note: I drew the header on June 10, not October 6 if you're confused :) it also doesn't have anything to do with the following oneshot I know >:(
There's both angst and fluff because there's two versions of this; the first one you see is the better angsty version, and the version below the first is fluffy, dumb and thrown together.
I know I said this was scrap but honestly this is one of my favourite oneshots now
ALSO if you got a notification that I posted a tmf and [something don't spoil it] crossover then ignore it; I pressed publish instead of save that day lmao (and also you better not steal that idea I'm still working on it)
--
paintbrushes (the better, new and improved version)
a bit of romantic Lander :)
TW - guns (but not real guns), implied death
-
A white void, much like a soft cumulus cloud. One with claustrophobia wouldn't even feel the walls closing in.
There were no walls. An endless room with an invisible floor. Perhaps it was a dream, perhaps it was too real to be true.
For days, possibly weeks, have they been trapped here. What they noticed was that every so often, one of them would go missing.
First, it was Lia. Then Jake. One by one, they'd be there, then they wouldn't.
Milly, Henry, Stacy, Sean, Zoey, Liam, Elliot, Sadie, Daisy. All gone.
Eventually, only Drew, Zander, Luke and Hailey remained.
"You alright?" Luke held Zander in his arms, the two of them huddled on the nonexistent ground. Ever since they found out someone only goes missing when they're alone, the four of them haven't left each other's view.
Though they now knew how, Zander had been trying to figure out why people kept going missing. And why they were here in the first place.
Drew sat across from them, a slight gap between the enemies. He lay on the floor, his head resting on top of his hands. He was staring into the nothingness, though it didn't matter what direction they looked. It was all the same.
Hailey was pacing back and forth, stopping every so often to glance at the others, making sure no one else went missing. She seemed to be worried out of her mind.
She gives a sigh, turning toward her groupmates in some sort of defeat.
"I know I'm taking a big risk if I do this, but I think I should go to try finding out what it is. It would be useless if more than one person tried, since it only strikes when you're alone."
Zander gets up, advancing his sister and grabbing her hand with both of his own.
"No, Hailey. I can't let you throw yourself into danger."
Luke stands, putting a hand on Zander's shoulder. "Let's try to listen to what Hailey has to say, Zan."
He hesitantly lets go of Hailey's hand, allowing her to speak.
"Sitting here won't do us any good. We're not making any progress, nor is the captor. I want to do this, even if it puts my life at risk. I just want us to have the upper hand over whatever it is keeping us here."
"How about this; get back in the time it takes for me to count to a thousand. That gives you about ten minutes to explore, not that we actually know how long that is anymore."
Hailey, Zander, and Luke turn toward Drew, who suggested the timer idea. Hailey gives a smile, pleased that at least someone agrees with her. Zander pipes up, adding on to Drew's suggestion.
"And if you're not back by then, we'll go and find you."
Hailey suddenly shakes her head. "No, don't. This is the only safe place we've been, and there's no way to figure out where this would be if you all left. If we all stray from this point, who knows what could happen?"
The group goes silent for a few moments. Luke, having been silent as of so far, gives one final suggestion.
"I'll go if you're not back. I don't want to put the rest of you in danger, and if anything happens to either of us while we're gone, I know you can stick together." He directs the last sentence toward Zander and Drew, the two of them grimacing at each other.
"Or—" Luke turns his gaze back toward Hailey, "I could come with you now. That way, there'd be two in each group and no one would be separated."
Zander was barely listening. The way his sister and boyfriend were acting was extremely brave, and he didn't want to let either of them go.
Though, that wasn't the main thing on his mind.
Hailey's demeanour. It wasn't like her. She may be an assertive person, but she never got aggresive and bossy unless she knew exactly what she was doing.
The way she used the word captor when none of them knew it was even a person behind all this. But she did.
The way she didn't want the group to follow or find her.
The way she was willing to leave her friends, possibly never coming back.
"Luke, wait."
Zander grasps Luke's hand, the two of them making eye contact. Luke gives his boyfriend a sympathetic smile, clearly dejected about leaving him.
The plum-haired boy envelops the boy he loves in a tight hug, making sure to keep his face close to Luke's ear.
"Please... don't go. I don't know what it is, but there's something off with Hailey. I don't want you to get hurt..." Zander whispers, proceeding to bury his face in Luke's shoulder.
They part, Luke's hands on Zander's shoulders.
