The Fault in Our Stars [Nix]

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gamemaker kelsier
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“And now that you don't have to be perfect, you can be good.” - steinbeck

The Fault in Our Stars [Nix] Apr 9, 2012 23:25:11 GMT -5

Post by gamemaker kelsier on Apr 9, 2012 23:25:11 GMT -5

Give me a second I,
I need to get my story straight
My friends are in the bathroom
Getting higher than the empire state
My lover, she is waiting for me just across the bar

When people speak of Romeo and Juliet, they call them the star-crossed lovers. Everything they thought they would be, was never meant, and they slipped far and away, out of life. When Juliet found a dead Romeo lying breathless on top of her, she killed herself. I guess she figured that there was nothing left for her. But what if Juliet hadn't been strong enough to slip out of life as well? What if she had woken up to find a dead boy lying on top of her, and she had simply shoved him off and walked away? How would the story change if Juliet had become a lawyer or something instead, and she grew up, only to move away from the warring families. Would they still be star-crossed lovers, or simply, Some bitch who didn't love Romeo enough to die for her love, and Romeo, an idiot who killed himself because he whined a lot.

I know I've lost the point somewhere along the way, but the point is, Is it allowed to be called love even if you didn't follow them into the darkness? Am I allowed to say that I loved my sister even if I wasn't strong enough to plunge a knife into my sternum at her death. Or am I an asshole that ruined everything. Alright, well that's beside the point. My ten year old self never read Romeo and Juliet. Maybe if I had I would have. Instead I simply asked a Monk for some poison, to slow my breathing and make me look dead. It worked, for so long, it worked. Still works, everyday. As long as the monk gets it to me, I get it to me, and sometimes that's all that is important.

Star-crossed doesn't have to mean romance. I know that at least. It doesn't even specifically point out two people in love. It's just for as long as anyone can remember, people have linked the two. Star-crossed literally means something thwarted by outside forces. Well no one but me did the thwarting here. I push my forehead into my right hand, arm steadied by the wooden bar beneath it. I've got a drink of some type clutched in my left, and a pill on my tongue. I can't remember how I even got here, or what time it is. but I know it's not that late. Maybe four pm. I glance out the window to my left. Make that seven in the evening. It's one of those weird spring days where it's oddly sunny and sweltering, like the sun is being unraveled thread by thread.

Can you be star-crossed even if you can feel the hatred of the dead swelling from the afterlife? Because I can, I can feel it in waves sometimes. How much she must hate me from taking her life from her, forcibly. She probably thinks that I pretended to love her, and it was all just building up to her murder. I wish I had a way of telling her now that I didn't mean it. I wish that i could look her in the eyes and tell her that I loved her, and she would hear me and know it. but she's dead and I'm alive, and she's the Romeo figure, and I'm the bitch of a Juliet that became a lawyer. So there is a fault line in our stars and I can feel it grow wider and wider every minute of every day that she hasn't aged one bit and I have.

It doesn't help either that she's always here. Even now, as I glance down, I can see small feet swinging back and forth on the bar stool beside me, but when I look up there is never anyone there. Or sometimes I think I can hear her small voice saying, "Ender! Stop that, I'm going to tell Mom!" I'll be sitting on a stool, lights on me somewhere, and she'll be in the front row, giggling and waving at me. Sometimes i'll stumble into the street and she'll catch me, so that we fall in a giggling heap to the ground. And as the pills dissolve she gets brighter and brighter and appears more often. Sometimes we have conversations about things from years ago, and sometimes conversations about things from now. Once, in that first year, i was turning eleven and she ran up to me in the street, giggling. She told me that mom had made a cake and it smelled amazing, so I sat down and cried. I cried and cried and cried.

I've spent my life seeing her everywhere so often that sometimes I guess I do think she's there. One morning, afternoon, whatever, I woke up and one of the boys asked who Nix was. That's when I realized I had a problem. Fucking finally. I'm a body bag made up of problems and faults but I finally decided I had one a few months back. Now when I see her, I ignore her, or do my best to. It's hard, it's so bloody difficult to pretend I don't see her. Sometimes she'll pull tactics, like pouting, or pretending she hurt herself. Once she told me that I was a fuck up, and the worst person ever for hours on end, so I drank till I couldn't see. So honestly, it's not all my fault, this drinking problem. Because my subconcious is half to blame for my crazy.

I feel rumpled. I know that my shirt is unironed, and that the sleeves are rolled up because of an ink spot on the cuff. I probably look like I'v been swallowed and spit up by the devil himself because that's where I feel like I've been. Let me assure you, she's not in hell.

