Chibiyu: So...I am taking over this story. Silver is MIA from fanfiction and she gave me permission to do this. Sorry it's been so long, guys. But it should be much more frequent from now on. No more 6,000+ worded chapters though.
We don't own JONAS or anything other than the plot.
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August 3rd, 2010; Borderline New Jersey, apartment 4.12
Journal Entry of July 17, 1982
Another complication has halted our desire for more. The dreams are not just one level of thoughts. Dreams, though we had known their complexity, go farther than any human can fathom. Their world is without begin or end and the sky does not mark the highest point. Oneiro cannot be measured and that makes taming it almost unfathomable. But this is what Paul, Thomas and I are experts in; doing what is said cannot be done. Oneiro and its power will be ours to tame. It will be our gift to mankind, the peace of dreams comes true. Where a young girl's dead dog will walk again with her, where anything thought of can be held.
But Oneiro dislikes the idea for it evades our fingers with every swipe we make. It delves deeper within the human mind than we anticipated. However, it will not evade us forever. Even my failure of a son can see it when he is not consumed with the nightmares of his daughter. He knows we are close, and he begs for us to stop. Tells us that his daughter is getting worse every time we force open the world and that every time we seal it, she is never the same. My son does not understand that May's sufferings will be over once we figure this out. We tested her dreams, watched her soul resonate with the consciousness of those locked away. She was our first subject and she will be the first to benefit.
But he cannot understand this. He is blind.
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The Professor looked to his arm, trying to ignore the faint hand-shaped bruise Nicholas had infused upon him. It had been his own fault; he had struggled against the teen's grasp and the teen responded with a tighter grip. It had been instinct for the younger to do so and the Professor had been blind to that fact. Again his glasses-clad eyes went to the round clock on the wall, sighing when he noticed the difference in hours. The war on the streets was in the early morning; Nicholas had appealed to him and agreed to carry out his destiny before noon. The sun was now high, the clouds offering little protection to the over-heating world.
Everyone seemed antsy about the youth's return – even Tynisha was constantly checking the time, her lips pursed in worry. Nokia sat in the middle of the floor, a ragged doll clutched in her hands; the dress looking like it was made out of napkins instead of cloth. Savage vowed to buy the girl a proper toy when they left this horrid place. Stella had long since joined the girl on the floor, her nimble fingers weaving together scraps of fabric into a new dress for the dirt-stained doll. Joe and Kevin were talking quietly, their voices barely drifting over to where the Professor sat. He could only catch a few words such as 'insanity' and 'different.'
"Does it normally take him this long to come back?" Stella asked, her voice sounding out of place in the silence.
Tynisha lifted her head, her fingers playing with a small hole in the sleeve of her waitress uniform. The answer was clear by the tears in her eyes.
"I'm sure he's okay," Stella tried to redeem herself, not wanting to be the fire that ignited the fuse of mourning. The mother could only stiffly nod, her eyes glued to the broken windows, searching for some sign of life on the streets below.
Little did any of them know, Nicholas was ok. He was standing tall and calmly addressing those who used to be under his command. He was telling them of his leaving and ordering them to behave. He was passing his crown. And for the first time in Administration history, it was a peaceful event. No one stood in opposition. No one pulled back their jacket to reveal the butt of a gun. They all were silent when their Leader stepped off the wooden box that served as his stage and put his hand on Xavier's shoulder. Silent when he opened his mouth. Silent when he began to sing.
Nicholas's family was none the wiser when he and Macy turned their backs on the ones they've protected for years. The family had no clue that their brother and his girlfriend were walking out of the subway tunnel as free people. And the ones below their feet had no idea that they would never see the two again.
The apartment exploded to life when they heard two sets of footsteps coming closer at a semi-leisurely pace. Tynisha grabbed the first aid kit from the cupboard and put it in front of her, waiting and staring at the door. Nokia was quick to stand, knowing that she could be tripped over if no one looked down. Stella picked up the small child and balanced her on her hip. Joe and Kevin walked out of Nick's room, faces unreadable. The Professor just lifted his head, wondering how Nicholas would break the news of their leaving to his family.
The door opened, Macy walking in first as Nick held it. Tynisha pulled out two stools, all but dragging both of them over and pushing them into sitting. Nick flicked his head at Macy and the mother got the massage. She quickly pulled the girl's bloodied shirt off her shoulder and began fixing the crudely attached bandages.
Joe and Kevin wanted to say so much to their brother, who was currently mindlessly tracing a pattern on his torn jeans, but they didn't know how to say it. Opening a conversation with 'Oh, so you're the leader of a gang,' didn't seem like a good idea. Thankfully, they were saved from the job of speaking first when Nick opened his mouth.
