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Post by Deleted on Jan 11, 2017 15:53:56 GMT -7
But I still wake up I still see your ghost oh boy I'm still not sure what I stand for Harley woke up with her face covered in sweat. Another dream about Ariadne and Cypress. She put her face in her hands and took a deep breath. Every day was harder for her to keep going. She had finally made contact with a woman from Alias' Army. For all she knew, it could be a facade. The Capitol could be behind the whole thing and capture escaped avoxes and convicts. She put on her clothes for the day and strapped her pistol into the side of her hip. If things went sour, she would need to defend herself. No matter what, she wasn't going back to the Capitol as a prisoner.
She put her backpack on her back and took out her map. She had been traveling from one tree to another the past week so the Capitol wouldn't find her. It was exhausting, especially since she was running out of food and was only able to eat one can of meat and vegetables a day. She didn't know if she could even defend herself against a Peacekeeper because of how weak she felt. She looked at the map and saw where she was suppose to go. She was suppose to meet up with the woman at the edge of District 5 and a river. It was forest heavy and she assured me that nobody would catch them.
She trekked for about three hours, with a twenty minute rest in between. She didn't sleep that far away from the meeting point, but far enough away just in case it was a trap. She finally arrived at the place at the crack of dawn. The woman was already there. She was a little older than her, maybe in her mid-forties. Harley nodded at the woman, and the woman nodded back. That was the only exchange between them, and they started walking.
After only thirty minutes, shorter than she thought it would be, the two arrived at the camp. It was next to the river as well. It was a nice makeshift camp that they made, and when she looked around, she didn't see any Peacekeepers. If this place was legitimate and their leader was nice enough to let her in, she would be more than willing to do her part. Whether it was fighting, hunting, or making camp, she would do whatever made her most useful.
The woman led her through the people. There were so many types of people in the camp, and it was fascinating the mix of people that took part in a good cause. She wondered if there were more people in the districts. She figured there were, and she put that question in the back of her mind to write down to the leader later. She could smell meat on the fire, which was probably their breakfast.
There were two soldier looking type men outside of the tent. She figured that it was Alias' tent. The woman went in first and Harley followed. It was pretty well protected, and that wasn't a bad thing. She just hoped the person inside wasn't a Peacekeeper. She entered the tent and her heart stopped. She had to turn away for a second. She looked again at him, the man in front of her. Was that Cypress? After two years? She held her hand up to her mouth in shock and smiled. She wasn't able to speak, but even if she could, she wasn't sure if she would be able to. She wanted to hug him, to touch him again, but her body was frozen. Harley Emerson didn't know how it was possible that he was still alive, but he was there. Right in front of her. And she couldn't be happier.
WORD COUNT: 640 TAG: @cypress NOTES: Awwww i missed them
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Post by Deleted on Jan 12, 2017 8:25:02 GMT -7
Cypress still wasn't entirely used to having a camp. It was a necessary thing at this point; after the prison break and various other small acts of rebellion, there had been several dozen people with no place to go. But these displaced people lived here now, and they looked to him to protect and guide them. One of the camp residents, a sixteen-year-old girl that seemed to never stop talking in his presence, had even suggested they make a big flag with their A on it and post it above camp. He'd shot the idea down of course - the less of a target they were out here, the better - but the sentiment did mean something. These people were committed to the cause, and they were strengthened by the idea of doing it under the banner he had helped create.
Cypress didn't take all the credit for what they were now calling Alias' Army. He couldn't. Sure, he was the man called Alias, and he was currently a large part of the leadership and mission planning. However, the army had started to grow beyond him. There were people whose job it was now to find new recruits, to evaluate them and bring them to camp if deemed ready. There were people reporting in from every district, members of the army still living in their own home district. There were tactical advisers and expert fighters who served often in the role of teacher. It still wasn't a huge army, and it was still nowhere close to being enough to bring down the Capitol, but it was something. It was growing.
