Theodore T. Tonks

[theodore]

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{ A B O U T . Y O U }

Name: Najooj
Gender: Female
Age: 18
E-mail: you has
Twitter: you has
Years of RPG Experience: >6
Other: Removed by Staff! =D

i forgot to put bible quotes in the history and now i can't be bothered. yay laziness!

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{ Q U I C K . Q U I Z }

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{ A B O U T . T H E . C H A R A C T E R }

Name: Theodore Tyson Tonks
Age: 17
Gender: Male
Year: Seventh
Face Claim: Orlando Bloom

Canon or Original? Canon

Facial Properties:

{ A man's wisdom maketh his face to shine, and the boldness of his face shall be changed }

Ted has never found anything particularly striking about his face. If you were to ask him what he looks like he'd literally respond with "I have brown hair, brown eyes and all the other facial features of a human being." And it's exactly that - he has dark, gossamer brown eyes that are neither too wide nor too narrow. He'd been previously accused of having 'puppy eyes', and he'll admit to taking advantage of them at times when the occasion calls for it. There aren't anything particularly special about them – no flecks of burgundy or green. Just plain, boring ole' brown, in his humble opinion. Similarly, his hair is dark brown and, when he grows it out – which he has a tendency to do due to general laziness – it's a mess of curls that he's normally not very buggered with and that has an annoying tendency to constantly hang over his forehead, covering his thick, dark eyebrows and, at times, his eyes. He tends to keep it tied at the nape of his neck to keep it out of his face whenever it gets longer since that makes it less annoying to deal with. His face is almost square-shaped, with an angular jaw and smooth chin. He's usually well-shaven, although lately he lets it grow out to form a light beard. He has strong cheek-bones, a medium-sized forehead and fairly thin, pink lips. His face is becomes quite tanned after hours spent in the hot sun helping out at the farm during the summer, although it becomes slightly lighter while he's at Hogwarts. Overall, he has a pleasing visage to look at. The type you could pass over without a second glance, really.

Physique:

{ He made man, and put his heart in the midst of the body, and gave him breath, life, and understanding. }

Ted really is a farm boy, and he definitely has the body for it. His shoulders are broad and his arms quite heavily muscled thanks to years of ploughing farm land and taking care of the live stock with his brother – up to a point – and his father. A wide chest tapers to a narrow waist, followed by long, toned legs and fairly large feet. His hands are rough and calloused, once again a product of the hard work he had to do on his father's farm. He's of average height for his age, having peaked at 5'11 and stopped growing upwards after the initial growth spurt. He's okay with this fairly average height, though, since he's not exactly a dwarf or anything next to his friends, and he's at least taller than most girls he's met. His skin is smooth and, like his face, quite tanned. The one out-of-place blemish is his tattoo. The first – and, unfortunately, not the last– time his best friend had convinced him that getting drunk would be a good idea, they'd decided that getting tattoos would also be a swell activity and now he has the shameful – in his opinion – reminder of that night; one resembling a sun to the left of his belly button. Overall, Ted is quite fit. Aside from farm work, he keeps himself toned throughout the year by playing Quidditch and football with his friends and waking up extra early each morning for his daily jog around the lake. He's a pretty active guy in general, especially since he's unable to sit around doing nothing for too long. He's used to waking up at the crack of dawn and having something to do around the farm, so sitting still and lazing about just isn't an option. He has a tendency to bounce his leg in class and doesn't even realise he's doing it until the person seated next to him points it out and tells him to stop, so he would. And then he would unconsciously be doing it again not five minutes later and they would give up trying to stop him. If it's not leg-bouncing, it's finger-tapping, if it's not finger-tapping it's fidgeting. He just needs to be doing something with his hands or body all the time. Ironically, it helps him focus better on the real tasks at hand, like completing an essay or listening in class. If he needs to stay still, he'd be focusing all his concentration on not fidgeting, and thus be missing out on what he should be focusing on.

