colors

alex anders housekeeping witch 33 not a doctor

[alexandersthewitch]

Cyr decided that there was a fair amount of decoding to be done, here, but he didn’t particularly mind. The man appeared to be some kind of clairvoyant, maybe, with all the talk of seeing emotions—or he just generally spoke that way. But quiet, that Cyr understood too well. “I can leave you be, if you want.” He had nowhere to be, and didn’t mind staying, but he hadn’t seemed aggressive and he was pretty sure if he did want Cyr to fuck off, now would be the time to say it.

His cigarette was spent and as much as Alex would like to start a new one, he tried to limit himself to one at a time. He flicked the butt to the ground and stepped on it to put the light out. “Leave or stay, the decision is irrelevant and I will go on hearing.” He needed to stop thinking about Brooke. Her presence at the ranch had him dwelling on all the things he usually tried so hard not to think about. “Not good company. Trivial conversation appears pointless but is necessary to the common interaction. He is incapable.”

[alexandersthewitch]

“Nope, we all deserve it — no matter who you are or what you’ve done.” It was said with a prompt nod and it meant that she wouldn’t argue it, or that if he tried, he would have to pile a headache onto his already chaotic mind. She blew air on her fingertips for a moment, warm from the magic that had seeped through, before she rummaged around in her jacket and found a couple of loose gummy bears. “Is it?” Her head tilted to the side as she threw a gummy bear into her mouth. She didn’t know how his mind worked and to what extent she could help him, but at least it seemed to provide something. “It must be strange, as if silence is a sound too. Just one you haven’t heard in a long time.”

“You hold roses in your eyes.” He wasn’t trying as hard as he usually did to make sense. So far she had been able to decipher his words, and he could already tell that she wouldn’t be afraid to ask if she didn’t understand something he said. Not that it mattered. She was done talking about it, both her intentions and her body language told him as much. He nodded, eyes shutting briefly to soak in the moment of peace. There was still a rumble inside his brain, but it was just that; a rumble. Nothing distinct breaking through. “Silence is a feeling.” He said slowly. “There used to be silence with her.” 

[alexandersthewitch]

Tall Tales & Hay Bales - Avocado

[alexandersthewitch]

If Brooke could have she would have kept walking. If she could force herself to not care her feet would have kept pushing her forward. But she couldn’t. Because she did care and the hurt she felt mirrored in Alex’s voice stopped her dead in her tracks. She didn’t turn back around to face him though. The stubborn side of her intent on ignoring him keeping her from doing so. Brooke could feel him behind her. A part of her hoping he’d touch her while also hoping he wouldn’t. She hated being so conflicted about a man who’d always been her rock in life. Alex was the yin to Brooke’s yang. And without him she just felt off, well, in everything.

Brooke’s eyes welled up with tears as she listened to him. She resisted yelling at him when he said he didn’t want to hurt her yet that was exactly what he’d been doing. His dying, his not dying, his running away, his pushing her away, all of it was hurting her. She resisted the shedding the tears that stung her eyes as he mentioned having demons. And finally she resisted speaking her innate reaction to his declaration of wanting better for her. Not yet ready to look at him she tilted her head up in an effort to blink away her tears. She wouldn’t cry she told herself. Hoping Alex wasn’t listening to her thoughts so that she could actually hide her tears from him.

Slowly the brunette turned around to face him. She stared at him for a long moment. Taking in every bit of his features. Then she finally spoke, “I don’t believe you.” Which she didn’t. “I don’t believe that you don’t want to hurt me. I don’t believe you even know what better for me even is. I don’t believe you’re even in the right state of mind to make that decision for me. And even if you were, you have no right to make that decision for me.” Brooke was doing her best to remain calm. It was hard as hell but she was trying. And since she didn’t think he got it she decided to tell him one of the things that made her feel guilty. “They told me you were dead Alex. They held a funeral for you and handed me a triangle folded flag in your honor. And I blindly told everyone they were wrong. There’s a tombstone with your empty casket and I still refused to accept you were dead.” There was a long guilt ridden pause. “Until I did.”

