//(hearts) of iron, (minds) of steel// [Lalia]

[sadniss everdeen]

Jessalyn Colbier

♫ We would be so less fragile if we were made of metal ♫

~:~ 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.

and you want three wishes
one to fly the heavens
one to swim like fishes [/size][/font]

"Jessa, I'm going to go out tonight."

It's nothing new - you furrow your brows in incomprehension and glance up to meet a face worrying a bottom lip and cloudy blue eyes watchwatchwatching like you're going to flail stop breakdown any second now - like you're some fragile broken thing and you hate that because Lydia knows better. You're strong and delicate all at once and it's that careful balance that keeps you here and okay in this world where everything is just a little bit too bright to bear. "Why?" Blunt and to the point - you are still getting used how to dance around one another, not used to this invisible distance that aches painfully in the center of your chest. Her face draws into identical lines while gathering her things and slipping into different shoes; you curl up just a little bit tighter on her bed once you realize that you bought them with her a little while ago. "Because this is the only day that Zane can go out."

She must see the change of expression on your face (you were never one to learn how to stick to pleasant neutrality - you are a canvas waiting to be sullied by the mistakes of others) but choose not to comment on it; you feel like your world is slowly being taken away because for all aspects and purposes Lydia is your world and he is dragging her back into the deeper dark that you can't enter. "But you promised." Lydia sighs (out of guilt or exasperation, you can never tell) and turns, nodding slightly but continues searching around for her various pieces of attire.

"I know, Jess. I'm really really sorry. Maybe I can make it up to you tomorrow?" You crave change but some things stay the same and you adhere to vague schedule like you can't let it go. She relies on that and forgets that you had to learn how to stand up on your own in those months that she slept and instead shake your head stubbornly, getting up to pace along with the energy that burns a hole inside your chest. "No! You said tonight. It's not fair. I was here first!" And it doesn't a genius to figure out the hidden meaning that carries more weight than perhaps it should, watching her cringe and fall back but don the stance that always reminds you of a soldier bracing for battle, clinging onto the very ideals that keep him alive. She loveloveloves him too much to give up but doesn't know what to do in the face of your anger - the Jessa she used to know was complacent and confused and entirely concave but this Jessa (should you even be called that anymore? you're so much more and just a bit less that you don't know where you stand) expands and fills the whole room with emotions she didn't even know you possessed. She can't do this it's not fair and it's by that single ideal that you won't give up give in give out.

"I know, sweetheart. I'll make it up to you, I promise." Tonight it isn't enough and the crawling feeling in your flesh amplifies as you throw out words that shouldn't even make sense but do because you're just so tired of not being able to say what your body knows and goes with what feels best. The tone of voice she uses is entirely too reminiscent of the doctors and nurses that look downdowndown and she knows how much you hate that so you flee from (all your problems and fears and hopes) her in hopes of being able to rub the bitter aftertaste from your skin.

I'm your friend, not your child. You think and judging by the sharp intake of breath it was translated into the open air. For a moment you want to murmur I'm sorry and I didn't mean it can we be okay now? but there's this burning need to run flee escape that has seized you and won't let go.

By the time you lace up your running shoes she's watching you with eyes that are curious and hurt and sad, weighing all the responses on her tongue and shifting when she can't find the right one. "Where are you going?"

A wry smile twists your lips, relishing the rare occasion where you can understand the irony.

"I'm going out tonight."

And so you go.

(sometimes i just can't. everything is so loud and shiny and new that it hurts my head and my heart too but i can't fix it.)

You are out the door with the night air licking paths along your skin moments after you straighten out, breaking out into a sprint that lets you go and go and go and leave everything else behind. From a young age you realized that you had to walk ever so slowly or else the world would zoom by and you'd be so utterly lost in world you can never comprehend. People make life more complicated than it is (you focus on the good things like living and love and movement because the rest is simply optional) and slows down the tilt of the Earth, but it keeps on spinning for you until your feet grow clumsy and heavy and unable to keep up with the beat. You've always been so very proud of your endurance and the ability to keep up with the loping stride for hours on end as you acquire shin splits and cramps that you welcome as old friends - it keeps you here and anchored and far away from the deathly quiet world of shadows and darkness that lurks beyond.

