><><Hometown Glory><>< [Chaos]

[Deleted]

Main: 95CFB7
Speech: F04155
Thought: F2F26F

[/i]
Other: FFF7BD[/center][/size]

~*~
Child of the wilderness
Born into emptiness
Learn to be lonely
Learn to find your way in darkness
~*~

While you've been known to have those almost moments that trigger bright flashes of blurry memory, never before have you felt this close to a breakthrough. The rain is cool and pleasant against your skin, adding to the scent of damp earth that makes you think of something you can't quite put your finger on. You can't really remember how long you've been walking, but you're certain that this District is absolutely gigantic compared to the others you've seen in your year of remembered life.

You're not really comfortable here, surrounded by walls and fences (although the large metal barrier is out of sight its oppressive shadow seems to weigh on you heavily) after spending what you view as your entire life in pure, unbridled freedom. Still, each step you take down the well-worn path seems to bring you a little closer to filling the empty space where your history should be, so you swallow the quiet claustrophobia and cast your eyes upward into the branches above. Something about the careful layout of trees with identical blossoms sends the word orchard swirling through your fractured mind, and in a brilliant moment dormant snippets of memory blaze to life and you can see a smaller version of yourself leaping between fruit-laden branches and laughing as voices from below cheer you on. The faces and names are no longer there but the feeling of unbreakable, solid friendship remains, and it makes you smile slightly as you trace spindly fingers along rough bark.

You always feel lost, but the loneliness you feel at this moment is almost entirely debilitating as you replay Zane's instructions over and over in your head until it becomes a blurred mantra. Keep a low profile. Stay away from the Justice Building, and avoid Peacekeepers. Look for people who recognize you, but don't be obvious about asking questions until you're sure you're safe. If things go downhill, run. Get over the fence and find me. I'll be around.

They were quick words half-whispered in the beginning of sunrise as your fingers laced together through the rusty metal lattice, accompanied by a heaviness in two sets of eyes that denoted words that neither of you were able to bring yourself to say. So you had turned your face to the slowly spreading glow on the horizon, padding off across what felt like endless wheat fields before you finally came upon this strangely familiar grove of trees with sweet-smelling blossoms and memories hidden within the branches. As hopeful as being somewhere that has to be your home makes you feel, you can't help but experience this innate sense of aimlessness and slight fear and what do I do now?

Your lips purse in speculation of your own question, the fingers of your left hand tracing the raised mess of scar tissue that is your right arm absently. In the distance you can see an end to the well-planned forest, giving way to open fields and several houses that give you that vague nostalgia that you've been experiencing with varying degrees of intensity. Leaving behind faded smiles and distant laughter you emerge from the wooded path, icyblue eyes shooting around nervously (you've always been able to tell when you're being watched, and you almost feel like if anyone sees you this spell will be broken and your mind will be empty again) as you thinkthinkthink and try to make sense of where you are. Your head is in tumult, you've been here and for some reason this path makes you think of leaping and twirling and moving so you follow the trail of instinct down the nearest side street until you've curved back into the trees slowly making your way to a little building with wide windows that is so familiar that you almost feel like something has physically hit you.

Callused, roughened feet carry you quickly across the clearing, hands pressing against the wooden structure as if you'll be able to physically draw the memories out of support beams and wide glass panes. But the solid fuselage gives you nothing more than the increased fervor of caged recollections straining at their bonds, so you carefully shuffle to the door, feeling the solid panel give way under your hands and opening into a large, empty room. You're immediately met with a mixed aroma of sweat and powder and perfume that makes long-dead synapses spark to life and pull you further in, drawing you across smooth hardwood floors and into the center of the room. You stare into the mirrors lining the walls but it's not just yourself that you see, but rather a whole room full of phantom memory-girls twirling and leaping and dancing and with that final thought it finally clicks - dance studio.

