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this is a story that i have never told ★ o, flashback - ★ HAZEL - 05-19-2018
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★ WHEN MY HEART IS MADE FROM GOLD AND FORGIVENESS SEEMS TOO BOLD
ooc human au because i have no self control. these will usually be in human au's because,, human au's, man; also this is hella long, so if you want to skip the intro, you can find the star and start reading from there : ) also trigger warning for verbal and physical abuse and a panic attack. If you're sensitive to that, skip the flashback written in italics. there will be a tl;dr at the end!
The sun was falling.
Its descent was gentle and consistent, graceful with the rotation of the earth. With it went the colors of the sky: blue to lavender, melting to rose and magenta and the barest hints of tangerine where the sunshine cut into the horizon like melted butter. It was delicious and mesmerizing with its clouds of cotton pulled thin over invisible pegs, their edges glowing with the sun's kiss.
Hazel had never yearned for art supplies as much as she did now. She wanted to paint the sunset over the metal walls in her room; she wanted to paint the peach of the skyline and the wisp of the clouds beneath the constellations spattered across the ceiling like freckles. She wanted to paint every square inch of boring metal with color, so she would feel warm and comforted instead of imprisoned.
She decided that she would paint one wall at a time, so that she could let the paint dry and then move about the filing cabinets and other assorted organizational tools she had sorted. Hazel desperately wished that none of the cabinets were there at all, and that she might instead have a bookshelf like Bastille did. That one day, she might be able to keep a small library, as opposed to the drawer she had cleaned out and stored the borrowed leather-bound classics in. She also wished that the cabinets would never leave, as she had never felt such a purpose in her room before. Her old room was stricken and bare with the exceptions of her crafts and jewelry lying about on the wooden panels.
Altogether, her room was far from the perfection she had so idealistically imagined. The project itself would be an evolution, and Hazel was near certain it wouldn't come out the way she envisioned. It didn't matter, though - not really. Any sort of project that took up vast majorities of her time were about the journey more than the final product.
From where Hazel sat now, the sunset was supposed to be wonderful end to a long, exhausting day. It had taken the majority of her morning and afternoon to teach Arion that he had his own room (one which Hazel wanted to paint a mural of Utah's plateau's on) which had a softer floor. The Thoroughbred seemed intent on sleeping in Hazel's room, which involved recklessly stumbling down the staircase several times a day. The rest of her time was occupied by shuffling through the last of the debris in the corners of her room, including broken lamps, deteriorating binders, folders, and more old notebooks and paper.
Her arms and legs were covered in dust and bits of grime from her time spent kneeling on the floor. Her hair, burning molten gold in the dying sunlight, was frizzier than usual; the curls she tucked behind her ears popped out within seconds like a box spring. Her body felt tight and cramped from being in her room all day, and yet she still sat with her arms hugging her knees to her chest and her chin resting in their valley. Her mind and body were tired, but she dropped her head back against the observatory wall as the frustrating twitch to be productive tingled at the base of her skull. There was an itch starting just under her skin, crawling between her muscles and bones and making her fingers clammy and jittery.
★ Hazel's teeth scraped against her bottom lip as her irritation with her own mind and body grew, her nails curling into her skin. She rationally wanted sleep, and irrationally wanted to work until her vision blurred. Screw it, she thought, it won't matter if I work late. Partly because Mother wasn't here to yell and lash out at her for making a ruckus all night, and partly because there was no way for her to be conscious of the time.
Mother never would have let her out at this time of evening, anyway.
The sixteen year old pushed herself up and the thought of Mother away, making her way back inside, mind ruffled and bordering on something she couldn't quite name. There were NPC's talking in the hallway and lounging on the stairs, and each of them hardly looked her way when she passed, settling a drop of discomfort in her stomach. It wasn't that she was unfamiliar with being ignored that made her uncomfortable, but instead that she was too familiar with the sensation that set her out of ease.
Hazel swung herself around the corner of her doorframe, out of sorts and unsatisfied. Her room was still bland and post-apocalyptic looking, the fluorescent lights above radiating a harsh, unearthly glow. Until Hazel could find another light source, she was forced to use the overhead lamps, or face working in complete darkness. She hated it.
Fingers curling against her palm and jaw set to grind her teeth and drag them harshly over her bottom lip, Hazel made a noise of utter frustration. It came out warbled; she could feel the irrational anger bubbling hot in her chest. It wasn't a foreign feeling - after all, she hadn't been born as a child that would submit at the first step. Hazel had to train the anger out of herself, or risk Mother's nails and kitchen utensils scraping against her skin. Risk the taste of copper in her mouth and the streaks of red against the sink bowl; the drops of crimson on the hardwood floor and the bitter fear infecting her every nerve that would follow her while she slept. Risk the hurtful words that would pour from lips painted with whiskey and gin; the tears that would stain the stolen bandages as she wrapped stinging wounds with shaking hands.
Breathe, her mind whispered, urging her fingers to uncurl. Breathe. In - two, three, four - a shaky intake of breath, slipping past her rapidly closing airway - out - five, six, seven, eight - ease back, shoulders falling, eyes closing - nine, ten. Jaw relaxing, muscles softening. Leave it. Move on. Hazel told herself, forcing her feet to cross the room.