Some woman hums quietly in your ears about wishes and metal and you fly with her, wishing desperately for a voice that will never appear. All these things you want so hard to say will forever remain in the pit of your stomach and that's okay, really, because your body always knows and feelings always wins over words because you can twist words until they are small and deformed and idle but touch and emotion will forever remain pure - even a twisted perversion of a once singular sentiment.

In some ways you love running even more than dancing because in the end the song has to finish but you can just keep going and going and the pavement never runs out and neither does the amount of steps you can take. Eventually everything morphs into a whispered blur and you can leave behind all of this (all your regrets and wants and fears) and become a different, better person.

(But you still cling onto that one little bit of yourself and build back up from pseudo-nothingness, never truly knowing how to let go.)

Buildings whip by at sonic speed and you're still sprinting and your lungs are burning and your throat is on fire; that's fine because you're never planning on stopping and speaking ever again. A vicious cramp starts up in your calf and you welcome it like an old friend, smiling against the sweat that stains your face and the ache and release of a body learning how to live again because it all feels so shinybright and muted at once that you can lose yourself in the feeling of breathing and living and not have to think about anything complicated like blondes and boys with angry eyes and smiles that makes you want to curl up somewhere quiet and rock back and forth back and forth. You hate him so much and not at all; all these conflicting feelings rise up and drown you (you've never felt anything this strong before and it /scares/ you - life is usually through the haze of a curtain that you can never draw back).

Breath whistles through your teeth and you slow your pace a fraction so you don't burn and crash before the night has even begun; a still suicidal pace to others but a comfortable rhythm to you. Now it's not about running away from your past but more fighting for the future, scoping out new places and possibilities and people to be. You think about inviting somebody home but the blind slap of feet on pavement gently pulls the thought from your mind until it is nothing but a distant memory that will be erased with all the rest. In time you will outrun all the people that watch and judge and your own mind that traps you within the brightwhite walls but for now you relish the anonymity of not being able to know your own name.

(we're all trapped and hidden and twisted but i've learned how to untangle myself for the briefest of moments and just be.)

When your lungs expand and send searing pangs all throughout your chest you know you should stop but can't - your pace slows so you force yourself to speed up again, taking noisy inhales and putting too much effort to just keep going keep going keep going because you can't stop now then you'll remember everything and remembering hurts. You slow down some more and that's not right because Jessa runs fast so you kick up with a sharper dig of heel, begging your muscles to just let you go for a little bit more, just a tiny bit longer but you're on your fourth wind and can't fucking stop won't ever stop. That's the point of (anything) everything you've ever done.

Your body impacts something hard and rough - if you took enough time you'd notice the air tastes different. Softer, somehow. Safer. You droop around the object and struggle to sort yourself out from the sudden detachment from your muscles and bones. Get up. And really, you would, but you're knotted and paralyzed and slumped almost motionless against the gentle ground and and there's no way you can even think, let alone move anytime soon.

(You can't keep running anymore just like you can't ever remember everything, but you forget everything you can eventually remember; you're torn on which is worse.)

[OOC: I don't even know what this monstrosity is. She kept rambling and wouldn't stop. Maybe because it's 4 30 in the morning, but I really don't even know. Yay if you can find anything out of that!]

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[L△LIA]

Used to be the one of the rotten ones
And I liked you for that
Now you're all gone
Got your make-up on
And you're not coming back

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Home. It was always something I took for granted until I didn't have one anymore. Like everything else, I assumed that it couldn't be taken from me; it had always belonged to me and always would belong to me. This is how things work when you're still young enough to believe that you have rights over anything you're able to lay your greedy hands on, but there was always a measure of truth in that. Confidence was literally everything to a slumdog like myself, so I licked my fingers until they were coated with the ink of my body and wrote my name in the dust of District One's streets: PROPERTY OF ELLA WREN DAHL. No trespassers allowed. Insist something often enough and people will start to believe you. Shacktown was mine and I made sure everyone knew it — howled it from the rooftops, beat my territorial fists against my chest, kissed sidewalks and trash cans until dereliction loved me back. Home was never really a house, but the people and places that wrapped themselves around me and claimed me as fervently as I did them.

