The voice was so high pitched it also seemed like he had whispered. The pain in my ears came instantly and I winced with my teeth gritted - my threads came afterwards, acting like a pair of earmuffs.
It only took a few moments for blood to come pouring from the assailant's ears. The man cursed, his fingers wiping the red substance from his jawbone, and shouted something I didn't register. The boy stood strong, his thin frame looking like a wall of bricks.
My God, this wasn't Jonathon. He wouldn't do this. He didn't hurt people.
Jonathon was standoffish and non-confrontational.
Jonathon was skinny and a bit of a coward.
This Jonathon was unfazed.
"I said-"
Even with earmuffs, my ear drums were strained.
The man took off, leaving Kelly and Jonathon alone in the alley. The 911 call on my phone was still undialed as I stood there unable to move.
Jonathon marched right up to her, blood pouring pouring from both ears.
The look on Kelly's face said she had never seen him like this before. Her fear kept her stiff and frozen as the boy went to help her up. He ended up grabbing her right as she went to take his hand. He jerked her up. She stood, turning slightly, not looking the boy in the eye. There was blood rolling down her face, wetting the hair under her ears. I walked up to her catching a flash of emerald green eyes, removing tissues from my bag as I went; I wiped the blood, aiming for her cheek as if I was wiping tears. Kelly's fierce look was enough. Jonathon was not allowed to know and Kelly was probably hard of hearing right now.
I held out more tissues for Jonathon. He didn't take them.
"Jonathon?"
His fists were hard, white. And it wasn't just because it was cold.
"You did what you had to. Kelly was about to get kidnapped."
The boy said nothing. Opening his hand, an orb colored Jonathon's shade of rose-brown pulsed; a stain of black harboring the center moved. I blinked - that wasn't Jonathon's orb.
Did that mean...?
"You kept it?" I hissed lowly. "You kept the orb you stole?"
He didn't answer me. "I don't know what this thing is, but it's been doing things to me since I got it." Jonathon held out the object like it was trash. "My powers are out of my control, I keep wanting to tear shit apart."
So he really didn't know what he had been doing. Jonathon looked at me.
"Gillian is planning to give orbs like these at the core renewal."
"Orbs that make you more violent? How is that even possible?"
He laughed caustically. "Says the girl who has no idea why she can't protect others."
That one stung, but I got his point. Regardless, I bit back. "Jonathon, you can't keep that thing! We have to destroy it before someone realizes you're the one who took it!"
"They'd probably kill me, huh?"
My lips turned into a grim line.
He laughed mirthlessly again, shoving the orb back into his pocket. "Makes no difference if I destroy it or not. The thing has my color, they can trace it back to me. I won't let Gillian get away with this, not after..."
He trailed off, looking at the uncharacteristically silent Kelly. Her face was as hard his Jonathon's fists. They shared a moment, and Kelly looked away. The boy's face contorted before resuming its stoic norm.
"... not after this. I'm sure they'll mark us now, but you? You're fine."
"He saw me too, you know."
"But you did nothing. Gillian doesn't even know your name, how can he mark you?"
"Gillian knows my name." I unwrinkled the piece of paper in my pocket. I held it out.
Jonathon read it then buried his face into his hands.
No, he reminded himself again, she is not Kelly. She will not know of that one time you laughed so hard milk came out of your nose, she will not understand why you start snorting with would-be laughter at King Kong's finger nails and the reason why you cannot get rid of those little paper trinket littering your room. She won't know your middle name, and she won't drag you around town like she would, nor would she screech when you refused to tell her a secret time and time again. Autumn is not Kelly.
Both girls are their own person but how can he not compare them?
At times like these, when it was just the two of them, Kelly would reach out and grab his hand and they'd hum little senseless melodies together because that's what they had in common - this intense, undying love of rhythms and lyrics and the creation of harmonic sound - and it made them happy. The sun just setting, and curfew rushing up to catch them, but they sat there like they were any other pair of teenagers. She would lean her dirty-blonde-sometimes-brown head on his shoulder and she'd shut her eyes, mewling like a kitten whenever he moved and she'd fall slightly. She'd pout angrily before tackling him with graceful fingertips at his sides and a nasty little smile he held way too close to his heart. Even if the Special Forces saw them, she didn't care that someone saw them acting like a bunch of kids. (They were kids.) Kelly had no qualms announcing to the whole world she was in love with him despite the fact he had a hard time letting that get past even a whisper of a thought: she's look him in the eye and say, "I love you, Jonathon Lee."
