Musical One-Shots and Headcanons! (REQUESTS OPEN!)

Philidosia - Never Made A Sound (Unwind AU)

A/N: Ellie! This is a one-shot I came up with by virtue of being a bookworm. For those of you who haven't read Unwind, it's basically a dystopia where unwanted teenagers (13-18) can be "unwound," or have all their body parts donated to other people. Some "kick-AWOL," or run away, to avoid this fate. A "clapper" is someone who had their blood replaced with a nitroglycerin compound. They blow themselves up by clapping their hands. I probably messed up the world-building by A LOT because I haven't read the entire thing...oops...

Also, this is a pretty angsty one, so...CW for major character death.

Philip POV

"We tried to warn you not to be with Theo like that, but you didn't listen. As a result, we've signed the unwind order," Pa said a month ago.

"How could you?" I shouted. "Send me to my own death? How?"

Ma was silently standing by and shaking intensely. The order is irreversible, and she didn't sign it.

"You'll still be alive, son," he feebly attempted to reassure me. Don't call me "son" when you've made this choice. "Just in a divided state."

And so I kicked-AWOL with Theo, whose father had also taken out an unwind order for her. Same reason. "You may not associate with that Hamilton boy. That was my one piece of advice, and you defied it. I've taken out an unwind order and signed it," she had told me, her voice whiny and high-pitched. She pulled out her yellow copy of the unwind order, which would remain with her until it was carried out. The date was set for a few weeks from then. She burst into tears. "I can't."

"Shh, shh...There's always the option of running away."

"Philip, we're fourteen. I doubt we can make it four more years." She shouted something indistinct. "Why would they do this?"

"I don't know. But this is how I see it. Either we take our own chances at living a little longer, or we give up and accept having no chance at all. What do you choose?"

At this, she was convinced.

We've made it this far, given that we have no clue where the safe houses are or anything else--all we can do is try to flee as far as we can. Every day is just a struggle to not make a wrong turn. Although we've made it past both the dates we'd have been unwound on, we aren't out of the woods just yet. The Juvey-cops set to catch those who kicked-AWOL are still after us, will still be after us until we're eighteen.

Tonight, she stands watch from on top of a tree while I sleep. Night is blanker than usual. My dreams are black where color once was. Being on the run makes you laconic and broken and distrustful; it's how you survive. By this point, I'm too laconic for poems anymore.

I wake up to a gunshot. "Huh?" I whisper. I blink, but it's pitch-black and I see nothing. Then, it's there. Two large, looming shadows pull a smaller one down a tree.

It's Theo.

I'm too shocked to do anything, but I see her motioning for me to run and waving at me as she's carried away. In a daze, I flee. I go as far as I can and hope I don't run into more trouble.

I stop at a field when my legs give out. I think and think. We've both passed our dates, so Theo will probably stay at a harvest camp, but only for a very short time.

This thought is taking over.

I feel something sharp rising in me, and I barely register myself letting out an agonizing scream. Everything seems to be happening in the third person: the way I sob and shout "No!" and wonder if I could have done something other than run and tear the grass up in fistfuls. It's unbearable.

I'm burning inside.

Burning.

...

I'm standing in the same forest we were in before. She wouldn't want this, I try to convince myself. She'd want me to continue and make it for us both.

The other part of me: She can't want anything anymore. Theo is no more. All of her remains, but the little things that made her who she was are gone. Just get it over with. Besides, you're clapping in a forest with nobody around. The blaze will take no one but yourself, and no one will hear.

I count to seven, then clap. I feel myself being lit on fire from the inside, flying up, flying apart in every direction. And there is nothing anymore except stillness and silence.

...

"Clappers again?" Eliza asked her husband from the kitchen. "What did they blow up this time?"

"You should see this," he called. "Just one of them. He blew up in a forest--an empty forest, mind you, so he must have thought no one else would be harmed. Instead, he caused a forest fire--wait a second, is that--?" The unthinkable suddenly occurred to him.

She stood in front of the screen, and she nodded sadly.

"What have you done?" she shouted. She seemed to be a broken record, and that was all she could say for an hour before falling silent.

...

A few days later, someone knocked on the door.

"I saw what happened on the news. We shouldn't have done this. We shouldn't have done this. She was all the light I had left."

"How do you tell your children that it was their brother who clapped? How do you explain something you yourself aren't ready for? You never think anything like this could happen until it does. Understandably, my wife hasn't spoken in days. How do you live with this shadow looming over you?"

That question was one nobody could answer. And when the guilt swallows you up and the regret forever following after, you could only hope to rewind things, but this is the reality--you can't go back and stop everything from happening, just like with Humphrey Dunfee: "All the king's horses and all the king's men couldn't put Humphrey together again." Nothing will be the same, and now they carry this calamity with them.