faybiandavis

[faybiandavis]

summaidens​:

He was trying not to be too serious. Aiden was someone who would much rather cover a situation up with sarcasm and witty remarks, getting either a laugh or an eyeroll – usually the latter – than face whatever deeper emotions surrounded what was going on. He was trying not to be too serious, but it was quickly apparent that wasn’t Faye’s approach. His grin vanished. He thought back to the boy she mentioned, what had happened to him? He could hardly remember who he was back then; he’d like to say he was the same, but he wasn’t, and he knew it. Everyone must’ve known it. Was it for better or worse?

“There’s more fog than memories in here,” he admitted, tapping the side of his head. They’d survived so much. Somewhere along the way, it had become too hard to figure out what was real life and what was a fever dream. What had actually happened in this lifetime and what had belonged to another Aiden Summers. Perhaps it was nothing but a coping mechanism — he couldn’t break down over what happened if he couldn’t remember what happened. If he started digging, he knew. It would all come back. He’d relive it all. And he couldn’t break, not again. There was one thing he knew about himself, he was supposed to be nonchalant, it was the only trait he could cling to, and it wasn’t very nonchalant to cry himself to sleep.

He’d gotten so distracted by his own thoughts he hadn’t noticed Faye coming closer until he felt the touch. It would’ve made him jump if it hadn’t been so soft. When was the last time someone had touched him at all? His coworker bumped into him in the hallway somewhere around last week. But that hardly counted. Intentionally, when was the last time he’d had any sort of physical affection? It was concerning even to him how blank his mind came up.

Aiden’s expression clouded with surprise. He was partially afraid he’d heard her wrong, that he’d wrap his arms around her shoulders and she’d punch him and demand to know what he was doing. Faybian Davis asking Aiden Summer, of all people, to hug her, was not something that happened in their reality. But, Hell, half of the things that happened was not something that happened in their reality. One look at her face was enough to know she was being serious, enough to make him want to ask if she was okay, but he already knew the answer. No words came to mind. He couldn’t even tease her. There was no reason to talk in this silent apartment where no one else could see or hear them. As strange as the action was, he closed the space between them, pulling her into a tight embrace — realizing, as he did so, he’d wanted to ask, too.

...

There’s something tangled up in two connected timelines that make this spot right here feel like the SAFEST place in the whole of London. The rest of her reality tumbled, erased and fell apart yet somehow through it all they were guaranteed to find one another. The string of fate had tied itself around their wrists and never once yet had it been broken. She hadn’t lived a single life where he had not become a major irreplaceable part. She had never in her life before the past ten years believed everything happened for a reason but now she clung to the idea that perhaps there was one thing that meant something in all the screwed up stuff they had made happen.

She presses her face to his chest thinking of the last time they had stood after a time warp, her chin rested against his shoulder as he cried. This time she’s sure that her heart is the heavy one because it’s sunken to the soles of her shoes. All the forgotten burdens and memories that went up in flames back at the forefront of her mind. All she has lost but all she was glad to leave behind at war once more, the domination for top spot in her mind and heart. Perhaps the pact had finally given her some peace... everything was out of her control in a new and different way. Once again, everything had changed in the blink of an eye. 

There are a few passing moments where her fingertips press gently against his back, a touch that grows more intense for a sparse second -- he feels like the only thing left to hold onto. He is the only one left to hold onto. 

She has never been weak and even now there is some wobbly strength left right at the core. She isn’t looking for an escape but her eyes and dark and anguished, she needs a vacation... a break in the tour before she reprises her role in their great unravelling story. Her breath slows down as she pulls away and her hands readjust to rest on his forearms, “I love you,” she promises, a small smile on her lips that doesn’t quite meet her eyes, “After all these years, you are my greatest friend,” It’s the truth. She means it. 

She releases and instead she brushes her thumb against his cheek, where repulsion had been for two young people who didn’t have a hell of a clue what was to come in their lives... one forlorn unrequited love had lay in another... is something unbreakable and pure. Something that will never leave her. Her hand drops away and she crosses her arms across her body, “So, maybe, just for tonight,” her voice is quiet, “We can just live in that in between foggy place and pretend the worlds not about to turn upside down.”

[faybiandavis]

“its-millie-hastings​:

.

What does it say about her that she’s caught so off guard by Faye’s words that her heart seems to stutter in her chest? It doesn’t feel so long ago now that Faye had said with such conviction that she would never be her friend again, that they were family, but sometimes it was important to know when it was time to walk away. And Millie had tried, hell, they had been forced to do so by the pact that had splintered all of those who had survived Whittemore, and yet ever since that day in the jail cell she had been so sure that was the path that the two of them were heading towards even without that oath. 

