Waldeinsamkeit {Colt Standalone}

Right from the start
You were a thief you stole my heart
And I your willing victim
I let you see the parts of me
That weren't all that pretty

when I got home that first day, Kaelen and everything that was Kaelen was gone. All that was left was a shell of a boy, some articles of clothing, but not the gray sweater I love so much, and a few books. But he took the knives he thought I didn't know about under the mattress, and even the old, battered copy of some crap novel about romantic vampires. The photo of us that used to be taped to the mirror, one of the only signs of cold affection he ever kept for me, is gone too. His cigarettes are on the side table, he'll be a cranky bitch without them, and the stub of the one he smoked this morning is still in the ashtray. A dog-eared Hemingway sits beside the tray, and the blankets are still rumpled from before. I rolled away from him and he tugged my arm back, so I laughed, telling him that we were going to be late for Specks. He pulled me back into bed anyway, and we didn't even go to English because it was Friday anyway, so why would we bother with morning class? Why would we bother with anything else when there are so many more important things to do.

When I found the note, I couldn't read it. My mind was too panicked. I had to give it to Pip, all grown up since I first met him, and so drastically changed. He doesn't run around on all fours anymore, and he actually keeps his clothes on. As Kaelen for a teacher, he's grown to be quite the intellectual. All sharp edges, and wit, just like Kaelen. But he's different, not like Kaelen at all, because where Kaelen carries hatred and destruction, Peregrine only harvests love and curiosity. They discovered he needs reading glasses to make sense of words, so he keeps them tucked safely into the back pocket of his skinny jeans. He's educated now, he knows his maths, and loves to play the violin. Debussy is his favourite, but he also loves Chaucer. The first words he ever learned were read to him from 'The Old Man and The Sea' but his favourite thing to do is still roughhouse with Kae, all long limbs and skinny bodies tangled up on the floor. He's such a human being now, but still too much wolf too ever be human. It's in the way his expressions paint pictures, or the way he so lovingly protects Juniper from everyone and herself. Kae once told me when he thought I wasn't listening that all he can ever do is destroy, but Peregrine is one of his finest creations. He pretends he doesn't care, but if he could see the way he looks at Pip, I think that cold demeanor would fracture. Pip isn't just Kaelen's prodigy, he's his adopted brother.

"I...I don't understand?" Pip's accent is something odd to be sure. It's as if he carefully enunciates each word, almost in a sing song way, to create something that sounds old an young all at once. I don't know what I expect the note to say. Maybe it says that Kaelen just needed a day, so he went to go hide somewhere. Yeah, with half of his things, and his throwing knives. Sighing, I run a hand through my hair, and try to mentally prepare myself. I could have read it myself, but then again, I couldn't have. The letters were dancing around in circles. "What does it say, Pip?" I say with a sigh, hating the way he learned how to skirt a topic from Kaelen, loving the way it won't work on me. "Well, you're not going to like it. Of course not, Kaelen wrote it. "It says, I love you I’m sorry it’s better this way."

We stand together in silence for a moment. Peregrine is staring rather intently, as if he's expecting me to spontaneously combust. He's pretending I don't notice the way he's shaking, and I'm pretending that he doesn't notice it when I do nothing. The first thing that floats from the back of my mind is, "I love you." What an interesting phrase. One word linking two strange words together to create a three word sentence where the topic is love, and the subjects are two people. Where I am one of those people, and the other one is an 'I'. Where one of those words means Kaelen, and one of those words means Colt.

For just a small moment, I am insanely happy. More happy than I've ever been in my whole entire life. It's even better than the first time I saw him. A grin, so wide it hurts spreads across my face, and Pip's expression gets cautionary as I stare into nothing. 'I love you' I can imagine the way his voice might hug the syllables, or weave through them. Imagine how they might have sounded. I know that I'm clinging to a small shred of happiness, that the next words Pip said will shatter me, but for the moment, before my mind does a fall into the unknown, it's decided to hold on to only one piece of the note. The part where Kaelen wrote, 'I love you,' in his sprawling hand.

"I’m sorry it’s better this way"

In what universe was that true? The thought flickers dully across my mind, as my hands slowly lift up, as if the burden is to great, to cup my face, to catch tears that are going to fall into the palms of my hands because I know what this is. I always thought that Kaelen would be the type to finish with me in front of an audience, his personality being so similar to my first fling in the way he wanted us to be a secret, and he was so cold at first. But I thought Kaelen was different, so different from a fifteen year old boy who told our friends that I had raped him. I didn't know how it would end, but I didn't think it would be by a piece of paper read to me by someone else either because my brain was too befuddled to figure it out. For some reason, I thought our end would never come which is so fucking stupid of me on too many levels to count. Isn't this how it always ends? Aren't I always the one left standing alone, with something so irrevocably broken that when it gets stitched back up it's always missing a piece.

