the song for this chapter is, "To Build A Home," by The Cinematic Orchestra and Patrick Watson :)

***********

'Cause, I built a home
For you
For me




Until it disappeared
From me
From you

And now, it's time to leave and turn to dust

***********

Tate

   Harry was pretty quiet on our drive this morning, but reasonably so. 

   Today was the day that we would be going to his childhood home. To the place that he hadn't been since his mother was murdered there six years ago.

  Today, it was my turn to be the strong one. I had to be, for Harry's sake.

   The closer we got to our destination, the more rigid Harry's body became. I took note of the way that his knuckles turned more white with each mile that was knocked off of our trip. His jaw was clenched so tightly, that I don't think he could have opened his mouth even if he wanted to. 

   I didn't say much either. I don't think that there was anything I could say that could improve the situation we were in. So, I did my best to comfort him as we shared our silence together. 

  I glanced down at the navigation to check on how far we were. We only had about ten minutes left, and I swear I could see beads of sweat forming on Harry's skin.

   He startled me a bit when he finally broke the silence. 

  "What if it's not even there anymore? What if someone else bought the house? What if they just bulldozed over it and put up a new building?" He asked quietly.

      "We will find out when we get there, and we will work from there. Maybe, if all else fails, we can just bust the lock to the journals," I suggested, but Harry shook his head at me.

   "I think that if it were that simple, someone would have done that a long time ago. There's a possibility that it could be rigged with something so that if the lock is tampered with, the contents could quite literally burst into flames," he responded, and I looked up to see a smile ticking at the corners of his mouth.

    "You watch too much TV," I teased, and he finally took one of his hands off of the steering wheel and reached over to grasp my own. His hand was cold and clammy, but I didn't hesitate to intertwine my fingers with his. 

        "I don't know how this is gonna end," he whispered, and I squeezed his hand.

   "Me either, but let's try not to worry about that until we get the journals open," I replied, doing my best to encourage him. 

     Harry opened his mouth to say something but instead sucked in a sharp breath, and the car began to slow down. I snapped my eyes over to follow his gaze, stopping when I saw the small house alongside the worn-down path we had been driving on. 

     Harry pulled up the driveway to the house, and I turned my head to look back up at him, and I saw the fear in his eyes. It broke my heart in ways I can't even begin to explain.

   He put the car in park and paused for a moment, exhaling a shaky breath, before finally unbuckling his seat belt and opening the car door. He stepped out and shut it behind him, before walking around to my side of the car to do the same. 

    I scooped up the journals in my lap and reached into the cupholder to grab my dad's half of the key.  

   I stepped out of the car and Harry shut it behind me. His head was facing the ground, and I reached a finger up to tilt his chin up to look at me. 

     "I'm here. I'm here for you, and I'm here with you. You are not doing this alone," I encouraged.

  His glassed over eyes stared back into my own, and then he reached his hands up to cup my face, pulling me in closer, before closing the distance between us, and connecting our lips.

   He pressed a long kiss to my lips before finally pulling away, my face still in his hands.

   "Thank you, Tate," he whispered. 

   I just nodded and pulled his hands down, lacing my fingers through one of them and squeezing it softly.

   He let out one final sigh, before beginning to walk up to the front door, my hand tightly gripped in his as we walked. 

   We approached the door, and Harry let go of my hand to reach around in his pocket, his hand shaking a bit as he did so, and eventually, he pulled out his lock pick.

   He struggled a bit to keep his hands steady as he slipped the pick into the doorknob, but eventually, he managed to twist it around for a bit, until I heard the now-familiar sound of the lock clicking open.

     He pushed the door open and just stood there for a minute, taking it all in, before finally breathing out his words.

     "It's exactly the same."

***********

Harry

     I had to force my body to move as I stepped over the threshold and into my childhood home, Tate following closely behind me. 

    There was a thick layer of dust covering everything in the house. I couldn't believe that, after all this time, not a single thing had changed about this place. That no one else had moved in, or torn it down. It just further caused me to believe that perhaps somehow, this was my fate all along. 

