Hello! If you're still reading, please comment because it honestly makes it extremely boring for me when you don't and it also makes the updates slower because I don't see a point in updating if no one cares, soooo please show some kind of sign that you exist by commenting on parts that you like, thank you!

I hope that you enjoy the story.

*

Reminder of previous chapters and relationships:
- Harry got sent to hospital after falling while training
- Louis has realised that abuse is different from love but he's still a little confused about it
- Louis' Mother was creeping up the stairs with two knives in her hands and watching Louis beneath the bedroom door, to which Louis made the decision to 'get rid of her eyes'
- Louis and Shawn had an argument and Louis said, "You're just like Mother"

*

"Mother," Louis said thoughtfully, as he sat at the kitchen table, twirling a spoon around an empty bowl. Mother ignored him, standing with her back to her son as she put sugar lump after sugar lump into her over-flowing teacup. Louis noticed the tea dribble down the side of the counter, and he stood, rushing over to Mother so that he could hold her hands and make her stop. When he did, she smiled at him.

And those blue eyes-they were rid of love, of passion, of everything in which a mother should have. The only shards of feeling that remained within the blue were poignant and splintering thoughts of insanity, depression, fear, and obsession. Her eyes were that piercing blue of an ocean, just as Louis' were, but the depth of them was nothing beautiful, any longer.

And her hands-they were so bony, not like the ones that had held Louis' body or stroked his head when he was a baby. They were indeed still chapped and well-worked, just as they had been back then, but booze and drugs and crawling across the floor was the cause of their poor state now.

Then there was her body when she hugged him. She was a skeleton, and her son-deprived of a good meal-was rapidly joining her. Her lips, lined in bright pink lipstick, touched his forehead where a bruise faded. Louis wondered if she realised what she was doing. He wondered if she knew where she was, who she was, and who he was?

He wondered if the beautiful lady that had raised him would ever return, and he looked up at Mother, and realised that that beautiful lady with the bright blue eyes was dead. She'd died long ago.

"What day is it?" Mother asked, letting go of Louis to lean against the counter.

"It's Tuesday, Mother." Louis replied.

"Do you not have school?"

"Yes, Mother. I will leave in an hour, Mother."

He paused. Her eyes were on him, waiting. She may have been lost in some dark and twisted corner of her mind, but she could tell that her son was troubled. Perhaps that it was the way that he stood, or his expression, or the fact that he kept glancing to the cutlery drawer. He was acting strangely, stranger than usual.

"Louis, my dear, what is the matter?" Mother inquired, watching her son linger by the doorway. He swayed on his feet, to and fro, gripping onto the chair and sparing endless glances to the locked cutlery drawer as if he could see right through it. Mother wondered what he wanted from within.

Finally, after a moment of reflexion, Louis looked at her and smiled. She did not notice the lack of joy in his eyes, nor did she see the corners of his mouth tremble from fighting the will to cry, "I wrote a poem for you. Will you listen?" he said.

She nodded. "Have you, really? You always loved writing, didn't you? Let me listen. I'm sure that there is no poet better than you, my dear." She sat on the chair and waited for him to start. He fidgeted, glanced at the locked drawer, and gulped. Staring one last time at the terrible and sharp corruption in her eyes, Louis moved a hand towards them, and closed the lids.

"There was once a little bluebird, in a bluebird's nest."

He walked to the drawer, and slipped the key in the lock, coughing when it clicked.

"There was once an angry cuckoo, who thought that she was best."

He opened the drawer, watching Mother. She didn't flinch, nor did she open her eyes.

"All the bugs and bees told mother blue to hide."

Louis looked down at the drawer. Spoons, forks, and knives stared back.

He ignored them.

He felt to the back the drawer, and found a needle and thread. Retrieving it, poking the thread through the hole of the needle, he continued to speak.

"They did not want the baby birds to be devoured alive."

He walked up to Mother, and said, "Your eyelashes are pretty, can I do your makeup?" She nodded at him. "I'll put bracelets on you, too. Don't peak, you can see them afterwards."

Louis bent down to her wrists, and using two of her own belts that had previously been hidden around his waist, he tied them to the chair. "Don't move, I'm going to do your eyelashes. Be very very still."

He gave Mother a kiss on her cheek. If she were to try and move her wrists now, his whole plan would fail. So he continued his poem, voice cracking, fear in his heart, yet he did what he felt obliged to do.

Picking up the needle, he said, "One day, the cuckoo laid an egg, in that nest of blue. It was larger than the rest, and it was heavier, too."

Louis moved to her left eye.
His love for her made his hand tremble.

He could barely speak, but he continued. He pushed the needle through mother' skin, just above her top lash line, and she was so numb from drugs that she did not feel a thing. "Mother blue raised the stranger egg, and did not notice flaws. She even raised it as her own, when the cuckoo was born."