Speaking of growing, he was expecting Jet any moment with a new recruit. Jet - who had given herself her alias when she'd taken on the role of being a "carrier jet" for new recruits - had returned two days ago with news of a few new recruits she had picked up. She'd given out the maps, and the first of her newest batch was expected to arrive this morning. It was strange not to be the one finding and leading new recruits himself, but Cypress trusted Jet. She had an amazing sense of character and was one of his earliest recruits. He still wanted to meet everyone she brought in, which was why he was in the strategy tent, filling the time by running over a few of the same already-discussed next steps with Brand.
"They'll be ready," Brand promised. "If any district is ready to get out of this mess, it's that one. You know everyone we have there is itching for a fight."
"And if any district is on the brink of getting burned to the ground, it's that one," Alias protested. "I don't think we should start this in Seven."
"Jet has returned," came a voice on the other side of the cloth tent, Raven's voice. Both men knew that as an indicator that their conversation was over, and Alias stood. Brand remained seated, which he claimed was a strategical thing. New recruits could think they were the greatest thing since sliced bread, and Brand thought his appraisal from a seated position was humbling. Well, Alias wasn't about to doubt him; Brand had run an entire plantation back in Nine, and he had a solid grip on how to lead. Cypress had his own style. He leaned back against the room's main piece of furniture, a desk, and turned to the entrance of the tent as first Jet walked in, and then another figure.
Cypress Emerson's heart seemed to actually stop in his chest when he saw her. It was a good thing he was already leaning against the desk, because he wasn't sure that he would have remained upright otherwise. She was thinner than she had been - painfully thin, he realized - but he would know those eyes anywhere. That face was the one he still dreamed about every night, the one that had been fixed in his mind since the day this shy girl showed up on his lumber crew. Her name was on the tip of his tongue, aching to pass through his lips, and only his tight grip on the desk behind him kept him from letting it spill out. There were things that he had learned since Harley had been taken from him, since Juniper had suffered for him. He didn't know how in Panem she had made it into his tent, why she was really here, but he wasn't going to give her up now.
"Alias?" Brand asked next to him. "You alright?" Alias jumped a little, realizing he hadn't been doing anything but simply staring at Harley. She hadn't said anything either, hadn't made a move toward him, but there was a smile on her face. Oh god, her smile. He'd been almost sure he would never see that smile again, and now here it was, right in front of him. He was the reason she had been taken, and he was the reason for whatever had happened to her since, but she was here now, smiling at him. The guilt and joy of it swam around in his stomach, and all he wanted in the world was just a few minutes alone with her - and one of the perks of being Alias was that he could get that.
"Leave us," Alias said, his voice rough. He was talking to Jet and Brand, but his eyes refused to leave Harley's face. "Tell Raven and Jed not to let anyone in until I say."
"Are you sure that's such a-"
"Go," Cypress said, more forcefully than he meant, then added, "please." Jet had already started leaving the moment Alias had asked it of her, and now Brand got reluctantly to his feet. The moment the tent flap closed behind Brand, Cypress crossed the short distance to his wife and pulled her to him. She felt so small in his arms, but it didn't matter. He was holding her. He was holding Harley, and he didn't think he'd ever be able to let her go.
"Harley," he breathed into her hair, and saying her name seemed to break some dam inside of him. "Harley, I'm sorry. I'm so sorry."
WC: 1033 Tag: @harley Notes: Me too!!
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Post by Deleted on Jan 12, 2017 12:11:10 GMT -7
There were other people in the room other than Cypress, but Harley barely noticed. The shock of seeing the man she loved, the man she assumed was dead, was too much for her. But it was too much in the right way. She had finally had her questions answered, and though she had more, she didn't care. She wished she could say his name. She wished she could speak and tell him how much she loved him. She was delighted, and the strong-willed woman burst into tears. She hadn't cried in ages, not since Ariadne died. Something good finally happened in the Emerson lives, even if it wasn't under the best of circumstances. Harley didn't care though, and when everyone cleared the room, she took a step forward to meet with her husband.
She grabbed onto the back of his shirt, holding him and being as close to him as she possibly could. There was so much she wanted to tell him. And then he spoke to her, saying how sorry he was. If Harley could speak, she would tell him that there was no need to apologize and that he didn't have any reason to do so. His warmth against her small, cold body was something she assumed she would never feel again after her trip to the Capitol. She was so proud of him. She had always been proud of her husband, but raising an army for a cause he believed in was something she couldn't be more proud of. He was always a leader, yes, but she never thought that he would lead an organization like this. To her, seeing him doing something so passionate was the happiest day of her life--right next to the day they married and birthed Ariadne.
