isn't anybody going to listen to my story?(open)

[Rain]

Dead.

The wind was dead, non-existent at the moment, which was all too appropriate for the setting. Eli scratched behind his ear as he passed numerous tombstones, all the same to him. The names etched into the stones were barely distinguishable, anyway. He didn't know any of them, so he wasn't going to try to decipher them. Pointless and a waste of time.

He sat before one of the tombstones--a random one. He only choose it for its shape. It wasn't rectangular like the rest, but had more of a rounded tip that stood out to him. He pulled at the grass beneath him, the blades soft and tender in comparison to his fingers. Ellie would have tried to read the tombstones. She would have pulled him into it somehow, stopping at nothing until she knew precisely what was written on the stone, and he would have gone along with it. He didn't care about the people buried, for they were long gone, dead, but she believed in a sort of immortality. Not literally, of course, but she never wanted the dead to be forgotten. She wanted them to live on until the apocalypse. That was one unspoken promise he'd kept. He hadn't forgotten her.

He dug his heels into the earth. It was six years ago, he reminded himself. She'd known how to swim, but the damn current had been so strong. She might have been able to fight it, but that damn rock had gotten in the way, struck her unconscious. Nobody had thought to go look for her before it was too late. There hadn't been any sacred last words exchanged between them before he was told the awful news. What was the last thing he said to her? "See you tomorrow"? Why didn't he go swimming with her? Why the hell did she go swimming in the first place?

He tossed a rock at the tombstone and was satisfied when it hit the stone. Yeah, he hadn't forgotten her, how kind of him. What a self-sacrificing promise to keep. Not forgetting her should have been the least of what he did for her. She'd told him everything she could about her family, every tiny, insignificant detail, whether he wanted to hear it or not. The funny part was how much he did want to hear it, how much he craved to hear her tell him a new story, whether it be funny or sad. She spoke of her family--no, of everybody, down to the grumpy old man who lived on the corner of their block--with such love and affection. Maybe she just loved people, and he remembered what she'd once said to him when they were eight. It had stuck with him all these years. "You don't have to be so distant, Eli. People aren't as scary as you think."

He lay back on the grass, which felt fuzzy beneath him. Yes, because it was so easy to love people when they talked about Ellie at her funeral like she was somebody she wasn't, when they spoke of how she was an angel on her way to heaven, how her death was oh so tragic, how Ellie would have wanted him to cry at her funeral and the rest of that bullshit. No, he didn't cry at her funeral. He certainly cried later when no one was around, but no way was he going to cry at her funeral when her body was right there. She would have giggled and told him to stop. She would have said, don't be sad, Eli. I'm right over here.

He looked at the sky, clouds drifting overhead with the utmost slowness, like honey dripping into a container. She had taught him so much, and what did he take away from it? Nothing. He was still the Eli that didn't trust anyone's motives, didn't let anybody in. She'd handed him so many life lessons on a silver platter, and he'd tossed it aside, didn't let it touch him. Maybe it did touch him, but he didn't want it to.

Maybe he never took her advice because he knew he would never be able to thank her.

[Tsubasa]

Since when was this his job?

As he raked the leaves that had accumulated into a littered mess, he reminisced on the much happier times he once had. Heck, he had been a prince, a noble, and a millionaire for god-sake! Why on earth was he stooping himself so low for such a mediocre and trivial occupation? But no, he sighed slightly, this is what he wished. This was helping his beloved mater's happiness. And his Master's happiness was certainly Cain's happiness. So if Master wanted him to take up this job as a guise for other hiden purposes, so be it.

Grumbling, he bent his oh-so sore and strained back to push the gathered leaves into the bag he held. There was so much work for a groundskeeper, why couldn't he have been the history teacher? That man was younger, and had an easier job. In short, the job was perfect for Cain as he had been around on this earth longer than most, or at least observed it for long. But, being a history teacher wouldn't help with keeping watch on a certain gypsie, now would it? No, no it would not.

As he tried finishing up in this chilling, morbid type place, he heard some rustling and strained to the left, catching a figure from the corner of his eye. Ugh, no, he hoped there wasn't someone there, disturbing his much strenuous peace. Turning his head more he saw for definite a person there. Oh Master, why did someone have to be here? He grumbled much louder this time, and tried to think up some sort of lame excuse to have the student or teacher alike leave him be. The demon in guise hated people, really humans more or less, which maybe made this groundskeeper job more appealing. It dealt with much less interaction, and much more Cain-time.

Sighing, and straightening his back, he forced himself to saunter over to the distant figure near a grave. Heaving the rake over his shoulder, possibly to look more imposing -as if the bleached hair and the trench coat didn't do so already-, the groundskeeper sped up and finally was able get a clear view of the intruder. A young boy, most probably one of the students, was see looming over a tombstone. Reaching the boy, Cain refrained from rolling his eyes and tried to crack a -failed- grin.

"Why, hello there, but I must tell you that the graveyard is closed...for...cleaning purposes."

Wow, that was most certainly a believable tale. Yes indeed.

[Rain]

"Why, hello there, but I must tell you that the graveyard is closed...for...cleaning purposes."

Eli turned his head in time to see Cain, the groundskeeper or something like that, approaching him. It took him a moment to register Cain's words, and then he frowned. The tombstones were clean, or at least as clean as they would ever be, seeing as they were attached to the ground, and there weren't many leaves around. Eli checked his watch to find it wasn't past curfew. Wait a minute, did the cemetery ever even close?

"Are you sure?" It wasn't in his nature to challenge a teacher unless they gave him crap. Therefore, since Cain was giving him total crap, this wasn't outside his comfort zone. "I thought the graveyard never closed. And it looks pretty clean to me."

He scanned the area, wishing that Cain would go away and that no one had disturbed him in the first place. He hadn't thought it very likely that someone would interrupt his pondering way out among the tombstones, and yet here was the groundskeeper coming up with obnoxious, ridiculous excuses to get rid of him. Well, two could play at that game. "I don't think I want to leave, actually. I'm visiting an old friend. That's his tombstone there. See?" He strained to look at the name on the tombstone: Emily Hobbs. Ah, damn it. He'd already said "his". "Parents were crazy. They named him Emily, and the poor chap was so miserable, he offed himself. Pretty tragic."

Well, that was stupid. He looked a way, somehow still clinging to the hope that Cain would buy his story.