Brooke hated herself for finally believing he was dead and she should move on. “It took me two years to finally believe you were dead. Two years to finally say maybe I should move on. Two years to finally agree to go on a date with someone. And sure he was nice and all, but he wasn’t you. I knew when I agreed to that date I’d spend the whole time comparing him to you. I knew it would be no good. But what was I supposed to do. You were dead. The love of my life was dead which meant I needed a new life.” Her breath caught in her throat and Brooke needed to sit down.

“And then you weren’t dead. And now you’re telling me you want better for me?” Brooke shook her head as she finally sat down on a near by bench. “There is no one Alex. I knew that even when you were dead.” Brooke looked up into his eyes. “Why can’t you get that?” She genuinely wanted to know. He could hear every one of her thoughts and yet he couldn’t get how he was her everything. Even as broken and messed up as everything was, he was still hers.

No one got her like Alex and no one would. But that wasn’t all. Alex had worked his way so deep into Brooke’s heart that he became a part of it. Loving him was like breathing and as angry and hurt as she was. She didn’t know how not to love him. She didn’t know how not to care for him. She didn’t know how not to want to help him. And she couldn’t figure out why he wouldn’t let her. She was no damsel in distress or some girl he hardly knew. She wasn’t clueless to his world, at least not the supernatural one. And she was tried and true badass who could handle a whole lot.

Alex threw himself into a pace, unable to stand still in the face of her words. She didn’t understand and he didn’t know how to make her understand. He didn’t know how to make her see that he wasn’t just broken, he was gone. He listened, still, frustration growing in him as she seemed determined not to see him. How could she not see how different he was? In the physical alone he looked like a different person, and the last conversation they had before he’d left had been an actual conversation. Now they just threw words around like weapons at each other. 

 “Alex is dead!” He shouted it, almost over her last words. He wouldn’t address how his heart twisted to think of her with someone else. He wouldn’t address the throat-clogging guilt at the idea of a funeral being held in his honor, as if he deserved it. He had to make her see him for what he was now and without thinking it through fully, Alex pulled his shirt over his head and tossed it to the side. If his body, bared, couldn’t show her how badly he had been changed, he wasn’t sure what would. He was a jigsaw of scars, some old and some still puckered and red. Each one of them a memory tattooed onto his skin. “They killed him.” He stepped closer to her, eyes a dark shade of green. “Pulled him apart, piece by piece, cut away the parts that made him real.” His finger traced a long, clean scar down his chest. There were others ripping through it, but it was still clearly there, one scar at least a foot long.

“It was a little knife. It liked to hear the screams.” He didn’t want to scare her. He had never wanted this, he only wanted her to see that he wasn’t her Alex anymore. He knew he wasn’t in the right state of mind to make decisions for her, he wasn’t in the right state of mind to make decisions for himself. But he didn’t have to be a psychic to know that nobody should be close to a creature like him. Again, he reached out to touch her and then pulled back. She wasn’t his to touch anymore. He hands pulled together and he spun away from her, forgetting that would bare his back with ten times worse scars than his chest. He dug his fingers into his hair, then tore them out and reached for his shirt once more.

“Alex is gone.” He said it softly now, simply holding his shirt and running his fingers over the rough fabric. “The body is just a shell to carry memories and scars and demons. Dead would be better, but they left a live coward, not broken but empty and pieces and bits,” his voice was growing more frantic, the clarity leaving him with so many thoughts of what it had been like before. Alex tried to find the hole in his shirt to pull it on, but it was turning into an endless loop and he didn’t remember where the arms went anymore. Something ripped and he let it drop on the ground, or maybe he threw it, he wasn’t sure. “Bits, pieces, he doesn’t know what I am anymore!” He fell forward, hands landing on a hay bale to support himself, like he was rediscovering the mechanics of his body. “It’s going away.”

[albihasa]

[alexandersthewitch]

@brookeoconnor

[alexandersthewitch]

“Sounds fairly broken, yeah.” He didn’t think he could soften that, or that the man wanted pity from a practical stranger. “Does anything you’ve found help, besides—?” he gestured to the whole sitting-and-smoking of it all, vaguely.