The sadness in Faye’s voice breaks her heart, and it still makes her feel sick to think that she’s in some way responsible. All of her life, she had only ever tried her best to protect Faye, to show her just how much she cared for her. She had gotten it wrong, made mistakes, but regardless of the timeline or the situation, a large part of Millicent Hastings’ heart would always belong to the woman standing in front of her. “I didn’t know,” she breathes out, and maybe she should have, but the words that are coming out of Faye’s mouth are ones that she has prayed for and yet still can’t quite believe have broken the quiet between them. “I didn’t think you’d ever want that again,” the brunette continues in a small voice. She had wanted it, so desperately, but Faye’s words had echoed in her ears along with her own shortcomings and on top of everything else it had seemed like such a distant impossibility. 

“I’m still trying to find her too. And I can’t promise that I’ll ever fully be that girl again, but I’d like to try.” Millie wanted to be the person that Faye could depend on, who knew her inside and out, who was able to act as her safe harbor and find the same in return. Brown eyes shift across Faye’s face, gaze focused and fond, tentative in a way she never was as a child. “I want to be the person who you can talk to about all of it, the good and the bad. The things I can help with and the things that I can’t.” Because no matter how hard she’d try, there were battles Faye could only ever fight on her own. “I want to be able to get to know you again, and for you to get to know me, and Olivia too.” As much as she wants to, Millie can’t promise that she’s the same person Faye is looking for, that she’ll ever fully be that person again. But she wants to be, and she wants so badly for them to find a new solid ground. She doesn’t want Olivia to grow up with Faye as a stranger, she doesn’t want to spend anymore of her life feeling as if they’re strangers. “I want all of those things, I don’t think I ever stopped wanting them   I just didn’t have enough hope that it could ever be more than that.”

.

God, she was trying. Sometimes she felt like she was trying her best. She had seen Tyson King impaled in front of her eyes but that had felt no less painful than the way her heart had been torn apart time and time again. The Whittemore kids could get through any type of physical pain... even torture... but those old emotional wounds never seemed to heal or disappear. They wore them like a badge of honour for their participation in the war that had almost killed them all. She had been an angry young girl that was absent of the emotional tenacity to truly understand the darkness they were wading through but as an adult she looked back and could barely fathom the things that had happened. 

“That’s the thing, though, isn’t it?” she finally says, a resounding unanswered question among many, so many split and twisted paths in their life so far, “It never matters what we want, it matters what life has given us. It didn’t give us forever, it just gave us a few amazing years and a few shitty ones that changed us forever.”

It was her relationship with Millie that had ended but she still looked back and wondered when she had changed. There had been a time when she could read her like a book she always knew the ending too... she was meant to be predictable... someone Faye would always understand. Yet, her, Chase, Julian... there had been times in her life when she had felt that they were the people she knew the least in the world. Her best friend but at the same time, a group of strangers who she had little experience with. 

“I’ve tried my hardest to get past it all. I’ve tried to picture this life that we could all lead together and how we could be happy. I see Julian with those big blue eyes and a smile on his face... I see us on Christmas day crowding around a well lit tree with presents under. So many presents. And you have made us all the worlds worst party hats... Chase has his on and he has Olivia on his knee telling her about some crappy day at the ice rink where we all fell on our asses. And we’re all laughing. God, we’re all laughing because we’re so happy and we love each other so much... we don’t even remember Whittemore anymore because all the time we’ve spent away from it has given us a new life that has no space left for all that sadness anymore...” her face is animated, an event that has never been, that never will be... “Then when we put Olivia to bed I’m in one of those itchy Christmas jumpers that my Dad used to buy us ever year and I’m reading her a story. She’s going to ask me whether monsters will ever get her and I’ll say no. It will be the truth. Because nobody will ever hurt her the way they hurt me, the way they hurt all of us. Nothing bad will ever happen again, I’ll promise it. Cross my heart and hope to die. We’ll all sit in front of the fire and watch some shitty TV and it won’t even matter... Because we’re together.”

She pauses, maybe it should be the end. The thing about her wants were that they were fantasies. She was telling Millie all the things she had dreamed about but none of it was real.