[Javert]

((woaaaah. sorry for the length and the rambling, and for fran's mental instability. ^_____^))

At a distant point in her life that Frances could no longer recall, cemeteries had been synonymous with peace. There was one down the road from her home, and sometimes she would ride her pony, Duchess, past it, head turned to solemnly regard the gravestones and studiously manicured lawns, the golden sun coaxing cheer to imposing wrought-iron fences. There was something poignantly beautiful about them. No, Fran was not a morbid girl—perhaps, contrarily, she was the farthest thing from it—but she simply saw solace where others saw sorrow. Cemeteries were places where the deceased engaged in a long and loving slumber as their souls ascended to a long and loving afterlife. Fran may have feared a myriad things, but among them was not death: She was confident that she and the people she loved would awaken from their earthly slumber and emerge into a far grander life than any they could imagine.

And then...

And then death reared its ugly head and proved to her that it could be a malignant thing, as well, flying upon black wings to infiltrate her open heart, or riding upon a pale horse through the black night to spirit away someone she loved with every fiber of her fragile being. Death had plucked and unraveled these threads, leaving them frayed, leaving her with a profound sense of betrayal, and pain, and sorrow. She was like a shirt that had been washed too many times. The fleeting image of her mother, with red, chapped hands washing a shirt of her father's or brother's suddenly ghosted across her half-delirious mind, before giving way to a memory of Fran's own hand held fast in a larger one, as if it were her anchor to the world, or, more succinctly, her anchor to him.

Her heart ached.

Her head ached from the pressure of memories flinging themselves against her temples. Her fingers ached from gardening, she knew, for she had been at it for the entirety of the day, hands churning into black soil as if she were digging for some lost item; its recovery was inevitably impossible and yet she dug, anyway, because otherwise she would have had to admit defeat, and that was something that Fran did not quite terribly wish to do. Her usual smile was gone today, replaced by a tight compression of her quivering lips, preventing the escape of unwanted words; her stormcloud eyes were streaked with the red of a sunset at the dusk of another day without--

Without what? Him? Love? Herself?

Since she could not bring herself to answer this question, she embarked from her garden and onto a trip to the cemetery, no longer a symbol of serenity, but the quintessential location for a broken—no, still breaking—heart and its owner. Certainly she could find the answer here, located among faceless angels and weathered crosses. As she wandered, abnormally quiet, unusually still, feeling more like a shadow of herself than the actual being, she wondered, very quietly, if she would find him, as well.

She did.

Fran felt her heart leap into her throat, as if it were trying desperately to escape and return to the boy who had once so carefully handled it and guarded it and exchanged it for his own. He was seated merely several lanes away. His name flew to her lips, and her feet flew across the grounds, nearly tripping her as they entangled in her skirts, an unimaginable burst of joy exploding in her heart like a sunrise or a tidal wave or a blooming flower.

A trembling hand flew to bloodless lips as she drew closer and the face of the boy swam into perfect clarity “I-I'm dreadfully sorry,” Fran heard herself say, although she did not recall ordering her vocal chords to do such a thing. She felt suddenly disengaged from herself, as if she were an innocent bystander watching the exchange between the violently trembling girl and the dark-haired boy. “I-I mistook you for someone else... You look so much like him... I didn't mean...”

Helplessly, despite her audience, Fran buried her face in her hands and succumbed to the storm of bitter tears that had brewed, unshed, for far too long. Cemeteries meant peace no longer. Cemeteries meant pain.

[Rain]

As he awaited the groundskeeper's response, he heard a girl's voice from somewhere to the right. He turned around to see a girl around his age running toward him, like one of those girls running in a field of flowers in slow motion. She was yelling some unfamiliar name, and he just stared at her, dumbfounded. Then he remembered where he was. This was a cemetery, so doubtless people would be swept up by emotion when they visited. Perhaps she was a friend or sister of Emily Hobbs. He continued to stare at her as she neared him, and then when her hand lifted to her face to touch her lips. There were so many emotions swimming across her face that it was hard to read. There was something there that he couldn't put his finger on--a crestfallen sensation intermixed with embarrassment and sorrow.

“I-I'm dreadfully sorry.”

"No, no, it's fine," he blurted out. He didn't think of anything to say before saying it, instead searching for lost fragments and phrases that would possibly make sense, if said in the right tone. He wasn't even sure what he was apologizing for. Being there? Staring at her as she ran at him yelling some random name? He turned over a nearby dried-up leaf in an attempt to return to normalcy, to the modest day he'd been having before she'd flung herself into it with all her girlish emotions. Was he being too hard on her? After all, she didn't know she was throwing his day off course. No, he decided. He had every right to resent her. In his head, at least.

“I-I mistook you for someone else... You look so much like him... I didn't mean...”

If her pelting herself at him with full force hadn't been enough to throw him off, this was. He saw people all the time that he mistook for people he knew, but he didn't frolic towards them, singing their name. Not even that girl that had looked like Ellie from behind, because he knew she was dead. Gone, and never coming back. "That's okay," he said for some reason.

Then his eyebrows almost flew off his forehead in surprise. She was crying. As in, tears were streaming down her face as she sobbed about God-knows-what. He moved his hands along the ground as if caressing them, stuck between getting up and staying seated. He was panicking. He looked over at Cain before remembering that the man was unlikely to be of any help. He fumbled with his zipper as if that would make her stop.

He couldn't deal with this. This wasn't going to work. The stupid tombstones sticking out of the ground, sordid reminders of lives that could no longer be changed, and the tears cascading down the girl's cheeks, brought him back to Ellie again. There'd been that one day when she had cried without control, just let her tears loose without inhibitions, even with him standing right there. She'd just been informed of her grandfather's death. And he'd done nothing. He'd looked at her, the freckles on her face blurred by the streams of water, but hadn't said anything, didn't run to her side to hug her. He let her cry like a helpless infant, all alone while standing meters away from him. Then he'd muttered "See you Monday," and left her.

Boy, did she let him have it on Monday. It was the only real fight they'd ever had. She screamed at him, her seven year old body shaking with rage, most leftover from the grief of her grandfather's death. He'd apologized over and over and over, but he'd already done the damage. It wasn't one he could wrap in gauze and hope would heal. They started talking again after a few days of sulking, but she'd never cried in front of him again. Whenever she needed to, she retreated to the other room, not trusting him to be her loving pillow that she could weep into. The bitter pain of that knowledge, the missing chain in their friendship that he couldn't pretend wasn't there, had shot through him every time.