When I try think back to the very beginning, before I was old enough to discover all the things bodies could do, I only remember walking hand-in-hand with Auggie until we were caught in the web of streets that District One hides, because god forbid someone realize that poor people live there. A memory only stretches back so far and a child can only be so aware of the world at large, but we knew enough. There were people who saw us sleeping on cardboard boxes, before we learned to hide ourselves properly, yet assumed we never knew that we were anything less than wanted. Children know. We wandered alleyways until we found other kids who also knew and learned that we could want each other when no one else would and that family was something we could make for ourselves. That's how Auggie and I met Zane, filthy and forgotten, like us.

Together we transformed poverty into pride, converted an abandoned also like us shack into a home, and reinvented our family trees into something more singular. Twining our fingers together like roots, we became our own source of sustenance when food was in short supply. My brother would go out at night, scrounging through trashcans for scraps, while my bosom brother, my guttersnipe twin, my newfound piece of always that huddled under tattered blankets with me in the cold of neglect that wasn't so lonely or scary anymore —

I can't help but flinch against the encroaching dusk that calls out to my harshest sweetest of childhood memories — all those awful, hollow moments of physical emptiness the three of us reconstructed into a kind of emotional fulfillment we could gorge ourselves on. "Chockablock full," I murmur to myself, feeling six years old again and wishing I still was. Looking out on District Eleven from the edge of the forest, our humdrum shanty in One doesn't feel so far away. In fact, it feels tortuously close. There is only a fence in my way, a chain link and barbed wire and blood stain divide that was almost easy to climb over the first time, but that feels impossible now. If I could figure out how to cross back to the other side, maybe I could reclaim what we left behind or at least what we lost in transition. I've never been good with giving things up. My stubborn hands automatically gravitate towards any possibility of recovery, no matter how minuscule the chance of salvage may be, because no matter what happens or who I try to fill the void with, I still want it all back, want myself back, want them him back. If I can see it, then I could reach out and touch it, I could wrap myself around him and never let go even if he fought against me... but I don't know how to cross this divide.

Camouflaged in the brambles at the edge of this foreign District, I quietly curl into my deprivation. Common sense tells me I shouldn't be here, that it's not only dangerous to me, but to everyone if I'm caught. We've all heard the stories of peacekeepers, hovercrafts, and the detention center — that holy trinity of Hell — but it's so hard to equate anything threatening with these thoughts of how Zane and I would press our pudgy childhood cheeks together as we puffed them full of air and giggled over how bizarro it felt. So as I sit cross-legged with my chin cupped in my palms and elbows on my knees, ballooning my cheeks out until they're inflated to full capacity before slowly pressing my fingers into the rounded flesh to send the air rushing out over my lips, the only fear I can feel is that I might never be able to reclaim this piece of me, of us. Again and again I send my exhalations trilling out, the vibrations from my fluttering lips numbing my nose until my eyes start to water in response to the overwhelming irritation of everything.

Burying my face in my hands, I empty my lungs of oxygen and seal my mouth and nose against the instinct to breathe, willing myself to become completely self-reliant. I don't need it, I don't need it, I don't need any of this — but no matter how determined I pretend I am, I know it's not true. I've never been much of a liar. Whatever I've done can't be taken back and I know how to accept that and freely confess to it... until the repercussions spiral beyond my control and my own conviction turns me into a convict. Honesty is not always the virtue it's made out to be. My truths repel everyone I've ever known and the only reason anyone stays is because I won't let them go. A familiar sensation of burning flares up within me and I gasp violently against it, my lungs swelling back to life with the rough intake of air. How am I supposed to give up something I need so desperately?

Silence is the only thing that answers me and I know it's just being honest too. Still, it's enough to send me into a fit of frustration that pulls me to my feet and towards the fence. It's just a goddamn fence, Ella. If you want to be on the other side, then climb it. Reaching out tentatively at first, I press my fingertips against the sun baked metal. It's warm, but the heat isn't enough to blister my hands and I'm not shocked by an electric current, so I tangle my fingers into the links and begin hoisting myself up off the ground. The world falls a little further away with each new foothold I find as I tug myself forever upward, convinced that there must be something beyond this barrier worth finding again. Despite the barbed wire looping itself into an intimidating obstacle course along the top, nearing ever closer as I continue hauling my body up the latticework of the fence, the prospect of reaching the hazardous summit only fuels my adrenaline.