I slip away from the bar, steadying myself by holding the edge, leaving the drink unfinished. I can't say I was really tasting it anyway. It's a clear night tonight, and I can go out and see things that I normally can't with clouds. the stars. n these nights, the boys know that I usually won't be coming home. Not if there are stars about to catch and sing off of. They always know what to say to me so that I can translate and write them into lyrics for songs. I have a habit fr writing them that keeps up my other habits too. The pill is fresh in my blood stream, and I have a pen in my pocket, and an unwritten arm, things should go as planned. If only my feet would do what they're told as well. Breathing deeply, I blink slowly and then push out into the night air.

It's that coolness that happens when the sun's only just left us here alone, and the moons just peeking out like a shy little thing. It's a relief after the stuffiness of the bar, and I breath the air in with great gulps. There's a few people about, gleaming that last bit of a nice day away, and workers still plodding along, to clean up the damage of that earthquake. But other than that, it's silent and nice. There's a slight breath, but it's warm, and appreciated. It tells me to go out and away, so I swivel on my heel, noting the seven year old keeping pace with me, brown locks swinging with her own turn into the wind. In my haste to ignore it, I glance up and away, only to see dark eyes in a halo of brown hair staring at me from far away. What seems like miles but could be measured in feet and inches.

Someone's plunged a dagger into my sternum.

I know I gave it to you months ago
I know you're trying to forget
But between the drinks and subtle things
The holes in my apologies
You know I'm trying hard to take it back

compendium / avriel
clown car / pietro
2022 tracker / 2023 tracker / 2024 tracker

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The Fault in Our Stars [Nix] Apr 26, 2012 14:03:24 GMT -5

Post by Deleted on Apr 26, 2012 14:03:24 GMT -5

[shadow=red,left,300][/shadow]

I've learned to talk with my fingers
The only voice that wakes my ears
Oh, make my bones do something
Ever wanna jump out of your skin?

I will never be what they want.

Sometimes the exact definition of who they are gets blurred and murky, fog on a windowpane that smears together the endless parade of disappointed faces. My parents, the doctors, my teachers, all the collective world who had been lying in wait to watch my ascension to some depraved throne of Career royalty, they've all looked at me with this sort of quiet letdown etched into their features ever since the day I woke up to a world with no sound and realized that everything had changed. Sometimes I wonder if that was why Ender left. He'd always been so attuned to each twist and turn of what happened in the recesses of my mind, maybe he could see in those days hooked up to a million machines and fighting for my life what a disappointment I would become. Maybe he left because he'd rather go than watch me turn into something that both of us knew I'd never want to be.

(Dependent)

There were the few sparks of hope in my life that I called friends, the ones who saw more in me than the rest of the world did, but as time goes by their light seems to fade in the face of judgement that only ever grows more biased by the day. Riley's graduated, so busy with the world of grown-ups and his own budding family that I never see him anymore, and Arwen's taken to hanging out with that weird sister of hers rather than give me insight into the oddly beautiful world inside her mind that she lives in, separate from the rest of us. People always seem to leave and I hate it, being written off and tossed aside as if I mean less than anyone else. Maybe that's why I reasoned it was my turn to leave for once, why I'm standing in the middle of a dusk-shadowed street with my bookbag bouncing against the small of my back and my feet unsure of where they want to walk.

I didn't go home after school today. Somewhere my mother is probably a basket case, shrieking into the phone and calling Riley and Arwen in hopes that they have any idea of where I am. Somewhere my father is pacing the floor, chain smoking to deal with the stress and wondering where they both went wrong. Somewhere my parents are worried sick about me. And I don't give a damn. Because I'm more their liability than I am their daughter; they've looked at me with more pity than love since the day I started living in my stark-silent world, and some dark, warped part of me hates them for it. It's the same part that whispers that I never want to go home, even if it means wandering the streets forever until some misfortune falls on me. I'd rather die young than never live at all.

With that thought, my shuffling feet seem to finally make up their minds, turning to the left and carrying me down an alley cast into shadow by the dim blue light of dusk spreading over the streets. It leads to unfamiliar territory, a side of the district I've only seen a few times in my life. While my family was never anywhere near rich (I never went to bed hungry but a lifetime of medical bills has ensured that the clothes on my back are a little bit worn and almost everything I own is secondhand) my father always warned me to stay out of this end of town, where the houses gradually become more and more dilapidated and the looks I draw from passerby become a little more insidious. This, I've been warned time and time again, is the hellish cesspool of depravity that turns good kids into hardened delinquents or worse - I vaguely remember a story I read off the lips of hallway-whisperers that told of a boy my age from these streets who had killed more people in a year than most Peacekeepers do in a lifetime - but despite the faint twinge of fear that shoots up the back of my neck, I feel a triumphant smile settling on my lips. Breaking the rules has a certain gratification to it, and I remember seeing Riley's sister whisper to her friend when she thought no one could hear about a bar around these parts where fists fly freely and punches and kicks are the great equalizer. Guess I know where I'm headed.