"I know you're worried, but we have to do this if we want to get out of here. Who knows, perhaps we'll find the others if we look far enough."
Zander looks down in defeat, knowing he can't change his mind. Luke nudges Zander's chin up to look at his eyes, their lavender and butterscotch irises twinkling as they lean into each other and share one last embrace.
-
Drew's POV
-
I don't know why, but I don't trust Hailey. The way she was acting was too outgoing. Up until now, she'd been nearly silent until only the four of us remained.
And now she's taking Luke away, leaving me with Zander. Maybe she knew what she was doing all along; Luke's too kind to sit back and not give a hand.
I knew that Zander, Luke and Hailey were extremely close. Chances are, they'd throw me under the bus and let me get taken first.
Especially Zander.
Speaking of him, he walks over to me, sitting down inches away from my motionless gaze. I don't have to look at him to know he's probably feeling sad about the two people he cares about leaving him.
"Uh..." He lets out a sustained filler, clearly trying to talk to me. I get up from my horizontal position, facing him. His eyes are brimmed with tears, and he quickly wipes them away when he realizes I was looking at him.
"You know, fighting when it's just us isn't going to get us anywhere." I give a chuckle at his statement, thinking the same thing.
"Alright, let's start over." I heave myself up, reaching out my left hand for him to take. He allows himself to be helped up, and we make a segue into a handshake.
"Nice to meet you, I'm Drew."
"Zander."
I try to let go, but his grip tightens.
"Hey, I know this'll be hard, but you don't have to make it more difficult. Come on, let me go and tell me what's wrong."
He slowly loosens his hand and slides it back toward him. The tears start to well out his eyes, flowing down his cheeks like raindrops off of a window.
"I should have tried harder. I shouldn't have let him go." A cough escapes from his tightened throat, choking him with sobs that are comforted solely by the tangible whitespace.
"We've been friends for five seconds and here I am, becoming your unpaid therapist already." I take a step closer to him, hesitant about getting too close, but he shoves his shaking body against mine. His head hangs down, his plum locks vibrating with each movement he makes. I wrap my arms around him, patting his back to try calming him down.
"What the hell," Zander says inbetween gulps, "I'm not a dog."
He starts to laugh inbetween his cries, and I instinctively laugh along with him.
It feels like a few minutes that we stand still, and he seems to have stopped weeping. I remember my deal of counting, and hurriedly start to count in my head. His sporadic sniffles and hiccups are the only sounds emitting into the void.
His voice muffled by my chest, he begins to speak again. "What I was trying to say, was that Luke shouldn't have left with Hailey. I-I don't think Hailey's being herself."
I stop counting at 404. "That... maybe she could be bad?"
He looks up at me in alarm, and I try to take back what I said. "I mean, I know she's your sister and all-"
"No, no. You're right."
We part, and he limply crosses his arms. "She said captor. No one knew why we're trapped, why people are going missing, and she uses the word captor."
"So, you're saying..."
"That she's keeping us here."
We go silent again, thinking about the conclusion we just came to.
"Damn. That's a lot."
He scoffs at my reaction, and gives one of his own. "Hailey, of all people."
He suddenly starts to panic, looking at me with worry.
My mind clicks, understanding why he's stressed.
"Luke!"
-
Zander's POV
-
I run with all my might, knowing they couldn't be too far. Drew trails not far behind, our footsteps making no noise on the ground.
The ground. I look down, and sure enough, I can see specks of pavement. Maybe escape was right at our fingertips.
"Drew, look down!"
I can't tell if he did, but his gasp of astonishment is the proof I need. "The ground!"
In the distance, I can see the faint outlines of an array of buildings. Pale, unsaturated colour starts to bleed through the blinding white, and our footsteps start to make echoing sound.
We start to slow; having sprinted for a minute, I've drained my energy.
"Wait; have you been counting at all?"
"Yeah, I got to four hundred... or something."
I look back at the building outlines, hints of pale blue peeping out to show the sky.
And a orange figure.
It seems to be running toward us.
"Luke!"
He says something, but he's too far away for me to hear.
I pick up the little endurance I have left and start to chase him. He gets clearer with every step I take, and I start to see white growing from his chest and face.
I reach out for him, but Drew holds me back.
"Stop. Don't touch him."
I try to rip my arm out of his grasp, but he only clutches me tighter. "I'm sorry, Zander. Just look at him."
