Shades of .:Grey:. {Lydie}

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Morgana
District Mayor

771 POSTS
last seen May 25, 2015 9:32:54 GMT -5

Shades of .:Grey:. {Lydie} Sept 11, 2011 20:16:38 GMT -5

Post by Morgana on Sept 11, 2011 20:16:38 GMT -5

Theron Rells

This has been going on too long.

Things rarely stay exactly the way you leave them, but you always hope it will be. You hope you'll come home and find out that your father isn't dead, your mother isn't crazy, and your brother's still perfect. but most of all, you hope you haven't changed. It's easier to believe everyone and everything else has changed while you have remained constant, but in most cases, that's just not true. Chances are, you've changed the most of all. When I came home, I don't know what I was expecting. I knew Dad was dead. He always would be. All my running these past four years hasn't changed that fact at all. Mom's mind had been going when I left, but I thought she'd still be doing okay when I got home. But Fledger, always perfect in his ways, had assured me she was too far gone. She couldn't remember who she was some days, she attacked Fledger because she thought he was a thief invading her home. He told me there wasn't anything he could do for her, so he sent her away to be taken care of by someone else. Fledger had effectively wiped his hands of her.

But that wasn't the only change I found. My room had been taken over by some drunk, the father of Fledger's girlfriend, River. I didn't like River from the start. It was her that had driven Mom out of the house, of that I'm certain. She had manipulated Fledger somehow so she could make room for herself, her father, and the baby she was expecting. Brooke was born a few weeks before I came home. She sleeps in Fledger's room with him and River. I can tell Fledger loves his daughter. He's a good father. I never liked him much as a brother, but I can see it in his eyes whenever he looks at little Brooke. He's not going to let her get hurt.

I've been reduced to sleeping on the couch. Not that I do that much sleeping anyway. It's hard to even close my eyes at night, knowing that the images I try so hard to keep locked away during the day will just come flooding out. I'm tired of reliving that nightmare. Tonight, I don't think I'd be able to fall asleep even if I wanted to. My arm's twitching too much, refusing to give me so much as the hope of a good night's sleep. Maybe it's a blessing in disguise. I'm sick of waking up to hear Fledger's door creak open, see him stick his head out and ask if I'm okay. He wouldn't know about the nightmares at all, except I shout when they come. I hate that he knows there's something wrong. I hate that he thinks he can fix it.

I roll off the couch and slip on my well-worn shoes. It's been cold the last few nights, so I grab a jacket from a chair nearby and put it on. I don't know where I'm going, but I need to get out. I've been stuck inside this house far too long. I keep telling Fledger I want to get a job to help pay for things. If I make enough money, I might be able to convince him it would be okay to bring Mom home. But Fledger won't even let me look for a job. He just keeps telling me to wait, but for what, I don't know.

Slowly, I pull the door open and slip outside, closing it softly behind me. I let my feet carry me wherever they want to go. Once I realize I'm headed for the ocean, I want to turn back. I don't want to be here. The memories will come back to me, and I've tried too hard to keep them at bay. They aren't even memories of the ocean, but of another place, far from here. A place where, for a time, I was happy. The place where, inevitably, my nightmares began.

My shoes make imprints in the sand as I walk down to the shoreline. I should turn around and walk back home, but that place doesn't exist anymore. It's Fledger's home now, and I'm just a stranger, invading his world. The last place that was anything close to a home for me is gone now, just a mess of shattered glass and dying bodies. I pull off my shoes and roll up my pants as I step into the water. I let it push at me, pull at me. A wind rolls off the surface and blows into my face. Closing my eyes, I try to figure out what was ever innocent about the world. It's cold and cruel. It eats you and spits you out. It takes what it wants from you, then throws you in the rubble pile. It gives you something good, just so it can laugh at you when it rips it away. I won't let the world hurt me anymore. And I won't let anyone else sacrifice something for me.

Someone is shaking you, trying to wake you up. You try to shrug it off at first. You've been up late the past few nights, doing work for Milo. You don't want to disappoint him. You really like it here, and you don't want to mess this up. "Come on Theron, you have to go, you have to

[/i]run."[/color] Your eyes snap open. It's Desiree. What's going on? There's noise, a sound like smashing glass...the fish! You jump out of bed and run. Desiree follows you, trying to make you slow down, stop, but you won't. You can't let them die.