You grin widely and go through a few fluid movements, watching yourself intently in the mirror - all worn clothing and tired eyes and sun-bleached hair that nearly brushes your shoulders. Another puzzle piece has been found, leaving you feeling pleasantly full even though you still have miles to go on this journey of figuring out who you are, because now you have the knowledge that I love to dance and that's because I used to dance in this place on this floor in this mirror and it adds meaning to feelings that you were previously unable to explain. Something stirs in the narrow hallway and it is enough to sufficiently spook you, causing you to turn on your heel and flee through the open door, flying back up the path and down nameless streets until you slump against a fence to catch your breath.

It takes you a while to notice the huge expanse of open space and the scores of stones dotting the rain-soaked grass, and even longer to notice the lone form crouched next to a weather-beaten monument. Zane told you to be careful but something about her calls to you (maybe it's because she's like you, alone in the rain with no sense of direction), all lean form and and sunny blonde hair a few shades lighter than your own. You shuffle quietly up behind her and place a hand against the lithe musculature of her shoulder, slate-colored orbs wide with wonder at the sight of another human, not to mention one who looks so achingly familiar. "Are you okay? You look sad."

[sadniss everdeen]

Jessalyn Colbier

♫ Please don't leave again - I missed you so ♫

~:~ 914493 ~:~ Can't you just watch me? It's so much easier to understand.
~:~ 469344 ~:~ I have a mind, I swear. It's all hidden away up here.
~:~ 936944 ~:~ It's okay if it doesn't look like I understand, because I do.
~:~ 446D93 ~:~ Without music I can't breathe, but it's so hard to make my own.

I'm so tired of being here, suppressed by all my childish fears
and if you have to leave, I wish that you would just leave[/size][/font]

At times, it's difficult. (Not that it's any different, but you manage. You always do.

Not because you want to, but because you have to.)

"Denver's gone."

Short, simple. Everything you embody and some you wish you could. The stone whispers back in silent words and you can hear her voice inside her head; a waterfall of noise that doesn't make sense but still comforts you in a way that you can never explain.

Grass is soft under your fingers and your eyes trace the carved words again and again, memorizing that one thing that really matters and wondering absently if she's slept enough, if she's going to come back anytime soon.

If people will be able to adjust that for once, you were right.

You understand that they don't believe you; really, you do. It doesn't make any sense because you aren't blinded by the things that aren't really important (money, popularity, greed) and swallow the truth without second thought. Material possessions never worked for you because you keep losing them just like you keep losing people - but it's not your own clumsiness that makes them go, just something else entirely.

After so much searching you can't figure out what it might be, and really, you're not going to try. It has so many possibilities that it makes your head do that strange humming thing, all angry and sad and loud.

(maybe if was more like her, people would listen. i'm so tired of being lonely in a crowd of people.)

Sometimes you wish to shed all of this in those rare moments of palpable regret and become somebody other than what you are. You are and always will be proud of everything you can and cannot be, but those times where the nauseating sequences slow to a halt, you find yourself wondering if it could be easier. A stillborn baby birthed in an alley by an almost mother. Too relieved to grieve she would leave you to remain unstained and unknown.

(Alone.)

But it doesn't work like that - it never has and never will - and you run through the stares and hesitant emotions with an oblivious smile while speaking a language that nobody will ever (care to) understand.

Just because they don't understand doesn't mean you can't. People let things become more complicated than they really have to be, and you hate that. Can't they all just be happy (maybe they're the ones that should really be taking pills, instead of people who run with thoughts stuck in infinite loop)?

Your dreams will always be marked with past intentions and future hopes.

"He's been gone for a long time. So have you. Why aren't you back yet? We miss you. "

There is somebody running; the footsteps crunch delicately and tell a story that you cannot decipher. You're not entirely sure if you want to know - things don't make sense because they hurt you in the end. All simple things speak of sunshine and muted heartbreak and a world that keeps on spinning.

