Shake Your Bones :: (Calliope + Orion)

[L△LIA]

take a back seat or play pharaoh dance with me and shake your bones No one needs to tell Calliope Bloom that the world is fucked up. She knows. Oh, believe you me, she knows. If ever she needed proof, her recent phone conversation with Mace Emberstatt provided a lifetime of clarity. It wasn't even that she contacted him or that she might have said one or two things that were borderline civil to her brother's murderer, but there were unspoken moments when she felt regret for something other than Aesop or Galaxy. So: Up your $%*@!# @#%%^$, World! As if she's going to confess a laundry list of exactly what all of her regrets are for. (However, she could probably be convinced to write up quite the list of things she'd rather do than that, beginning with eating whatever biohazardous material this hospital has slated for incineration today and ending with being the person in charge of clipping Napoleon's endlessly growing toe nails.) Besides, the chemical cooking street-queen of Six is too busy. As it is, she's had her hands full with beakers of questionable liquids, mixing and measuring out her rebellion in a very tangible way. Calliope Bloom versus The World. She's got the whole crystal meth thing down to, well, a science, but last night's project was a little trickier and, frankly, she wasn't expecting it to turn out quite so... purple. Maybe it's for the best that she missed the realm of orange entirely, but regardless of hue, she thinks her hair is definitely red enough to make Galaxy proud. Way to put that talent for chemistry to good use. Gold star. The girl wanders the hospital's hallways with the same kind of thinly veiled aimlessness that resulted in the decision to metaphorically set her hair on fire last night. Now, she burns. Mace's advice to her about Patricia haunts her and her head spins from not just the idea that Galaxy's murderer knows Calliope's fallen friend in a way she can never understand, but that if she accepts that then she also has to come to terms with Mace knowing Aesop in the same way. It's not that she has ever wanted to know her brother or her friend on that level, but who is Mace? Who is Patricia to lay claims to a piece of a person neither of them have a right to? Calliope still isn't certain she's capable of loving the brother she has left, so how is she supposed to care about her sworn enemies? It's impossible for her to know where to go from here. As if trying to give her a helpful hint, she comes across a trail of muddy footprints leading down the hallway to her left. She frowns. Turns. Follows. The echoes of dirt take her away from rooms she knows too well and toward an escape of the unknown. More and more often lately she's found herself nosing into other people's business in a secret attempt to forget her own, so when she reaches the end of the path (a sign reads: Theodore Hartmyre), she has no qualms about oh-so-casually leaning against the open door frame and turning a critical eye toward the pair of strangers within. One lies in bed, obviously comatose, while the other has taken up residence in the chair beside him. There's no mistaking them for anything other than brothers and the only particularly stand-out detail of the scene is how the unconscious guy looks freshly bathed with well-kept hair, while the one fussing over him is... To put it bluntly, the only person in this room who looks even half-presentable is also the only person not capable of taking care of himself. Calliope, her mangy oversized t-shirts, and the burning rats nest she calls hair shouldn't be in charge of delivering judgment, but seeing as how the world is already pretty fucked up, she has no intention of missing her opportunity to contribute. "He's in a coma. Do you really think he cares about whether or not his hair got messed up during the sponge bath? Stop patting his weave and do something with your own life."

[loren]

YOU RATTLE MY BONES BUT YOU'RE LOCKED IN A CAGE WITH ME

O R I O N ▲ H A R T M Y R E

I woke up blinded by morning's yoke at the bottom of a grave.

Three in the morning and my one man's symphony of seething mattress springs and crumpling bed sheets and half-formed hymns about them were interrupted mid-crescendo with the sound of Clara's shoe thrown against the wall dividing our rooms. My clothes were a second skin drenched in cold sweat. 

And then I was outside. The courtyard was completely erased in the tar of twilight but the pathway to the tool shed was worn and I found my way. That's all we were ever taught to do. Find a way. Keep your tears running on the inside, and be thankful that the heart doesn't make a sound as it breaks. Misfortune strikes, and the Hartmyres find a way. And the ones that don't...