Louis watched his Mother. To speak right now was, by far, the hardest thing that he'd ever done. He watched the thick thread go through her eyelid, top lash line to bottom, outer corner to inner, and it hurt that she trusted him. She never tried to resist, never tried to move her hands that were strapped to the chair, and never doubted her son's love to her. She trusted him, and he did not.

Perhaps that he was the worst of them both, after all.

His voice trembled properly now, he couldn't hide it. He couldn't stop the tears streaming down his face and the pain in his heart from making him bend over and clutch it. He was doing something terrible, and to a person that he would risk his life for. But, despite of it all, he recited the poem, and he did not stop from what he was doing.

He snapped the thread while placing a forceful kiss on her cheek, and moved to her other eye.

'I don't know what you mean to me,' He thought to himself, 'I hate you, but I love you so much. If I didn't, then why would I be crying like this, right now?'

He laughed a little, wiping his cheek on his shoulder. "You look beautiful, Mother." He commented, and then he began to cry truthfully. Large tears fell down his face, dripping onto her dress, onto his shirt, and onto the floor. He couldn't betray Mother like this, but he didn't want to stop. He just couldn't bare to see those blue eyes in so much pain again.

"The little-The little cuckoo did not like his friends and wanted each gone. He pushed them all from the nest-from the nest-until there was... but one."

It was then, when his voice cracked, that Mother opened her eyes.

Yet the left one was bleeding, sewn shut with thick black thread. the pale blue of her eye could be seen moving frantically beneath the lid.

Louis scrambled away, and Mother paused. She tried to raise her hands to touch her iris, wondering why it would not open, why her son was looking like the mess that he was, and she found her hands to be strapped to the chair.

It was then that she screamed.

And Hell, she really screamed.

She screamed so loudly, screeching and snarling and lashing out at the little boy in plasters that the pans handing on the wall trembled and the floorboards snapped when her feet slammed against them. Louis stood there with his back pressed to the wall, trembling like a beaten puppy, holding the evidence to his crime in his hand.

"I'm sorry, please-" He cried, although Mother never listened. Her right eye was still open, the left was trying to, and there was spit and drool dripping down her chin. She struggled in the chair, and Louis was certain that if she were to be let out, she'd truly kill him this time. There was no pity in her stare, no forgiveness, no love, nor passion, or even obsession. There was just anger, insanity, and and it was clear that she couldn't see her son as anything but an object to smash apart. She would kill him, Mother would truly kill him.

She moaned and screamed and wailed in fury. Louis could no longer speak. He just sank down the wall, dropping the needle and thread, and stared into the void in shock of the cruel act that he'd just performed.

'It's been done,' he thought, 'I tried and I failed, but I did it. I almost got rid of those horrible eyes.'

*

The car door slammed shut louder than usual, and the little kid in Mickey Mouse plasters gave not a smile but a look of terror to Zayn when he greeted him.
"Hi." He said, giving that strange look, and then turned away to the window.

He jumped when Zayn put a hand on his shoulder. "Louis? Kid, are you alright?"

Louis looked back, and he was clearly not alright.

His eyes were so wide, pupils so small that it truly terrified Zayn. He had a smile, now, that seemed to be aggressively hacked into his face-twisted and forced to an unimaginable extent. Louis did not look like a child right then, but a puppet, or an animatronic, or some other thing with a face this distort.

"What has she done, Louis?" Zayn asked, grabbing the boy's face and searching the answer in those blue eyes. If he wanted the truth, he should've looked into hers.

"She hasn't done anything." Louis smiled, "We read poems together."

Zayn shook his head in disbelief. He wanted answers, but he didn't know the questions to go along with them. "You can't go to school. Something is wrong with you, Louis, don't lie to me. I can't take you to school like this."

He pulled away from the drive, tires screeching over the road, and said, "We're going to the hospital."

*

Zayn watched Louis through the glass of the hospital room. Nurses pushed past him and the corridor was alive with patients and visitors. Louis sat in a private room, not on the bed that was there, but on a chair beside it. He held an open book in his hands about astronomy and his lips were moving. An empty glass of water lay on the bedside table with the remains of tablets in that had calmed him down considerably. He was his normal self, now. Possibly a little dazed, but beyond that, he seemed alright again.

"Do you know what happened?" The elderly nurse inquired as she stepped up to Zayn. She offered him a coffee and he took it, eyes on Louis.

"I couldn't tell you that. You'd have to ask him, but he won't tell what he doesn't want to share, trust me on that." He thought for a while, remembering all of the times that he'd suggested taking custody of Louis and sending that Mother of his to get help. He recalled Louis fear and panic attacks all too well, and they had only been caused by the suggestion to separate him from his Mother. Zayn knew it was probably wrong to stay silent, but he couldn't put Louis through that panic. "It must have just been a bad dream. He gets them a lot and they're so vivid that he think they're real sometimes." Zayn laughed stiffly and the nurse nodded.