Alex nodded, then paused as the idea of a thought reached him. Was it a thought, or was it a word? He shook his head. “No, no pity, pity reeks of yellow and syrup, it makes everything sticky and hard to think.” He took another long drag from the cigarette, trying to clear his head with the smoke and nicotine. “Quiet. Places with no people and no thoughts to clutter up the mind, make everything messy. Removes some of the extra pieces.” 

[alexandersthewitch]

He leaned back, hands on his knees. “Fair enough. So, if that’s how it is, are you giving up on trying to fit them together? No judgement if you are.” He just liked to know where someone was at when he talked to them.

It made Alex’s head hurt to think of all the pieces inside his head. “He tried. There’s too many pieces, some missing and some that don’t belong and some that don’t look like they used to. Like a gun, if you put them together wrong it blows up and hurts the one pulling the trigger.” 

[alexandersthewitch]

“How long has it been since you were alone?” She asked, head tilting to the side as she studied him with intense, green eyes. She wasn’t aware that she was doing it but it kept her focused and it was easier to understand him without her own whirlwind of thoughts. “’cause I think you deserve to be alone — I lived in a big house, lots of people,” she added as her arm rose, palm up and light began to trickle out of it, growing like tree branches. Every sliver went in different directions but all ended up in the walls, expanding before they faded out. And just like that, she had shielded the room from any outside noises. “So I made this spell.”

“Alone?” He repeated the word as a question, though he understood the concept. He couldn’t remember the last time he had experienced silence, solitude.  He craved it, could hardly imagine it anymore. His head tipped down, smile turning wry and self-deprecating. “Deserve ought to be said with more knowledge of the person deserving.” He could feel the magic as it started, looking up and watching in surprise, that faded into relief. Noise dimmed, even the noise inside of him, the kind that couldn’t be blocked by mere walls. It was still there, but quiet enough that he could hear his own thoughts a little clearer. He let out a small, breathless sound. “It’s quiet.” 

[alexandersthewitch]

“Self-pity’s also probably not great for you.”

“Smoke and lungs and guns and dirt, there’s nothing but echoes inhabiting human skin. Pieces come no closer to fitting, regardless of his self-thoughts.”

[alexandersthewitch]

you’re not scared anymore?                                                                              she makes me brave.

@brookeoconnor

[alexandersthewitch]

“I don’t care what species you are. That can’t possibly be good for you.”

“When the mind is broken, the body ought to match.” 

[alexandersthewitch]

Tall Tales & Hay Bales - Avocado

[alexandersthewitch]

Brooke’s last conversation with Alex, if you could call it that, hadn’t gone very well. It had left her well she wasn’t exactly sure what it had left her. In an effort to get away from the feelings she’d been consumed with she buried herself in her work. Though after three days of avoiding the ranch she only felt sadder, and she was done wallowing. As grief stricken as she was she didn’t want to feel like her life had ended so she was back at the ranch. Trying to get the know the only people who knew the world she grew up in. A world her coworkers would never understand.

She went to the ranch often. Striking up conversations with the people there. Doing her best to make friends all while still avoiding Alex. She wasn’t yet ready to talk to him. It hurt. It was also hard for her not to think of him. Brooke had spent so much of her life with him that being without him just felt… wrong. But if the last five years, not to mention Alex recent attempt to push her away, had taught her anything was that Brooke needed more of a life outside of Alex.

Brooke didn’t have work today, so she went to the ranch early. The nice thing about the place is she could wander around it and always find something new. However, it could also be a bit mind numbing. A part of her wanted to go out shooting again, but after what happened the last time she went she was still a bit nervous. Which is how Brooke found herself wandering aimlessly outside looking for something to do.

What she hadn’t expected to see when she wandered into the barn though was Alex. She was no longer avoiding him like she had been before, but she wasn’t seeking him out either. She thought for sure he would be inside cleaning. After all, the place had plenty of things that needed cleaning. Which is exactly why she was so surprised coming face to face with him in the barn lifting hay of all things.