How could he go? How could he just leave me like that? How could he say he loved me, and then leave me all alone? No one to catch me, there isn't anyone to catch me here, not like he can. next time he sees me, I'll be a mess of bruises and scratches. next time I see him, I'm going to murder him myself for leaving me behind. Mister, 'I can't wait to show you District One.'

They're always so sorry, or never sorry. Whatever it is, I don't know what it is about me that always sends them away. I know I'm a clumsy oaf that sounds like an idiot whenever he tries to talk, but that comes with the territory. There's stuff about me that's good. I know there is, I get told everyday that I'm a lovely person, or a great friend. But am I good enough to stay with? Lyssa told me that the girl on the television who volunteered was his cousin, but I don't know what he expects to do about it. It's not like he can go into the games, and the only way he's going to get into the capitol is by getting avoxed. So I don't think it's that, I think it's just me, but then again I always think it's just me. It's never the guy who broke my heart that's made the mistake. Maybe he's sorry, but not as sorry as he's going to be.

A sob gets stuck in my throat as I sink down to the couch, misery framing each and every feature like a loving caress. We're friends, she and I. We know each other well. I just didn't think she'd be visiting so soon. For a moment, I despise him, for leaving me, just like everyone else does. Mom, dad, everyone I ever loved left me. Every single boy I ever dated, they left me. Everyone leaves, but how does one leave a District that you go to as a refuge? How did he leave me behind? For a moment I feel so sad, that breath is having a hard time making it's way past swallowed tears. I'm panicking, I know, and there is a hand on my back, a skinny body pulling me close, but it's not him. I can't help collapsing into the body anyway, wishing so badly for Kaelen, and knowing that it's not going to be him when I open my eyes.

So this is what a universe crumbling is like.

Just give me a reason
Just a little bit's enough
Just a second we're not broken just bent
And we can learn to love again
It's been written in the scars on our hearts

"I-I mean, what kind of asshat.....does that thing with a pen, on a napkin?"

"Are you honestly asking me that question Colt? Come on, you know about how I feel about the guy." is always moving, swirling about in a whirlwind of colour and activity. Right now, I think he's trying to write an arrangement for Glee as he tries to bake a cake for his mother's birthday, and is talking to me. He's fifty percent wisdom, and one hundred percent hyper activity. It's sort of tiring me out, even though I myself and slung over the back of a chair, chin resting on the back, and arms wrapped around the top as well. I offered to help, but everyone in Glee club knows about me in a kitchen after we tried to do that bake sale to raise ballots for a new piano bench. Turns out that Sam, Pip, and Day falling on top of it was just too heavy.

It's been exactly thirteen hours since I realized Kaelen was gone, and after he left the cafeteria at lunch, I gave him till two to feel better. I wanted to follow him out, but Lyss said I had to let him get over it alone. I really wish now that I'd simply gone after him like I wanted to, because maybe then he wouldn't have left me. So maybe it is five in the morning, but Jace and I have been awake since four, when I knocked on his door. He was still up, anyway. I'm not sure if Jace actually ever sleeps, to be completely honest. The district is quiet right now, it's Saturday, so it won't fully wake up until at least seven. We have two hours. Sighing, it's all I do now, I roll off the chair and onto the floor, landing with a thud on my back, which receives a glance from Jace, but nothing more. "Why am I so leavable?"

I can almost hear him roll his eyes when he says, "You are not leavable Colt," suddenly his face pops into view as he looks down at me, a small smile arching bemusedly across his face. "You're proving that by what you're doing right now, and don't pretend that's your school backpack and you came here for extra help. We're friends for a reason, you know." I glare in his general direction as he pops out of his view, my gaze then turning to the side to rest on a small black bag that literally holds all my worldly possessions. I don't have a lot of things, I've always been on the move. Sure, I got a few new items of clothing, but there was always space in my bag. It's filled to the brim now with some provisions from the kitchen and my snack drawer. The stupid love letter, Asshat, writing 'I LOVE YOU' on a napkin, who does that but Asshats? With a growl, I roll onto my side, away from the bag, "I'm not going...to um....follow him like a whiny little....freak."