Mind distant, she reached for the last lamp that sat on top of the tallest filing cabinet. It was an ordinary desk lamp, its spine flexible and light bulb coated with dust from lack of use. Hazel had to stand on her toes to reach it. When her fingers curled around the stem, she pulled, eyes glassy and movement slow. Gravity tugged when the lamp slid of the edge of the cabinet - and then, the barest stutter in movement, where the plug caught between the back of the structure and the wall.
Hazel frowned, and tugged harder; too hard. She jerked, the lamp slipping out of her grip and crashing to the floor. Glass splintered, spinning in every direction. Hazel shrieked, stumbling back until her shoulder blades hit the opposite wall. Her ears rang with the sound of shattering glass, pulse skyrocketing and heart slamming against her chest as her vision blurred and her mind fogged over - carried her somewhere old and painful.
She was reaching for the faucet handle on the sink, leaning on the cold counter top with her other arm. She wasn't tall enough to reach it without standing on her toes, and Mother hated it when she left the water running. Her fingertips brushed against the handle, pushing it back. There was a split second where she glanced at the window, blinking at the reflection of a dark-skinned little girl with bushy hair the color of peaches and a bruise on her jaw.
Then she was rocking back on her heels, ready to dry her hands off and start sweeping, when her elbow knocked into the glass vase filled with dead flowers next to the sink. Hazel watched in horror as the vase tottered and slipped, shattering on the tile floor beneath her feet. Water and long-dead flowers and glass spilled in every direction, and Hazel felt her heart jump into her throat.
She had just destroyed Mother's favorite vase. The vase she nonsensically kept by the kitchen sink, only refilling it with living flowers every month and a half. The vase that was practically religion. Hazel was never to touch it. She wasn't to clean it, or even look at it. And now...it lay in pieces on the kitchen floor.
"I can fix it before Mother gets home," She whispered to the deathly still air. "I can fix it." She couldn't; there was no way in hell. But the terror rising in her chest was overwhelming, because Mother would be home soon, and find Hazel. She moved frantically, heedless of the glass bits biting into the bottom of her feet. Nobody was around to tell her to be quiet, but she stifled the noises of pain anyway.
She bent, reaching out to pick up the largest bits of glass, when the front door opened and slammed shut. Hazel froze, her heart seizing. There was a thump of something dropping against the floor - probably a coat, which meant the person was inebriated to the point where she missed the coat rack - and then Mother stumbled around the corner. Her brown hair was a disheveled mess, and her pale skin looked greasy with makeup. She leaned heavily on the door frame, and Hazel could see the bright pink nail polish chipping on the tips of her fingers.
Then there was the low rumble of her voice, hoarse and dangerous: "What," she slurred, "did you do?"
Hazel didn't move, didn't say a word. It would only make it worse. The barest slip of a whimper escaped her lips, and she felt the blood drain from her face as Mother started towards her, unsteady in her red pumps.
Her vision blurred (whether it was from tears or holding her breath for so long, she didn't know) and then Mother had her by the arm, glass crunching beneath her heels and nails digging into Hazel's skin. "I feed you, and clothe you, and this 's what you give me?" She hissed. "This 's what I get? You, breaking m'favorite flower pot? You're a brat - useless 'n greedy 'n...selfish." Mother frowned, lips pressed thin with her anger. Hazel shrank back, the stench of her breath overpowering and the fear rising so far she could taste it on the back of her tongue.
She cried out when Mother's nails raked down her arm as she bent down to Hazel's eye level. If the tears and pain etched into the child's face affected her, she showed no sign of it. "Do you know that you're - that you're -" She paused, drunken mind too slow to find the right word. "- adopted? You're not even [i]mine, brat. Someone just left you on my doorstep. Be grateful that I picked you up, b'cause you would have died if I hadn't. You owe me your life, but instead of thanking me you whine and bitch and cry and complain." She seethed.
Hazel's heart twisted. "P-Please, Mother, I didn't - i-it was an accident, I was cleaning the dishes like you -" The startling [/i]smack that rang through the air interrupted Hazel's plea, stinging her cheek as her head was whipped to the side by the force of impact. She cried out, shock dripping like the blood from the scratches on her arms.
"Quit begging, you miserable girl. I know it wasn' an accident. Doesn't matter, because you can go to your room after you clean this up." Mother yanked Hazel closer to her face, fingernails only digging harder as the little girl squirmed. "No dinner for three days, you hear? This is what you get, you waste of space." With that, the woman shoved Hazel away from her, sending the girl crashing into the glass. Hazel bit her tongue, trying to keep from shrieking as she gingerly raised her shaking hands to pick out the shards of glass from her palms, fingers slippery with her own blood.
She kept her gaze averted while Mother stared disdainfully at her. Everything hurt: her arms, her face, her legs, her feet, her head. She was already hungry, but knew better than to try and steal food from the pantry. So she waited, bloody and obedient and trying so hard to be the daughter that Mother wanted. And later that night while locked in her room, she would bandage her wounds as best she could in the pitch black.
