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If you're going through hell, keep going.

@theo-matthews / theo-matthews.tumblr.com

Theo Matthews 19 years old human/aware ~~~~~~~~~~ I know what I'm capable of; I am a soldier now, a warrior. I am someone to fear, not hunt.
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Gravity ➤➤ Flashforward

   “The aging thing.” Lexi clarified, rolling her eyes at her own vagueness. She hadn’t run into a single human from Arcadia in the last several years. The change threw her as she looked at Theo now. He wasn’t just physically different, that much was obvious, but still, there’d been a part of Lexi, as melodramatic as it sounded now, that years ago believed she’d never see him again. The image of Theo Matthews in high school was still branded in her mind, distant but there, and now he was technically older than her. He had a beard! If there had been just an ounce of comfort left between each other she would have gone as far as to tease him about it a half hour ago. But all the vampire found herself doing was stitching up his wound and cutting at the corners of all the questions that wanted to escape her mouth.
   “You’ve got to be…what, twenty five now? Twenty seven?” 

“Oh.” Theo grimaced at the pain slightly but didn’t complain as she continued to sew up the gash in his leg. He hadn’t thought about the lack of difference in Lexi actually. If anything, it was nice to see a familiar face after years of ones just a war torn as his own. Even if that familiar face was only familiar because of what she was. Long dark hair, striking eyes and cheek bones...she was still the girl all the guys freaked out over in high school, but he wasn’t the hapless freshman anymore. “Twenty-six,” he grunted in response to her age assessment, his right hand gripping the counter top tightly.

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“You didn’t even recognize me.”

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GROWING UP

they say there was a child here, once, who stood where these gravebound feet tread. they say these bloodhound hands used to belong to an innocent who never imagined the taste of iron     or sharks with a nose for wounded memories. they say this child counted shooting stars     and saw miracles instead of flaming plummets. they say this child heard church bells as prayers, not death knells.               this child tasted rain on the wind, but never wildfires and gunsmoke. they say this child was beautiful                               was golden                               was winged like angels and haloed like gods. they say this child vanished, one day. they say this child left one day and didn’t come home again. they say this child has never been seen since that day. they do not know that this child is buried     between the rows of my ribs lined up like headstones. they do not know that this child’s crying voice     claws up my throat with each rasping breath, each gasping sigh. they do not know that this child made a home     out of the four chambers of my heart beating like battledrums. they do not know that this child is here,     still            now                    today trapped somewhere between bloodhound hands and gravebound feet,                                  between headstone ribs and battledrum heart, this child is here, still–

–and sometimes, when I face a mirror and speak my own name just right      softly, gently, kindly this child rises like a ghost between my eyes and the glass and I swear I can almost remember what it looked like      when this child smiled.

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Bring me a hero, and I will show you  a damned angel: Lucifer turned not monstrous but pitiful:      a seraph robbed of their wings      a demigod deprived of ambrosia      a favoured son cast aside and exiled. The world is so quick to turn its back upon those that saved it      but your saviour is still handcuffed to the sword and the shield.   Bring me a hero, and I will show you a tired soldier: the prodigal son who wasted a fortune he didn’t know he had    the splendor of innocence, the invulnerability of youth, and no longer knows how to walk back across burned bridges to greener pastures where respite awaits with beckoning arms.   Bring me a hero, and I will show you a frightened child: a boy dragged from back alley fistfights into battlefields,  a girl who had to learn to wear blood like lipstick and nail polish. a lost soul, no more than ten or twenty,      a sweet little thing, still recoiling yet from the horror of it all      a pleading child, still screaming with terror and desperation a mere kid who was never granted the time to grow up.

there are no heroes in a world where heroes can’t die ( j.p. ) || insp.  (via pencap)

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Gravity ➤➤ Flashforward

   When Theo’s quip clicked in her mind, Lexi gave a reluctant chuckle. Walking in on him post-shower was a memory of their youth they had both tried to move past at the height of their friendship, but recalling it now, it was funnier than it was embarrassing. At least back then his body wasn’t marred with war wounds. That somber thought wiped the smile from her face fairly quickly. The brunette cleared her throat, and kept her hand steady. She heard his assurances, Lexi just…wasn’t sure they made her feel any better. Once he told her he was good to go, Lexi nodded. “On three. One…” 
   And then the needle was in, better sooner than later. With careful hands, she began to sew up the arrow wound, though she couldn’t be too empathetic to the pain. She hadn’t ever had to get stitches before, not counting the time she was in the hospital thanks to another old friend…Jacob. Lexi didn’t let his memory linger at the forefront of her mind for too long, something about it always reminding her of a grief she hadn’t wanted to feel, not then and not now. Looking back up at Theodore, Lexi tried talking of other things, lighter things. 
   “Does it freak you out?” she asked, before looking back down at his wound. “Me.”
The joke between them was fleeting. Theo had expected the usual flirty and embarrassing teasing from his oldest friend, but it was cut short as her eyes trailed off to a couple of bruises around his rib cage. He seemed to have made her uncomfortable, which was a task within itself, but he wondered what had triggered it. Was it his change in appearance? The scars from his lifestyle? The time that had passed between them?

His body tensed as she began to sew up the wound. It hurt but he had been through worse. His eyes followed her steady hands as she stitched the skin together, but flickered up to meet hers as she spoke up. Theo frowned at her question, spitting out the gauze so he could answer her. “...freaked out by you? What do you mean?