“On Boxing Day then I’ll see Aiden and maybe I’ll even see Zach and they’ll ask me stupid questions that we all know the answer to and their life will be good. We’ll go the graveyard and we’ll leave a flower on Charles’ grave and maybe even Daisy’s, maybe even Trevor’s. We’ll see all the people who’s lives came to an end that night at Whittemore and they’ll be so happy. We’ll all think, boy, I’m glad it all worked out in the end. Olivia will be so happy, she’ll think she’s never met so many people in her entire life. She’ll think... my parents must be pretty popular if everyone likes the, and when she says her parents then me and Julian will just know in her heart of hearts that means us. And maybe we’ll come up with some insane idea about how to reconstitute our family, maybe in some messed up way we can have another child between the four of us and even if they’re a French then we’ll fucking love them like I always loved Julian. Me and him, we’ll sit at the side of the bath when we’re running the bubbles and he’ll look at me and he won’t be sad anymore. He’ll finally feel like he’s whole. We all will.”

She stops, a sudden standstill in her spiel. She knows it’s not true, that it will never happen. There is always a reason, always something that stands in their way.

“So don’t you get it, Millie? I can’t try and have anything I want. Not anymore, because if I let myself believe that we can make something good happen again because if it falls apart then my heart will be broken,” that’s the truth of it. The bottom line. “We all have Olivia. We all love Olivia. We always will. But I don’t think you’ve ever really understood that I can’t keep going through all this pain with nothing to show for it,” she crosses her arms, “And maybe that’s because I never really told you. I can’t lose those dreams. I can’t lose those fantasies. Because they’re mine, they’re just for me and it might be selfish but I can’t stand to let anything ruin them ever again. Not even a sobering shot at reality.”

[faybiandavis]

summaidens​:

Maybe he missed playing.

It had been Hell, don’t get the kid wrong, but when it came down to it, the game was the only reason Aiden ever had a life. If not for the insane situations Whittemore put its students through, he would’ve spent the entirety of his high school years sat behind a computer screen, making cynical comments to himself about every stupid person he came in contact with. That sounded nice and all, but even the most anti-social people must get bored of being alone all the time. He had his coworkers now, sure, the very few and far between he could even stand to hold half a conversation with, but it wasn’t the same. The tolerable weren’t close to, dare he say, friends, the way he had been with some of his schoolmates. Maybe it wasn’t the playing he missed. Maybe it was the people.

He’d never tell any of them that, except maybe Millie and certainly not Faye, but he couldn’t lie to himself. She was at the very top of his list of people he wished he could call. The two of them butted heads, but she was the one person who had always been there for him in some way. She was the one and only person in this entire world he truly trusted, and he hadn’t counted on how lonely his life would have been without her. He hadn’t counted on any of it ending until it did, then he was left to pick up the pieces, not even knowing what it was that was broken.

Aiden wasn’t expecting company — was he ever? — and opened the door half prepared to tell a delivery guy he didn’t order pizza. He wasn’t expecting Faybian Davis to be standing there, obvious by the look on his face. With his never ending sarcasm and wit, it was rare he was at a loss or words, but for a moment, nothing came out. He just stared. Then… the smallest of smiles.

“Well, would ya have a look at what the cat dragged in.”

.

The joke falls flat. Maybe she should of laughed or at least smiled, a witty comment on the end of a fierce tongue. She didn’t feel very fierce right then. Although it hadn’t been so long ago that they had stood side by side and laughed about all the things that their lives were now, how time had played so many tricks on them and created a softness in their hearts that had never existed before. The two of them were so different and yet he was the only person who still felt the same.

“You know,” she says finally, her teeth digging into her bottom lip which is painted red as she wraps her arms around her body. It is not cold but she feels so small in the grand scheme of things; she hates that feeling, the lack of control. “A part of me still expects to see that stubborn blonde haired boy that considered extorting me for your help to save the school...” she breathes, a sad expression that should of been a smile but simply wasn’t.

There is something so quiet about the space inside her head, the life she has built for herself that is nothing like who she used to be. A part of her that even misses Zach and his desperate heavy sadness... the burdens that she carried. Now her life is safe, it holds her up in ways that nothing else ever has. She watches Aiden on the television and thinks about a life where they were something else and then about a life where they were the best of friends; so many narratives that come face to face every day. So much lost and nothing ever gained. All too be thrown in the air again like confetti.

She moves towards him and her arms drop down by her sides as she gulps an unsteady breath because sometimes it feels that all she touches disintegrates, that everything she loves is destined to belong to someone else’s story. She had never craved love or admiration, she had spent her entire life fiercely loyal in every sense... even when she had felt that she was trying her hardest not to be.

She only remembers one other instance in their entire lives when she had behaved this way (at least in this universe). She reaches out and her fingers gently wrap around his wrists as she comes to hold them, her breath uneven, “Just put your arms around me, please.”

[faybiandavis]

its-millie-hastings​:

.

