Work Text:
Try
A Caster Chronicles Fanfiction
A hard lump in her throat that made her feel like her necklace was strangling her, Lena Duchannes knelt on the grass in the clearing at Greenbrier. In her hands, between her two white, wide-knuckled fists, was cupped a small grey rock, onto which she'd inked – using her worn nearly to a nub sharpie – the words He Tried.
Her chin trembled as she remembered, what felt like a lifetime ago now, when Ethan had followed her home from school after she broke the window. He'd been trying so desperately to be her friend. Later, he'd tried to be more. She'd pushed him away; she'd had to. Even though there were the dreams. Especially because there were the dreams.
She'd told him about Bukowski's grave that day.
Don't try.
He hadn't understood, not even when she explained it.
Ethan had tried anyway.
And look where it had gotten him.
Dead. After a tumble from a water tower.
And Gatlin – this whole stupid, stupid town – didn't even know what he'd sacrificed for her, for all of them.
He was buried here, at Greenbrier, with no headstone, no marker at all. Not even a pathetic cross like a child might make for a dead family pet. So, Lena had come with this dumb rock. It wasn't much, but it was something.
She waved her hand over the rock after she set it over his place of burial. It glowed faintly – orange, then green, then an unnerving gold, before returning to grey, though maybe a slightly darker grey than it had been moments ago.
It was a cast – a simple one, just to keep the words on the rock from being smudged or washed away.
He Tried
I told you not to, Ethan.
She wished she could go back in time and make him turn around before they ever met, before they ever spoke.
Before he took her hand in his and saw the scratches on her wrist.
She wished she could be on that road with Macon's broken-down hearse, swallowed up in a downpour, and not flag down Link's beater with Ethan inside. Not almost be run over. She wished she'd drowned that day. Maybe Ethan would still be alive if she had.
She wished she'd never tried.
Trying only brought pain.
Charles Bukowski had had the right of it.