Colby: Okay don't take this the wrong way because I'm not trying to be a bother or anything you know I'd never try to police what you're doing or who you're hanging out with I would just love to know if you're okay because I haven't heard from you today or seen you much?
Colby: And by much I mean I saw you when I was half asleep this morning but by the time I was out of the shower you were gone
what is your favourite food to eat? alternately, what is your favourite food to cook?
“To eat is an easy one: as silly as it may sound, because our family’s restaurant is named for the dish, my father’s (or Brie’s) ratatouille is most certainly my favorite meal.”
“To cook is another story, though, because I am not the best at that, so, I do not think I can say….it is hard to chose between burnt toast and raw eggs, oui?”
Many thanks to those who helped out with this, whether through encouragement or beta reading or letting me fiddle around with your characters (cough cough @brieleclaire & @thehornedprince ). Y’all are the best.
Let’s break our girl down, shall we?
Colby LeClaire thrives on order, or rather, she shrinks at the first sign of chaos.
She thinks perhaps she’s figured out where it came from, how the planets spliced and the stardust fell to create the person she’s become.
Her parents.
Sabine, who was stubborn, steadfast, Amazonian, until she wasn’t.
Remy, who paled in comparison, but was a star in his own right -- kind, bright, warm, until he wasn’t, either, or, maybe he was, just, not as much as before.
Sure, both Colby and her sister were LeClaires, compassionate, loving, loyal, but the differences were vast.
Brie inherited that steadfast nature, the glow, the starlight.
Colby was left with the interstellar junk -- the fear, the doubt, the dread, the anxiety.
Admittedly, there’s always been a part of her that’s envied Brie’s naturally celestial nature. Her younger sister seems to find her place in a group of people easily, and so clearly thrives on human connection.
Colby doesn’t.
At all.
She’s an introvert in every sense of the word, but it’s more than that. It’s this feeling, this turbulence in the pit of her stomach, this need to be in control, to know what has happened and what might happen next, to list out the possible outcomes and effect of every situation.
Most of the time, it’s okay. Most of the time, she can figure it out. Most of the time, she writes, and she can keep control, she can get the voices to stop.
But of course, like everything in life, writing only helps, until it doesn’t.
1. July 6th, 2017, 11:06 AM.
“Hey, big cheese, I got you something.”
Colby can’t bring herself to look up at her sister, to avert her gaze from her hands and her fingers and the broken skin around her nails.
It’s only been twenty-four hours since she lost her journal, and already her fingers are a mess, not that they hadn’t been bad before -- frankly, given what had happened close to the end of June, and what would happen close to the end of July, she had been surprised at how well she was doing.
“Was” being the key word here, of course.
“Hey.”
The bed moves beneath her as Brie sits and places a soft hand over hers. It’s this action that triggers Colby actually looking up into her sister’s eyes.
They look bluer than normal. Colby isn’t really sure if that’s important.
“It’s just me. It’s just us. Focus, okay? I got you a present.”
The blonde holds out a paper bag with the World of Color logo etched into the front. Colby looks at her, blinking, but doesn’t move. It takes another encouraging look from Brie for her to shift her position and move her hands toward her present.
She removes the tissue paper from the top and places it gently on the bed, before reaching in and pulling out the bag’s contents. The tears settle into the corners of her eyes.
“I know it’s not the same. I know you lost a lot, but...maybe these will help.”
Colby isn’t really sure how she lucked into having Brie as her sister.
That’s one of life’s mysteries she has never questioned.
2. July 15th, 2017, 5:34 AM.
“...but if I DO get coffee during our layover is that going to screw me over? Am I going to regret that? The day stuck in airplane mode is annoying as it is, but the time difference is going to be KILLER...”
Colby sighs, watching as Brie holds her phone to the glass. The blonde smiles brightly at the airline employee, who then looks at her, expectantly. Colby takes a few steps forward, scanning her own phone and hitching her bag on her shoulders, following her sister.
