sky full of stars

JOSETTE LAUGHLIN AS RUINED BY ALEX

[jolaughlin2]

drownedparker

“I was happy, alright?  It was easier being close to everyone but not.. close enough to fuck it up…” It was a testament to how well this conversation was going. Her advice was striking – playing a tune he wasn’t exactly pleased to hear. “It’s not my closet and they’re not my skeletons, but why do I still feel like I’m atoning for something?” It wasn’t even a question at her, but for her. “I have spent years feeling like a half-person. Like I was brought back for a reason that I wasn’t fucking doing.”

“Our lives have been fucked up since we were born, Joey.” It wasn’t an argument, just a statement of the facts of the situation. Even when things had been good, they weren’t perfect, all them living in a ticking time bomb of a situation, unable to stop the inevitable from tearing them apart piece by piece. ”Someone has to atone for the sins of our ancestors, it just happens to be our burden to bare.”

[jolaughlin2]

familyreject

“But we got out, Jo,” he said in defense. A jump in his tone. “We were born and bred to bear the weight of an ancient coven. We grew to love and hate each other just to end up twisted and scarred. Everything was stacked against us and we made it out alive…” He breathed in quickly, feeling it hard to keep his focus; to not fall apart at the sight of his twin crying in front of him. It was never as satisfying as it should have been, even when it was super intentional. “We should have rotted through that chapel floor together but there was something waiting for us on the other side of that fateful night. Not our coven – US.” Kai didn’t care if they weren’t the only ones that were resurrected. He didn’t even care about the nonsense of vampirism being cured. All he could think about was that he was back on this cruel earth.. but not alone. “I’m not.. I won’t be the one to say it means something but, it’s something, isn’t it?”

She's shaking as she listens to her brother tries to explain it to her. Tears streaming down her face as he holds onto his composure as she's effectively falling to pieces in front of him. But she can't help but shake her head as he repeats his sentiment over and over and it's ringing in her ears. "We didn't do anything, Kai." She's whispering, whimpering as she tries to pull herself together, pull the pieces back, but she can't, and she's too far gone. Us. We. Us. We. "You got out."  This time she's louder, wiping the tears from her eyes though her efforts are fruitless as new tears replace the old almost immediatly. "You got out!" Now it's a scream, broken, jagged, but it gets the idea across. 

"You survived, you thrived, you won. You got everything you ever wanted and put everything behind you like it never mattered at all. Like they never mattered at all. And I didn't. I can't." The power in her voice is gone, but her pain takes the place as she steps away from him. "I'm alive, but I didn't survive. I'm haunted everyday by the coven, by our family, and by you." The tears have slowed, but not by her own choice, she's just run out of tears. "Because now I close my eyes and I'm reliving it. I'm hearing our siblings screaming and running for their lives. I'm laying on the floor bleeding with a hunting knife sticking out of me while they're dying and I can't do anything to help them." Her voice is shaking again, and she's unraveling ever faster, but she can't stop now, no way can she stop now. "I close my eyes and they're gone, and you're gone, and it's just me and my unrelenting guilt." 

Deep breaths that should provide relief don't do the trick and she feels like she's suffocating but she still can't stop.  "I close my eyes and I'm holding Luke as he dies in my arms because I failed him just like I failed all of them." The tears are back, not that it changes the scene. "Everyday since I came back, I had to live my live like that, and if that wasn't enougj, now, now I close my eyes and I see Bonnie Bennet die strapped down to a table and I feel everything you felt when her heart stopped."

She shouldn't have done that, she shouldn't have said that, she shouldn't have said any of that. Her hands go up to her head, fingers grasping at her scalp as if a last attempt of maintaining some control as she's finishing her spiral. A calm starts to set, but she's so far gone she's not sure it can provide the relief she needs. "You got out, Kai, but I'm stuck living with ghosts of everyone I've ever failed." She's breathing, she's backing up and she's trying to pick herself back up as she looks up to her brother again. Nearly identical eyes looking at each other, and even still, holding his gaze is almost more than she can bare. "I'm stuck reliving every terrible moment. The screams, the hopelessness, the guilt... all while I'm trying my hardest to hold it together for my kids and my family and for you... I fell through, Kai. We both carried the weight, but now I'm carrying it all on my own... and I-I don't know how much longer I can do it alone." Another pause, and another jagged breath. "But you survived, and you made it out alive... and I'm trying really hard not to hate you for it. And it's getting harder and harder the more you talk about us and how we defied all the odds... so please, just, stop."

[jolaughlin2]

hiiyakai

Her response stole the breath from his lungs, but there was a lingering sense of justice in the way he felt the air thin. There was no peace, no – if anything, the heretic was filling with red hot fury. It upped his temperature a notch but not a single notion of it showed on his face. “It wasn’t fair,” he offered coldly, though the harshness in his tone was not directed toward anyone present. To expect that kind of support, even from someone’s twin… it should have never been her burden, and he saw that now. “For either of us.” Her closing statement was chilling, and his blue eyes are flashing up to search hers. “Are…” he began, lips left parted in uncertainty. “… are you?” He feared the answer, no matter which direction it took, because he knew it would have nothing to do with him. He was already feeling empty; hollowed out and numb.