You've always loved to run. The wind, smell, sound. Sight as the world morphs into a singular blur and you're unable to map out where you are; so deliciously lost that you're free to be everything (and anything) you've always wanted. Beyond anything, you're proud of your stamina. You can run faster than all the problems and memories you've forgotten - even the people that keep those thoughts. Eventually you end up so far away from your house that you don't know where you are or what you're doing but that's okay, because you're just so tired that you could die right there and you wouldn't even put up a fight. Sometimes you run so fast that you outlast everything (everyone) and figure out how to brush all these conflicting thoughts away.

Sometimes when the price of putting yourself back together is just too high, you let the wind tear you apart until you don't belong anywhere and you find a new person to be. Running is even better than dancing when it comes to mindless repetition that you need to just clear your mind and go.

At times you'll go so far, so fast, so long, that you'll forgot why you're running. That's always amazing because that's the point; in time, nature will take its toll and you'll forget what you've done, who they are, who you used to be.

Eventually you'll be a blank canvas, ready to be painted on by the borrowed agony of stranger faces.

(i've just always been terrible at waiting.)

"Are you okay? You look sad."

Instinct makes you stiffen because people aren't allowed to touch you - they're too loud and rough and they hurthurthurt because they never know how to handle anything besides their own emotions (so very bright, so very noisy, always frightening).

The voice carries on the winds and you turn your gaze to meet a face that clicks as if it never left - it speaks of cool winter days and warm summer nights - and you smile slightly, responding in that calm hollow voice that always makes people think you've beyond repair. Really, there's things under the surface.

(they just don't care enough to look. you can't fix me, i'm not broken. you have to be full to break and i'm always half empty.)

"I'm sad. It's okay."

There are so many things you wish to say, but your tongue is torn between two choices. People thing you aren't ever sad but that's a lielie filthy lie - but you're naturally buoyant and careful to shadow your sadness because it conflicts so readily with the sunshine that burns brightbright in your soul. They don't get that you can be both at once and that's fine, really, because it's expected that they can only feel it one at a time.

You have to be a special kind of dysfunctional to be a walking paradox.

She looks just the way that you remember but with an added element; she screams of the way Denver acts sometimes, like you want to hug him but you physically can't because he's too warm and too close and seems to suck all the air from your lungs. And not in the good way, when the nameless strangers make your chest arch and mouth drop and all those words you've never said rise up sticky and spew forth in a tangled jumble that doesn't make them sad. No, this speaks of oppression and hopelessness and sweetheart, we need you again. why have you been gone for so long?

It's not surprising that you don't fall back into sync the moment you meet again, but it hurts somewhere deep down that you try and ignore because it always just brings more heartache. You hate that. So, so much.

(it hurts when i'm alone. but i'm never alone. does that make sense?)

"You don't look happy." Maybe she's slept for too long and her muscles have grown tired and she's forgotten how to smile. "Are you still sad?"

your presence still lingers here
and it won't leave me alone

[/font]

[/blockquote][/size][/color]

[Deleted]

~*~
Let me stay
Where the wind will whisper to me
Where the raindrops as they're falling
Tell the story
~*~

You feel her stiffen beneath your fingers but it doesn't bother you all that much (sometimes people like keeping everything inside and refuse the weakness of someone else to lean on) as her head pivots on a graceful neck and her eyes meet yours. The familiarity in the vacant pools of blue is very nearly staggering, and it takes your best effort to bite back a gasp of clouded recognition and utter, complete surprise. You always knew that you'd find yourself inside this fence somewhere, but coming across someone who makes all the caged memories begin to shake and rattle at a fever pitch so soon is a dose of serendipity that you did not expect.

"You don't look happy," she muses, and her voice is only half-there but carries something in it that is so powerful it sends your mind reeling, plunging you back through years of blurred colors and muted mumbles and into a moment of startling half-clarity.