The moment her eyes laid on him, she was reminded of why she was avoiding him. And overwhelming sense of love for the man took her quickly followed by an unreasonable amount of hurt and sadness. Though both those emotions were covered with a spark of anger when all Alex could manage to say upon seeing her was a feeble hi. “Hi?” she echoed in disbelief. “Hi,” she repeated a bit more bitter. “I..” thoughts of how they haven’t seen each other in a while consumed her. “You…” her words cut short as she couldn’t bare to voice how he last pushed her away. “And all you can manage is hi. Like we’re friends. Like we’re pals.” Brooke let out a frustrated sigh. Followed by a large calming breath. She wasn’t going to let him get her all worked up again. Brooke pushed her shoulders back and tucked her hair behind her ears. “Hi Alex,” she calmly said before walking further into the barn intent on ignoring him.

It was a wave that hit him, when Brooke processed that he was there. Her leaves were roaring in the wind, worse than the first time, and he dropped the hay bale as the wall of hurt smack into him. All the strength was gone out of him at the idea of his Brooke feeling like this, even worse with the idea that he had been the one to cause it. What he couldn’t explain was this was why he had stayed away. He hadn’t wanted this for her, but here they were and they she was in all of her pain and anger that had never been directed at him before. 

Brooke had never stumbled over her words before, but then, neither had he. He hated the way she was looking at him, the way it felt like he was looking in a mirror again. Not as strong as he looked at himself, but there was a thin layer of bitterness and disgust under the anger. He knew it would be so much strong if she knew what he had done. She would never forgive him. Just like he could never forgive himself. Her words were like knives thrown into his chest and his eyes fell shut as he stood there to receive the blows. He stuttered into action when she moved to leave, by no conscience intent. He only knew that he couldn’t let her leave while hurting like this. He didn’t have the strength. 

“Brooke,” he stopped himself just short of touching her, recoiling and drawing his hand back against his own body. “I-” he stopped himself. He had to say this right and again his eyes shut as he focused on words, trying to ignore the rest of the chaos inside. “Find the right words, find the words...” he said quietly to himself, with a heavy sigh. He opened his eyes. He was going to get this right. “I don’t want...” another deep breath, “I don’t want you to hurt.” He told her, pleading with her. She had to know that wasn’t his intention, he could never hurt her on purpose. “It’s clear now. Words belong to me. But the sun goes away and the clouds come and my words run when I try to catch them, I have to rely on the demons that live in other people’s minds and they teach me terrible things, he-I don’t want, I wan’t better for you.” He was stumbling again, but at least the words were obeying him and he wasn’t having to leak her thoughts out of his mouth to fill the silence. 

[alexandersthewitch]

Sera nodded at his question. “Yeah, a lot of you artist types say that. Painters communicate in pictures better than woods, musicians in song.” She smiled at him. People who created things made her slightly jealous. She wasn’t particularly skilled in anything like that, anything that could bring happiness to people the way that artists could.

She sat down on the chair, legs curled underneath her. Alex spoke again, and she couldn‘t help but compare his words to a riddle. Like one of those sphinxes in storybooks, you had to decipher his words before answering. The third person was a bit weird though, she’d admit. “Country is good music. I mean as long as it’s not all just songs about your truck,” she added with a smile. “I don’t even know how to drive, so those songs about trucks bore me.”

Something that resembled a laugh left his mouth. It had been a long time, so he couldn’t be sure if that was what it actually sounded like. “Musician is not the usual title.” Not that he was complaining. It was better than the lie of war hero or the stigma of the crazy person. Musician sounded like something normal. He liked the idea of normal. 

Alex grimaced momentarily. He thought about defending himself, but he could at least tell the difference between her thoughts and her words, and he didn’t think that replying to the first would make him seem any less strange. “No trucks.” Alex nodded. He didn’t have a truck himself, and those had never been the songs he had leaned towards anyway. He started strumming softly, picking something nostalgic. 