The silence filling the room could have suffocated the witch, but looking at her brother all but ripped her heart from her chest. His expression dug into her, leaving her wonder how she could breathe when her lungs felt like they were filled with led, and his words sliced her like a knife. He wasn’t wrong, but she found irony in it. Fair? Of all the things to go with, that was what he chose? “Nothing in our lives has ever been fair, Kai.” There’s something there, as her fingers dug into her palms, slicing into them and then something peculiar happened. Was she laughing or crying? She didn’t know, and she didn’t think could tell anymore if she tried. “Nothing has been fair, and it never will be. Fair doesn’t exist for people like us.” Was is something they’d done, or were they paying for the sins of their ancestors and a coven long dead?  Either way, they were doomed from the moment they took their first breath, forced to take the world on with no idea of the ruin that awaited them. Then he asked the question, and the witch finally had her answer: She was crying. “I don’t know.” A pause, a laugh, and repeat. “I really don’t know.”

[jolaughlin2]

hiiyakai

Her words hurt him, and he strained to understand why. They should have come to him as a welcomed reprieve from their push and pull. His relationship with his twin was always hot and cold. Fire and ice. This was smoke and shallow breathes. Suffocating on the thin oxygen left between them. “I wanted –” he began, voice hitched in his throat as sad eyes met their counterpart. “You, Jo. I wanted you to be enough.” But it wasn’t. The coldness of their childhood home was anything but comfort, no matter how much his twin had tried. It was easier now, to look back at how hard she had fought to fill those dark spaces with light – to consume the terror and pain. In the end it only left him feeling even more hollow than before, watching just how easily his other half could sacrifice herself for such an unwanted creature.

Where these moments should have been soft, eased some of their pain, they only left a tightness in her chest she couldn’t quite describe, an agony she wished would end. The awkward silence drug on, but then her brother started again and she started to lose her battle against the tears stinging at her eyes. “Kai, I’m begging you -” and she didn’t get to finish before he finished his own explanation. It was funny, the unspoken truth hurt more, even the silence had been better than that. “But I wasn’t. I never could have been, and I never will be.” She thought saying it out loud might make it easier, show she understood, but instead it left her feeling more suffocated than ever.  “You’re happy.” A fact, something she could say with ease. “I’m happy that you’re happy.” Another fact, though this one was even harder to say. “ - I’m begging you to let me focus on that, Kai. Please just let me focus on that.” 

[brokengcmini]

hiiyakai

He hadn’t thought that far ahead. When she asked for clarification, or perhaps.. just for more information, he wondered if he had anything left to give. Kai considered the question – breaking their eye contact to let his gaze drift in thought. “Warm,” he tested, weighing the word on his tongue. “Like I belong here. I’m.. wanted.”

Jo listened silently as he offered his insight, and as happy as she was for him, she couldn’t help but feel hurt knowing he hadn’t felt that before, and she hated it. “… I’m happy for you.” she finally managed to offer her brother, though she couldn’t offer him a smile or anything similar to accompany the words, if anything there was something sad behind it all. “I’m glad someone was finally able to do that for you.”

[brokengcmini]

hiiyakai

He didn’t want to say it – he had tried real, real hard to avoid saying anything too provative or mushy but what she had said just ignited something inside him – a desire to defend his new life. “It is home,” he agreed. “It’s.. what I figure a home should feel like.”

“Thats because it is your home, or Bonnie’s house that you just crash in.” She tried to keep it light, friendly, but she couldnt deny how awkward it was being in a room with her brother, even after everything else. “…. What do you think a home should feel like?”

[brokengcmini]

“You know, this place isn’t half bad when you aren’t being held captive in it. It’s even kind of homey.”

[brokengcmini]

hiiyakai

The truth was.. he didn’t want to fight much longer. A moment passed, just Kai watching his twin’s face as he saw just how much she didn’t want to tell him. “Josette,” he began in a more quiet, less complacent tone. “What do you know?” He thought about her words, but it didn’t take long at all for him to answer. “I don’t think I could ever stop. Could you?”

“Kai.” she countered, just waiting for him to offer his next comment. Whenever he used her full name, it was always accompanied by something, whether it be a taunt, an agressive phase, or a question, it was always something. Then came the question, and she felt her resolve slipping away. “Please don’t ask me.” It was softer than her rejections, but her words still held firm. I don’t think I could ever stop. Now, that stung more than it should have. “I’d have to hate you first.”

[brokengcmini]

hiiyakai

They had reached an understanding, though any outsider tuning in on the conversation wouldn’t be able to tell. “Any minute now.” For assumptions, he had limited, but there was the nagging thought that Jo really did know something – and wasn’t exactly proud to admit how. That alone was enough for him to press on. “Good, because I can’t make any promises.”