Hazel ripped herself out of the memory, trembling and unsteady as she slid down the wall, the latches on her overall shorts scraping harshly against the metal. Tears dripped, steady and fast, down her cheeks as she curled in on herself, hands sliding into her hair to scratch uselessly at her scalp. Eyes squeezing as tightly shut as they would go, Hazel felt the prickle of those glass shards in her skin, and the sting of Mother's nails against her skin. The sound of glass against the floor echoed off the walls, the crunch of broken pieces under Mother's heels ingrained in her brain.
The sounds got louder, closer, had Hazel pressing herself as close to the wall as she could get and slapping her hands over her ears to get away from it, to block it out. Her body felt like it was on fire, burning with the glass embedded in her feet like all those years ago and flickering with her pulse speeding through her veins.
"Leave me alone!" She yelled into the noise that roared in her ears, borderline desperate and panicked. "Leave me alone!"
tl;dr Hazel is in her room, and it's pretty late in the evening. She's cleaning up and breaks a lamp, which triggers the memory of a very bad experience she had when she broke her mother's favorite glass vase. Now she's in the middle of a panic attack. Also, I really suck at tl;dr's. Apparently. 2278 words.
The sun was falling.
Its descent was gentle and consistent, graceful with the rotation of the earth. With it went the colors of the sky: blue to lavender, melting to rose and magenta and the barest hints of tangerine where the sunshine cut into the horizon like melted butter. It was delicious and mesmerizing with its clouds of cotton pulled thin over invisible pegs, their edges glowing with the sun's kiss.
Hazel had never yearned for art supplies as much as she did now. She wanted to paint the sunset over the metal walls in her room; she wanted to paint the peach of the skyline and the wisp of the clouds beneath the constellations spattered across the ceiling like freckles. She wanted to paint every square inch of boring metal with color, so she would feel warm and comforted instead of imprisoned.
She decided that she would paint one wall at a time, so that she could let the paint dry and then move about the filing cabinets and other assorted organizational tools she had sorted. Hazel desperately wished that none of the cabinets were there at all, and that she might instead have a bookshelf like Bastille did. That one day, she might be able to keep a small library, as opposed to the drawer she had cleaned out and stored the borrowed leather-bound classics in. She also wished that the cabinets would never leave, as she had never felt such a purpose in her room before. Her old room was stricken and bare with the exceptions of her crafts and jewelry lying about on the wooden panels.
Altogether, her room was far from the perfection she had so idealistically imagined. The project itself would be an evolution, and Hazel was near certain it wouldn't come out the way she envisioned. It didn't matter, though - not really. Any sort of project that took up vast majorities of her time were about the journey more than the final product.
From where Hazel sat now, the sunset was supposed to be wonderful end to a long, exhausting day. It had taken the majority of her morning and afternoon to teach Arion that he had his own room (one which Hazel wanted to paint a mural of Utah's plateau's on) which had a softer floor. The Thoroughbred seemed intent on sleeping in Hazel's room, which involved recklessly stumbling down the staircase several times a day. The rest of her time was occupied by shuffling through the last of the debris in the corners of her room, including broken lamps, deteriorating binders, folders, and more old notebooks and paper.
Her arms and legs were covered in dust and bits of grime from her time spent kneeling on the floor. Her hair, burning molten gold in the dying sunlight, was frizzier than usual; the curls she tucked behind her ears popped out within seconds like a box spring. Her body felt tight and cramped from being in her room all day, and yet she still sat with her arms hugging her knees to her chest and her chin resting in their valley. Her mind and body were tired, but she dropped her head back against the observatory wall as the frustrating twitch to be productive tingled at the base of her skull. There was an itch starting just under her skin, crawling between her muscles and bones and making her fingers clammy and jittery.
★ Hazel's teeth scraped against her bottom lip as her irritation with her own mind and body grew, her nails curling into her skin. She rationally wanted sleep, and irrationally wanted to work until her vision blurred. Screw it, she thought, it won't matter if I work late. Partly because Mother wasn't here to yell and lash out at her for making a ruckus all night, and partly because there was no way for her to be conscious of the time.
Mother never would have let her out at this time of evening, anyway.
The sixteen year old pushed herself up and the thought of Mother away, making her way back inside, mind ruffled and bordering on something she couldn't quite name. There were NPC's talking in the hallway and lounging on the stairs, and each of them hardly looked her way when she passed, settling a drop of discomfort in her stomach. It wasn't that she was unfamiliar with being ignored that made her uncomfortable, but instead that she was too familiar with the sensation that set her out of ease.
Hazel swung herself around the corner of her doorframe, out of sorts and unsatisfied. Her room was still bland and post-apocalyptic looking, the fluorescent lights above radiating a harsh, unearthly glow. Until Hazel could find another light source, she was forced to use the overhead lamps, or face working in complete darkness. She hated it.