Mrs. Emerson pulled away from him and shook her head, indicating that he didn't need to apologize. She smiled and wiped the tears off of her cheeks. They could finally be a family again, or as makeshift of a family as they could be. She knew Cypress had important things to do as a leader, and she wondered if he would be gone often. She hoped not, though she would understand since it was his job. She wondered if he did this in the name of Ariadne, and the thought of her made her almost cry again. It was heartbreaking to know that she was gone for three years now. She saw Cypress change after that. It wasn't a good or bad change, but one filled with both passion and rage of sorts. Harley was proud that he turned that negative into a positive by creating a group that could help others.
She then put her arms around his neck and kissed him. Before they went to work every day, they would kiss, and it was something she dearly missed. She knew that normal wouldn't apply to them anymore. The leader of an army and his avox wife. It was about as abnormal as they could get. But when she kissed him, she felt like she was finally home. Harley didn't want to seem greedy by taking up a lot of his time from other things, but she couldn't help but have this moment with him.
WORD COUNT: 546 TAG: @cypress
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Post by Deleted on Jan 14, 2017 18:07:12 GMT -7
It seemed to Cypress that Harley was holding onto him just as tightly as he was holding her. She had always fit against him so well, as if somehow their bodies had been engineered for each other from the start. Right now, it would be enough if they were the only two people on earth. If she asked it of him, he would give up on the army he'd created and find a place that was safe for the two of them to live out the rest of their lives. If she was a trap, he would fall for it. All that mattered was that she was here.
Harley pulled back a little and he got a look at her face up close. She was still his Harley, just as beautiful as she always had been. She smiled and wiped tears from her cheeks, and he laughed in spite of the sting of his own tears against the corners of his eyes. He brushed a few more tears away from her cheeks with his own thumb, relishing the warmth of her skin. There seemed to be nothing but joy and relief in his wife's face. Did she forgive him? Could she really? Cypress' guilt at being unable to save her from whatever fate she'd been forced into constantly weighed on him. He had begged District 13 to let him rescue her, and they had refused helping him in any way. They had expressly said he wasn't to try anything - the risk involved had been too high for the reward it would reap. Harley hadn't been important to the cause, and didn't have anything District 13 could use. That refusal had been most of the fuel for his own rebellion, and while he never gave up the search for her, he had failed to even get close. His connections hadn't been great enough yet. Harley had always been selfless and understanding, but could the depth of her compassion truly go so far as to forgive him for the hell she must have gone through? He was afraid to really ask, and she obliged him there too by kissing him.
If Cypress had thought his greatest joy was holding Harley again, that was nothing in comparison to the exhilaration of kissing her. It had almost been something he had taken for granted, being able to kiss his wife every day before they went to work. He hadn't understood how much it meant to have that brief intimacy daily until it was gone, and his lack of it now for so long made her touch painfully good. It reverberated through his entire being. It was like falling into his old self, his true self, and he pulled her even closer to him. All thoughts of Alias, of the army, were gone. All of his questions, too, were gone. There would be time for them later, when he could regain control of his mind. For now, he wanted desperately to get lost in this, in her.
Cypress took a step back, pulling Harley further into his tent. He opened his mouth to deepen the kiss, and when his tongue came forward to greet hers, there was nothing. No, not nothing. Not exactly. He pulled back in surprise, and a heartbeat later, his face darkened. Among the many nightmarish tortures he'd imagined them inflicting upon her, this one was his freshest fear. He'd long imagined her fate like Juniper's, her body bruised and broken for his sake. He had had thought of her locked in a cell. These images haunted him at night, but it wasn't until fairly recently he knew the Capitol performed this different kind of torture. One of his newer recruits had mentioned an avox, a friend in the Capitol desperate to get out, and he had inquired about this new term. What he had learned was chilling, and now it had come true. To have a person's voice taken away felt like the worst kind of punishment.
