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Post by Deleted on Dec 10, 2016 14:37:54 GMT -7
They were nowhere. Technically speaking, they were off any normal map, between the districts. When he wasn't recruiting, planning, or meeting, this was the kind of place that Cypress Emerson spent his time. Before the mission at the prison, he'd been in these places alone. He had welcome the solitude, the loneliness. He deserved to be alone, because despite the fact that he know accepted that the Capitol had destroyed his family, he also accepted his part in it. He could have helped his upset siblings get Acacia back all of those years ago. When Ariadne's name had been called at the reaping, he could have stopped her from going or found a way to stop her from going in. He could have fought harder to stop Harley from being taken, could have hid himself better from the Capitol so they would never have come from her. Worst of all, he could have stayed away from District 7 like he should have and stopped Juniper for receiving the payment for his sins.
Now, though, Cypress wasn't alone. It wasn't entirely by choice that he was bringing Everett Barbodes along with him, but the boy had no where else to go. Like Cypress, he couldn't go home. They were stranded in between, with no one to go to that was safe. Cypress supposed he could have sent the kid out to District 13. They might have taken him in, fed him and trained him to fight, but Cypress didn't trust them. They would have asked things of Everett they shouldn't, would have denied him things he might want - just as they had with Cypress. Besides, District 13 didn't understand what it was like to live in Panem. They had their seclusion, and were left alone by the Capitol. They had no idea what it was like to watch everything you love be ripped from you.
In a worn off-road car that was now stored in a cave about a mile off, Cypress had brought Everett to an old train car. It was long abandoned, the track it set on long out of use when tracks were re-reouted probably decades ago. He'd found the place about a year ago and it had become one of his often-used stops, located centrally between Districts 7, 2, and 10. The car was clearly old, but it held out the rain and Cypress had stocked provisions here for when he passed through. He figured they could stay here for a few nights and let the boy catch his breath a little. With the prison mission complete, he figured everyone in his network could use a small breather before they committed fully to whatever was coming next. Cypress wasn't sure what that was yet, but hopefully the newly-released prisoners would be an asset there.
"It's not much," Cypress said, pulling open the large metal door, "but it's not bad either. You'll get used to that odd smell in about an hour, and I just patched it up last time I came through, so at least we'll be dry in a storm. As long as it doesn't blow too hard." He stepped inside and sank down onto a wooden crate, dropping his heavy pack onto the metal floor. "Pick anywhere you like to set up your bedroll, but I'd advise against the ground. 'Cold' doesn't even being to cover how you'll feel."
WC: 564 Tag: @barbodes Notes: This is after the prison break (obviously). Hope it's okay!
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Post by Deleted on Dec 10, 2016 20:47:20 GMT -7
If he had to guess, Everett would have wagered that he was somewhere on the outskirts of Panem, somewhere between territories, maybe. The only thing he was sure of was that his location didn't matter. While sitting in his prison cell, Everett had slipped into something deeper than apathy. Back in District 7, when he'd blown the mill, he wished that he'd died. His agony would have ended there. Physically, Everett would not have faced the pain of a broken body with no medicated high to help him survive while he healed. Mentally and emotionally, there would not have been another day that passed without her. When Everett thought her name, remembered how her voice sounded or how she felt, the flaming anguish that seared through him was worse than any crack of a whip or crushed bone. Even the golden locket, the only piece of her he had left, had been confiscated sometime while he was unconscious. The only thing that reminded him that she was ever real was the crushing weight of his dreams and memories.
Unfortunately, he had somehow evaded death and found a much darker place - prison. Time was no longer linear, so Everett had no idea how long he had been locked away: days, months, even a year. There were no windows, no calendars. Only a small white room, constantly lit. When the others had come for them, he didn't fight. He'd complicity stood, then followed them out. If they were breaking him out of a Capitol prison, he supposed that they were just as big of enemies of the Capitol as he was. Besides, he was too tired to fight. Everett did not know what they wanted of him, what they might ask, just that it would surely be something. No one would have made the effort to free a husk of a person from a maximum security prison, putting their life on the line, only because they thought it was a decent thing to do. Besides, Everett saw two outlets for the rest of his life: rip the Capitol apart brick by brick with his own bare hands until he got to the Gamemakers and Snow, or he'd die trying. In the prison cell, he couldn't do either, so Everett left without protest.