He decided on standing, holding out his hands so she knew they were there for help, if begrudgingly. He didn't touch her arm in a comforting way or anything. Idiot. "A-are you okay?" Damn, he was glowing red. This really wasn't the best time, he reminded the blood now pooling into his cheeks. "Do you need...something?" Wow. What a master of articulation. Shit, why did she have to be crying?

But out of all the moronic things he said to her, the next one took the cake.

"Wh-who do I look like?"

OOC: Sorry about Eli's mental rudeness toward Fran. It's the way he is.

[Tsubasa]

This was not what the man, if you could call him that, wanted to have to deal with. The frusterated groan, crawling up his throat and begging him to be free was violently pushed down as his hand met his forehead, fingers rubbing those sore temples of his. Cain had so many complaints and whines swelled up inside of him, swirling around ready to burst out just about everyday, but he always forced himself to keep them subdued.

He had to endure, had to endure endure endure. Everytime he thought of the worst, he would just imagine his beautiful Master's face smiling down at him with admiration and pride, and it would all just wash away like footprints in the sand. The blonde sucked in his cheeks while taking a deep breath and took a double-take over situation. He turned his left eyebrow slightly up, mustering up a skeptical look that he thought would be appropriate, Cain stared straight through the fellow boy.

"I see, offed himself because of his name? My my, poor fellow. Well, as your story is just as believable as mine, I would suggest we both just make our way and-"

But oh no, it could not possibly end right there, couldn't it? No, that would be much too easy and far to relievable for this one tortured soul, if he had one at all. A million protests that had been swarming around with the rest of his complaints shot up from in him and tried to barge their way out when he first caught a glimpse of the red-haired girl. Calm yourself Cain, so what if there are more people who insist on giving you a hard time? So what if this is becoming a cute little human party? Know that this will one day give joy to your Master, and you can relax.

The demon watched as the girl slowly succumbed to dreadful droplets of tears, cascading down her freckled face and adding a newly formed scene that was clearly already present. She was crying, oh lord she was crying. He just couldn't deal with this, with all of this. The man wasn't a social person, no, not in all the thousands of years he had lived. He just didn't know how to interact, how to deal, it didn't come as naturally to him as it did humans - or Toni for that matter.

Earning a look from the boy apparently just as confused as he was, Cain only responded with a firm 'i have no fucking idea' expression that he managed to present. Giving a shrug, he hoped that the sobbing female wouldn't notice him so that it wouldn't be his priority. Hopefully the student could miraculously fix this one up for him, and just in the nick of time so that he and that girl could just leave him be once and for all. The drama was too overpowering, and Cain did not need that in his day, not thank you.

It already seemed that they were on the trail of figuring things out for themselves, but for some reason the blonde's feet couldn't pick themselves up. It was if they were cemented to the cold moist ground of the ever present graveyard. Well, he couldn't just walk up and leave, could he? In a human's eyes that would seem rude and uncivilized. Maybe if he just put in a few unfelt condolences or fake concern, it would give him the ticket out. Stepping forward a bit -oh so now his feet could move?- Cain tried looking at the girl with a sorrowful expression.

"Um, well do you need a handkerchief?"

Yes, that was all he could muster. Social level non-existent, check.

[Javert]

Crying, when employed at the proper times, could be a relieving activity. [/size]Sometimes, Fran imagined that all of her troubles and all of her worries and all of her woes were leaving her when she wept, shuttled away upon the backs of crystalline tears; she would be careful to keep them from returning to her by gathering upon her lips, and ensure that they were captured by handkerchiefs or the pads of her thumbs, or that they dropped from her chin to be swallowed by the thirsting ground.

This was not the proper time.

Still, maybe the tears could help her garden grow, she thought, her sadness fueling irrationality, her irrationality beginning to metamorphose into something far more poignant and unsettling, a caterpillar into a bat instead of a butterfly. Madness, something whispered; she had mistaken this flesh-and-bones boy for a dead one, after all...

Fran pressed her forefingers into the space between her eyes, her thumbs hooked beneath her jaw, the pressure enough to keep her trembling mouth closed. She was afraid of what she would say if she were able to speak.

Aware of eyes upon her, Fran, petulantly, pivoted away from them, shuddering, as if her back were enough of a barrier between her searching eyes and lost memories. Her tightly closed eyes were not enough.

She cried.

When she trusted herself enough to speak, feeling quite foolish and no better but at least more stable, more certain that her feet were firmly upon the ground and her heart firmly within her chest, Fran turned slowly around. She was careful not to lick her burning lips. Instead, she pressed the heels of her hands into her eyes for a moment, and forced laughter from her raw throat. “Dear me,” she said, quietly, smiling, “that was quite rude of me. I'm sorry.” Her gaze was fixated upon the groundskeeper, who, she knew, did not deserve the apology as much as... He did.

She blinked once, then looked over to the boy—not the ghost, she reminded herself as her heart grew wings again and protested its cage. “Oh, w-well, no, I'm fine, thank you,” she said in response to his inquiry, not noticing the awkward cadences upon which it was delivered. She was not a good liar, and she felt red rushing to the aid of her now bone-white face. “Thank you,” she whispered, again, to the groundskeeper, to give her an opportunity to look away.

Who do I look like?

“No one,” blurted Fran, eyes widening as they darted to look at the boy again, feeling her pulse quicken enough to tattoo blood against her wrists. A stream of unnatural laughter escaped between her lips, and, face flushing further, she added, her words rapidly gaining momentum as she lost confidence, “Well, I mean, you look like you, because everyone looks like themselves, I look like me, too, isn't that surprising?” Helplessly, she looked between the boy and the man, the man and the boy, before, too quickly, before their confusion or pity could reach her through their words, she confessed, “Actually, you look like a friend of mine, a dear friend, back home, and I've been feeling quite homesick lately, you know, and I apologize for being ever so rude, but you just reminded me of him and I felt...” Hopeful, her mind provided, since her vocal chords could not.

Suddenly, words were delivered with a breathless desperation that Fran could not explain: “What's your name?” [/font]

[Rain]

“Oh, w-well, no, I'm fine, thank you.”