Fingers curling against her palm and jaw set to grind her teeth and drag them harshly over her bottom lip, Hazel made a noise of utter frustration. It came out warbled; she could feel the irrational anger bubbling hot in her chest. It wasn't a foreign feeling - after all, she hadn't been born as a child that would submit at the first step. Hazel had to train the anger out of herself, or risk Mother's nails and kitchen utensils scraping against her skin. Risk the taste of copper in her mouth and the streaks of red against the sink bowl; the drops of crimson on the hardwood floor and the bitter fear infecting her every nerve that would follow her while she slept. Risk the hurtful words that would pour from lips painted with whiskey and gin; the tears that would stain the stolen bandages as she wrapped stinging wounds with shaking hands.
Breathe, her mind whispered, urging her fingers to uncurl. Breathe. In - two, three, four - a shaky intake of breath, slipping past her rapidly closing airway - out - five, six, seven, eight - ease back, shoulders falling, eyes closing - nine, ten. Jaw relaxing, muscles softening. Leave it. Move on. Hazel told herself, forcing her feet to cross the room.
Mind distant, she reached for the last lamp that sat on top of the tallest filing cabinet. It was an ordinary desk lamp, its spine flexible and light bulb coated with dust from lack of use. Hazel had to stand on her toes to reach it. When her fingers curled around the stem, she pulled, eyes glassy and movement slow. Gravity tugged when the lamp slid of the edge of the cabinet - and then, the barest stutter in movement, where the plug caught between the back of the structure and the wall.
Hazel frowned, and tugged harder; too hard. She jerked, the lamp slipping out of her grip and crashing to the floor. Glass splintered, spinning in every direction. Hazel shrieked, stumbling back until her shoulder blades hit the opposite wall. Her ears rang with the sound of shattering glass, pulse skyrocketing and heart slamming against her chest as her vision blurred and her mind fogged over - carried her somewhere old and painful.
She was reaching for the faucet handle on the sink, leaning on the cold counter top with her other arm. She wasn't tall enough to reach it without standing on her toes, and Mother hated it when she left the water running. Her fingertips brushed against the handle, pushing it back. There was a split second where she glanced at the window, blinking at the reflection of a dark-skinned little girl with bushy hair the color of peaches and a bruise on her jaw.
Then she was rocking back on her heels, ready to dry her hands off and start sweeping, when her elbow knocked into the glass vase filled with dead flowers next to the sink. Hazel watched in horror as the vase tottered and slipped, shattering on the tile floor beneath her feet. Water and long-dead flowers and glass spilled in every direction, and Hazel felt her heart jump into her throat.
She had just destroyed Mother's favorite vase. The vase she nonsensically kept by the kitchen sink, only refilling it with living flowers every month and a half. The vase that was practically religion. Hazel was never to touch it. She wasn't to clean it, or even look at it. And now...it lay in pieces on the kitchen floor.
"I can fix it before Mother gets home," She whispered to the deathly still air. "I can fix it." She couldn't; there was no way in hell. But the terror rising in her chest was overwhelming, because Mother would be home soon, and find Hazel. She moved frantically, heedless of the glass bits biting into the bottom of her feet. Nobody was around to tell her to be quiet, but she stifled the noises of pain anyway.
She bent, reaching out to pick up the largest bits of glass, when the front door opened and slammed shut. Hazel froze, her heart seizing. There was a thump of something dropping against the floor - probably a coat, which meant the person was inebriated to the point where she missed the coat rack - and then Mother stumbled around the corner. Her brown hair was a disheveled mess, and her pale skin looked greasy with makeup. She leaned heavily on the door frame, and Hazel could see the bright pink nail polish chipping on the tips of her fingers.
Then there was the low rumble of her voice, hoarse and dangerous: "What," she slurred, "did you do?"
Hazel didn't move, didn't say a word. It would only make it worse. The barest slip of a whimper escaped her lips, and she felt the blood drain from her face as Mother started towards her, unsteady in her red pumps.
Her vision blurred (whether it was from tears or holding her breath for so long, she didn't know) and then Mother had her by the arm, glass crunching beneath her heels and nails digging into Hazel's skin. "I feed you, and clothe you, and this 's what you give me?" She hissed. "This 's what I get? You, breaking m'favorite flower pot? You're a brat - useless 'n greedy 'n...selfish." Mother frowned, lips pressed thin with her anger. Hazel shrank back, the stench of her breath overpowering and the fear rising so far she could taste it on the back of her tongue.
She cried out when Mother's nails raked down her arm as she bent down to Hazel's eye level. If the tears and pain etched into the child's face affected her, she showed no sign of it. "Do you know that you're - that you're -" She paused, drunken mind too slow to find the right word. "- adopted? You're not even [i]mine, brat. Someone just left you on my doorstep. Be grateful that I picked you up, b'cause you would have died if I hadn't. You owe me your life, but instead of thanking me you whine and bitch and cry and complain." She seethed.
Hazel's heart twisted. "P-Please, Mother, I didn't - i-it was an accident, I was cleaning the dishes like you -" The startling [/i]smack that rang through the air interrupted Hazel's plea, stinging her cheek as her head was whipped to the side by the force of impact. She cried out, shock dripping like the blood from the scratches on her arms.