Brie -- who’d stopped talking long enough for both of them to pass into the tunnel leading toward their plane -- intertwines their fingers and picks up the conversation right where she left off. Colby isn’t really paying much attention to her words. Instead, her gaze flickers over the people around them, mostly half-asleep, some sending disapproving glares in their direction.
There’s this strange sense of pride that fills the older girl’s body. Brie is practically the only person who could somehow be this talkative at five in the morning. Colby knows most of this excitement is simply Brie being Brie, though she guesses that falling asleep so early the night before only amplified her chipper manner.
Colby hadn’t slept, but the sound of Brie’s breathing was certainly calming, a high quality soundtrack to which Colby could write, but that was last night, and Brie deserves to be listened to now. Colby blinks, partially to clear the thoughts in her head, and refocuses her attention on her sister.
“What movies do you think they’ll show on the flight? I hope they’re not too ba-- OH! But, what if there are two of them we want to watch? Perhaps we can watch one on one of our screens and one on the other, oui? Split screen, like a computer!”
Colby smiles and gives Brie’s hand a soft squeeze. She knows the blonde means every word, and she wishes she had the capacity to be as excited.
But she has things to do, tasks to accomplish.
Truthfully, she didn’t really want to go to Paris in the first place, not after what had happened, not after who she’d seen -- what if something happened while she was gone? -- but she couldn’t say no when Brie suggested it. She’s never been able to say no to her.
So if she’s going, she’s going to work, and, as they wait to board their first plane of the day, Colby’s already formulating her plan. It’s a plan of synthesis, of data collection. She’ll gather what she can from the journals that line the top bookshelf in her closet. It won’t be everything, but it will be a start, and -- Colby hopes -- enough to toggle everything she’d written down since arriving in Buena Vista...or at least, enough of it so the pictures all come into view again.
“Whatever you want, mon cherie.”
This is going to be okay.
From the last time she saw him in Paris to the first time she saw him in Buena Vista, Colby LeClaire heard from Cedric Arawin once.
It had been exactly two weeks since she’d woken up in her bed, two weeks since she’d reached for him, two weeks since she’d grasped at bed sheets and broken promises.
In the days that followed, Colby was a mess. She didn’t sleep, or eat, or drink, or work, or write, or really do much at all, except sit in middle of the floor in her bedroom and let the tears fall down her face.
Her parents were clueless, speechless, and atypically unhelpful during those two weeks time. Truth be told, it was Brie -- small but wise fifteen-year-old Brie -- who snapped Colby out of it on Day Four.
All it took was moving Colby out of her room and into Brie’s -- a simple act that even her parents hadn’t thought of, but as soon as she’d be settled into Brie’s bed, the girl was out like a light, dead to the world, three days of exhaustion and emotion and dehydration finally catching up to her.
She spent the next two weeks in Brie’s room.
On Day Fourteen, at 6:07 AM, Colby’s phone rang, waking both sisters up. Groggily, Colby sat up and glanced down at her phone screen. She wasn’t sure where she’d put her glasses the night before and tried her hardest to see who was calling without them. This had quickly proved futile, and the brunette reached out to answer it.
Brie stopped her, eyes wide, head shaking, aura serious.
“Don’t pick up the phone.”
It had been too late, anyway -- by the time this commotion had ended, the phone had stopped ringing.
He didn’t leave a voicemail.
Colby probably could’ve expected as much.
3. July 27th, 2017, 10:28 PM.
”I saw him this morning, at breakfast...”
The words are soft, nonchalant. Colby knows Brie is attempting to keep conversation light and ventures to determine the reason why. It’s likely because she didn’t come home last night -- a change in behavior if there ever has been one -- but it might also be emotional leftovers, or simply relief that today is today and yesterday has passed.
But they made it through. One year down, who knows how many left to--
“...except, he left, soon after I arrived, and I didn’t think anything of it, until...”