“I wouldn’t hold my breath.” she mused, though she knew her resolve for the matter would dissipate sooner rather than later. It involved him, and perhaps he did deserve to know that she had also been forced to bare witness to the death of the Bennett, but she wasn’t ready for him to know that just yet. “It’s easier for both of us if you just hate me.”

[brokengcmini]

hiiyakai

His head cocked sharply to the right. “I’m minding,” came his quick response, eyes boring into her. There was no malice in his gaze, but he was clearly not convinced. She was hiding something from him. “Even if, one day, I could be willing to feel that way for you?”

“So I’ve noticed.” the witch muttered as she looked at her brother. She knew it wasn’t going to be that easy, she never should have made the comment if she hadn’t intended on following through with an explanation. “I don’t care if you feel that way for me, Kai. I just want you to be okay.”

[brokengcmini]

hiiyakai

He listened to her words carefully, nodding in acknowledgment. “It’s not half bad,” he mused, giving it a few seconds more of thought– weighing the pros and cons. Then he’s looking back up at her, curiosity in his eyes. “How I felt?” It wasn’t that he didn’t know the exact feeling she was speaking of, it was just curious that she seemed pretty familiar with it too. “I don’t ever want to feel that way again.. but for her, I would.”

“When things are good, it’s great.” Jo hadn’t realized her slip up until he reiterated what she’d said. “Never mind.” She replied too quickly, and she knew she’d made another mistake in responding the way she did. Though, the way she saw it, what good would it do for him to know that she had felt everything he felt whenever he watched the Bennett witch die? It was in the past, and reopening the fresh wounds more than she already had. “Let’s just hope you don’t have to.”

[brokengcmini]

hiiyakai

Despite being involuntarily stunned by his twin’s words, there was a particular comment she made that seemed to resonate with him. “She does have me,” he repeated the words, agreeing with her, but also lost in thought. Then, not a second later, he asked “Do you believe that I care about her?” Because if anyone’s opinion were to matter, if anyone knew him better than he knew himself, it would be Jo, wouldn’t it?  She’d see through it, wouldn’t she? If what he was feeling wasn’t real – if he was wrong.

Just as her words had left him momentarily speechless, she found herself stunned by his question. “I do.” she admitted, looking over at the heretic. Her eyes lingered on his for just a moment, contemplating for a moment before she spoke again. “If you didn’t care about her, you wouldn’t have felt the way you did when he killed her. You wouldn’t be sticking by her side, you wouldn’t even have to ask if you didn’t care, you’d just know it.” 

[brokengcmini]

hiiyakai

He pointed at his general person. “Not strapped to a chair,” he offered, to relate to her comment. Though, he could honestly relate to the rest of what she said, too. Despite doing better, things were still not the way they were supposed to be. How could they be?  “I hate what he’s done to her,” he said suddenly, venom on his tongue. “I hate that she feels… broken.” The word was hard to get out. Empathy was still difficult for him, but he knew exactly what it felt like to be missing a part of your identity. For the longest time, it was all he knew.

“Guess we’ve both had worse days.” She cracked a smile, albeit a small one at her brother’s gesture. The silence that settled between them was awkward and unsettling for the witch as she tried to find something to say to him, but then he spoke, and she simply listened as he explained. “He’s going to pay for it.” she explained. She didn’t scream the words, nor did she directly threaten him, but her intentions were obvious in her words. She may not have been close with her brother, in fact, she’d spent the better part of her life avoiding him, but she’d be damned if she sat by and let someone hurt her family without any consequences. “It won’t fix things, it won’t undo the damage, but eventually, with time, Bonnie will be okay. She’s strong, and she has you there to help her through it all.” she added, trying to do her best to reassure her brother that things would be alright. “You’ll both be okay.”

[brokengcmini]

hiiyakai

“I’m doing a lot better, Jo,” he said slowly, trying to keep his expression neutral as he really couldn’t do the whole soft look on command – not around her. “How’ve you been?”

“Good.” The word comes out hesitant and unsure as the the witch looked at her brother. In all honesty, Jo couldn’t have been happier to hear that he was doing better, but she couldn’t just spill her guts to him. Not right now. “I’m alive.” she shrugged, not really sure how else to respond to the question. “And I’m not spelled into a room, so, I could be worse.”

[brokengcmini]

hiiyakai

“Wait, wait,” the heretic sighed in defeat. “Let me try that again. Please?”

“Fine.” she sighed, already going impatient with her brother as she crossed her arms.

[hiiyakai]

“And how is that my problem?”

[brokengcmini]

“I just wanted to know if you were okay…” Jo replied, shaking her head as she spoke. “Forget it. I won’t bother you again.”

[brokengcmini]

raina-parker

“I will. Is it okay if I stick around here for a bit? I don’t really feel like going home to a bunch of happy memories and pictures.”

“Of course, stay as long as you’d like.”