“Darlin don't you cry tonight The moon is full and the world is right I've loved more than my share Took the pain and called it fair So I'm gonna lay down all my fears My highway blues and my ramblin tears They can shout it down the line I can't take what was not mine.” 

[alexandersthewitch]

Her brows rose when she saw the surprise on his face and she decided that it was a good reaction. It seemed like her little trick had been working although it was hardly a trick, it was a way to understand herself too. She didn’t have other people in her head but she had a tendency to have six thoughts at once and picking out keywords had been her way to understand her thoughts. Or at least when she wanted to understand them. They shared similarities, but what separated them was perhaps the most vital part. She wasn’t broken. 

“Catch them? You mean you have to find your own words in a sea of everyone else’s? Because you’re not alone in there,” she asked, tapping her own temple while he sat down. Sometimes she wanted to read people’s minds but she couldn’t imagine having them all in there at the same time without a way to shut them out. “Booberry,” she repeated with a wide smile, eyes adverting to her little friend, “don’t be rude, go say hello.” Her head nodded as a gesture, the ghost floating across the table to greet the man. 

Alex actually laughed a little. He didn’t think he had realized just how hard he was to understand until someone succeeded at it. “It’s like there’s someone else inside of me. Sometimes he’s quiet and I can hear and think and everything is clear. The sun comes out, I look like a man. The he gets loud and I go away, fall into pieces again and I can’t find my words. I have to steal from minds and mouths to talk and terrible things come out.” He forced himself to take a breath. The last thing he needed was to find someone who could actually understand what he was saying and immediately scare them off by being crazy. 

Alex drew his attention to the little ghost invading his space. It was small and oddly cute and he couldn’t help laughing again. It was such an innocent use of magic and he liked it more than he expected. It made him feel like a teenager again, spending all his afternoons at Brooke’s house, surrounded by magic. “Hello Booberry.” He told it, finding it odd how easy it was to speak clearly to a thing that wasn’t human. 

[alexandersthewitch]

Seraphina blinked at the still musical nature of his words. Looking at him, that wasn’t quite what she expected, but she was pretty good at rolling with weird things.  People said she was weird too sometimes, so she got it. She smiled at him. “I’ve heard musicians say that before. Me, I can’t carry a tune at all.  But I do enjoy listening.” 

She sat on a chair near to him.  “Do you mind an audience? Your singing was very good, I’d love to hear more if you’re willing.” She enjoyed listening to music now since she didn’t really have much access to music (or TV or the internet) when she was with Desmond.

He was used to surprise. Even before he had gone crazy, people had been surprised to hear him speak. Him, the looming country boy with the thick accent and deep voice that spoke in riddles and used words half the population didn’t know. He didn’t fit. She wasn’t upset, though. “You have?” That seemed unlikely. Alex could quote other people, but rarely did he find that someone shared a phrase he’d come up with in the moment. 

He shifted a little, but it wasn’t so bad. Music at least he could be confident in. He knew it, and he could pretend to be normal when he sang. He looked down at the guitar. “Not a bother.” A name flitted through his head, but he had gotten used to ignoring things that seemed personal. “There is mostly country music for him... Only a few others.” 

[alexandersthewitch]

Unlike what people thought, Lenore was quite intelligent but even she had a problem attempting to understand the strange man. Her face was all scrunched up in concentration to pick out the words in his sentences that would help the rest of it make sense. Those are in his head and in his mind. “You see with your mind?” Her head tilted to the side and she wondered why he spoke of himself in third person. Albeit, she often did the same. “You talk funny,” she commented shortly after, “has anyone ever told you that?”

She continued to listen to him even if it might not have seen like it since she placed her palm up on the table and let the tiny ghost travel up her arm to rest on her shoulder. It tickled but it seemed like he was struggling so she did her best to keep her otherwise fleeting concentration. “You’re a telepath,” she added with a soft smile. It was the first time she had met a kindred, everyone she had come across were regular witches and then there was her, of course. No peace. “You can’t turn it off?” 

