and shakes it at me.

I smile a bit and put my hands on my face as if I'm stunned. "Oooh."

"And teabags and little packets of instant coffee. You can even have the last hot chocolate if you want."

"Stop it Harry, you're spoiling me."

"What can I say? I know how to treat a lady."

He flicks the kettle on, grabbing the mugs that are next to it and as he does so, I turn to the desk and look at the book that's lying there. It's not one I've heard of, looks old and science-fictiony with a funny title, Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?  Picking it up so I can read the back cover, I spot a folded up newspaper clipping underneath it.

Man-hunt For Man-killer Over, reads the caption under the photo. It must have been clipped from a while ago, back when I was still a murderer. It's me in my school uniform, in front of one of those swirled colour backgrounds, with a tight pony tail on top of my head and an expression more like a sneer than a smile.

I smile now though, wide and stupid like an idiot, picking it up and showing it to Harry.

"I wanted a picture of you."

I've melted just slightly at the gesture and he's well aware of it, grinning smugly so I can see dimples.

"I took this in year ten- got in a massive strop because they made me take off all my makeup for it," I explain and I look down at her, the fourteen year old girl and I'm not ashamed of her, I don't hate her or fear her. She wasn't all bad- I don't have to forget about her completely, I just don't have to be her all the time now. "Jesus Christ, they just do not find flattering pictures of me. Did you ever see such a hard faced little cow?"

Me and Harry, we've both had to do it; stare at flat pictures of the people who might have been us once but aren't even close anymore.

"You would have beaten the absolute shit out of me at school. Won't lie, bit of a turn on."

"Oh?" I lean my bum against the desk. "Would it do it for you now if I told you to give me all of your fucking lunch money, Styles?"

He looks up and considers it, grinning at me. But the smile suddenly wanes slightly.

It's like the sun going behind a cloud and the desperate way he looks at me fills me with dread. Something is going on; it's lurking behind the smiles and the jokes and the way his heart was beating in the car. It's something I'm doing my best to overlook, because I've missed him a lot and because, after everything, I want to make the most of these moments with My Harry since history has shown that they are always so brief.

I'm willing him to do the same. But it seems like he can't anymore, letting out a deep breath, walking over to me and staring very intently as he puts his hand on my arms.

"It...it is really you isn't it, Tish?" he asks quietly.

"Yeah, course it is," I say with a frown.

"Sorry, I know. It's just...seeing you lying there while I-"he takes a pained breath, probably thinking about how it must have looked while I died in his arms "...and your teeth...."

"Oh," my hands drift into my mouth, to the plate that's been sitting in there since a trip to the dentist about a month ago. I couldn't very well go for job interviews looking like I regularly went out and did bare knuckle boxing at the weekends. "Oh no, they're false. Got them on the NHS. Didn't cost anything in the end."

To prove it, I slip them out and roll the sleeve of my blouse up to reveal the one that will always be carved into my arm. "Ta-da"

I go to put the plate back in but Harry's hand on my wrist stops me. He inclines his head downwards slightly, implications heading somewhere towards the vicinity of his crotch.

"Ugh. Don't be gross," I laugh.

But even now he still holds my wrist, bringing up my forearm so he can kiss along the scar there. My breath seems to be made of thick butter; it's heavy and clogging up my throat and nose. Harry closes the gap between us, one leg between mine on the desk and leans in to kiss me.   

"You changed your hair too. Looks nice," he says, tucking a strand behind my ear."I'd've done it if you asked me. We could've been matching slapheads."

"It's you too, isn't it?" I whisper, his eyes flicker away slightly.

"I'd say the one and only but...well...." he puts it to me like it's a joke, but I can see the tightness all over his face.

My hands wrap around the bottom of his t-shirt, "I think I'd better check. Just to be sure."

Harry raises his eyebrows, "Purely in the interest of safety?"

"Uhuh, totally." I slide the fabric up over his torso, the scar on his hip is there like I knew it would be. "Can't be too careful," I add as he raises his arms and I pull his t-shirt right off him, letting it fall to the floor.

His skin is warm and I press my lips just above the wound on his shoulder as his arms go around me, stroking and squeezing at my back and my bum.

You are the one and only, I say with each kiss against his skin. My one and only Harry. I lean up and catch him in a kiss, like it's the easiest thing in the world. Easy as falling. After a while gravity does all the work and I'm falling, falling, falling back into him. To the taste of his mouth, the smell of his skin and the angles of his body pressed close against mine.

Harry pushes me further up against the desk, pulling up my skirt as I hook my hands around his shoulders and let out a small breath, "I never had a scar down there, Harry," I whisper and he sniggers against my ear before biting down on it.

"There's no...like, cameras in here are there?" I fret out loud, my voice a little strained from his kisses and stroke of his hands against my skin. Harry breathes out a muffled, rumbling no, somewhere around my neck, pushing me backwards so my elbows are leaning on the desk.

