i've come too far, i can't go back [private]

“

Caleb didn't know how to describe the past few weeks. To start things off, there were some bad news and, surprisingly, a very small bit of good news. The bad news was that even with that time frame, the son of Momus didn't feel any better about himself. Considering all the crap he had to put up with, well, that probably shouldn't come as a surprise. And the good news? Well, it was just a small piece of news, really. Because of the deep dark hole he ended up in, he figured that it couldn't get any worse than this. It was a pathetic attempt to be optimistic, but cut him some slack. At least he was still alive. Yeah, a voice in Caleb's mind sneered, like that's something to be real happy about.

But then, Caleb didn't want to spend the rest of his time moping around like some idiot. Sure, he was a mess, but he'd rather be a mess who wouldn't let such things stop him from being productive. That was how he had ended up in the arena in the first place, chucking knives at lifeless dummies. As each blade met its mark, he imagined it was Ares. Everything was Ares' fault and nothing could convince him otherwise.

Practicing his knife-throwing gave Caleb a healthy distraction. No one bothered with him, too terrified by the prospect he suspected, and it suited him just fine. Still, he could feel the small glances burning his back, the hushed voices accompanying each look. He felt a trickle of irritation as he caught a word from the whispers behind his back and it made him hurl the knife so hard that the blade, save for the hilt, was completely buried in the straw dummy's chest exactly where its heart might have been. What he heard wasn't even something negative. It was only a name, one name that seemed to make him sad and furious at the same time: June.

He hadn't seen the girl since that last encounter in the attic. Neither did he bother to count the days that had gone by after that. With the chariot races and the winter solstice coming up, he knew that she had more than enough things to worry about as a cabin leader. But that didn't stop him from missing her, no matter how hard he tried not to. His heart had a complete mind of its own. It did anything it wanted and his brain couldn't do anything about it. With all the negative emotions brewing up inside him at the thought of the daughter of Ares, Caleb blocked anything else and used up more energy than he should as he continued to throw knives at his immobile targets. Panting as he finished, he stared at the bunch of dummies in front of him, knives sticking out from their vital points had they been alive. Still, he couldn't bring himself to be proud of what he had done.

Suddenly, he grew aware of the sound of metal slicing the air close to his left and he swerved sideways on instinct, seeing the flash of silver shoot past before lodging into a dummy a few feet away. He spun around angrily, ready to give the thrower a piece of his mind, when he was met with the sight of the person he had just been thinking about a few moments before. Her presence triggered something in the son of Momus, something he could make neither heads nor tails of. Everything in the past few weeks came rushing back in waves, overwhelming him that it was all he could do to stop his knees from buckling, to keep holding himself together even under these circumstances. His mouth ran dry and he was almost certain that everything in him ceased to function at that moment, save for his heart. Caleb went slack, thinking. Since when had he been lame enough for something like this?

He forced himself to meet her gaze, hazel eyes turning glassy behind his spectacles. He didn't let himself react to her last statement, even if it rang a bell in his muddled mind. The son of Momus didn't want to admit that he recalled that incident so clearly in his mind, how they coincidentally bumped into each other in the courtyard. Curling his fingers into closed fists, Caleb tried to come up with something witty in response, but his mind didn't seem to want to cooperate. Before he knew it, he was speaking on impulse with the first words that occurred to him. "You should watch where you're throwing." He surprised himself at how strangely formal he sounded. Was this where they stood now? Two people so close to the other behaving as if they were strangers, as if they hadn't gone through the same things together. Not wanting to disrupt his act but at the same time not helping himself, he felt his lips coil into a forced smirk, the next familiar words easily rolling off his tongue. "You're not the blind one here."

“

Caleb shrugged. That was yet another thing they had in common, how their brains seemed to turn into mush. Most of it, anyway. He looked back to the dummies and started throwing a bunch of knives again as he continued to watch June out of the corner of his eye. He blinked. Was it just him or was she really drawing closer? He stiffened a little, growing tense enough that he missed the dummy's head by a few inches. This wasn't good. He should leave. Now. Unluckily for him, his brain was too out of it to tell his feet to get moving.

Finally accepting that he wasn't going anywhere anytime soon, Caleb turned to face her almost lazily. It wasn't that he didn't want to stay, but he had to keep up a believable act, right? Besides, the fact that he was torn between walking out and continuing their conversation didn't help his case. "Yeah. I'm quite surprised that people still wanted to race with you around." He looked down on the knife in his hand, taking a few seconds to polish the blade casually before meeting June's eyes. "Are you not that intimidating anymore?" he added teasingly, wondering how the girl would respond.