"People just don't understand her, Mama," you lament quietly, packing a change of clothes into a duffel bag worn by time and use as the beginnings of sunset begin to slant through the window. "The kids at school are awful to her. They call her all these horrible names, and she's never done anything to them. It isn't fair."

A blurry form with a faraway sort of feel enters your vision, you know her but you can't make her features clarify into sharp enough detail, can't make her voice stop sounding as if it comes from a mile away when she speaks. "People are cruel, Lyd. They hate anything that's different."

"But she's better than them!" You reply, voice tight with frustration and hurt for this mysterious someone other than yourself. "People think she's stupid, but she's not. There are all these beautiful things in her mind and she... She just needs help getting them out. And I guess I'm the only one who really gets her."

The smudged shape makes a motion that might be a nod, a phantom hand picking up the bag and gently laying a strap against your shoulder. "I know, love. Maybe someday you can help them understand her like you do. But if you don't leave now you'll be late for dance. Don't forget to give that new roll of film to your brother when he picks you up."

You try to smile but your heart aches fiercely for a myriad of reasons you can't place, so you only manage a tight-lipped half grin as you settle the satchel's weight into a comfortable position and head for the door.

"Are you still sad?"

That beautifully broken, ethereal voice calls you back from the confines of your foggy mind, bringing you back to the rainy graveyard with a sudden jerk that makes you give pause to blink remnants of the hazy recollection from your eyes before you can formulate a response. Her features are so familiar that part of you longs to trace the contours of her face with careful fingers, but given her earlier reaction to being touched you are aware that this wouldn't me the best course of action. Instead you content yourself to blink absently a few more times and tilt your head to the side in contemplation, brows furrowed as you thinkthinkthink with all of your feeble strength and try to place her in the gaping holes of your long-forgotten past.

"I know you." It isn't really an answer so much as a statement that stands on its own, affirmation that your life is slowly but surely filling in the blanks. "I know you, I know I do, but how?"

You screw your eyes shut, blocking out one of the senses that threatens to dissipate the wave of reminiscence that builds in the back of your mind before another brilliant flash of recognition pulls you back out of your surroundings and into the scintillating haze of your kaleidoscope memory.

You're scared but you try to smile because going to school means being a big girl, and even though this is your first day you want to make Mama proud of you so maybe her eyes will light up like they do sometimes and she won't look so sad. The people around you are little more than smudges against the landscape but there's a boy next to you who is clearer than the rest of them, all wheatblonde hair and wide blue eyes that match yours and a bright smile that could light up the darkest place. He leaves, though, trotting off towards a group of faceless little boys that are playing in the mud a few yards away, leaving you alone and wriggling uncomfortably in your best dress that Mama did up special just for your first day of school, pink with lace on the collar and sleeves.

For a moment you feel hopelessly lost among this swirling haze of blurred people and muffled sounds, but then you see her shining like a beacon, clear as daylight all huddled up alone against a tree trunk. A wide smile paints your face because she's wearing a pink dress too and that means the two of you are meant to be best friends, so you trot over and kneel in the grass next to her, ignoring the green stains that paint the perfect fabric. "Hi! Your dress is pretty. Why are you sitting all alone like that? I'm Lydia."

There's a moment when she looks up and you almost back away because there's something different about her eyes (like they're too full and completely empty all at once), but she echoes your grin and you feel like you're kneeling under a ray of pure sunshine. "You have a nice smile. I'm -"

[/i]

"Jessa." the word seems to ring like you've shouted it down an empty well, weaving its way through long-dead synapses and filling so many blank spaces all at once that you sway on your feet a little, overcome by the sheer magnitude of your life that has been returned to you in a single instant. In a violent shock of exploding light you regain countless days on the swing sets and countless nights dancing like the world was ending until the rush left you both grinning widely and gasping for breath as the music faded into the shimmering air heavy with envious stares from the other girls. You get back long summer afternoons laying in the tall, whispering grass of the hayfields and picking out shapes in the clouds, the sound of her laugh, the fractured depth of her uniquely gorgeous mind, and you have to give a sharp squeal of elation, for a moment forgetting her aversion to contact as you throw your arms around her and squeeze tight in case she should be ripped away and take your remembrance with her.