"Oh fuck...what about Norris?" I ask, lifting my hips up to help him ease off my knickers.

"What, you think he'll feel left out? I can get him in if you want. HEY N-"

Quickly I put my fingers on his lips, squeezing them tightly shut. "Don't you dare." And then we're laughing, heads pressed together, sharing the same breath.

**

I opt for tea in the end. Black with a healthy dose of caffeine and sugar to combat a wave of post coital sleepiness. Sitting on the bed in just my underwear, I cross my legs, taking the mug Harry hands me before he sits opposite me like a mirror image, his own mug in hand.

It's nice enough to just be, but I can't help but think about what happens now. I think about the interview I've missed, about Norris doing crossword puzzles in the next room and how time can't stop here and now the way that I want it to.

"What's really happening, Harry?" I finally say before I explode. "I turn on the TV and it's like nothing changed and I keep expecting...I don't know, the door to burst open or to...I couldn't sleep for ages....still don't do it that well...I still can't even really breathe right...."

He shuffles closer so our knees are touching and puts a hand on my arm to stop my rambling.

"Everything's changed. We're good. Everything's fine."

I look around the room thinking, this is fine?

"So the clones are definitely all gone?"

"They found a batch that was, I guess, half made, in Belgium or something. Since the brains hadn't developed yet they weren't connected. Just five; one each of us and then all the rest are gone," he looks at me fondly. "You properly scuppered everything."

"So how...who..." I begin, trying to assemble a question but I don't even know where to start, putting my head in my hands. "I feel like I know less about what's going on now than I did when we were still in trouble."

"What've they already told you?"

"Nothing. Nobody told me anything. First I'm in hospital thinking I'm going to prison, no visitors allowed and all these weird things about you and what happened being written in the papers, then they just pack me off home. So long Tish. Thanks for saving the world and everything but fuck off now. It wasn't til I started threatening to blab anyone even said you were alright."

"What? Shit," his face folds into a frown. "Seriously?"

I nod. I hadn't realised this was news to him.

"I thought they'd stay in contact. How could they do that to you?"

"Quite easily, I'd imagine. Who am I really?" I shrug quietly, tucking my hair behind my ear before taking a sip from the mug, "Just some girl from a housing estate in South London who tagged along for the ride. Not worth the effort. Not worth a second thought, probably. They can shove me back into my little life and I'll just fade away....nobody's problem anymore.

"Until you made yourself their problem. Got a habit of that, you."

I smirk a bit, "There was a dead Zayn clone in this parking garage, I said I'd post pictures of him on instagram if they didn't tell me where you were. Talked to me pretty sharpish after that, let me tell you."

After this story, I expect a smile or some jokey comment  but Harry looks down at his tea, wrinkling up his brows. For a minute I worry that I've said something wrong or done something wrong but I can't even begin to imagine what.

"You never expect anything from anyone, do you Tish?" he finally says gently to the mug. "Or sit around feeling like the world owes you one single handout....You always just-"

"-Steal it," I agree with a wince, thinking about old Tish and the cars and the shoplifting.

"Get on with it," he insists, lifting his head up and fixing me with a stare that makes me desperately want to be all the things he thinks I am "Fight for it. Earn it."

He looks away sheepishly, tugging on a handful of his short hair.

"I don't know what I'm going on about. I think that was supposed to be 'I love you'."

And it seems kind of strange to hear that now. Almost out of context for us even; because we're not in a freezer surrounded by corpses and he's not asking me to shoot him in the head and we're not running for our lives with the world burning around us. This morning I woke up when my alarm went off, I went to the loo, took a shower, watched some telly, brushed my teeth and Harry loves me.

"Love you too," I tell him quietly. "You make good tea."

I take a deep sip.

"Niall's alive," says Harry.

I start choking and shoot hot tea out of my mouth and nose.

"Fuck off. What? Shit. What?" I exclaim, slapping Harry's knee with the back of my hand. "No."

"Yeah," he laughs, "He's alive. He held on."

"But the....the bullet...."

"Should've known a bullet wouldn't stop him. Should've known being dead twice wouldn't stop you either." I put a hand over my mouth, then rub at my temples, remembering. 

"I saw him. I saw him in hospital. I thought it was my stupid brain. He made a shiv out of a wheel and stabbed a nurse in the hand with it!"

No wonder there was still blood on the floor. It hadn't been another hallucination and I can only shake my head and marvel, getting up onto my knees and wrapping my arms around Harry's shoulders. It was real; Niall shuffling down the corridor as determined to get away from that hospital as he must have been to get away from death. He must have hated being cooped up sick in a room with no one telling him anything. I bet he gave them absolute hell.  It's all a bit too much and I'm laughing and crying again.

