Burn [Larry Stylinson AU]

Chapter Eight

1100 AD

"You're a bloody whore Margaret! A filthy, retchet whore!"

"What are you talking about?! I've been faithful to you all my life, David! You are the only man I've ever lied down for!"

"Stop with your lies you swine! You've bloody spread your legs for half of the men in the village like a damn prostitute!" 

Louis tucked his sister tighter in his arms, trying to the best of his ability to block his father's drunk and raging image from her innocent ears and hazel eyes. He wanted to just vanish into the room's corner that they sat in, let dawn's violet light take him and his sister far, far away from here. Far away from his father's liquor breath and heavy hand. Far away from the cowardly mother that was too afraid to protect her own children from her husband's frequent beatings and insults.

Shaking, Louis watched as his father turned the wooden table where they ate measly servings of bread and goat cheese onto the floor, the wooden panels of the decaying floor beneath their feet groaning from the impact. "Liar!" his father roared, his thin, breakable mother cowering in fright.

His little sister's small mouth frowned, biting her lip as tears sprang to her eyes. "Shhh, Charlotte. Be quiet. Don't look at father, love. Just look at me," Louis comforted in her ear. He petted her thin brown hair, loosening the knots and keeping her face buried in his chest. 

At 12 years old, Louis was nearly a man. Most children his age were still dependent on their parents, but Louis was much more mature. He had to grow up fast in his broken home, because for him, his childhood was just black and white images of his father's fists on his mother's pretty face, his mother's seemingly empty eyes, and cold nights wondering when his next meal would come. 

His mother hadn't raised Charlotte, his father barely recognized her existence. Louis didn't know what it was like to be loved and adored, and since coming to this earth, had been alone. When Charlotte's care had been taken into his arms, he made sure to give her some of his rations to her, making it his mission to keep the little baby fat on her tiny frame, even if it meant his would whither to just skin and bones. He told her bedtime stories on the straw mattress they shared, hoping to drown out his mother's cries and his father's poisonous words from the other side of the thin, paneled walls. 

He told her stories of angels. He told her about the angels that watch over them, keeping them safe from father, hunger, and cold that reaked havoc on their youth. He'd weave the story with the details of their large, white wings and soft, melodic voices. He'd tell her about the golden gates of heaven, and about the endless bounty of food and the vast meadows that the angels could run and play in.

He'd loll her to sleep about one particular angel that visited his dreams nearly every night, the angel with curls the color of pine wood and eyes as green as the grass during the rainy season. He told her about the angel, how he had promised Louis everything in the world. He told her a secret Harry had told him, about the rain and that it was actually the angels' tears. The rain was the angels crying, Harry had told him, and its thunder was their agony. He whispered to her as her eyes closed about how the angel comforted Louis on nights when father left bruises on his skin and tears on the skimpy kit that hung on his rounded shoulders. 

When she had fallen asleep, and father's snores could be heard over his mother's hushed sobs, Louis would fall asleep as well, happy to be welcomed in the angel's, Harry's, prescence. In his dreams, his empty stomach didn't bother him, his scars and bruises didn't mark his skin, and his chest didn't ache. Louis was always eager to dream, because it was his only escape to Harry, and paradise.