Alias's voice was the first he'd heard in what felt like forever. When Alias and his team had first broken Everett out of prison, he'd opened his mouth to reply. When he did this, though, he realized that he didn't walk to talk. Everett had been silent so long that words felt foreign. No one questioned him, but they didn't stop talking, either. He'd gotten used to this. Though he wouldn't admit it to himself, the words were sometimes calming to hear.
A long time ago, he'd been told by the grandmother of a friend that before the Dark Days, some people believed in a place called hell. The concept went that if someone was a bad person in their life, then after they died they would suffer eternally in a place of fire and torture. Everett did not know why they had stopped believing in that, because really, it was a good summary of what his life felt like, especially when he was isolated in prison, his sanity leaving him more and more each day.
When he tasted fresh air for the first time, it burnt his lungs. The sunlight hurt his eyes. Everett hadn't felt any joy, though. The world was still a horrible one of death and destruction. It was all relative - both Panem and the prison were torturous, just in different manners. Everett couldn't deny that he preferred outside, though, and Cypress wasn't horrible company.
As he wasn't speaking and didn't plan to, Everett followed with no questions, only listening to the other man. Finally, they reach a boxcar. It was discrete enough, he supposed, to avoid being noticed by anyone caring to look. He followed Alias to the door, quickly realizing that it was meant to be their shelter. A time ago, he might have smiled or even laughed at the joke, but both of those things felt a millennia away. Instead, he just nodded. Everett couldn't bring himself to care if he seemed unappreciative or not, even though the old him would have been horrified at his ungrateful behavior. Everett stepped into the car behind Cypress. It only took a few brief seconds to sweep the area with his eyes. Along the wall beside the entrance, there was a long wooden shelf, probably once there for supplies. Everett walked to it, testing its sturdiness with his hand before dropping his bedroll across it. When that was done, he took a seat facing the other wall, leaning his head backwards and staring directly up. It did not register with him that this had been the exact same position he'd taken at the prison.
Words: 860 Tags:@cypress Notes: I'm really sorry that this is all ramble, but seeing as Everett isn't speaking, I guess this is what the posts will be like? I hope this wasn't as crap as it feels. :/
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Post by Deleted on Feb 1, 2017 12:42:01 GMT -7
Cypress didn't exactly think he was the funniest man alive, but his words hadn't even brought a hint of a smile to the boy's face. It wasn't surprising though, after everything Everett had been through. After everything Cypress himself had lost, he had only found reasons to be happy in his work. He drove himself into this budding rebellion, into creating connections and managing people. He had always been a people person, and the growth of his network held promise. There were so many people out there like him - people that had lost something dear to them and were ready to make the responsible parties pay. It was rewarding to find them, to talk to them, and that had the power to push away thoughts of the family he'd lost or abandoned.
As far as he could tell so far, Everett had little use to the rebellion itself. It he continued to be this uncommunicative and reserved, he might end up being nothing more than another face in the camp Cypress planned to bring the boy to. Maybe he could help cook, or clean. Or maybe he would sulk in his tent every day. None of that mattered, though. Everett's pain struck close to Cypress' heart. The boy had lost someone he loved to the Hunger Games, and like Cypress, had exploded in its aftermath. Their main different there seemed to be that Cypress had friends and family there to bring him back from the brink back then; Everett hadn't. That, and the fact that Everett's retaliation had been impossible to cover up, and he'd been caught. When he'd devised the plan for the prison breakout, it had been impossible to leave this boy behind, and he was glad that his team hadn't questioned the addition of Everett's name to the list of those that needed rescuing.
Cypress' eyes followed Everett as he looked around the car, then spotted a place for his bedroll. The older man was trying to give the boy some time to settle, to maybe think about talking. It was only the two of them out here, so what better time? Of course, it had only been the two of them for hours, and he hadn't said a thing. Everett could still be in shock, or afraid, or unsure whether or not to trust this stranger who had rescued him from the prison. Did he even see it as a rescue? Maybe in some twisted way, Everett had thought he deserved to be back there. Cypress could understand if that was the case; there were times when his own guilt lay so heavily on him that he wasn't sure he could keep going.