"You told them?" His voice was weaker than anyone expected, tired and scratchy. Tynisha nodded, not looking up from her task. They watched Macy wince and Stella tried to conceal a smile when Nick's hand covered the brunette's. "Good," but judging from the teen's tone, it was anything but. "It doesn't matter now, anyway," he whispered, his voice still carrying. The Professor looked over, excitement doting the man's face, something to which Nick rolled his eyes at and looked away, mildly annoyed.
"Why's that, hun?" Tynisha asked while turning her attention to Nick now that Macy was taken care of. He didn't speak for a moment, letting his mother's cold fingers probe his black eye while her other hand pressed against his heavily colored chest.
"We're leaving. And we're not coming back."
Tynisha, who was the only one close enough to see the set resolve in the youth's eyes, was also the only one who didn't gasp out from the bluntness of this order.
"Why, honey?" Tynisha asked with forced calm as she carefully lifted her son's shirt off. She bit her lip at the bruises and open wounds which still oozed blood, but said nothing.
Nick closed his eyes for a moment, and nearly leapt out of his skin when Macy pressed an icepack to his eye. She quickly calmed him with a smile and he allowed his eyes to fall closed again, not bothered by the harsh sting of alcohol as his mother tended to his wounds.
"Savage has a Summer home. Someplace safe. If I go with him, you and Nokia will be safe and cared for. You don't deserve to live in this nightmare of a town. I'm getting you out."
Tynisha froze at this news, the cloth in her hand still pressing to a thankfully shallow wound. She stared at her son, who refused to open his eyes. "And what about you?"
Nick could only shrug, but he did answer, if not only for the sake of the green eyed girl that clutched his leg. "Like I said before, I'll help Savage," Nick opened his eyes to send a glare to the Professor, as if daring him to interrupt. "But we'll do it from the Summer home. We can still be together."
Even Nokia didn't catch her older brother's lie.
He looked away from the Professor and to his girlfriend. "Macy's coming too." He turned to address the oldest of the brothers. "Kevin, I would appreciate it if you would go with her while she gets her things. Nothing should happen, but just in case."
The older instantly nodded and stood, as Nick's tone left no room for any contradiction.
Macy waited for Nick's hand to cover her own before she released the icepack. She leaned down and kissed his cheek softly, gaining a small smile. "I'll be back in twenty," she breathed into his ear before she dashed off, the older Lucas on her tail.
"Joseph," the Professor called, oblivious to the growl sent his way from the use the full name, "Will you please call the car rental? We will need another van." The middle brother stalked away, Stella attached to his hip.
The Professor turned and watched as the mother stepped away from her son, only to pull him into a nearly bone crushing hug.
"I'm alright, mom," Nick whispered, his exhausted voice only slightly broken, "I'm okay."
Tynisha pulled away, but did not release her son. "You stupidly glorious boy," she smiled. Nick let out a chuckle, one that only held relief. The mother touched foreheads with the son, identical smiles and looks of love on their faces. "I am so proud of you, Nicholas." She pulled away and began to pack up the medical kit.
"Noki," Nick called tiredly, no hint of his mother's compliment in his tense shoulders. "Pull out the duffle bag under my bed and pack your things. Only the things you need, okay?"
The younger nodded once, but pulled on Nick's free hand. He stared at her for a moment before he opened his arms. She was in them in record time as she clung to her brother and shook. Nick only offered a brief hug, the movement seeming painful to him.
"I'm glad you came home," she whispered before she ran off to do as told.
Nick, now alone with the Professor, just stared at him menacingly. "If you don't uphold your end of the bargain," he threatened, but he didn't get a chance to finish as his mother walked back into the small kitchen. She eyed her son, having seen the dark look in his eye one too many times to be ignorant of what she had just interrupted. She pursed her lips and said nothing of it though; Nick did what he had to to protect them. This was something no amount of punishment or scolding could ever change.
"You should help your sister."
Nick understood the hidden meaning as he dragged himself from the chair and into the room with a door.
The Professor was about to say something, but he was cut off by a finger pointed to his nose. "You take care of my son, got it? I may not look tough, but I grew up here. I know more than Nick thinks I do. I can kick your ass all night long and I will do so if you hurt my boy. Understand?"
Savage eyed the woman and took in her too skinny frame and the frail nature of her fingers. But he had no doubt that the woman would do to him exactly as he said. "I will watch out for him," he vowed, though he knew that if anything did happen to Nicholas, Tynisha would never hear about it. Nicholas wouldn't allow him to say.
The woman nodded to herself before she turned and began scrounging up the things she couldn't part with: the misshapen vase Nokia made her when she was in first grade, her apron which Nick had managed to get for her before he joined the Administration, and the only picture she had of the three of them together. She smiled fondly at the younger version of the family, with a red and yellow tent in the background. Nokia, only six, was smiling widely, probably due to the red balloon tied to her wrist and the butterfly painted on her cheek. Tynisha herself looked years younger from the happiness of this easy scene. Even Nick, who had been fourteen when the carnival had come into town, had a smile on his face.
