Guilt Ridden and Broken AU

Cynthia's black hair whipped into her face as she spun on the spot to kick the closest object which happened to be a desk. 'I was there! I could've saved them! What was I thinking?!' The fourteen-year old's heart sunk further to her stomach as she gazed outside of the room, blue eyes misty and distant. 'The woods, why did we have to go out there? Now all three of them are kidnapped!'

"Cindy," Haliah spoke meekly from where she was perched on her lower bunk, well away from her sister's self-anger. "There wasn't anything you could do, it wasn't your-"

"I could've done something!" Cynthia snarled, whirling around on her sister, blue eyes still misty and not from tears. "I could've prevented it from happening! I could've prevented them from being kidnapped!" She looked at her sister, angry and herself, weighed down with her guilt and looking tired and heartbroken, "My friend's were kidnapped Haliah! Right in front of me! And what did I do?! I did nothing! Nothing at all! They're gone Haliah!" She took a few short heaving breaths, "I could've done something! My friends are gone Haliah!" Her blue eyes brimmed with tears, "Gone." She dropped to her knees and stared blankly at the floor. "I'll never see them again."

Haliah hurried over and enveloped her younger sister in a hug as she burst into sobbing tears, the fifteen-year-old feeling miserable and worried about her sister, "Ssh, Cindy, it'll be okay," She lied, trying to comfort her sister.

"It'll never, be okay again!" Cynthia cried, burying her face in her sister's shirt, "My friends are gone!"

"Sshh," Haliah comforted hopelessly, knowing her sister wasn't going to be convinced everything was going to be okay with three of the four people she had known since they were all little kids, kidnapped.

Cynthia watched the entrance to the woods from her position on the large boulder that gave a perfect viewpoint. Her blue eyes were currently shaded by white rimmed, black tinted lenses sunglasses, with the sun beating down on top of her the sunglasses allowed her to actually see what was going on. Her peaceful silence was broken by someone stirring up rocks of the gravel path toward her position accompanied by the sound of wheels rolling across the earth. Taking off the sunglasses and rubbing at her eyes slightly she let the duo approach, knowing exactly who it was. "Hey Bree, Haliah."
"Hi!"

"Hey Cindy, you okay? We brought you lunch-"

"Not hungry."

"-if you wanted it. You can save it and eat it later it won't spoil." Haliah finished quietly, putting down the lunch box and sitting next to her sister, green eyes worried about her.

"Is the mistiness clearing up?" Cynthia asked her with a sigh, looking up at her sister.

Like it had been since Jay Holly and Leon had been kidnapped two years ago, Cynthia's blue eyes were fogged over with a distant mistiness that Leah had pulled Haliah aside to tell her that the mistiness was caused by the constant and intense guilt Cynthia dealt with combined with the constant keeping guard over the woods to make sure nobody else gets lost or kidnapped as well. Basically her eyes with seriously tired, but the solution wasn't to sleep, the mistiness would only go away when and if Leon, Holly, and Jay returned.

"Yeah-"

"Don't lie Haliah." Cynthia said to her sister bluntly, "people still think I've gone crazy and am the crazy person who guards the forest. Why? Because of the stupid mistiness." She propped her head up on her palms, elbows on her knees.

"You aren't crazy Cynthia!" Bree looked at her friend, splitting a small sandwich and offering it to her, "but you are really stubborn!"

"Thanks for the compliment Bree," Cynthia laughed, rolling her eyes and accepting the sandwich half despite her earlier insistence on not being hungry.

"No problem!" Bree grinned, "You'd never guess what I saw today!" She exclaimed enthusiastically. So the three girls chatted with each other, Bree doing most of the chatting.

It was peaceful for a few minutes until Cynthia noticed something out of the corner of her eye and she sprang to her feet, "Someone's going into the woods." Springing off her boulder she sprinted towards the person going towards the dreary woods, "Hey! Stay out of there!" She shouted, Haliah and Bree on her heels.

The girl paused, looking over at Cynthia with curiosity. "Oh! You must be the girl who guards this place!"

Cynthia exchanged confused glances with her sister, 'What? Someone who doesn't know about the incident?' "Yes, I am. Are you new here?"

"Yeah! My family's visiting the Bramble family!" The girl chirped and the three natives looked even more worried, the Bramble family was the family that Holly, Leon, and Jay belonged to, the only kids. "I could totally tell you're the one who guards here!"

"Let me guess, my eyes." Cynthia deadpanned, hiding her worry. "Why don't we take you back to the villa?" the villa was the fancy name for the neighborhood they lived in, an entire neighborhood centered around a giant tree that had been struck by lightning many years ago. Or at least that's what Packer and Mei, the community elders said.

