Cecily Herondale knew what loss was.
She thought the sad thing was really that she'd known for so many years, ever since she was a child, because loss had been given to her in the form of punishments so many times at a young age that she thought she'd progressed more than more adults, even, who thought that she didn't understand anything when really she was pushing herself to be strong enough not to cry. She wanted to be strong. She wanted to show that nothing could break down her walls but if she really thought about it, really pondered over it, then it was fairly easy to see that this wasn't really the case.
That hurt her more than the loss did in the first place.
They all thought that she wouldn't be able to tell the difference - they all thought that they could show her lies and fake smiles and that she would actually believe that everything was okay. She could see why she gave them that impression, yes, because she was young and more often than not mistaken for stupid; but she wasn't, really. She was intelligent enough to know that things were painted over solely for her eyes. She understood.
So whenever someone went up to her and told her a story, believing that she wouldn't truly empathize, she would prove them wrong. She would stare at them with wide blue eyes and promise them two things:
I won't try to butter things up for you. The truth is the truth and the truth hurts, especially since there's nothing in our power to morph it into something else; so all you can really do is pass it the best you can, head held high so that one day when you look back at this moment you will regret nothing.
And I'll be there for you, every step of the way. Because I know what it feels like to want to close your eyes forever and push everything out of your mind for the sole fact that it hurts. But it hurts less if there's someone else to help carry the weight.
And when she made a promise with that stubborn little mind of hers, she would keep it.
Being experienced with loss meant nothing, however, when it came to going through it again. It didn't mean you were prepared for it any more, and it didn't mean that it pained you any less. You just understood, at that point, that it was necessary. That was enough for Cecily to know, really, because if she thought anything else about it then the situation that she'd put herself in could've been something much worse than it actually was, and it was already something that she wanted to deny being her fault in the first place. But she couldn't, partly out of care for the one she'd hurt, and partly to salvage the rest of her dignity she had left. The rest of her honor. If she'd messed up, she wouldn't do so any further.
She knew what love was. Her brother had thought that she didn't, thought that she didn't really love him but she couldn't simply just stop and when she realized that, still at such a young age just as with everything else she'd done, she understood that it was a valuable piece of information almost instantly and held it close to her. She could recognize love, now, true and in its purest form because there'd been a beautiful point in her life where she was just surrounded by it. Love made everything brighter, made colors more vivid and, therefore, the world just more beautiful as a whole and that was one of her favorite things about it. Love made everything better because it was so rare, so hard to come by.
When she fell in love, she actually hadn't noticed it at first; had took all the signs to be that she was finally just being happier with herself, with her life, and everything else. She hadn't noticed it until her lips had brushed by someone's by the name of Dexterous LaFevers and she knew, at that point in time, sitting in front of his cabin with a picnic he'd set up just for her, that this was love. It had to be. Nothing could feel this strong pulsing in her chest besides something that she was all too familiar with so yes, she was in love.
All her other losses, she thought, were just cruel twists of fate, never exactly her fault though she always blamed herself for them, just like her brother. This one was completely on her own, though, when she'd lost him for her own reasons that she couldn't explain. She needed to explain them to him, though, in order for him to forgive her, and she hadn't done that yet; hadn't made everything better even though with every passing day it was just getting worse. She wasn't sure why, because there was a multitude of things that it could be; maybe she was just scared, above all, that he wouldn't react the way she wanted him to and she would fall into a hole deeper than the one she'd created already.
But every day passed by, still, because time didn't stop for a single person. If it did, the world would never move. So she made herself a silent promise, one night.
I think of you too often. So it's time, I think, that I'll make it up to you. Everything I've ever messed up on. And we'll be okay.
Okay.
Kit Odair had, quite literally, grown up without a father. So he thought to himself sometimes, when he had too much spare time and hadn't taken the chance to distract and busy himself as he typically did, that he'd only grown up with half the chance he could've had at being - being happy, he thought, but that was a bit cruel to think about and he didn't want to ever hurt someone as much as thinking about that did, even if that someone was himself.
It was still an excuse, after all.
When he was little, probably no older than six of seven and he hadn't had his growth spurt yet to tower over most everyone he met, he remembered going up to Annie once and asking her why she was crying, because he barely knew what tears were at that age and he couldn't understand why they were rolling down her cheeks when nothing recently had really happened to evoke them. And she'd looked at him as if he was the most precious thing in the world and pulled him close, continuing to cry even though his face was now buried in the soft material of her dress. He didn't ask any more questions, after that. But he didn't need to. He understood only a few years later, when it kept happening and he forced himself to stop being ignorant and realize that there must be a reason for all of this, for all of the pain caused to their small family that he was fine with. He was fine with it, always. What had scared him when he was younger was the fact that he was worried that Annie might not be.
Loss had made him wonder things like if he was good enough to stop Annie from having her nightmares every night, and for quite a bit of his life he'd believe that the answer was no. Because no matter what he did, she would always remain grieving over Finnick and maybe he couldn't ever fill that gap.
Maybe he wasn't meant to.
It was incredibly difficult to stop blaming himself for whenever she suffered, but eventually he was able to convince himself that it wasn't completely his fault. It wasn't anybody's fault, really, he thought; he could believe, and he could get Annie to believe as well, that life just wanted to test them out a bit every once in a while and all that was left to do for the both of them was to try and get past it with the little strength they had left.
Kit found it ironic that the more losses they had, the weaker they became, but the more strength they needed to overcome it. There were times when he truly believed that he was Annie's only lifeline at the moment and exactly the other way around as well and it took him quite a few years to realize that this kind of a relationship was okay. It wasn't normal, sure, but it didn't mean that it was exactly wrong, because they were still depending on each other like they should and it didn't mean that they were any more weak than the others; it didn't mean that it wasn't okay to cry.
So if that was the only way to get over loss, then he could live with it. It was just the natural sort of process of life, he'd learned, but it was nearly impossible to go through that without someone else.
And it made everything more important, blew things into proportion some more, when you had someone to protect, he found. If he was alone through it all, there would've been times he would've simply just given up because he couldn't find the point in trying to go on some more with no reward for doing so - whereas if he had someone else that he needed to keep on the surface as well, then he needed to keep them safe or else he'd go insane with the guilt himself. He would let himself drown, but the case where he let someone that he loved - which was a rare word, at this point in time - go under then he would never forgive himself for it. Everything became more important. It became easier to fight.
For protection.
For love.
For family, and friends, and all the other beautiful people in the world who deserved it.
Because loss spread far too easily to far too many people, and he doubted that there really could be a person in the world who hadn't experienced the feeling. So there was no more point in the bitter words thrown in its way when all that needed to be done was just to stand tall.
And with his height, that wasn't altogether very difficult to do.