His bedroll laid out, Everett sat, and settled into a familiar position. It was familiar, because it was exactly how he had looked when Cypress opened the cell door that had contained him. Everett stared straight up, his face unreadable, his body language resigned. No, it would not be easy to bring this kid back to life, but Cypress had to try. He did't know how to do that, so he just talked. "I'm from District 7 too," he began, settling on the crate. "I introduced myself as Alias back there because I believe everyone working to end the Capitol's reign deserves some privacy for their family, but I don't have much in the way of either - privacy or family." He smiled, taking off his hat and ruffling his auburn hair a bit. "The name's Cypress Emerson. I'd offer you my hand, Everett, but I don't think you'd take it, and then both our feelings might be hurt." He laughed a little, turning his hat over in his hands. "I had everything I loved back there once - great job, supportive friends, perfect family. When they took my sister and she never came back, I told my siblings no, keep safe, don't do anything stupid like try to avenge her. These things happen. When they beat this little stowaway I found on a lumber run, I thought they'd stop when he'd learned his lesson. When he died, I thought no, this had to be a mistake, an accident, but I couldn't help it sticking in the back of my mind. Something was off, I kept thinking, something with this whole nation when teenage girls and stowaway boys die when they don't have to." He swallowed, turning his eyes down to the floor as he saw the next faces. "Then they took my daughter, my sweet girl when she was in her very last reaping. Something in my broke when I saw her die, along with the millions of others who watched too. But I had my wife, and I had found people who hurt as much as I did. Then they took my wife, and home wasn't safe anymore, and I couldn't sit on the sidelines anymore, and I couldn't just let these things happen. But I tried to save the few people I had left, only to find...you can't save anyone. Not in this world."
Cypress had gotten lost in himself as he spoke, almost forgetting the boy sitting in the train car with him. There had been no one he could tell this to, no one who was safe enough to know. And he wasn't even sure that Everett was the right person to know all of this about him, when the boy's life was so tenuous, but Cypress had found he couldn't stop once he'd gotten started. If this boy was his undoing because he'd take this information to the wrong people, Cypress deserved whatever came next. He wiped away the tears that had fallen as he spoke and looked back at the boy he was trying to save. "What you can do instead is change the world so that no one else has to feel like you do." He stood and opened the crate he'd been sitting on, pulling out two tightly wrapped packages of food. He tossed one to Everett and put his own beside his pack, starting to get ready for the night. He had no idea if his story had meant anything to Everett, but he did know that he'd done all he could for tonight.
WC: 1040 Tag: @barbodes
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Post by Deleted on Feb 4, 2017 18:48:53 GMT -7
When the man’s voice filled the small area, Everett turned to look at the him, still quiet although his silence didn’t mean that he was not listening. In fact, Everett listened to every single word Alias had ever spoken. Everett came to know that Alias was a good person, though that was already apparent from the other man’s repeated attempts to make mutual contact with him.
When Alias reintroduced himself as Cypress and made a bit of a joke, it prompted Everett to think. Had Cypress actually offered out his hand, would he have taken it? He couldn’t decide on the answer for himself.
It was striking to hear the similarities between himself and Cypress. District 7. The brutal, unnecessary death of loved ones. The raw agony that bred the deepest form of a need for vengeance. Everett swallowed and tried to ignore the emotion rising in his chest. It had been what felt like ages since he last felt anything. Cypress’s story reopened the wounds on Everett’s heart that had been haphazardly stitched - they had been ugly, terrible things to look at, but were fine so long as they weren’t acknowledged. Now, his whole story played through his head again. The initial brushes with injustice like the stories of dead workers, killed by their overseer’s greed and haste; his whipping; Josh’s disappearance and Nova’s pain from that and the Games; Fable’s reaping and his rushed marriage; his parent’s death; and, lastly and worst of all, Fable’s murder in the Games. Like Cypress, he had felt every single thing he cared about be ripped away from him.
Everett watched as Cypress wiped away tears. If Everett wasn’t so deeply broken, he would have sobbed. Instead, he forced himself to breathe, focusing on the last words that Cypress gave him. They were eerily similar to the ones that Nova spoke years ago, promising him that he could make a difference.
Everett caught the pack that Cypress threw but he wasn’t thinking about the food inside.
He didn’t want his intentions to be mistaken. Yes, he would be quiet, but that was because he knew there was no use left for his voice. But that didn’t mean that he was going to be inactive. Cypress granted him his freedom, his chance to make the Capitol pay for the ruin they laid on his life.
He sat the food pack on his bedroll beside him and stood, crossing the short distance of the room to stand in front of Cypress. He took a deep breath and extended his hand out to shake Cypress’s.
Everett would be quiet, but he would also listen, and, more than anything, he would fight.
————————————
After some time, Everett and Cypress moved into camp. Dozens and dozens of others joined them. No one there asked any questions about his silence, or, if they did, Everett was never around to hear any of it. The other refugees there didn’t seem to mind him. Everett worked hard, doing whatever was asked of him. Though he wouldn’t admit it, he sometimes enjoyed the presence of others. At times, he could almost forget his situation.