I've done this before, there's no reason I can't do it now. Only this time my palms aren't slicked with blood and I'm doing this alone; Zane isn't here to nudge me onward the way he was then when all I wanted to do was throw myself into the arms of Auggie's death or to take my hand when I thought I couldn't go on, the same way he'd been doing since the days before we even knew what death was. Even if he were here now, he wouldn't reach out to me the same way he did back then. Things are different — we're different. Home was never a house and it's no longer the space between his arms and maybe it could be the space between Tiva and Kade's arms, but they are new territory and right now I just want something that feels undeniably familiar. I want dusty streets and tin roofs, cracked sidewalks and District dereliction — the days I lived without a mother or a lover or definitions for words like guilt and loss.

Grappling carefully with the treacherous coils of spiked wire crowning the peak of the fence, I find an arc wide enough to slip through, gritting my teeth as my arm grazes a couple of barbs when I turn myself around for the decent. A thin trail of blood trickles down my arm, taunting me about how the only things that stay the same are the things I wish were different. As I reach down for a lower handhold, I can feel the red fluid creep into the lifelines of my palm, filling the web of cracks before a shift in my grip spreads it across the entire surface of my hand. My stomach twists against a vague blur of things I can't quite remember, thankfully, when my skin was so slippery with blood that I don't know how I held onto anything. I didn't. Zane held on for me the same way he always had and without him I —

Wound up in my flashback panic, the realization of my hand slipping loose is delayed and I can't catch myself in time. I have often daydreamed about falling and the way the air might rush against my face, pulling me away from myself until the only thing that remained would be a hazy awareness of liberation. This is nothing like that and I writhe against the emptiness, searching for something to reach out and cling to, but my wild flails find only a vacant nothingness. There is nothing left to catch me except — the ground knocks the air from my lungs, but seems to show me enough mercy to leave my bones in tact. Momentum continues to hurl me onward and my body rolls until my legs collide with the trunk of a nearby tree. Everything screams out in shock and pain and disorientation, but I'm so relieved to have found the stability of stillness again that I don't even care. I just squeeze my eyes shut and lay there.

Once more, my mind rewinds into the memories of my youth and the puffer fish faces of Zane and I's childish breathing games, because, in the end, this is what I came looking for. I am lulled into the pattern of rise and fall, inflate and deflate. Automatically, I exhale into my cheeks before reaching up to push the air free. The hushed whisper of each breath leaving my mouth helps to soothe the pain from my fall, until it ebbs away into little more than a dull ache. Slowly I begin to notice that whatever my face is resting against is anything but still, something more than a figment of my imagination, and my eyes snap open at the realization that it's another person. I attempt to crane my neck to see who I've collided with, but the dark tangles of my hair are everywhere and my vertebrae scream out an objection to the movement, so I abandon my investigation. I know enough — "Not a tree." — and, despite the way my limbs are wrapped around her, not the home I came searching for.

(Can't you come back?)

---

(OOC — Urghhh, I don't even know. It's three a.m. and I shouldn't be writing this late, it makes my brain feel half-dead. Maybe I can make this better in the morning. D:)

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[sadniss everdeen]

Jessalyn Colbier

♫ Never bitter and all delicious ♫

~:~ 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.

and if we built an armor for our tender bodies
could we love each other
would we stop to feel? [/size][/font]

Ever so slowly you are beginning to sort out where you begin and where you end, limbs becoming unstuck from this strange sort of limbo you find yourself in more and more nowadays, between awake and asleep (alive and dead). Some part of you tries to lay really quite still in hopes of finding out what Lydia could have possibly gained from this – how it made her smarter but even more blind at the same time and why would she do it if she turned into what she is now? But the fragile peace you’ve acquired give no answers and you are not inclined to ask the questions that will never leave the weighted tip of your tongue.

Jessa goes fast but now Jessa is gone alone somewhere inside her own head and you absently wonder if you could stay here forever with the dark that doesn’t hurt and the blunted edges of a room you can never canvas. Everything is nothing but muted shadow but it doesn’t scare you because you aren’t yourself right now – you are simply an extension of Jessa that is trying ever so hard to find a way to feel through the throbbing of disjointed limbs and lungs that refuse to cool. And you guess that’s okay because it means you’ll be able to go again soon and that fills you with a sense of deep peace – something you can never hold onto no matter how hard you try.