They were just kids. Freshly in love with a bond so strong their names might as well should have been glued together with an "and" in between. Kelly was his first love. No matter what Autumn could ever do, that fact will never change. Kelly had experience and time by her side; she knew Jonathon like she knew the back of her hand, the length of her arm, or the flicker of her inner rows of fire. She knew his favorite songs, could recite his past like a honors' society speech, and knew every inch of him from the scar on the bottom of his foot to the beauty mark marring his hairline on the left side of his face ("Just above the arch of your eyebrow."). And God, he loved her for that. She took the time and the effort to study him. She earnestly put his broken being back together when no one else would. She held his hand when the world seemed black. And for that, he gave her his heart, his trust, and everything she asked for.
But, as said before, they were just kids. Their love, though strong, was based off of memories, a mutual respect of music that they created together, and a hatred for something much bigger and older than themselves. As friends, they worked brilliantly. As lovers, as two different people, they struggled. They were different, almost painfully so, and these differences on top of inexperience are what ultimately drove them apart. Maybe they started too young? Maybe they could have worked if they just knew how to meld a bridge from the sky where she flew to the earth where he had claimed a mound of dirt as his home. They were young and naive; the timing just wasn't right and no amount of memories, whimsical tunes, or righteous fury could was enough.
Autumn is no Kelly. Autumn only knows the boy that Kelly had helped to rebuild: a boy with a few skin problems, slightly hunched shoulders, and a voice only above a murmur. She knew the boy who was trying to pick himself up from his very first heartbreak and failing.
If Autumn was Kelly, she would have stopped everything to help him pick up his heart. She would have stayed with him to tape it together, perhaps wrap it with string with a couple poorly-done but well-intended knots. She'd stay and she'd help coddle this fragile heart. She'd protect you, shield you, hold you, burning the hell out of anything that came too close. But ultimately, she got tired of having to stick around. She was a roaring forest fire - ready to burn through obstacles and reach for the stars she could potentially become.
But Autumn is not Kelly.
No, Autumn is something different. When he first looked into her eyes and sincerely looked, he saw the same fire that encompassed Kelly. But Autumn burned the same way a tree in fall did - in color and in the will to live. Kelly burned with her temper and passionate actions driven by excitement and energy and enthrallment, but this made her burn constantly while flaring up in spurts. In contrast, Autumn burned like an ember with barely enough oxygen to thrive: slowly and constantly. She was a fire meant for survival.
No, Autumn didn't help tape up his heart. No, she didn't tie poorly-done but well-intended knots to hold it together. After Kelly had left, his heart had broken back down into smaller fragments because suddenly the world hit him again. Autumn had come too late to shield him, but she did come in time for other things.
She came and the first thing she did was start talking. She handed him some glue. She positioned his hand so the pieces wouldn't fall, and she handed him pieces as she casually found them. The fix was not instant - it took time. Time to talk, time to find the pieces, time to figure out how each piece went, time to take a break from the confusion, time to strengthen what small fragments he had, time to let the piece dry in place. She protected him as much as she could while still living her own life, and she eventually came to hold him as his heart got fuller and fuller. Autumn took some of the strings and tied them together at the ends to make string games as something to pass the time with. She wasn't a forest fire, no, but she was little plant with some fire for leaves - and when those leave fell after brightening the black, they come to earth and help him grow.
Autumn did not have time or experience by her side. She took things slowly and cautiously at time, and others she reminded him of Kelly because she jumped in headfirst without thinking. She didn't just like his music, she just loved music in general and they fought about who was better. They could never meet eye-to-eye on political matters and Autumn was insistent on being inside by curfew or else he'd have to suffer another one of her panic-stricken rambles. They fought. They teased. They cajoled. She challenged him to be something he never thought he was, pushed him to stand on his own while he found himself in Kelly's teacher position with this bright-eyed child who knew nothing outside her little world. A bit of give and take, a series of compromises that began to define each person as their own being.
No, Autumn didn't understand the jokes. No, she didn't know his middle name. Maybe it was because they were slightly older. Maybe it was because Autumn was more like a tree in her namesake's season. But somehow, they were working. They were working. Him, with his hunched shoulders and clearing acne, and her, with her slight anxiety and hushed words of love when it only the two of them, had something going on. But while Autumn was not Kelly, she was herself: a comrade, a pupil, a teacher, a girl, a friend. (Not yet lovers; he was working on that.) She didn't want you to be anyone but yourself but she wanted you to push yourself to be more, to strive for something that would make himself happy. She yelled and screamed at him just like Kelly, true, but a night on the town to her was just the two of them alone watching TV.
He had loved Kelly with everything he was. But Autumn he loved with everything he was and so much more. And that was enough.
Jonathon and Kelly's relationship was a roller coaster and a game of tug-of-war all at once.
THe relationship dynamic between one Jonathon Lee and one Kelly Lawrence was, in a few words, very lop-sided.
Kelly, despite having a troubled home life, was as spunky and naughty as a typical outgoing pre-adolescent to adolescent, teenage, wild-child with too much money, spirited girl out there. Certain cops know her by name, and the specialty officers - specializing in who else but powered humans - know her family very well. She got in trouble a couple times.