"Oh, Jess, you wouldn't believe... I don't remember anything. Isn't that funny? But I remember you, and that's the first step to -" You trail off, eyes finally crossing the weather beaten monument in front of you and widening in apprehension as they trace the letters carved into the stone. "I... I don't understand. I'm not dead. What's all of this? Do they think I'm dead, Jessa? Everyone?"

You reach out and gently run the pads of your scarred fingers over the rough, rocky surface, struggling to fight down an apprehension you can't explain. You are nowhere near to completely rediscovering who you are and where you come from, but something deep and visceral in your mind seems to scream run, leave, before you find out too much.[/i][/color][/justify][/blockquote][/size]

[sadniss everdeen]

Jessalyn Colbier

♫ Darling, open up to me ♫

~:~ 914493 ~:~ Can't you just watch me? It's so much easier to understand.
~:~ 469344 ~:~ I have a mind, I swear. It's all hidden away up here.
~:~ 936944 ~:~ It's okay if it doesn't look like I understand, because I do.
~:~ 446D93 ~:~ Without music I can't breathe, but it's so hard to make my own.

do you see this mind, this thing inside?
it's not what I've become - it's what I've been all along
you just never tried to see [/size][/font]

She's everywhere and nowhere in the best of ways and it aches in that pleasant place when it hurtshurtshurts but is supposed to - the dull throb of a heart that needs to fall back into perfect synchronization after being oh so tired from pumping on its own.

(There are silent nights curled around another body you know with a single sweep of your palm, skin slick and comforting under your touch that feels so much like home all these quiet words spew forth with force you've never seen before.)

Your arms come back up and pull her into you, taking in the silk-spun hair that's changed its scent over a year of wishing wanting hoping and that's not right, she smells like somebody else; like nature and sweat and a heavier, musky scent that makes your toes curl in distaste. But it's Lydia none the less and you feel the smooth of her cheek against your neck and cling like a child, never wanting to let go for fear that your prized (possession) companion will be swept away once more into the great unknown. You understand that she was tired and needed to sleep but she's okay and here now and could you not go away again? I lose myself when I'm not with you.

She starts mumbling fragile, broken things that make no sense and hang heavy on that place that you can't describe, weighed down by the countless I don't knows and questions and you cringe because she knows how much you hate it when all the syllables slur together (it makes you think of a raging river you can't escape). Instead you just hold her tighter, rocking back and forth with silent encouragement as she sees the grave and watch her careful grip on confidence begin to crumble at her feet.

(and really, that's the first step. maybe that's why i'm still like i am; i've never let it all die so it can be reborn)

She looks so lost and scared and sad that you go and forsake your trepidations, tangling your tongue to form some sort of explanation that could tell the story of why they never waited for her to come home. "You were sleeping. They didn't think so. I told then but they didn't listen. They never listen. They put it there so they knew where you were sleeping. But they didn't think you were sleeping, they thought you were gone." They fall all over themselves to be heard, tripping from your mouth in a spectacular failure that has you craving something that cannot be found, catching the feeling with splayed fingers and taut thighs. You try (all the time) to remind yourself that you control them, you shape them, you give them purpose. But instead you keep them because they never sound right; until they become thin and weak, until they float away forever, until people give up and leave you alone.

Until you have to erase them completely and start anew.

Things are always complicated when they never mean to be and you hate that (why can't the world just get along?). Even children seem to clue in too early and begin the game that always hurts your head; of lies and deceit and manipulation that eclipses the truth into this thing that doesn't even make sense. You turn it over and over in your fingers (it's always so much easier to feel because it never lies) but can never make sense of it - why the cold clouds your mind and robs you entirely of your faltering verbalizations. Lydia knows how much you hate it, and tried to live as far apart from that as she could. If you knew how, you'd thank her.