Wand Type: 12 inches, Hazel wood, Demiguise hair core
Wand Expertise: Transfiguration
Patronus: German Shepherd
Boggart: Back in third year, Ted's boggart was a bible with a knife stuck through it, blood blooming from the pages. It represented his fear of betraying God. Unbeknown to him, his fear changed after the summer before his fourth year and it is now, ironically, magic. Or, more specifically, himself doing magic. In some ways, it's a mixture of his old fear and a newer one. He's deathly afraid of hurting someone he loves – again. It's not a fear he's exactly aware of. Sure, more recently, quite a few spells are difficult for him to master at first, but he's never put much thought as to why that is. He's simply accepted it as him not being powerful enough.

Personality:

{ Faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen. }

Ted grew up in a household where religion came first above everything else. His parents are strict Catholics and drilled the faith into him and his brother ever since they were little, constantly referring to the bible and ensuring they went to church every week. In no time at all, both Ted and Tristan were quoting from the bible. Of course, Ted's faith wasn't always as concrete and unwavering as it is now. When he first learned of his magical abilities and his parents had that rather…violent, as it were, reaction to the news, he'd begun to doubt himself. With his mother telling him he was a bad Christian, he wondered if he had been wrong about God – if he really didn't love all his children, because the way his parents made it out to be, God didn't love him anymore because he was a wizard. And then the second one was after The Accident. Despite those times where his faith was shaken, Ted always managed to find his way back to God, knowing that God would always accept him once again. If there is one person you can trust, it's God, or so he believes. He would never forsake you, He'd never judge you, He'd always be there for you when you needed Him most. He was perfect, kind, just. It saddened Ted that others were not as faithful to Him as he was, that some did not even believe in God, and found it to be his duty to spread the message and attempt to guide his fellow peers in the right direction. Of course, he would never try to enforce his beliefs on anyone, and if one seemed to be completely opposed to the idea, he would drop the topic. He had always believed that everyone needed to come into their own faith in their own time, really. He's simply willing to help them along if needed.

{ Do not let loyalty and faithfulness forsake you. }

Besides God, what Ted values above everything else is friendship. His friends mean the world to him – literally. He's willing to do anything for them, within reason of course. Unfortunately, he expects the same from them. He's not naïve, however. He knows how to pick his friends well. While to others his choice in friends might seem a little odd, but often he sees things in people that others might not – that they might not even see in themselves. As soon as someone's his friend, however, Ted easily opens up to them. Of course, no matter how much he might think that he's putting his trust in the right people, he does have a tendency to overlook more in-your-face flaws with a few of his friends. He'll probably be the best friend you'll ever have because he'll always come through for you, no matter what. If there's a favor that you need, Ted's definitely your guy because, as long as it's reasonable enough, he won't say no. He's also a pretty loyal boyfriend. He doesn't believe in hook-ups and one-night-stands. Instead, he believes in long-lasting, meaningful relationships. He's a romantic at heart and it shows when he's giving his girlfriend her favorite flowers, buying her little, thoughtful presents or telling her how beautiful he thinks she is. He doesn't exactly shower her with compliments and big, extravagant gifts – they're really just little things to show her how much he cares and then, later, something to remember him by. It's often the smallest things that have the most meaning, after all.

