alyx {d9/fin}

Deleted 0 POSTS last seen Apr 23, 2024 17:14:01 GMT -5	alyx {d9/fin} Jan 21, 2015 19:39:38 GMT -5 Quote Select Post Deselect Post Link to Post Member Give Gift Back to Top Post by Deleted on Jan 21, 2015 19:39:38 GMT -5 "well-behaved women don't make history" alyxandria ruah seventeen u steal this fc i mess u up
	Last Edit: Jan 22, 2015 15:37:34 GMT -5 by Deleted

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alyx {d9/fin} Jan 21, 2015 20:06:12 GMT -5

Quote

Post by Deleted on Jan 21, 2015 20:06:12 GMT -5

alyxandria ruah

"You're going to work yourself to death."

"God, I hope so."

It can be said that we reap the benefits we sow, and if this stands true, then I'll be swimming in alcohol and self-induced misery by the age of nineteen. That won't be a bad way to die, really, surrounded by the two things I love (my brother not included). Then again, I've always questioned if what I feel for him is the typically marked "sibling hospitality" or something more along the lines of pity. Regardless of what it is, I still find myself by his side day in and out, tapping my toe to the tune he hums as we take the floor side by side, the thought of the few extra dollars we'll be scraping more prominent than the steps we're supposed to be taking.

1,

2,

3--

"You're not paying attention, Alyx."

"I've got more important things on my mind than a fucking dance."

That was a rhythm we knew far too well.

It was a number composed of his apologies, of a crooked smile and a light heart that angered me even more, that drove me away even further. He and I may have been related by blood but our minds were patterned in such a different manner that our relation left a bitter taste on my tongue.

It was our work ethics that really set us apart.

For he is the weight upon a soul set free, the temptation to just "roll with the punches." He is every missed opportunity and callback set aside, and if it hadn't been for him and his fate left to play the cards then maybe, just maybe we wouldn't live in a home with the roof caving in or lay down with the stench of alcohol clinging to our skin like a bad memory.

Then again, I suppose this fate had always been hard to swallow.

We read stories of those who work their way up from nothing, taking the risks the average would never even dream of, but we can never quite apply the concepts they live by, simply because those stories never coincide with our own. They're not inspiring because we don't emerge from the same dark alleyways smelling like regret and cigarette smoke.

My brother and I didn't, anyway.

No we were raised in the dimly lit bar on the corner of a street not known otherwise, playing tag at three in the morning when the locals had finished their fourth shots of whiskey and staggered home to a family whose names they couldn't remember even on the best of days.

We learned to live a life not led by example, but rather formulated around the wrong paths to take and how to avoid travelling them, and by the age of thirteen it seemed as if we had seen them all: families ripped by divorce, death, and adultery, and they were all deemed normal.

Because then the happy family was not characterized by one still held together.

I suppose we were considered functional, then.

If we were not then I would not stand over my father's gravestone with a bottle of beer instead of a flower, telling him how we were ruining ourselves minute by minute, how if he hadn't have been selfish enough to leave then maybe we'd get more than three hours of sleep a night and how maybe I wouldn't have to dance to one more song while holding my brother's hand and messing up every fucking step.

1,

2,

3--

Still happy; still functional, only missing a figure deemed important by a society controlled by the same.

Yet he did leave me something.

He left me his clenched jaw and sunken eyes, and on the worst days, when my mother and I's opinions differed so distinctly that we'd yell so loudly the locals in the front could hear, she'd remind me that he never really did leave us for good.

"You're just like your father, Alyx."

"I'm still here, aren't I?"

"You don't want to be."

She wasn't wrong.

But she wasn't right either, for my father was a coward who wanted a quick fix, and so he tossed himself to his own work without a care that it threatened to end him in a second, threatened to pluck his family from comfort in the minute it saved him.

And oh how it did just that.

For as soon as my mother fell to her knees and cupped a hand to her mouth to suppress the scream it held, I grabbed my brother by the shoulders and shook him until the dazed expression fell from his face and he could hold my gaze for more than second at most.

"Aytac, count to three."

"1,

2,

3--

Alyx, you know we're going to be okay, right?"

His answer came in nights worked through, when we chased the sun and greeted the moon only to hate it too; the only real time we enjoyed was that spent away from the stench of our own misery, the same misery our mother described as an opportunity of luck. For she said if we had not been taken in by the merciful heart of another we'd count our ribs instead of shot glasses, tracing cuts and bruises upon our pale skin rather than the scratches in soft wood, where the topic of conversation was not scraggly hair or bitten nails but rather the impossible game of poker played the night before between two hands matched evenly in mind and skill.

And this was because we worked for those whose cares seemed undeniably less important.

But while we attended to the trivial matters of another we were writing the story of heroes built from the ashes of a burned family with every drink we poured and bow we took at the end of a dance, eyes quickly turning from each other to the tip jar situated upon the bar, where golden hands dropped quarters and nickels as compensation for guilt and pleasure.

And we finished just to do it all again.

1,

2,

3--

"Focus, Alyx, dad would want you to."

alyxandria ruah
seventeen
district nine
odair

table by anzie

Last Edit: Jan 22, 2015 17:05:32 GMT -5 by Deleted

Deleted 0 POSTS last seen Apr 23, 2024 17:14:01 GMT -5	alyx {d9/fin} Jan 22, 2015 15:37:23 GMT -5 Quote Select Post Deselect Post Link to Post Member Give Gift Back to Top Post by Deleted on Jan 22, 2015 15:37:23 GMT -5 bo$$ plays quietly in the background fin

[ retro gm ] angel lí ✨ Advertiser 8,145 POSTS Pronouns: she/her Member is Online bloomtodeath	alyx {d9/fin} Jan 22, 2015 16:57:58 GMT -5 Quote Select Post Deselect Post Link to Post Member Give Gift Back to Top Post by [ retro gm ] angel lí ✨ on Jan 22, 2015 16:57:58 GMT -5 bc of bo$$
	“and men said that the blood of the stars flowed in her veins.”