burn for a second || { silas }

[dars]

This story began a very, very long time ago, when a girl named Lennon Greer closed her eyes to this world and opened them someplace else. It was empty space: a white void, and she was alone for quite some time, floating there. She passed the time by watching her son's growth, smiling until her cheeks cramped. From there, she still got to hear him the first time he laughed, got to see him take his first steps, got to see him hold the teddy bear she'd gotten him close every night when he went to sleep.

She was there, but he didn't know it. A ghost, fixated on the mortal world she would never again be a part of. Lennon grew prone to melancholy, stopped watching as much because it began to hurt when her own mother had to raise another child in her absence. It began to hurt when he learned the words Granny and Pop instead of Momma and Daddy. It hurt when he cried at night, because she was so close that she could reach out and pluck him up, hold him against her until he fell asleep again. It hurt, and on those days, the white light she was immersed in was not so bright, a gray mass of broken memories and loneliness.

She didn't know how to explain it, but she realized one day that she had the opportunity to go someplace else, someplace further. It was not quite so easy an answer, though, because in the same way that she knew she could leave, she knew seeing her loved ones so often would no longer be possible.

Still. She mulled over the options in her head for an eternity and a second all the same- time was irrelevant where she was. She could stay, and be alone, and watch. Or she could go, and let him become a man without looking over his shoulder when he felt her presence, only to look right through her.

She was going to leave; she's embarrassed to admit. But just when she had decided, a portal appeared, a light within the light, she heard a voice that was not her own, and everything changed.

Andy brought a forest with him and, somehow, the space felt more alive. The trees went on forever and ever in most directions, all except the edge, a cliff side that met the white light. It was an exit and a window into the mortal plane, but also an entrance, it turned out.

She did not speak to Andy for quite some time. She would occasionally catch him looming in the distance, peering at her from behind a tree and wondering who, exactly, she was, and what she was doing there. She could also hear him whistling as he skipped along the forest floor, spinning with his hands stretched out and his head tipped back.

Others came with time. A boy named Drace brought the mountains he'd grown up in. They sat nestled miles away from her white space, too far for her to cross paths with him for the longest. And then she heard him speaking one day, to Andy. Their voices were approaching but she could not see them past the treeline. All at once, their voices became quiet, and she guessed they must have seen her there, floating in the nothingness.

"You can come out, you know," she said at last, "I won't bite."

For the first time since arriving, Lennon stepped on solid ground and looked away from the past, to look at the new life she'd born.

"I'm Lennon."

After that, existing- or, not existing, maybe, was much easier. She could always go back, always check on her son when she wanted, but she realized more and more that he was okay without her, that it had always been her who needed him in the end.

A girl named Magenta brought birds and they built nests in Andy's trees. A boy named Gavin came and suddenly they had home- the feeling and literal buildings for each of them. They could tell when someone new would come from then on, because a new home would appear in anticipation of their arrival.

They would all meet up at the edge of the world and wait from then on, a growing group of souls who'd loved and lost and been loved and been lost. A boy named Lex brought the beach so sometimes the group would swim. Even more so after a boy named Dustyn brought the sun with him- it was bright and hot and the water was nice to cool off in. Dane brought the changing of the seasons, though, so sometimes the water was too cold and they would all just stand at the shoreline.

Reese brought empathy- they'd struggled to know what, exactly, it was he'd brought until they realized how much more they all understood one another. They could look at each other and see everything they'd been, everything they were, everything they felt, even everything they wanted to be.

Raven brought the meadow, a place so quiet that not even Magenta's birds dared to sing. The flowers were plump and smelled beautiful. It was their quiet place- her quiet place, but she never minded sharing with the group. Tobias brought music that seemed to come from the sky itself. Beautiful piano ballads when the winter came, upbeat guitar come spring.

Myrcella brought the night. Or, rather, the moon and the stars. She and Dustyn had taken quite some time to work out a schedule and even now, half the time night and day were one in the same. Harper brought the rain, which brought vibrancy and renewal to everything: Andy's trees, Raven's meadow, even the souls themselves seemed refreshed after the rain.

Lennon's place, once filled with loneliness, was now so very full of life and love and friendship and happiness. There was never a day where she felt alone. Somehow this place, this infinity that was neither here nor there, had become home to so many, all because she'd stayed, or maybe because she'd considered leaving, and now it was not her place. It was theirs. All of theirs.

And it was wonderful, until the newest house appeared and Andy's forest caught fire.

[dars]

Andy exploded into screams, a mixture of panic and fury as the leaves crackled into ash above them. He flailed, falling to the ground, kicking, clawing at the dirt shrieking as if it were causing him physical pain.

It wasn't, they all thought, but also he was Andy, so it might as well have.

The portal of light flickered, a flame by its own right, then sparked, then a burst of inferno spilled out it: a volcano beginning erupt.

The boy that stepped out of the flames was not a boy anymore. He was six and a half feet of fury, complete with horns and glowing red eyes and the cruelest of smiles stretched across his face.

Dane froze, a statue of terrified anguish. For him, The Boy Who Was Not once a name, and a title, and had the funniest laugh when he was a toddler.

Reese groaned, hands pressed to his temples.

"So much darkness," he muttered, though the sound was lost between the burning trees and the bellowing Andy, who was now standing up. His screams stopped all at once, facing away from the group, he hunched over as if his consciousness was slipping. They all felt a surge of energy- a surge of Andy- so bright that it hurt to look at him for a moment but once they did, Andy's feet were hovering above the ground.

His eyes glowed with a yellow-green light: the heart of the forest, vines crawled their way up his arms and the fallen leaves swirled around him in wind patterns the rest of them could not feel.