"Quit begging, you miserable girl. I know it wasn' an accident. Doesn't matter, because you can go to your room after you clean this up." Mother yanked Hazel closer to her face, fingernails only digging harder as the little girl squirmed. "No dinner for three days, you hear? This is what you get, you waste of space." With that, the woman shoved Hazel away from her, sending the girl crashing into the glass. Hazel bit her tongue, trying to keep from shrieking as she gingerly raised her shaking hands to pick out the shards of glass from her palms, fingers slippery with her own blood.
She kept her gaze averted while Mother stared disdainfully at her. Everything hurt: her arms, her face, her legs, her feet, her head. She was already hungry, but knew better than to try and steal food from the pantry. So she waited, bloody and obedient and trying so hard to be the daughter that Mother wanted. And later that night while locked in her room, she would bandage her wounds as best she could in the pitch black.
Hazel ripped herself out of the memory, trembling and unsteady as she slid down the wall, the latches on her overall shorts scraping harshly against the metal. Tears dripped, steady and fast, down her cheeks as she curled in on herself, hands sliding into her hair to scratch uselessly at her scalp. Eyes squeezing as tightly shut as they would go, Hazel felt the prickle of those glass shards in her skin, and the sting of Mother's nails against her skin. The sound of glass against the floor echoed off the walls, the crunch of broken pieces under Mother's heels ingrained in her brain.
The sounds got louder, closer, had Hazel pressing herself as close to the wall as she could get and slapping her hands over her ears to get away from it, to block it out. Her body felt like it was on fire, burning with the glass embedded in her feet like all those years ago and flickering with her pulse speeding through her veins.
"Leave me alone!" She yelled into the noise that roared in her ears, borderline desperate and panicked. "Leave me alone!"
tl;dr Hazel is in her room, and it's pretty late in the evening. She's cleaning up and breaks a lamp, which triggers the memory of a very bad experience she had when she broke her mother's favorite glass vase. Now she's in the middle of a panic attack. Also, I really suck at tl;dr's. Apparently. 2278 words.
Re: this is a story that i have never told ★ o, flashback - BASTILLEPAW - 05-19-2018
![[Image: jgC0ptA.png]](https://i.imgur.com/jgC0ptA.png)
Bastille's insomnia had passed with the outburst of his elementals, but that didn't mean he always slept well these days. There were nights where he woke up with a jerk, lingering memories clouding his thoughts and some foreign smell on his tongue. There were times when he couldn't get to sleep at all, feeling a sort of bone-deep restlessness that demanded his attention. His powers seemed to have quieted somewhat, less explosive and less out of control, but he could that in the middle of those restless nights they were most rebellious. He could feel his past lives more saliently, shifting close beneath the surface, his thoughts flickering in and out of clarity, mingling with theirs.
This was one of those nights.
He'd woken up with the taste of smoke in his mouth, the flush of warmth from the bonfire and vodka lingering for a few moments as he struggled to get his bearings. It took a few moments to shrug off Zaniel's memories, but once he had pushed the past away he was awake for good. He often found that there was no going back to sleep when he dreamed of his souls; for whatever reason, his body wouldn't let him slip back into the midst of them. So, Bastille didn't even try -- he slipped out of his room with a book, deciding he may as well go read with Octavia until morning. It was what he usually did when he was awake but not too restless to settle down to read.
It was the shouting, not the crash of glass, that caught his attention. Bastille dropped his book -- Metamorphosis, this time -- and whirled around, scowling as he stared down the hall. It took him a few moments to place the voice as Hazel's, and then he was moving forward on auto-pilot, his book forgotten as he headed for her room. He shoved her door open without bothered to stop, picking up on the distress flaring through her aura viciously -- it made his skin feel tight, his blood boiling in an agitated fashion, and there was a brief splintering noise as the basement floor cracked under his feet.
He found her hunched in the corner and fell to his knees in front of her, his hands automatically curling around her wrists before he remembered. Too late now, however, and he pulled gently but urgently on her arms, trying to get her to release her ears, his thumbs planted on her pulse to track her heartbeat as he did so. "Hazel, Hazel, hey, come on," he said lowly, forcing his voice to remain steady and calm despite the winds that were starting to rage outside of the Observatory. He could feel the pull of the storm, reacting to his surging something -- it wasn't quite fear, or panic, but a low-burning sense of frustration, of wanting to stab whatever hurt her, of concern; a twisting wrongness about seeing her life this, broken -- but he did his best to focus on Hazel, on her heartbeat.
"It's okay, it's okay, just breathe, it's okay, Haze," he kept repeating in a steady flow, pulling her towards him by her wrists before he could second guess himself. He recalled the sudden warmth of Suite's presence, breaking through the chaos surrounding him, and released her long enough to wrap his arms around her tightly, hoping the weight would ground her or at least startle her out of her daze. "Come on, Haze, match my breathing," he started to say instead, focusing on keeping his own warring distress under control so that she had a reference point, "You need to breathe, okay? You need to breathe. With me. You're okay, just breathe."
This was one of those nights.
