"What—" Alouette's voice breaks, and she has to try again. Her voice sounds strange in her mouth, like it doesn't really belong her, like this isn't truly her speaking. "What are you talking about?"

Her father's picture stares at her from the floor, like it's waiting for her to connect the pieces, to see what she's wilfully ignored all this time.

Harry sits on the couch again. He's so close his presence feels electric by her side, like a shock. "I'd gone with my father to the warehouses." He speaks quickly, faster than he ever has, cramming as many words as possible in as little a time, as if he fears he won't manage to say it all. "I went out. I was bored. He was taking too long."

"Stop it."

"I was waiting outside."

Alouette's breath speeds up. Her heart thunders in her ears. "Stop."

"Your father came to me—"

"Stop it!"

Harry's eyes widen. She's just shouted in his face. He didn't expect her to. She didn't expect herself to. She hisses and pushes away from him, tripping and falling on the ground. Her fall scatters the papers further away on the floor.

Harry doesn't move. He's eerily still as he says, "Alouette..."

"Stop lying." Her throat is dry, her breath is short. "Just stop."

"I'm not lying." His voice sounds like venom, like he's offended she'd ever think him a liar, but that's exactly what he is—a deceiver, a con artist that relishes in other people's suffering. He'd try to convince her the moon is blue if it pleased him so. "He was there. He—"

"Stop lying!" She shoots to her feet, so fast her head spins. "Just stop fucking lying!" She steps away and nearly trips over the coffee table. Her gaze falls back to her father's name on the papers scattered on the floor and sudden sickness washes over her.

He's lying.

He's lying.

He's lying.

Her father wasn't that kind of person. He would've never come to Harry with anything. He would've never trusted a Styles, let alone strike a deal with him.

He's a liar. A new wave of nausea hits her. She's always known Harry isn't a good person, but this—this surpasses it all. She'd thought he'd at least have the decency not to lie on the dead's name, but clearly she was wrong. Nothing is beyond him—not even this. How could she ever think he's better than this? There's nothing he'll stop at. He'll just keep lying and lying and lying until his reality is nothing but fantasy. He'll go in the ground lying on the day of his death—he'll lie past it, too. He will not stop until the sun will swallow the earth and there will be nothing more for him to lie about.

She remembers the day she entered the archive. There was nothing on her father there. This is just another scheme, another way to get the best of her again. One more leash to tie her down.

He stands. It's the first sign of life he gives since he sat back down. "Al—"

"Stop fucking talking," she breathes out heavily. "Just stop talking."

"Your father—"

"Stop it!" She lets out a shout, hands flying to her ears. Tears blur her vision. She sways in her spot, and only then Harry reaches for her, but she slaps his hand away. She trips over the coffee table again in her rush to get away, and this time crashes to the ground. Her gaze snaps up, and for an instant it meets Harry's.

No.

He takes a step towards her, and she scrambles back to her feet, her own breath choking her.

Stay away.

Stay away.

Stay away.

The papers slide on top of each other as she makes for the door, threatening to make her fall to the ground again. She grips the handle like a lifeline and bursts out of Harry's office.

He's a liar. He's such a liar.

She feels so sick.

Evie jumps to her feet behind her desk, but Alouette doesn't spare her a single glance.

He's a liar. A liar. A liar. Her father would've never—he would've never—

She doesn't know where she's going—she's hardly aware she's going anywhere at all—but all of a sudden she stops and there's a door, and she doesn't need to wonder whose it is, or why her feet carried her here.

She slams her fist against it. "Jesse!" she shouts against the door, and the people walking past are giving her weird glances, but why would she care? Nothing makes sense. Harry knows too much about her father and he's using it against her. Her sister is missing and her mother is missing and Elijah is missing and no one cares but her. She's on a ball spinning around another in the middle of nothing and nothing is everything but everything is nothing and nothing but everything matters and she's tired, so tired of nothing ever making sense and being so lost and feeling like she was buried long ago and keeps choking on the wet earth in her mouth. "Jesse! Jesse please!" She lets out a cry. "Please open the door. Please please please just open the door, please please—"

The door stays shut, hard and unmoving against her hands.