This felt nice. It almost seemed like the past weeks hadn't happened and there they were, just trying to have a normal conversation and behave like normal people. But then, that didn't change the fact that they had been both ripped apart by the circumstances, suffering under painful backlashes and doing their best just to survive. June was doing a worse job though; he could gather as much just by looking at her. It almost made him want to reach out to her, but he stopped himself before he could. Caleb had an act to keep up. "I suppose you can say that." He studied her closely, noting how she said 'yet'. "Haven't done anything bad either. Is that why you joined the chariot race?"

“

Caleb averted his gaze. Looking at the knife-riddled dummies slightly distracted him from his thoughts. Still, he couldn't ignore the sinking feeling in his chest as June continued talking. There was no mistaking it from her words and motions. She wasn't doing well at all. An uncomfortable sensation surged through him and he hurled his last knife as hard as he could, not altogether seeing it hit a dummy square on the eye. He released a breath he was holding, still not looking at the daughter of Ares.

"I don't see you around here much, surprisingly," he admitted from out of the blue. He figured that she would've found the arena as a release, as something to pass the time, but maybe he was wrong. Or perhaps she was here all along, but he just refused to see it. "I don't see how chariot racing can be considered as something happy, but I suppose you're in your element with the weapons and possible maiming and all..."

Barely aware that June had started crying, Caleb fought the urge to even look at her. His hands clenched into fists as he dug them in his pockets and he was afraid that he would snap even if he so much as spared a glance. He wanted so badly to correct her, that she wasn't a bad person. He wanted to admit that he missed her too, but after that incident in the attic, it just seemed too awkward and he didn't want to pull her back into the mess just when they had started to untangle themselves from it. That hadn't stopped the hurt from coming and sometimes, Caleb wondered if it would ever stop coming. Were they destined to be this way? Haunted by their own memories and mistakes. Trying to live when it almost seemed like life had lost its light.

Then, Caleb just had to make the mistake to glance at June and he crumbled again, the pieces he tried to glue together breaking apart like the fragile things they were. For a split-second, an anguished look crossed his face but he regained his composure just as quickly. He tugged at his hair in frustration. This was the exact thing he was trying to avoid. June's apparent inability to hold her tears back reopened old wounds that Caleb wouldn't have wanted to bleed again, but hadn't it been always inevitable? Had he really expected for a moment that he could live this kind of life after getting a taste of what he could've had, of what he missed because a higher being had opposed it? Caleb's defenses had worn down slightly and if it wasn't made obvious earlier on, it should be noticeable in how his voice lost the cocky edge to it, replaced by desperation. "You know this can't happen, June. It's killing me, maybe both of us, but this just can't happen."

“

Caleb groaned and put both hands on his head as he backed away, his fingernails digging into his scalp. This was exactly what he was trying to avoid. After everything that happened, the last thing he wanted was to discuss it and its consequences any further. People say that talking things over would help solve the problem somehow, but thinking about it almost made Caleb scoff. Yeah, like this helped. So far the only thing it had done was make each of them more vulnerable, make them easier targets for Ares.

Plus, hearing about how June coped with the situation made his life suck even more, if that was even possible. The guilt, the anger, all the resentment building up inside him got him riled up, and it annoyed him more when he found that he had no knives left to let out his caged emotions. Instead, Caleb forced out a curse through his clenched teeth, whirling around on his feet and punching the nearest knife-riddled dummy on its chest. It toppled over in a mess of straws as he wrenched his gaze back to June. "This isn't helping anything! You think you're the only one who's alone? You think you're the only one who doesn't have friends? I don't know if you've been blind or what, but if you haven't noticed..." He forcefully pulled out four knives out of the fallen dummy and flung them at another, each hard throw punctuating each of his words. "I. Don't. Have. Any."

Caleb was panting when he finished, staring straight at his most recent target. He didn't even spare a glance at her when he spoke again. "I might as well be a psycho. Maybe they even think I'm like you now. The only other person I cared for is dead. My mother is dead. She sent me to camp because I was alone, and she hoped I'd 'branch out' and actually make friends. She succeeded. I did make one single friend - or maybe reconciled is the right term - but because of that, she got taken away. All in exchange for trying to bring some sort of 'happiness' to my life. It's ironic how her own wish backfired on her, isn't it?"

Caleb was so angry that he was spitting the words out at this point, letting the fury fill his mind to make room for nothing else. He had no room for grief for he was done mourning. He was fed up, and the most aggravating thing about it all was how he couldn't put a stop to it no matter how hard he tried.

“

The initial shock from June's sudden mood shift quickly wore off. It drove Caleb to the brink of rage though, and by now he was trying to control his shaking. Half of him wanted to yell back with as much intensity, but there was no fighting the composed voice in his mind telling him that it would be no use. Still, his nature wouldn't let himself back down without at least responding with a remark of his own. "Exactly. You wouldn't know the pain of losing a parent because you never knew what it was like to have one."