Certainly a cover-up, but Eli couldn't blame her. He couldn't remember a time when he'd actually fessed up to what he was feeling, at least, not a recent instance. He didn't see the point to it, since most usually asked the question out of pure nosiness, for gossip-related reasons, and not because they actually sought to help. He stopped to question why he himself even helped her now, why he had abandoned his comfortable seat on the grass to make sure she was all right. The answer found him immediately. He wanted the crying to stop, for it made him anxious, uncomfortable. And oh, what a selfish reason that was.

Ellie--there was the little devil again, popping up in his mind, but what did he expect? He was in a cemetery. She was one of the only people he could remember feeling actual sympathy for--his fists had clenched whenever some action against her was unjust, a smile had lit his face every time she'd shrieked with laughter, and a hole punctured his heart each time she'd been overcome with sorrow. But not enough for him to comfort her, to show he actually cared.

He stomach clenched with a mixture of nausea and butterflies. He hadn't done a single thing to show he cared about her, even when she'd fixed the scrape on his knee that he'd gotten at age six, kissing it with her puckered, rosy lips. A second mother for him, yes, when his real one was too busy caring for his baby sister. Not a grateful word, aside from the obligatory "thank you", had passed his lips. He had nothing to show for how much she'd meant to him aside from his thoughts, and what use were those when he couldn't find the means to share them? He had vocal chords, didn't he?

She'd died without knowing.

“Well, I mean, you look like you, because everyone looks like themselves, I look like me, too, isn't that surprising?”

"I suppose." What he really supposed was that she was babbling, an act he was familiar with. He did it every day of his life. What else was he supposed to do when constantly asked stupid questions? What a hypocrite he was, asking stupid questions and expecting interesting answers. That's what everyone did, he supposed. They bothered people with annoying formalities and small talk, expecting the other to make all the effort, to pull the weight of interesting conversation on their own, while the other could just take instead of give, observe instead of speak their own mind.

“Actually, you look like a friend of mine, a dear friend, back home, and I've been feeling quite homesick lately, you know, and I apologize for being ever so rude, but you just reminded me of him and I felt...”

His eyebrows rose again. What was this? Honesty? A confession that rang true? She could have brushed it off, pretended it never happened, run off into the distance and never spoken to him again, but here she continued to stand. Then it struck him like a harpoon to the stomach. She had the red hair. She had the freckles. She had that look of youth to her. He realized he was blushing again as it dawned on him that Ellie, had she lived to be a teenager, might have resembled this girl. His eyes dropped to the floor as he suddenly found it difficult to look at her.

"Er, yes. Sorry." Why was he apologizing? "I mean, uh, you look like someone I know--knew, too. She was--yeah. She had the red hair 'n stuff." He made vague gestures to her hair. Why such over-the-top gestures, grandmother? The better to look like an idiot, my dear.

Really, the concept of Ellie returning from the dead, or even her spirit inhabiting this girl's body, was ludicrous. It reminded him of the kind of preternatural bullshit his mum believed in. But still, he felt her presence in a more tangible way than he had since the last time he'd seen her. It was as if she was standing right before him, the same scene again, her tears dribbling along her cheek while he stood there without helping. He gazed over at Cain, who had offered her a handkerchief. My God, this was just one big circle of awkward.

“What's your name?”

He had completely forgotten. How refreshing, what a novelty it was to start off with drama, and encounter the introductions so far into their conversation. Granted, they hadn't said much to each other, but it was still nice. "Eli. Eli Appleby, I mean." He dug the tip of his shoe into the dirt, his hands buried in his pockets. "And yours?"

[Tsubasa]

After all the tension, after all the awkwardness and uneasy air surrounding the newly met trio, Cain couldn't help but let out an out of character and unorthodox chuckle. He really don't know where it had happened to come from, or how it sprung upon him in such a manner, time, and place, but it had. And quickly after it had he could feel the heat of rosy cheeks rising up and contrasting on his sickly pale face, forcing him to turn his head in a direction that was not cast upon any of the two.

The demon supposed that he just couldn't help it, and just couldn't push down any more of the uneasiness that was swelling in the pit of his body, so the frivolous laugh had just found it's way there. Blinking his eyes rapidly, which was a sort of habit Cain succumbed to when he was nervous or embarrassed, he let out a strained and forceful cough, or clearing of the throat to perhaps cloak what had just occurred.

It was time to go, the awkward period of time was too overdone, and it certainly wasn't any better with him, the lowly groundskeeper, imposing here. The blonde decided it was rather best to leave these two alone, as it seemed they had some hidden pasts to share with and relate to, then later share some silly bond that those young people happened to do. Cain really gawked at it all, but then again he couldn't even remember those young years, the faraway days he spent as a young seedling, learning new things in the place he had been created. His home.

Not bothering in turning his head back, no that would be much too embarassing of him, the man simply trailed his eyes back to the other two's in order to establish some sort of a connection.

"Well then," he started, "I suppose I'd best be off now." Now he turned his eyes and attention fully on the pretty little girl, who didn't seem so bad. No, she seemed like a nice human, he could tell that much by the way she acted and the pose she kept about her. He decided that maybe he did wish her some good will. That alone was a feat for the monster. "I do hope you feel better, little miss."

After standing still for a few seconds, practically used to that stance as he had been accustomed to that for a long while now during these minutes, he turned his body in the opposite direction in a quick spin. It was very startling actually, even to himself after breaking the silent stillness of the scene. And then, he was gone. He never looked back.

(;__; so short. i hate you guys, you're are so good.)

[Javert]

Staring at him as if she were a drowning girl and he a life preserver, [/size] a last chance at a buoyancy that could keep her afloat, a last anchor to life, had the possibility of greatly unnerving the yet anonymous boy, and Fran's waterlogged eyes were burning from the effort, and yet she found that the longer she looked at him, the calmer she gradually felt herself becoming, or allowed herself to become. She wrung her hands like a washcloth at her abdomen, as if they had absorbed all of her tears and she was ousting them from the pores of her skin. His eyes were gray, like clouds, she noted, and not the warm golden-brown that she had been expecting. His chin was not so long. The shape of their lips was entirely different, Fran decided upon thorough inspection, and it was at this relieving discovery that she felt a blush flood the hollow of her tearstained cheeks again. She drew a trembling hand across one cheek again, to swipe away the moisture and the color, succeeding only at the latter.