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Gravity ➤➤ Flashforward

Yeah, well you’re still human. Yeah and he had the scars to show it, but it didn’t seem to altering the path he had chosen for his life. When she hesitated, he looked up from then gauze and tried to gauge her reaction. “What? Not like you remembered?” Theo asked with a subtle grin, the first air of humor passing between the two as he referenced the time she had walked in on him - one of the brighter moments between the two of them. “None of them hurt anymore.” He followed her gaze as it swept over his damaged body, reading her mind just by her expression. Lexi’s worry for him was always clearly written across her face, even now.

He watched her as she methodically cleaned his wound without a word - barely even sparing him a glance unless it pertained to the injury. When she pulled out the needle and was prepared to sew up the wound, he held up a hand to stop her. “Almost,” he replied and pulled out a flask from the medical kit, taking a long swig of whatever was inside. Sucking in air through clenched teeth before exhaling, he gave her a thumbs up as he placed the gauze back in his mouth so he had something to bite down on.

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Gravity ➤➤ Flashforward

   Taking a generous swig from the blood bag, Lexi walked over and brushed the dust off the stool nearest to Theo. Her eyes were on him, until he tore at his pants and exposed his wound. The gash was deep and the smell was pungent, something that might have disgusted any other individual but only tempted her. Taking a sharp inhale, Lexi sighed and pushed the bag away from her for now. “Nope, just…gonna put that away for a second.” she quipped, knowing better than to drink unless she wanted the temptation to get worse. Sitting down, the vampire pulled the first aid kit to her and slipped on the medical gloves, doing a quick job of sanitizing the needle before Theo’s grunt of pain made her look his way. 
   Without the pressure of the arrow, the blood began to seep and as quickly as her hands could move, Lexi grabbed a square of gauze, doused it with antibacterial spray and held it down over the wound. It would sting, but then he should have warned her he was pulling it out. Hazel eyes met his. “Sorry.” she said, with a crinkle of her nose and a hint of a smile at the corner of her lips. But as she looked at him up close now, Lexi’s face fell. Without bullets at their tails, acting like she knew him felt like an invasion of privacy. The brunette shook off the feeling and pulled away. “
Just…put pressure on that. I’m guessing you’re used to it, if you’re pulling arrows out of your body like they’re nothing.” 

Theo’s jaw remained hardset and clenched tightly around the gauze as she applied pressure and sanitized the wound, both of which hurt almost as much as when the arrow initially pierced his skin. His hand gripped the counter, knuckles pure white, as he did everything to brace against an all too familiar pain. Only difference was he wasn’t having to patch it up himself for once.

He met her eyes momentarily as she apologized for the antiseptic and for a moment, despite the pain, he was transfixed. With the one thing - the one person - that remained constant through everything. Even the house had changed, growing old and vacant with dust and empty rooms, but not the woman in front of him. There was that familiar smile....but in a fleeting moment it was gone and she broke the closeness between the two of them. Maybe he really was unrecognizable after all. The boy she had known swallowed by the darkness that always crept into his fairy tales.

And of course she wasn’t the same either, despite her constant appearance. “It’s like ripping a band aid off. I had to accustom myself to the pain and diving right into it always seemed like the best option.” He replied once he removed the gauze from his mouth .Briefly letting go of hiis leg, he pulled on the back collar of his shirt and slipped it over his head. “Do me a favor?” he asked, nodding toward the wound on his upperarm from where a bullet grazed him earlier in the fray. Not only did this reveal another fresh wound, but a multitude of scars and bruises that decorated his torso. Most healed but by the looks of them they were not stitched up prettily by a doctor.

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Gravity ➤➤ Flashforward

    “Things change.” Lexi shrugged, the words escaping her lips in a mutter. As she glanced around the entryway, the statement came so easy. It’d only been a few years, but so they did. So did she, and Theo…As Lexi stole subtle lingering glances, she realized, he had too. Though the brunette had no clue as to how much. Even as he hinted at his experience, Lexi wasn’t sure if his decision to come back and fight was out of reckless abandon, or if he knew what he was doing. 
   She supposed the fact that he’d saved her life was enough proof, and yet after so long picturing him one way, Lexi remained unsure. Catching the bag in hand, a look of surprise filtered through her features. Since when was he stocking up on blood bags? Biting back the slew of questions stacking on her tongue, the brunette tore a gap into the iv bag and took a generous swig. It was instant relief, but Lexi paced herself as she’d learnt to do, walking over to him and nodding to his injury. 
“Thanks…Well, you need something to help your healing process.” she told him, “Where’s your first aid kit? I’ll sew that up.”

That they do. Theo acknowledged the rift in the air between them which, for the most part, was remaining unspoken but hung heavy around them. But could there ever be anything said that could cover all that needed to be said? His silence proved that for his part, he didn’t seem to have an answer to that.

He observed her take in his peace offering with an unreadable expression - or at least one lacking any of the expected emotion. Disgust, discomfort, uncertainty...nothing registered. As if it was a common sight. Easing onto on of the dusty bar stools, he extended his leg gingerly as she mentioned it and then reached across the counter and pulled a kit into view. “Here.”

He opened the kit and pushed it closer to her reach, showing it was stocked with pretty basic first aid along with a bit of supernatural remedies. Vervain, wolfsbane, and a couple of harder to distinguish items. “You sure the blood is not going to be a problem?” But he didn’t wait for an answer as he tore open the tear in his pants to expose the wound more. Pulling out a thick roll of gauze from the kit, he placed it between his teeth - and bit down hard as his fingers wrapped around the remaining piece of the arrow and wrenched it from his leg. “..!!”

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