(sometimes i wonder how normal kids grew up.)

Maybe the wild and time took her ability to know because she's doing it right now with all these questions that don't make sense and hurt your head when really, it's simple: you were gone and now you're not, can we stop thinking about it now? it's not that difficult so you smile with the force of the setting sun and crouch down beside her, touching the grave and noting how it no longer sings to you.

"You're back now. That's good. Denver will be happy when he comes back." Thoughtful, troubled; you smooth traces of mirth from the soft of your skin. "He's sad. He gets all funny and hugs me too tight sometimes."

Sometimes you think he believes you to be someone else but you let him pretend. Reality hurts to the point where it's hard to breathe and crushes all your imagination into p(r)etty dust; Denver, if anybody, deserves a chance to fly. Fly until his wings tire, until he finds what he wants, until he can go as fast as you to erase all the bad memories.

Until he touches the sun.

[/size][/blockquote]

[Deleted]

~*~
Calling out, somebody save me
I feel like I'm fading away, am I gone?
Calling out, somebody save me
I feel like I'm fading
~*~

Your palm presses so hard against the rough-hewn gravestone that it begins to protest with little prickles of pain, and when you pull away there is an L and half of a Y imprinted on the roughened flesh of the heel of your hand. Everything is moving so fast and memories are straining so tightly at the ties that bind them that your confusion and complete brokenness manifests itself as a physical ache, all the fractured pieces of who you once were boiling inside your veins and hurting like you’re on fire from the inside out. Jessa talks of sleeping and people never listening and you being gone, the last word reverberating somewhere deep in you chest and making you bite down on the words you want to say but can’t for fear of her stability.I’m still gone, and I’m afraid I might not be able to find myself.

More than anything you yearn to break out of this fragile existence and fly like you’re sure that you used to, the wind in your hair and feet barely touching the ground as you dance like there’s no tomorrow because you’re free and not inhibited by a burden of strapped-down memories that keep you weighted to the ground and press on your lungs until you feel like you’re drowning in secrets that you’re not sure you want to know.

”You’re back now,” she says plainly, like it’s the simplest fact in the world. The sky is blue. Rivers flow to the ocean. The sun rises and sets and you are back and everything is fine. And you wish with all the might that is left within your feeble inner fortitude that it really could be that simple, that easy to slip back into the comfortable embrace of your old life as if you’d never left at all. Jessa’s always had a way of making things far less complicated than they really are and sometimes that’s a blessing, but now it only makes a deep sort of sadness settle heavily behind your sternum because no matter what you do you know in your heart that things will never be the same again, even as the familiar airy murmurs dance in the vacant space next to your ear. ”That’s good. Denver will be happy when he comes back.”

For a moment your world shuts down, narrowing until it’s just you and your mind and the memories that shivershakescream at the sound of those two syllables. Desperate, you rattle the bars on their invisible cages and plead with them what, what is it, why can’t I just remember? but receive nothing other than prolonged pain in return, restless recollections kept steadfastly out of your reach. The rain is cool on your skin and it’s the only that keeps you from going altogether mad, sucking in lungfuls of damp air as you make attempts to put this obviously important puzzle piece into place.

”Denver.” The word is sweet in your mouth and rolls into existence with an odd sort of ease, but the verbalization does nothing to make synapses connect and memories spark to life like they did with Jessa. ”Denver. Denver. Denver.” But no matter how many different inflections or amount of repetitions you throw into the mix, the name does nothing but make the war in your head rage even more intensely, a constant battle that makes you ache all over and yearn for nothing more than sleep and Zane’s arms around you and it’s okay, Lyd, it’ll all come back someday.