You stop fast. There are Peacekeepers here. One holds a dagger to Milo's throat. He spots you and Desiree. His eyes are wild. These creatures are his life's work, his passion, but at this moment he cares more about you. You don't understand why he's doing this, why he's risking his life for you. You don't deserve it. He screams at you to run, but you can't move. Not until you see the red jewels come spilling from his neck, not until you hear Desiree's earth-shattering scream. Then you run. You run so fast and hard, you don't dare stop until you reach the edge of the district. You have to leave, but you don't want to. Desiree's saying that she can't come with, her family would worry. You want to make her come anyway. You don't think you know how to live alone anymore. But maybe it's better that she stays behind. Maybe the horrors will fade faster this way.[/i]

My eyes snap open. The memories always come without warning, shaking me hard. Desiree's scream echoes still in my mind, two years later. I still see Milo's wild eyes as he stares into the face of death. My arm's trembling harder now, shaking more than it ever has before. I grab at it, try to make it stop. And suddenly, my legs don't want to take me to shore. They want to take me out, further and further until the waves close over my head. But surrendering to that would mean that the two of the people I love most in the world have died in vain. I have to keep living, no matter how hard it is, because that's the only way I can make it up to them. It's the only way I can live with myself.

I head back to the shore, sitting down ten feet from the waves. I envy how the waves can be so careless. They don't make mistakes, because they can't. Not like people. But how do you know when you've made a mistake and when you've done something right? You can never know what would have happened had you chosen a different path. There's no way of telling where a road leads until you reach the end of it. And once you're there, all you can do is look back at your footprints and pray you've done the right thing. Was running the right thing? Or should I have accepted my fate then and there? Should I have let the Peacekeepers take me? They got me in the end. All I accomplished by running was stall the inevitable. Maybe, by running, I gave myself the chance to be stronger, to prepare myself for the Detention Center. I gained the time I needed to build up the walls around me, so no one else gets hurt.

There's one thing I know for certain was a mistake, and that was going back to District Six. If I hadn't gone back, Desiree would still be alive. I'd still be running, and Fledger would still be pretending I didn't exist. I know why I went, though.

This had been going on too long.

[/color][/size][/blockquote][/blockquote][/justify]

Lydie
Merchant

[M:-515]

112 POSTS
last seen May 5, 2012 19:39:48 GMT -5

I'm sittin' on a gold mine!

Shades of .:Grey:. {Lydie} Sept 25, 2011 12:21:54 GMT -5

Post by Lydie on Sept 25, 2011 12:21:54 GMT -5

Luna Grey

I wish you were here.

My eyes flew open, my heart raced, pounded in my chest. Remnants of a nightmare still clinging to my mind. My covers were tangled around me and I tried to get free, my hands shaky. When I stumbled out of bed and onto the floor I tried to catch my breath, to get the nightmare out of my mind, the feel of terror and hopelessness. “It’s okay Moon, I’m right here.” Jason’s voice echoed in my head. The feeling of security I usually felt at this memory fell through, it wasn’t comforting anymore. Because Jason was gone. Gone. Because of me. “Good night Moon, I’ll keep the bad dreams away from you.” His words cut into me. Jason was gone. I looked at my hand, the one he always held, the one with the white scar across it. I didn’t feel a lingering warmth there, just the cold.

It’s been four months since Jason left, I didn’t know why I was even trying to sleep. I knew I couldn’t. I got up from the floor, feeling around in the dark for my dresser. I quickly pulled on a pair of jeans and wrapped a shawl around my shoulders, covering the tank top I wore to bed. I opened my door without a sound and tiptoed down the hall. I paused at Jason’s door. It had been kept closed since he left but every once in a while I went inside. Tonight was one of those times. I opened the door, imagining Jason that night when he left, wondering what he could have been thinking at that moment. The room was dark, only a beam from the moon shone through his window falling over his bed and along the floor, right in the path of the door.