Her eyes lost focus as she ducked her head, embarrassed, before she peered curiously at him through a sidelong glance. He saw a dead person in her face, too? Immediately, the unasked question drained the newfound color from her face, and Fran mentally chided her brain for suggesting it. She had not mentioned anything about the... state that the person she missed was in, and although the lie had been a poor one, she hoped that the boy's mind had been unable to supply an alternative truth. How morbid of her to assume that this red-haired girl of his was deceased simply because she, Fran, was currently lost among the realms of the dead—mentally, of course, but somewhat physically as well, she was reminded as a bird alighted upon a tombstone to her left and preened charcoal feathers. Just because he corrected a word from present to past-tense meant nothing. Perhaps they moved away from each other. Perhaps they had met only in passing, years ago.

Something, however, had woven a thread of kinship between them, and whether the other realized it or not, Fran did. She lifted her head to meet his gaze again, the barest implication of a smile at her lips. “Yes,” she said, nodding in understanding, at his gestures to her hair, as, her hands desperate for movement, she took a scarlet strand of it between her fingers, rubbed it between thumb and forefinger, reassuring herself that she was still a physical entity. “He, my friend, I mean, had your hair, too. Or it was similar. I think his was longer.” She didn't think: she was absolutely certain that his had curled to his collarbone sometimes, if the right amount of moisture was suspended above the ground. Belatedly, distracted by the memory, the truth of her words made her lips sting as if they had been stung by bees, and, weakly, she corrected, “Is. Is longer.”

Being able to attach a name to the face before her removed another weight from her thin shoulders, and Fran almost could feel her spine realigning itself, her back a little straighter, her head a little higher, her smile a little more sure of itself, confident and willing to present itself to its audience. Eli. The names had the same number of syllables, she noted, occupied the same amount of space in the air as he projected the word into it, and yet were completely different, and this made her feel better, lighter. “Why, hello, Eli,” she said, automatically, then, at the sudden formality, was even able to produce a sound that was more of a giggle than a sob. “I'm Fran. Fran Crawford. Frances Crawford, actually, but most people call me Fran, because Frances reminds them of their grandfather or something, even though they're spelled differently.” She found comfort in the calm cadences of her own steady voice, like the still ground after an earthquake.

She was alerted to the third presence only as it began retreating. Fran, saddened that she had effectively ignored the groundskeeper, folded her lips into the sunniest smile that she could radiate through her still clouded visage. “Thank you, sir. You're very kind.”[/font]

[Rain]

Thank goodness she had stopped crying. Really, it had been the thing gnawing at his insides, but now that all that remained of the little droplets were vertical stains upon her cheeks, he was able to relax. Of course, he wasn't completely relaxed--ever since the groundskeeper had intruded upon his solitude, nothing about this day could be called leisurely. One thing he knew about girls is that they liked to share their feelings, or at least most of them did. However, this girl had never revealed the reason for her miserable behavior, and frankly, he was glad. Sure, there was a tale somewhere in her, one that would no doubt make a nice short story and that piqued his interest, but now he wanted nothing more than to forget the crying incident had ever happened. In truth, she still seemed rather disturbed as she wrung her hands about, but she got points for the effort. No more waterworks, so he was somewhat mollified.

A chuckle from Cain startled Eli a bit, but he kept his composure as he turned to look at the older man. A blush rose in Cain's face, prompting Eli to look away. If there was one thing he hated more than seeing a girl cry, it was witnessing someone of the male gender in a moment of vulnerability, and blushing fell under this category. He instead kept his eyes on the girl, who was brushing the moisture off her freckled cheeks. If only she had been a brunette or had more of a tan, but no, she had to bear such a strong resemblance to Ellie, didn't she? Had he been a young boy watching this scene in a crystal ball from a third-person point of view, he would have guessed the two teenagers to be him and Ellie, spending another day together as they always did. How he wished that was true. Then again, how rude was it to wish away this girl's existence?

"I suppose I'd best be off now."

Eli's stomach turned over as he observed Cain, who was departing. Panicked thoughts began to zip through his mind. Cain couldn't leave, not now, not when this depressed teenage girl stood in front of him, speaking to him. He clasped his hands behind his back, bouncing a little on his heels and looking anywhere but at the girl. Yes, it had all been fine and dandy with an adult around, but now he was stuck on his own. Sure, he'd been able to function around girls before--when he was prepubescent. Now, anytime he and a girl of about his age were caught anywhere, he acted like more of an idiot than usual. To make matters worse, he'd just seen this girl crying. It was like standing around with someone he'd just walked in on while they were naked.

“He, my friend, I mean, had your hair, too. Or it was similar. I think his was longer.....is. Is longer.”

Oh, God. She'd covered up the past tense, but the pause had been too long, and he'd caught it in time. She'd mentioned her friend was from back home, but all of a sudden he was a thing of the past, and then she'd switched back again. He'd lied too many times for this to get past him. Either her friend was now bald and she was too ashamed to admit it, or he was dead as well, possibly having a spot of tea with Ellie up in the clouds. He shook his head a bit to rid his mind of the thought. Imagining Ellie having tea with someone who looked just like him...well, it nauseated him. He probably didn't even know her favorite flavor, chamomile.

He was now very curious about her situation--Fran's situation, as he was now aware of her name--and about this mystery boy. It was natural for Eli to wonder about someone he looked enough alike to elicit tears from Fran. Tears--there was more evidence for the dead theory. Surely she took trips back home and saw him, so why would she weep over him? The pieces all fit together, but there was only one obstacle in the way. What was he supposed to say to confirm his belief? Oh, by the way, Fran, would your friend happen to be dead? No, there had to be another way to find out.

And then, he blurted out the first thing that came into mind. It took the cake for stupidity, he was sure. "My friend's dead." He went numb after uttering that last word, and silently begged for Ellie, wherever she might be, to forgive him for the usage of it. "Dead" wasn't an adjective befitting Ellie, for she had been so, so alive. Passed away would suit her better, but she hadn't just keeled over one day. She'd drowned. She'd had the life sucked out of her lungs. If that was passing away, then he sure as hell didn't want to know what "dead" implied.

And what was worse, that wasn't something a person was supposed to bring up in casual conversation. Ah yes, seems like it's going to rain today, I see that strawberries are in season, and by the way, my friend died. Just when the tears stopped flowing, he had to turn it around and make the discussion dark and dreary again. Why, why, why had he said it? Why hadn't he stopped his stupid lips from flapping before they could utter any sound?