There had been a time when Millie genuinely believed that if they all worked together, they’d make it out of it okay. They had been seventeen, thrown into a world that didn’t make any sense and seemed to be going so horribly wrong, and yet they’d all made it out of a burning building alive and mostly intact. For a brief time, it had felt like they’d won. And although she’s not as optimistic as she was then, although she knows that there’s only so much that they can do to keep things from spiraling once again, she wouldn’t be herself if she didn’t attempt to fix things. It might be foolish, but it was the way she’d always been, and the young mother doubts that it will change.

Faye’s words are clearly an attempt at ending the conversation, and Millie gives a short nod and for a moment intends to leave it at that. Except from the way that Faye is acting she has a feeling she won’tbe seeing her tonight, and there is something she has to say that feels time sensitive. “Faye, before you go,” she starts, and it appears as if the rest of London has sworn off the food tucked away in their current aisle, a blessing in disguise. “I just wanted to say that I understand if things don’t change for us. Just because we’re able to talk again, doesn’t meanwell, I know that it doesn’t really change all that much.” Not for them, not with everything that has happened. Faye’s forgiveness is a far off thought, something that she has come to terms with likely never achieving. As much as she wishes that the pact would allow the two of them to be close again, to share their lives again, even she’s not so optimistic to believe that will be the case. Millie regrets what led to this chasm between them, to the hurt that she caused someone she loved with so much of her heart, but if Whittemore has taught her anything, it is that regret can only count for so much.

.

It’s not really a shock when the words leave the other brunettes lips but it still feels somewhat wounding, the sentiment all wrong. She stops and her basket is limp in her hand, she listens to the message that’s being delivered to her like a hand written apology in a pretty stamped envelope. Millie had spent her entire life being well meaning and there was a time that they had understood one another more deeply than anyone. Faye had been shocked by Millie’s actions because she hadn’t known that she was capable of harbouring a secret like that but together they had gone on a journey like no other, a knife wound and betrayal left far behind.

It was wounding to her... not the prospect of a life without each other, not even staring at a stranger with the face of a best friend but the depth of misunderstanding. It had never been about forgiveness, it had never been about time... it was meant to heal all wounds but it would never quite heal all the terrible things that they had done to one another. Faye had forgiven, her bitter cold heart warmed by the million kindnesses granted by times gone by and lives that she had lived between but she could never, ever forget.

“I want to talk to the person that understands me above anyone, I want to talk to my best friend who I have loved so viciously through this life and the next,” she says, the carrots seeming like a sobering part snack now. The rawness, the realness, not once in her life had she been able to hold back the ferocity of words that she meant but they were not ferocious, they were just honest and desperately sad. “That’s the person I wanted to talk to his past year and every day of all the years before, I wanted to tell her that everything went to shit. I wanted to tell her that I have to watch the man that I have loved forever and a day marry someone else... that he has a child and God, she’s the most beautiful little being that I’ve ever seen. I wanted to tell my best friend all the things that have been good and bad, all the things that I’ve had to live through...” she presses her lips together, “I have forgiven. I’ve even tried to forget some parts. But I can’t find my best friend anymore. I don’t think she’s ever coming back.”

[faybiandavis]

its-millie-hastings​:

.

To any person passing them by, it probably looked like any other conversation. Perhaps the awkwardness of bumping into an acquaintance or a coworker, the conversation a bit stilted. There was so much history between them, and yet when it came down to it, the conversation was one that could have belonged to anyone. The brunette nods, tucking the package into the small shopping basket that is hooked into the crook of her elbow. It only has a few items inside, and although the woman is still petite, the weight of it is nothing compared to the carseat she has been carrying around for the past year or so. 

“I’m just picking up some things for tonight,” she explains, because although it isn’t what she really wants to be talking about, there’s no way that she’s approaching that particular conversation until they’re somewhere a bit more private. Faye deserves that much, regardless of how it will end up going. “I don’t know who will end up showing, but I thought, I don’t know. Might as well.” Would Faye show up? Was she getting in a quick shop before preparing herself for conversations that would surely be on the same comfort level as pulling teeth, or was she picking up food in preparation of locking herself in her flat for the next several months?  

.

Tonight? There it went, another Whittemore meeting as if they were still kids that were running around like headless chickens. Maybe they were. Maybe they had always been. It didn’t matter how many times things didn’t work out, it didn’t matter how much they should have known better because time and time again they would try again. It was meant to be faith, trust even but she was pretty sure by now that it was just stupidity on their behalf. She would of spurted off, rolled her eyes or even scoffed just a few years ago but now she just ignored it completely. She would be absent either way.