He'd woken up with the taste of smoke in his mouth, the flush of warmth from the bonfire and vodka lingering for a few moments as he struggled to get his bearings. It took a few moments to shrug off Zaniel's memories, but once he had pushed the past away he was awake for good. He often found that there was no going back to sleep when he dreamed of his souls; for whatever reason, his body wouldn't let him slip back into the midst of them. So, Bastille didn't even try -- he slipped out of his room with a book, deciding he may as well go read with Octavia until morning. It was what he usually did when he was awake but not too restless to settle down to read.
It was the shouting, not the crash of glass, that caught his attention. Bastille dropped his book -- Metamorphosis, this time -- and whirled around, scowling as he stared down the hall. It took him a few moments to place the voice as Hazel's, and then he was moving forward on auto-pilot, his book forgotten as he headed for her room. He shoved her door open without bothered to stop, picking up on the distress flaring through her aura viciously -- it made his skin feel tight, his blood boiling in an agitated fashion, and there was a brief splintering noise as the basement floor cracked under his feet.
He found her hunched in the corner and fell to his knees in front of her, his hands automatically curling around her wrists before he remembered. Too late now, however, and he pulled gently but urgently on her arms, trying to get her to release her ears, his thumbs planted on her pulse to track her heartbeat as he did so. "Hazel, Hazel, hey, come on," he said lowly, forcing his voice to remain steady and calm despite the winds that were starting to rage outside of the Observatory. He could feel the pull of the storm, reacting to his surging something -- it wasn't quite fear, or panic, but a low-burning sense of frustration, of wanting to stab whatever hurt her, of concern; a twisting wrongness about seeing her life this, broken -- but he did his best to focus on Hazel, on her heartbeat.
"It's okay, it's okay, just breathe, it's okay, Haze," he kept repeating in a steady flow, pulling her towards him by her wrists before he could second guess himself. He recalled the sudden warmth of Suite's presence, breaking through the chaos surrounding him, and released her long enough to wrap his arms around her tightly, hoping the weight would ground her or at least startle her out of her daze. "Come on, Haze, match my breathing," he started to say instead, focusing on keeping his own warring distress under control so that she had a reference point, "You need to breathe, okay? You need to breathe. With me. You're okay, just breathe."
[align=center]![[Image: 4ySBjji.png]](https://i.imgur.com/4ySBjji.png)
the ascendants — cosmic general — tags
[div style="width:400px; margin: auto; text-align: right; font-size: 8px"]© MADI
Re: this is a story that i have never told ★ o, flashback - Character Graveyard. - 05-19-2018
LUNAFREYA N.F.
✯ — take these broken wings and learn to fly
space
Lunafreya had been wandering the halls of the Complex, feeling restless. She had trouble sleeping that night, so she had spent some time reading before she left her room to walk around the Complex for a bit.
Upon seeing Bastille enter Hazel's room and hearing the young girl's sobbing, she would peak her head into her room, a look of concern on her face, and ask. "Hey, Bastille, is everything okay?"
Upon seeing Bastille enter Hazel's room and hearing the young girl's sobbing, she would peak her head into her room, a look of concern on her face, and ask. "Hey, Bastille, is everything okay?"
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✯ — Luna. The Ascedants. Easy. — ✯
Re: this is a story that i have never told ★ o, flashback - Suiteheart - 05-20-2018
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Re: this is a story that i have never told ★ o, flashback - ★ HAZEL - 05-20-2018
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★ WHEN MY HEART IS MADE FROM GOLD AND FORGIVENESS SEEMS TOO BOLD
It was a mess. Hazel was a mess: sobbing and dusty and exhausted and fucking terrified out of her mind. Terrified that her old life would follow her into her new one and she would never escape it, no matter how far she ran. That one morning, she might wake up and find Mother in her doorway, bottle of whiskey in hand and clothes from the previous night still on. That one day, she might look down and watch all her old scars - all her permanent reminders of what a horrible daughter she was - reopen and bleed onto the floor. People would stare and point fingers and spread rumors; closer friends would ask what happened and want to know more. They would say it was for her own sake: making her dig up all those horrible days and nights she had spent alone and feeling worthless.
Fear made her head hurt. Fear made her nails scrape against her arms. Fear made her press as far into the corner as she could go, like she might melt into the walls. Hazel wanted her past to leave, to fade away and never come back because she wasn't fucking strong enough to face it yet, or ever.
Hugging her knees tighter to her chest still, Hazel noticed the barest of shadows in her doorway, and then a tremor in the floor that cracked the cement. Immediately, she flattened herself against the wall, mind too polluted with panic and raw terror to realize that it was Bastille, not Mother. It was all there - the sudden movement towards her, the crunch of glass under shoes, the heavy presence of someone larger dropping to the floor and leaning into her personal space, suffocating her. Her breath hiccuped, a whine sliding out. "No," She whimpered, horrified because she didn't know if this was even real; she was so sure that she had woken up, that the memory was just that: a dream. "No, no - please, no -" She shrank away, near hysterical.
And then he grabbed her wrists.
And electricity crackled across her skin.
