#epochstarter

[epochpotter]

Someone once said: You only get bored if you are boring.

Bullshit. 

James was definitely not a boring person and yet, he found himself incredibly bored. But he supposed that living underground and having nothing to do could make even the most interesting people feel a bit...Meh. And that just made it even more of a challenge for him to try and do something to entertain himself.

So far, he had tried doing handstands which had worked for a little while. Until he fell down and almost kicked someone in the face. He had tried reading one of the battered books kept in the library but he simply couldn’t focus on them for more than a couple of sentences, his mind to restless to try such a passive activity.  He tried to clean up and that had been fun...But there was nothing else left to clean up. And now, he was playing with his hacky sack, which was providing enough entertainment until he threw it to hard and ended up hitting someone in the face.

“Oh shi---” He quickly walked closer to the other person, trying his best to hold back his laugher. “Sorry about that...Are you okay?”

[dorcaes]

The door’s metallic pinch rang into her ears as she was led away from the scene she had caused. She looked back momentarily to see what was happening in the room they had moved her from, trying to get a sense of what had happened only moments before:

“Dead is dead no matter when it happens.” She replied, arms crossed nonchalantly to reflect her factual mindset about the situation.

The girl opened her mouth, attempting to speak words that weren’t making their way through. Dorcas interpreted the girl’s eyes watering as a sign of sadness, and her loss of words to reflect the other’s grief filled thoughts. 

It was a sharp pinching sensation on her cheek, and her sight finding a new angle of vision that proved Dorcas wrong. The girl almost jumped her as she yelled about Dorcas’ insensitivity, her anger almost billowing out of her ears as her intensity grew with each word. Dorcas had not been not been afraid of the girl ( she didn’t do scared ), but she had been confused as to why the girl would become so angered. 

The two had been separated by a group of people (five to be exact), and Dorcas had been led to a room to keep them both apart.

They must’ve thought Dorcas to be the least vulnerable of the two, as she was left alone in an room deserted of people ( the typical cement-colored walls lined the long space, blocking out most of the sound from the outside. A worn-out red couch sat against the right wall, and a table with chairs hovered near the other. Simple and unremarkable ), while they remained comforting the other. Or she assumed as much.

As she took out the cigarette pack from her pocket ( she could sense the smell of cigarette on the couch, so she figured it right to do as the people who gathered here did ), the door opened behind her.

“I didn’t do anything wrong.” She stated, laying a cigarette between her lips.

[fightfightfightfightfight-blog]

Robotic enhancements aren’t cool.

Fuck it, nothing’s cool.

Al Moody wasn’t cool either, but he wouldn’t be caught dead showing it.

He wouldn’t be.

Except, maybe, today.

Something had snapped in his brain that morning. He’d read somewhere that the brain was plasticy, stretchy. It was as if his brain had become a broken rubber band, stretched too far to its limits and succumbed to what was natural.

Keeping up his facade of stoicism and calmness was not natural.

He sat in the corner of one of the canteens, swarms of fucking jovial undergrounders acting as if they were on some sort of summer camp passing him by.

He wanted to explode at them.

Or be one of them.

Leaning gruffly over a small workbench in the corner, Moody had his leg laid in front of him. Tinkering with the wiring inside, he hoped he could get it back in prime condition before the next patrol.

He hated it when things didn’t work the way he wanted them to.

He heard the benign beep of his watch. It was around four in the afternoon. He’d been here since eleven, crouched in his pathetic, rusted old wheelchair he’d taken from the hospital wing what seemed like centuries ago.

He had come no closer to finishing up, yet here he was, and here he’d stay. People would probably start to think he’d gone mad!

[delirumetdecorum-blog]

This was fine. And things would be even more fine by the end of the day, once he had something to do again, more information to gather. He was fine. The quarantine had not been fine. A month was too long to be alone. Alone with nothing but his thoughts and all of the sounds. And that was never good for him. It made him confused, it made him want to pull out his switchblade and do something. It made him want to run away, even though he knew he couldn’t, shouldn’t. Augustus had to get something before leaving. Anything useful. Even after that, the months following had been too quiet for him. Too much time to sit and listen. But it was getting easier. The routine was familiar from his home with the Death Eaters; it seemed like there was only one real way to do things now that the world was all but dead. It was easy to lie and say that he had come from another colony of survivors, that that’s where he had gained his knowledge. And most people seemed to believe him. He had always been very good at acting. Acting like someone he wasn’t. Acting normal. Acting like all of the noise didn’t make him want to scream sometimes.

But today was fine. It was the day. Easier to blend in, make himself useful to the Underground, and therefore, ultimately, useful to Riddle, because he was going to leave. That was what he told himself, at least. He hadn’t realized that he had come to a stop in the hall, until he heard a door close behind him. He hadn’t realized that his hand had found its way to the handle of his switchblade from before the Virus, until he heard someone come to a stop behind him.

“Sorry, didn’t see you there. Probably not the best to sneak up on anyone, you know,” Augustus said gently with a slight laugh, turning around to see who it was.

[voicelessprince-blog]

      The room had been empty when they got there; quiet and calm       and removed from the crowd, the constant movement, the questions.       Ever since training had ended, there seemed to have been nothing but       questions. From other Protectors, strangers passing in the halls. There       were only so many times they could answer a question with a glare or       a frown or a shrug before it started to get tedious. 

      It wasn’t the newness of it all that made it hard. There was enough        routine, enough structure to everything that was done here that it was       simple enough to fit in. So simple, really, that Regulus almost forgot,       sometimes, what they were doing here. How they got here.

      Sometimes, they opened their mouth to answer a question before they       stopped short. 

      When the door opened, disrupting the sacred emptiness of the quiet       room, they sighed. Maybe it would be someone they didn’t have to        try to talk to. Maybe it would be someone they could ignore.