(But really, that’s not surprising. There are plenty of things you can’t feel in your grasp; like words and friends and the ability to stop caring.)

You allow yourself to float along the muddled channels of your own mind in hopes of coming out of this with something you’ve been missing your whole life – a healthy brain, a co-operative tongue, how to make the stares they give you just go away.

(really, that’s all I want. just to be normal. i’m not fragile, honestly. you can touch me and it’ll be okay. it’s always okay even when it’s not.)

It is the insistent pressure of something on your chest that brings your baby blues back into this lifetime, all frosted and lost and empty but so very full at once – it heaves and whistles like a real person but that’s stupid because you didn’t bring anybody home today. It’s everywhere and you hate it because it’s so warm and close and they’re not supposed to touch you and it’s all so wrong, but your limbs have dissolved once more and you find yourself robbed from capacity of speech.

You try to think of things that can make wrong right and blink because really, can it be that easy?

Yesterday you found an old lamp in your basement and you were glowing the rest of the day because it looks exactly like a genie lamp, and that’s what genies do, right? Give you wishes? Maybe this time the genie will listen and the warmth that’s actually kind of nice can go away to leave you with knotted limbs and vague shapes of ideas that will never take solid form. Your eyes scrunch shut and you start muttering unknown words under your breath, waiting for the crushing weight to disappear and leave you blissfully alone again.

You wait and wait and wait but even though you wished really hard like Lydia said you should, the owner of the mess of raven hair is still there, and you’re not sure if you want to feel cheated or sad, so settle for a little bit of both. It’s only the grounding presence of a gentle swell against your ribcage (a girl, then. A girl that feels so familiar but so different at once it makes that hazy doubt retract just a little bit) that keeps you from breaking like the promises people make but have no intention to keep.

A breeze rolls past and sweeps up the toned expanse of your biceps, drawing a shiver from your flushed skin, unconsciously slinging a rubbery arm over the unknown body for warmth and contact as the shadows (so very dark, so very frightening) begin to close in. It’s kind of like when you bring them home for the night and you try to fix each other’s problems that you can bring yourselves to care about, but there’s this lack of urgency that’s strange and misplaced and maybe a little bit nice that you could get used to if you cared enough past tonight.

(but i don’t want to ask because words make everything worse and i think i’d be crushed if this stranger didn’t get it just like everybody else.)

She smells like sweat and wilderness and something so familiar it makes your lips curl up in something resembling anger but that’s not right because Jessa is never angry because you’re so uncomfortably empty and not as once that nothing ever makes sense and you’re just dancing along to the songs in your head. And that’s okay, really. You can’t bring yourself to understand the notes that everybody else seems to play.

And then there’s that feeling again inside yourself, filling and emptying a space where something is supposed to be, something so very big and beautiful that fills your days with half-truths and vague notions of fairytales that are not meant to be held. And you’re like a ball of rubber bands collapsing in on itself, so very taut and strung and tense as they go ininin because they do not know how to be at peace in that way that you always are but can never be at once. It’s all so loud and you just want it to go away so you bury your face in messy curls and try to forget the world.

Without noticing your fingers have begun to pluck random melodies along the xylophone of her ribs, a whimsical tune that is repetitive and soothing in ways you just can’t describe. She is smooth and raw to the touch, dirtied skin under ragged clothes telling a story so different from the pale flesh you’re used to – it is angry and spiteful and alive whereas the blonde is always calm and serene and right – that you are suddenly possessed with the urge to simply lay here and map the canvas of her body for hours, cleansing her of those unworthy of touching her temple that you understand is tainted in that uncanny ability to look beyond that singular theme of not knowing (every)things in life with clarity that betrays yourself to others.

(Mine you think with a languid fervor that has no right being here with her warmth so cloying and uninvited but welcome all the same I want to feel and feel and never stop never ever stop that repeats a mantra as your scarred fingertips draw harmonies and lyrics in patterns, featherlight, against her form)

And in a tangled heap with limbs that threaten to float away and a mind already half gone to the Dark Days, you cling onto whatever grounding you can find and just breathe.

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