Shock rippled, snapping across her arms like a whip. There was so much that sank into her skin; there was so much: warmth and softness and foreign sensation and fucking pressure. Pressure that felt familiar and old and drove a spike of fear so deep in her heart Hazel really did burst into hysterics then, shrieking and trying to wrench her arms away. "Let go! Let go, stop it -" She begged, reality still fuzzing in her brain. Her mind confused Bastille's attempt to help as Mother's biting and unrelenting grip, the phantom pain of nails digging into her skin lighting up her nerves as his fingers got too close to the scar she hid underneath the bandanna. Hazel didn't even register Luna, just kept trying to get out of the iron clamps holding her down.
"Let me go, please, it was an accident, I-I didn't mean to break it!" She sobbed, still trying to twist out of his grasp. But he held fast, and was undoubtedly stronger. When he pulled her close, Hazel's panic flared brighter than it ever head before, her aura nearing radioactive. He was crushing her and she couldn't pull away, couldn't get free, couldn't escape and couldn't run. It was suffocating, all encompassing and objectively fucking terrorizing, and she couldn't breathe. She didn't hear him, what he said, couldn't match his breathing if she wanted to. Her head was light with lack of oxygen from hyperventilating, and she tried to suck in a breath, tried to get air to her lungs, and -
And.
It wasn't whiskey and gin that filled her nose. It was smoke and pine - campfire smoke that accompanied the woodland smell of pine. It was fresh and it wasn't sour. It didn't clog her throat and send her heart slamming into her ribcage - it...it just cracked across her senses like ice.
All at once, Hazel fell still, fists still holding handfuls of Bastille's shirt and chest heaving. She stalled, mind in limbo somewhere as she tried to struggle through the thick fog and understand what the hell was going on. Another breath in brought more smoke and pine, stinging the back of her throat and making the back of her tongue taste sweet. Then came a voice, deep and steady, murmuring something into the top of her hair. Slowly, her senses came back to her, with them returning guilt and confusion and pain.
Hazel lurched back, breaking from his grip before the sensation of skin and proximity could send her spiraling again. Her back hit the wall and she looked up, finding a boy with messy curls and icy blue eyes sitting in front of her. "Bast," Hazel said breathlessly, like she was just now figuring out his name.
Deus - Deus, had he - was that who she had been lashing out and kicking at? Fuck. Shame rose like a wave to engulf her, and she dropped her forehead to her knees, viciously rubbing her hands over her face to try and get rid of the shaking and the tears. "Oh god, I'm sorry," She mumbled. "I'm so sorry, I didn't mean for - you didn't have to - you shouldn't have seen...that." Hazel stumbled over her words, wanting nothing more than for him to forget everything. "Can we pretend that didn't happen?" She asked, still not looking him in the eye. "...Please?"
Fear made her head hurt. Fear made her nails scrape against her arms. Fear made her press as far into the corner as she could go, like she might melt into the walls. Hazel wanted her past to leave, to fade away and never come back because she wasn't fucking strong enough to face it yet, or ever.
Hugging her knees tighter to her chest still, Hazel noticed the barest of shadows in her doorway, and then a tremor in the floor that cracked the cement. Immediately, she flattened herself against the wall, mind too polluted with panic and raw terror to realize that it was Bastille, not Mother. It was all there - the sudden movement towards her, the crunch of glass under shoes, the heavy presence of someone larger dropping to the floor and leaning into her personal space, suffocating her. Her breath hiccuped, a whine sliding out. "No," She whimpered, horrified because she didn't know if this was even real; she was so sure that she had woken up, that the memory was just that: a dream. "No, no - please, no -" She shrank away, near hysterical.
And then he grabbed her wrists.
And electricity crackled across her skin.
Shock rippled, snapping across her arms like a whip. There was so much that sank into her skin; there was so much: warmth and softness and foreign sensation and fucking pressure. Pressure that felt familiar and old and drove a spike of fear so deep in her heart Hazel really did burst into hysterics then, shrieking and trying to wrench her arms away. "Let go! Let go, stop it -" She begged, reality still fuzzing in her brain. Her mind confused Bastille's attempt to help as Mother's biting and unrelenting grip, the phantom pain of nails digging into her skin lighting up her nerves as his fingers got too close to the scar she hid underneath the bandanna. Hazel didn't even register Luna, just kept trying to get out of the iron clamps holding her down.
"Let me go, please, it was an accident, I-I didn't mean to break it!" She sobbed, still trying to twist out of his grasp. But he held fast, and was undoubtedly stronger. When he pulled her close, Hazel's panic flared brighter than it ever head before, her aura nearing radioactive. He was crushing her and she couldn't pull away, couldn't get free, couldn't escape and couldn't run. It was suffocating, all encompassing and objectively fucking terrorizing, and she couldn't breathe. She didn't hear him, what he said, couldn't match his breathing if she wanted to. Her head was light with lack of oxygen from hyperventilating, and she tried to suck in a breath, tried to get air to her lungs, and -
And.
It wasn't whiskey and gin that filled her nose. It was smoke and pine - campfire smoke that accompanied the woodland smell of pine. It was fresh and it wasn't sour. It didn't clog her throat and send her heart slamming into her ribcage - it...it just cracked across her senses like ice.
