~*Stay A Child While You Can Be A Child*~ <Done!>

~*Stay A Child While You Can Be A Child*~ <Done!> Feb 27, 2011 22:53:41 GMT -5

Post by Deleted on Feb 27, 2011 22:53:41 GMT -5

Lyla Matheson

"You are so wrong."

Lyla knew it probably wasn't the best thing to say to someone as consumed by rage as Julian was at the moment, but she was making an effort to tell the truth, which was a little harder for a pathological liar than most other people. The blonde gently reached out, taking her younger friend's hand. "You are worth protecting. Just becuase you're broken doesn't mean someone can't put you back together."

Lyla's gaze dropped down to her scarred arm, to the streaks on Julian's back, the warped bone of her other appendage, the purple bruises making a beautifully macabre necklace around his slender neck. "I guess we're both broken, aren't we?"

Julian Rockshaw was not a replacement for her lost brother. It had taken Lyla a while to realize that, but the revelation that the little dancer was his own person couldn't have been more evident from his outburst. Leo Matheson had never hated, at least not in the way that Julian and Lyla did. They were both so warped by the world around them, how could they not stick together? Hadn't everything else that was solid in the universe abandoned them?

"You're right. You're nothing like my brother. You're like me, Jules. We're both horribly twisted, sick people that carry around a staggering amount of hate for people that have hurt us. We're both artists, I guess, if you can call hacking an art. We've both been beaten down countless times and still managed to get back up."

She wrapped the sweatshirt back around the dancer's bony shoulders, the rust-streaked lime green fabric standing out sharply against his alabaster skin. "We're messed up. Who in their right minds would want to be around us?

"We break a lot, Jules. We're fragile people," she continued, accompanied by another soothing stroke of the hair. "We break, and there's no one there to put us back together."

Lyla had broken before. She'd been broken for three years, staring in the mirror and wondering why, why, why she was still here and her brother, her sweet little brother who deserved life far more than she did wasn't. Then the hate had come, and she'd come back to life, a limp doll motivated only by revenge. She had never given any thought to what would happen once she got it, once the Capitol was a writhing technological mess. She'd collapse back into numbness, she supposed. Real, true happiness just wasn't an option anymore.

But Julian could still be happy, she decided. And if Julian could be happy, then maybe, just maybe she could still feel something other than numbness or hatred again. Lyla felt neither when she looked at the little dancer. In different ways, they had saved each other.

Lyla opened her bag once again, digging through its contents until she found the little tin container. The caramel-eyed girl popped the lid, turning the metallic vessel upside-down to empty its contents of one single, neon-bright band-aid. Ripping back the sterile paper coating of the bandage, she pulled the electric-lime patch from its prison and removed the backing that concealed the sticky adhesive. Smiling serenely, Lyla gently wrapped the band-aid around her friend's finger, from a distance, it looked like a bright green ring. Up close, it looked like a promise. "That's why we've got to stick together. So one of us is always there to pick up the pieces."