     I instinctively went over to the light switch on the inside of the door, flicking it up, but nothing happened. It didn't surprise me that our power had been switched off, and luckily, there was enough light streaming in through the windows for us to be able to see. 

   I noticed some movement out of the corner of my eye and turned my head to see Tate, her eyes flicking over the wall in our entryway, which was covered with pictures. There were photographs of different sceneries and beautiful places, photographs that my mother had taken. Photography was one of her many passions. I had sort of subconsciously been collecting different photography books over the years, my brain's way of clinging on to my mother, I suppose. 

      "These are beautiful," Tate remarked, grinning up at the photographs on the wall. 

 I nodded and took a few steps over to stand next to her.

    "My mother took them. She liked to do photography in her free time," I replied, and Tate turned her head to look up at me with wide eyes.

       "I-Is that why you have all of those photography books at your place?" She asked quietly. 

  I smiled weakly and mumbled my reply. "Yeah, I guess it is."

     I had noticed Tate sifting through some of the books that I had in my room on the window seat the morning after she tried to escape. The same books that had given her away when she knocked them onto the floor. 

    Those books had taken me the longest to find. I bought them because my mother had the same ones. They were her favorites, and she used to always make me sit beside her so that she could show me all of the beautiful things in them. 

   I could point out the exact spot on the bookshelf in my living room that they were, I could point everything out in this house.

    I guess since those were my mother's favorite photography books, that's why I kept those in my room so close to me. I smiled as a new thought popped into my brain.

   Maybe Tate knocking over those books was my mother's way of making sure we stayed together. A subtle sign that she was rooting for us, even when we couldn't stand each other. 

    Tate suddenly reached down onto the chest of drawers below all of the picture frames. The same chest that I had gotten my dad's journal out of, and the same chest that I had taken the picture of me and my mother from six years ago. 

   She picked up a picture of me as a child.  With one eye scrunched up into a wink, and my tiny hands holding out a big thumbs up. My smile was so wide, it looked almost painful.

   "You were adorable oh my gosh," she gushed.

 "Were?" I asked, pretending to be hurt.

    She rolled her eyes and stood on her tiptoes to press a kiss to my cheek.

   "You are adorable," she corrected herself.

    I chuckled at her and turned my head to peer behind her into the living room. 

 "You ready?" I asked, glancing down at her.

    "Only if you are," she replied, gripping my hand.

   I nodded and walked with her into the room. So many memories had been held here. Memories of me standing on the same coffee table as a child, and putting on a concert for my mother and all of her friends. Memories of Christmas morning, where my mother and I snuggled into our worn-down couch and had Christmas movie marathons the whole day. 

   I forced myself not to think about those times any longer, and instead, I walked up to the mantle, towards the one thing that we had come here for. 

   The little sculpture of the angel.

 I let go of Tate's hands to pick it up, holding it at arm's length as I once again marveled at how something that I had walked by and looked at so many times, held something so significant inside. 

    I tilted it up and saw a little notch on the bottom, and I flicked it open with my thumb.

   The bottom of the statue opened and out tumbled my father's half of the key. 

  Tate and I watched as it clattered to the floor, the sound of the metal hitting the ground echoing throughout the walls, seeming much louder than it normally would have, as today was the first day my old home had heard a sound in years.

   Tate crouched down to pick it up off of the floor, holding it delicately in between her fingertips. 

 "We got it," she breathed out, smiling up at me. 

   I couldn't help but grin back at her. It was a pretty rewarding feeling. Even if we weren't done yet, even if we had to run, we had finally gotten the other half of the key, after all this time. 

   She paused a bit, her smile faltering as she looked up at me. "Are you ready to go, or do you want to hang around here for a bit? Maybe look around, grab some things?" She asked softly.

   I pressed my lips together in a straight line and thought about it. Maybe one day I would return to this house, to grab some of my old things, some of my mother's old things. But for some reason, I didn't really want to today. This was my first time being in this house in six years, and I was already barely managing to keep it together.

    However, there was one thing that I knew I had to do.

   "We can leave, but first, there's something I need to do. Will you come with me?" I asked quietly.

    Tate just nodded her head in reply. 

     I turned around and placed the little sculpture back onto the mantle, right where it had always been, before reaching down to grab Tate's hand. 

