Between
Creeno
Based on the song by Vienna Teng of the same name. Jude/Max.
It's all the same to Jude, wars, and all wars broke down into one simple thing:
bloodshed.
Lucy's fighting a war against another war. Her weapons are fliers and papers and marches. Her uniform is her long hair and well to do clothes, the peace sign she keeps on her wrist and probably her heart too.
Max's war is against an army of Prudence's, his fellow army men copies of him and Jojo, without the soul either possessed. He fights in jungles, and his weapons were loud guns that didn't belong in his hands because it wasn't his war.
Jude didn't have a war, and that was a problem.
-
"Don't you care?"
Jude peers at Lucy for a moment before looking back down at his drawing through a haze of pot. She's holding Max's letter and they both can see that Max is breaking, even if he doesn't say it himself.
"Jude--"
"I care about Max. Shouldn't that be enough?"
It obviously isn't, by the look on her face.
-
He hates the little telly Paco the Shagger brings to the apartment. It sends him feverish dreams of Max screaming for someone, anyone to come save him. Sometimes, Max will do nothing in Jude's dreams but stare lifelessly at the letters and drawings Jude has never sent. He cries when he looks at them.
"Why won't you send them?" he asks.
Jude can't honestly answer, even in his dreams.
-
He paints endlessly as the telly transmits images of bloodied soldiers.
He looks as if he were fighting right along Max, emerging from his work room covered in splatters of red. Lucy can't bear to look at him when he emerges, and he can't really look at her, either. There's a gulf between them now, all due to one stupid war.
-
"He's asking for you, Jude."
He turns away from Lucy, away from the letter, even if all of him wants to turn around and grab it.
"Jude, please."
He stays firmly turned to the wall, gazing at the old sketches he and Max had done in life's long past until she leaves the room.
And it's then that he lets himself cry.
(i'm scared you won't ever write back)
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