"No," Cypress breathed, laying a hand on each of her cheeks. He searched her eyes for a moment, then swallowed. "Oh god, Harley." He kissed her forehead, pulling her against him again and giving himself a moment to breathe. The questions were back, pulling at his mind. Had she been in the Capitol then? And they had done this to her. Oh, her voice! How he missed her voice. He could still hear her voice when she was gone, and sometimes, it had been the only thing that kept him sane - if that could still be counted as sanity. It didn't matter what she said - anything from "the axes need sharpening again" to just his name had popped up in his mind. A few times, she had even sung to him. She had sung when she was pregnant, and when Ariadne was little too. Her singing was perhaps the most bittersweet sound of all.
But if the price he had to pay for having her back was never hearing her voice again, he couldn't be selfish enough to curse that. Her price was so far worse than his own. Cypress looked down into his wife's eyes again. He wanted to say how sorry he was again, but she already knew. Besides, she's already shaken off his first apology. So instead, he made a promise that he would die to keep. "I have you back. I want to know everything, and I have so much to tell you, but I have you back. That's all that matters. If you'll have me still, I'm yours. Always. I'll make them pay, for you and our daughter, for my sisters, and I won't ever let anything happen to you again. I promise."
WC: 954 Tag: @harley
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Post by Deleted on Jan 14, 2017 19:17:40 GMT -7
Harley still couldn't grasp that Cypress was alive. Feeling his touch and the warmness of his lips almost felt like a dream to her. With how rebellious he was, she was almost certain of his death. Then again, she was almost certain that she would die without ever seeing him again. But he was there with her. All Harley wanted was to be alone with him for the day and hold him. She wanted to tell him the things that happened, especially how she escaped and got in contact with their friends in District 7. She knew she would be able to write those things down, but they wouldn't be the same. She just wanted to listen to Cypress. The way he spoke to her was different than the way he spoke to anyone else, and Harley adored it more than anything. She adored him, and even words couldn't express her feelings when she kissed him. When he pulled her in, she had nothing else on her mind except for the man she married.
As they got more passionate, Harley didn't have her mind on her tongue. She knew she should've stepped back, but it was too late. Cypress had already found out, despite her wanting to tell him herself. He was surprised at first, as anyone would be. She felt like the moment was broken because of what the Capitol did to her. Her being unable to speak was in the back of her mind with Cypress here, but when she saw his face change into something darker, she realize that it was the first on his mind. She reacted by looking at him with understanding. Maybe he had changed, but she wasn't sure if that was good or bad. She had known that he was always troubled and that the Emerson's have had some very bad luck, but no matter what, she wouldn't stop loving him.
No, he said to her, and the way he said it almost broke her heart. He placed his hand on her cheeks, and she wanted to tell him it was okay. She was used to it, and there was nothing to worry about. But alas, nothing came out when she parted her lips slightly. He had pulled her back in, speaking again but in a tone that she could only remember as being terrified. It was the same tone when he saw first saw Ariadne die in the games. It was the tone of their first miscarriage. And second. And third. She could feel her heart beating slower whenever he spoke so fragile like that, but unlike the previous circumstances, she knew that this moment would pass. Though she didn't have a voice, this was a moment of happiness.
Cypress then pulled Harley back and spoke to her with more determination than she ever heard before. They had promised each other a lot of things. That he would rebuild a shed, that she would get back to her positive self, and that they would love each other until the day they died with their wedding vows. Those promises were kept, but this one was more dark than that. He spoke of revenge, and doing anything he could to keep her safe. She smiled and nodded, but knew that Cypress had changed. After her own capturing and Ariadne's death, that was something to be expected. He had made an army, after all. She also wondered what happened to Juniper. With how Cypress was speaking, she assumed that his last living sister was dead.
Out of the two of them, Harley was the peaceful one. Not that Cypress was violent by any means, but her husband did have a darker side to him. He seemed to punish only himself for things, and it led to his harm. She didn't want that to happen this time. She kissed him once again to ensure that she wouldn't leave his side, and that was certain. When their lips parted, Harley set her backpack down. She moved the empty cans around and got her white notebook out. She clicked the pen and wrote on it. She knew it wouldn't have the same effect as her speaking did, but she did want to communicate with him in some way.