{ Pride goeth before destruction, and a haughty spirit before a fall. }

One of Ted's worst traits is his pride. It's one of the seven deadly sins, and he's well-aware of that. He has tried to change it – honestly, he has – but it simply can't be helped. It's not that he's a vain person; he's not. He just knows who he is, and accepts himself for it. He doesn't appreciate blows to his ego, and takes them particularly hard. You know that saying "there is no wrath like a woman scorned"? Well, there is also no wrath like Theodore Tonks scorned. He has a hard time getting over his own pride, and it's quite irritating, both to people, and to himself when he ends up saying or doing something completely irrational. He's not very open minded towards criticism, even if it's supposed to be constructive, and ends up becoming visibly annoyed and either reacting with a testy "I don't need your help" or something similar, or simply ignore them. He finds it especially difficult to apologise. Oh, he realizes when he needs to, the words just don't come out very easily, and when they do...well, it's probably not the best apology you're going to get, depending on the situation. If he does feel really bad – bad enough to ignore his pride – then he can end up giving the best apology ever, complete with honeyed words, guilty expressions and maybe even a little 'I'm sorry' gift. His pride is also a factor of his rather unforgiving nature. Should you, for whatever reason, betray his trust, it is ridiculously difficult to regain his faith in you. He takes things a tad too much to heart, and as easy as it is to gain his trust, it's just as easy to break it. Depending on the magnitude of your actions, he might not forgive you for a few days, a few weeks, a month – and, if the situation is that bad, he might never forgive you. It's not something he's proud of – no pun intended – but it's something that he simply cannot help.

{ A wise man has great power, and a man of knowledge increases strength. }

Ted loves facts. He likes to constantly feed his mind with general knowledge and keep it active. The brain is the one organ that actually needs you to exercise it; it will not work on its own, after all. Like a muscle, it will become lazy and lax should you neglect it. He does not have a particularly huge mental capacity – a genius he is not – and so he definitely doesn't stray towards the more philosophical volumes, but he does enjoy reading and expanding his knowledge. Intelligence is one of the most powerful weapons when used correctly. He's not the type of guy who lets his fists do the talking, although he can definitely hold his own should it come to that. But no, he prefers to uses his words instead and reason out an argument. Despite his thirst for intelligence, Ted does not spend all his free time cooped up in his dormitory with a book – quite the opposite, since he's quite outdoors-y and hates being inside for too long, and thus prefers to do his reading and homework outside. He's your regular guy who likes the sunshine as much as the next person – and perhaps even more than the regular person, really. As a matter of fact, he enjoys being social – hanging out with friends, playing football with his mates, and so on and so forth. He's definitely not a party animal, and prefers not to waste away nights drinking and generally acting like an uncivilized buffoon, although he won't say no to going to a normal party – he just won't be one of the people guzzling down half their weight in alcohol and then spending the morning becoming intimate with their toilet. Excuse him for not wanting to regurgitate everything in his stomach just for those few hours of "letting loose" – in other words, acting like a slurring, inebriated douchebag and likely making some sort of huge mistake.

He knows from experience, after all.

{ And as he reasoned of righteousness, temperance, and judgment to come. }

When his pride isn't hurt, Ted is actually a pretty reasonable guy. In a debate, he'll hear you out fully and, while he doesn't like to admit he's wrong, in a calm situation he might eventually give in if you're convincing enough. He's not the type of person to make snap judgments, unless the situation is perfectly clear to him. He'll analyze things before he makes his decisions and forms his opinions – but just because he's the think-before-you-speak type of guy does not mean that the thoughts and opinions he forms are right. On the contrary! No matter how much he likes to believes that he's in the right and that you are in the wrong, there are times when he isn't. Still, as good of a listener as he might be, and as much as he likes to hear other people's opinions, and as reasonable as he can be, his pride – and, at times, plain pig-headedness - often ends up conflicting with the more logical side of him and it becomes a battle of reason versus pure, man-pride. Nevertheless, he's also a responsible person. Growing up on the farm, Ted had quite a few chores and responsibilities and it taught him the ability to handle tasks and the accident with his brother truly taught him how to take responsibility for his own actions. He never shies away from responsibilities, whether it's those to God as a Christian, to his teachers – and, in some ways, himself - as a student, to the school as Head Boy, to his family as a son who has certain duties on the farm, or even just to his friends.

