i'd run | farley&tobias | jb [blitz]

[eulalie blake 1a 🍒 tris]

►►►

you're fighting me off like a firefighter
so tell me why you still get burned?
you say you're not, but you're still a liar
'cause i'm the one that you run to first

Farley counts her knuckles as she waits — relatives coming and going with every set of ten, and she wants to correct the peacekeepers. 'I'm family, too.' But they hold her at a distance, narrowed eyes and clenched jaws showing no compassion, and she has to watch as minutes shift to an hour. It's unbearable. A thousand things she wants to say, but all she can feel is her throat swelling shut. How does someone give a eulogy without breaking? How do you accept death?

"Farley Merlo, you're up.
You've only got two minutes.
We're running late. Make it quick."

There's an urge to fight, to throw a fist and stand her ground, but she can't mourn him in a cage. The birds have stopped singing, but then she's there in that room and she's finally able to speak. But all that comes out is a gasp, arms wrapping around his neck and forehead resting against his cheek. It's not supposed to end like this. A stupid boy and foolish feelings. What had she been thinking? She should have been patient. Just waited to grow up and find herself on her own. Being a lone wolf isn't the worst fate.

But she let herself get attached; found a boy that spoke like rain against glass and she opened up without taking the time to think it through. In another life, maybe the future would have been kinder. Maybe she would have told him how she felt, three words that could make empires rise and fall, and maybe he would have lived past eighteen. Maybe he will, but she shakes her head. She can't think about all the could-be's. Not now. Funerals are easier when you aren't in love.

She hates herself for expecting the worse, but she's morbid, and early deaths run in his blood. "It's not fair," she croaks, addressing too many things to count, but she brings a hand to his face and looks into his eyes. He stills her, but there'll be a scar. "They can't take my best friend. You can't leave, Toby. Please don't." It's not like he has a choice, but they're spoiled creatures. Abadeer boys and Eden girls. "We should have stayed at that pond. I wish we could run away."

Ghosts never stay;
she should have learned.

every time that i swear it's over
it makes you want me even more
you pull away and i come in closer
and all we ever stay is torn

[ dars ]

[umber vivuus 12b 🥀 [dars]]

a burn of breath; young vapor dies
a touch of mist slid upper thigh
paler flight, veiled white
skying sight

He hugged Lenox goodbye, did his best to catalog her scent before the peacekeepers pulled her out and the door slammed shut.

Citrus. She smelled like the bits of life that stuck around after autumn settled in, satsumas littering the ground and vines of plump, purple grapes stretching their fingers out against the tallest of pines, even while everything else turned brown and decayed. And he would remember her for that.

Lenox, the life that continued on.

When the doors opened again, Tobias's mother collapsed into his arms, and his father rested hi chin on top of his head. Apart from the things he expected them to say, needed them to say, there was nothing. Silence and mourning, and peacekeepers ripping his mother's hand off of his wrist when she refused to let go. He clenched his jaw, then quickly covered the claw mark with his sleeve, for fear that she would be punished for injuring him.

And then they opened again, and a little black bird perched in front of him. Raven hair and wise eyes smeared with black. She'd always looked a little too rough around the edges to belong at Eden, but that was precisely why he had agreed to be her friend the night they met.

He smiled.

Oak trees and ant bites; summer's to-and-fro. There was a thump in his chest, a pang of nostalgia as she wrapped her arms around him.

"They can't take my best friend. You can't leave, Toby."

He worried that he would blink and she would be gone, so he did not dare close his eyes. He stared, pulling away from her finger to her chin, tracing her features as casually as an artist viewing a subject.

"Please don't," she pleaded, and he bit down hard on his cheek.

What if things could ever be that simple?

"We should have stayed at that pond. I wish we could run away."

He covered her mouth with his palm, walking her further away from the door, eyes manic with fear.

"Sh!" he whispered, finger to his own lips, "They can hear everything."

The last thing he needed was to know his last meeting with his best friend would end in horrible consequences for them both.

"Go there every day while I'm away. Go to our place, and think of me as I am right now." A strand of her hair fell in her face, and though his palm itched for him to do it, he refrained from tucking it. We don't do things like that, he reminded himself.

