the fire that burned us all, FAITH

[adair]

time to change has come and gone
watched your fears become your God

[/font][/center]

The rusted swings teetered back and forth in the wind, which only added to the depressing atmosphere of the deserted playground. The day was winding down into the evening hours, but it was still late afternoon at the moment. There was not a single soul around considering the short-lived fame that this park had experienced during the days when Adair was younger. The play equipment was slowly growing brown with rust and misuse, not to mention age. It seemed as though all the children had left the neighborhood back when he had, although he could not have been to certain considering he had spoken with very few of them. Truly he had only kept one friend from back then and today he planned on meeting her here, which was the occasion that dragged him back to this familiar territory. His parents had long ago moved from this spot, their house no longer stood close to this playground and for that much Adair was grateful. He had not seen them since last time they had attempted to get him committed, then he had broken all ties with them. That is not to say that they would recognize him at the moment, although he had shaved for the occasion and was clad in his normal black coat, he had aged visibly.

The skies above were gray almost as if they were attempting to mimick the weather that Adair had witnessed this morning in London. Although the weather in England was always bad, Adair never took much notice of it. He had not traveled far considering the trip would have probably taken more than a few hours to accomplish, but he had gotten here in less than an hour. His short journey was accounted for due to his method of travel, disapparating made traveling so much faster. Perhaps that was why another reason why he was early now, although he had not done so intentionally Adair had left about thirty minutes before the designated meeting time. He had not put much thought into making the trip nor had he really thought about the quickness with which he would arrive. Somehow it almost seemed as if his subconscious mind was torturing him once more allowing him to bare witness to the deserted playground that had once provided a supple environment for small children. Not that Adair felt much pain anymore, aside from the mental strain that his mind was always working under. Emotions had never been a definite area for him, it was the gray area in the world that he loved to consider black and white.

Adair had taken a seat now on a bench overlooking the deserted playground listening to the creaking of the rusty swings in the wind. The sound was almost eerie in contrast with the dark gray skies above. Adair paid little attention though to his surroundings now as he stared blankly at the disarray of playground equipment left to fight against the elements, unwanted and unloved it appeared. Had he possessed a shred of sentiment he possibly could have related to each and every piece of that scrap metal in its truest tattered form. Incapable of thinking in such a manner Adair was fighting silently against other demons, ones which were more likely not to surface from depths of his mind anytime soon. It seemed as if a twinge of nervous energy had struck that impenetrable barrier that proved to be his "emotions" or what was serving in place of them. Why am I so early? Adair thought to himself, his blue eyes continued to stare at nothing in particular.

Because you want to see her, but she doesn't want to see you. She's married. You're crazy. It won't work.

Adair's eyes widened slightly at the sound that he knew truly was not there. He pressed his cold hand to his warm black sleeve running his fingers along the thick rough wool fabric. This action would by no means block out the sound, but maybe it would calm the anxiety that he suddenly felt for a moment. Sentences... full sentences, what next whole monologues? He could have laughed out loud at that moment, but it would probably only heighten the paranoia that was suddenly pulling him apart at the seams. This was not out of the ordinary for him since the voices once again had been getting progressively worse. He was still masquerading under the guise that he was perfectly healthy and that there was nothing wrong anymore, even to her. Adair never had a tendency to tell people when there was something wrong, it all went along with his lack of emotion and his need to conceal the what he considered the worst parts of himself. He did not worry that people would not accept him considering his illness, he just worried what they would think and if they would look down upon him -- and of course the most important of all if all of his life's work would be discredited. He had worked hard on all the research that he had done since coming to teach at Hogwarts, it was a collection of papers that he had been compiling over the years. He had been published quite a few times in some journals in the wizarding world and even cited once or twice in the newspaper for some small yet still rather insignificant discovery. Adair's desire to work was overwhelming, it consumed most of his life, it had been the only thing keeping him alive all those years prior -- it still was now.

Clamping his jaw shut Adair fought the urge to get up and walk away, he knew that he had already promised to meet Faith so he couldn't very well away. Although he had been infamous in the past for doing such a thing, he swore that he would be better now. It was always hard to arrange a meeting with her too due to the fact that they both held down busy schedules, well really her more than him. Adair's days now were mainly consumed with teaching at Hogwarts and then working out his research in his spare time along with a plethora of overly complicated math problems. Not to mention that he also had to hold office hours sometimes, which was somehow always full of students who didn't understand one thing or another. Adair did not think that his classes got that complicated, but apparently they did.

