A lot of these chapters will vary in length so this is a shorter one. But hey. I actually updated something. Haha.
Jillessa Heronstair's Characters: Anthony, Clarisse
SilverJem5's Characters: Percy, Leo, Caspian
My Characters: Quinn, Park
~~Anthony~~
There was something in him that made worry.
Every time he would catch someone's eye and they would look away, he'd instantly put on a fake smile and hope they weren't judging him. He'd run a hand casually through his hair and hope it didn't look messy. He'd say thank you and please one too many times just to make sure he was being polite. He'd catch that person's eye again and try to see if they needed help. He wanted to be liked. Fit in. Be admired.
But he wasn't ambitious in the way that made him bad.
Just...insecure.
Wasn't everyone?
So he adopted a new mindset that he would make sure everyone liked him and that everything that he thought of would match the cleanliness and politeness of his looks. He wasn't naturally mean so it was easy, but he found himself promising things to people to make them feel better when the only promise that was true was one of deceit. He'd try to hide that too. So he'd tell people that they'd be alright and that tomorrow would make it better but he knew that it wouldn't.
But he wanted to be liked. Fit in. Be admired.
And so no matter how many times he lied, he felt steady because, for once, he was running on steady ground and he hadn't slipped. Not in a long time. He knew that he couldn't be perfect, but he wanted to be something near it. He knew he tried too hard, but he found himself judging. Judging the way he looked. Judging the way he acted. Judging the way he didn't say the right thing in the right moment.
So he kept worrying.
But he kept striving to be perfect.
He just wanted to be liked.
~~Quinn~~
Twenty dollars.
That's all it cost for a beer and a hit of the opium drugs.
And then Quinn would see.
He would see the smile on people's faces and he would smile too because there was a way to escape. He didn't have a terrible childhood but the enchantment of being high was too much for him to resist. There would be light in his vision and he'd see stars. And it'd be easy to find himself with a different girl and then everything else was a blur. And he'd wake up in a different bed and see a different girl and he wondered if she had been just as plastered as he was. Because he didn't remember a thing.
In fact, he liked it that way.
And he'd repeat it every single night until he felt himself getting sick and he'd almost pass out. But he never would. And sometimes he wished he could just take enough to slip unconscious because then everything would float away. He'd float away with the drugs.
He'd spend twenty dollars for a night of fun he'd never remember.
And he knew he was scorned for it but everything seemed so fuzzy.
He didn't care that he had a reputation as long as people didn't think he was like Chris. He wasn't like him anyway and he kept enough of his sense. Mostly. And he found himself wanting to move because he had gotten bored. He wasn't one to stay in one place often and he wanted to just go.
But he didn't know if it was the drugs and alcohol making him think like that or his thuohgts getting scrambled up in his mnid on his own.
Bcsuase it wolud get hrader to think.
And it woldn't mkae sense.
So he'd repaet the same procses oevr and oevr.
Twnety dolalrs for artiiifcal hpapiness
~~Percy~~
There was this untold stereotype about all warlocks.
Everyone knew that they were some sort of freak and therefore, weren't to be trusted.
But if Percy had learned anything in the past sixty years, it was that warlocks had the most to lose. And thus, they wanted to trust and be trusted and they yearned for the very comfort in mortality that humans sought after. But he had resisted falling in love and getting attached because a lifetime of loss and hurt was hard. An eternity of mourning was unbearable.
So perhaps then he had finally found the reason why humans were mortal. (Being human was a gift, perhaps?)
It was the demon blood in his veins that punished him. (He argued it wasn't his fault.)
But he didn't dare cross the gap between life and death because he was afraid. (And that made him the freak?) He wanted people- mortals, humans- to understand him as a person and not as some crossbreed but they would never change. Never change no matter how much magic he used to cloud the world. So he took to potions because they were a simple science. A breeding of chemicals that weren't categorized on social classes and could be influenced with a bit of science and magic.
There were points in his life where he wanted to be human.
(But not really.)
And when Shadowhunters spoke of the terrors of his kind, he felt angry.
(Scared maybe.)
And he realized that it wasn't the contrast between mortal and immortal that made others different but the content of their makeup and chemistry that made people the way they were. And suddenly it made sense. It wasn't influence from others. It wasn't society. It was science and magic. And because emotions were a category of human nature, he found that he wasn't different from them. (Things began to be simpler.)
So he went back to his potions.
And ignored anytime someone scorned him as a warlock.
Because he knew that he was very, very human.
~~Clarisse~~
There was something precious about the world around her.
No matter how many times wars and winds and waters rushed and battered and battled along the surface, it always seemed to revive. Wastelands would become valleys and the victims of fires created by man and wild would always replenish. But she... She felt like a piece of paper. Clarisse felt that no matter matter how many times she folded her appearance into different shapes, no one would truly get what she was saying. And no matter how many times she tried to smooth out the creases, they would still show like gashes.
Once she had gotten her memories back, she felt unfolded... But.. she felt that she finally could understand everything.
It was scary at first.
