Beautiful Secrets (Cranksepticeye Fanfiction)

~2.12~ Silver Lining

I looked at my cell. It was broken.
The time still read 11:59.
But I knew it was well after midnight, because the fireworks finale had started, even though it was raining. The Battle of Honey Hill was over for another year.
I lay in the middle of the muddy field, letting the rain wash over me. As I watched the small-time fireworks attempt to explode in the still drizzling night sky, everything was cloudy. My mind just couldn't focus. I had fallen, hit my head and a few other places, too. My stomach, my hip, my whole left side ached. Anna was going to kill me when I came home, banged up like this.
All I remembered was, one second I was holding onto that stupid angel statue, and the next second I was lying flat on my back in the mud, here. I thought a piece of that statue broke off when I was trying to climb to the top of the crypt, but I wasn't really sure. Mark must have carried me out here after I knocked myself out like an idiot. Aside from that, it was like my mind had been wiped clean.
I guess that's why I didn't understand why Marian, Gramma, and Aunt Del were huddled near the crypt, crying. Nothing could have prepared me for what I saw when I finally stumbled over there.
Macon Ravenwood. Dead.
Maybe he had always been dead, I don't know, but now he was gone. I knew that much. Jack threw himself onto his body, the rain drenching both of them.
Macon, wet from the raindrops for the first time.

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The next morning, I pieced together a few things about the night of Jack's birthday. Macon was the only casualty. Apparently, Hunting had overpowered him after I lost consciousness. Gramma explained that feeding on dreams was much less substantial then feeding on blood. I guess he had never really stood a chance against Hunting. Still, it hadn't stopped him from trying.
Macon always said he would do anything for Jack. In the end, he was a man of his word.
Everyone else seemed to be alright, at least physically. Aunt Del, Gramma, and Marian had dragged themselves back to Ravenwood, with Boo trailing behind them, whimpering like a lost pup. Aunt Del couldn't understand what had happened to Larkin. Nobody knew how to break the news to her that she had not one but two bad seeds in her family, so no one said a thing.
Mrs. Fischbach didn't remember anything, and Mark had a hard time explaining what she was doing in the middle of the battlefield in her petticoat and pantyhose. She had been appalled to find herself in the company of Macon Ravenwood's family, but had been civil ad Mark helped her to the Beater. Mark had a lot of questions, but I figured it could wait until Algebra II. It would give us both something to do when things returned to normal, whenever that would be.
And Sarafine.
Sarafine, Hunting, and Larkin were gone. I knew that because when I came to, they had disappeared, and Jack was there, leaning against me as we walked back toward Ravenwood. I was fuzzy on details, like everything else right now, but it appeared that Jack, Macon, all of us underestimated Jack's powers as a Natural. He had somehow managed to block out the moon and save himself from being Claimed, after all. Without the Claiming, it looked like Sarafine, Hunting, and Larkin had fled, at least for now.
Jack still wasn't talking about it. He wasn't talking much at all.
I had fallen asleep on the floor of his bedroom, next to him, our hands still intertwined. When I woke up, he was gone and I was alone. His bedroom walls, the same ones that had been so covered in writing that you couldn't see an inch of the white walls underneath the all the black, were now completely blank. Except for one, the wall that faced the windows was covered from floor to ceiling with words, only the writing no longer looked like Jack's. I touched the script as if I could feel the words, and I knew he had been up all night, writing.
macon ethan
i lay my head down on his chest and cried because he had lived
because he had died
a dry ocean, a desert of emotion
happysad darklight sorrowjoy swept over me, under me
i could hear the sound but i could not understand the words
and then i realized i was feeling everything and i was feeling nothing
i was shattered, i was saved, i lost everything, i was given
everything else
something in me died, something in me was born, i only knew
the boy was gone
whoever i was now, i would never be him again this is the way
the world ends not with a bang but a whimper
claim yourself claim yourself claim yourself claim
gratitude fury love despair hope hate
first green is gold but nothing green can stay
don't
try
nothing
green
can
stay
T. S. Eliot. Robert Frost. Bukowski. I recognized some of the poets from his shelf and his walls. Except for the Frost, Jack got it backward, which wasn't like him. Nothing gold can stay, that's how the poem goes.
Not green.
Maybe it all looked the same to him now.