{ He maketh the storm a calm, so that the waves thereof are still. }

Ted doesn't have much of a temper at all. He's pretty much the calmest, most level-headed guy you'll find, really. He doesn't lose his head easily, and he rarely – if ever – shouts, mostly because he never needs to. He has the I'm-being-very-serious-so-you-better-shut-up-and-listen tone down to a pat, and thus never feels the need to raise his voice since he can get his point across without it. It takes a lot to get a real rise out of him. He pretends to calmly and quietly deal with situations since he believes that it's better to logically handle things rather than blow up and cause a scene. He doesn't start fights, either. As a matter of fact, more often than not, he's ends them. He's known as the peace-maker who gets in the middle of the fray to pull the offenders apart and try to reasonably and rationally talk to them and persuade them to calm down and not want to rip each other apart any longer. He'll speak soothingly, calmly, trying to ease the tension and cool down the situation. He's also very patient – he's the type of person who could wait around forever without becoming aggravated, although you wouldn't think so with his constant twitching. He's not the type of person to thoughtlessly rush into a situation, since he believes that recklessness leads to making mistakes and hasty decisions that can lead to a crap load of trouble. And if there's one thing that Ted doesn't like its making trouble. Oh sure, he might be amused when his friends pull pranks, but he'd definitely not join in the fun. He's the I'll-stand-on-the-side-lines-and-watch-you-get-detention type of guy rather than I'm-the-mastermind-behind-it-all. So, really, it's no surprise that he was made Head Boy in his seventh year: responsible, intelligent, reasonable, calm, non-trouble maker. Dumbledore knew what he was doing, as he often does.

Likes:
+ God
+ His family
+ Expanding his knowledge
+ Friendship
+ Butterbeer
+ Chocolate truffles
+ The outdoors
+ The farm
+ Order
+ When girls blush
Dislikes:
– Any Dark Magic
– Sitting still; he always has to be doing something.
– Alcohol
– Being criticized
– Know-it-alls
– Tight spaces
– The notion that his mother blames him for what happened to his brother
– Winter
– Being patronised
– Shouting

History:

Jeremy Tonks was everything a mother would dream for her daughter: handsome, from a well-off family, a strict Catholic, a good man. He was an only child and it was no secret that the mother's at the church all had their sights set on him for their respective daughters who were considered old enough. A part of him basked in this knowledge; he could have any girl he wanted, any girl at all. It stroked his ego, as it would anyone's. He knew he had to choose carefully, however. He couldn't just take anyone as his wife. Not only did she have to be good enough for him, but she had to be good enough for his mother. That, in itself, was a huge issue. See, his mother was the epitome of 'picky'. Seeing as he was her only son, she spent his whole life doting on him, making him the most perfect Christian and man there ever was and the most perfect man deserved the most perfect woman, no? But of course! And she wouldn't stand for anything less than perfect. Of course, when you set such high standards, you were bound to find that they were almost impossible. Emphasis on the almost, thank you. Jeremy's mother knew that such a girl existed: someone who was from a good, Christian family, someone beautiful – of course – who would know how to handle her husband and her children, who would be able to make a wonderful home with her son, who would be calm and patient, loving and kind, firm and strict when needed. She did not want a flighty, silly girl who had too many ideas. No, what she really wanted was a simple girl – simple, but not stupid. She had to know when to graciously bend the will of her husband – because, of course, Jeremy was the man of the house, but she also had to know when to put her foot down because she was still a woman and she had to know how to hold her own when the occasion called for it. Jeremy was a bit stubborn at times, and for all the wrong reasons. She didn't want him making mistakes when his wife could be there to guide him in the right direction. And so Jillian watched the girls at their church grow and bloom into "wonderful" young ladies, searching for that perfect one for her son.

Enter Annabelle Newberry.