My parents tried to squash it out of me after the accident, keeping me sepulchered in the house like some disabled princess in an ivory ~~prison~~ tower, but they gave up soon enough. Being a Career was in my blood and there was nothing either of them could have done about it. I see the world in blood and grit and a balance of power where deafness doesn't matter, and even if it makes me an uncivilized heathen there's always a part of me that craves a time when I can show them all that I'm made of more than unending silence and a handicap no one expects me to overcome. Dad had put his foot down when it came to sending me to the training center but had conceded to train me himself, but I've always wanted something more in the way of feeling someone's bones shudder under my hands and maybe pulling a plea for mercy that I know I won't hear.

The next corner gives way to another shack-lined street with a scuzzy-looking bar at the end of it, a worn out old sign that says The Barking Mutt creaking back and forth in the wind. The slight smile on my face widens into a full-out grin and I set off over the uneven pavement, ignoring the stares of the street's occupants as they notice the stranger in their midst. I can see the words they hiss to one another, she's new and just a kid and gonna work herself into a whole heap of trouble, they always do. But I keep my head held high and continue in the same directions, brushing the stares off my skin like bothersome flies until one sticks and refuses to let go.

He's a ways off, still in the middle of the street and eyes wide like he's seen a ghost (we live in Panem, there's a whole world of ghosts out there that haunt everyone to some degree), gaze fixed on me in a way that admittedly gives me the creeps. Swallowing down the fleeting thought that maybe Dad was right and I should just go home, I quirk an eyebrow and scowl, effectively masking how rattled I actually am by the odd familiarity that seems to hang around what should just be another weirdo standing in the street. "The hell are you looking at? If you're gonna stand there and ogle me at least buy me dinner first. Christ, guys are pigs."

He doesn't say anything, still standing there gaping like I'm some sort of weird divine apparition, so I roll my eyes and stalk over, fully prepared to make him stop staring at me by way of a right hook to the jaw. "Listen, bro, I don't want to have to open up a can of whoop-ass on you, but - oh my god."

It all clicks when I get close enough to see his eyes, the pupils oddly large and blown but not enough to conceal their color, a blurred, smoky gray-blue. The same as mine. That's about all that's remained the same, but then I guess ten years can do a lot to a person. I blink slowly, owlishly, fingers hovering in the air over his shoulder as if they might pass directly through if I try to touch him. "... Ender?"

gamemaker kelsier
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“And now that you don't have to be perfect, you can be good.” - steinbeck

The Fault in Our Stars [Nix] May 21, 2012 1:42:24 GMT -5

Post by gamemaker kelsier on May 21, 2012 1:42:24 GMT -5

In the spring we made a boat
Out of feathers, out of bones.
We set fire to our homes,
Walking barefoot in the snow.
As we drifted towards the storm.

My heart is a piece of broken poetry. mostly it feels like someone's run me over with a truck. I can see her walking towards me, in front of me, and saying things. She's speaking, but it doesn't matter because she's dead and this is another delusion. Unless I finally went too far and I'm finally dead. In which case I don't know whether to feel relieved or slightly disappointed because heaven seems a lot like District One. I didn't know you aged in heaven though. She's never appeared like this either, I mean, I've imagined what she would look like if she had the chance to age, I've wondered if I'd have had to do the big brother job of beating up assholes for her, but she's never seemed so real. Whatever it is, this must be some really good E, or I must be fucking wasted because I don't see how this can actually be a thing. I realize I am staring, but I don't really care, because this is nice for me, even if she is dead and buried.

The seven year old version of her hasn't left yet though, she's still there, in the corner of my vision. That's weird, as I'm not really used to having more than one of her at once in such small amounts. (Usually if she's going to be here she's infinite and I slip into her waves.) Even though I haven't even seen her in ten years, there is no doubt in my mind it's her. Although she's been going away, fading for a while now, (First I forgot what her hands looked like, then what her little elbow felt like linked in mine, and then what her body felt like when I carried her on my back.) she's substantial and all there and it's her, I know it. I don't know why she's finally all here for once, where the rest of her has been hiding for so long, but I do know that I've missed seeing the exact way her hair shined in the fading light.

But still, when I look steadily at the seven year old Nix, she begins chattering again about the time we stayed up all night watching the stars and how she told me I was the best big brother ever. (This is the story that usually manages to gauge a stone into my heart.) She doesn't pay any attention to the girl standing in front of me, which isn't odd because they never really do interact, they usually just overlap like a song in a music shop that's played on every available instrument not starting at the same time at all. That's what they're doing now, they're overlapping. But the weird part is coming, I step forward slowly, the road tilting up to meet me a bit before settling back down in that way it does, and something even odder happens. The apparition speaks. The older nix apparition speaks. My mind has no knowledge of what her voice would sound like as an older girl, but she speaks all the same, and words happen forming sentences and paragraphs.