“Frozen carrots... not the party food I’d go for,” she clears her throat eventually. She refuses to lie but she’s not going to come out and tell the truth about any of her intentions either; she will see Chase, her dare strongly suggests it and who is she to say no? Telling Millie that she wants to avoid them all will only be a contradiction and she’ll be damned if she goes back on her word like the rest of them. The pact is broken by chance but not by her, she didn’t decide it and she still wants her choice... she needs some power, control. “Well, I’ve got more organic stuff to judge and pick out so I guess I’ll see you around,” she rocks her basket.

[faybiandavis]

.

When they had made the pact all those years ago, Faye had been glad. The pain of losing those she had come to love and care about forever was a small price to pay if they would be spared from the suffering that seemed to occur whenever they were brought together. They all attracted one another, Faye had thought many years ago that she was some great dark force but her eyes had been pinned open against her will to the truth; everyone was dark in the end. It had been cruel. She felt back then that her innocence was torn out and left in tatters in the ground but again and again she had been ripped open, torn asunder... she was wounded in a way she hadn’t yet realised existed. She had never been the curse, no one human could contribute so much and yet together Whittemore had been a tornado that was able to bring out the very worst part of the people who were full of good. It had crushed them all under the weight of destiny and Faye had thought, on that final day as they left Tyson King bleeding and impaled... God, it’s finally over. I’m finally done bleeding.

“I was just picking some shopping up,” she responds simply, a civil tone. It’s a lifetime where they have little to share, little to say. She didn’t imagine (although deep down she suspected) they would be brought back together. It was an inevitable situation, really, their paths intertwined at every intersection in their lives. She looks at Millie and she wonders what happened to that little girl she once knew... she wonders if she thinks the same when she looks in her eyes. She doesn’t ask all the questions an old friend should, she doesn’t say much at all, “Go for it. I wasn’t that into it anyway.”

The dares were back in London, and although that meant the vow the Whittemore kids (they weren’t children anymore, of course, but the name was a difficult one to move past) had taken was no longer in place, things hadn’t gotten any less complicated. There were small pockets of joy, like being able to have dinner as a family with Chase and Olivia for the first time ever, the little grin that her daughter wore every time she was able to reach out and grab her parents’ hands at the same time. Seeing Aiden’s car parked across the street, not just idling, but parked as he made his way towards her door. Glimpses of so many of the people she cared about, people she had missed so much and didn’t necessarily have to miss any longer. But with it came the knowledge that none of them were truly safe, her tiny daughter included, and that anxiety was crawling up her throat even as she marched her way through the grocery store trying to prepare for the meeting Justin had arranged for later that night. What store bought snack said good to see you again, now how do we stop a potential catastrophe while dealing with our own individual and collective trauma? 

The mothering instinct took over as she reached for an organic vegetable platter, lips pursed as she simultaneously made a note to call her father and remind him that Olivia was having a bit of a fussy phase at bedtime. As the brunette looks up to reach for another package, one in the back that looks a bit more promising, she spots a familiar face, one that brings about just as much confusion and complicated feelings as the meeting that’s only a few hours away. They could talk to each other now, had done so in a coffee shop with years of good and bad memories alike spread out between them, and yet the words were so hard to come by. “Faye,” Millie breathes out, gaze shifting quickly over the woman’s face. She’d gone over what she wanted to say perhaps a hundred times, but now that the moment is here, they don’t feel quite right. “I’m sorry, do you  do you need in here?” 

[faybiandavis]

@summaiden​

Did she want to play again? There was a part of her that always had wanted to. When dare had been a trivial game, when she had written blog posts with journalist flair about the secrets of her peers it had all been whimsical. There had been no life or death, there had been a rumour about a young girl Faye had never really cared about at all throwing herself off the roof of the school they attended. She had been numb and all consumed by the darkness of her own pain and Hazel Marks had always been an after thought.

In all the bloody gore and drama, she had taken a backseat but the years had made things harder and they had taken their toll. Sometimes she thought that Hazel had gotten out easy... she’d managed to fly off that roof just in time to not see the worst of it all. She’d made it out of a never ending cycle of chaos that they brought upon themselves time and time again. The game probably felt harmless now but it had a track record of turning the world on its head. In recent years she had began to wonder if that was because of the nature of the game or the nature of the people she had known...

The pact was broken, a few conversations sparing much detail about what they all knew was coming. This was the darkness and it was marked with a piece of paper with a message just for her. Someone was playing games and who was she to refuse? She had never been a game keeper, she had never had the power to stop it at all... each person she had loved a traitor just like the last.

She had nobody. Well... maybe she had one person. She pressed the buzzer.