"Okay! I was just curious about this place!"

"My word," Cynthia sighed as she and Haliah entered their family's house, "That girl can talk! Even more than Bree, and that's saying something!"

"She's very…"

"Chatty? Annoying? Obnoxious?" Cynthia supplied as together they went up the stairs to their bedroom, their younger sibling's making a whole ton of noise from inside their room.

Haliah chose a nicer approach, "Energetic, like Bree." She decided, entering their room and wandering over to her twin sister Paige who was doing a craft of some sort. "Whatcha doing Paige?" She asked, looking over her twin's shoulder.

"Yikes!" Paige jumped and nearly smacked her sister in the face with her hot glue gun. Cynthia was less lucky and received a container of glitter to the face as she got closer to the desk.

Surprised and Startled, Cynthia staggered backward and lost her balance. Crashing to the ground with a violent sneeze, the thing that had upset her balance. "Glitter is not something you want to inhale," She sneezed again before letting her head drop back to the floor, "Starclan above that burns!"

Haliah and Paige burst out laughing at the brief moment where their sister's normal personality shone through her depressed state. "You're not supposed to breathe it in Cindy!" Haliah giggled, grabbing a towel and disappearing to get it wet, the glitter Paige was using was dissolvable when in contact with skin and would dissolve under water.

"You're supposed to use it!" Paige laughed, putting out her glue gun to swivel around and face her younger sister, green eyes twinkling merrily.

Haliah came back with the soaking wet towel and dropped it on her sister's face with a splat. "Here you go!" She chirped cheerfully before laughing harder as her sister let out a shriek from the cold temperature of the water and scrambling up to her knees, taking the towel away from her face, revealing her face painted many different colors from the glitter.

"Gah!" Cynthia grumbled, now thoroughly waterlogged, her blue eyes gleamed as she came up with a plan for revenge, rubbing her face clean she then got to her feet and chased after her sisters, who both shrieked and sprinted away from her, running down the stairs and around the house, trying to avoid their sister who was chasing after them in an attempt to make their faces tie-dye from the dissolved glitter on the towel in her hands.

"Dad!" Haliah ran behind her father, hiding behind him as Paige sprinted by, Cynthia laughing madly, right on her heels. "Cindy's going to paint us tie-dye!"

"Help me! Haliah!" Paige pleaded as she ran back through the room, Cynthia close enough to her that the latter could throw the towel and hit the back of her head, "She's going to get me!"

"Gotcha!" Cynthia tackled her sister and pressed the wet towel to her face, cackling, "Revenge!" she grinned and burst into laughter along with Haliah at both the stunned expression on Paige's face, and the tie-dye all over her face, she looked like someone had exploded a bunch of pink, purple, blue, and red paint balloon on her face.

"You three!" Sarah came into the room from the kitchen, "I hope you three remember that we are going to the Bramble's house in an hour!" She was frazzled, with three teenagers, two eight-year-olds, and a preteen she had a lot to deal with. The moment she said that she covered her mouth, amber eyes widening just slightly. Talking about the Brambles had an unspoken rule of it not happening while Cynthia was home, even just mentioning them was enough for the teenager to stop short of whatever she was doing and go hide somewhere in the house, somewhere quiet enough she could go cry or sneak off to the boulder to take her post by the woods.

Haliah and Paige's smiles fell as they looked at their younger sister who's expression dropped to be depressed and miserable once again. 'Uh oh.' Haliah thought, 'there goes the cheer.' "Cindy…" she said, trying to find something to say to cheer her up again.

"It's fine. Let's go see my missing friends' parents, they're probably really lonely." Cynthia said, her voice miserable, blue eyes haunted, "I'll go wash the glitter out of this towel." She darted off up the stairs and out of sight.

"I'm sorry," Sarah said in a partial whisper,

"It's okay, Mom," Paige smiled weakly at her mother, "You didn't mean too, Cindy knows that."

'I haven't seen that mischievous side for a while,' Haliah reflected, her gaze resting on the empty stairwell, 'We need to find them, it's not fair that Cindy has to deal with her friend's missing and kidnapped, especially when she's been in love with one of them for years.' She took a deep breath, "I'll go find her, you get everything prepared Paige," She told her twin and jogged up the stairs, looking for her younger sister, she found her up in the attic, sitting quietly in front of the small circular window. 'She's really upset if she's up here.' The large attic had originally Cynthia's room which had somehow morphed into a place where all three of the Bramble kids came over and the six of them with the edition of Bree and Finli hung out, playing random games, having sleepovers, all the normal kid stuff. But after the woods incident Cynthia had stepped into the room only a handful of times, and never to sit by herself, usually to grab something of hers that she really needed and nobody else had.