”Denver.” One last halfhearted whisper brings no results other than an increased buzzing in your mind, prompting you to exhale shakily and press a rain-slickened hand over your fluttering eyelids. Who is he and why does he mean so much and why does everything hurt oh God make it stop pleasepleaseplease…

”Jess, I can’t stay here.” Your voice is almost as far away and absent as hers is, weakened by inner turmoil to the point where you’re fighting tooth and nail just to stave off a full-blown panic. ”I’m really confused, and this is just too much and… can we leave? Please?”

With tentative motions you push yourself to your feet, wet grass clinging to the denim stretched over your legs, stray verdant blades peeling off and floating away on the cool breeze. Slate blue orbs filled up to the brim with all the hurt they can bear track the progress of a single strand of green until it lands on a gravestone – your gravestone – and the sight is enough to send you turning on your heel and running away from this, from everything because you’d almost rather be in the dark if finding out who you are hurts this badly.

You don’t stop until you’re huddled in a sopping mess on the floor of the dance studio, lungs heaving in wheezing inhalations that don’t feel like they’re giving you any air at all. After a moment your gaze raises and you take in the girl in the mirror with dripping blonde strands and a clouded visage that screams Help, I’m broken and I don’t know how to fix myself

[/color] as your breaths only grow more frantic in the half-dark of the large room.

”What is wrong with me?”[/color][/justify][/blockquote][/size]

[sadniss everdeen]

Jessalyn Colbier

♫ It's all about the sacrifices you can't make and the wires you can't connect♫

~:~ 914493 ~:~ Can't you just watch me? It's so much easier to understand.
~:~ 469344 ~:~ I have a mind, I swear. It's all hidden away up here.
~:~ 936944 ~:~ It's okay if it doesn't look like I understand, because I do.
~:~ 446D93 ~:~ Without music I can't breathe, but it's so hard to make my own.

sometimes she's sad and sometime she cries
but she pretends everything's all right
because she's not allowed to be like this [/size][/font]

She runs.

So you run with her.

You don't expect to see her huddled all strange and lost and dead on the floor with anger and sadness that seems so wrong on a broken frame like hers because it should be empty, but is so painfully full and vacant at once that it makes your head throb.

And it hurts for the girl when you bring fingernails dipped in darkness to drag along the expanse of her skin, slowly and methodically clawing away at the pain that will always hang like a shroud. It clogs underneath and seeps in through your pores but you were always slow to digest the bad things and that kept you safe from harm. Always, always and forever.

(Until one day, it didn't.)

Sometimes you like to wonder silly little things that will never be answered like why do people hurt each other so much or is it possible to be fixed if you were never broken and people can't find the answers so they simply laugh it off like they always do because they've become exceptionally good at seeing you as a not-person and it's so much easier to think that something hard and raw and painful doesn't exist if you don't think about it. You acknowledge that in the way that you always do with a hazy knowledge that keeps the gentle anger from burning its way upupup and out where it can be seen. (It burns your throat and it hurts. But you don't complain. You aren't sure you know how.)

When you can't form words like Lydia all crumpled on the floor your lady makes you write them out instead. It works most of the time but now you even get your words mixed up on paper. You write sad instead of silent twice and put the pen down with trembling fingers because it's kind of automatic now.

(But you don't have any paper, so you're just content to sit on the floor with all your faded regrets looking so old and apathetic around you, trying to distinguish whose is whose because you hold your secret fears and wants so very close to your chest in fear that somebody will take them away.)

Lydia loved to make life into a set series of clear points so she wouldn't get all jumbled up and confused along the way but that's not how life works; life is mysterious and blurred and there are no lines or borders and that's what makes people cross them so often into territory they don't want to be. Lands of Bad Brains and Limp Legs and the quiet certainty that life isn't all sunshine and rainbows but at the same time it kinda is. No matter how much you want to cry you carry on because that's what you do, you're Jessa and thrive in the light. It makes the blotched mess glow but sheds no insight on its magic - you simply scoop up a tangle of unknown words and attempt to paint it on your canvas but only half the letters stick. That creates something that nobody can understand except yourself and you're not sure which you hate more - the feeling that people know you're trying to say something but ignoring it for the sake of convinience, or the fact that it makes you less than human in their eyes because it's okay to quiet what you have to say.