[faybiandavis]

[faybiandavis]

[faybiandavis]

HOW TO SAY GOODBYE

Say it like an amputee, each letter a prosthetic limb. Say it because sometimes two just aren’t enough; sometimes you need an entire bouquet of hands to carry all the love, say it because the love always slips through your thousand fingers anyway, like sand, like floss, like water, like a song. Say goodness. Say grace. Say thank you for holding my hair. Thank you for turning my sick, sleeping body on its side. You held me when I couldn’t stay upright in the storm of myself. Say sorry for the mess. Say goldenrod. Say goose-feather. Say it with all eight muscles of the tongue, as if their leaving was a soft language that didn’t bite back. Say loving you has been the greatest kindness. Say I’ve carried your salt in my wounds. Cradled your heart in my gullet like a prayer, a sacred thing I was too afraid to want or release; say I release you. I deliver you now into the arms of the one who will love you best. Say beauty. Say bless. Say their name, one perfect time while it still belongs to you. Say it even when they refuse to say yours, your name shattering on the hardwood floor of their rejection, their name in your mouth like glass. Names of blood and names of fire. Names that burn when swallowed. Say it with your last breath. With your mouth of insatiable fury. Hungry as the sea, their name a kind of drowning.

[faybiandavis]

[faybiandavis]

chasingmyers‌:

His own hands came to rest on her waist. Maybe his grasp would be strong enough to keep them grounded in this moment, this kiss hidden in the calm before the storm. When she pulled back, his grip only tightened, pulling her frame closer to his. Maybe a different Chase– a younger, lighter, version of himself–would have cracked a joke. He would have deflected and distracted and prayed to God that she couldn’t see the emotions swimming in his eyes. But this version simply agreed, “You could.” 

She didn’t have to disappear again. It wasn’t solely Faye’s responsibility to face the consequences of their collective choices. He could help lift the weight of the next series of decisions, if only she’d let him. “We could figure it out.” 

Even after everything, that look in his eyes made her stomach swirl with butterflies. Nobody in the world could make Faye feel the way that Chase did and she thought that was a pretty good thing, because at least this way she knew it was worth holding onto so painstakingly for all those years when they hadn’t stood a chance. “Maybe,” she told him, although they both probably knew that she would do the figuring out on her own as she always did, she couldn’t seem to allow anyone else to be in on her plans because that would bring them down with her. Despite all the good she did, she still felt that she was a part of the darkness and he was part of the bright and wonderful world, a part of her that was always positive and beautiful, a part that was always home. 

“You haven’t even drank your hot chocolate,” she prompted, a wry smile on her lips to cover up the avalanche of emotions that she wasn’t quite ready for. It was sad to live so constantly attached to the idea that you would only disappoint the person that you loved the most but she didn’t know how not to. She didn’t know how not to leave. How not to do what was necessary even when it was painful. “I broke into your house and made it in your third favourite mug especially for you. I was very considerate and you’ve just abandoned it on the wayside to go cold.”

[faybiandavis]

jxlian‌:

“Well, I don’t love it,” he responded, irritated. Soon, he was up. Aggravation clear. Was this the new him or the old him? Nobody would ever know. "You want to know about real things, Faye?”

He pushed up, he stood on his own two feet. All the pathetic desperation in his face disappeared, he looked at her distastefully and found that he was angry. He was angry with her. He had only been angry at her one other time in their lives, and for all the pain and misery they had put each other through, he was frustrated now. He knew it wasn’t perfect. He didn’t want perfect, he didn’t even want fair, he just wanted something to call his own. Something that hadn’t been manufactured between the three people that had been most important in his life that he had never got a say in.

“You don’t get it, you don’t want to admit it. Our lives would of been better not all tangled up. If it was just me and Millie, you and Chase, not all of the rest. You can’t admit it because you’re always right. You don’t even know how to be wrong anymore.”

He looked at her. She was all dark. So was he. They had always found their way back to each other in their darkest moments and there was a reason for that, he knew it. “Real things, Faye,” he told her bitterly, the words sliding off his tongue. This one was meant to hurt. This one was meant to leave behind a scar – not that either of them needed another. “Real things like how we never really protected each other. We were just fucking stupid. We were just kids who hid away and smoked cigarettes and pretended neither of us knew the truth that we were broken. All you did was make the time between my last beating and my next a little bit more pleasant. That’s real. That’s honest. You didn’t protect me and I didn’t protect you, because if either of us had been doing a decent job then we wouldn’t be so fucked up.”

He stopped, shoulders raised only a small amount. Bitter resignation. “Look at us now,” he almost laughed, “You must be so proud. Stand up citizens. We obviously fixed each other, right, Davis?” Prompting. He wanted her to feel how he did. He wanted her to realise that they were alone, unnecessary parts, that they were the replaceable parts in their own stories now. 

