ill met by moonlight - ele (blitz)

[charade]

cleo.

We were alone
Bad habits
We lost control
We had it"

The academy was so close and yet so far. It was horrifying, stumbling around in the woods outside the walls, dried vomit on her dress, tearing holes in her stockings and being hit with a fresh spell of dizziness every few steps. She didn’t have to see her face to know that her makeup was dreadful, and her wrists were beyond sore.

The problem was that no one was allowed to see her in such a state. She had a certain image that she had carefully curated and that was one that was always supposed to be put together. On the other hand, she was doubtful that she was going to be able to get all the way back to her dorm without becoming a spectacle.

Cleo’s knees wobbled and she clenched her teeth. It wasn’t fair. She’d made it to the bike trail that ran around the circumference of the academy and there was someone walking several steps ahead, their back to her. Should she make her presence known?

“Help.” She squeaked, unsure if she even wanted to be heard. Showing weakness at a school like the one she attended was asking to be torn to pieces. But her body decided for her when she lost her balance and landed in the middle of the dusty path, yelping weakly when she broke a nail in the process.

Some cold part of her heart fumed at the indignity of it all, but she looked up anyway and froze. It would have been bad enough if it were some random student or a faculty member. But someone she knew? Someone in the group that she had—

“Benji…” she said quietly. It’d be easy to turn this nightmare to her advantage; of that she was sure. Then the nausea returned and she retched in a most undignified manner.

elegant

[gamemaker kelsier]

b e n j i .

"We might
be broken
by design"

Benji held onto so few pieces of himself sometimes that it was hard to reel himself in. He felt slightly frail for just a moment as he lay in the dark and stared at the spot on the bed that Scarlet used to inhabit. There wasn't much room in the space against the wall but somehow Benji hadn't minded. There was no way to sleep except tangled.

And the feeling of always being about to fall off the edge of the bed had become comforting. It had become hard to sleep since he'd been sleeping alone. Stella needed her beauty rest in order to stay on top. Benji didn't sleep. He'd spent so long in bed as a child that his teenage years had begged the time back.

Twelve-thirty in the morning had him slipping out of his dorm, a sweater pulled on over his pyjamas. The grounds were silent, slightly perfect in the sleeping hours. It felt as if the district had taken a deep breath and had yet to let it out.

He walked across the lawn until he hit the bike trail. A full loop around the academy would take him thirty minutes. If he walked it twice, perhaps he'd exhaust himself enough to sleep. He'd spent countless nights on it, drawing in his head as he stepped over roots and cracks in his path.

Maybe that's why he didn't hear her first cry, why when he turned in his tracks and saw her there, torn and broken in so many places he didn't register her there. She fell forwards. Benji stared at her, bloody, a mess. That blonde head of hair was unmistakable.

"Cleo," he said and knelt down in front of her. Fear, sharp and too deep lanced through him and he grit his teeth, he'd never seen her weak. Cleo's makeup was streaked down her cheeks, blood was on her lips, her skin, everywhere. Benji cupped her cheek in his hand lightly as if he were afraid of breaking her further. "Who did this," he asked. His tone was quiet, reserved as always but an unmistakable edge made his syllables sharp.

It'd been a while since he'd been angry but he could still remember the feeling. Cleo wasn't his just as much as he wasn't hers but kneeling in the dirt with her in pieces in front of him was unacceptable.

"Where does it hurt?"

[charade]

cleo.

We were alone
Bad habits
We lost control
We had it"

What was he doing, roaming the perimeter in the middle of the night? Trying to score some ounces of a dealer? Getting away from Stella? Or had he always been a night owl?

She started prepping the start of the story, it was terror inducing enough that she wouldn’t have to make up what had happened to her, but if she framed it just right she could probably get him to help instead of him laughing and taking pictures like most people would.

But before she could start getting him on her side, he was there, kneeling in front of her and looking almost concerned.

Like genuinely or something.

She winced, his touch was soft, but the muscles in her jaw were tense and she could feel a headache coming on. It was almost comforting in a way too. She met his gaze with tearstained eyes and she didn’t even have to pretend to cry.

It was strange, she almost felt safe.

“I—I don’t know.” It was the truth, something she wasn’t accustomed to saying without a bunch of bells and whistles attached. “It was—“ a kidnapping? Revenge? Bullying? A freak?