Rather ironically, his task for the morning was to find firewood. He did though, falling into the easy routine of chopping and splitting wood that was still so familiar. Once he had a sizable stack neatly cut, he started to work on hauling it all back to the camp.
When Everett was carrying his third load back, he caught sight of Cypress leaving his tent with a woman that he did not recognize. Everett assumed that she was some new inhabitant. That was, of course, until Everett saw Cypress kiss the woman. Suddenly, everything connected.
Of course.
Cypress had gotten his wife back.
Everett dropped the load of wood that he was carrying. It struck the ground with a large crash. Several pairs of eyes from around the camp turned to look at him, but he was already taking off in the direction of the woods.
The only thought in his mind that was now, there was no question for him. Every other person who thought they had lost everything was wrong. Cypress got his wife back. But Everett would never be reunited with Fable, not in a million years.
Words: 756 Tags: @cypress
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Post by Deleted on Feb 8, 2017 15:40:51 GMT -7
There were no words to describe the true elation Cypress felt at having Harley here, with him agin. He'd never given up hope on her being alive, but after so much silence surrounding her, he'd doubted finding her himself. Instead, she had simply stumbled into his camp without knowing who Alias was, a coincidence that bordered on miracle. She'd found a way back to him when he couldn't find one to her, and it amazed him.
After he'd sent Jet, Brand, and his loosely termed "guards" away from his strategy tent, Cypress Emerson had acted like a lovestruck teenager again. He couldn't help it - he felt like a teenager. After endless months of loneliness, guilt, and pain, he'd given himself over to joy for a rare few moments. For those moments, the rest of the camp hadn't existed, and it was only the two of them. He had a couple new memories in the strategy tent now, and even if no one heard them or suspected anything now, he knew he couldn't keep his relationship with Harley a secret. Everyone in his camp had a right to their privacy, but now that she was with him again, he wasn't about to hide his greatest joy.
Cypress had taken Harley to his own tent afterward so she could get settled, but when he left a few minutes later to fill in the aptly confused main strategy council about what was going on, Harley had insisted on coming along. He wasn't about to refuse her anything, so he agreed. He kissed her gently right beyond his tent - again, couldn't help it - and then smiled at the barely veiled whispers it caused. This camp was his family and friends, and he would get to share good news with them for a chance. It would be a welcome change.
Before he could say much though, a wooden thunk and small commotion to his right caught his attention. A small group of campers were exchanging a few words in low voices, but they weren't looking in his direction. Instead, a few gazes were turned back toward the woods, where a flash of someone was disappearing. The only other anomaly he could see was a pile of logs, abandoned haphazardly, with one long still rolling away from the rest. It might be nothing, but he had an immediate feeling it wasn't.
Cypress glanced back to the people nearest him. "My wife is our newest guest," he told them, erasing the questions they had been to kind yet to ask. His eyes lit on a woman who often helped with the meals. "Juliet, can you find Aspen something to eat? She's come a long way." He turned to his wife and added, "I'll be just a moment, love." He squeezed her hand and walked toward the pile of logs.
"What happened?"
"That Link kid," Plow said, shrugging a bit. "Just dropped his logs and ran away. Odd one, him."
"Thanks," Cypress replied, and made his way into the forest. Everett. There'd been moments, real moments, when Cypress thought he might be getting through to the kid. That first night in the train car, Everett had stood up and shook his hand, man to man. It might not be much on the surface, but it had showed a sort of mutual respect. Then they'd made it to the camp together, which had barely existed before he'd brought Everett to it. Everett fit in and found a place here, working hard. The others accepted him. He still hadn't spoken, but that hadn't stopped Cypress from speaking to him. He could talk with Everett about things he couldn't talk about with anyone else - home and the losses they had faced. If Everett judged him for any of it, Cypress didn't know, but it didn't feel like he did. Everett wasn't the only one in camp who knew his real name - he'd become a bit infamous back in 7 - but it felt like Everett was the only one who knew who Cypress actually was.
Cypress had picked Everett's alias, since he couldn't exactly pick his own if he refused to talk. He'd chosen Link, a name that had come to him almost without thought, and one that seemed to suit him. Everett was his link to the past, sure, and maybe his link to the future. They were connected by birthplace and grief, and hopefully by the common goal that had spurred Cypress into this work to begin with. Cypress just needed to find that final connection, that thing that would bring Everett out of his grief and really into this war. The last thing he wanted to do was scare Everett off, if that was even what happened just now. But what else would make him drop what he was doing and run away? He'd forgotten about Everett in those moments with Harley, and he had no idea what this would mean for him.
