blue b☐xes [Elegant, South]

Doing
Emphasis
"Talking"
"Hearing"
Thinking

Real life is harder than I thought it would be.

Riley has learned over the course of his life to never hope for much. Things are less disappointing that way, he stands less of a chance of getting hurt, but he had never really rid himself of the nubile thought that maybe things would be a little bit easier after high school. There had been idyllic scenes in his mind of a life where the little ones didn't need him so much and the family might finally be able to keep itself afloat for long enough that he could trike out to find a life of his own, find a purpose that might do something to fill the ever-present void and take step toward actually making him happy. But those dreams had been formulated in a brighter world, where Avon was still alive and he didn't have the beginnings of a family on the way. His existence is dimmer now, darkened by dead sisters and lingering wreckage from an earthquake that shook all the way to the core of his soul still littering the back streets he cuts through in the pale light of the morning. But if there's one thing he learned from a night of rum-soaked wisdom imparted from the brother of another fallen tribute, it speaks to him in those exact, slurred words. Listen. Happiness ain't gonna fall out of the sky an' whack you on top of the head, Riley Lightwood. You want it, you gotta chase it down and grab it. I ran away from mine, and look where it got me. Don't be as stupid as I was.

Even if it's harder to get now, Riley fully intends to find fulfillment somewhere in a world that's not quite wide enough for him to escape his past. He owes that much to all of them; Fenn, Bridge, Avon, Lucy... If for no other reason than Lucy, he decides, he has to make himself be better. No daughter deserves a father too fragile and broken to give her a good life and a stable family. Riley knows firsthand what instability will do to someone; the raised lines of scar tissue that brush along the white linen of his shirtsleeves are chilling evidence that makes terror thrum in his abused veins at the very idea that his own unborn child could be headed down such a road if he doesn't get his act together. Maybe, he reasons, the rising sun shedding a growing illumination across narrow shoulders and a simplistic brown vest with faded jeans, that phantom fear is what had finally broken his shyness and put his foot down for once in his life the night of his, Edana's, and Antoinette's graduation.

"What do you mean, you don't want to go into the family business?" Willow Lightwood asked, the empty curvature of her smile fading a bit even as the music and laughter of the graduation party Riley hadn't even wanted in the first place thrummed around the two of them, standing motionless amid the swirling colors of the celebration around them. "You're the oldest son, Riley, that's how these things work. Your father always wanted you to -"

"Don't bring Dad into this," Riley said, softly but firmly, tugging at the constricting tension of his tie and fiddling with the cufflinks on his jacket. "Dad wanted a lot of things that he didn't get. He wanted his kids to grow up normally. He wanted all of us to live past the age of eighteen. He wanted you to be the one taking care of everyone instead of me, because newsflash, that was your job, Mom. I just did it because you refused to and because Dad made me promise before he died that I'd make sure you and the others were okay."

The words licked like poison flames along his tongue, and something inside of Riley seared with guilt at the dumbfounded, hurt look on his mother's face, but some things needed to be said, some initiatives needed to be taken, and Luke Marling had told him on no uncertain terms that sometimes, man, people aren't gonna listen to you 'less you get mean with 'em. That's how people work. So Riley tried his best to inject something hard and immovable behind his gaze (it was hard since he knew very well that he was neither of those things and never would be), looking out over the spinning skirts and smiling faces of the party. "I don't want to run the company, okay? It's as simple as that. I don't want to have any hand in making something that benefits the Capitol after what they did to Avon. I want what I do with my life to help people. People here in One, Mom. The ones who can't help themselves. I was never cut out to be a businessman. Keela's the CEO in this family and we both know it."

Willow was silent for a long time, something fractured and broken and utterly familiar (he'd seen it in his own mirror a thousand times) lingering in her gaze when her delicate hand settled on his arm. "I'm so sorry, Ri. Everything with your father, with Xavier, I didn't want to believe it so I just..."

