People always said I was crazy. A freak. A psychopath. That I needed help. People always said to stay away from me, since getting too close would make you lose your mind too.

Just know I wasn't always like this. I wasn't always immune to finding the good in bad people.

There was a vast difference between someone like you, and someone like me, Harry. You always wanted to find the light in someone so rotten to the core, someone so brutal and belittling. But you weren't there to see her the way I was. You weren't the one behind her fists, or hunched over on your hands and knees in pain, soaked with sweat and tears. You were never there to hear the things that came from lips so wry and invigorating, lips that only intended to kill. Because you were always blindsided by the good, never dwindled by the bad.

I saw the way she treated you. Like you were a King and she were your Queen and your love was stronger than ours ever could be. The way she brushed your hair behind your ears to make you smile, the way she kissed your lips with such delicacy. I always wondered how she managed to work her way around you and Zayn without a single misplaced foot. One minute she was wrapped in your arms and engorged with love and lust and joy, the next she was off on her own, looking for someone she called her stepbrother, someone you called a friend. And I saw the way she treated him. Like he were a
King and she were his Queen and their love was stronger than ours could ever be.

I deserved a second chance.

Remember what it was like with me? Remember us together, back at the garden with daisies in our hair and grass taller than skyscrapers? Remember the way your hand fit in mine so perfectly? Do you remember my eyes? How they were always so pure and so genuine? Did being with her ever feel so real?

I thought of you when she had me like this, clutching at the reopened wounds across my stomach, completely at her will. This is what kept me awake when blood spurted from the side of my head, when my eyes began to lose their vision to stars and a midnight sky. And as her knee rammed into my side a third time, I wondered if it was worth seeing her and Zayn smothered against that wall, caressing with longevity and content. I wondered if leaving class was ever worth the familiarity of being butchered and beaten to the ground.

"What did you see? What did you see?! Why won't you tell me what you saw?!" I didn't understand any of it. I didn't understand the way her eyes flashed, as if she saw me as a hunched, bruised threat, or the way her teeth chattered, as if she actually feared losing you. And suddenly, she wasn't so beautiful anymore.

And because I couldn't bring these exact words from the back of my swollen throat, I disregarded saying anything at all. I accepted punch after punch. Kick after kick. Her spit across my cheek, dribbling down the curve of my chin. Everything until I was trembling and struggling to breathe, until I finally complied to just rest there in a puddle of my own blood, succumbing to the pain. Nothing was ever good enough for her. The torment never stopped. Not in the halls, not durning class. Not after school, nor before.

She dragged me along like a rag doll, told me that if I ever ran my mouth, she'd make everything worse. And it wasn't selfishness or greed or anything else that could've possibly forced me to stay away from you, Harry, it was fear.

I always sat at the back of the class. Here I didn't feel so porcelain like, as if I were antique and meant for eyes only. I wanted a normal day. I wanted to feel normal for just a second, as if beneath these sleeves the skin was untouched, or beneath these jeans there were no cuts. I wanted to feel like a human being with actual skin and flesh and bones and feelings.

The anger wasn't as prevailed as the hurt, though it was there, fiery and strong and ready to spread and obliterate everything in its wake. The beatings were purposeless, though they did brew something inside me that became deadly. I was no longer weeping for help or crying from pain, I was shuddering with inflammable danger and havoc, rattled with fury and humiliation. You deserved better than her. This world deserved better than Venus Jones, always quick to make me feel that my life were a speck compared to hers.

Imagine months of this. Months of fresh blood breaking loose from skin that had just recovered days prior, months of threats and bad mouthing and keeping her secret. And for what? Because I was afraid? Because I was weak? Because she had what belonged to me, something she'd taken for granted over and over again? This wasn't about Venus anymore, Harry. This was about me. What was I supposed to do for myself?

Day by day I was losing my mind. Day by day the way things went about my brain became less of feeling sorry for myself, and more of needing to be in control. She ruined me, Harry. She made me this way. She did this to herself, don't you see? She took everything that made me feel good, that made me feel human, and wrangled it dry of life and compassion, beauty and sentiment.

This was the girl you were in love with. The girl who ruined us. The girl who ruined you.

And I wouldn't ever let that go, even if it killed me.

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Wow I fuckin suck at updating plz don't hate me

Also attempting to get back on track with an actual updating schedule like seriously