They'd only gone to bed an hour or two before, after the rubes had drifted back to town, laughing and satisfied, and the lights had flickered out one by one. Lydia had fallen asleep almost immediately, a skill that had escaped her all her life but one she'd picked up recently as her body grasped for some sort of relief, however sporadic.

( She wasn't sure how long after Samuel followed, but he was asleep when she jerked awake, an instinct pulling her from the depths of dreamless slumber that was stronger than her tired body. )

"Say that one more time, love. You’re a what ( Read more... )

"Love is the difficult realization that something other than oneself is real." ~ Iris Murdoch

She was going to die.

This wasn't exactly news, given it had happened once already, but the follow up was one she hadn't really considered, even though she'd seen proof of it in her trailer that night she didn't like to dwell on.

He wasn't.

( The two sentences rolled around in her head as she stood in the kitchen mixing up batter for muffins because she couldn't stand to just sit staring out the window at the cold winter waves beating on the empty shoreline anymore. )

Maybe I know somewhere deep in ( Read more... )

A sign hangs crookedly off a building in the wasteland stretched out below. She shouldn't be here, perched on the balcony's edge like this. It's possible patrols still come through the ruined city, looking for people just like them. She's tucked up close to the crumbling brick, though, pressed in a nook between wall and parapet, and there isn't ( Read more... )

The cave floor was cold and hard, but she barely felt it. She’d shifted last night, mostly to stop the wracking sobs when she couldn’t take any more of them shaking her body. Exhaustion still weighed her limbs down from how far she’d run, and for the moment she had no idea where she was. Austria, perhaps. Maybe Switzerland, if she’d shifted ( Read more... )

( She still had a reflection. )

I dreamed a dream in time gone by
When hope was high and life worth living
I dreamed that love would never die
I dreamed that God would be forgiving

Then I was young and unafraid
And dreams were made and used and wasted
There was no ransom to be paid
No song unsung, no wine untasted

Dearest Amanda,

( His name was Danny. )

[ooc: Noah Bennet is im_exhibita and is used with permission.]

Don't know much about your life.
Don't know much about your world, but
Don't want to be alone tonight,
On this planet they call earth.

You don't know about my past, and
I don't have a future figured out.
And maybe this is going too fast.
And maybe it's not meant to last

( Lydia wasn't sure what to make of the world she'd found herself in. )

Tonight the sunset means so much
The one thing that you know you'll never touch
Like the feeling, the real thing
I reach out for that sweet dream

But somehow the darkness wakes me up
I've felt this emptiness before
But all the times that I've been broken
I still run right back for more

( When it started, Lydia couldn't say. More than a decade of protecting her heart, of keeping out even those she knew meant her no harm, and one day she looked up and realized it wasn't hers anymore. )