"Please please please. Please just please—" She chokes back tears, but it matters little when they're already streaming down her cheeks. "Please please—" She doesn't even know what she's pleading for anymore. She just needs—something, anything—"Please."

Her thoughts turn to smoke. She collapses against the door and slides to the floor. She's breathing hard, but it feels like her lungs are full of water instead of oxygen. She doesn't know the last time she's breathed properly. There's a neon white light above her head, and reality tilts and shatters. There's a marble floor beneath her and a door at her back and a white wall in front of her, but it all feels unreal, like she's already dead and the world is waiting for her mind to catch up. She chokes back a sob.

A shadow stops in front of her. It takes her a moment to recognise the shape through the blur of her tears, but then she catches the words THE BEST JACKSON handwritten on his shirt and she lets out a snarl.

"Are you dying?" Brooks asks, with the tone of voice of someone that already knows the answer but is inquiring just to make sure.

"Leave me alone," she hisses out, wrapping her hands around her middle. She realises only now how hard she's trembling.

Brooks crouches down. "You look like you need help." His hand reaches towards her, but her foot slams into the ground less than an inch away, and he flinches back.

"Don't fucking touch me," she snarls.

He looks at her for a long moment, like he's deciding who to call.

She slams her foot on the ground again, too close, forcing him to stand back. "Leave me alone." The words rip out of her throat like a feral thing, and he takes another step back.

Maybe, if it were another person, they'd stop and sit next to her anyway. If it were another person, they'd leave instantly, not even bothering to exchange a word with her.

But it isn't another person—it's Brooks. And he doesn't make a move. "Are you—"

She kicks towards him. "Leave me the fuck alone!"

She's not close enough to have possibly hit him, but he moves back anyway. He scoffs. "This is why you don't have friends," he mutters, and then turns around and leaves.

Alouette watches him go, breathing quickly. The exchange hasn't even felt real—like there's a patina between her and the world, and she's watching it from outside. Reality in a mirror, instead of reality itself.

Her head falls back against the door with a thud. Calm down, she tells herself. Just calm down. She can't lose her mind now. She hasn't come this far just to go insane and lose her grip on reality.

Harry has played her—he's playing her again. But she can't let him keep winning. He can't keep lying, and she can't keep letting him.

But still—she can't help but think, that if it were the truth, then some things would start making sense. Not many—just some. But some goes a long way when nothing else does.

And yet—

She has to think clearly.

She needs to get up. Get off the floor.

One step at a time.

Her father named her after the lark because she was always cheerful, like the morning, light after a dark night. She's never missed the other side of the symbolism, though—the escapade. It should be meant as an adventure, a merry mischief, but she's always seen it as something more, something darker—the idea of removal, of separation, of blindness to reality itself. After all, only a fool would celebrate daybreak while knowing darkness is only some hours away, that it will come once more.

All this time, she's been a lark all right. But she can't let her name become a prophecy.

She has to think clearly.

She has to be rational about this.

She has to find the seam, the thread that, if pulled just right, will unveil reality itself.

Nothing ever happens without leaving a trace. She has to find it—that ghost of things past. She can't trust anyone else, so she has to rebuild reality on her own, piece by piece, so she'll find out what the truth is.

But where is that seam, that moment in time she tripped over something and chose to close her eyes and pretend nothing was there? When did she make a conscious choice not to see, a choice to ignore what she shouldn't have, because it raised too many questions and she didn't know how to deal with them?

A memory comes back to her—months back, miles away.

I don't trust anything Styles says.

Her head snaps up. Suddenly, she knows.

Sometimes decisions are quick things—they pull someone into action before they can realise the when and the where and all those little details that make it so hard to move around in real life. Sometimes, none of it matters.