"Er, sorry." He ducked his head down to gaze at the grass. "Just, uhm, thought you might want to know that. Actually, no, you probably didn't want to know that, but..." He let a humorless, nervous laugh escape from his mouth. If only someone would swoop by on a vine and drop him over a cliff, or even into a volcano, just so long as it would get him to shut up. Even with this in mind, he still felt the need to fill in the horrible silence. "Well, it's good you look like her, I mean good for you, because she was...she was pretty fantastic. And I bet she would've turned out really pretty too, so...yeah."

Weren't writers supposed to be good with words?

[Javert]

((yyyyeah, have I mentioned fran's mental instability lately? xD poor, poor eli.))

She had been watching the groundkeeper's retreat from this battlefield they stood upon,[/size] not a place for warring words or flailing fists, but for memories warring against their fragile hosts. Fran had won, she decided; the fight had not been easy, and the fresh scars were still wet upon her cheeks, but she had emerged victorious. The boy before her was named Eli. He was a student at Florence's. She knew very little else about him except that she resembled a friend of his—that was as far as she permitted the thought to go, loath to continue on and mention a state of being that would sharpen the blades of her memories again. Although she hoped to learn more about the boy, for he seemed kind, and Fran was infrequently unwilling to notbefriend someone, at the moment she was quite content with the state of relative anonymity and mystery she saw him cloaked by. It kept her from mistaking him for another, kept the ghosts at bay, restrained by the tombstones; she refused to think that they were only hiding behind them, waiting for another chance to leap out.

Reflecting her newfound courage, the smile upon her lips faded in intensity but lingered in the corners of her mouth. Perhaps, she thought, as she looked back to the boy, hearing him beginning to speak, cemeteries weren't so bad, after all. They may not have been holding the most desirable of conversations, but she had met two new people in this graveyard, had procured two new possible friends, had stared her sadness in the face until it had backed away, not frightened by such a timid soul but perhaps humbled by the tears in her eyes. Fran was even able to tear her mind away from her own grief, chastising herself for her selfishness, and she began to wonder about the boy's friend, whom Fran apparently resembled. She must—

“My friend's dead.”

Everything stopped.

Fran felt her heart slow, her breathing hitch and shudder to a halt deep within her breath, her thoughts freeze.

She closed her eyes to darkness lighter than the one before her.

When she opened them again, a moment later, a second, the world had resumed moving, but everything was muted, every color dimmed, every sound muffled, every movement imperceptible; her hands and feet had turned to ice to rival the chill of the blood in her veins. She did not shake as violently as she had earlier merely because she would have shattered the frozen atmosphere if she had into asymmetric fragments, shrapnel sharp enough to pierce her heart. Her victory no longer stood. She had been stabbed in the back. She almost pressed a numb hand to her heart, to stop the blood inevitably flowing from it, but there was no blossoming stain upon her dress, so the bleeding must have been internal. Her heart instead pounded at her ears, drowning out Eli's next few words, and Fran watched as he ducked his head and moved his lips, watched but did not, could not, hear.

Instead she heard a different voice, one she had not heard for far too long, speaking to her, softly, murmuring, almost a whisper, more concrete, less urgent, like an embrace and not a kiss, and as Fran stared vacantly at everything and nothing she listened to the music of this voice, trying to remember what her voice had sounded like in conjunction with it, wondering what harmonies they had created, when they had been thrust into discordance, remembering when she had began to warble alone, tunelessly and off-key, like an out-of-tune piano, because the other voice was not there to coax it back into key, or even to ensure that she kept singing.

“I'm so sorry,” she sputtered, when the voice faded and she was forced to use her own to fill the silence, and she did not know to whom she was apologizing until she realized that Eli had stopped speaking, and his last few words reached her after an unnecessarily long journey. “That's—that's so awful.” Understatement. “Horrible.” Understatement. “I—I can't imagine what that would be like...” Lie. Her own voice was so weak in comparison, and she clenched her jaw to silence it, before words pried her mouth open and began spilling out again: “I'm sure she was absolutely wonderful... I-I'm so honored that you think I look like her, but I'm so sorry that she's not here herself to look like her... I'm sure she's looking down— on you right now—and th-thinking—how fantastic—you are— too.” She hadn't realized that she was taking huge gulping breaths between each word until her chest began to ache. She delivered the words urgently enough to convince her that they were true, and that Eli's friend was up in Heaven with the boy who looked like but was not Eli, and that he was looking down on her, too, and was proud of her, and had forgiven her, and had—

had not—

she couldn't—

She couldn't breathe and Fran stumbled forward, to clutch at Eli to regain balance, and instead she was hugging him as tightly as her arms could manage, and tears were staining his shoulder; even if he did not return the embrace, she would stand there with her arms around him for as long as he would allow her to, because he needed it, she knew, even if he would not admit it, but so did she, even though she could not admit it. [/font]

[Rain]

Oh, I believe in yesterday...

It wasn't the reaction he had been anticipating, and this was purely because he was an absolute dunderhead. He should have expected it, for this girl had already exhibited hints of her personality, ones that implied she was prone to overreaction--no, that wasn't the right word. Overemotional was more accurate. She'd burst into tears upon discovering he was, in fact, not the apparition her eyes had so deceptively waved in her face. Anyone with any logical thinking pattern could come to the conclusion that if he brought up death again, she would display some strong emotion once again. He had been daft to entertain the notion that she might shrug it off. No, it hadn't been logic assuring him that this would be her reaction. It had been some pathetic hope.

This, this gulping and choking on the words struggling to come out of her mouth, was far worse than the tears. In fact, if she started crying right now, interrupting the violent convulsions of her chest, he would welcome it with open arms, maybe even a "welcome back" surprise party. It was making him sick to his stomach, watching the peculiar acquaintance of his wear her heart so openly on her sleeve, when his heart hadn't even gotten a peek through the holes between the buttons of his shirt.

He couldn't fathom what this meant. There were so many possibilities. He was supposed to be a writer, and yet, he couldn't even come close to guessing what was going through Fran's mind. He should be privy to these things, he should know what makes characters, what makes people. But he was stuck in a rut. He was a disgrace of a writer--no, worse, a disgrace of a human being. Humans were supposed to know other humans, but his best friend was his typewriter. And half the time, that machine refused to talk to him, anyway.

“I'm so sorry. That's—that's so awful. Horrible.”