It kills you just a little bit to see the girl that always made you strong (stronger than anything, than the looks and the touches and the fleeting dark that crawls inside and won't ever let go) curled up like the world has broken her shoulders along with everything good and precious, like humanity has finally caught up to her and robbed her of her spark. So you smile sadly and let your hands do all the talking because you hate not knowing what to say what your body has always known and brush back the curtain that forms a halo around her face.

So you smile silently and will all these half formed feelings into existence so that they might expand in the hollow of her chest to make way for something new and fill her to bursting and let that hollow look leave her eyes (that is reserved for you, dancer, she does not wear it with the kind of quiet devastation that you do) that makes her look like a stranger. And perhaps she is in some kind of way because she's finally figured out that life hurts and it's not just something that you have to learn, that it applies to everybody and nobody and the world is mean, sometimes.

But that's okay. Really.

(You're so used to it that the cuts barely hurt anymore and you can feel like a not-person in peace. And they leave you alone, because that's exactly what you are. Not somebody.)

Maybe now you and Lydia can feel subtly shattered together in all the right ways, like how you can carefully piece her back together so you can start searching for the shard(s) that you were missing at birth. You know you'll never find them but whatever keeps her focused and you smile anyway.

"It's okay." And it is. "You'll find it." What it is is entirely unknown but it carries the weight or something hidden and sweet with just a hint of bitterness that you harbor deep down somewhere where nobody can see.

People don't tell stories about overcoming obstacles with a not-person, because they don't count. Their story was never quite bad enough to everybody else to warrant somthing besides careful apathy; that if they couldn't see the signs they weren't there and a broken brain doesn't equal a broken body and really you shouldn't complain because you're safe and that's all that matters. Like the girl who went to sleep happy and right and peaceful and came back with something gone, something missing and not quite there and hiding that you can see but not touch. But you're trapped inside your own head even as you carefully coax Lydia out of her's, tugging on all the loose ends and hoping that she won't unravel before you can fix her like she always does (she isn't broken, she just needs some mending).

[Deleted]

Main: 95CFB7
Speech: F04155
Thought: F2F26F

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Other: FFF7BD[/center][/size]

~*~
And I’m getting weary waiting for the harbor lights to change
I’ve forgotten what I do it for but I tread water just the same
Never let this pair of hands forget to pull their weight
This burden may be more than I would like to bear but still it’s less than I can take
~*~

There's this something inside you that feels all kinds of wrong as you stare down the crumbled form with blue eyes that looks back at you from the mirror, something twisted and out of place and dark in a way that you almost never feel (or maybe you've always felt this way and the carefully-built walls you've built around your own mind are finally beginning to collapse). And even though you should be relieved and happy because the puzzle pieces are fitting back together and Jessa's here and you're in a place that you just inherently know made you happy once upon a time, this thing behind your sternum writhes and twists and makes your brain catch fire until you finally realize it, gaze locked with your reflection's.

You're angry.

"It's okay. You'll find it," Jessa breathes, careful fingers mapping out the expanse of your back in a way that would be soothing if you weren't so frustrated and hurt and this, this thick black fury that clogs your veins until the heart that Tiva always told you was so pure begins to feel like it might shrivel up and die. While part of you wants more than anything to believe her and smile and pretend that everything's going to be okay (okay, okay is all you've ever wanted and it's always just out of your reach), this venomous thing rooting its way into your consciousness wants to snarl out a cruel laugh and spit out what you know deep down - Nothing will ever be "okay" again.

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"I don't know if I want to."[/color][/justify][/blockquote][/size]