In the woods, Cypress didn't call out. Their camp was safe and guarded, but he'd cautioned everyone against yelling, especially outside of the main camp. The trees and the nearby river could cancel a lot of sound, but it only took one sound in the wrong ears to put them all in danger. Perhaps it was too much, but he was protective of these people who had already been through so much. So instead, he wound his way through the trees, searching for the blonde hair that would give Everett away. When he found it, he didn't bother to muffle his approach, letting the other know he was here.
"Everett," he said gently when he was close enough, "it's the last thing in the world I expected too."
WC: 952 Tag: @barbodes
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Post by Deleted on Feb 12, 2017 14:08:40 GMT -7
Everett didn’t get very far before he ran out of breath. It wasn’t that he didn’t have the endurance to run. In fact, during his time with Cypress he bulked up impressively, almost looking like his old self. At the prison, Everett never moved and there was always very little food. His body deteriorated quickly, looking closer to a corpse than to an actual living thing. But at the camp, there was plenty of food and work. No, this time, it wasn’t the state of his body that left him physically incapacitated. It was the feeling ripping through his lungs and heart and mind. Everett leaned against a tall tree, pushing his forehead against the rough bark as he tried to regulate his breathing.
Everett stood for a moment, trying not to think. Everything that he had done since being broken out of prison was like a small bandage on the massive wound on his heart that was the profound grief circulating his past. Now, each bandage had been ripped off. His grief was raw and new, almost as debilitating as the day he felt it first, the moment he heard Fable’s name called at her reaping.
Leaves and branches cracked under heavy footsteps. Everett heard them for almost a minute before he felt the presence of another. At first, he wondered if he should run. What if it was a Peacekeeper who happened upon him, or maybe even a rebel gone rogue? But then he realized that he didn’t care. If someone were to come take him and end his life right then, Everett might have felt relief as his pain ended once and for all. Instead, he heard Cypress’s voice which only deepened the hurt.
Everett wasn’t mad at Cypress. Not at all. If he was any different, from any other set of circumstances, he would have been overjoyed. Cypress was a good person and he deserved happiness, deserved his wife’s return more than almost anyone Everett knew. But, as he found, there was no “fair” or “deserving” in the world, only cruel and hard circumstances that robbed Everett of any emotions he had.
After a moment, he turned to look at Cypress, his gray eyes flashing with agony. There were no tears wetting them, just the broken, suffering look of the deepest damnation possible on Earth.
There was nothing left for him to expect. Even though Cypress was surprised, probably even extremely shocked, even, there had still been the remote possibility that his wife would come back. Everett was sure that it was one of those terrible hopes that some people had and couldn’t prevent themselves from visiting at one time or another. But he had none. Everett watched on as each person he loved most dearly was brutally ripped apart from him. In his situation, there would be no returns or no hope. The return of Cypress’s wife was like the grandest joke in Panem for Everett. Just when he thought that he had someone who would understand him, someone in his exact same position, Everett was abandoned in his depth of grief once again.
Everett dropped his eyes to the forest floor, willing himself to breathe for some inexplicable reason, because at the moment, all he felt like doing was ceasing to exist.
Words: 601 Tags: @cypress Notes: Wait for it….
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Post by Deleted on Mar 13, 2017 18:25:44 GMT -7
It didn't seem possible that Cypress' heart could take much more today. First, he'd been overjoyed at the return of his wife, despite the fact that she could no longer speak and that the horrors she had endured had been entirely his fault. Now, his heart was breaking for this boy in front of him. He couldn't imagine the pain that Everett was enduring, knowing that his girl would never come back. She was gone forever, and the close bond that Cypress had felt they had was taking a step back because of that. He couldn't fault the boy for being sad, for being angry even - at him, at the world, at Harley for existing. He wouldn't blame Everett for a single emotion.
The boy said nothing, only looked at him with pain and returned his eyes to the forest floor. Cypress ran a hand through his hair, wondering what on earth he could even say in this position. He could remind Everett that time would heal him, or that the people Cypress had lost were still lost forever. Ariadne would never work beside him with her defiant, indestructible attitude. Acacia would never smile at him again over the top of a book. And Juniper... well true, he had not seen her body, but the chances of her being alive were smaller than his wife's had been. But would good would reminding Everett of these loses do? Cypress had already talked about these deaths, and the deaths he had witnessed or known about. Everett already knew that Cypress wasn't so lucky as to get where he was unscathed, but it wouldn't make his own grief any less. Probably nothing Cypress could say would do that.