"See I told you he was a no-good deadbeat who'd hurt you, not saying I told you so but I told you so. You deserve better. I can set you up with Sam. You're going to date Sam now." He laughs as he pours the cake batter into a pan, and it's a real question of the cake is going to rise or not, knowing Jace. The point of the cake isn't really the taste though, it's the thought, and he's making it because he thinks his mother will love it. I don't think Kaelen even asked when my birthday was. There's so much Kaelen didn't ask about me, and so much I didn't ask about him. "FINE!" I announce suddenly, rolling off the ground into a standing position, and shouldering a my bag in a grace that would rival that of a three toed sloth.

"Wonderful, I'll let him know." Rolling my eyes, I walk into the kitchen, and Jace braces himself, and places a knife he was holding carefully in the sink. Nearing him, I take his hand and pull him into a hug. "G'bye Wheaton, I'll....have that feeling of loss when you think about someone you're away from." Pulling away from me, he opens the door of his apartment, and swings it wide, "Go after him, you idiot," and with that, he shoves me onto the street. So I slip, more like stumble out into the quiet morning of the District, and don't stop checking over my shoulder to see Jace watching me until I turn the corner.

And with every touch you fixed them
Now you've been talking in your sleep
Things you never say to me
Tell me that you've had enough
Of our love, our love

I pick the lock like how Kaelen taught me to, and it only took me twenty minutes. It would have taken him five at most. But when I make it into the armory, it doesn't take long to find Crescendo and Descant, gleaming in the holsters. It's been months since I've seen them, and I haven't felt exactly right without their ivory on my hips. Slipping the holster back on feels like slipping back into my own skin. Their weight brings them down to rest low on hips that haven't lost any of their musculature while underground, due to some pretty strenuous exercise. They feel like home almost, and as he picks up three boxes of bullets and shoves them into his bag, he can smell home too. The way the gun shop always smelt like it was smoking, and how everyone always smelled like cold metal and oil. I take a moment to rest my hands on them, and then quickly lift them out and spin them on the ends of my fingers. If there's one thing a Hanlon knows how to do, it's treat a gun.

As I stand there, in the dark, a gun twirling absentmindedly, it does occur to me. As I slip out of the room, and back across the district, it occurs to me again. And once more, as I stand contemplating a door that I've been through only once, and that was from the opposite side. When I slip out the door, the thought finally formulates into something coherent, blooming like a rare flower in my mind. He left because he's finished with you. I shove it back away, as I lift my eyes up, with slow, steady blinks, to a sky caught in an eclipse of twilight. I missed this sky. Although, I have never felt so sad in my life, the sky has reason to make things better, just being out under it brings my spirit up to more than it ever was. Besides, I think I know where he's gone.

Just a day before, had it only been a day? he'd been telling more stories of his childhood, about a saggy old house in the slums of District One with red shutters and a tire swing. Go upstairs, and it's the third room on the right. He's gone back home, to where he thinks his home his but that's stupid because his home is with me, and he told me that. It's dark, the sun hasn't come up yet. It doesn't mean that much to me, I've traveled through the woods before with nothing but a shovel before, and Crescendo and Descant of course. I know how to survive out here, probably better than silly Dempsey. Whatever it is, I'll find him, and then I'll bring him back. Maybe I'll kill him first, but either way, I'll bring him home.

I'm not very certain of what's going to happen once I step away from the door, but I do know that I'll be in the woods again, and he's somewhere out there in the woods too, so I won't be alone. I don't know if I'll have to use my guns where I'm going, but if I do, I'll be using them for him or on him. Whatever it is, there is a calm storm brewing somewhere in my sternum, a hurricane. I am not afraid to become another boy, someone else because I've done it before. Before I was Colt, I was Colt Hanlon. I can become whatever he needs, because the paper said he loved me. Who am I trying to kid? I love him just as much, although I've never said it or written it down. I don't think I'm really searching for an answer, or even a question. i'm trying to figure out if what the paper said is real.

I don't know if I can trust it, these things he has written, because what if they aren't true? I've seen him screw around with the smartest of them, and god knows, I'm not brilliant. I know how I feel, but that piece of paper isn't a feeling, it's three words, and I need to hear them spoken before I can rest easy. What I'm searching for, I've already found. I'm just getting it back. I'm not afraid, not even happy. As I step into the woods, I only feel like a ghost among the trees, like Adele taught me to be. I'm not afraid of the night, no. I have loved the stars too fondly to be fearful of the night.

Just give me a reason
Just a little bit's enough
Just a second we're not broken just bent
And we can learn to love again
It's been written in the scars on our hearts

ooc: Colt has left District Thirteen.