Mute Musician (Ziall Horlik) AU

Chapter 18

Zayn's POV

The sounds of the beautiful notes playing from my piano was the only thing that filled my empty dorm room. Niall was still at his class so I took the time to make as much noise as I could because I was feeling a bit of bottled up emotions from the words my professor spoke to me. She was telling me that I wasn't a serious pianist because I missed her class a few times then show up pretending like I memorized all my material. I did have it memorized because I have the biggest audition of my life coming up next month, considering today is the first day of December. I just continued to play, not even following the music that was in front of me as a reference guide incase I was rusty on the piece.

My mind was swirling with so many different things. My grandmother's sick figure came into mind. The words she spoke to me saying that I looked like my father. That was the one thing that had me feeling so preoccupied. I had dreams of them the last night Niall and I stayed at my old house. I wasn't sure if it was really them or if it was people my mind created because I desperately wanted to see who they were. The man resembled me greatly, his smile especially, but the woman had my eyes. I could say Doniya looked more like her. They were waving goodbye to me happily as I stood on someone's front porch. That all faded away without saying how old I was or even if those people that looked so happy together were my parents. The images popped back into my mind making me slam my fingers into my piano, ended the music to turn it into abrupt silence.

My breathing was heavy as I looked down at my fingers. I got up and started pacing the room back and forth just trying to think of a way that I could ask Doniya properly who our parents were. All of me wanted to go pick up my phone and call her to ask her straight out, but the thought of speaking begin to pull on the noose that's permanently around my vocal cords. I let my hands run over my neck as it felt tighter and tighter as if my mind had hands and was trying to keep the speech in its cage  that wanted to be free. Before I even knew want was happening, I turned and slammed both of my hands into the wall as had as I could.

Everything stopped swirling so fast in my head and it all felt like it had been snowed on. It was like the windstorm that brings in the clouds that snow falls from once it all stops blowing around so violently. I fell to my knees and looked at my now bloody hands. The only thought I had was that I was probably never going to play piano again because the amount of blood looked like I broke them.

"Zayn, are you in here?" I heard Liam say as he knocked on the door and opened it. I looked up slowly as his brown eyes fell on me then moved down to my hands. He had his music binder in his hands, but that slipped to the floor just like his happy smile slipped off his face when he saw me. I bit my bottom lip to hid the tears that started to burn my eyes. Liam shut the door and made small steps to me.

"What happened, Zayn?" He asked me. I pulled my hands closer to hide them from my friend then shook my head. The first of my tears fell at the movement. Liam left me to go to the bathroom then came back with a first aid kit that he placed on my bed as well as a wet cloth. He came over to me, but the energy in my body that used to be anger was now drained to complete exhaustion. So Liam picked me up like I weighed nothing and put me on my bed.

"I'm going to clean you up and make sure you didn't break anything. I've punched a number of walls in my life and it doesn't look like anything is broken. Can you move them for me, babe?" He asked me. I listened to his instructions, even through I was still in a bit of a daze of what I was supposed to be feeling. I only caught a few of his words and I blamed everything else I heard that was strange on the tiredness seeping into my bones. My hands moved with only a little ache to them, but nothing was at a weird angle or not moving at all so I was able to look over at my piano as a small way to tell myself my passion wasn't over because my confusion took control of me in a moment of weakness.