Jonathon didn't do that. He was raised by his Asian American mother and she was the one who made sure his powers remained a secret. She wanted Jonathon to have a chance at living a normal life - sadly, she passed on and Jonathon inevitably got caught and shoved into the system - and so she raised him to be a very quiet, unassuming child. As a person, Jonathon wasn't much for drawing attention to himself anyway... not that he didn't mind attention, he just wasn't use to it.
When the two finally got together, things changed. Kelly was starting to spread her wings and Jonathon was the person she wanted to share her life with. So whatever shenanigan she wanted to do, Jonathon got dragged along. Jonathon usually dragged Matt with him, as if having two boys with the same opinion ("Kelly, this is dangerous.") against one fiery girl would help change her mind. ("It's only dangerous if you really believe that.")
Kelly had the boy wrapped around her finger. He loved her. He looked up to her. Yes, it was a one-sided relationship, but one has to understand that Jonathon was not put together by just anyone. And no, he didn't bring himself back together. She was the one who picked up the pieces after his world shattered.
It was like his voice starting to crack was him diving off the deep end, and his mother's passing was him hitting the water. The sea was once clear blue because she kept them that way for her son... but then clear waters that he could once see through clouded over with the debris of his mother's passing and his normal life turned upside down. And Kelly was the one that lit the way back to the surface. He felt like he was drowning in this new, overly regulated world without anyone by his side... but she was. Matt was. But he clung to Kelly, the girl who knew what it was like to be isolated because of her ability.
She holds a lot of power over him. He had done anything she asked, or at least considered it. (It wasn't until the last pieces of their relationship did he actively try to make her happy though.) But what a lot of people don't know is that Kelly went out of her way to make Jonathon laugh.
Now, take note that the boy rarely laughs. He smiles and chuckles, but he hardly ever laughs. It's a part of his personality, really. Kelly knew this and she made it her mission to make him laugh as often as she could, hoping it would help him get over the trials in his life... and it did, to an extent.
She made sure she and Matt spent as much time as possible with him - they were the only ones he knew after all - and she was the one who suggested the idea of a band. She asked Matt to form a band with the two of them because she knew it would make him happy. Kelly knew how to play the violin from her upbringing, but she pushed herself to learn how to play the bass guitar for the sake of the band.
Kelly loves Jonathon. They have similar opinions on the system, similar mental caliber, their sense of snarky, sarcastic, and dead pan humor is similar, and he let her drag him all over town no matter what shenanigans she wanted. (Her mother always bailed them out anyway.) He was there when her father came from overseas. He was there when she got kicked out of her home. He listened to her vent, calmed her down, and he stayed with her like a layer of caked dirt on her skin, acting as a shield against the sharp flick's of her father's verbal abuse. He opened the door of creativity to her, showing her that bottling your emotions and hiding in a corner would never produce anything. "Put on paper. Show it to the world - they'll watch and listen."
For Jonathon, she and the band became his passions, his muses and reasons for living. But Kelly's passions grew beyond what Jonathon could offer. He was holding her back from what she was really capable of doing with her life - she wanted to become an actress. And she had the talent. She had the looks. She had the money to start. She already had people scouting her, and oh, how she wanted to go to their offices in LA and finally get away from the system and her small town... but she'd look at Jonathon who would quietly and wordlessly beg her not to go. And just like that, she'd put out the flames that were her passions just so she could be with this boy and his band a little longer.
Like mud suffocating a fire.
They loved each other. She showed him what fire could do, what a light to brighten up your life could make you see, and he was the oxygen that let her grow into spitfire she is today. The support for each other was there, but her ambitions outgrew what he didn't mind. To an extent, he wasn't healthy for Kelly and as much as it broke her heart... she knew it.
Like fire and mud, they can coexist under certain circumstances, but not together - never together.
The ability to control his hearing and vocal chords. It take time and effort to control; sometimes he loses his voice and in an extreme case, he can go deaf temporarily. He got caught during sixth grade when his voice would crack.
I know you have a dilema with how music is written...
But how would start if you could?
The melody, for some, comes first. For others, it's the lyrics. Musicians, I assume, write whatever comes to their mind first, whatever inspires them. What gets Jonathon inspired? What pushes Matt or Kelly to write when they actually do? Remember, Jonathon wrote Cursive on a napkin in a trashy but local and delicious breakfast diner.
He comes from a slightly broken family - his mother died when he was twelve and his father wasn't home all that much until his body started breaking down. Jonathon acts as a caretaker for a man who was almost never around in his childhood. Yet the man still tries to act like Jonathon's father. Of course little Jojo is mad - but he also respects his father.
So where does all the fury go? To his music. Jonathon holds himself back a lot. What does he do? He plays music. His world is music. His voice - and to a lesser extent, his guitar - mean the world to him.
"Jonathon's only really speaking when he's singing."