She's here..

The wind kicked up momentarily and a small batch of leaves rustled near his feet, Adair's eyes were suddenly pulled down towards the concrete beneath his feet. Liar! How ridiculous was it to argue with yourself? It was stupid, but it was the only way that Adair could express the bitterness that he felt towards those mocking voices.

TAGG: faith elizabeth evans
WORDS: 1184
LYRICS: alice in chains - your decision
PIC_CREDIT: photobucket.com

[/blockquote]

[faith elizabeth evans]

Wind caught her dark red hair as she strolled through the old playground. Memories overtook her thoughts as she passed by the old sandbox she had played in when she was a little girl. She paused for a second recalling the past events. They were good memories, a precious few she held in her mind from her childhood. These precious memories were like expensive jewels to her. She protected them with all her heart and locked them up, only recalling them when she felt harsh loneliness. She wasn't necessarily lonely at the moment but being at the old playground caused these locked away memories to be shoved to the front of her thoughts. A smile made way on her lips as she recalled laughing and playing with her dear friend. It was a time when innocence was still in her eyes. She had loved her parents then because she didn't know any different. She was merely a toddler and she didn't have a voice. Sometimes Faith wondered if not having a voice was better than having one. She dismissed the thought as quickly as it came. Faith loved her voice it was the reason behind her success.

She had come early. Very early. She wanted to soak in memories. It wasn't often she embraced her memories of the past. Faith tried to stray from the path of total self destruction. She had learned to barricade her memories. She had built a mental fortress around the horrors of her past. Many urged her to break down the fortress but she refused. She was afraid to do so. The last time she had taken down her guard she experienced feelings so dark she never knew she had. Those memories had profoundly left a mark on her and no matter who she married, what therapist she went to, or how many times she received unwanted sympathy the stain wouldn't go away. It was a grape juice stain on her very soul and personality. She paused for another moment at the old slide. Why had she come? She herself didn't know. She felt she was losing it. The last time she saw him was too far for her to recollect. They had kept in contact by means of letter writing but she herself knew letter writing wasn't the same as physical contact. Why was she doing this? She was only asking for trouble and deep down she knew it. The last time she had drawn him from the abyss of memories into her head she found herself falling in love with him.

It was insanity. She was married to a man who loved her and who she loved more than anything. She felt secure and overall happy. She didn't even understand why she had even let the previous thought cross her mind. This whole meeting was insanity but no matter how much she wanted to go back home to her safety and security she couldn't. She sighed heavily, for the first time in her life she wasn't listening to the warnings of her mind instead she was listening to the strange warm feeling in her stomach and her heart. She didn't know the logic behind her choice, no not one bit. It was strange not following logic. For the longest of time she had grown accustomed to entering situations based on logic proofs. If something was proven the slightest illogical she think of it. Her mind had proven this meeting not only highly illogical but extremely dangerous. Her ignoring of this was unusual and slightly unsettling. She shook her head in her own self disapproval of herself. Was she losing grip on her mind?

She continued her stride making her way to the rusty, old swing sets. She smiled at them with a melancholy disposition. She had loved the swings as a young girl and when she was brought to the playground she would swing for hours. A gust of wind blew her hair again. She flattened her unruly locks of red nervously. She looked around and, unknowingly, her sad blue eyes caught the gaze of him. They had aged, both of them. Faith wasn't as pathetic looking. She had meat on her bones, nice clothes on her back, and the absence of bruises and scars. At least on the outside. He had aged as well but she knew who it was, she would always know. She found herself in awe of him. She didn't move she only stared. Her sad blue eyes would not move away. It was like a strange trance. One that took a few minutes to break of. She slowly made her way over to him, a smile slowly making way on her face. She sat down next to him and grasped his hand gently as they did when they were younger. Faith had wanted to marry him in her youth she often teased him about it. "Adair Burke." She said softly, lifting her eyes up to meet his.

tagged: adair
word count: 908
wearing: click
notes: blah blah blah

[adair]

time to change has come and gone
watched your fears become your God

[/font][/center]

