JUSTICE BUILDING BLITZ! // Thundy, Lightwoods

/*\ I'd like to keep cutting, but I can't stand to watch myself bleed /*\

So stop telling me
I'm not the man that I should be
If dying is your way out
Then count me in, I'm coming

Riley's not sure how he got here.

He's not sure why his throat is on fire or why his jacket sleeves are covered in coagulating red-brown or why his arms have been transformed into such a ragged, painful mess that they feel like they're about to fall off. He's not sure if any of this is real (because in this family if we don't talk about it then it isn't real at all) or if he's going to wake up in a few seconds from the worst night terror he's ever had in eighteen years. He's not sure of a lot of things anymore. All he's sure of is that the foundation of his world has been yanked out from under his feet and he's falling, falling, falling so far into the dark descent of his own mind that he doesn't know if he'll ever be able to claw (or cut) his way back to the light.

He's not sure why the solid wood of the door hums oddly beneath his palm as if it's filled with the trapped sadness of sixty families who've come to say their last goodbyes, not sure why he even insisted on going in first. Maybe so he'll have a chance to pull himself together - but how, when I've forgotten how to be whole and a piece of me is missing? -

[/i] for the sake of others who will go in after him, all of their faces mute, blank slates still gripped in the vise of shock save for his own, marred by drying streaks of tears that he wipes away with the roughened heel of his hand as he takes a shuddering breath and shoulders the door open. He can't afford tears anymore. Not when the rock of the family has been shattered by the Capitol's hammer and he's the only one that can hope to fill her shoes.

He and Avon have never been good with words. He thinks back to this morning, the silent exchange of helping hands, her doing the dishes when he'd been locked in the bathroom scrawling out his fears in violent crimson along his forearm, him laying out her clothes while she was in the shower in return. The two of them don't work in the pretty turns of phrase and careful diction that Riley keeps so carefully sepulchered in his notebooks and guitar strings, and up until now he's been okay with that. Because now there are so many words pressing against the back of his teeth and no time for him to say them.

He and Avon have never been good with physical affection. Or at least she hasn't, responding to the occasional hug or ruffle of her hair with a scowl and an odd stiffness to her limbs that spoke of a body at war with a mind in terms of what she really wanted. He thinks back to the last time he reached out to her with any sort of tenderness, a hug on their birthday that she had returned with puppet limbs and a tight smile, or the last time she did so to him, an awkward, tense embrace when he'd come home so horribly empty and lost after telling Bridgit about Fenn. The two of them don't work in the open arms and goodnight kisses that Riley's always found to be so much easier with the rest of his siblings, and up until now he's been okay with that. Because now he wants nothing more than to latch onto her smaller form with all of his feeble might, hold them together until maybe they can assimilate into the whole they've always been two parts of and he can find some way to take her place.

He and Avon have never been good with anything that Riley needs right now, but he finds that he doesn't care, sweeping across the room in a flurry of lanky limbs and tearstained eyes that sweep her up before either of them can say anything, clinging so tightly that his wounded arms throb out their discomfort that he quickly bites back, swallowing the hiss of pain that blooms in his throat in favor of a low murmur against the shell of her ear. "I love you. I love you so much."

Riley didn't have time to script this out but knew that this was what he needed to say above all else. It's something Avon's said to him only a handful of times, and that's fine because Avon doesn't work in I love you's. But Riley works in love, always love because that's the only thing that keeps him going in a world that would crush what's left of him. He tries to memorize ever part of her, the feel of the lean musculature of her back beneath his fingers and the way her hair smells like shampoo and roses and something with a tougher edge that he can't quite place. He knows he only has to look in a mirror to remember her eyes, wide, dark amber with a fierceness to them that he'll never really have but eighteen years of memory will surely compensate for.

"I've... I brought something for you," he stutters, the quiet tenor of his voice unbearably ragged and raspy from screams that still echo inside his head, probably always will. Riley backs out of the embrace and feels another piece of his soul detach from the whole and stick to her skin when he does, a slender hand fumbling through his pocket and pulling the faded guitar pick out, presenting it on his palm with tentative eyes. "I know you didn't bring anything with you, so I thought you should have it... for luck."

And Riley tries to smile, he really does, but not even his well-practiced mask of composure is enough to cover up the feeling of himself breaking from the inside out as the rest of his sentence echoes empty and silent in the cavern where his heart used to be.

Because luck is all we've got now, sister. And luck has never been on our side.[/color][/blockquote][/justify][/size]
Maybe a different spin
And I'm so used to being a coward
It's all I've ever been
I quit before I win