Anna, like the rest of her church friends and probably most of the girls that had ever met him, had had her eyes set on Jeremy ever since she got over her ew-boys-have-cooties stage. He really was the epitome of perfection: smart, handsome, religious, fit, ambitious. Perfect. And she believed she was the perfect match for him. She knew his mother – everyone knew Jillian Tonks, for the Tonks family was well-known ever since Jeremy's great-great-grandfather had started the successful shoe-making business, Tonks & Co. While Jeremy was not the direct heir to the empire, he still came from good money. Besides, with his ambition, Anna wouldn't be surprised if he had plans to start his own successful company. Her mother was quite pleased with her choice, encouraging her to get closer to him. And she did, but Anna knew that as easy as it was to enrapture him with her beauty and intelligence, it was no he that she needed to impress. No, the one person who would decide whether she was good enough for Jeremy Tonks was his ever-so-hard-to-please mother. And so Anna focused most of her attention on her, often bringing the woman home-baked cookies, complimenting her at every opportunity, making a point to clip out parts in magazines that she knew Jillian would enjoy and then, when they became closer, she would bring her gifts that she claimed she "saw and simply had to buy for her because they simply screamed 'Mrs. Tonks'". Soon enough, Jillian was inviting her to dinner and talking her up to Jeremy; about how wonderful Anna was, and how thoughtful and sweet, and oh wasn't that pie she baked absolutely scrumptious? She would make such a good housewife one day. Finally, when Anna was nineteen and Jeremy twenty-one, they began dating properly with Jillian's consent. Soon enough, they were engaged, and then two months later, married.

Anna could not have been more pleased with the way her life was going. Jeremy was everything she had ever wanted, and he made her happy. She made him happy too – why wouldn't he be happy? She was absolutely perfect. However, he surprised her when he told her he wanted nothing to do with the family business; neither did he have any interest in being a business man. No, Jeremy had bigger dreams than that. He wanted to own a farm. Annabelle was shocked. All of that trouble and she would end up as a farmer's wife? She tried to sway him away from the idea, but he was convinced. Not even his parents could change his mind and, to add onto her frustration, his father actually supported his decision. It was obvious Jeremy had them wrapped around his little finger, and it was obvious that she had no choice in the matter, either. All she could do was pray to God that their farm would be fruitful. With that, Jeremy dipped into his savings and, with a little help from his father, bought a large piece of land in the countryside of Kent and started his farm from scratch. It was incredibly difficult at first, especially since Anna wanted children at once. Starting up such a big project from scratch took a lot of time and effort, but Jeremy was nothing if not motivated. He started off with growing and harvesting potatoes, and then expanded into mixed farming as he bought and bred cattle, and then built stables, and then a chicken coop; slowly, but surely, his dream came true. He now owned one of the biggest farms and Anna was finally appeased. It took years, especially since he could not spend as much time as he wanted to with his sons. He had tried to persuade Anna to postpone it until after the farm was on its feet, but she would hear none of it. Not a year after the farm was started up, he was the proud father of two sons; twins that they named Theodore and Tristan. Despite their – in his opinion – bad timing, Jeremy loved them to pieces, and spent as much time with them as possible – which wasn't very much at all for the first five years or so of their lives. Anna was the one who raised them, and who bred in them the strong, Catholic beliefs they carried with them now.

Ted and Tristan were eager to help with their father's farm. They absolutely loved everything about it. When they were old enough, they would wake up at the crack of dawn to take care of all kinds of chores – feeding the chickens, grooming the horses. Oh, there was hired help, but not much. Even though Jeremy could afford it, he wasn't the type of person who liked to delegate to complete strangers and put too much trust in them, and so he was grateful for the extra help that his sons provided, and they were more than happy to lend it. The twins were tighter than any other brothers could be, although they could not be more different. Tristan was the more adventurous, rambunctious one while Ted was the quiet one who preferred to observe his brother's antics rather than join in. Most of the time, anyway, for his brother held a power over him like no other and it was ridiculously easy to be swayed into getting up to trouble with his brother and drive their mother half-insane and end up being grounded for being such "naughty boys". The farm continued to reap success and the Tonks lived quite comfortably. Even though it was not the life Anna had imagined – she'd dreamt of an extravagant house, parties every night, menservants and flowing champagne– she had to admit, she couldn't be happier with their quite little life at the farm. It humbled her and she soon realized that the life she had imagined was not one that God would approve of. Throwing money around like nobody's business was not very Christian, after all. Did God not encourage humility? And thus, she was appeased once more.