Well then it appears that she is early as well.. Currently Adair's appearance stood in a stagnant form of disarray, although he had shaved for the occasion (the last few weeks he had neglected to do so) there was still the ever-present dark circles underneath his eyes and the nearly sick-pallid glow to his skin. As aforementioned he was wearing his usual long black coat accompanied by black pants and shoes. His hair was ruffled lightly in the wind as it picked up, causing it too look a more unorganized mess. He had never cared much for his appearance, even now although he had taken the liberty to shave he had only done so because he did not know if she would recognize him in the state that he had been in. Now it was still questionable to him whether or not she would know who he was as the lines on his face were slowly growing more defined with each passing year. Perhaps those lines were merely a result of the constant state of paranoid worry that he had been suspended in all those years back. Not to say that he had been able to fend off all that worry, he was still suffering from it at this very moment.

Shifting his blue eyes towards the ruined playground he caught sight of a flash of red hair somewhere in the near distance. He watched her approaching him as if nothing out of the ordinary were happening, almost as if the scene were somehow commonplace. There was not a single change in his stance, his posture was as always impeccable and his expression was stoic and unchanging. He did not appear moved at all by this reunion, but he was unable to feel such things incapable as it seemed. This woman, who his best friend (his only friend in fact), was just about as close to a connection that he had ever made with anyone and somehow he was still an empty emotionless shell. What had compelled him to keep writing to her? There was nothing in particular just that whenever he received a letter he felt the need to reply to it. This habit about responding to the mail that he received was borderline obsession, except when it came to letters that he received from his family. Not that they had really caught wind of where he was at the moment, but he had his suspicions that they knew. Even if they had written him he would not have replied, not even now after all that time had passed -- not that he held grudges but he feared that they would try to commit him again even though he had found himself help.

Adair did not easily trust anyone as it seemed proof enough that he didn't even trust his own family. He had had his own doubts at one time or another about Faith as well since he was not sure how she would react to him once he told her that he had schizophrenia. Mental illness was definitely not a good conversation starter, nor was it popular among the masses considering he could potentially be viewed as dangerous. Adair had been mildly surprised that she had not stopped speaking to him at the time, logic dictated that she would because it had nearly driven everyone else away. His own family did not possess the patience to deal with him, instead they opted to dump him in the mental institution. That was only the beginning of his trust issues though, being a paranoid schizophrenic trusting other people was a hard thing for Adair -- especially when the hallucinations were still present. Those hallucinations always got a rise out of his paranoia considering the two nearly went hand in hand when you couldn't trust the world around you as you saw it.

Empty blue eyes examined Faith's hand as she grasped his own, his fingers were limp and he was incredibly numb. Despite his clearly indifferent exterior there was a war going on just beneath the surface, and that was all Adair could feel at the moment. If he were even capable of fathoming such a thing as feelings, that would possibly be an explanation for what was happening at the moment. He could not explain it and he did not seem to possess the vocabulary to attempt it either, yet the hesitation and the pure confusion that he was feeling was depicted nowhere on his face. Best to keep it all inside considering that he did not have the words for it, although it was unsettling he had felt this way once before when he had seen Faith. He assumed that maybe that was how you were supposed to feel about your best friend, yet he had no point of reference. He never watched muggle movies nor had he listened to much music aside from classical music -- but never the sort where they played those sonatas for lovers. Everything was about breaking down the medium through which it was being portrayed and finding the mathematical algorithms and the logic behind it. Rationale ruled his life, it was no different now when it came to relationships or the way that suddenly her fingers lay across his in a manner that created some sort of inverse tangent relationship with the straight line of the bench beneath their small pile of fingers.

