Har and the Jar (Full of Moonshine)

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This is my Fight Song --TAKE BACK MY LIFE SONG, PROVE I'M ALRIGHT SONG Harper liked having the freedom to go outside the camp and amongst the trees without the threat of being killed. The ceasefire had lasted and now that it was more than a month after escaping Mount Weather, Harper felt as if she could go out without worry for her life. At least, without worry from human threats. The cold metal of a gun rubbed against her side, tucked into her pants and making her feel even safer. She was well and truly comfortable with using one by that point and was thankful that she was a part of the guard and could carry one. The river wasn't a long walk from where Arkadia was. Harper had offered to go collect water and she used the chance to practice her navigational skills, trying to remember the quickest route to water. She hadn't expected, truthfully, to find anyone else out. A metal flask glinted in the corner of her eye, catching on the low rays of the setting sun. She couldn't image that it would be something that a grounder would own, although she also wouldn't be too surprised either way. Just in case it was who she thought it might be, she decided to check it out. She turned on her heels and started down the small hill to where she could see the flask. A bottle in his hand and the smell of alcohol seeming to steam off of him, Jasper sat near the metal flask. Harper crinkled her nose, jumping down from a tree root to stand near the other arker. "Jasper?" She said She hoped that he hadn't fallen asleep with a bottle in his hand or passed out from too much alcohol. "You shouldn't be out here drinking, Arkadia is warmer. Why isn't Monty out here with you at least?" She placed the empty water container on the ground and leaned forward to see that he was okay. @jasper420 || HAAARJAAAR! ENJOY!

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Jasper hadn't exactly been asleep, but he hadn't exactly been awake either. He'd closed his eyes and was sort of drifting on this pleasantly numb feeling the moonshine had given him. Moonshine would never be as good as weed had been, but it did it's job keeping Jasper from crawling out of his skin, crying (much), and making his sleep dreamless--or rather nightmare-less.

He flinched at the sound of movement next to him, but didn't bother to reach for the knife tucked into his pocket. So what if it was a Grounder? So what if it killed him? But Harper's voice cut through the haze of drink, and he blinked his eyes open to look at her, frowning. "Monty can float himself," he said, hearing that his voice sounded a little funny, almost slowed down, but not caring. "And I'm plenty warm," he added, picking up his flask and shaking it to indicate the moonshine had warmed him. He was surprised when they was no slosh of liquid in it. He must have finished it. "Shit," he muttered, a little more alert now that he realized he was out of his 'medicine'.

Tag: @harpermcintyre

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This is my Fight Song --TAKE BACK MY LIFE SONG, PROVE I'M ALRIGHT SONG Well, Jasper was alive. Shadows ringed his eyes as he opened them, making him look older. Also tired. He definitely looked tired. Harper crouched down to be at the same level as him, ready to help him if he needed it. She then flinched back slightly at the smell of alcohol as he opened his mouth to speak and she wondered just how much he had drunk. There was the empty flask on the ground, another flask in his hand. She was also trying to remember if she had seen him drinking back at Arkadia as well. The smell and the slurred voice told her she likely could have. She decided that it would be best to ignore the comment about Monty, it wasn't worth arguing with a drunk person. She was sure that he couldn't have really meant it. They weren't together as much as they had been but she hadn't seen a friendship as strong as theirs, it was one that would last. Well, she hoped Jasper would forgive Monty. With everything that had happened, they all deserved to have something good in their lives. "It's empty," Harper said as Jasper shook the flask in his hand. "It's time to come back to Arkadia then. It'll be dark soon." Shaking her head, Harper reached over to grab the flask on the ground that had first caught her attention. As she searched for its lid she pursed her lips and kept quickly glancing over at Jasper as she waited to see whether he was going to fight her on going back to the camp or not. "Did this even have a lid?" she eventually asked, holding up the second flask for him to see. @jasper420 || HAAARJAAAR! ENJOY!

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Jasper shrugged and made a noise that resembled 'I don't know'. He was pretty sure there had been a lid, though. He shifted forward, reaching to his back pocket where the was a smaller flask. He shook it, satisfied that there was moonshine left, and then shoved it back in his pocket. He didn't need it just yet. He shifted again and ran his hands over the ground, trying to remember where he'd dropped the lid.

"Don't mind the dark," he told her, his hands finding the lid fairly easily. Apparently somewhere in his brain he remembered where he dropped it, even if he couldn't retrieve the memory fully. He held it out to her and slumped back against the tree. "Whad're you doing out here?"