Cypress stepped closer and put a hand on Everett's shoulder. It was an invitation, a reminder that he was here for the boy. The only thing Cypress could think to do was confide in Everett, just as he had already been doing - whether the boy actually wanted to hear anything he had to say or not. "She's back, and I feel like the luckiest man alive," he began, "but she's not the same. They cut out her tongue, Everett. She can't talk. They probably tortured her and put her through hell, and that's all on me. Every single thing they did to her is my fault. It's a miracle that she's alive, that she found me, but if I hadn't gotten it in my head that I could do all this" - here he gestured back toward the camp - "then she wouldn't have had to go through any of that." He swallowed, unable or unwilling to continue. He couldn't compare his loss to Everett's, because in this he would still come out the luckier man, but he also felt like Everett would understand what he was feeling somehow. Everett didn't bear the same demons that Cypress did - the guilt that his actions had lead to the death or pain of someone he loved. At least, Everett didn't as far as Cypress knew. Fable had died in the Games - but there was still a lot Cypress didn't know about this boy. Still though, he felt that Everett would at least listen, and wouldn't brush Harley's pain away as he knew Harley would. Harley didn't hate him for her own pain, still remaining positive despite everything, but that didn't make his guilt any less.
WC: 566 Tag: @barbodes
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Post by Deleted on Apr 19, 2017 16:48:01 GMT -7
Since the reaping and especially since that day, Everett tried to bury all his emotions under the thickest layer of apathy possible. It was like he coated himself in the resin from District 7, making layers so thick that he began to wonder if anything existed underneath at all. But now, seeing Cypress with his wife was like the biggest crack in him of all. Everett felt himself heating up. The hand laying on his shoulder felt like fire. As Cypress spoke, Everett knew that he was loosing his measure of control. He elected to not feel, knowing that there were no good things left to be felt. There was only agony. When Everett felt the weight of a hand on his shoulder, it brought the crushing memories of feeling Fable's hand there and everywhere else. He took a step back, breaking the touch between them.
Miracle. Everett hated that word. In life, miracles were very thinly spread. Some people were more fortunate than others. Some got more than their own share of miracles. In Everett's case, he'd been given a single miracle, and it was the time he had with Fable. But after the Games cutting that time short, Everett began to wonder if their time together had even been a blessing at all. Maybe his life would have been easier if he never knew the wrenching pain that came with loss. If he hadn’t known love, he wouldn’t have known loss. Maybe, he could even have been happy. The word filled him with bitter hatred. “Happy” seemed so unattainable and unrealistic that it was laughable.
in the camp, it was easy for Everett to bury his demons. There, he could busy himself with work. So long as he chopped and hauled wood, helped make tents for new arrivals, or generally stayed around others, comforted by the numbing and distracted sound of their voices. It didn’t matter that sometimes he heard their whispers, wondering if and how he became an Avox. There, it was better, because before, the white walls of his prison cell were too boring to keep his attention. When boredom set in, the pain was able to sear his mind and soul. Camp gave him a false sense of security, almost as if his problems no longer existed - a wholly incorrect notion. All it took to send him delving into the terrifying confines of the terror in his mind were a single sight. Everett was breaking down so badly that he might as well have been in prison for the first day again.
When Everett’s voice came, he didn’t notice it at first. Only mere seconds elapsed before he did, though, because the terrible pain and dryness in his throat felt like wildfire.
“I watched them cut off her arm,” he shot back at first. His voice was terribly hoarse voice, sounding more animalistic than human. Everett couldn’t stop now, he’d already entered a vicious cycle. By speaking and breaking his solemn period of silence, he was filled with a large measure of self hatred which combined with all his other awful emotions to form a ferocious anger at the world which was being expressed through his gravely voice.
Everett could hear the canon firing, could see the terrible look on her face as she took her last breaths. ”I watched Fable as she died.” He felt the hot tears that pricked at the corners of his eyes but willed them away. Everett turned for a moment, entertaining the idea of calming down for a split second. Once again, his anger inevitably took over and sent him turning around. ”I watched them all go - every one of them.” Everett’s voice was to weak to be anything louder than quiet, but each of his words was punctuated by a growl or hiss, depending on how badly it tore at his throat as it left his mouth. ”My. Friend. My. Parents. My. Wife.” Now, he smiled, so deeply embedded in the thoughts shredding his mind that he felt as if he were going insane. ”The best part?” he asked with a whisper, not waiting for an answer from Cypress, taking the initiative himself, ”The best part is that it doesn’t mater whose f*cking fault it is. At the end of the day, they’re dead and I wish that I was.”