Her touch had a cold numbing effect on his fingers, which had formerly been cold but were now feeling even colder. Certainly the motion brought back memories, it brought him back to a time when he was still searching for something. The time so long ago when he still had some sort of hope and when everyone that surrounded him told him that he held such great promise. When he had been young and she had been too when all that hand holding might have meant something more than his brutally structured logic. But, what had become of him now? You're pathetic. You're nothing now. They all know that you're crazy. You've never made anything of yourself. And the insults would keep on coming because there was no way to repair what had happened or what was now broken. As far as Adair was concerned nothing needed to be repaired, nothing except maybe the portion of his head that forced him to hallucinate and hear such lucid voices. He had been walking in a dream world all those decades before, when he had been younger and the hallucinations had not yet truly manifested. That was a world that was now to far off where he had been free, where somehow all those unspoken emotions had made some sense. Now he was distant and even when she spoke his name, he seemed to respond almost dully as if he were a dog that was suddenly hard of hearing. His bright blue eyes held a glassy quality to them almost as if they had been pulled straight from a porcelin doll and then meticulously placed into his eye sockets. These same eyes had not been lifted towards Faith's, and now he stared at her with an unwavering gaze, "Good afternoon Faith." His response was polite and automatic.

TAGG: faith elizabeth evans
WORDS: 1281
LYRICS: alice in chains - your decision
PIC_CREDIT: photobucket.com

[/blockquote]

[faith elizabeth evans]

Faith couldn't help but wonder. Adair looked, to put it bluntly, terrible. He looked exhausted and worn out. It was of course something she herself had experienced. Being a college professor wasn't exactly the most simple job out there. She was exhausted now but not to the point of having baggy eyes. Throughout their friendship Adair was always detached, but so was she. She didn't expect that to change but for some reason she had a biting hope at the back of her heart. She was his friend after all the one thing she longed for, for him, was stable health. Today he looked far from good health and it worried her to a certain extent. That wasn't anything out of the ordinary though. Faith worried all the time. She worried about her friends, family, and even her enemies. It was a fatal flaw that often got her into a lot of trouble. Sometimes she worried so much she drove herself into fits of anxiety attacks especially when it came to her family. The first year her daughter left for Hogwarts she drove herself insane.

Adair had proved that he hadn't changed much throughout the years. His facial expressions and bodily movements were similar to those from the past. She herself had only changed a little, based on her own personal evaluations. His stoic and unchanging expressions probably would have been deemed as offensive to anyone in her position. After all they were best friends being reunited for the first time in God knows how long. Faith understood, Adair understood. To her that mutual understanding was far more powerful than a fake hug and smile. If he had given her either of the two she would have been greatly unsettled. For some unusual reason she welcomed the quiet reunion far better than the passionate ones she was used to. Despite the years of healing, as they liked to call it, Faith still felt rather uncomfortable during times of blatant and obvious expressions of intimacy whether given by a friend or her husband. Between her and Adair there was a silent intimacy one she treasured greatly.

In many ways Adair and herself were very similar, but they were also very different as well. They both had trust issues. Trust issues that were both very different and very similar. Faith trusted those who were close to her but failed to put her trust into those she hardly knew. She was very picky when it came to making friends and deciding who was close enough to her to trust. She had a small list of three people she actually trusted. Her husband, Lily, and Adair. Adair, on the other hand, trusted no one. He even doubted her own allegiance to him. She knew when he told her his condition. Faith was accepting of the statement, she would be a hypocrite if she hadn't been. Adair was her friend and even if he was a 'paranoid schizophrenic' she wasn't going to pull away. His diagnosis was just a label he was a living person.

She didn't remove her hand. She didn't want to. Faith could see his indifference but that didn't bother her. After all he had been indifferent whenever she made small advances of affection. That didn't bother her. She liked holding someone's hand it made her feel young again. Once she reached a certain age she and her husband passed the stage of innocence. They no longer held hands nor did they take romantic strolls. They were both too busy. He was at the office taking care of patients and she was on campus lecturing students on Marxist communism. There was no romance involved with either conversation. One was living a horror film the other an thriller. She let go for a split second only to remove her white cashmere gloves and let her bare hand fall upon his own.