"Leon liked it here," Cynthia spoke, apparently noticing her older sister's presence.

'Oh, Cindy…' Haliah thought, her heart heavy as she walked over to the window seat and took a seat next to her sister, looking at her and studying her face, noticing the distance in her eyes and the way she was holding herself, tired, worn out, dejected. She let her talk, it was unusual for Cynthia to say anything about her friends when she did, it was never Leon, keeping her feelings about that particular person under lock and key.

"He liked looking through the window and watching the sun rise or fall over the woods. He never admitted it, though, saying watching the sun was a girl thing when the others were around. But he didn't say anything like that when it was just the two of us. He often said he liked being high up, able to see everything from here to the lake past the woods and even the edge of River pond sometimes. Not that you can see it from here." Cynthia said quietly, gazing unseeingly out of the window. "I wonder sometimes…" She trailed off, blinking so her blue eyes focused on the window and the outside world.

"I'm sure he thinks about you too," Haliah softly told her sister, "You're just as important as his siblings are to him, Cindy."

(Cynthia's View)

I knew I was important to him, it's always been that way, even when we were innocent little kids playing in our backyards or up here. But there was always the heart-wrenching feeling that he wasn't coming back and I couldn't do a single thing about it. Two years. Two long years since I've heard Leon whispering in my ear, two years since I've had Holly tutoring me in science and literature, two years since I had Jay give me advice on the many injuries I sustained on a weekly basis.

It hurt being alone like this, my sister's are amazing, and they try their hardest to make me happy, but there wasn't anything they could do or say to replace my friends. They can't be Leon, who would wrap his arms around me and whisper how much I meant to him in my ear as we sat here quietly watching whatever was going on outside; they can't be Holly, who would freak out at the idea of missing two years of school work, staining her perfect academic record; they can't be Jay who would roll his eyes at Bree's happy chatter and comment that she speaks faster than a cheetah runs.

Bree's the only one who knows where I'm coming from. She was there too, a tree fell on top of her while we were in the forest running after the man who had kidnapped our friends. She was paralyzed and broken physically while I was ruined emotionally, and I'm sure she is too, she's just a better person, able to help others and keep cheerful while hurting on the inside. But I know for a fact that she was used to not having Jay show a whole lot of affection for her, I'm not used to that, I probably never will be. I'm used to having Leon wearing his heart on his sleeve, everyone knew we liked each other more than friends, but nobody knew the whole extent. Leon and I had many stolen moments, of which makes it painful to remember at the moment. I closed my eyes, tired of looking out the window and instead held the first two fingers of my right hand against my lips, ignoring Haliah for the moment. The worst part about their disappearance was the fact that I had literally kissed Leon for the first time barely ten minutes before they were kidnapped. I ended up frightening Leon and he ran off into the woods, Holly and Jay chased after him and Bree and I chased after them.

"This entire thing is my fault." I sighed, letting my arm drop, my knuckles briefly rapping against the window in front of me as I did so and opened my eyes again. "The day they disappeared I ended up frightening Leon and he ran off into the woods, his siblings ran after him and Bree and I followed a few moments later." It was strange, Leon had kissed me many times before that moment, either on the cheek, forehead, nose, or an actual kiss, but the moment I tried taking some initiative he got scared. I rested my head on my knees, feeling more drained than I usually did.

"If I hadn't frightened him he wouldn't have run into the woods." 'And I wouldn't be alone, feeling like part of myself has gone missing with each of them.'

"That doesn't seem like Leon Cindy," Haliah told me softly, "He wouldn't run from you, no matter what you did."

"Maybe so, but this theory points the blame at me, so I'll take it," I replied quietly. 'I'd rather feel like this is my fault than some random person.' reluctantly I gazed out the slightly dusty window once again, looking at the smaller house across the street. "We should get going before mom kills us both," I said with a small amount of forced humor, tearing my eyes away from the other house and getting to my feet, staring down at the floor as I walked down the stairs to the room I shared with my older sisters. 'Where ever you are Leon, Holly, Jay, I hope you're all safe. I love you, Leon.'

(normal)

Leon's breathing grew heavy as he twitched, dreaming, his amber eyes tightly closed. Holly and Jay were asleep as well, trying to get some decent sleep through the chilly no heating or cooling cabin. Leon twitched, turning his head slightly, and rolling onto his side, obviously uncomfortable, something in the dream disturbing him.

