Chapter Text
He's not sure what the worst part is; there are a few things that tug at the cavity in his chest as he stares blankly across the church.
He never got to say goodbye. He lost the sweater Zayn accidentally left behind. He never took a picture of the phoenix. There's a shoebox of faded photographs he tore off the fridge, and a couple dozen suppressed memories that tell Liam he lives a life in pits of regret.
Everything's changed.
The sky is beginning to darken when the music stops, when the people laugh again, and Liam slips away from the crowd, watching what was once his whole life fade with the sunlight before his eyes.
He thinks, as he walks home alone, that he sees Zayn from the corner of his eye, trailing only two steps behind.
But that's impossible – the Zayn he knows, Zayn he knew, would never be two steps behind. Zayn always had to be first – or perhaps, Liam always made sure he was. Liam wrenches his door open, and manages to make it to his bedroom, fumbling around in the dark, before he breaks down.
For a moment, before he drifts off, he smells spray paint and feels the heat of a flame licking at his innards. He rolls over, and then he doesn’t feel anything anymore.
The phoenix turns up in a package marked delicate on Liam's doorstep ten years later. There's no note, no letter, not even a postage stamp that says it's been shipped.
Liam wants to punch a hole straight through it and toss it in the dumpster. He thinks about selling it to a museum.
Instead, he brings it into his living room, and hangs it from the nail on the wall, the empty wall that's been waiting its whole life for this spark.