She smiled warmly when he spoke. It was nothing shy of what she expected. She had come here with next to no expectations...but had great expectations at the same time. She lifted her eyes from their entwined hands to meet his. They both had bright blue eyes. It startled her seeing such vibrant color staring back at her. They shared the same color but a different emotion. Her eyes were sympathetic and warm yet frightened as well. His were nearly empty. "Good afternoon to you as well," Her voice was stronger than it was before. She wasn't as flabbergasted. Slowly her senses were coming back to her. "Could we skip past the polite inquiries as to how I am or what I'm up to. We all know how much I despise questions such as those," Her elegant British tongue accented her words perfectly. Speech was something she mastered from her years in lecture hall with her pupils. "This place is quite dilapidated. I'm sort of sad its gone it one of my best memories," She paused for a second, looking out onto the deserted playground. "Perhaps its not the playground I'm missing opposed to the people. But then again I did quite enjoy that swing set."

tagged: adair
word count: 937
wearing: click
notes: not my best

[adair]

time to change has come and gone
watched your fears become your God

[/font][/center]

He watched silently as if from afar as she removed her gloves and her naked fingers fell across his own. He had not been wearing gloves, it had been an unwise choice from the beginning but Adair had never cared much for his own health. Although it was not logical to ensure an early death he did surely wish for one at times, merely due to his flawed condition. Perhaps natural selection had no place in the modern world, but had it he knew that he would surely be dead by now because he probably would have driven himself to do it decades before had he not had the medication to deal with his problem. Of course he had tried it once before, but modern medicine had saved him -- truly the obscure wizard wondering the street had saved him and medicine had done the rest. Adair had nearly counted on that moment as his last back then despite the harsh memory he still looked upon it somewhat fondly, yet at the same time it was streaked with bitterness. Had he thought about getting help from the wizarding world sooner for his ailment then he would not have wasted so much time back then. There was no way that he could make up for all those years lost in his youth and now he could only attribute it to his own foolishness. By contrast it seemed absurd for Adair only cared for that lost time because he had been unable to solve math problems or take a deeper intuative look into the things that he desired to research. He had never made any large breakthroughs throughout all the years that he had been working, but he always felt as if he were on to something. Something inexplicable and had he been given those horrible first few years perhaps he would have been that much closer now.

You are no genius, you are merely crazy. He found his fingers all the more numb when contrasted against Faith's warmer previously gloved hands. That maybe, but bloody Hell I won't go to my grave without trying to prove you wrong. Perhaps his insults no longer made sense, maybe he was just speaking to the wall enclosed in a dark room for something that he had mistaken originally as a person. There seemed to be no telling now because his own reactions to the voices were so commonplace recently that it sounded almost natural to respond as he did. There was no point now in restraining himself, no when such a conversation flowed so easily unheard by the outside world. The memories could certainly be pulled from his mind and experienced, but the hallucinations were still unseen and unheard. Although they were his memories the thoughts were merely inside his head and so they could not be projected into what had happened back then. It was a peculiar topic and it was one that stuck out in the back of Adair's mind at times, if only to know that maybe what he was experiencing -- the pain and the anxiety was truly unbearable in someone else's opinion as well. In the unforeseen future perhaps they would have the technology one day that would allow for such an unlimited view of his own world through someone else's eyes.

The warmth of Faith's hand continued to pull away at Adair's insides, yet his expression remained as it had been before -- empty and now even a little pensive. There was strength behind her words now when she spoke as Adair found himself entangled in the warmth of her hand. Despite all the perplexity of the situation he was still somehow separated from what was occurring, the distant was staggering and there was no way he could close it. He no longer attempted to close that gap, he merely let it stand for he could not exactly label the loneliness that he felt for in all rational opinions he did not "feel" lonely. One could not feel something if they did not know what it was in the first place, or something to that extent. The facts had somehow slipped from his grasp now having heard the explanation time and time again. The sieve full of sand was again failing him as a basket that should have held all of the spoils of the day. Pleasantries have always bothered you.. Adair silently agreed with Faith's spoken words, having found no need to speak aloud. On occasion he felt hesitant about saying things aloud if only because he still doubted that he was not hallucinating these days. Although he had been on those pills for decades now recently with the fresh appearance of those voices he often wondered if he were still living in the reality that he had known previously. There was a good chance that this world was one that he had merely created for himself within the depths of his own mind. Perhaps his thoughts were lost somewhere in the fathoms of what had once been his conscienciousness and he was truly somewhere else -- somewhere more unpleasant than this reality that he had created from himself.