She turned towards her room, but was unsurprised when Nick walked out of it, her bag already neatly packed with her clothes. He wanted to be gone as quickly as he could be, she realized. The teen turned and pulled the duffle bag from his sister's grip and dropped it next to his mother's ratty suitcase. they watched him turn and walk into his room before he emerged with a dusty guitar case on his back. Tynisha started at the sight of the instrument, having thought Nick rid of it awhile ago - probably due to the foot shaped hold in the back of it. But judging by the dust, he had only hidden it away, not willing to part with the only gift his mother had been able to afford him.
"Hun, you should leave that. It was broken awhile ago."
Nick turned his head to the floor as a look of guilt flashed across his face. "I got it fixed," he mumbled for he didn't want to go into details has to how he accomplished this. Tynisha sighed once and shook her head, accepting what was pointless to fight about.
Joe walked into the room, confused by the silence. "Alright, the car is here. The driver left it and ran."
Nick snorted once at this, the sound both startling and fitting. "Can't blame the dude."
Joe smiled sadly. "Yeah, can't say I do either."
"Joe!" Stella reprimanded in attempts to remind the brother whom he was talking too.
But Nick just shook his head. "It's okay, Stella. This place is insane."
The blonde was saved from answering when Macy skipped in, her duct-taped backpack on Kevin's shoulders. No one spoke as Nick stood and put on the shirt his mother offered him. He pulled off his gloves, and stared at them for the longest time. They all watched as the gloves were tossed through the air and landed with a slight thump at the bottom on the apartment's only trash bin.
Nick picked up his family's bags and nodded to the Professor. "Let's get out of here."
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August 3rd, 2010; Boston Massachusetts, 2:03 am
"I like to make myself believe that planet earth turns slowly..."
The soft melody hummed from the phonograph in the corner of the small room. The walls, though mostly bare, still had some character in the framed calligraphic name and the few various posters that could label the room's owner as a 'fan.'
Said owner on her bed, situated on her elbows with a furrowed brow and pursed lips.
"No," she whispered to herself as she scratched an entire paragraph from her notebook, "That's not right either. What would Jack Harness really do in this situation?" she sighed as the answer didn't come to her. "I am such a failure," she moaned as she fell forward to her forehead was against the mattress. "I can't even write the Eleventh Doctor right!"
She pounded her fist once on her mattress before she lifted her head and pushed her curly mane from her dark eyes.
"Okay," she whispered to herself as she stared at the screen. "Think, Elizabeth."
But that got her nowhere.
She groaned again as she snapped the notebook shut. "How do authors do this?" she asked no one, "How is it so easy for them to pull the ideas from their heads and actually write them down?!"
"It shouldn't be this hard," she whined. She hated how difficult this was for her. So many ideas swirled around in her head; they taunted her when she failed at writing them, and they begged to be written when she gave up. There was no end to this cycle - the ideas were just forever locked inside of her.
So she ended up where she always did when the hour was too late for anyone without insomnia and when her words failed her yet again: Fanfiction. She poured over the Glee and Sherlock fics, squealed happily and ended up crying when Kurt and Blaine ended up happy or when something unexpected happened to her favorite character. She would pout at the cliffhangers and smile at a character's pain, but still want so much more.
More, she realized, that she herself could never seem to give.
She closed the computer screen before she climbed under her blankets, for she felt utterly defeated. They had no trouble with writing. It was easy for them. One idea turned into countless chapters and amazing plots, things that she was convinced she could never achieve. And it was always this way for her; she always put herself through the same torturous thoughts. She thought she would never be good enough; they would always best her in everything, not just writing. They clearly had everything in their life sorted out enough so it wouldn't block them from making their plotlines come to life.
They, she forced herself to believe, were truly better.
But if only she knew how to get her ideas down, how to shine, how to be the best. If only she was the girl in her dreams. The one whom everyone adored, who had millions of Twitter followers and more Tumblr rebloggs than she could count. The very best.
Lizzy switched off her light and flopped down on her bed. She curled up in the corner and hugged her stuffed bunny tightly.
"One day," she whispered into its floppy ears, "One day that will be me."
As she drifted off, another heard her words. And that other snatched onto her dreams and allowed her to become the girl she already was in the real world. It took her insecurities and stretched them until she pulled completely away from the world she thought she hated. It took her. It took her into the reality that was her dreams.
And so another fell into the clutches of Oneiro.
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Chibiyu: I miss Silver. If she still wrote this, it would easily be over 6,000 words. Sorry it was kind of a filler, but that was the ony kind of chapter that fit. Next one will be better and more entertaining, I promise! Until Next Update!