Something Known // {Kirito+Wyatt}

Trapped between the sheets I spent the early hours of morning, a false sunrise drifting into a mid-morning sun that beat through the window. There had been knocks on the door periodically, an insincere attempt to close the void between interested and mandatory concern. Every time it had been the simple “I’m fine,” the reassurance they wanted and nothing more, for the steps would turn and their feet would grow faint against the ground.

The clock struck eleven and the door swings open, apparently I had let one too many sets of those two syllables fall, for the light flickered on and I was stared down until I had no other option but to pull myself from the bed. Cold floor against my feet I huffed until his presence was gone, half-tempted to throw myself back under the sheets and throw a shoe at the light switch. But judgment and its counterpart of common sense suppress the feeling, leaving me mumbling under my breath as I pull clean clothes over my head and intention into my mind.

Lack of one leaves me trudging to the common room, which happens to be thankfully void of Geo or Gabrielle, two minds too many in this room leaves me thinking of nothing more than hell. Can’t be worse than page eleven of that clinical depression.

I ponder their current placement while scratching my nails along the wooden table, hardly breaking the glassy surface as I watch the neglected food that lies in the center of the table. Loss of life in the room and I’m still speaking, if to no one in particular, “Not hungry.” Truly, appetite had been lost with the speaking of Orion Hammerfell and his idea of expectations, or with Noah and his mind of smoke. Sharpened hearts and heightened minds they had a place they all seemed to know, but my mind was bound by question marks, each a thought I never dared to complete, hanging like—

Three steps out the door and a path remains sketched in the tile, three paces down and to the left until I’m stumbling down the stairs and through two doors that are still a struggle to push open. The morning wave has dissipated into the tide’s last, stragglers and late-goers among the wreckage of those who were just a bit over-eager to flex their muscles in front of the wide-eyed and weary. Being one of the latter, I take a place at the desolate plants station, surrounded by green—fifty shades the same as my stomach, and in the silent air I sit with nothing on my mind but sleep again.

Leaves between my fingers with no hope of identification I keep my mind from settling on one thought for one second too many, instead letting each weave into a web of if’s and maybe’s, an enemy even the past victors had never completely combated. Lost in that tangled web the hand that settles against my shoulder startles me until I’m staring at the boy from eleven, though I cannot bring myself to quite meet his gaze. “Sorry but I couldn’ help notice that ya seem to be strugglin’ a bit. I could help ya if ya want meh to.”

Simple words—simple enough of a question that I cannot bring myself to be functional enough to fully answer, instead nodding in his direction before handing him the stem and leaves of the plant that had almost been crushed against my palm.

Tangled web we weaved, indeed.