"The bullet hit his spleen but apparently you can get along without them," Harry explains. "They just removed it." 

"Jesus what is it with you lot and organs? None of you can seem to keep a hold of the full set," I pull away from Harry eagerly. "Is he here? He must be out of hospital by now. That's two of us back from the dead. We could start a religion."

It's better news than I've heard in the longest time, and I'm beaming though it wanes a little as Harry shakes his head and gives me another tight sort of smile.

"I've not seen him for ages .I mean I've asked. I've wanted to see you too for ages but it's been....intense. Lock and key stuff."

"You're the biological equivalent of a nuclear weapon," I say, remembering what Ruthie told me as I crawl over the bed to put our mugs on the side table.

"Thanks, you're not so bad yourself."

That only makes me sigh and slide down so I'm lying on my stomach, cheek pressed to his knee as he sits. I kiss it and he threads his hand through my hair and I can't give this up. Even if him being here is the only thing between peace and world war three or whatever Ruthie and the rest are trying to say.

"Why can't they just say you've broken up?" I mumble. "Why isn't over yet? Okay...I get in the beginning...but that was almost two whole months ago...they could say the fire put a strain on everything, you all want to spend time with your families, people would buy that- it's literally the easiest thing in the world."

"The easiest thing in the world would have been destroying us, Tish," says Harry gravely. "Right there when the fire happened. But they didn't do that."

"Because they can't," I say hotly. "The government can't just...."

I don't know when I've started believing in government so much- it doesn't sound like me in the slightest and okay they did save us, but they also abandoned me.

"They can. And I mean technically, we're not even people."

"Stop that," I say sharply.

"We're government property. That's a fact," he says. I wrap my fingers around his again because he's My Harry and not Their's and thats a fact too. Though they didn't destroy him I feel a curl of anger knowing that it was a possibility. "For Queen and country and blah blah blah,"says Harry, falling backwards so he's lying next to me.

"I don't want there to be wars and stuff Tish. I really really don't," he tells the ceiling. "Not because of me. And if them allowing me and the boys to be alive is a massive risk then I have to do whatever I can to help them."

This makes me turn into him, squeeze on tight and bury my head into his chest. "Don't you even bloody start with me on that," I whisper savagely. "If you try to kill yourself to save the world again then I'll...I'll..."

"You'll not kill me all over again?" Harry asks wryly. But I feel him kiss the top of my head. "You don't have to worry about that. I promise. It's not just me anymore either, there's Louis and Liam and Zayn and Niall to worry about too."

And Niall too. That still feels good to hear even if I am chewing on my lip and driving myself to distraction with worry for them all.

"They're all nuclear weapons too....I mean, mine is bigger but some things never change."

"God, you're such a twat," I groan, shifting so I can prop myself up onto my elbow and look at him. "Well then if MI5 haven't killed you what the hell do they want with you?"

"For the band not to break up."

That knocks me off guard. I'd been expecting horror story stuff, like they meant to experiment on him- this clone with all this potential to control other versions of himself, whose DNA got all fiddled about with by a man who was desperate to save his son. If not that then I was expecting some cell in the bottom of the Ministry of Defence where they could lock him away.

The idea that MI5 would still want One Direction around did not really figure. Maybe the higher ups are just really big fans of the latest album.

"Why the fuck would they want that?"

"I dunno. I've got theories though," Harry says darkly. I get a few of my own and the word money seems to play into it mostly.  

"No. They can't. After everything?" I whisper. And to my surprise he shoots me another half smile, bringing my fingers up to his lips to kiss them.

"It'd be different this time, though. It'd be how it was supposed to. Right from the start. No torture or brainwashing. Just...all those things we got promised...or they got promised. He really did love it, Tish." I look up into his eyes and I actually don't doubt that at all. I think of that awful day, Trick's body sinking deep under the water of the canal when he'd held my wrist and sang to me. Of course he loved it. More than anything probably.

"So you'd have to-"

"I don't have to do it. It'd be a choice. If I didn't do it then they'd use someone else. The Other Harry, the Belgian one."

"And what would happen to you?"

"I wouldn't be Harry Styles anymore. He would and I'd have to agree to piss off somewhere and probably avoid any national singing competitions, that sort of thing," he smiles at me again, though I'm struggling a little to see the funny side at the moment.

"It's a bit Shakespeare really."

"It's a bit what?"

"To be or not to be....Harry Styles that is. That's what I have to think about. That's the choice"

It seems like an impossible one. And I try to think about what I'd choose but it just hurts my head. Could I start over and not be myself or see my family ever again? Could I smile and pretend that nothing had happened, could I essentially go from belonging to one set of people to another and never quite feel free? But it's not my choice to make. I can't decide anything for him.

I do have a fight though. Because I want him either way- which means I have to get on with it, fight for him, earn him .