Colby looks up from her journal at this point.
She’d made control from chaos. She’d done what she always did, what she does best, but now she’s frightened it’s all going to come crashing down again.
“Until what?”
“Well, when I got back to our room, he was... HERE. Just, like, standing outside our door, as if he was debating if he should to knock or something.”
Colby feels her heart sink. She closes the notebook, sticks it -- and her matching pen -- into the drawer beside her bed. Her mouth is dry, but nothing can prepare her for the words that fall from Brie’s mouth next.
“M-maybe...maybe, you should just give him a chance to explain? Talking just once wouldn’t hurt...right?”
Colby hopes that Brie somehow always stays this naive, this innocent, this hopeful.
“C-Colby?”
“If he comes again, don’t let him in.”
The journal set was perhaps the kindest gift Colby had ever received from her sister.
When she’d opened it properly that night and noticed there were four journals, she couldn’t help the anxiety that washed over her at the thought of having to pick one to start with.
It didn’t take long for her to realize she didn’t have to pick at all.
Colby quickly decided that the best thing to do was split them by content. A journal for her mother, a journal for Cedric, a journal for school-related rambles, a journal for the rest of it.
She kept them all in her backpack, of course -- she was never sure which one she’d want to write in until she found herself reaching for it -- but this was the better way to do it. The smarter way.
She wouldn’t lose everything if she lost just one, though she couldn’t help but count them every half an hour or so, to make sure she had them all.
One, two, three, four.
Everything was okay as long as she reached four.
4. July 30th, 2017, 3:52 PM.
“I heard the Dream House is reopening in the next few days. Someone said we might be getting room assignments today. I hope we are on the first floor! I am getting sick of climbing stairs.”
Colby’s looking down at her hands again. They’re getting a little better -- she’s getting a little better -- but she’s not sure if this will make it worse.
Sharing a room with Brie in the inn had been a dream. It made it easier for the two of them to find each other, to see each other, not to mention they were probably less annoying this way.
No roommates were bothered by impromptu LeClaire sleepovers if their roommates were each other.
“I have to hand it to WDA, they certainly have found a way to force people to mingle with one another. Talk about making new fri-”
The ping of an email notification from Brie’s phone cuts her off, and Colby watches as she practically leaps onto her bed, scrambling for it.
Colby’s phone quickly follows suit, the email notification popping up on her phone. Her actions are slower than Brie’s, but she moves to unlock her phone, too. No sense in delaying the inevitable.
Brie’s hand is holding hers before she even registers the fact that her younger sister has moved to her bed. Her face scrunches and she pulls her hand away, opening the e-mail and beginning to scroll through it.
“Don’t be his friend.”
It takes Colby a second to register what Brie’s talking about, but when she finds her name on the list, it clicks.
“Colby, I am so sorry...”
In the six months they were together, Cedric Arawin did many things for Colby LeClaire.
He taught her what freedom tasted like. Sweet and salty, all at once.
He reminded her how much lungs crave oxygen. He’d deprive her of breath for minutes at a time, tongues intertwined, lips pressed together, bodies close.
He guided her through the lesson of walking against a crowd in every sense of the phrase. She’d never been to a concert before him, and somehow the view from right beneath the stage was worth the panic of fighting through people to get there.
He showed her what it felt like to mean something to someone else. She’d never doubted the unconditional love of her parents, of her sister, but this was something different. This was the kind of love you worked for, the kind of love you kindled, the kind of love that started with the tiniest of sparks.
He found her starlight. He taught her to glow, to shine.
And by the time she recognized the black hole, it was too late.
5. August 3rd, 2017, 8:41 AM.
She’s put it off long enough. Brie had moved out two days ago, but Colby hadn’t found the courage to.
Now, she has no choice. They need the room she’s in.
Eden Inn has been kind, has been good, to her friends, to her school, to their families.
Colby needed to suck it up.