Words: 758 Tags: @cypress Notes: Help I didn’t even mean for that last line to happen
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Post by Deleted on May 10, 2017 19:27:04 GMT -7
Cypress had never heard Everett's voice before. At this point, he had rather wondered if he ever would. Everett didn't seem to have any sort of medical muteness, or Avoxed muteness, although most people in the camp thought that's what it was. No, Cypress was pretty sure he had decided not to speak of his own free will. Although they'd had many conversations together over the course of their acquiescence, the conversations had been verbally one-sided. Cypress could live with that, much as he wanted to boy to talk again. Hearing the pain that was infused with the voice Everett finally shared broke his heart though.
Cypress didn't know what arm Everett had watched be cut off, but he knew better than to interrupt. Instead he swallowed, listened. He knew about the most recent cause of Everett's pain through other sources. Everett had lost his girlfriend to the Hunger Games, after watching her make it so far. Cypress himself hadn't seen the Games. After Ariadne's death, he could watch no more than the mandatory viewings, and those had been torture. Since leaving District 7, he hadn't seen a moment of them. Perhaps he should have made himself watch them, to cement their pain with his own. He was fighting to end their needless death, but the fact remained that they were still dying. The Capitol was still using kids to tear apart families and lives, and Cypress hadn't stopped it yet. Maybe he had no hope of every really stopping that, and he needed to understand the full weight of that. He should have the image of Fable's death as ready in his mind as Ariadne's.
But he didn't, and now all he could seem to do was stand there as Everett unloaded his pain for the first time since they'd met. Cypress let it crash against him, wishing he could pull the boy in for a hug like he would anyone hurting, like a child, like he would his child, but knowing that touch was probably fire rather than ice. Everett had already backed away from him once. He pushed away any pain of his loss - or at least tried to, because it was never far behind. Sometimes another person's pain couldn't break through your own, but right now, Everett's felt like a part of his own.
"God, no," Cypress said when he finally finished, his own voice sounding too loud after following Everett's quiet, pained one. That was the worst kind of wish. "It matters who is at fault. It matters that you're still here. You're still here because you're supposed to be." He could say that they were both here because they people they'd lost would want them to be too, but the dead had no clear desires. Maybe Ariadne did want her daddy back, and Acacia and Juniper would welcome their brother in death. Maybe that boy he'd let die wanted to drag Cypress into the afterlife with him. Maybe all the people he'd let down wanted him to follow in death for his inability to save them. These were thoughts he had had before, thoughts that would not help this conversation at all.
"I'm sorry for your losses, for your pain," he continued, letting whatever words wanted to come, come. "None of it ever goes away, not really." He shook his head. "If you were gone, I'm not sure that I'd be here. If you hadn't been there to rescue, if you hadn't made it to today, I don't think this camp would be what it is or I would be what I am. You saved a part of me that might have killed me in a suicidal Capitol run otherwise, whether you wanted to or not. I'd like to think you listened to me all that time not just because I rescued you and you had some sort of debt, but even if that's all it was, I wouldn't be here, sane, alive, and ready to make a real impact otherwise." He would be even less the man Harley needed, less the man these people needed. Everett kept his humanity alive, and now he would have to find a way to do the same for the boy.
"It's not just me," he went on. "You're a good man, Everett, and people can see that - even if you're a man that's hurting. I've seen you inspire things in others, and you probably haven't even noticed it. Don't... let their deaths stop you from being that person. Don't keep them inside either. Let them live through you. Let someone else share the pain and the joy it was to know them." Cypress had no idea whether or not his words would get through to Everett in this state, but he said them all the same. He said them so that they were there, out in the world, to be taken or forgotten as needed. Ariadne had always told him he could spin anything into a lesson and teased him endlessly for it whenever he did just that, but it was in his nature. And he liked to think it wasn't a wholly unsuccessful habit, since she'd in turn taken so many of his lessons to heart and made him the most proud a father could be.
WC: 880 Tag: @barbodes Notes: If this speech lacks, just remember Cypress is a better speech-i-fier than me and I struggled hard with what he would actually say.
