Open Post the Sequel

[desertions]

how to play.

1. Drop a comment with one or more of your muses. It can be empty if you want me to make a scenario, or you can toss one at me. If you want to just give me a prompt (a word, song, lyric, picture, phrase, anything), I can riff off that too.
2. In the subject line, you can specify any of my muses you might want to play with, or you can ask me to pick someone.
3. just rp with me. if something jives really well, maybe we can continue it in another one of these later, sort of like a super casual verse. if it doesn't, it doesn't.

Comments

[believable]

It reminds her of Jeremy.

Vividly and all too sudden, Tyler sitting out on the beach with his sketchbook reminds her of Jeremy. It comes in waves, the remembering; the kind that steals your breath until it cages up in your chest. Of course, Jeremy wasn't the only one with artistic talent. Tyler had always loved it, too. She knows this already.

But maybe Elena had just never really been paying attention.

She gingerly sits down next to him. The journal is on her lap, the pen wedged in between the blank pages. Sometimes she'll manage to form the words but sometimes she won't. Maybe sometimes there aren't words for things. "Mind some company?" she asks. She won't be offended if he says no.

[lockwood]

To be fair, it had never been something Tyler advertised. Even when Jeremy had asked him about it he remembers brushing it off. "It's just an elective" had been the easy deflective tone at the time. But Tyler is tired of pretending like he doesn't care when he does. And it's not like he has any reason to hide it anymore.

His father had preferred he spent his time on things like football than "silly" things like art but his dad is long gone, just like everyone else.

He smiles -- weakly, but it's something -- as Elena sits down, nodding.

"Not at all."

Honestly, it gets tiring being alone anyways. He's spent too much time that way already.

[believable]

That rings true to Elena.

There's always been something of a dichotomy when it comes to how Tyler was viewed through the lens of high school popularity, and who he really was. She thinks if anyone ever really knew Tyler, it was Caroline. Jeremy probably caught glimpses here and there. Elena has known Tyler all her life, and that means something.

But she can't say she's ever really gotten to know him until now.

"Gathering inspiration?" she asks, having noted the sketchpad; she brings her knees to her chest as she looks ahead. The clear water and the taste of salt air. The waves crashing onto the shore. Elena hopes it brings him peace. She hopes there's a gift, somewhere amidst all the pain.

[lockwood]

Tyler's often thought the only person who ever knew him at all was Caroline. Jeremy saw bits of it. Matt did occasionally, but that's about it. He's known Elena his whole life but they've never been close. They were in each other's orbits whether it be because of Matt or Caroline or whoever but they were never friends. Not really.

But slowly, it's been changing.

"Yeah, I guess. I don't know." He hasn't gotten far. It's been so long since he last sketched, he doesn't know where to start. But He can't help keep everything. He was hoping maybe if he could get those feelings on paper somehow that pain would ease.

If only just a little.

[believable]

Elena gingerly lifts her hand up and settles it on his shoulder, if only for a brief moment. Caroline would know what to do. She'd know exactly what to say. Her presence alone would be the balm, and she wishes, so much, that she could give that to him.

But she doesn't have much to give. It's all been taken, and what's left is fractured pieces, but she gathers them up as best she can, and she gives. Whatever it means.

"The same thing happens to me," she reveals to him with a mirthless, lopsided smile. She looks down at the journal on her lap, and shakes her head. "Sometimes I'll stare at the blank page for hours. I know all the things I want to say, but I can't get them out somehow."

Maybe because once they're out there, she can't keep them locked up inside anymore. They're real, in a way she can't take back. Some things can only live inside. "It used to be easier," she says. Her smile quirks into something sardonic.

"Back when I was convinced I would be a novelist."

Now all she has are stories of blood and death, and there is no ending. There is forever.

[lockwood]

The comfort feels strange -- it always does. The only time it didn't was Caroline. He still can remember sometimes how she held him through that first transformation, how she didn't flinch from his pain. Caroline knew how to deal with people, how to help them. Tyler's never been too good at that.

He just messes things up. He tries to help and he makes it worse. After what happened to his pack -- well he doesn't try much anymore. He's too tired, and trying takes energy he doesn't have. He doesn't believe it'll make a difference. (Caroline had the optimism too, that shining hope that they could beat everything in the end).

"It used to come easy. I mean, I never drew much outside of class, but it was never hard."

It came naturally.

Nothing comes naturally anymore. Everything is a struggle.

(Caroline would want them to keep fighting, that's what he tells himself when it's too hard to get out bed)

"I never thought I'd be an artist -- my dad never would of gone for that." And Richard Lockwood's word had been law, but he's dead like everyone else.

None of it matters now.

[believable]

Elena was once --

Maybe not necessarily an optimist. Maybe underneath it all she was a bruised fatalist, aware of every cosmic bullet she had coming. But she once held on to hope so fiercely, one couldn't be sure if it was an earnest embrace or she simply believed what she needed to for the same reasons.

To get out of bed. (People tell themselves the truth they need. Sometimes.)

Elena almost asks him if he would've gone for art, had his father not been so against it, but she doesn't need to. And they both know that's not what matters anymore. Instead, she falls silent, her index finger tracing the edge of his sketch book. "Jeremy was an artist, too," she says quietly.

"I'd catch him drawing in his room. Not as much, after our parents died, but sometimes he'd pick it back up again."

[lockwood]

Tyler's always been cynical. Has always expected the worst out of people, perhaps because that's the most he was ever really exposed to. He's not sure. He envied people like Caroline who could trust, who could believe that things would be better. Her optimism has been like a bright beam of sunlight to his dark outlook.

But now the sun's gone. (so what's the point of getting out of bed at all?)

"I remember. He was one of the first people to realize I actually liked it -- not that I admitted it."

He remembers that night, Jeremy trying to engage him. It's just an elective. It's easier to pretend like things don't matter, then it hurts less when you lose them. Except that's not true. They matter. (and it still hurts)

"I remember really freaking out when I saw his drawings of werewolves, back when I was still piecing everything together from Uncle Mason."