"So I-" he begins with a heavy breath. But I cut him off and sit up

"Shh for a minute. You're getting a speech," I say firmly.

"Oh?"  

"You did one for me back there in that machine so it's my turn," I take a breath as Harry pulls himself, lacing his hands over his stomach and watching me intently. " I want you to know that I'm here. Whatever you decide. Just, you know, be sure it's what you want. What you really really want-"

"-Spice Girls quote. Nice."

"Shut up. I'm trying," I huff out in exasperation. "My brain was dead twice; it needs to warm up a bit sometimes."

"I'm going to kiss you now," he informs me, leaning forwards but I put my hand on his chest to stop him.

"I trust you, Harry," I continue. "You have never ever let me down. Not once. But I'm also a bit worried-"

"-Tish, you don't have to-"

"No, I am. I'm worried that you might think you have to do something you don't really want. For me or your friends or whatever other fucking martyr complex 'uh, Tish, I need you to shoot me in the head' reason you've cooked up.

So what you say, whatever you say, I'll stand by it. Because it's your choice and you believe in it. Not for anyone else. just you. With, like, all your heart and guts..and...stuff.

And I don't know....I'll manage. We'll fight for it, won't we? Me on unemployment benefits, you on the telly. You at fancy showbiz parties surrounded by beautiful people, me eating cheesey chips in the park surrounded by tramps and pigeons. We'll make it work."

I worry that sounds a bit presumptuous, I don't think it is but it doesn't stop me tacking on a hurried, "If that's what you want. I mean, I know I want for us to-"

Harry shuts his eyes and laughs softly. When he opens them he's still grinning, calm as you like against the storm I'm kicking up. "I said no, Tish."

I blink. It takes me a little while to register that he's taken both my hands in his.

"I said no. With all my heart and guts and stuff. That's why I'm in this shit hole. I've agreed to keep my head down, go where they want me and put up with Norris til the Other Harry is ready. But after that..."

After that it's over. I breathe out, my mouth falling open. Does that mean beans on toast and the sofa? What does it mean? Maybe I should stop trying to predict it and just surrender to the next curve ball that's thrown my way. They never do disappoint.

"So you...just...said no," I repeat, third time lucky to try and really nail it down.

"Yep," he slides off the bed and goes over to the gym bag in the corner. "And then they gave me this to kindly piss off and never ever come back," he opens it up and gives it a bit of a shake. I shove my hand into my hair and let out a sharp exhale when I see what's inside of it.

"Christ, is that a big fucking bag of money?"

"It is a big fucking bag of money, Letitia. Well spotted."

I just frown and sit back, is this the right choice? He comes back and kisses me though, so I try to take my cues from him. To trust in him like I promised I would.

"What about the others?" I ask softly.

"Well they didn't ask Niall and Zayn for obvious reasons...and me Liam and Lou aren't going to do it without them. No. They can have their new One Direction, ones that think they're real and the last two years have all been great...us bashed up, beaten down and burned originals are a package deal."

"But...so....what about going home? What about your mum?"

Harry looks pained, when he speaks his voice is a little lower and shakier than usual.

"I got to speak to her on the phone. They said I could...all this stuff on the news; it's freaking everyone out. And since there are no more Harry clones in the country right now, I got to talk to her."

"What did you say?"

He just sniffs sharply, turns his head towards the window with the newspaper on it.  "Oh, bullshit," he murmurs gently.  

"How was it?"

Harry shakes his head and ducks down a little. I don't push it, just hold out my arms so I can be his anchor if he needs me to be. He sits next to me, allows me to pull his head close to my chest as I stroke his hair and he tiptoes his fingers up and down my hips. We stay that way for a while until he finally mutters against me,

"I love her. She's my mum and she always will be. In my heart, you know? I love all of them so much.  But knowing what I know, seeing what I've seen, how can I ever be her Harry again?" he swallows thickly. "I can't be how she needs me to be, not like the new Harry will."

"Harry-" I pull away sharply. This was what I was afraid of. Him making the choice for his mum and the others in the band, but as if he's read my mind, he looks me dead in the eye with an expression of absolute resolution.

"And I don't want it either. I don't. It would be too much like walking around in a dead man's clothes. I won't feel like an impostor my whole life. I need to be me."

And right now, when I look at him, I find he doesn't look like a poster or a pencil sharpener or anything much but himself at all.

He looks like running, like crying and being held close. Like bleeding and choosing and falling in love. Like somebody kind and funny and so so brave. He looks like a past full of fear but also like something new and only just born, right here and now in front of me.

"And who's that going to be?" I smile and ask him.

It could be anything; a fresh coat of paint, a crisp page in a book waiting to be written on, a new skin ready to be populated with scars.

"Honestly? I haven't a bloody clue," he tells me. "But what I want- what I really really want, Tish, is to figure it out with you."