“So sorry for not being grateful for what’s real. You see, reality’s never done much for me.”

 "Well done,” she was on her feet too, she was staring right at him and for the first time she was seeing some trace of Julian Miller that had been amiss for far too long. Finally, she could be angry too, because he was standing there and telling her a bunch of things that she had known for years and what was worse than that... -- he would get to leave.

Her pride stung desperately but she tried to get through to him, although the blood in her veins boiled, “It might surprise you but a few cigarettes and deep conversations didn’t cure me either,” she shot back. “Nothing gave me back my pride, my dignity, my virginity."

She scoffed. “Sometimes you don’t even get the bare minimum and you have to live with that,” she was telling him the truth. He was talking so much about choices but she could barely remember even one that she had made knowing the consequence. Choice had been taken away from her far both the involvement of Whittemore and time travel and he had no idea that now he was talking about this and taking away hers too, “Sometimes better, sometimes pleasant is all you get and that has to be enough. This has to be enough because, Julian, there is no more.”

She moved one hand to brush hair out of her face, the pale light of the night outside cascading against her pale skin and showing the bags under her eyes. She knew what she knew and he thought what he thought and perhaps all at the same time they were both wrong and both completely right. “I would give anything to take away all the things that hurt you, all the things that you think you needed protection from but I can’t. And that’s the truth, Julian. Love it, hate it, tolerate it. This is our life. We’ve had others and they weren’t much better either. This reality is the one I would choose because at least in this one, those who fought the hardest for us for all these years still got a chance to live.”

She moved and grabbed her bag, throwing it over her shoulder as she moved to the hotel door and opened it, light from the hallway spilling in and glimmering off of empty bottles that littered the surfaces around them, “I hope you understand one day, that I never got a choice in any of this either, but I’m not angry at the world - I’m angry at you. Because you’re just like your Father. A coward, hiding behind injustice as an excuse.”

[faybiandavis]

chasingmyers‌:

She may have been able to stop him from speaking, but she wasn’t able to stop him from thinking. He couldn’t just sit back and accept their fate without at least trying. But maybe if he wasn’t too afraid to be honest with himself, he could admit what he already knew. Faye and Julian always were so close– and if Faye couldn’t get through to him, there really was no hope. No amount of begging could undo what needed to be done. 

Chase let out a noise, somewhere between a laugh and a broken sob. How else is someone supposed to react to something like this? The answer is they’re not supposed to react in any particular way because something like this isn’t supposed to exist. “What are you going to do?” he asked. He wasn’t so much asking for the gruesome details, more so wondering what came after. Where was she planning on going? Was this a goodbye for one or two? 

"Nothing, yet,” she knew that wasn’t what he was asking but it was all she could say because truth be told, even Faye wasn’t sure what was ahead. Their twisted rocky road had led so many places and she was about to go from outcast to fugitive in coming years, which was why she knew she had to plan. She had to make sure she could get away with whatever she did, that nobody truly knew the details. 

She let out a gentle shush, her hand on his cheek, she leaned in and gently pressed her lips to his. A meaningful kiss. She never knew when it would be the last but if nothing else, it reassured her, they were all still here. They still had each other. She pulled away, “I have a lot to figure out, but maybe for a little while, just for the interlude, maybe I can stay.”

[faybiandavis]

chasingmyers‌:

“He can’t,” Chase shook his head. “He has to know he can’t. We’ve tried. All he’s going to do is–” His eyes scanned the crayon drawings on his fridge as the reality of the situation crashed over him. They had already lost so much. They couldn’t lose her. There was no guarantee that his plan would work. It was safer to bet it wouldn’t. All it would do is lead to different versions of the same outcome. In all variations of their lives, they lose. Olivia’s the one thing they got right.

“Let me talk to him,” he tried, grabbing her hand as it fell and squeezing it in his own. “Maybe I could get through to him, you know? Give him a chance to change his mind before you have to…” The words caught in his throat. Just moments before he had called her out for asking questions she already knew the answer to. Now here he was, making suggestions he already knew wouldn’t work. The irony. 

"Don’t,” she spoke, raising her free hand to press against his lips before he could finish a sentence that already knew had no written ending. They looked at each other, her hand untangling from his to reach forwards and grab the material of his shirt around his waist, “You know I would of thought of it already.”

She looked down, her forehead almost rested against her chest, her words quieter than before, “I gave it time to see, I visited him a lot, but every time it’s just worse, he can’t see clearly,” she explained, fighting away images of the other boy she had so loved, all blue eyes and sarcasm, now nothing but a pathetic fallacy of things that came before. “I’ll wait for a while, if you want to say good bye. But there’s not much to say good bye to.”