I looked at the made bed, the desk in order. His clothes picked up off the floor by Ma. It was almost as though this had never been his room, that this was just another empty room. I don’t know why I tortured myself like this. Maybe it was to remind myself that it was my fault he was gone, that this family wasn’t the same anymore. Not that I could have forgotten. Jason’s absence was like an elephant in the room, no one could ignore it or not feel it’s existence. It was like the sun had been blocked and we were all left in the darkness, trying to find our way back to the light.

I closed the door and continued down the hall, down the stairs and out the back door. The smell of the ocean came to me in a light breeze that tickled my cheeks. I closed my eyes for a moment and breathed it in. In my room my chest felt constricted, like I couldn’t breathe right, when I was in the house I felt weighted down by Jason’s absence. But out here I felt the closest to free as I could get, without Jason here. I started walking towards the beach, I saw the tide roll in and out, it immediately calmed me, set my heart to a normal pace. The moon light glittered off the water, creating a path straight to the beach almost as if it were calling to me, showing me where I needed to go, where I could be free of all my pain.

I almost followed it, almost let myself submerge into the water, but I didn’t. Because I couldn’t give up on Jason, on the idea that he might come back, that he might still be alive. And I couldn’t let myself take the easy way out. This pain was meant to be felt. The conversation that had changed everything rang in my ears, Jason’s words hitting me and causing my knees to shake.

"Luna I've been in love with you for a long time now but I've been afraid to tell you."
“I was never your brother Luna.”

“…after a while I started realizing that I was in love with you.”

“There’s never been anyone else I cared about as much as I care about you.”

“That’s fine,”

I fell to the sand, the tide only a few feet away, the sound filling my ears and overwhelming my senses. But I could still see Jason’s face, his dirty blond hair falling in his eyes. The smile on his face that wasn’t quite as brilliant as it used to be. The serious look that fell across his face after I had broken his heart. The last time I spoke to him replays inside my mind:

I was walking down the hall to my room and could here Jason following behind to his own room. What he had told me on the beach was still replaying inside my mind, I had to say something to him. When I got to my doorway I turned around, “Jason?”

Jason looked up from his door, “Yeah?”

I swallowed, “Everything is still going to be the same right? We’re still friends, just like before?”

He looked at me and again I got the feeling that I didn’t know Jason at all, “Sure Luna, just like before.”

I watched him, trying to decide if he really meant it or if he was just trying to make me feel better, “Good night Jason.”

“Good night Moon.” He said with a smile, though the smile didn’t quite make it to his eyes. Then he opened his door and left me standing in the hall.

That night I couldn’t fall asleep, the scar on my hand hurt. At the time I had thought it was because of what had happened that afternoon, but really it was because that would be the last time I’d see Jason.

I let myself fall backwards, laying in the slightly damp sand, overcome by the guilt that haunted me every day but came to life in the night. I should have just told him that I loved him too, that I felt the same way. Maybe than he’d still be here and I wouldn’t be wandering out on the beach in the middle of the night.

I stretched my legs out and realized that I had forgotten to put on a pair of shoes. The salt water lapped at my toes, dragging at the cuffs of my jeans. I rubbed my hands across my face trying to wipe away the nightmare that my life had become. I hadn’t cried in a long time but tonight I felt like I might. Like maybe this had all just become too much for me to handle.

I looked up at the dark night, at the stars that shone there. They were never ending, just going on and on above me. Too late I realized that I had done this once before.

“Do you see that little star right there?” Jason asked me, pointing up above us. It was about two months before his fifteenth birthday and we had snuck out to look at the stars.

I squinted, trying to follow his finger. “You mean the one that’s all by itself?”

Jason shook his head and I looked over at him, laying beside me, his left hand wrapped around my right one. He was still looking up at the stars. “It’s not alone Moon, don’t you see the circle of stars surrounding it?”

I turned my attention back to the stars, finding the small one again that looked like it was all alone. I widened my gaze and looked around it, he was right there was a circle of stars around it, almost as if they were protecting the little one. “Yeah, what about it?”

“From now on that’s your star Luna, whenever you feel alone just look up at that star and remember that even though it feels like your alone, there are people watching out for you.” Jason said, looking over at me, his eyes twinkling in the starlight.