She clenches and unclenches her fists, before meeting one hand with the other and falling back into the same bad habits she just can’t seem to break. She makes a mental note that she might have to head to the pharmacy and grab more band-aids. She’s not sure if she has enough to last as long as she needs them to.
She’s trying to keep her breath even, trying to remind herself of the plan she’s made, but it’s shaky. Everything’s shaky.
Did she grab all of her journals this morning?
She takes her backpack off of her back and opens it to check.
Don’t pick up the phone. One, two, three, four. Don’t let him in. One, two, three, four. Don’t be his friend. One, two, three, four.
Eventually she feels convinced, and she returns her backpack to her back, grabs the handle of her suitcase, and keeps walking, switching to count her paces, to catching her breath.
One. Breath in. Don’t pick up the phone. Two. Breath out. Don’t let him in. Three. Breath in. Don’t be his friend. Four. Breathe out. Don’t --
She stops in front of room 4A.
Her room. His room.
Their room.
Breathe in, breathe out.
It takes her a second to actually manage to get her key card into the lock. Her hand is shaking too much, she’s shaking too much, but slowly, carefully, she pushes the door open, teeth pressed deeply into her bottom lip, heart pounding in her ears, scared of whatever might be awaiting her...
She waits. She stops. She listens.
She’s met with nothing but silence.
She walks further into the room, fearful of what might be lurking in the shadows, terrified of what she might find.
Three minutes pass before she’s certain she’s alone, though its clear he’s been here. His stuff is thrown about, and it smells like him.
Colby places her suitcase on the untouched bed by the window, adjusting her backpack on her shoulders, and, with another glance around the room, heads right back out the door.
She can’t do this. Not now.
Colby LeClaire thrives on order, or rather, she shrinks at the first sign of chaos.
She’s not sure what happens when all signs point to pandemonium.
your fave is problematic: reese ham ( @reesesxpiece )
cries all the fucking time?
an emotional mess
made no effort to talk to cas when he avoided her even though she was upset
always tries to find a way to pin the blame on herself even when it’s not her fault
too fuckin’ anxious to actually live her life
tries too hard to be okay for piper, is not actually okay
will probably never get over her parents death
mothers everyone which i mean isn’t necessarily a bad thing ?
low-key feels responsible for michele’s death and sylvia and oliver’s injuries b/c she should have been watching out for the hundred acre wood kids as the oldest of the crew
also feels responsible for piper being in a wheelchair b/c she wasn’t there
blames herself for literally everything
codependent aF
spends all her money on admission to the art museum when she could buy food or something useful
talks about castor way too much like girl calm down
doesn’t know how to adult
knew how to do taxes once but def forgot
flipped off an old lady once because the hag didn’t like PDA (ft. castor)
accidentally insulted jackson windsor and his dog b/c she was tired
the most problematic thing about dee is her damn fc like who made the decision to cast naya as tiana and naveen’s daughter in what world does that make sense
(i did not pick her fc, i was just young and dumb and didn’t know better!!!)
but i actually love naya ok
that’s a different post
where to start with dee rana
she’s ?? perfect
sort of
she strives for perfection
she is always the Most
she wants people to be vulnerable around her so she can take care of them but she never wants to be vulnerable ever
she wants people to see that she’s got her shit Together
(she does not)
naveen really fucked things up didn’t he
Unexpected!DaddyIssues
remember Dolton
slept with her best friend’s brother for like...Ever
and then dated him
but that was it’s own mess, wasn’t it
quit the cheer squad like the dramatic bitch she is
got in a fight with shawn over it too??
messy!!
she was kind of a bitch but like....a loveable bitch?? she meant well
idk where she is now
I know she’s in Maldonia
I hope she found a hot guy to settle down with
she’s going to be such a good queen
i miss her and i love her
Liability by Lorde & Girl on Fire by Alicia Keys are more or less her theme songs
don’t even read her bio, just listen to those songs and you’ll be gucci
