gloria, district six / finished

[eulalie blake 1a 🍒 tris]

eileen langston "gloria" (x) / twenty-one / pilot b1

( cancer sun. gemini moon. leo rising. )

there's a soundtrack playing in her mind. (x) a new song for each new moment. the good, the bad,

all the blackouts in-between. (x)

elliot liked to call her theatric. "if only i could make a living out of that," eileen would respond bitterly, a laugh like salt in a wound — bitter in a way that has since hollowed out and left behind a shell of regret. "when's the last time you ever heard of an actress from six?" this was their routine. they'd say something cruel, and then something kind, and finally their hands would meet like they were always bound to. a ballad playing on a cheap radio, a static choir. polaroids taped to the wall, memories refusing to be forgotten. little dreams in their heads, all the lives they should have lived instead of this one.

eileen & elliot; an absolute disaster of a pair. feared by all who know them.

knew them.

soulmates since that first day of school. one a prodigy in the making, and the other a problem child with no solution in sight. eileen remembers locking herself in the bathroom during their graduation ceremony, eighteen years of trauma folding into a single moment, bloodshot eyes staring into the mirror. at the girl looking back. owning every stupid mistake she's ever made, and still hating herself for each one. reckless, careless eileen — with her dry humor, and all her wild schemes. elliot was her one chance for redemption. in another room, with words powerful enough to break through walls, they are singing her praises. her best friend is destined to be great. the whole district knows it.

but eileen knew it first. a sky full of strange stars, but she's already named all of the constellations. always two steps behind, but so is everyone else — elliot is like a comet trapped in flesh, burning so brightly but moving at an unreachable pace. blink, and the person standing in front of you is hardly the same person you claim to love. this was, and will always be, their tragedy.

she's sixteen, and she's a memory. there's mascara tears trailing down her cheeks, and she's sobbing into her best friend's shoulder. she fucked up again. they've been here before. she chases highs like she's never known what it's like to lie on the ground, broken. staring up at those same stars. into those eyes.

"you think if we were brave, and we ran, life would be better than this?"

the night regards them quietly. elliot looks down at her like the sun at its highest point; like she has a purpose, a calling. like all of eileen's problems haven't been caused by her own two hands. like running could ever solve anything. it feels like a parting, even then.

even now.

eighteen again. she locks herself in the bathroom stall.

and she lights up a cigarette. call her a traitor. call her damaged.

the world keeps on turning until it doesn't — eileen shifts from a traumatized teenager into a traumatized adult, elliot starts a new career right after graduating. the silence grows between them like a universe, a vast blackness wrapping itself around them like a funeral shroud. they write letters, and they grow up, and all the while they talk about the things they'll do when they grow older still. because the present has always been so terrifying, especially for eileen. her best friend is changing the world, even if she's not allowed to know the specifics. she's sure of that. in the same way that she's sure her own life is ruined. "i'm talking to tommy again." two weeks before she disappears, this is the last cruel thing she says to elliot.

if she unpacks it, if she thinks long and hard about her choices — eileen self destructs in the hopes that someone can fix her and make up for all the pieces of herself she hates. a puzzle that doesn't want to be solved, but made into something new. she's twenty-one, and she's sixteen, and she's eighteen; all of her life can be witnessed in this single moment. shoulder to shoulder with elliot, cigarette between her fingers, she begs for pity and refuses to accept any of the advice. after the detonation, she stands in the fire, and she has the audacity to hope for rain.

it's easy for a wreck to accept destruction.

but for all the terrible moments, there are beautiful ones, too. there's a song playing on the radio again. their hands meet, swaying to the melody, laughing like disaster is only a possibility. not a truth. they have so many dreams. they are alive. this has already happened, and will never happen again.

she waits for letters that never arrive. the world allows itself to forget about the sun.

elliot testino-lee is gone.

but eileen remembers.

[eulalie blake 1a 🍒 tris]

^{eileen langston} gloria

you watch the sky as a child

hands over your ears

peace —

a crash in the next room

you are terribly good at pretending

♟

the record skips a beat. a hundred scars immortalized in vinyl.

you're just a kid, and you're scared shitless before you even know what real fear is. it's a game you like to play with yourself. create little terrors to distract yourself from the big one. start crying on your first day of school. convince yourself it's a trick — that's always been the trick. you're too young to be anything, and yet you're writing yourself down as the villain of the story. so sad, and so impulsive, and so unable to process the trauma.

there's a yard sale. a new coat of paint on a bedroom wall. your mother moves out.

it was an accident. your innocence kills itself to blur out the memory, a silhouette slipping backwards — you refuse to unpack it. no one ever asks you to. the silence grows and grows in your house when the fighting finally stops. your father is kind, and patient, but he allows you to be forgotten. he doesn't ask about your day, or the friend you made, or the fact that you haven't even reached double digits and it already feels like you're falling apart.

and you don't know anything yet.

but you learn to crave the rush of disappointing the people you love — it's all you have, a glass rose in your grasp, one last keepsake to break into shards. in your world, everything stings, and everything cuts, and you wonder sometimes why you feel so difficult to be held. you remember a winter evening, the third time elliot came to spend the night, a sheet draped over two chairs. you shared a flashlight between your hands, fingers meeting in the shadows. you told a ghost story, and all the while you couldn't take your eyes off the way your friend seemed to illuminate everything just by being there.

"i love you."

you meant it, then.

but then high school starts, and there's so many new ways to ruin your reputation. tommy dane is a wreck of a boy, renowned heartbreaker, and you can't help yourself for inviting him in. you want your house to catch fire. you are the walls, and you are the floor, and the drugs and the affairs are just some fault in the wiring. a spark plug igniting. you skip class, damn an education that won't serve you where you're destined to end up, stick a needle in the crook of your arm when you're seventeen because it doesn't feel like there's anything else you could lose. and that's your problem, you know. thinking it can't get worse.

bloodshot eyes gazing down at a positive pregnancy test, a hollow thud in your chest. he means nothing to you and you mean nothing to him and all of this — every moment, every flash outside of her — it means nothing. you think maybe that's part of it. break your bones so she'll be forced to stay and mend them when she comes back around. your solstice is a girl, brilliant and brave, spring into summer into fall into winter into a waiting room. hands locked together, elliot signs the papers, you agree never to speak of it.

you have a gun. / you make a choice during the witching hour.

nineteen.

it's quiet.

your best friend flies into the sun, into a future that makes your lungs constrict just thinking about it, and you stay there in the neon light of a downtown bar. there's nothing to ruin anymore. all the good things in your life are just words on parchment now, letters exchanged weekly, memories experienced outside of each other. you feel like a bomb, and you hate the way that you wish she was there to hold you. to brush your hair out of your face like she always had a way of. you're killing yourself, and you're killing her, too. it always comes down to that. she is the reason.

she is the choice you made.

and eventually, one lonely sunday morning, you pull yourself out of tommy's bed, not bothering to shake off the regrets, and go to see that there is nothing waiting in the mailbox for you. no trace of her. and it feels like a severing, a premonition, a hard pull in your soul that has always connected you to elliot — and then it goes slack. thread hanging in the darkness. the noose you've been crafting for twenty-one years. you cannot fathom a world without her.

so you will burn it.

[eulalie blake 1a 🍒 tris]

umber vivuus 12b 🥀 [dars] @fabulousraven
fight.

[Deleted]

could quote this all night fookin stunnin love

catch the compliments in the plot slack chat lool
accepted!