I grabbed my newest shovel, a secret present to myself, Florentina, and headed for the yard.

This was the only way I could ever rest in peace anymore. Digging graves until the calluses beneath my gloves became trenches of their own and my knees collapse beneath me. Only in all-consuming exhaustion could I find five hours of release. I don't dream, I don't see their faces, I don't feel anything at all. I don't feel the venom rips in my tendons and I don't feel the blow of watching Florence murdered over and over eternally behind my eyelids. In my dreamless collapse I'm not holding unto a shovel, or the hope that our father will resurrect from his deathless death, or Teddy's limp body the night we found him there. I'm not holding unto anything because I cease to exist all together. 

It's easier to cease to be. It's easier to surrender to nothingness and just lie in the tomb you dug yourself. And that morning I woke up in a half-assed shallow grave was the first time I finally understood him.

So I went to visit him for the first time since his admittance. 

And he looked like both himself and a complete stranger all at once. He had the tracings of the brother I knew but dull shades and shadows of sickness and disinfectant. 

Sitting by his side, I reached out to touch him but froze. He looked like he could shatter at my touch and we've been there before. The last time he fell apart he was alone and afraid and shattered so finely none of us knew there were so many pieces to him he was storing inside. And I never visited. I let him stew alone again in all his pieces and shards and the only thing I could think to do was

fix his hair. They got the front all wrong and if he was awake he would've thrown a fit.

"You look like one of those... one of those Capitol snoots, Ted," I grinned, mussing with his locks. 

"He's in a coma." a voice interjected, "Do you really think he cares about whether or not his hair got messed up during the sponge bath? Stop patting his weave and do something with your own life."

I turned to look at the figure in the doorway. A young figure drowned in her own clothing and crowned in a tangle of gaudy purple sneered.

I blinked. "Did they ruin your hair during the baths, too?" 

T E M P L A T E B Y C H E L S E Y

[L△LIA]

don’t be, don’t be so cold bones rust, decay, and mold head first, it is what it is youth lost kicks us to live Arms cross, the language of unspoken tongues and lingering resentment, as she allows the crook of her lips to hitch up into precisely half a smirk. "Nah, I did this to myself." The hospital lighting wavers endlessly overhead, subtle enough to get used to, but too persistent to ever stop being irritating. If the girl continues wasting away all of her time wandering the coma ward, she thinks she'll need glasses soon or at least a really good THWACK to the head so she can close her eyes to life's little annoyances, like the boy wasting away in front of her. With both perfect hair and effortless ignorance, he has obviously figured out the secret to life. "Besides, I thought it was pretty obvious that I don't do much of the whole —" She uncrosses her arms just enough to make a mockery of jazz hands... as if jazz hands aren't inherently self-mocking. "— bathing thing. Too busy." Yet, despite her profession of being too busy, she finds the time to slink, uninvited, into the room, claiming a vacant chair next to the conscious stranger and immediately kicking up her feet. One glance at her face makes it perfectly clear that she has no qualms about her footrest being the end of Theodore Hartmyre's hospital bed. Hell, if she were two inches taller they'd be playing footsie right now. This is a secret on display. What appears to be total disregard is actually just a girl who has gotten too used to this. Months have passed (— a year? More?) since Poe got knocked down and didn't get back up again and despite how frequently she's cursed his name and wondered to herself if she even loves her idiot brother anymore... she hasn't missed a day. Just like this, she visits him — kicking her feet up and ranting, because she can't stop caring. She can hate him, but she can't abandon him and it's the same when it comes to how she can neglect herself, but can't give up entirely. "What's your excuse, dirt boy?" Leaning over, she licks the pad of her thumb and wipes at a smudge of soil on the cheek of the chattier Hartmyre brother. This too is a phrase from an unspoken language, but even if the traditionally motherly gesture implies that she cares just a little, it's still pretty clear that mostly? Mostly she doesn't give a fuck.