#color breakdown: light blue - beth / green-grey - josh / red - beth bad thoughts and/or unkind ones

[cataschism]

✦ @mountaindmned asked: -- One quiet night after a supply run. Fresh roasted vegetables in their bellies, a "mountain fresh" orange shared between them over the fire. Beth had the white dog piled in her lap, softly sleeping. Jack picked his works carefully. He spoke slowly, measured. "The... The night I found you both." He swallowed another orange slice. "I know you all were there for... For some party. That I get. We had parties when I was younger.  "Hannah. I mean. She was running out into the snow half dressed." He swallowed again, this time just the knot in his throat. "What the hell happened?" Are you sure these are your friends?, it stayed unspoken. He didn't meet her eyes, stared at the fire and watched her in peripheral. Gave her some space and time to form a response.

Beth sometimes didn’t feel like she was the entire way HUMAN; even before Hannah’s death, it was her siblings who got their WHOLENESS. Beth was some amount of parts without purpose &. didn’t exist as interwoven with reality as the two of them. She supposes her friendship with Jack is somewhat a confirmation of her lack of wholeness.

Girls don’t usually hang out with men with flamethrowers. ( but girls also usually don’t have sisters that talk to them like grief - stricken dreams, visages of their old selves still transforming into monsters. )

Beth watches the fire crash into itself. ❛ It was a prank. My sister had this crush on this guy who’s kinda a womanizer, and she just.. there was a note, and a drawing, and she fell for it… and then they were all hiding in that room, recording her. Waiting for her to fail. She took her shirt off, and then she ran off into the snow. ❜

Beth remembers a part of her SOUL HOWLING that night, when Hannah left her behind. ( when beth let her go. are all exits as painful &. unreal as that one? did either of them deserve their connection burning that night? she felt hannnah go. ) 

❛ I don’t think any of them got what they deserved that night. It’s just me and my brother, and I know he understands the depths of what… we’ve been through. But also he doesn’t. Because how can he? And how can I him? My older brother. Resilient. And me. Honest. How do I save us from this HORRIBLE DARK PLACE? ❜

❛ If they come back here, Jack, THE WOODS CAN HAVE THEM. I don’t know if I could make myself do anything. None of them followed after her and they wouldn’t have after me, I know that. So why FOLLOW THEM INTO THE DARK? ❜