[faybiandavis]

millie-hastings‌:

Images of two brunette girls, fingers interlaced, paint stains on overalls came to mind at Faye’s words. A childhood filled with bright colors and carefree laughter, skinned knees with carefully applied love heart bandaids. There had been a time where Faye had been the more optimistic one, the little girl who could make anyone’s day brighter, no matter what was happening. There had been a wall painted with beautiful flowers and brilliant colors, its artist just as blinding in the sunshine. Even after, after the wall was painted black and harsh words were thrown, Faye had still shone. It was just a different kind of light behind her now, a light that Millie observed as she quietly processed the other woman’s words.

“I’m happy that it saved you. I’m happy that you were one of the few of us who were able to take everything, all of the trauma and the nightmares, and turn it into a motivator. That you didn’t let it stop you,” she replied quietly, voice firm. Her eyes met Faye’s and this moment almost made her next words less painful, almost kept her watery eyes from spilling over. “But Faye, both of you are still apart of her. Julian  when he was still Julian, Liv adored him. She loved him just as much as I did. She listens to the stories that Chase and I tell her, and she knows. She knows that you’re family. She knows how strong you are, how much you’ve held us all together.” Her words were genuine, the slightest bit of desperation in her voice as they fell from her lips. There was no denying that there was darkness in Faye and Julian, in all of them, but Millie had raised her daughter to see the light. There would never be a timeline, a universe, where Millie’s daughter didn’t know how much she cared for the people she’d once shared such happiness with.

“She’s going to  she’s going to need to know that she has people still who love her and want the best for her.” The tears spilled over, a familiar ache in her chest as a sharp pain bloomed in her forehead. One shaky hand instinctively rose to her temple, staying there for a fraction of a second before dropping back to her side. “If I can’t be here with her, I  I at least know that she will be okay with those who will be.” 

She listened to them words and knew that they were true, every last one. They had all been a part of Olivia’s life but still she was so glad that the little girl would never have to live through the misery any of them had. She had seen only the best of them and she hoped that she would live to never see the worst because there were parts of all four of them that a child should never have to see. 

“Well, you’ll know,” the subtlest smile slid onto her chapped lips, the tiredness still clear but some small amount of light on her face, “that no matter what, she’ll always have someone still here looking out for her. She was born into chaos, she’s the only good thing any of us will remember,” but she didn’t just mean the four of them, she meant all of them. They had all gone on to live rather strange lives, always knowing that they had things to maintain, but her, she was the only pure thing that was born from the mistakes of those damn Whittemore kids.

She stepped away from the photograph that she now left abandoned on the side, looking at Millie with both sadness and relief about all the things that had come to pass. “I hope that you found some small amount of peace in the life you’ve lived. I did.”

[faybiandavis]

chasingmyers‌:

He listened as she spoke, following along as she retraced her steps over the course of the past few months. His heart yearned for the life they never managed to find– the one where things were simple and fair and good. In that life he wouldn’t be standing here, listening to Faye talk about ending this Julian’s life so candidly. Maybe in that timeline, he’d feel surprised. He’d say that she couldn’t do it– that this was Julian they were talking about. That she was right and that the consequences of this decision would haunt them for the rest of their lives. Maybe then he could insist that there had to be some other way. 

But as she spoke, he could tell she already made the mistake of believing that once. If there was any other way, Faye would have found it. 

“What is it he’s wanting to do?” he asked, but there was another question lying beneath the surface. What could Julian possibly do that was so bad, so unforgivable, that Faye felt that this was the only way to stop it? 

“Turn back time.” She let the words fall out unfollowed by everything else, a taste of irony left behind in her mouth because, didn’t they all? It was twisted that it was that very thing that had gotten them into such a big mess.

“We all want that but it doesn’t work like that and if we get thrown through one more time loop, relive Charles’ dinner one more time, watch different friends die, all we’ll do is end back here wanting to change things again,” she told Chase, her voice quiet but sure. “He won’t stop, he can’t stop, it’s in his blood,” she told him bitterly, reflecting on the fact that perhaps it was true that every French was born to go absolutely bonkers in the end, whether she liked to admit it or not. 

She moved forwards and she looked into Chase’s eyes, resting the palm of her hand on his cheek, “He wants what we stole from him, the chance to live his life for himself,” she tilted her head to the side, knowing now that he would finally begin to understand what she meant, “For it to be undecided, open, for him and Millie to have everything they wanted. And for you and me to have that too, but there’s just one thing that time gave and never took away,” she dropped her hand, “And he won’t take her either.”