All at once, Hazel fell still, fists still holding handfuls of Bastille's shirt and chest heaving. She stalled, mind in limbo somewhere as she tried to struggle through the thick fog and understand what the hell was going on. Another breath in brought more smoke and pine, stinging the back of her throat and making the back of her tongue taste sweet. Then came a voice, deep and steady, murmuring something into the top of her hair. Slowly, her senses came back to her, with them returning guilt and confusion and pain.
Hazel lurched back, breaking from his grip before the sensation of skin and proximity could send her spiraling again. Her back hit the wall and she looked up, finding a boy with messy curls and icy blue eyes sitting in front of her. "Bast," Hazel said breathlessly, like she was just now figuring out his name.
Deus - Deus, had he - was that who she had been lashing out and kicking at? Fuck. Shame rose like a wave to engulf her, and she dropped her forehead to her knees, viciously rubbing her hands over her face to try and get rid of the shaking and the tears. "Oh god, I'm sorry," She mumbled. "I'm so sorry, I didn't mean for - you didn't have to - you shouldn't have seen...that." Hazel stumbled over her words, wanting nothing more than for him to forget everything. "Can we pretend that didn't happen?" She asked, still not looking him in the eye. "...Please?"
Re: this is a story that i have never told ★ o, flashback - BASTILLEPAW - 05-20-2018
There was a prolonged moment where he was certain that he'd made a mistake, that relying on his own experience had been foolish -- Suite had jarred him so violently with her hug that he'd been shocked out of his own hysteria, but Hazel seemed to get even worse. He knew that she had an aversion to touch, had seen her flinch away once already, but he just didn't know what else to do to shake her out of it. He had been convinced that the only way to help was to consume her with warmth, as Suite had, and gods, he was so wrong. He couldn't let her go, either, though -- not now that he had her, thrashing against his hold, and Bastille felt vaguely desperate. He should let her go but he felt like that would be wrong, too, and thunder cracked loudly overhead as the storm started to pick up.
Breathe, he had to remind himself, struggling not to panic as she got more panicked, her aura flaring -- but then it stopped, and Bast let out a breath he didn't realize he'd been holding. "It's okay, it's just me, you're okay," he mumbled, mixing the words into his steady flow of words. He couldn't even remember what all he'd said to her, distracted as he'd been by trying to keep himself calm and calm her down, but he got the vague impression that she didn't know, either. He mumbled something under his breathe -- quick, quietly, distinctly foreign (German?) -- but she seemed to suddenly jerk back to life at the same moment.
Bastille's hands dropped, and he blinked back at her as she seemed to realize what was happening. "Hi," he said, slightly jilted, at a loss for what else to say as she said his name. She seemed surprised, but that wasn't much of a shock -- he knew she'd been trapped somewhere, in some distant memory. He became suddenly conscious on Luna's presence, and he glanced over his shoulder at her almost guiltily, as if his mentor had caught him doing something he shouldn't have. Which was... odd. One would image that he should be trying to help his Clanmates, but, well, he wasn't particularly good at it. (Nor did he hug people, or could remember the last time he'd actually hugged someone instead of being hugged. It was... weird.)
Hazel jerked his attention back, and for a moment he was confused about what she was apologizing for. He felt distinctly like he was supposed to apologize for touching her again, but instead he just ended up saying, "Well, at least you didn't nearly blow up the Observatory." He gave her a weak half-smile, because he just... wasn't sure what else to say. That it was okay? That he didn't mind? Instead he settled on the easy route that she gave him: pretending this never happened so that he could stop feeling so horribly awkward. "Uh, yeah. Never happened."
Breathe, he had to remind himself, struggling not to panic as she got more panicked, her aura flaring -- but then it stopped, and Bast let out a breath he didn't realize he'd been holding. "It's okay, it's just me, you're okay," he mumbled, mixing the words into his steady flow of words. He couldn't even remember what all he'd said to her, distracted as he'd been by trying to keep himself calm and calm her down, but he got the vague impression that she didn't know, either. He mumbled something under his breathe -- quick, quietly, distinctly foreign (German?) -- but she seemed to suddenly jerk back to life at the same moment.
Bastille's hands dropped, and he blinked back at her as she seemed to realize what was happening. "Hi," he said, slightly jilted, at a loss for what else to say as she said his name. She seemed surprised, but that wasn't much of a shock -- he knew she'd been trapped somewhere, in some distant memory. He became suddenly conscious on Luna's presence, and he glanced over his shoulder at her almost guiltily, as if his mentor had caught him doing something he shouldn't have. Which was... odd. One would image that he should be trying to help his Clanmates, but, well, he wasn't particularly good at it. (Nor did he hug people, or could remember the last time he'd actually hugged someone instead of being hugged. It was... weird.)
Hazel jerked his attention back, and for a moment he was confused about what she was apologizing for. He felt distinctly like he was supposed to apologize for touching her again, but instead he just ended up saying, "Well, at least you didn't nearly blow up the Observatory." He gave her a weak half-smile, because he just... wasn't sure what else to say. That it was okay? That he didn't mind? Instead he settled on the easy route that she gave him: pretending this never happened so that he could stop feeling so horribly awkward. "Uh, yeah. Never happened."
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