"Cindy! Help!" Leon struggled against his captor, struggling to get free.

"Fang! Get the girl!" his captor snarled and a large white wolf dog burst from the undergrowth to tackle Cynthia, knocking her to the ground and dragging her away by the ankle, snarling, it's strong jaws locked around her ankle. Cynthia shrieked, trying to grab onto the grass or anything that could stop her from being dragged away, struggling to reach her friends.

"Leon! No!"

Leon had to watch as she was dragged out of the small clearing into the undergrowth, disappearing from view, a moment later a high pitched, frightened, and pain filled scream rang through the woods.

"No! Cindy!" He yelled, jerking awake in the process, jolting upright, forehead clammy with cold sweat as he breathed heavily, his siblings jerking awake as well. "It was a dream, just a dream." He tried to reassure himself as the dream played out in his mind once again.

"Are you okay Leon?" Holly asked, rubbing her green eyes and looking at her younger brother, "Did something scare you?"

"N-no, but my imagination running wild," Leon replied, stuttering a little at the beginning, his amber eyes wide and scared. 'Cyn's not here, she's fine, we're all okay.'

"Are you sure? You look really pale."

"I'm fine, Holly, just gotta catch my breath," Leon replied, laying back down on his side away from her to hide the fear in his eyes. 'But that wasn't a dream, that was a memory… I have to check on her.' He waited until his sister was asleep before slipping out the window and heaving himself up into a tree before running precariously along the branches and stopping once he reached the edge of the woods. 'Is she here? Starclan let her be here!' He looked around and soon enough he caught sight of a figure sitting quietly on a large boulder, looking at the woods with a longing expression on her face, like she longed to go out there and search for something. 'Thank you Starclan!' He drank in the sight of his best friend, the one he loved. Sitting with her knees drawn up to her chest Cynthia was sitting quietly, currently bathed in moonlight, the only person awake at the late hours of the night besides Leon himself. 'She's perfectly fine, she's safe. I've got to do something to tell her I'm alive.' He looked around and searched his pockets, finding a small pen and a piece of paper he wrote four simple words on the paper. Before turning the paper into a paper airplane and throwing it so it landed in her lap. 'Please understand, please!'

He knew it had worked when Cynthia's gaze shot up to be staring in his general direction and he saw another airplane fly past him. With no knowledge of where he was, she did a pretty good job. Unfolding the airplane he read what she had written underneath his words. With a small smile, he replied, deciding to use the nickname he only used when he was being fully sincere. He got a reply a moment later and cracked a grin at her response before scribbling down a reply and throwing it once again, watching her intently for her reaction. She snorted and rolled her eyes before scribbling down a reply and hurtling it back in his direction. Leon pulled his open and his amber eyes softened, writing down a reply before he glanced back at the cabin to check if Ashton was back, cause if he was he had to hurry back. The paper airplane hit him in the face this time and he opened it, looking at the reply sadly before replying and waiting impatiently for her response as one of the lights in the cabin turned on. A moment later he got a reply. He glanced down at it, smiled wistfully before starting to run back the way he came. 'I love you too, Cyn, more than you'd believe.' He thought as he snuck back into the cabin and laid back down, pretending to sleep as Ashton stomped around.

Meanwhile, a small piece of paper fluttered to the ground from the trees, revealing theconversation between the two lonely teens crammed onto the small paper.

I love you, Cyn.

I love you too, Leo, I know you're out there somewhere.

I'm close enough I can see you, and you're beautiful, My Sunshine.

While I can not say the same because I can't see you and you aren't a girl, I can say that I'm sure you're as handsome as you always are and have been.

How can you attack and boost my ego at the same time?

It's a skill I've gained over the years… I miss you, Leo.

I miss you too, Cyn, I wish I could reveal myself to you and go hug you.

But you can't, you're being held, prisoner.

I have to leave, Cyn, don't miss me too much okay?

I can never miss you too much, Sabersword, I can't really do this in person, so instead I'll do it the old-fashioned way. Xoxo

I love you with all my heart, Leo.

Character Emails (all are gmail accounts)

Caylee and any other side character – youngcrazyteenageauthor

Cynthia – athleticsapphiresinger

Leon – athleticgoldenboy

Bree – cheerfulcuriosity

Jay – perfectgrumpytone

Holly – emeraldintelligencequeen

Fini – gingerandwhiteteenager

WHSS Art

Deviantart: tigercryrocks | Instagram: tigercry

WHSS Audiobooks

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