Due to these rational thoughts of his he was always on guard to see if something appeared off about the world around him. Somehow the scene that lay before him was all to real and all too charming, as if this meeting had suddenly been reconstructed from the pages of one of the old renowned authors of yesterday. It bothers you because it doesn't exist. Adair knew that the voices would attempt to confirm his word fears they fed off of what he feared the most. And that is why you fear it. Perhaps the bond between him and Faith was truly imaginary, perhaps it was as real as the rust on the nearby swing set -- Adair could never tell. "Everything erodes." Adair replied in the slightest wistful manner to Faith's sorrowful words. It was difficult to tell if his emotions were genuine or false, he had fallen into the habit on occasion for mimicking other's emotions. Possibly this was only so because he knew that he was uncapable of feeling what they felt, maybe it was only his simple innate yearning to do so. Adair had never openly desired to feel, feelings seemed to messy for his own logical nature, yet he was completely blind to the fact that he did feel -- he had just never had the words or the intellect to recognize it. "It is a process of nature.." His voice trailed now as if he too were reflecting on the surroundings. Having had thoroughly examined the place when he had first gotten here was not enough now, especially with her commentary.

TAGG: faith elizabeth evans
WORDS: 1174
LYRICS: silencee
OOC: sorry this took so long, I'm at my disappearing act again =\\
PIC_CREDIT: photobucket.com

[/blockquote]

[faith elizabeth evans]

Faith was usually a woman who lived her standards by logic opposed to emotion and what she was feeling. The only man she had ever let her emotions get into the way was her husband but that wasn't entirely true. Indirectly she had let Adair in millions of times, when she was alone in her mind. The mind was a very dangerous thing, that was something she learned many years ago. The mind was one of the most dangerous weapons around if not second to none. Sometimes she reprimanded herself for letting her mind slip to Adair when she was with her husband, sometimes she let herself stay but that was only upon rare occasion. It was safe to say her husband didn't know the intensity of Adair and her relationship he merely thought they were childhood sweethearts that drifted apart. Part of that was her own doing for she hadn't bothered to tell him. She knew that it would someday be considered a mistake.

She wasn't sure of the tingling sensation she got when her hand grasped his. She had felt it with her husband when they were first in love but over the course of many long years the sensation sort of dimmed down. Feeling it again, with someone else, was not comprehensible. She let her eyes wonder from their hands, to his chest, up his neck, and finally to his eyes. She didn't get the sense of any sort of emotion from looking straight into his eyes but she knew better, Adair didn't showcase his feelings. She herself didn't usually showcase them especially when it came to whatever it was she was feeling deep inside. But in the moment, unlike him, she didn't even try to conceal what she was feeling her eyes twinkled longingly back at his. It wasn't something she could control. Her eyes were always known to have a mind of their own. When she was angry at her girls her facial expressions would remain calm and collected but her eyes would be fiery. When she felt...this....she wouldn't showcase it in her face but her eyes would defy her want to conceal her feelings.

After so many years Adair couldn't even showcase his feeling with her. She understood, to a certain point, why this was but she still found herself pondering what went on in his mind. She didn't do this often for many people wondered what went on in her mind. She didn't enjoy having people wonder what she thought on a regular daily basis because she knew if they actually found out what she thought, her emotions, her feelings they would leave her. Ever since she was a little girl the fear of having someone close to her leave in an untimely manner was evident. This was the cause of her mother's suicide and her father's permanent detachment from the world and from himself.

"Not everything." She said, a glimmer of hope in her voice. She had taught her girls that there was hope in everything. When she was in her late teens and early twenties she had lost hope and it had destroyed her, she wanted to make sure her girls did not have to worry about that ever. Her delicate finger pressed gently and rather tenderly against his lips. "Science can only explain so little." She said with a smile. Her hand dropped to her side and she stood up motioning for him to do the same. "Remember when we were children? Remember when we would pretend we were married and we would describe our lives in turns?" She asked. She walked over to a large rock and motioned for him to follow.

"Remember this?" She asked smiling. It was a large rock they had claimed as their own. "I wonder if our names are still on it, it sure took a long time to engrave them into it." She looked up at him after glancing the rock over. "I think we did something else here." She gently pressed her own lips against his tenderly. She didn't know why she did it it was almost not in her control, her mind just send the impulse to do it. The feeling she got from it was electrifying, it left her almost wanting more.

tagged: adair
word count: lazy
wearing: click
notes: drama