I look back at Luke, the white having expanded to cover over half his body.
"He's right; please, don't get close to me."
I stop straining, and Drew lets go of my arm.
"It's Hailey. It's been Hailey all along. She's got white paint, some magical stuff that makes you disappear. Don't touch it or this'll happen to you."
"Paint...? So she painted everything white?" Drew asks Luke, trying to comprehend the flow of information we're getting.
He frantically touches the visible spots, but they fade almost as quickly as he tries to preserve them. "I-I don't know, maybe? But she's got water there too, buckets of it. I think you can splash it around the place and get yourselves out of here."
"But I can't leave you! I can't leave without getting the rest of you-"
"Don't be a hero, Zander. Get out of here while you can."
He fades.
I run toward where he was, being greeted with nothing.
"Damn... it is a shame he's so honest."
Hailey.
-
third person POV
-
Three teenagers that didn't know any better. One against two.
Like a showdown with cowboy hats, dust and a lone tumbleweed. In fact, everything was coming in place. The colour of the real world was showing bit by bit, slowly but surely.
Hailey had tied her hair in a bun, and was wearing gloves, boots and goggles. Presumably to keep herself free from the paint.
Drew and Zander had nothing. Nothing except knowing the only way to save themselves.
Drew looks to his newfound comrade, and with a glimmer of hope, hushes his voice and tells him his plan.
"I don't know if that's her. Maybe she's been corrupted, maybe there's a hint of the real Hailey in there. But you're her brother, I think you have the best bet of holding her off. I'll stay until I get a chance to escape, alright?"
Zander nods, reverting his focus to his sister.
"Hailey. Good to know you're still visible."
"Good to know Luke's not."
This remark takes Zander aback, and he hesitates as Drew tries to grab Hailey's attention.
"Hailey Austin. The great and powerful captor, is she not? No wonder why you were so willing to run off on your own."
She scoffs. "I've got this planned like a tour."
"And this is your final destination."
She strides over to the two last unarmed captives, taking something blue and orange, hard and shiny, out from behind her.
"Is that a paintball gun?" Zander chokes out a strained laugh, not reacting fast enough to dodge.
She aims it directly at her brother, pulling the trigger.
A sphere the size of a blueberry emerging from the muzzle of the barrel. It shines bright like a pearl, and zooms through the dead, still air.
Drew, on the other hand, knows what was going to happen. He instanteously runs toward Zander, pushing him away from the bullet's path.
A muffled pop is heard. The bullet hit Drew's right shoulder.
No pain. Drew's arm starts to go numb, the paint just beginning to expand out of the tiny splotch.
"A slow burn. My ideas were always so genius, weren't they?" Hailey ignores the boy she hit, going back to her brother.
"You're lucky I only had one bullet loaded."
She stomps her heel on his chest, Zander giving a pained gasp in response.
"I wasn't expecting you to bring a friend, but your fate will be no different from EVERYONE ELSE that's gone. You will be no more, terminated from everything you ever knew."
"You. Will. Be. Nothing."
And as if on cue, Drew runs.
-
Drew's POV
-
Water. Buckets of it.
Everything was happening so fast; one moment Zander and I were enemies, one moment he's crying in my shoulder, one moment we find out Hailey's behind everything.
I hope Luke was right.
Perhaps the colour only came when we started to believe there was a way out of here; the colour was draining once again, leaving me running back in the void.
Piercing the blankness in the distance is a blob of gray. I make my way to them as they form their shape.
Buckets.
Buckets of water and paint.
A couple drops of water spilled on the ground, and I bend down to touch it.
A couple blades of grass poking out through the water. They brush against my fingers like the bristles of a paintbrush.
I don't notice that the paint had by now spread and completely covered my right hand, so when I reach out to grab the handle of the bucket, my lack of a hand swipes through the air as if there was nothing. Frustrated, I use my non-dominant hand to grab the handle instead.
Now what?
I clumsily spill some of the water out of the bucket, a splash of water landing on the ground next to me, revealing more grass.
And a shoe.
Not just any shoe,
Jake's shoe, with his laces lazily stuffed in instead of tied up, as usual.
Maybe there was a chance of getting everyone out of here.
-
Zander's POV
-
"You're foolish to try overpowering me. I have all the power, Alexzander."
She takes another pearl out, loading it through the chamber. She presses the muzzle against my skull, giving a satisfied smile as her eyes gleam with rage.