Alex blinked. He couldn’t contain his surprise, face betraying him. She understood him. In hardly any time, without mush pretense of hard thinking, she had understood. Only she didn’t just understood, she had picked up things that he hadn’t even been trying to convey through mere subtext where most people didn’t get the basic text. It was going to take him a moment to wrap his brain around the face that she had understood his broken syntax with so little effort. 

“Used to have a switch in the brain. Flip it and the voices go away. Words used to be normal, but now he has to catch each one and put it in place. The switch is gone, destroyed, and all there is voices all the time. It’s...loud.” He shook his head. Purpose had it quieter than normal, and with or without invitation, Alex took a seat at the table. He wished he could explain what he had been before. Still odd, yes. But much more normal, he had sounded intelligent and well put together. He looked to where the ghost still floated over the table and gave a small smile. “Booberry.” He said, repeating the name he thought he had heard her think of it as. 

[alexandersthewitch]

The sounds of conversation and children playing slowly drifted away as Lux made his way from the kitchen towards a quieter side of the house. He held a plate of food in one hand and a glass of wine in the other. He knew of a few that often had few if any occupants at all, which Lux found odd since it had plenty of windows and places to sit. Though he supposed it was due to its lack of electronics that deterred folks. Which was perfectly fine for the nephilim. 

The strum of a guitar and someone singing registered to his ears as he grew closer to his intended place for eating. Although when he walked into the room and saw who was the cause of the sound the person stopped. Lux continued to where he had planned to sit and set his food down. When the man hadn’t started back singing Lux looked towards him once more. He wasn’t giving him the shock and awe look but something more akin to a question. “If that’s your way of asking if I care whether or not you keep playing, I don’t.”

Alex looked from the newcomer back to his guitar. He didn’t do well singing in front of people anymore, they were distracting and he thought too much about what he was doing. He didn’t know if it was a request or merely giving leave to continue. The man was hard to read, murky colors and a cloud covering his mind that kept his thoughts more or less away from him. Alex could appreciate people like this when things were loud, but it disoriented him as well. He was used to knowing, hearing. He would, in time. But it always took a while with people like this, to understand their particular white noise that coded their thoughts. 

It usually came from time. Not a purposeful barrier, only one created by years of wear and weariness. “Capable of leaving. Music has no preference for where it is made, so long as it is eventually made. He has no intentions of an audience, save for himself.” 

[alexandersthewitch]

His name was Booberry and at start, he had been a temporary little thing but now she wasn’t so sure. It had started as a means of entertainment, she was both too tired and too lazy to annoy someone else so she was slumped down in a chair where she made a friend and was now watching him dance to the song playing in her head. Her ghost son was adorable and only needed light to exist, no fuss or draining energy. Just light with a dash of happiness. 

Her inward singing came to an abrupt end when she heard a noise and Booberry’s dance was sadly cut short. She turned her head and a smile grew on her lips at the statement. It wasn’t even a question but it didn’t bother her. Sure, it wasn’t something she announced but she didn’t hide it either. “Yup,” she popped in response, “and you’re a person with eyes. I rarely meet those which ironic ‘cause I’m the rare one.”

It was somewhat disappointing that the music he hadn’t been aware was only in her head stopped and the ghost quit dancing. But it focused his attention on her. She was bright. Bright enough he didn’t think he could have expected her to be anything but a light witch. He wondered if he would look the same. Under the brightness, she was green. Swirls of deep, forest green and bright, distracting lime green. It was distracting and a little chaotic, but nice. 

He smiled a little. She wasn’t fragmented like him, but she still talked like she was a little off and he liked it. “He-I am the rare one too. Not for the eyes, though those are in his head and in his mind.” No, he was getting off track now. He needed to focus what he was saying. He didn’t have the same sort of magic as her, he couldn’t show it like she could. He would have to try to explain, and he paused long enough to search for words. “The mind sees more than the eyes perceive. Sometimes future or past melt together, and the voices of others give him no peace, even when they are silent.” He faded out again, grimacing. No, there was a certain word if he could just find it... “Clairvoyant!” He exclaimed, remembering the term someone had used for him. There was another one, but it was dancing just out of reach.