When she was done writing, she turned the notebook to him. I'm so proud of you. I will back you in anything you do, but don't make this all about revenge. I don't want to lose you again. It said, and it was true. If she had lost Cypress again, she wouldn't know if she could keep on living. Cypress was the only family she had left. If he wasn't careful and got too greedy with his revenge, she could lose him too. That was the last thing she wanted, especially knowing that he was finally alive.
She set the notebook down and stepped towards him once again. She took his hands in hers and smiled up at him. To her, it was a vow that she was going to stay with him forever. After the war, she wanted to settle down with him in the country, away from everything else. He was probably so used to being around people now, but Harley wanted the rest of their lives to be quiet and without misfortune. She wanted the mockingjays to sing as they lived out their lives quietly. She knew that wasn't possible with his army right now, and she would never ask him--nor want him--to get rid of it until everything was over and done for. There hadn't been so much passion in her husband than there was right now. She looked down at his hands, which had been rougher than when she last held them, and she still saw his wedding ring on. She was overjoyed and flashed a smile across her face. When the Capitol took her, they took her wedding ring with them, at least she thought. She might have dropped it when she was unconscious, or they might have just thrown it away. Either way, she was heartbroken that she didn't have it. WORD COUNT: 1021 TAG: @cypress NOTES: Sorry, got super ramble-y there!
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Post by Deleted on Jan 14, 2017 20:12:27 GMT -7
Harley kissed him again, and Cypress took that as acceptance. He had meant every word he said. He had thrown himself into this rebellion fully when she was taken, and now that she was back, it was even more important. There were so many times he had been sure he was failing, that he had failed everyone, and he wasn't going to allow that to happen again. They were going to win, and the Capitol was going to get what they deserved. In the long uncertainty of Harley's captivity, Cypress had known that he wouldn't have much of a future if she didn't survive. Without her, this rebellion would have been his death one way or another, and he wouldn't be sorry for it. It would be right. But there was more at stake now than his own life, and his conviction only strengthened.
Harley pulled back from him to drop her backpack, and Cypress felt the momentarily cold. He just watched though as she rifled through her backpack and extracted a small white notebook. He swallowed, pushing down the disappointment that this would now be the only way he heard her voice. It would be enough, more than enough. It was more than he deserved, just like Harley always had been. He watched her write, laying a hand against her back as a sort of assurance that she was still here. If he could touch her, he could know for sure that she was here. When she turned the notebook to him, he found he could almost hear her voice as he read, and that brought a smile to his lips. What she asked, though, was difficult.
The line between justice and revenge was thin, and often blurred. Cypress knew that he had formed his army for both. He was not a violent man, nor a hateful one, and revenge alone couldn't have brought him to this place. But revenge was a fuel for him. If he faced one of the people who had directly caused the death or pain of someone he loved, he wasn't sure he'd be able to control himself. He wasn't sure that he wouldn't act stupidly, that rashness wouldn't undo everything he had just done. In most things, he was careful and made sure to fully plan his actions. It was the reason he had structured his army in the way he had. Everyone had the chance at a clean start, and their anonymity could provide safety for their own loved ones. He would have said the same thing to a recruit that his wife was now asking of him, and he needed to be able to do what she asked.
"Okay," he agreed, squeezing the hands that held his again. "I won't. I plan to stick around." She looked down at their joined hands, and he did too. Their hands just looked so right together. He noticed now though that her left hand was bare - her ring was gone. His thumb gently rubbed the place where it had used to be. It was the ring he had scrimped and saved for, the one he had taken Juniper along to help pick out - which had ended up being a lifesaver, because his tastes were apparently awful. It wasn't mother's ring at least - Cedar had gotten that - but it was the start of their lives together. He would just need to find something again, something better, and it was another promise. He didn't even feel the need to say it out loud, just brought her hand to his lips and kissed the place where it was missing. Then, he kissed her lips again. There was more to talk about, but for now, what they had said was enough.
WC: 623 Tag: @harley
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