#liamla

[invinsibyl-blog]

Leaving California

Liam walks in to L.A’s cabin to gather the last of her things before New York Cherry moves in. She doesn’t have much in there to being with..most of her shit has already made its way to the Ravens’ cabin. She packs up all of her snacks, and makes sure to hit all of the secret hiding spots where she kept her Spaghettos. She pulls the caution tape and Boston post cards off of her bunk that hasn’t been slept in in months. “At least it’ll actually get some use now,” she thought as she packed her decorations into her backpack. She slings her bag over her right shoulder and looks all around the room. She looks at all of the bunks that are empty now. Lola’s, Joel’s, Cassian’s, Sean’s, Isaiah’s, Blayne’s, and now hers. The only bunks that are still occupied are Michael’s and Nira’s, but she never really saw them as part of her team to begin with.

She starts to think about how in the fuck this happened. How one of the strongest teams in Nova just...fell apart. How maybe she could have prevented it. It all started with Lola. Lola just up and left in the middle of the night. She didn’t care what happened to her. She didn’t care what happened to her team. And then after being captured and rescued she goes off and joins New York. Just like that. After all L.A did for her. Not even a goodbye. Not. Even. A. Fucking. Goodbye.

Then Evgeni died. Just the thought of him was enough to bring Liam to tears. He was really the heart of the team. Somehow that crazy little Russian was the one who was holding everyone together. After he died the spirit of the team changed. That was when Liam started spending most of her nights in the Ravens’ cabin, because it was too painful for her to sleep in her own bunk. 

She blames herself for the fall of L.A too. She thought maybe if she had stayed in the cabin more it could have kept the team together. Maybe if she had spent more time with them or gotten to know Cassian a little better, it would have helped. 

Sean losing his soul was the final nail in the coffin. Without his passion the team crumbled. There were no more classic Sean speeches. No marching towards combat yelling “Die with your boots on”. No more goofing off during dinner. He would just sit there and stare at the fire. He was gone. L.A was gone. And then he just left. He packed up his stuff and took off in the middle of the night. Again, no goodbye. Once he was gone that was it. L.A lost their Lieutenant, and Liam lost another one of her best friends. Even if Isaiah and Blayne did find him and manage to bring him back, what’s done is done. They’re broken and not even Liam’s superglue can fix them.

She takes one final look around the room to make sure she didn’t forget anything. She’s not planning on setting foot in there ever again. She walks out and closes the door behind her. She drops her stuff on the porch and begins to take down the flag hanging on the front of the cabin. She folds it up and sticks it under her left arm, then picks up the rest of her stuff and heads toward her new cabin.

[gorejob-blog]

The roads seemed endless, and the car bucked and jerked under her whenever she pressed the gas and took it over 85. It was the first time Lola had really been alone in ages, and she had been alone for weeks now, and the silence that had been a blessing at the beginning had begun to weight heavy in her bones. Her fingers fumbled with the radio while her other wrist draped lazily over the steering wheel, guiding the jeep around all manner of road hazard. The white noise crackled and hissed and she bobbed her head like it was her favorite song. She hadn’t been able to sleep much since the Vicar told her about Mojave- no, honestly she hadn’t been able to sleep much since the vitae project. Now it felt impossible, with her mind eternally turning through the details, wondering about the screaming.

Have you ever seen someone burnt alive?

She wished she had asked the Raven’s. They would know, they would have been able to answer.

I heard once that the fire doesn’t even kill you, the smoke inhalation does, is they true? How can anyone survive fire?

She stared at the road and her head nodded, her stomach growled and she fumbled for a candy bar, tearing the wrapper open with her teeth and they taking a few hungry bites.

Laughter. They were sitting in a stolen truck, four bodies crowded onto a bench seat while Lola drove their way down the coast. Prado and Trip and four other rogue youths sat in the bed while Hunter sat in the middle, straddling the stick shift and Duardo sat by the window with Alexis in his lap. They were laughing, laughing so hard, and Lola was so focused on the road but she smiled anyway.

“- And then,” Duardo was talking to Alexis but loud enough for all to hear, “I fucking took the dye pack out of the bag and I threw it at the guy and ya know I had that PCP edge so I fucking HURLED it and his nose broke, fucking blood everywhere.”

“You’re so bad Cholo.” Alexis purred to him and she rested her head on his shoulder. Alexis was made of warm and the softness of her velour track pants. She held a joint in one well manicured hand and lit it with a bic that was bedazzled with stick on gems. Hunter didn’t speak at first, he just took the joint and held the inhale deep in his lungs, and then he elbowed Lola.

“Lo’?” Lola glanced over and reached for the joint, thinking that was all he wanted. He passed it on and she took two greedy puffs and then passed it back to Alexis. Their hands were different, feminine, both soft, but Lola’s fingertips were decorated with cheap chipped black nail polish and a fist full of jelly bracelets pinched from the dollar store. Alexis had all the glamour, the long acrylic, the gold and silver.

“What do you want?” Hunter asked and Lola furrowed her eyebrows,

“Ah, What do you mean?” She didn’t understand, and maybe it was the pot or the three fat lines or the cheap 40s they’d been drinking an hour earlier.