"The hell are you looking at? If you're gonna stand there and ogle me at least buy me dinner first. Christ, guys are pigs."

I ignore the words, knocking on the pavement, listening to the way it sounds instead. Slightly slurred, almost like she's been drinking but not really, like something is off. Maybe she's on drugs, but she doesn't look like a druggie, nor are her pupils blown or like mine. Mine probably look huge right now. As I think it, seven year old Nix comments, "I'm telling Mom." It was something that used to work back when I was younger, and I actually cared that my mother probably didn't love me. Now it's all just dust in my ear, and I ignore the comment completely as i latch onto grown Nix's. Usually I don't talk back at them, just wait for them to finish. but it's not everyday that I'm drunk and high at the same time, an my mouth is flapping away even when there isn't anyone to talk to. Point is I'm a chatty cathy.

She looks angry, again, nothing new. But now she's walking over to me and so I stop trying to move forward, the mixture of chemicals in my body not quite leveled for take ff anyway, and wait for her. I don't know why I am, why I haven't left yet. I'm not sure why I haven't just kept on plodding along, ignoring this image the same way that I ignore the seven year old, and all the other year olds. Why should I care that she's new, that she's never appeared so old before, and so attention grabbing. It only means I'm getting even nuttier. Or maybe just more accepting. I'm excited that she's coming toward me. Though just a second ago, seeing her so old felt like needles and pain, but the pill is making everything happy and warm, and my brain is sort of slow right now due to the alcohol in my system too. The way I'm simply standing here, waiting for her approach, it almost seems like I'm waving a big white flag.

"Listen, bro, I don't want to have to open up a can of whoop-ass on you, but - oh my god."

It registers and clicks that she's just called me 'bro'and not brother, or End like they normally do, but I take it as a maturity thing, I guess it's what the cool kids say now anyway right? My brothers yell bro around, well my brothers except for Question because he doesn't really talk, and even if he did I'm pretty sure he wouldn't say bro anyway, but you get the picture. But the threatening is new too, everything is so new but so old in confrontations played out by me that I simply stand there, watching the show like I'm up above and watching this scene being played out in front of my eyes. This is the sweetest torture, these imaginings, but I'd rather have them, than nothing at all.

I stand there, sort of hoping she'll make good on her words and hurt me until I can't breathe or stand, and then hurt me some more. I used to stay up at night, waiting fr the pain to stop, trying to figure out how it could go away. I finally figured out that if I was busy being hurt physically, it didn't hurt so badly mentally anymore. So then I discovered fight club, and I'd live for broken noses and cracked ribs, excited for each bruise, and looking forward to every single pain that was coming to me, glad in turn to help out the men who were searching for it too. But she's not doing anything, just staring back. I hate all this newness, I want it to go back to her torturing me to death, but now she's staring like I'm the ghost.

Finally she speaks, saying my name, so hesitantly like she's not sure it's really me, like she's looking at a ghost. It's like she's looking at an apparition too, the way she's staring at me, how her hand is hovering over my body like if she presses down I won't be there. (Like I've never been there, and she's never been there even though she's dead because I murdered her and I'm alive because I murdered her.) She's always been something that I can touch, and now that she's closer, I see that her eyes are the proper blue like mine, they've always been blue. Blues of a feather.

And it's too much, it's too fucking much. I need her hand to rest on my shoulder and to feel warmth and not nothing, and I can't ave her hovering because it hurts, oh god it burns because I know when I reach for her, I'll feel invisible and she'won't be there. /She's never actually there./

My lungs are burning, and my breath is coming in short gasps as I stare at her. I feel like I'm actually going to pass out because she's so goddamned close and she's never seemed so real before. I want to fold myself into her and never let go until we've grown together and I live inside her body, and she's inside mine. i want to remember what she smells like, what she's always smelled like, and I would kill to hear her laughter and know if she still sings. Tentatively, and oh so foolishly, I reach up, hand taking flesh that I know isn't actually real, and I hold her hand against my cheek so that my flesh enfolds her imaginary flesh and we're as close to normal as we'll ever get while I'm down here in purgatory and she's up there in heaven hating me for killing her.

I shut my eyes and can feel them burning up with salt and things as I pretend for one eighth of a second that she might be a real breathing human, even as my heart soul, body, mind tells me no, that she's a figment of my fucked up mind and I'm a poor bastard who won't ever be able to climb up out of the darkness. It's been so long since I played along, but I remember how.

"Phoenix," I breath.