#lenore huerta 005.

[anoracle]

DATE & TIME: February 21ST, 5:30AM LOCATION: Lenny’s Room TAG: @llenore

When she stops dreaming of a person, she assumes they've died. A simple logic, she will no longer share their dreams, have visions of their future. But this doesn't mean she doesn't have her own dreams sometimes, when they slip in. Arturo's memory in her thoughts, the image of him carrying her from the cot into the bed, taking her place on the floor; him telling stories and she knows it's a dream because she'll imagine the three of them all among stars, she'll dream that when the campfire fades that she'll open her palms and stars emerge from her skin. But this wasn't like that. This was blue and grey, a glimmer of it. This was a truck and a bus ride and a young boy beside him. This was a woman beside them, a ghost, a dream. This was his dream.

And when she wakes, the world still dark and cold and shivering, berating herself for falling asleep at all in the black, a hand on her chest, feeling the winds of Germany. There's no way to feel. Nothing to describe the way of a chest when you can't breathe. When there's tears on her cheeks when she sits up - telling herself it's one of her dreams because it's the only thing that makes sense, but why the boy she doesn't recognize. 

A cocktail of the impossible mixed with impossible hope and impossible fear and impossible pain because the remembers the tired of his face, haunting the back of her mind. After a breath, she turns to the girl beside her, sharing blankets, not trying to wake up, but she speaks, afraid to turn to look at her, afraid to think anything at all, not if she's wrong, not if she's right, just bewilderment, just static. "I had a dream," wipe at tears she already forgot about, "I think - I think, I'm, I don't know. I had a dream of your father," and then, as the confirmation that it wasn't her dream, "Do you know a boy named Elias?"

[minotaur-unslain]

DATE & TIME: February 4TH, 12:30AM LOCATION: The Blackbird Bar TAG: @llenore

In his lifetime Jin had witnessed more than his fair share of bar fights (drunk college students; pissed fans in sports bars; couples arguing, the list went on and on) and he was keenly aware that this was technically his second one in less than month, but it wasn’t until now —sidestepping broken bottles and damaged property; trying to distinguish co-worker from enemy in the half lit room— that it became noticeable what prime location the Blackbird was for catching them off guard.

If he was a little less drunk he might have been able to discern if that was paranoia or insight talking. 

In the chaos Jin couldn’t help but wonder if someone had managed to escape; if both Vegas and the protest had taught him anything it was that at least one co-worker was slippery enough to figure out how break free when things go heated. The fact that person apparently wasn’t him was probably a plus mark in someone’s moral checkbook, but as Jin narrowly avoided someone charging towards him it felt more like a huge oversight on his part.

What did he have to do to get people to get it through their head that he was not someone fucked with?

Until that moment Jin had never considered the skill of his reflexes, but as his instinct works double time to curb his punch as his brain registers that the person standing in front of him was no longer his target but Lenore (and that he was as close to giving her a black eye as she is to nearly concussing him with a bat) he has never felt more relieved that it could be described as fast.

“Fuck— Goddamn, Lenore!”

[malachileclair]

DATE & TIME: February 21ST, 12:30AM LOCATION: Malachi’s Old Apartment TAG: @llenore

It’s a place he knew, somewhere deep within him, as a place he’d never return, not even in dreams, beyond here in person. And never so with Lenore - even with the promises he planned to keep. They never strayed as far as the old apartment left, somehow, uncleared of everything.

The kitchen still as he left it, though food had to be cleared out and he told Lenore not to go near the fridge (not staying here long enough to clean it - and that too is a thought strange to him). The living room still full of the mess Elias left behind him, comic books laid open, on the last page his son read, two pages until the end. Malachi dog-ears the page, and closes it, wants to put it in his back pocket, wants to never see it again. 

It’s the same apartment building as in the photo Lenore once showed him, quiet in the way he speaks in the darkened rooms, not looking at her, but at the comic book, in his hands, Miles Morales swinging through New York. Leaving room on the couch for to sit. “The room, I’ve heard about, she lived a few floors up,” and then, “I’m not sure who lives there now anymore.” Because he doesn’t know how long he’s truly been away from the world. 

What do you become after being ripped open, by his own hands, back in the home he did it in, back in empty home where there is no son he did it for. We call it a void, different from an emptiness. We call it a cavern. He says it simply, finding out he’s chosen without thinking of it, “I’m staying here tonight,” says it like an invitation.