Grace brought her hands together and wrung them pitifully while speaking in a apologetic tone.
"Please, Harry. I swear, I love you. I love you so much... I just... I just felt so vulnerable. I was so weak and tired of being alone! There's no excuse for what I did, b-but I love you and George! Please don't do this to me! Please, I'm begging you."
Grace knew more than anyone just how far Harry was willing to go for those he loved, but she also knew just how much he was willing to do to get back at those who wronged him. Grace never thought a day would come when she would be the one facing the full force of that glare!
Harry pointed his finger at Grace and seethed in her face.
"You weren't fucking vulnerable! You weren't! I was there for you! My parents were there for you! You just couldn't control yourself because you are a fucking —"
PIIIIIIII!!!
"HARRY!!"
A loud horn blared from around the corner and Grace yelled in fear as a bright light shone into the car, blinding them both! The last thing Harry thought about just before the large truck body-slammed their car off the side of the overpass was how much he wished he had finished his sentence so that Grace knew exactly what she was!
The silver Toyota was thrown off the side of the overpass and plummeted more than five hundred meters to the forest below.
…
"GASP!"
Harry woke up to the feeling of wind on his back and the sun shining on his face! He winced for a moment as the bright light assaulted him, but at the next moment, he realized something insane!
'I'm falling!?'
Harry's hands flailed about in shock as he realized that he was still falling down, and as he went, he was barely able to catch sight of three boys standing on top of a cliff and staring down at him in shock!
And then, Harry's back slammed into the water below!
SPLASH!
Harry felt like he was floating in the air. He could feel the water raging around him and making the sounds outside feel muffled and distant. There was a strange peace that he felt just floating in there, and in that calmness, Harry thought about simply giving up.
But then, Harry's training kicked in, and he quickly snapped his eyes open and held the air in his lungs tight! Harry rearranged his body so that his head was facing toward the light, and he started to move up. There was a painful jerk he felt in his left shoulder when he tried to move it, and Harry winced as he immediately understood that it was broken. Harry didn't arrange his body properly when he was falling into the water earlier, so he could only sacrifice one of his arms to cushion the impact. If Harry had landed straight on his back, then he might've been knocked out from the shock to his spine and drowned.
Harry felt the water surge into his nose and mouth when the shock of the cold water hit his body, and the feeling was so different from what he was used to from the army that he swallowed a few gulps of water unconsciously before he finally realized what was happening and controlled his breathing properly!
"Arry!! Arry! Arry!"
Far away, Harry could hear a voice shouting. It was muffled, like he was hearing it through a wall, and Harry only guessed that it was someone on the shore of this lake calling his name from outside. Harry angled his body toward where he could hear the voice coming from and he slowly began to move toward it. The movement was slow because of his broken shoulder, but Harry had been through worse before, so he was able to use his legs and one arm to make his way across the lake.
"Puah!"
Harry surfaced from the water a few meters away from the shore and he looked over to see who it was that had been calling him. It was a young girl who didn't look any older than sixteen. She was kneeling at the edge of the lake with tears in her eyes and a worried look on her face. There was dirt on her long gown, and her hair was rough and disheveled, almost like someone had grabbed it and shaken it roughly recently.
The girl had been looking into the river worriedly when she didn't see Harry emerge for a while, and it wasn't until he broke out from the water that her face took on a look of relief as she splashed into the water to grab him!
"Fuck!"
Harry cursed when he felt her grab his broken arm and pull on it, and she quickly recoiled when she saw the pained look on his face! She looked around, like she didn't know what to do anymore, and Harry told her to grab his other hand. The one she had grabbed was broken.
Harry waited for her to do just that, but she didn't seem to hear what Harry had said as she just continued looking at him in worry. Harry furrowed his brow in confusion and wondered what was wrong, but when Harry felt a cold shiver pass through his body from the water, he put out his other hand to her and shouted for her to help him out!
The girl finally seemed to understand what he was telling her and she grabbed Harry's good hand and started to help him out of the water.
Harry flopped down on the ground in a wet heap and coughed to try and get the water out of his lungs. It was hard for him to breathe, and he didn't know how clean the water he fell into was, so he just assumed he was going to be having a hard time in the toilet for the next few days.
Harry turned around and lay on his back on the floor while looking up into the sky, and he released a sigh as he finally began to think about what had just happened to him. Harry had been sure that he was going to die when he was hit by the truck, so how did he end up falling from a cliff?