All right, to figure this out, he needed to look at it from his perspective, since he was the only human he really knew. Maybe, just maybe, he would be able to come to a plausible conclusion regarding her actions if he used himself as a guinea pig. But he was coming up short. There was nothing he could come up with, because he wouldn't have had this sort of absurd reaction to someone else's misery in the first place.

There was the problem, there was the fatal flaw in his plan. People were different, every single fucking one of them. God, was this girl really so empathetic? How could she be? She hadn't watched Ellie slip into the riverbank, or hit her head on the rock, or drift down, down, until she was out of sight. He hadn't ever glimpsed her again. Maybe he'd seen her face again, at the funeral. That corpse hadn't been Ellie. That corpse had been dead. Ellie had been alive.

“I—I can't imagine what that would be like...”

Oh, wait. There it was. Now he figured it out. She wasn't even talking to him. This was all about her, wasn't it? How typical; how selfishly human of her. He was aware of his uneven breathing, and the rage rising in his chest. He couldn't remember the last time he'd been this angry. Fran had brought back all these memories that he'd forgotten, that had been better off forgotten. But now he saw them--Ellie rolling down the hill and knocking into him, her laughter drifting through the air like sweet cherry blossoms. Ellie putting her arm around him as he struggled with his studies. Ellie falling asleep in the big, leather armchair to his right, and the blanket he'd thrown over her when he'd been sure she was asleep. Ellie breathing, Ellie existing, Ellie living.

It was her fault that, beneath that mounting rage was that cold feeling, the one he'd pushed away every time it had presented itself to him. Go away, he told it, I don't fucking need you. You're not welcome here.

“I'm sure she was absolutely wonderful... I-I'm so honored that you think I look like her, but I'm so sorry that she's not here herself to look like her... I'm sure she's looking down— on you right now—and th-thinking—how fantastic—you are— too.”

Yes, judging by Fran's reaction, her friend was also dead. These were not words meant for him, but for herself. But the last distorted sentence set him on edge. He let out a bitter, melancholy laugh. "Oh, I highly doubt it. She's probably laughing at me." Ellie wouldn't laugh at him. Yes, she would. He couldn't decide which one was the truth and which was wishful thinking. "I'm one big fucking disappointment."

His voice broke on the last word, and that horribly familiar sensitivity made itself present behind his eyes. Oh, God, what the hell? He hadn't cried over Ellie since--since it happened. And he'd suppressed it anyway, hadn't let more than a few tears fall. That's what he was doing now, but he was managing to prevent any tears from escaping. How dare she evoke this amount of grief for him, grief that had remained buried for six years.

But then she put her arms around him. He stiffened at the contact, caught off guard by her sudden affection for a stranger. He expected all the usual things--the desire to push her off, to tell her to piss off, to make awkward excuses, but none of these came naturally this time.

He hadn't been fair. Perhaps there was some validity in her words toward him, after all. Maybe she did feel for him. Maybe there was enough room in her heart to grieve for the two of them. And he realized that, as much as she needed and craved this embrace, as much as it was a crutch for her to fall upon, he needed it, too. She was supplying him with a wheelchair, something to assist him while he recovered and licked his wounds.

A new sensation overcame him, or rather, a sensation he'd lost somewhere in the back of the closet and had only just recovered. A library book that he'd found years later, even though it was long overdue. He owed a ton of money to the library, and he knew it. They wouldn't stop sending him letters, and he wouldn't stop ignoring them, as if hoping they would go away at some point. He appreciated this gesture, honestly and sincerely. The hug hadn't pushed him away. It made him actually consider the possibility that he could enjoy her company, if they grew to know each other. She wasn't one to resent, but one to admire. She was doing the work for the both of them--supplying the strength to take care of herself, and to take care of him.

Realizing he hadn't done anything besides freeze in slight terror, he gave her a few awkward pats on the back. He opened his mouth to thank her, but found he couldn't form the words. Instead, he croaked, knowing that the life and death situation with her friend was no longer a secret, at least in his mind, "I'm sorry about your friend."

Whoa. He'd really meant it.

[Javert]

His words, and the vehemence entwined like thorned vines around them,[/size] stung Fran to the core. She was a creature of strong emotions—blinding happiness, exuberance, joy that radiated to the marrow of her bones—and yet negative emotions shook her. She knew sadness, of course, much more intimately than she had even wanted to, and she knew anger, and even, somewhere, very minutely, she heard a tiny whisper of hatred among her shouts of love, but she endeavored as valiantly as she could to keep them under careful lock and key within herself. Positive things she could express; negative things prompted her to retreat to a secluded area and storm to herself about, if they were even released from their prison at all. She knew that she was weak—she knew this all too well—and she did not like it, but it could not be changed. If someone unleashed the strength of their own emotions against her, she was powerless against them.

Therefore, she could not suppress a wince when he spoke, as if he had physically slapped her. Immediately, she felt tears spring unbidden to her eyes once again, her face coloring at his language and his anger. “Of course she isn't,” she whispered, shaking her head once, lips quivering with the effort at remaining still. She heard pain in his voice, saw it clearly flicker on his face, like lightning illuminating the midnight dreary for a single heartbeat. His emotions being so clearly betrayed made her feel suddenly and extremely selfish. She had been so consumed by her own pain that she had not bothered to tend to the wounds now painfully visible before her. How dare you, she chided herself in a small, angry voice that she did not recognize. How dare you assume that your grief is worse than his, than anyone else's.

The tears that now fell down her cheeks were hot rivulets of anger and shame, tributaries of some great boiling river. As she embraced him, she wondered if the anger that she could feel radiating through him in tremors was being transferred to her. before she decided that it was all her own—the anger she had stored deep within her for years, the bitterest pf rage that one directs at themselves. She wondered if it was the same as he was currently feeling. She hugged him tighter, lips compressed into a firm line of resolve that belied her weak chin, and finally released her anger on butterfly wings. Her emotions were no longer relevant; she had dwelled on them for far too long. There was someone in pain within the circle of her arms, now, and he deserved to be listened to.