Tag: @harpermcintyre

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This is my Fight Song --TAKE BACK MY LIFE SONG, PROVE I'M ALRIGHT SONG Harper took the lid from Jasper as soon as he offered it to her, screwing it onto the flask and frowning as she placed it on the ground next to the water container. Maybe if she got his stuff together for him it would be easier to convince him to come back to the camp with her. There was no way that she would be leaving Jasper there. He would be eaten by a wild animal or killed by a rogue grounder. Who knew what other things could happen to him, and if something happened to him, Monty would not be happy. She owed it to both of them to keep Jasper safe. "Now, could I have the other flasks you're carrying?" Her hair covered her face slightly as she shook her head in disbelief. He'd pulled another one from his pocket. How many flasks could one boy have collected? She wasn't even sure that the camp had that much alcohol in stock. One would think they could only have so much moonshine ready to give out. She sighed and sat down on the ground, confident in knowing that it would take a while to move out. "I'm going to collect water for the camp," she said. She brushed the stray hairs away from her face. "What are you doing out here?" @jasper420 || HAARJAAAR

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Jasper handed her the empty flask he'd shaken before, and said, "The other one is fine where it is." He wasn't giving her his alcohol. Not unless her intent was to sit here and drink with him. He doubted that was the case. Even Monty had had the nerve to try to talk to him about drinking. Like Monty had any say in what Jasper did anymore.

Jasper shook his head in probably an over exaggerated way when Harper asked what he was doing out here, then then let his head drop to the side, almost touching his shoulder. "You know, just enjoying the fresh air," he said casually. "Enjoying being alone," he added, but there was nothing in his voice that indicated he was upset by Harper's presence. He wasn't. She hadn't done anything to upset Jasper, either in Mount Weather or out of it. "Hoping something would put me out of my misery." He tapped one of the flasks in her hand with his fingernail. "That helps."

Tag: @harpermcintyre

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This is my Fight Song --TAKE BACK MY LIFE SONG, PROVE I'M ALRIGHT SONG Harper took the second empty flask from him and held her hand out to take the one in his pocket as well. She was met with resistance on that. Getting the alcohol off of him would stop him from drinking any more that day, at the very least stop him from drinking more out in the forest, but he obviously didn't like that idea. She couldn't force him to do anything. If it came to the worse, she would sit with him all night to make sure he was safe, although that idea had her more than a little bit nervous. She had seen how big some of the animals were in the forest. As she watched his head lull to the side, she laughed quietly. "Fresh air is nice, can't be outside enough even after months of being down here." She really couldn't get enough of the fresh air. It was different to what they had been breathing on the Ark, so much more refreshing and full of smells that made it worth. She doubted that Jasper was really appreciating that in his drunk state. From everything that Harper had seen of Jasper since they escaped Mount Weather, he wasn't appreciating much at all. He always seemed numb to the world. There was a part of Harper that could understand, at least to a degree. She hadn't lost anyone so close but she couldn't imagine she would be herself after something like that. "Jasper," Harper began but she wasn't one hundred percent sure what she was actually going to say. Something about how it would be okay? About how alcohol wouldn't bring Maya back? No, that wouldn't help at all. "Look, everyone's been probably telling you the same things. You're probably sick of it. I would be. But Jas, you need to move on already. It's been a month, more than and I miss my jerk of a friend." She dropped the second flask down next to the first and leaned back against a tree herself. @jasper420 || Jasper, be a sober jerk again, okay?

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Jasper had closed his eyes, ready for the 'I'm sorry' or one of the many other condolences people kept giving him that didn't mean anything, but when Harper finished talking, Jasper snapped his gaze up to hers, scowling. "Move on?" he asked, feeling his heart start to race. "Move on?!" he repeated more angrily, his voice shaking slightly as he did his best not to just lash out completely. "It's been more than a month?" he paraphrased. "I didn't realize there was a time limit on grieving," he spat. Jasper suspected there was more to it than just that. He felt like his brain was broken.

He ran his hand over his freshly shaved head. He couldn't do this. Couldn't have this conversation. Tears were starting to fill his eyes now, but he wasn't sure if they were angry tears or mournful ones. He clumsily pushed himself to his feet, using the tree to help him stand, and started to stagger away in the direction opposite camp. He wanted to move fast, but his body wouldn't cooperate.