"Alright." She said, not believing the lie but accepting the secrecy of the situation. "Still, he appears to be fine, now. Just make sure that you send him to a doctor. A child this young shouldn't have bad dreams like that; they become real far too quickly. I'll tell you, Mr. Malik, that boy grabbed onto me and muttered something about monsters earlier, I've never seen anything like it, he was terrified, poor sod; God knows what he was on about though." She began to walk off, "Make sure that you call the doctor!" she shouted, waggling her finger, and then she was gone.

Zayn glanced back to Louis one last time, before turning away to sit on one of the waiting chairs.

*

"And this one looks like a bear, and this one looks like a lynx, and this looks like a crab-"

"It looks nothing like a crab." Harry said from the bed. "You can't just take five random stars and call it a crab. It looks nothing like it."

His voice was raspier than usual, tired perhaps, and certainly weaker. His eyes didn't fully open, either, and he didn't move anything but his head. When he'd look at Louis, however, he'd smile every time. Louis, upon looking at the Cancer constellation for a while, finally turned to Harry and then rested his head on the man's torso. He held the book on Harry's lap so that he could continue to read it. "Am I hurting you?" He asked, tipping the book on its side so that he could see it better.

"Not much." Harry replied, "It's not my body so much as my arm. Oh, they took my leg, did you see?"

Louis looked down the bed where the blankets only showed the shape of one foot. "Where?"

"No idea," Harry replied. "I have to pee in a weird cup thing as well. I haven't been out of here since I arrived. I doubt I'll be free to go any time soon."

Louis sat up again. "Which one? Arm, I mean." He asked, and Harry glanced down to his right side where Louis had been lying.

"You didn't touch it, don't make such a worried face. It's alright, Louis."

"Is it?" Louis asked, observing the way that Harry's life seemed to have faded from his face. "Is it really alright? Will you leave this hospital all in one piece? Will you dance again? When you're smiling under the shower of roses at the end of this Christmas' Ballet, and holding my hand when we bow, then you can tell me that it's alright." He looked at Harry's hand. There was no movement in it at all, and it was turning a strange blue colour. "Until then, don't tell me it's alright. It's not alright, Harry."

Harry nodded for a moment, looking down at his arm. It hurt him so much that it didn't feel like a part of him anymore. It felt like an extra weight that never left and just drove him insane. He wanted it gone. He genuinely wanted every part of his arm after the shoulder to be removed. He'd beg for it to be taken away, he truly would.

"What about you?" He asked, looking back to Louis.

"Well, I'm not alright either, so that makes us even more best friends because we're the same, I guess." Louis said, "But I don't think that I ever have been alright. I want to get out of the house and live with you, or Niall, or Zayn, or anyone. But the other part of me doesn't want to leave Mother."

"Why not?" Harry asked, seeing every plaster on Louis' body and wondering how he could possibly hold onto the creator of those wounds. He found it strange that Louis' Mother had not sculpted him into another version of herself. He knew that Louis would never, in a million years, cause pain such as she had caused it. He wouldn't hurt a fly. It amazed Harry how Louis had remained sane all of these years of being barricaded up with her. Perhaps that was why he admired him so deeply.

"Why not?" Louis repeated after a while, "I just don't want her to be sad anymore.She's happy with me. If some strange people came to take her away then she'd cry and panic and they'd do horrible things to her and lock her up in prison. I don't want to leave her, I'm all she has, and if I let anyone take her away then I'll be a bad son and she won't love me anymore."

"You're doing it again, Louis. You know that she doesn't love you-her mind isn't in the right place to love anyone-but you keep convincing yourself that she does. That woman does not love you, Louis. Being shouted at isn't love, being hit isn't love, being used as an anger relief isn't love. If she hurts you, it is abuse. Abuse is not love, Louis. Even if she kisses you and holds you and tell you nice things, never believe that it is love.
Abuse, no matter how discreet, is not love."

And then came a moment that made Harry raise his eyebrows in alarm. Louis began to cry, but it was not from the realisation that his mother was abusive, because he'd already known. He cried too much for that to be the reason, so Harry asked what the matter was, and Louis' reply had been,

"Your view of me is wrong, I'm just like her."

*

Hi! Please remember the message that Harry has just told Louis!

Abuse is not love. If you are in a relationship or in contact with anyone who verbally attacks you or physically hurts you, it is abuse and you need to find a way to cut them from your lives. If you are in love with that person, please free yourself from that feeling and take a step back to realise what they do to you.
People can say 'I love you' and still be abusive. They can still show physical and emotional attraction to you but still be abusive. If you cry over them or get hurt because of them, it is abuse. Don't let their love fool you into thinking that the situation is alright, and don't give them the chance to fix it.

Asides from that message, what do you think of the story? Do you have any questions?

Also, I have not had bone cancer, nor any other kind of cancer so I do not know the accurate details despite the fact of me knowing people who have had it, so if you are familiar with cancer, I apologise for my inaccuracy and possible ignorance of the subject. Asides from that, certain factors may have been altered for the purpose of this story.

My love, Lucy. XX