“It hurts everywhere.” She whimpered softly. She was laying it on a little thick, she told herself, as if trying to convince herself that it didn’t hurt as much as it did. Where was she supposed to start? It all came flooding back. The chair, the dial. The goggled mask and the cooler full of—

“Can you—can you help— god she hated that word—help me to my dorm? I don’t—"want? Need?

“I can’t be seen like this,” she huffed, her eyes fluttering as she tried to keep herself steady. Cass was dead. Cass was dead and she was supposed to tell people that some freak dressed like a demon bird had murdered him and then tortured her for shits and giggles.

“They strapped me to a chair, she sniffled. “And then…fuck, Benji, they stole my shoes too.”

The waterworks started up again.

elegant

[gamemaker kelsier]

b e n j i .

"We might
be broken
by design"

Everyone bends to rage sometimes. Like a flower wilting without the grace of light, Benji bent over Cleo as if he could take her pain.

Her voice was too soft, too scared for the girl whose gaze had always pierced through him. It was hard to recognize her like this. That anyone had the gall to reduce her to this angered him. He was wordless, shaking under the weight of his contempt. All he could do for a long moment was swipe his thumb across her cheek, slow and careful.

She was cold.

He listened to Cleo, a hand carefully travelling along her body, testing for any points of pain. He didn't want to risk hurting her further but he had to move her somewhere warmer. She needed help and luckily the academy had a nurse on duty twenty-four hours a day.

"It's Okay Cleo," he said, and wiped a tear gently with his thumb, "I've got you."

She seemed smaller than he remembered when he bent to pick her up. So much of her was in her persona, perhaps her ego made her taller. That or it was just the heels. His heartbeat was elevated, erratic. He paused and breathed out a slow and careful breath, gaze focused ahead of him. The nurse's room was roughly five hundred and twenty metres away. He would need to pause three times.

"I'll buy you a new pair of shoes," he said. Benji was pretty certain that he knew her style well enough by now. He started walking, focused on not losing his footing. "Two if you let me bring you to the nurse's."

[charade]

cleo.

We were alone
Bad habits
We lost control
We had it"

A gloved black hand interlacing fingers with a ragged, bloody stump.

A boy with dark eyes and kind hands brushing her tears away.

Though his touch was soft, she winced a couple times as he checked over her bruises. Cleo hadn’t asked him to do that, but she couldn’t find her voice to tell him to stop either. Her heart was beating madly in her chest.

From the electric shocks of course.

“I’ve got you.”

Did he? Cleo started to protest, but he picked her up with little effort. He was stronger than she’d realized. Even so, it bit her pride deep, being carried like some kind of invalid.

Comfortable as his arms may have felt.

Cleo shivered and then gave in, resting her head in the crook of his neck. He was so warm. Or maybe she was just cold. There was no way to know how long she’d been unconscious in the woods.

It was a hitched laugh that came out of her throat when he talked about buying her shoes; halfway between a hiccup and a giggle.

What would Grady think when he noticed she wasn't wearing the shoes he'd bought her? What would Stella think of Benji so readily holding her like this? She’d purposefully avoided being anywhere alone with him, because more than once his eyes had told her that he was still thinking about the fun they’d had.

Cleo swallowed nervously.

That afternoon in the library had been a momentary lapse in judgement. But one that she was thinking about repeating. Anyone else would have done the same, wouldn’t they have? Stella would have fooled around with Grady if she thought she could get one over on her. And if Grady wasn’t busy making eyes at himself in the mirror.

It was wrong, she knew that. But she just couldn't help herself sometimes. Still, the horror of her ordeal chased those thoughts away, if only for the moment.

“They had a message. Wanted me to tell the school.” It was difficult to keep the bitterness out of her tone. Despite the pain she was in, despite the abject humiliation of having her control taken away from her.

There was fear there too, though she was desperately trying to ignore it. She hadn’t been made to feel so small in such a long time, it was a shock to her system.

She’d felt invulnerable, using people as stepping stones to further her ambitions and social circle at school. Cutting people down with words just because she could, because she had to be on top, because she had to get them before they got her.

I’m doing this for me. I’m doing this because you all deserve it.

“They said that we all deserve pain. That's what they said while they had me trussed up in an...an electric chair and...”

Her voice came out smaller than she meant it to as she trailed off.  

elegant