"Any last words?"
I think for a moment, remembering what Drew said to me before he left.
Maybe there's a hint of the real Hailey in there.
I figure now's a better time than ever to test that theory out.
"You made me cry today."
She scoffs, giving a dismissive eye roll. "No, I didn't."
"You did. I was scared of what you had done to the people who disappeared, and what you were going to do to all of us. Look at how much you've changed. I cried because this isn't the Hailey I know. I cried because I thought I was going to lose my sister."
She closes her eyes, giving an exasperated sigh. "You don't know anything about me."
"I know that you're a good person. A good leader and club president, you're modest and talented, you're creative and understanding. I don't know where that all went now..."
I take the moment to push her leg away, and she falls to the floor, the gun knocked out of her reach.
"But I know that part of you, that inspiring, kind, part of you, is still in there."
I take the paintball gun, and we both go silent. Her grim expression forms into mania, slowly erupting into cackling laughter.
"You naïve, little boy."
"Perhaps that part of me never existed to begin with."
She gets up, the unrelenting flame of fury flickering within the ebony of her irises.
"You spare me, and I'll come back. I'll be your living nightmare, and I will never be the same. But you're in the upper hand, dear. You could shoot me once, and all of this will be over. You've got the one thing that can stop me, so the choice is yours."
My hands tremble, knowing she wanted this to tear me to pieces.
I couldn't do this to my sister. But I didn't want to take the chance of letting her roam free.
She was right. She did have all the power at this moment.
"Zander, stop! You'll be no better than her." A voice penetrates the tension, followed by a dozen of people running toward us.
"Don't influence his decision, Lukey." Hailey's venomous voice silences Luke's plea, as well as the noises of everyone else. I look at them, and they're all there.
They're all alive. Drew looks at me with a reassuring smile, signaling to me that they're all safe and accounted for.
I know what I should do. I want to drop everything and let her go, and maybe she'll be a better person. And if not, then she'd be arrested and that'd be pretty much the end of her reign.
But something comes over me.
An urge to do one bad thing, to save the good things to come.
I don't drop the gun. I aim it directly at her,
and I pull the trigger.
It hits the side of her stomach, some of the paint splattering on her forearm. She gives me a pained, but satisfied grin.
"Like sister, like brother, huh?"
I really do want to continue and 'finish' the ending but i think it'd be best in terms of a crippling cliffhanger to leave it as it is :)
The plot wasn't amazing in terms of logic, and it moved really quickly. I just kept having more and more ideas that I'd just stuff to what I already had, and then I'd add more stuff to make the previous stuff flow better, and it's just a pile now. As you probably can tell it got a lot longer than I had anticipated
so..
paintbrushes! (old ver.)
I'd put the old version above the new one but this would give away the entire conflict of the better version of the story.
This was some scrap I wrote based off of an image someone sent on a discord server. It's over a month old (May 11 I wrote it I believe)
This old version took me like 15 minutes because I was trying to come up with a short thing as quick as possible. So there's a very obvious drop in quality compared to the first one you just read lol
-
Drew has handed Zander a big paintbrush to paint the walls of the white void the characters live in, as they all know the only way to escape into the human realm is with the power of colour
Unfortunately, Hailey is very much opposed to this, as she is in fact the one keeping them captive. She has heard of this attempt of escape, and does not approve. After all, if these characters run rogue in our world, their chaotic energy is enough to destroy the world lmao
She gets in the way right before Zander's attempt to brush the void of its first strike of colour, and he is very disapproved.
"You are foolish. I have all the power, Alexzander."
He stares at her for a few moments, trying to come up with a quick way to make use of his paintbrush before it is confiscated from him.
"Fine. You caught me. I know it would be futile to make another attempt as your idiotic face stands in the way."
He comes up with a genius idea.
"Before you go, I want to mark my power. I will establish my dominance against you, for I now have the upper hand."
Hailey is appalled by his sheer stupidity. She turns around, prepared to leave with a smug expression on her face.
"You think you can stop me?!"
"Oh, yes, for I have the one thing that can stop you."
He slashes the brush against her hair, and with the power of a knife, strands fall out of the braid.
--
Meanwhile, Drew sits, wondering how he could have let this happen.
- end - (it made even less sense, I know)
ｎｅｘｔ ｉｎ ｑｕｅｕｅ: platonic Sailey [Sean and Hailey]
- word count: 3764