They knew what came next; there was no stopping it.

For a single, solitary moment, their world was silent in wait. Andy drew in on himself and then screamed loud enough to rattle bones and churn blood. He surged forward toward the Boy Who Was Not, earth versus fire.

The Boy seemed to greet the challenge. The sound of sparks began at his fingertips and he was, only a few short seconds later, completely engulfed in fire.

Andy was going to lose this if he fought alone, they all knew that. Fire fed on earth, and the Boy had at least two feet on Andy; he was foolish and headstrong to try this on his own.

Lennon pointed a finger at Harper, "Deal with the fire."

Harper was one step ahead, raising her hands above her to summon the rain. The flames above began to hiss unpleasantly, no happier to have their meal interrupted than the souls were for having their existence interrupted.

"Reese, make him-" she halted. Make him feel. Reese winced.

"So much darkness," he repeated and she didn't care.

"Now!"

He sighed, begrudgingly sneaking away.

Andy crashed into the Boy and the result was fireworks. He raised his hands and patches of brier broke ground; the Boy burned them away just as soon as they tried to touch him. "He can't stay here!" Raven said through gritted teeth. Andy tried harder: sent and entire tree crashing toward his foe. A wall of flame met it halfway, and by the time it reached the Boy, it was no more than ash.

"RAHHHHH!" Andy fumed, manic, he swung once, twice, three times- each was parried with visible ease from the Boy.

He grabbed Andy by his shoulders; Andy screamed in pain as he was lifted into the air and the flames began to scorch him.

"Boo!" said the Boy, and Andy was sent flying backwards, crashing into the forest, ripping through entire tree limbs before finally falling to a heap several hundred yards away.

The Boy reverted to his more-human-but-still-not-quite state, no longer coated in flame. The evil smile returned.

"Who is next?" he whistled, as if it were a game.

He'd just looked at Gavin when he faltered.

His eyes grew wide for a second, then impossibly narrow. He swung about face to find Reese, who was still clutched onto his ankle. There were tendrils of darkness pouring out of the Boy and into Reese; he was visibly in pain.

"What are you- Get-" The Boy Who Was Not raised his fist like he was going to swing, and then he stopped. He stumbled, fell to his knees. His breathing sped up, small desperate gasps of air.

His mother squeezing his hand. "Say yes." His brothers chasing after him. His first kiss. His first middle-school dance. The bike he'd ridden for four years before he finally managed to break it beyond fixing. The taste of vanilla ice cream. The smell of summer after the rain. Juliet bumping her head on the bar. Beck hunting for a high with him. Sophie complaining about the bugs.

His eyes were closed, and they were all filled with an incomprehensible amount of grief. They felt guilty for every bad thing he had done, pained for every bad thing that had ever been done to him. At once they all understood why he was like this, how his light had been taken, how easy it was to forget it had ever been there in the first place.

When he opened his eyes, they were full of tears.

He did not speak, just pushed past them deeper into the forest. He crashed to his knees next to a crumpled Andy, who was unresponsive. But his chest still rose and fell, at least, so he was alive. Or, not dead. Or, whatever the rest of them were.

The boy pressed a hand to Andy's chest, and they all felt the warmth that was breathed into him.

Andy's eyes opened; the Boy stood.

"I... uh," they watched. Lennon said, "It will take some time. That's okay."

He disappeared into the forest.

Andy said, "Better not go burning anymore of my trees, either."

[dars]

Coming to terms with his humanity was a process. He followed Reese around for months because half the time he was so angry with himself that he didn't want to risk repeating what had happened when he had first arrived.

A boy, said to be living with no heart, killed when he was stabbed through it. A boy who'd made a game of death, who'd laughed at life, who'd held no regard for it. A boy who had, as Reese put it, allowed the darkness within him to win.

"We all got demons," he had said.

When he wasn't with Reese, he was with Dane. Neither of them spoke, though he suspected it was because Dane didn't really speak much to begin with and Silas hadn't exactly made a great impression. Perhaps the thing that got people through was the hope that their loved ones would grow up to be better; Silas guessed he'd failed in that regard, so they would both just sit and not speak for a while, neither willing to go first but neither wishing the other would leave, either.

It would never be fixable. That's what was so hard about it. There would never be a chance to undo all of his wrongs, there would never be a chance to do something right. He was not there anymore, he was here, with these strangers who he'd tried to kill as a greeting. Most of them seemed to have completely forgotten it, pardon the little one, whose eyes still flickered that strange shade of chlorophyll-green any time he was near.

It would never be fixable, but eventually he found the freedom in that. There was no fixing it, and there was no breaking it. He was here, with these strangers, and he was okay, and everyone else would be too.

They all sat around a campfire on the beach one night laughing as one of the boys played music without an instrument. He finally stepped out of the darkness toward them, illuminated by the flames. He winced, glad for the darkness so that they wouldn't see his blush when they all turned to face him.

"Um, I'm Silas."

They smiled, and Dane patted the empty space next to him, and Silas took it, and then they carried on because things were all better again.

[dars]

silas when he realized he was dead:

thank you !

to the gms for being awesome and making this an enjoyable experience- you guys are the best and your hard work has not gone unnoticed or unappreciated and ily all !!!

to my allies for being so fun to plot with, for helping silas find some shred of his humanity before he died, for making me wish i had a little more time with him just so i could continue writing with you guys. ur the best 10/10 would ally again.

to the d10 fam: yeehaw, giddy on up now ya hear?

and to the other tribs still duking it out: good luck have fun!!! can't wait to keep reading what u guys write xoxo