Tag: @harpermcintyre

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This is my Fight Song --TAKE BACK MY LIFE SONG, PROVE I'M ALRIGHT SONG As much as Harper had expected that she wouldn't receive the most positive reaction from what she had said, she couldn't say she expected the dramatic and angry reaction she did end up receiving from Jasper. She flinched back as his anger flooded words and her head began to ache as she banged it against the tree behind her. Not even really thinking about the action, her hand lifted to rub the back of her head. It hurt more though to hear her own words thrown back at her, she hadn't meant for them to sound as cruel as he had understood them. "Jasper, I.." She looked down at the ground in front of her, trying to think of how to fix it. She may have been a little bit too hard in her love. Jasper was well and truly trying to destroy his own life because of his grief. That's what it looked like from her point of view, she had just wanted to try and snap him out of it. "You're pushing everyone away," she said, her eyes still on the ground. Her head shook as she looked up again and saw Jasper standing. He looked like he could fall at any second. Harper stood up quickly, ignoring the flasks and water container that were on the ground and followed Jasper. It wasn't that hard to keep up with him, it wasn't like he was walking very straight or very steadily. She let him walk for a moment, keeping a step behind him as she decided that she wasn't going to give up on her tough love. "Jasper, I'm sorry," she said as she sped up to walk beside him. She placed her hand on his arm in hope that he would stop and actually listen to her. "But you can't just run away because you're upset. You are pushing everyone away. We get it, Maya meant so much to you but don't we mean something to you?" She looked into his tear flooded eyes, trying to find anything that might show he understood or that he cared. Trying to see if her friend was still in there somewhere.  @jasper420 || Yay! A post!

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"Harper, you don't understand," Jasper managed, though walking was becoming even more difficult with his vision swimming from unshed tears. "And I can't explain it," he added, his voice cracking as the tears finally spilled over. How could he explain to someone that he thought his brain was broken?Anyone he said that to would probably laugh or tell him he was being over-dramatic, even though Jasper really felt like it was true. He felt like a completely different person from who he was before.

He gave up trying to walk away from Harper, as she obviously wasn't going to stop following him, and slumped against a tree. "How am I not supposed to push you all away?" he asked, letting a few more tears roll down his face without bothering to wipe them away. "My best friend, practically my brother, killed all those people. An entire civilization. Clarke, our supposed fearless leader," he said, sarcasm dripping from his voice even as it cracked with emotion, "killed all those people. Not just Maya. There we're children there too. Good people. People that helped us. And I see the every night in my sleep. If my best fucking friend--ex-best friend--could do that, who the hell am I supposed to trust? He knew them too. They helped him too. Maya helped him." By the time he finished talking, he was practically sobbing. He didn't care. He just slid down the tree until he was on his knees, covering his face with his hands. "Just leave me, please," he pleaded quietly. "As far as I know, you don't deserve this."

Tag: @harpermcintyre

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This is my Fight Song --TAKE BACK MY LIFE SONG, PROVE I'M ALRIGHT SONG Jasper was right. Harper didn't understand, she hadn't been through his pain of losing someone so close but then he hadn't exactly been helping any of them to understand either. How were they supposed to have any chance at understanding what Jasper was going through when all he was doing with his days was drinking and being more reckless than normal. "Why don't you try?" There was a slight hint of desperation in Harper's voice. Jasper had become one of her best friends on Earth and she missed him. "Try to explain what's going on and maybe we'll be able to help you. In a nicer way. Maybe talking about it could help you." She watched as he cried, something that she had seen him do so much more often as of lately. She wasn't sure if she had really ever even seen Jasper cry before Mount Weather and the loss of Maya. Harper took it as a good sign when Jasper stopped to lean against the tree, she hadn't really wanted to follow him through the woods for a long time. Seeing that the sun was getting lower on the horizon and knowing that Jasper wasn't the most steady on his feet, it couldn't have ended well. Her even slightly positive view on the situation completely disappeared when he continued to talk, however. Harper found herself speechless. She knew everything she was saying, she knew it as well as everyone else who had lived through Mount Weather. Yet still, the words being said still hit home and she found herself unable to look at Jasper. It wasn't the deaths of the doctor that had drilled into her or the guards that he came in to take them away when they had been locked in the dorms that she cared about. She never thought about the children. She never wanted to.  She stared down at the ground, at the thick roots of the tree and took in a deep breath. "I'm not leaving you." Her head lifted to look back at Jasper, crying and on his knees. "None of us are happy about what happened, Jasper. Children died and that shouldn't happen." But what else could we have done? From everything that Harper had heard about what had happened in the control room, there hadn't been any other choice in what to do. Instead of trying some other method of convincing him that it was fine, instead of giving him another speech about how they all cared or even making that comment about their lack of choices in the Mount Weather decision, Harper just sat down. She could sit with him all night and protect him. There wasn't much chance now that he would go back with her to the camp. @jasper420 || Not the children!