Harry raised his one good hand up to look at it and he felt even more questions pop into his head as he started to turn the hand around slowly while clenching and unclenching it. This… was not his hand. It was too smooth, too young. It felt like the owner of this hand hadn't done a single day of hard labor in his life.
'Am I in hell?'
Harry could only have this thought at that moment. Harry didn't know what sort of situation this was, but he knew only three things. One, he was not dead somehow. Two, he was no longer in his own body. Three, there was a deaf girl leaning over him worriedly.
A shadow fell over Harry's face and Harry looked up into the pale brown eyes of the girl who had helped him out of the water. She had an even more worried look than before and she was holding the hem of her gown tightly while staring at Harry.
How did Harry know that she was deaf? It was easy to figure out when she didn't get into the water earlier and also when she didn't hear what he had told her about grabbing his other hand.
The girl was probably a friend of whoever owned this body since she looked so worried.
'Jenny.'
Harry narrowed his eyes into a glare as a thought came to his mind and he put his good hand up to his head as he felt a headache coming. The headache suddenly started to increase in intensity as thoughts and images began to filter through Harry's mind, and it wasn't long before Harry realized what was happening! He was getting memories of the former owner of this body!
No, these weren't memories. It was more like Harry was living the life of the former owner of this body. His actions and thoughts began to mix with the ones that Harry had of himself, until, at the end of it all, Harry felt like he had lived two lives. One of them where he was a failing college student who decided to enter the army because of how much he hated the monotonous nature of the real world, and the other one where he was a shy kid who was bullied and pushed around by those around him because of how weak he was.
Coincidentally, both of these lives had the same name echoing through: Harry Black.
Harry began to wonder what sort of mad prank was being played on him.
"Arry!"
The girl that had been kneeling beside Harry suddenly grabbed him by the shoulder and began to push him back and forth, and gained a worried expression on her face again once she saw Harry hold his head in pain. She was close to tears this time as she began to gesticulate with her hands quickly, and Harry blinked as words began to filter into his head explaining what she was saying.
[Are you okay? Are you okay!? Do you need me to call grandma?]
'I understand sign language?'
Harry didn't remember ever learning sign language during his time in the army, so it was surreal for him to suddenly be able to understand what the girl was saying. Harry immediately figured that it wasn't him who understood sign language. It was the previous owner of this body whose memories he had.
Harry opened his mouth and was about to answer, but he stopped as he realized what he was doing and instead brought up his good hand to try something.
Harry pointed his forefinger to his chest first and then opened his palm and used his thumb to touch his chest while spreading the other fingers out.
[I'm fine.]
If the previous owner of this body could understand sign language, then it was only reasonable to assume that he would also be able to gesture the signs. Thankfully, what Harry did was enough to alleviate the girl's worries, and Harry watched as she nodded to him while using the back of her hands to wipe her eyes. She was still sniffling pitifully, and Harry felt the sudden urge to pet her on the head.
'She must've been very close to the previous owner of this body.'
Harry tried to move again and he groaned a little as his shoulder shifted. Now that Harry was no longer distracted with trying to survive, he realized that his previous assessment of his shoulder injury was not very accurate.
The reason why Harry thought that his shoulder was broken was because of how intense the pain was in his body. Normally, when Harry feels a pain that intense, it was only whenever he breaks something. But this body was a lot smaller than his previous one. Harry guessed that it was anywhere from fifteen to sixteen years of age. The smaller stature and weaker bones meant that even something as simple as a dislocation would hurt as much as a bone being broken.
Harry reached over to the left shoulder that had been dislocated and the girl kneeling in front of him felt her eyes widen in shock as Harry suddenly pulled the arm up and backward!
SNAP!
"ARGH!"
Harry gritted his teeth as another surge of pain passed through his body and the girl immediately grabbed Harry as he almost fell to his back!
"Arry!"
The girl called for him once more and Harry just made the same gesture as before to say that he was fine while waiting for the phantom pains to pass. The arm was going to be fine, but Harry was going to be feeling sore in that arm for the next week at least. Especially with how weak this body was.
A few minutes later, Harry finally felt like he could get on his feet and he stood up to look around him to get a bearing of where he was. He was on a large embankment facing a lake, and above him, Harry could see a cliff that had the heads of tall trees peeking out from its edge. That was where the previous owner of this body had fallen from.
'Wait, no. I remember seeing someone there when I was falling. Did I fall or was I pushed?'