   I pulled her along with me back into the entryway of the house, turning back to look at the inside of it one more time, letting out a puff of air that I hadn't realized I had been holding in, before opening up the front door and walking out of it, feeling like I was fourteen all over again. 

    I walked around to the back of the house, and was pleasantly surprised that I was looking for was still there after all this time. 

    There were still flowers from my mom's garden blooming behind my house. I would bring my mother a cluster of them all of the time when I was younger, and the last time I did so was when I placed them on her grave six years ago. 

      I let go of Tate's hand and bent down, about to reach for the familiar knife in my back pocket, but deciding against it. I didn't want the blade of my mother's killer to taint the beauty of these flowers. 

     I gripped my hand around the most beautiful bunch I could find and ripped them up from the ground. I stood back up and turned to Tate.

     "This will only take a minute," I whispered.

 She shook her head at me. "Take all the time you need."

    I smiled weakly at her and she followed me as I continued to walk farther behind my house. We walked about another twenty feet before I stopped in front of the patch of ground I had been searching for. 

  My mother's grave.

   Along with the flowers I had placed on top of it the night of her death, I had also surrounded her gravesite with small stones so that if I ever came back, I would know where to find it. However, I don't think I could forget its location even if I tried. 

    I sighed and got on my knees at the edge of it, my body slumping down as I did so. I turned my head as I saw Tate doing the same, not seeming to care about the dirt she was getting on her clothes. 

   I gave her a grateful smile, wanting to show her how much I appreciated her. As bad as it sounds, if she wasn't here with me, if we didn't have to come back here, I don't know if I would have had the courage to return here by myself. 

    With Tate, I was growing more and more comfortable with being vulnerable. When I was with her, I didn't feel the need to maintain the unbreakable facade that I had built up for myself over the years. She brought out the empathy within me, she showed me that bravery and expressing your emotions go hand in hand. 

     She had proved to me that even though I had been left unattended, uncared for, and alone for the last six years, I still had the ability to bloom and grow, just like the flowers in my mother's garden. 

    My hands trembled and the petals of the flowers within them trembled as I kneeled there. Tate reached out a hand and placed it upon my own, steadying them with her touch.

    I lifted my eyes to look at my mother's grave, and let out a shaky breath as I began to speak.

    "I'm sorry I haven't found them yet, mum. But I promise you, that I will."

  I couldn't stop the tears that were forming in my eyes, and soon enough, I felt a few of them beginning to slide down my face.  I brought the flowers to my lips and placed a soft kiss against one of them, a couple of my tears staining the petals, before lowering them back down and placing them on top of her grave.

    "I love you, mum," I whispered, and I swear I could hear her muttering, "I love you right back."

    I pushed myself off of the ground and reached an arm out, which Tate quickly took hold of, and I pulled her up. 

    I reached a hand up to wipe away some of the tears that remained on my face and gazed down at Tate.

   "Okay, I'm ready now."

  She gave me a small smile and held my hand as we walked back to the car, the journals clutched in her free hand, and once we got there, I opened her door for her just as I always did. She pushed up on her toes and pecked my cheek, before climbing into the car.

    I walked around to the other side and got in, starting the car, and then looking at Tate.

  She pulled both halves of the key out from her pocket, looking at me for confirmation to continue, and I nodded at her in approval.

   She let out a deep breath, before bringing the two halves together, lining them up and then pushing them together until we heard a faint click. She then looked down to the journals sitting on her lap, and then back up at me, smiling a bit.

    "Well, I guess it's time to finally open these things," she chuckled faintly.

  I let out a sigh and smiled at her.

   "Yeah, I guess it is."

AN: AH I HOPE YOU GUYS LIKED THIS CHAPTER! IT WAS KIND OF SAD BUT JUST A HEADS UP, THE NEXT FEW CHAPTERS ARE SUPER IMPORTANT TO THE STORY!! I AM SO EXCITED TO WRITE THEM, AND EVEN MORE EXCITED FOR YOU ALL TO READ THEM! PLEASE DON'T FORGET TO VOTE AND COMMENT! ILY ALL SM! xx