"I know. I understand. It's okay." It wasn't really, it would never be okay and there would always be mile-deep fault lines in the family because of it, but Riley knew he was nothing if not a master of pretty lies, and one more couldn't hurt as he placed his hand over Willow's. "But this is my life, now, Mom. I'm going to have a daughter in a few months, and I need to be able to give her the life she deserves to have. And to do that, I need to be happy with myself first, instead of living for you and the others. That's all I've done for nineteen years. I need them to take care of themselves now. I need you to take care of them."

Willow nodded, the look on her face so much more pained but so much more present than the empty bliss that had adorned her features for years. She conjured up the ghost of a smile, eyes tracing the tiny faces of the last family portrait on the wall that included Casper Lightwood, something brewing in her mind that Riley couldn't decipher. "Keela's a born CEO, all right. And you, you want to help people. What did you have in mind? We'll make it happen, Ri, just name it."

Riley's face split into a smile for the first time since the day before the Reaping, the last day anything in his life had been okay, and he pulled his mother into the spindly circle of his arms, feeling a bloom of that happiness rise in his chest. It was still a ways off, he'd still have to chase it, but it was there. "Well, I've kind of been thinking that I'd like to be a doctor."

The apprenticeship at the hospital is more work than Riley could have imagined, days spent hovering over doctors' shoulders watching how they work and nights spent hovering over impossibly thick textbooks and medical encyclopedias, pulling two to three hours of sleep in if he's lucky, running on coffee and willpower if he's not. It's hard, but it's rewarding, more rewarding than anything he can recall doing before (he'd been doing some easy jobs around the outpatient clinic the other day, stitching up a little girl who'd had a biking accident, and he felt like he might actually glow when his supervisor had said he'd make a hell of a pediatrician one day), and although he's not quite there yet, still comes to his senses sometimes clutching a stained blade with rivers of crimson flowing over his skin, Riley starts to think sometimes that maybe, just maybe, he feels a little bit happy. Maybe he's starting to get better.

Which is why he'd decided that maybe he could be strong enough to swing by the training center this morning before work/school/whatever it is to get Avon's things from her locker, where they've been sitting for months. The pain of her absence never really stops - sometimes it feels like a knife in his chest and he wonders how he manages to breathe anymore - but it does get more manageable. The seasons change, the flowers bloom, life goes on and in his heart of hearts Riley knows that's what his sister would want. She'd made him promise in the end to be strong for them, and for the first time lately he's begun to think that maybe it's a promise he can keep.

You are stronger than you think, an invisible voice seems to whisper to him when things start to feel like too much, and Riley has a distinct idea of who that voice belongs to.

The halls of the training center are dark and unfamiliar, but with enough time spent wandering on his own and asking for directions Riley manages to find his way into a locker room at the end of a dim corridor, fingers brushing over a metallic box with his sister's name on the front of it. They gave him the key and their condolences at the front desk and Riley thanked them for both, but he begins to wonder if he's really got it in him to do this when the key slides into the lock and the door springs open, bearing a tide of roses and sweat and Avon that threatens to make him burst into tears. You are stronger than you think. Believe that.

The locker's contents are minimal: a worn out pair of grappling gloves, several rolls of athletic tape, a small first aid kit, a bundle of dried roses hanging from the top of the locker - but it's the photo taped to the inside of the door that makes Riley smile even as liquid fire laps at the back of his eyes. The same photo his mother had looked at that night of the graduation party, the last picture of the entire family before they had been ripped apart by death and deceit and a million things that none of them could control. Riley's fingers trace the paper contours of Avon's six-year-old features softly before he empties everything from the locker into his backpack. "I miss you, Sis. Every second of every day."

He decides to leave the picture taped to the door, so the locker's next owner will be able to see the legacy they inherit. The hall is still abnormally dim when he steps back into it (do they purposefully keep the lights this way to lower morale?), but Riley doesn't have much time to think about it before something slams into him, hard, both knocking the wind out of him and knocking him off his feet. He clatters to the ground with a muffled whoosh of air, wheezing for breath as the guttering light illuminates the forms of a man a few inches shorter and a few years older than himself, and a blonde girl who appears to be much more distraught. Riley silently thanks the heavens he was never a Career. This place seems like a madhouse.

"Sorry," he groans, hauling himself back to his feet in a tangle of spindly limbs. "Was I in the way? I was just leaving."