[CENTER][img]https://fontmeme.com/permalink/210117/7423788cb403d4c94cda8db158b092fa.png[/img][/CENTER] [indent][indent][indent][color=gray][sub][right][color=#dc143c][b]Location:[/b][/color] Westwood, Indiana, U.S.A[/right][/sub][/color] [hr] Andrew sat alone in the dark. It was quiet. Quiet, save for that high-pitched ringing in the back of his head and the blood pounding in his ears. There was nowhere else in the house he could hear himself think. Nowhere else he could go to work through the pain he felt in his chest. The argument kept playing in his head over and over. He kept wondering if he could've said that differently, or interrupted there, or if he'd known just a little bit more...Could it have ended differently? Light entered the room as the cellar door creaked open. He pulled his knees up to his chest and held his breath, waiting. A figure descended down the stairs with the thudding of heavy boots. They shut the door behind them. Andrew waited for the yelling to start again- -And then Anna pulled the chain on the cellar's only lightbulb, washing the space in a dull glow. "Knew you'd be down here." She rasped, seating herself on the last two steps across from him. Anna was ten years his elder, with the same mess of black hair and eyes tinged with mischief. She was the second oldest after Jess, and had come back to Westwood for Christmas. Anna was the only one that had come back. She set two shot glasses against one of the stairs and pulled a bottle off a nearby shelf, and began pouring two drinks. [color=dc143c]"You heard dad?"[/color] He sniffled, wiping the snot and tears from his face with the back of his sleeve. "Whole damn neighborhood could hear him," she snorted. "Old man whipped out the King James n' started shouting about hellfire n' brimstone. Its been...Jesus, its had'ta been ages since I last heard him quote the word at one'a us. Was the first night I brought a girl home, I think. So, how'd you fuck up?" Andrew just shook his head. He let the conversation play through his mind like a track set on repeat. If he'd just been a little smarter, a little better with words, a little more insistent...He didn't answer her question. The two sat in silence for a moment, staring at the same bit of dirt on the ground between them. "Here." She leaned forward suddenly, pressing a glass into his hand. "To loosen the tongue." He just looked at it. Dark liquid swirled in the glass. [color=dc143c]"I'm not old enough to-"[/color] "-Do it." She insisted, taking a shot of her own. "Its fine, I promise. You'll feel better." It was the worst thing he'd tasted in living memory. It was all Andrew could do not to let it come sputtering back out. Anna's giggling at him was the only thing that let him force it back down. [color=dc143c]"Do you give this stuff to your students, too?!"[/color] She shook her head. "Its only for people I give a shit about." She paused, looking at him. Looking [i]into[/i] him. "And I give a shit about you. So tell me what's goin' on, Andy." Then the flood gates opened, and everything he'd kept dammed up inside came spilling out. [color=dc143c]"Ray kept bugging me to let him come over. Said we'd been hanging out too long for him to have never met my family. I told him it was a bad idea. Told him what they were like, but he's a stubborn idiot and he wouldn't give it up. We weren't even [i]doing[/i] anything when dad came in."[/color] Anna nodded, slowly. Her voice was a soft rasp. "Yeah. I heard what he called you." [color=dc143c]"Why?"[/color] The tears flowed freely down his cheeks. [color=dc143c]"Why's he hate me?"[/color] His older sister sighed, a hand moving to rub her forehead. She couldn't look at him; she looked so uncomfortable he thought, for a moment, she might just get up and leave. People were never something she was good at. Instead, she whispered: "I don't think he hates you." Andrew just looked up at her, confused. Confused and hurt. "I think..." She sighed. "I think in his own, fucked up way, he cares. He just doesn't-" [color=dc143c]"How could you say that?!"[/color] "-He just doesn't understand and I don't think he ever will." Anna looked back at her brother, her own eyes going misty despite herself. "He's an old man, Andy. He grew up in a different kinda place in a different kinda time, and the world's changed. It changed around him and he refused to change with it." She pushed herself off the stairs and moved over to where Andrew was sitting against the wall. She fell down beside him, wrapping an arm around his shoulders. He was a total mess, now. Anything he tried to say just came out as more tears. "I know." She muttered to him. "I know it sucks. But you can't fix everything, Andy. You gotta learn to accept that sometimes- sometimes things just are a certain way n' you've gotta change around 'em. Adapt. That's how you survive." The rest of the conversation began to blur, like he was looking at the memory through a broken mirror. Anna was explaining to him that she and her husband were moving up to Michigan; he'd gotten a big promotion and this was their chance to get a real, honest-to-God place. She was going to leave town, and she was offering to let Andrew go with them. He wasn't going to take it. He was going to explain how he couldn't leave the others behind. He couldn't leave Lucy or Karen or even Will in a place like this; he had to protect them. It was all a blur. . . . A blur of excuses, of half-truths. . . . Of words he didn't really mean. . . . Andrew looked up, and he saw someone else standing at the top of the stairs. Someone that hadn't been there when it happened. It was a man. He came stumbling down the stairs, a trail of blood left behind him. It was a man Graves recognized: a man with a hole plunged through his chest. [color=gray][sub][right][color=#dc143c][b]Location:[/b][/color] The Innhouse, The City-State of Thorinn, Aetheria[/right][/sub][/color] [hr] And Graves woke up, screaming. [/indent][/indent][/indent]