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Post by Deleted on May 24, 2017 9:08:52 GMT -7
In the stories that Everett heard when he was young, pain could be a beautiful, profound thing. In the tales whispered to him late at night by his mother, the main character was always tortured by some ghost of his past. Sometimes, it was a lost dream, other times, a lost person. Always, these lost things transformed the hero, made him strong and desirable and capable of feeling the good things that came in his life just as deeply as he had felt the sadness. Once, his mother ended the story with a comment: ”You know, Everett, I don’t think we’d ever know that things are good unless they were bad.” So far, his life made him question if the good was worth being felt at all. What were the highs when the lows were near unsurvivable?
Cypress’s words cut him. Everett wanted to ruin the landscape around him, to leave each blade of grass smoldered and each tree leveled with the charred heap of the earth. This was the anger that fueled him as he traveled to the mill and lit it up while he still stood inside. This was the anger that could end worlds. Any other emotions stung. The ripping and destruction that came with his fury was, in a way, comfortable. It felt like a denial of his past because each wave of hatred rocking him worked to cancel out his thoughts. The anger was painful enough to be a blanket, to be the only thing he had to feel. That was, of course, until Cypress stood before him, attacking him with softness.
Everett’s stomach turned violently at Cypress’s gentle demeanor. The softly spoken words and positive affirmations cut his heart to ribbons. Since the reaping, Everett was locked in a struggle between apathy and hysterics. Even though he’d felt good, this resurgence of horror made him want to not feel again, once and for all.
”Stop. Don’t pull this,” he said, his voice straining. ”Don’t pretend that life’s worth living. Not when it’s like this.”
But Cypress didn’t stop. It made the anger well up inside Everett even more, building and building until he thought he was going to blow up. When it peaked, though, there weren’t any mills left to blow up. There were no Peacekeepers left to fight. There were no hateful words left waiting on the back of his tongue. Instead, the emotion departed just as quickly as it came, but when it left, his head was anything but empty. Everett tried to look elsewhere as Cypress spoke. ”I know,” he agreed once, quietly, hoping that he would manage to stop the flow of words that whittled away at what was left of him. The remainder of his composure was hanging by a single thread. Just as Cypress finished speaking, it broke.
Everett had been trying to will away the tears burning at his eyes, pricking at the tops of his cheeks. Now, they were undeniable. He felt the bark of a tree grinding into his back, leaving him with nowhere left to go. Everett raised a hand to his face as a final defense, trying to stop the flood of tears that were on their way. Instead of a composed silence, the only thing that followed the gesture was a deep, broken sob. ”Oh, my god,” he whispered, partially to himself and partially to Cypress as he sank down the trunk of the tree.
Words: 602 Tags: @cypress
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Post by Deleted on Jun 26, 2017 18:30:59 GMT -7
Cypress had no idea, as he spoke, if he was breaking the boy or helping him. Maybe both. He didn't know if this calm demeanor, this advice and this gentleness, was what Everett needed, but it was what Cypress had to offer. More often than not, this was who Cypress was. He'd had bursts of rage before, so violent and powerful that they could scare even those who loved him the most. But when the rage had run its course, he'd come back to himself and remember that the consequences were never worth the relief. He still remembered the absolute terror on a 5-year-old Ariadne's face when he destroyed the bedroom of their house meant for her sibling that had died before he could live. She wouldn't even go near him for days after that, and that fear almost hurt worse than the pain of losing their son. He had learned an eveness over the years, and it was why he could lead in a nation fueled by anger and pain.
He couldn't stop when asked. It was no simple thing to wish you were dead, and Cypress couldn't lose Everett to the darkness of his grief. He'd felt that too, and if he'd have been alone, there was no telling what that feeling might have come to. He wanted Everett to know that he wasn't alone, to really understand it. He would be there. He didn't expect anything in return for it - although he had probably already taken whatever due he might have had a hundred-fold. And perhaps the boy needed a peer instead of a father figure, but here they were, and Cypress had no intention of giving up.
When the last words left his mouth, Cypress watched as the boy started to crumble. The tears came then, and his strength left him. Cypress followed Everett down to the ground, kneeling in the damp leaves across from him. He reached out and touched the boy's arm again, a reminder physically that he was here. Despite the anger and the quiet he'd seen in Everett, he hadn't seen tears, and perhaps this now was a good thing. Maybe now his walls were down far enough that he could let something good into his life. Maybe now, Everett would join their cause for real - or learn what cause truly called his name. But such things were beyond the present moment to see. For now though, he said nothing, feeling he'd said enough. He'd listen if Everett had more to say, or he'd sit here until Everett couldn't cry anymore.
WC: 429 Tag: @barbodes Notes: End of thread? Unless you have more Everett wants to do.
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