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Jasper heard Harper sit near him. She wasn't going to leave him. Of course not, even if Jasper begged her too. If he dug, he could probably find something terrible to say to her to make her leave, but as much as he wanted to make her leave, he couldn't hurt her like that. That wasn't who he was, even if his broken brain made him think maybe he could get away with it.

He was slowly regaining his composure, his breath still gaspy, though th tears had slowed. "What's talking about it going to do, Harper?" he asked, going back to what she'd said earlier. "It won't bring her back. It won't bring any of them back." He wiped at his eyes, then leaned his head against the tree. "I was going to kill Cage," he said more quietly, his voice wobbling. "I could have stopped it all if I'd just had more time. Or if I'd moved faster."

Tag: @harpermcintyre

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This is my Fight Song --TAKE BACK MY LIFE SONG, PROVE I'M ALRIGHT SONG With Jasper beginning to calm down, Harper found herself wishing that she had a handkerchief with her that she could give to him. Or at least some scrap bit of fabric. It still seemed like she was far from getting him to come back to Arkadia and she knew the feeling of drying snot and tears did not improve any situation. That was a minor problem really and there was a much larger one with a solution that Harper couldn't yet see. She wasn't sure that she had done anything by that stage to make Jasper feel better. She was sure that she had only managed to make him feel worse and for that she felt horrible. All she wanted was to see Jasper on his way back to his normal self. She couldn't see that happening anytime soon, if ever. All she could do was hope that maybe talking about it might trigger something for him to heal. She looked up at Jasper to speak. Her face was pulled down in a frown but she tried to hold a sense of confidence. "No, it won't bring any of them back. Nothing will. But that doesn't mean it can't help. Have you talked to anyone about it since it happened?" She looked down at the ground, suddenly noticing a small paw print in the dirt. That made her feel nervous but she did have her gun and she knew it was loaded. She had enough confidence in her gun skills to know that an animal wouldn't likely be able to kill them. Not wanting to focus too much on the animal track, she looked back up at Jasper and focused on the plan he said he'd had. "And it would have ended with Cage? There were children, there were good people but I doubt it all would have ended with Cage's death. It was a good plan to think of," she tried to give him a small smile, "but there wasn't much choice for us." @jasper420 || Poor Jas!

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"Maybe it wouldn't have ended with Cage," Jasper admitted. He'd thought about it a lot since the night it happened. He could't stop thinking about it. His brain wouldn't let him. At the time, he'd been so zoned in on saving everyone, he hadn't looked at the bigger picture. The Mountain people would still need transfusions to live. "But it would have stopped the immediate problem. It would've stopped people getting drilled." He shook his head, still mad at himself that he couldn't get to Cage soon enough. "It would have given us time to think,  to figure something out, like we always do." Jasper had only been able to convince the delinquents in Mount Weather to volunteer for transfusions only after they knew what was happening and were trying to buy themselves time. But maybe if the other Arkers had seen the people inside, the children, enough of them would be kind hearted enough to volunteer too.

Jasper glanced over at Harper, remembering that she had been drilled too. "How's your leg?"

Tag: @harpermcintyre

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This is my Fight Song --TAKE BACK MY LIFE SONG, PROVE I'M ALRIGHT SONG As much as Harper had to admit that Jasper was right in what he said, that killing Cage may have fixed the immediate problem they faced, she couldn't help but think it would have left their side with more dead. That was not something that Harper was going to say out loud as she could work out that it would only lead to Jasper mentioning all of Mount Weather's dead once again but she still though it. She hated that so many innocents had died but her friends - well, most of them - were still alive and that was something that mattered more to her. And then, of course, the fact that the people of Mount Weather would have still needed the bone marrow and Harper felt herself begin to shut down, if that was even the right way to describe it, when she thought too much about the drilling. "Maybe," she just said to Jasper. There was an obvious discomfort in her voice and she couldn't quite look at Jasper. For Jasper to be thinking about Harper, well, she took that as a good sign. She doubted that when he was stuck in the deep depths of his mourning that he ever stopped to think about how other people were feeling. For a quick answer, Harper just gave Jasper a shrug. She glanced down at her leg, feeling a ghost pain shoot up where she had been drilled, like it was reacting to its mention. It happened sometimes but not often, the ghost pain. She had yet to mention it to Abby though, because by that point she had been told she had made a great recovery. "It's fine now," she told him, another shrug with her words. It really was the topic that she herself didn't enjoy talking about at all. Even just getting questions about how her injuries were by that point made her uncomfortable, wanting to change the subject. So, she did. "How do you get so much alcohol?" She asked the question with a smile forced onto her face. @jasper420 || Shitty post is shitty.