She did enjoy the new peace she was at with herself, and even recognized an old friend, but he was different. And so was she. The Hunt, she hated to admit, changed her and wherever she went, it seemed that lingering regrets and fears of forgetting followed. And she told herself it was nothing and that the feeling would go away, but it never did. It stayed for days but... She was comforted when she thought of how her friend had tried so hard to get her to remember him. Though sometimes she reminded herself over and over that she would lose her memories again and that she would be back to the way she was before. And thus she was saddened.
Because she didn't want to forget.
Yet, at the same time... It would smooth the creases in her paper.
And she could start over.
But she put the thought off again and immersed herself in nature. She would twirl in the wind and dip her fingers in the stream and send daisies down the water as if they were little boats. And she'd watch them. They reminded her of her memories that would fade once the rune had faded from her skin and she was left with her flowers.
Nothing but her and the flowers.
She knew she would be left unsatisfied.
That finally understanding had made everything so much clearer.
But the inevitable could not be changed.
~~Leo~~
There would be a very subtle gleam in his eyes every time he would be in his character.
He'd play nice.
Act nice.
Become a nicer version of himself.
And the only thing he would try to cover up would be the Lies in his thoughts and the amusement that passed over his expression. But there would always be a spark of light in his eyes. He wasn't Evil and he certainly wasn't Pure at heart. He liked a mix of both. If the Demons played dirty, the world would be Dead. If the Angels played nice, the world would grow boring.
So, rarely, he apologized for when he went too far.
And people were left hurt beyond his reason.
But he never apologized for the way his eyes never refused to stop gleaming.
~~Park~~
There was a girl Park remembered out of a dream.
And he saw her fall and break her wrist when she ran across the field. It had only been a vision, but he scribbled it down in his notebook anyway. There was a boy- close to his age but not quite- who was going to be bit by a werewolf sometime in the next month. He should have told him but he never could. He had learned to record his visions in a notebook instead.
It was more difficult to refrain when it was his friend he dreamt about. Park knew he shouldn't have said anything but he couldn't help it. He just...had to. It was on a casual day in the skatepark when he had confronted the mundane he had known all his life to tell him how he was going to die. He should have expected it, but Dylan told him he was crazy. He told him he was playing some sort of sick joke. He said he didn't believe it.
But somehow, Park knew he did.
Dylan grew paranoid, avoiding planes as if they could hurt him. He knew he was going to die on a plane, thanks to Park, and when he did have to go on a plane, he was terrified. Park knew he had made a mistake, apologizing and saying he was going to make it because he could just change fate. So Dylan missed his flight and booked the next one and Park stopped having the vision of Dylan on a plane and it crashing down and the blood; the blood everywhere from the crumpled bodies.
But when Dylan tried to change his fate, Park realized it had turned for the worse.
It was 3/24/2013 when his friend went missing.
His plane had crashed down on an island and Park thought he had died.
But he got a vision of his friend two days later of the crash and he knew that telling his friend about his fate had been a mistake. The future undoubtedly, had been changed, though not by much and it made him feel sick. And after the vision, his dreams were plagued by a single sentence that seemed to echo in punishment in his thoughts.
And Dylan sat on the island, waiting for death.
And Dylan sat on the island, waiting for death.
And Dylan sat on the island, waiting for death.
~~Caspian~~
He had forbidden himself to cry.
But he was on the verge of screaming and passing out when the faerie gang had made the first cut. He berated himself terribly for getting into the fight. He didn't think it would have ended as brutally but the Unseelie Court had no order. No loyalty to the citizen of fae who protected the very ground it stood on for it stood on battle ground and blood. And faeries turned against each other until the ground was slick and there were bodies. Mutilated people that had taken a turn for the worst, ending up with a knife in the chest or an arrow in their side.
Caspian envied them.
He had never really wished to die but it hurt like hell and it stung where they gripped his wrists and kept him still though he tried to thrash. He bit and dug his nails into their skin and kicked but nothing seemed to stop the blade from settling at the base of his wings and sawing.
The knife tore through skin, cartilage, thin bones where his shoulders ridged into wings and it kept cutting and cutting and cutting until it really fucking hurt. Jagged edges lurched and he could have heard them laughing if the black wasn't pressing at his eyes and his ears. Lurching, stabbing, cutting and searing white hot pain coursed through his veins. His eyes shot open. His vision swam out of focus and tried to break out of the haze of pain and think properly but it was too much. Blood splattered the floor next to him and even his eyes hurt but he refused to cry. He wanted to, but he took shuddering gasps and prayed he would bleed out and die.
The knife cluttered next to him and they let him go, watching him fall to the ground in a heap, still in a state of shock. To avoid further humiliation, he had forced himself up in a daze, dragging himself to a nearby tree to sit under. He felt his heart beat in a throb of agony. He wished it would stop and it would all go away. But it never did and the only thing that stopped was the blood, starting to clot.
He was nothing.
In the Unseelie Court, wings were a symbol of purity and without them, he felt shamed. He focused on breathing but it hurt. It hurt. It hurt. It hurt and he wanted it to be over. And he prayed to whatever might be listening to have mercy and kill him so he wouldn't bring shame to the Unseelie Court and his family.
But the relief never came.
And though the pain dulled slightly over time, he was different.
But he forbade himself to cry.
~fin~
