Beautiful Lorien

His Eyes - Cohn

Five and Four never had it starting out; Five blamed himself. He shut himself out from the rest of the Garde, picked fights with Nine and Six too much. It started to change; John sought him out to retrieve Nine but ended up saving his life anyway.

He didn't know he could have ever come to feel this way about the other boy.

Oddly enough, he remembers the rumbling laughter from the opposite end of the long hall. His days of Mogadorian abuse trained him to recognize the voice from every bit it vibrated the air around his ears. Nine. He remembers the throaty sound, the doubt that coated his words soon after, and the musty mess of footsteps that Five soon lost count of as they grew closer. He didn't know how many people were coming for him, he just knew to prepare for the shame that would come with Nine. When his biggest eyesore walked in, flanked by the one who ordered for the close monitoring, Five was less than excited.

But when he saw what had become of John, he was less detested but more curious.

Quite the bags under his eyes all of a sudden. He used to be more good looking.

Not only was his ally's face drained of its joyful pink color but his hands were cracked, loosely dappled with specks dried blood. The drops decorated the remains of his jacket's sleeves, telling Five all he needed to know, that those droplets weren't John's. He was still covered in the wear from his last biggest mission.

He remembers the cold expression, how John's lips had been frozen in a nearly permanent frown. His blue eyes, once bright and blazing with hope that could move even the most lost of causes, were dull. Dull .

Even his signature, the blue eyes, lost their color. Almost dead.

Those eyes.

Five remembers being taken back. He remembers his stomach cramping at the mere sight him. He'd never seen Four look so defeated.

The image of Number Four slumped at the edge of his cell as he commanded Five to teach him how to fly replays in his head, over and over.

He's such a mess.

It hurt to see him this way. It hurt that the last time Five saw Four, it was in such a shaken state. Like the life had been torn from him and replaced with half the effort.

What is wrong with me.

Four hadn't left his thoughts; Number Four tried to accept him, he bargained with him for Nine's life multiple times. Four ordered he be held instead of tortured, but that had been the only plus.

Perhaps he was a touch kind because they were both outsiders now. Shells of themselves. Was Four as in touch to realize that of himself though, that part of his very being had died with Sarah Hart?

Five waited in his room patiently, rubbing the scarred skin on his arms over and over. He issued a fake complaint about his bed, anything to get an officials attention to relay a message to the communications wars where Sutekh and Four recently camped out the most. Five wasn't a genius but he knew that Adamus Sutekh intercepted wavelengths and listened to Mog radio frequency. He was hell bent on redeeming himself, redeeming his worth over his gifts, that he hadn't resurfaced from the dark crevice in days. He would rejoin with answers; work ethic was what Five found most admirable about Adam.

Four, in the meanwhile, was collecting as many powers as he could. Five was still sore from his brawl with Four midair, the way the straight jacket melted off of his body when his Externa took to and mimicked the protective Lumen field that surrounded the blonde boy's body. Ximic made his comrade hungry, eager to grow beyond every single one of his peers.

The others feared the new Four. Nine challenged him, of course he had.

Five told himself he wasn't afraid. That he was still curious, eager. But his left hand shook quietly at his side.