"Remember me as I am- not as who I'll become."

[eulalie blake 1a 🍒 tris]

►►►

you're fighting me off like a firefighter
so tell me why you still get burned?
you say you're not, but you're still a liar
'cause i'm the one that you run to first

Hand over her mouth and hair in her eyes — she wants to disappear. If anyone could erase her, it'd be Tobias; but the way he looks at her proves that would be an impossibility. Almost like she matters to him. Like he wants to push her out the door and chase her away to somewhere safer, just so she could go on to live a better life than his. And there's a chance that if he leaves her she can learn to laugh again with time, but in that moment it doesn't seem plausible. Even if she heals and finds someone else to share her insecurities with, she'll always carry Tobias in her heart. He's a stain she can't wash off. Won't.

The day they met, he looked at the way she carried herself — a walking cry for help with dark makeup and ripped clothes — and he didn't judge her for the way she expressed herself. Kids could be cruel, but not Tobias. He's always been an old soul. Maybe their past lives had been kinder. But it's better not to think about another world. She has to learn how to accept this one. She tries to nod at his advice, to let the hope of his words bury itself in her chest and bloom, but she's not able to fake being a garden right now. She's just a glass vase. And she's doing everything in her power not to break in front of him.

"I'll never forget you," she assures him, pulling back until only her hands are left closing the space between them. Latched to his shoulders — because Ripred knows she can't stand on her own. Because they're only friends. She has to be content with that. "And I'll keep going. I promise. It'll always be our place. Just ours." And Reese's, too. The line that connects the stars into a constellation. "You really are an idiot, Toby," she goes on, voice still soft, but there's a strain to it. She throws a punch at his chest, but there's barely any force behind it. "But you're my idiot. My stupid, reckless best friend. I don't deserve you."

She steps away and walks backwards, edging closer to where she entered. She feels weightless, like she needs to run back and hug him again, but it's easier this way. The clock is ticking, and it's almost time to go. He can't go into the arena with an added burden, and she can't risk living with the thought that she made his last days more conflicted. And as much as she'll regret it, she swallows her true feelings and mock-salutes him. "Make us proud, Mr. LaChance. If Six could do it, so can Seven." It's a gamble, but she'll let herself hope that he'll make it out. There's so much she still has to tell him.

"You know where to find me."

every time that i swear it's over
it makes you want me even more
you pull away and i come in closer
and all we ever stay is torn

[ dars ]

[umber vivuus 12b 🥀 [dars]]

a burn of breath; young vapor dies
a touch of mist slid upper thigh
paler flight, veiled white
skying sight

Farley was never meant to be a stable part of his life— his life was too stable as it was. Wealthy parents, private schools, seconds at dinner. Farley was meant to be a call to adventure. She was supposed to be sneaking out of windows and walking home from parties in the dark and counting stars on rooftops. And somehow, through the years, his best friend had become the biggest constant in his life, the thing with the most stability.

Of course he had thought about grabbing her hand on those walks home, or counting stars in her eyes instead of the sky, but fear of the unknown labelled him a coward in all aspects of romance. If there was even the slightest chance that the foundation of Tobias LaChance could crack, he was not willing to try, and whether he had meant for it to happen or not, that's exactly what Farley was: his foundation.

"I'll never forget you," she said, salt-skinned and raw. He wondered what she had meant by that— if she meant this to be their last meeting, or something else. Part of him felt angry for that, and part of him felt heartbroken. But uncertainty had a way of doing that to a person, didn't it?

"Make us proud, Mr. LaChance. If Six could do it, so can Seven."

Confusion ran its course through his veins, bleeding into his soul. A mass of unanswered questions peppered his existence, and he was too dumbfounded to ask them.

If Six could do it, so can Seven.

The words echoed, burned him like wildfire. Maybe he could survive, and maybe Farley had meant something else before.

"I—"

"You know where to find me," she whispered, and he smiled. Something familiar. Something they had always said to each other, ever since the garden of their friendship was an empty plot of tilled soil.

"Where the wild things are," he answered.