“I mean what do you want?”

The road dipped suddenly and Lola had to jerk the wheel to keep the damn jeep on the road. Her heart fluttered a bit, the road came back into focus. Had she drifted off? She bit her lip and this time she fumbled for a cigarette, needing the burn the sticky sweet candy taste from her tongue. Their ghosts haunted her more and more frequently now that there were no distractions. In the wasteland nothing was certain anymore. Did the children burn? Did they scream? Did they scream for her? She pulled onto the shoulder and put her hazards on, then smirked at the habit. She just sat in the seat for a moment, smoked her cigarette, lit another off the end of the first.

“Lola?” She looked up and saw Hunter in the passenger seat where he belonged, smiling with his green eyes dilated and his hair all messy from riding with the windows down.

“Yea?” And here was the ghost, haunting her.

“What do you want?” He asks and he reaches for the cigarette and she holds it out. Their hands don’t touch - can’t touch -

“….But…Hunter, you’re dead.” And the spell is broken, and the cigarette is burning a hole in the empty seat beside her while Lola sat staring at the place he’d only just been. The noise she heard next was ugly, and awful, and it took Lola a moment to realize it was her own ragged breath. A sob came next, and frantic, panicked crying while her hands pressed against her mouth and nose and then covered her eyes, as if she could somehow push the tears back and swallow down the words that had banished the ghost.

The sun was getting lower and lower when she finally found the gas pedal again. She drove all night despite the danger, lights off, racing through the ether. She cranked the radio up high, and kept reassuring herself that it wasn’t Trip’s laugh she heard hidden behind the static.

[gorejob-blog]

It was two or three in the morning, and Liam couldn’t sleep. Nightmares made rest uninviting, and even the few shots she’d done around midnight weren’t doing much to numb the guilt. Why hadn’t Lola talked to her? Worse, why hadn’t she talked to Lola? Why hadn’t she given the poor beast a reason to stay instead of stumbling away like an injured animal ready to die? Her fingers tinkered endlessly with the radios, like if she could just figure out the right frequency she could broadcast her voice into the past and beg the girl to stay, just stay, don’t go.

Sobbing. Quiet and broken. Weak and empty, like the person had been crying for hours.

Lola’s eyes wouldn’t focus on the world around her, too tired and hungry, with the left one swelling from a particularly vicious blow to the face. She could feel the tears on her face. She had long since bridged the gap from defiant prisoner to pathetic play thing, and she hated it.

Another voice, familiar in that bone-chilling way. “What wrong sweetheart? Shh, shh..”

Liam felt like she might vomit. Was that mercy’s voice? She wanted to scream for Sean or Connie or Isaiah, but instead her hand trembled as she stared at the radio in her hand, only half believing what was happening as Lola’s voice came through the static-ridden frequency.

“I’m so tired…Please… Just let me sleep…”

And She hated how her voice sounded when she begged, but there was nothing contrary left in her as the burns stung and her stomach ached out of emptiness. Nails dug into her neck, cutting vicious crescent moons that made her yelp like a terrified animal and she cried harder and begged more.

“Please Mercy, please, just an hour, please, just let me sleep, please I just-“  And then screaming, not in fear, but the deep guttural way you scream when you are in agony.

It was the same scream Liam had heard a hundred times on the radio, listening to the resistance members being mauled alive by hellhounds and ghouls because of one wrong turn and Liam wished she could have warned them, and now she was helpless again, listening to Lola as the sharp cry broke into hysterical cries and Mercy mocked her.

“What do you dream about now, Lola? What is there left to dream about? You know you’re never getting out of here. You’re mine now. My good dog.”

And the pain made Lola see white, made her vision worse and she thrashed against her restraints and struck out with her legs as best she could with her wrists bound. Her heart hammered alarmingly in her chest, and the words Mercy said may have made her vomit if she had anything inside her stomach but blood- blood only half hers, and she could still feel the angel in her, the angel screaming too.

“Fine, sleep, but remember sweetheart, no one is coming for you.”

And the radio went dead.

When Liam woke her head was in her arms, tears dried to her face. She never knew if she dreamed it or not.

[gorejob-blog]

I dreamt of Liam blurry and oversaturated, through the pain and the heat she came to me like the rush of heroine. She came to me like people say our lives flash before our eyes but theres no life left so I saw her. I saw her. I saw her crying over nightmares and I tried to touch her face and I wanted to pull her close close close I wanted to break open the cage of my ribs (more, break it more- it hurts to breath, everything hurts) and I wanted to hide her and when mercy woke me with nails and teeth and razor wire I knew I knew I knew I could do it I can keep going (but god it hurts it hurts it hurts) because I have to suffer so that people like her can be happy. I have to breath and feel the thud thud thud of my heart aching on because it someone has to hurt, I’d rather it was me.

[gorejob-blog]

I don’t know how to tell her I knew him.

I don’t know how to tell her he didn’t love her.

Maybe his disappearance is better than knowing

how I killed the man she loved.

[grabsomeideas]