He patted her back once, twice, and Fran almost choked on a smile. She released him only when she felt that he was alright, denying her own desire to stand there in such a position for the remainder of the evening. She tried quite desperately to ignore the deep aches and the fresh wounds in her heart, the presences of ghosts loitering by crumbling tombstones, the deep resonating voice in her head that was not her own, and, stronger than she knew, she mostly succeeded. In fact, as she looked at him, she no longer was opposite of the face of a man she once loved; in fact, she could see no similarities between them whatsoever, was blind to the set of his jaw and the length of his hair. Instead, she saw Eli Appleby. Fran's hand, now still, free of trembling, rested on his upper arm, near his shoulder, as if he were the tin man and his joints needed oiling to remember movement. “Thank you,” she told him as he whispered a condolence, and every molecule in her body contributed to the passion in those mere two syllables, and then they were said, gone. She would tell him no more unless he requested it, and would feel no more of her own gaping emptiness until the evening's conclusion, at least. The yawning cave mouth was currently blocked with the stone of another presence.

Now that she could feel more than her own grief, the night air was pleasantly cool against Fran's warmed face. The sky was darkening. A bat sliced through the heavy atmosphere like an ink stroke on paper. Fran shifted her weight from foot to foot, then, noticing with a jolt that her hand remained on his shoulder, she removed it to clasp both hands before her again, as if in a plea, or a prayer. “Please forgive me,” she said, quietly, her gaze desperate to look away yet forced to meet his. “My behavior has been positively ghastly. Beastly. I feel ever so horrible.” She did. Usually, she considered herself a careful employer of both sympathy and empathy, and she was quick to place the needs and concerns of others before her own. This had not been the case this evening, but she was determined to resolve it now. Tucking a stray lock of hair behind one ear, resisting making a face as she discovered it damp with tears, she looked cautiously at him, her usually smiling face serious. “What was her name?” she asked, gently. Almost instantly, she regretted it, and reconsidering, she stammered, “We don't have to talk about her if you don't want to... I just thought you might... Want to... If not, please, just let me know, and I'll just leave or something. I've caused enough trouble here tonight. I'm so sorry.”

[Rain]

Oh, I believe in yesterday...

At first, he was pleased to see her recoil at his words, to see how his language and tone affected her so, but the feeling passed as more of those infernal tears rolled down her cheeks. He was quite the wretched human being, wasn't he? Delighting in watching girls wince as if in pain as his words inflicted their fury upon her--that was despicable. He knew this was the part where he was supposed to apologize, but it didn't seem to fit. Or was he just ill-equipped when it came to these things? That was usually the case. He'd hardly ever had a single interaction with someone that didn't involve awkward stammering or saying the wrong thing. He'd made a girl cry twice within the hour. It was going to be hard to top that one.

As for the tears building behind his own eyes, he did his best to ignore them. At least it was acceptable to society for a girl to weep in the middle of a cemetery, but he would be a man soon, for crying out loud. Then again, when had he ever given a shit about what society expected of him? No, this was different, this was something that had never gone down well with the rest of the world, strict societal rules or not. Hell, he refused to cry in private, so doing it here was out of the question. Instead, he let her cling to him, admitting to himself with some guilt that he didn't mind her being there.

She let go of him, and he breathed deeply, hoping that his own vulnerability wasn't too apparent in his eyes. He shoved his hands in his pockets, unsure what else to do with them. "Well." He cleared his throat, and then said with a forced laugh, "We're just a couple of miserable saps, aren't we?" He thought to himself, well, wouldn't it be nice for once if he actually said the words in his head before blurting them out for the world to hear? "I mean, er, that wasn't meant as--as an offense to you. That was more of me mocking myself." He scratched at some of the stubble on his chin. "Sorry."

No longer did he want to upset the girl. In fact, he hadn't wanted to from the start--it had just been that fleeting moment of rage in which he'd wanted to unleash all hell on Fran. He almost apologized again for bringing tears to her eyes, but he realized uttering "sorry" once again would just make him look like more of an arse than he already came off as. Then she touched his arm, and he froze. Somehow, it was even worse than when she'd hugged him. Did she just reach out and touch people like that? He wasn't used to this sort of tenderness from anybody. Well, except maybe Annette, but she was his twelve-year-old sister. That was different.

She thanked him, something he didn't feel he deserved, so he didn't respond to it. He hoped she wouldn't perceive it as rudeness on his part, although with his luck, she probably would.

“Please forgive me. My behavior has been positively ghastly. Beastly. I feel ever so horrible.”

"Oh, pfft," was his awkward reply. "No, no, you've been fine. I've just been a sort of nightmare. Sorry for swearing at you, by the way." It had slipped out, something that would have made his mother faint. Good thing she wasn't within spitting distance from here, much less in earshot. He wanted to thank her, too, but his lips couldn't form the words. It seemed a little too nice--and the fact that he could consider something too nice was, if he really thought about it, saddening. How did one phrase such things? 'Thank you for hugging me'? It couldn't be as simple as that, now, could it?

“What was her name?”

His first instinct was to chicken out, to withdraw as he usually did, to lie about Ellie's true identity. But then he imagined the contemptuous glower she might give him if he did such a thing. Well now, Eli, she might say, are you ashamed of being friends with me? Don't you dare tell her my name was Mildred or something, or I'll have to go around introducing you as Eliot.

Great. What was he, schizophrenic now? No, he couldn't hear the literal voice, just his imagination playing tricks on him, so he figured he was fine, at least in the medical sense. She would always whip out his full name, the one he detested so much, whenever she was angry with him. He would have thrown back the insult with her full name but, thanks to her damn parents, she didn't have one. Not Eleanor, not Ellen, just Ellie. He supposed it wouldn't do any harm to share this bit of information with Fran. He had gained a new respect for the girl, funnily enough.

"Erm, Ellie." The name tasted strange on his tongue. He hadn't uttered it in years. It was like tasting mother's cookies, the ones she hadn't baked for twenty years or so, and having all the memories that came with it come flooding back. "Er, yeah. Ellie McLain."

“We don't have to talk about her if you don't want to... I just thought you might... Want to... If not, please, just let me know, and I'll just leave or something. I've caused enough trouble here tonight. I'm so sorry.”

"Oh, no, it's...okay." Sure, he was trembling a little bit, but something made him want to push forward. He felt dizzy and disoriented, like the time he'd spun around in circles nonstop and vomited afterward. Mother hadn't been pleased, but Ellie'd laughed about it for days. "I don't usually talk about her, but...I guess I could. She would've..." He stopped, making rapid changes of positions with his hands. He gave a low chuckle. "Well, she would've been pretty pissed that I haven't ever really talked about her." A hint of a smile caused the corner of his mouth to raise upward. "In fact, if she were here right now, I'd be in for a severe beating."