This is one of those times.

Alouette races to her bedroom and pulls her bag out of the wardrobe and throws it on the bed. She goes around the room, putting on heavier clothes and throwing others into it. She throws her father's book out of its hiding place inside the couch and puts it at the bottom of the bag. She takes the knife she swiped from the dinner tray three days ago out from under the pillow and throws it into the bag as well. Then, she puts on her shoes and her heaviest coat, and slips the Palace card into the pocket of her trousers. She doesn't have a phone anymore—she lost it at the Revolution when it was attacked, but it's not a problem. Amina doesn't remember her number anyway.

She throws the bag over her shoulder and leaves her room. No one is outside, but she isn't foolish enough to believe the Palace is asleep because it's the middle of the night. The explosion from earlier has woken everyone up; they're just busy on Harry's floor. That means she doesn't have a long time to make her move.

She slips into the hidden staircase and goes down to the kitchen. It's empty and unguarded—likely because Harry's food comes from a different one—so she slides through the door and steals a few packets of crackers and a bottle of water, making sure it's well closed before throwing it into the bag as well.

Then, she's off again.

She takes the hidden staircase again, but she doesn't follow it all the way down this time around—she knows there's someone guarding that entrance, and she has no intention to get caught a second time.

She gets out a couple of floors below and enters the lift, swipes her card and selects the button that will take her to the roof. She slips out before the doors close and gets back in the hidden staircase. She knows Harry will get notified by her use of the card—hopefully, it'll be enough of a distraction to let her leave unseen. He'd certainly see her leave the lift if he checked the cameras, but would he really bother to, with all that's going on?

She goes all the way down to the middle floors, and then opens the door just barely, spying the corridor on the other side.

The desk is empty—the secretary standing guard was called away, likely by the explosion. She has just a moment.

She slips into the second staircase, the one she used to meet Nathan in. Her chest clenches around her heart at his memory, but she forces herself to push it to the back of her mind as she makes her way down.

When she gets out, she's on the lower floors. The corridors are crawling with guards, so she clenches her fist around her bag and slips through the people walking past, counting on the chaos to hide her. She can't use the lift without getting caught, so she's forced to wait in the doorway of a darkened room for a bunch of guards to get into the lift and select the bottom floors. She sneaks in just a moment before the doors close, and she knows this is a gamble, but she's lucky. They're not a single group, and most of them were called away from their beds in the middle of the night, so they're wearing their badges on their casual clothes. She's not wearing a badge, but no one's looking.

The lift stops and the doors open. She slows her step, letting them walk past her and following them slowly down the last staircases and into the garage. She gives a quick glance around, coming up with a plan. Steal a car or slip out of the garage as soon as it opens to let the cars out? Stealing a car from the Palace seems too complicated, so she opts for the second option and makes her way to the shadows of the garage.

A hand closes around her wrist, and she gasps and turns around. She doesn't recognise the man that stopped her, but she doesn't need to. He's wearing a uniform, and all the lines of his face harden as he takes her in. "You're not wearing a badge."

"I forgot to," Alouette replies quickly, a little too quick. His grip tightens around her wrist. Her breath falters.

He doesn't move to alert anyone. For a moment Alouette hopes she'll find a way past him, but then she realises he isn't simply because he already has. She briefly debates trying to kick him away, but a quick glance around tells her that not only there are no cars leaving, but the other guards have stopped to look at them. She mutters a curse under her breath. She'd hoped the Palace's security system was only impenetrable from the outside and not the inside as well, but now she realises it was a foolish thought. Harry would never leave things half-done.

Still, she doesn't stand down, doesn't give up her bag. And that's when she realises word must've come from the upper floors, because the guard doesn't tell her to.

Hardly a minute goes by before Harry steps into the garage, immediately followed by Jayden and Gray, both in uniform, and with Jackson by his side. Gray chuckles when he sees her and joins the group of guards next to the closest car shaking his head and pulling out the keycard.