The words hurt him as soon as they left his mouth, but he didn't let himself feel the pain. At least, not yet. Not when he was too busy keeping an eye out for the knives she tossed aside. It was partially for his own well-being, but the thought of June losing her marbles and stabbing herself with the blades also crossed his mind. It pained him to think that after all this, he was still trying to look out for her, trying not to let her get hurt even when it was all he seemed to do to her these days. Even when the things she was saying was causing him all sorts of pain coming from every angle, compressing him into a cramped space where he almost couldn't breathe. He didn't know if it was only a defense mechanism the daughter of Ares had developed in response to his own, or if it was simply the untainted and undisguised truth.

"Fine. Maybe I am. Dead, I mean," he said in an eerily calm manner, quite unlike the brief shouting fit and tantrum he had earlier. "As if that matters now. You're right. Looks like we're doomed to this life where no one cares. We're not supposed to be friends anyway. " He stuffed his white-knuckled fists into his pockets, kicking a stray knife on the ground near his feet. Sighing in resignation, Caleb realized that he was just... tired. So freaking tired.

"You know what, screw it. I don't know how much you care, but I don't think I want to find out. I dislike liars, especially those who lie to themselves," Caleb said stoically, picking up the knives he had 'borrowed' from the armory. He still had to get a new weapon made, he realized. Did he just forget, or had he intended to all along? Once he picked up the last one, he straightened up and stared at June. He stayed silent for a few moments, before managing, "Merry Christmas."

Caleb started making his way towards the exit. His padding footsteps seemed amplified in the barely empty arena. He didn't realize that his pace was slower than usual, didn't realize that subconsciously, he desperately wanted to be stopped.

“

Caleb froze in surprise. He didn't expect that. He hadn't expected for June to stoop that low, to push his buttons much like he did to her in the past. Each word hit him like a gunshot straight to the heart while keeping him alive to feel the pain. Bristling from her accusations, Caleb just stood there with his gaze trained on the ground. White-hot fury coursed through him as if it was molten lava in his veins instead of blood. How dare she call him a coward! But then, he believed that he had been immune to these kinds of jabs, so how can he let himself get this affected? Caleb started shaking, fingers unclenching to hover over the borrowed knives attached to his belt. It was not a good idea to taunt him while he had an array of weapons just raring to be used and he was this close to showing the reason why... but this was June, and that fact alone made his fingers curl back into a fist. But that didn't stop him from having the desire to knock some sense into her, to strangle her to the brink of death, but he couldn't because he, for some strange and stupid reason, cared for her...

"Shut the hell up!" Caleb roared, and with a quick fluid movement he threw a knife at her direction. The weapon sliced the air, missing her by an inch. "I... You... Don't talk about things you know nothing about!" he yelled, making no move to hide his anger. "Don't you ever speak of my mother like that. She wasn't anything like yours." His voice was losing power just as he stood at a loss for words. Caleb had just run out of ammo to fire back and he hated it, how he had let her gibes hit home. He shouldn't be like this. Had the course of events weakened him enough to get affected so easily?

Clenching his jaw, Caleb fought hard to put up the mask of indifference he had always been so good at. Looking disdainfully at June, it was all it took for him to hide the reopened wounds, to shield from view the bleeding he had sustained. He tore his eyes away from her to take a deep breath. He wanted to fight back and prove her wrong, but why was he finding it so hard to do so? It didn't seem like he could make up his mind. He couldn't even make sense of his thoughts. "I am not a coward," Caleb could only say in a pathetic defense, putting force in his words to make it sound more believable, before picking up his pace and resuming his walk out of the arena.

I'm not a coward. I'm not. The mantra consumed his mind. He wasn't a coward, Caleb says, and yet here he was walking out from it all, from the daughter of Ares who tried to open his eyes to the truth. What did that say about him? What did it say about the boy who didn't know what to want anymore? A boy who no longer knew when to stand and when to back down? I'm not a coward.

Caleb hated people who lied to themselves. Now, he just had more reason to hate himself.

“

Still in deep thought, Caleb barely heard June's attempts to stop him. It even took him a few seconds to realize that she was holding on to his arm. With gritted teeth, Caleb stopped and glared at her. What happened to the psycho who didn't have a problem accusing him of things? Of calling him a coward? It almost seemed like the last few seconds didn't happen and here was June begging him to stay. She didn't even seem to remember that barely a moment ago, he had thrown a knife at her.

Were they back to this again, him severing the ties and her trying to glue them back together?

"Make up your goddamned mind," he said coldly, shrugging his arm off her grip. He was furious and confused, the two emotions mixing together in a hot frenzy. While June seemed to go on a emotion-filled rollercoaster ride, Caleb's agitation only seemed to escalate further and further. He pushed her away none-too-gently and continued on, but not without leaving three chilling words. "Leave me alone."