For a moment I was mesmerized by the light in his eyes, and the words that he spoke. I looked back up at the star, trying to memorize it’s position. Than I looked tat the stars around it thinking about Jason, Ma, and Dad and how much they all meant to me. I looked back at Jason and found that he was still looking at me, “I don’t need a star to remind me of what I have Jason, not when I have you beside me.”

Jason kept staring at me, almost as if he had something he wanted to say. “When you look up at the stars your right eye looks almost like the same color as your left one.” He said.

“It does?” I asked, covering it with my hand. I always forgot about my eyes, how I was blind in the left one and because of it the iris was silver instead of gray.

Jason took my hand away from my eye and continued, “But when you’re looking at the moon this really light ring of silver appears in the left one and it looks different again.”

“Well, I’m not called Luna because of my gray eye.” I said, unsure of how to reply.

“No,” He said, “you’re not.” Then he cleared his throat and looked back up at the stars.

I felt a tear escape my right eye and let it fall. I blinked and looked up at the stars, trying to find the little star Jason had shown me half a year ago. When I found it I looked at the circle of stars around it, but through my tears I couldn’t see them all, I couldn’t see the one that went into the circle slightly, the one closest to my star. I couldn’t see the star that I thought of as Jason. He was gone from the circle around me. A few more tears escaped and I tried to brush the dampness away. But I knew now that there was no hope of Jason coming back, of things going back to the way the had been before. When everything was just the way it should be.

I wish you were here.

Last Edit: Sept 26, 2011 19:40:42 GMT -5 by Lydie

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Morgana
District Mayor

771 POSTS
last seen May 25, 2015 9:32:54 GMT -5

Shades of .:Grey:. {Lydie} Oct 13, 2011 13:06:56 GMT -5

Post by Morgana on Oct 13, 2011 13:06:56 GMT -5

Theron Rells

Keep it inside.

I watch the waves swallow themselves up. Maybe I was wrong to think they were careless, because suddenly they seem like vicious, selfish things, and rather like humans. Eating each other up so they can get on top, so they can be the best. And underneath, the ones with the best idea and the least courage struggle to get some air. They get impaled on the rocks, and when they finally come to the surface, bloody and ragged, the whole world stares, wondering how such a thing could have happened. They're too blind to see that they've caused this hurt.

Why does living have to be so hard? Why do people have to go on living when everyone they loved is gone, when there's no reason left to breathe? Has some higher power decided it would be fun to watch us wander around, running into brick walls? I've seen enough for one lifetime. I'm tired. I want to sleep and not wake up until I've had my fill. I want something to swallow me up so I don't have to breathe for a while. But the world is not that merciful. It will keep pulling from me until I collapse. It shouldn't be long now, considering I'm now a house of cards. Pull out the right one and I'll tumble to pieces at your feet.

I push up against the sand and rise to my feet. My arm's still shaking, but not as bad as before. Maybe it's time to go back to my borrowed couch, put in another futile attempt at sleep. The stars tonight are shining brightly, trying to tempt me to stay here, make my bed out of the sand. A nice idea, but one I'd regret come morning. Some other time, maybe, when I'm feeling a little more tired and hopeless.

Before I head back to the house, I decide to walk along the shore line for a bit. It might be the key to falling asleep tonight. The walk leads to thinking, and suddenly I wonder if it wasn't such a good idea after all. If I could shut off the thoughts, I'd be able to fall asleep much more easily. And stay asleep. The last thing I need is more time to think, to go over the nightmare I've been living in. My arm twitches at the memory of a knife cutting deep, growing slick with blood...I squeeze my eyes shut, knowing as I do it that it won't help any. The memories won't go away. They'll always be-

My foot catches something and I tumble onto the sand, my leg twisting painfully, the breath knocked from my lungs. Sand sticks to my hands as I push myself to a sitting position, wincing at the pain in my leg. I glance over my shoulder, trying to figure out what tripped me. I feel really stupid when I see. There's a girl sitting on the sand. Why didn't I see her? Well, Theron, that's probably because your eyes were closed.
It all goes passing by.