The guard that had grabbed Alouette lets go, but she doesn't make a move, watching Harry walk towards her.

"She's escaping," he tells him when Harry stops in front of them. He must've stopped by his rooms, because he's wearing one of his perfectly ironed black suits again, and there's no trace of the rushed, rumpled man that spoke to her in the quietness of his office less than an hour ago.

Jackson crosses his arms and turns to Harry. "I'll take her back upstairs."

The sentence sparks a sudden anger in Alouette, and she looks at Harry, hard. Do it, something defiant inside her thinks. Try to stop me again. I'll make you regret it.

Harry looks back at her, and he doesn't move, doesn't speak. He's so still she's suddenly remembered of his similarity to a tin soldier, so perfect, yet so motionless, like he isn't a real person at all.

Jackson sends Harry a puzzled look. "Sir?" Harry doesn't reply, so he adds, "I'll bring her back to her room."

Alouette doesn't take her glare away from Harry, ignoring Jackson.

Do it.

Stop me.

Harry stares her down, and he seems so still, so dead, but she would be foolish to believe it. She clenches her teeth. She's a hare daring a hunter to shoot it with the mere force of her gaze.

Do. It.

At last Harry looks away, and a quick breath leaves his lips. It takes Alouette a second too long to realise the corner of his lips has turned slightly up in an ironic smile. The tension cracks, and that's when Alouette understands she's been daring Harry indeed, but to do something very different than she thought.

He takes the challenge with a defiant raise of his chin. "Let her go," he says through his teeth, and the attention of the few guards that were looking at her snaps to him.

"Sir—" Jackson starts, but Harry interrupts him with a raised hand.

"Let her go," he repeats, louder. "She'll come back anyway."

Alouette would like to tell him that's not true, that if he lets her out of that door he'll never see her again, but she knows that's not true. As long as Amina is missing, she'll be tied to him, and she can't change that, no matter how much she wishes to. So, she doesn't say a word.

"But—"

"You want to go?" Harry says, interrupting Jackson. "Then go." His voice is sharp, the thin edge of cracked ice, a dare in its own right. When she doesn't move, he snarls, "What are you still doing here?"

He takes a step, and that's what gets Alouette to move. She takes off towards Gray, her back stinging with the force of Harry's gaze. She steals the keycard from Gray's hands and turns back. Harry is breathing heavily as he watches her go, and so is she. She doesn't know if it's another of his games or a moment of ego, but she doesn't care. She gets in the car and starts the engine.

The doors of the garage open, and she backs out of the Palace, turning the car around in the cemented courtyard and speeding past the gates as soon as they open to let her through.

She watches the Palace in the rear view mirror until she makes it past the chaos of the collapsed skyscraper and dips into the streets of Northfair.

The coloured lights of the city are near blinding after the darkness of the garage, but she doesn't stop, not even when she can hardly see through the shades reflected on the fogged up windshield. Her heart is thundering in her chest, and she keeps checking the road at her back, half-expecting to see the telltale lights of the Palace's cars coming after her.

She pulls the car into park at the first open store and makes a quick job of finding a packet of hairpins. At the cash register, she hesitates only a moment before using her Palace card to pay. She knows Harry could see the payment she's just made. She hopes he does, because he knows what it means.

She gets back to the car and unscrews the radio with a hairpin before pinning her hair back with two more and sliding the rest in the pocket of her coat. She takes the chip out of the car and snaps it in half. Then, she opens the window and throws the broken chip and the radio out.

Try to catch me now.

A half-smile curves her lips as she pulls the car into the road, hearing the crack of the radio under the wheels. She speeds out of Northfair, the car windows open, freezing cold wind whipping at her hair.

For the first time in weeks, she feels like she can breathe again.

Sorry for the delay. I hope you enjoyed this chapter x
Miki