For the first eleven years, life was good. And then, mid-June, Ted received a letter inviting him to go to a special school – a school of magic. Not knowing what it meant, he gave the letter to his mother, who proceeded to burn it, convinced it was a practical joke. But there was nothing funny about the man who came to their doorstep and told them that Ted was a wizard and that he had to go to this boarding school called Hogwarts. Jeremy and Anna were stunned. Magic? Wizard? Boarding school? It went against everything they believed. There was no way powerful beings such as wizards and witches existed. There was no way they could do things that only God was capable of. And yet, even so, the signs were clear as they remembered the strange things that happened around Ted. The strange, inexplicable things. And while the man was dressed funny, it was obvious he wasn't insane; their son was a wizard. Anna took it a lot harder than Jeremy did. She couldn't look Ted in the face for days and when she did, she would mutter an anguished prayer, asking God to save her son from this fate. When she finally talked to him, it was to inform him that he could no longer be a good Christian, because Christians could not be wizards, they couldn't know magic. And, of course, Ted believed her and after one such conversation he ran to his room and burst into shameful tears, convinced that he had now betrayed his religion by being the way he was. His mother was right; he was a bad Christian. Good Christians didn't think they had magical powers. How could they? Only God had such powers. So it was obvious there was something wrong with him. He didn't know how, he didn't know what he had done to deserve this fate, but there was no escaping it because the Man-In-The-Weird-Robes said he had to go to that school in a month.

It was Tristan who finally smoothed everything over. Whereas the family seemed to think of it as a curse, he was thrilled. He had always been the open-minded one, and the news of his brother's abilities was a gift, in his opinion. A gift with which he wished he had been blessed with but, alas, the wizard had come for Ted alone. And while he was a little jealous, his concern for his brother overrode it. He would stay up nights with Ted telling him everything was going to be okay, and how cool it was, and how there was no way God could hate him because it wasn't like he was a wizard on purpose. It was God who had made him this way, so God must love him for God loved all His children, wizards or not. Their father was a lot easier to sway than his mother, but the influence was too great and with a week left until it was time for Ted to leave for Hogwarts, there was some semblance of acceptance. And now that Ted didn't have to worry about being a "bad Christian", he allowed himself to explore what this really meant for him – he was a wizard. A real, honest-to-God, I-can-do-abra-kadabra-magic wizard. Buying his wand was possibly the most amazing experience he had had in his short life. And then he was being dropped off at King's Cross station and saying goodbye to his parents and Tristan – the latter was harder, admittedly, and he promised to write to him every single day without fail- and then he was off to Hogwarts with the rest of the eleven-year-old wizards. For three years, Ted's life as a wizard went without a hitch. His father now accepted him with open arms, and his mother had gotten very good at pretending that she did, too. And all it took for that fragile acceptance to be shattered was one big mistake.

It was the summer before his fourth year. Ted had just returned from Hogwarts that morning. He and Tristan were out in the fields on their respective horses, Apollo and Artemis. It was getting late, but neither of them noticed as Ted continued relaying onto Tristan all the magic he had learned. It was a mark of how much he loved his brother that Tristan felt no jealously, simply absorbing all the information like a dying man guzzled down water in a desert. Ted had just finished telling him about a new spell they had learned when Tristan suddenly demanded that he show him magic. Surprised, Ted automatically replied with the same response he had given the past two summers: "I can't, I'll be expelled". Tristan was having none of it, however, and after five minutes of "please"s, "come on"s and "don't be a coward"s, he finally relented. How much harm could it be if he just did a little spell? He knew you weren't supposed to in front of muggles, but he could see that his brother was getting more and more frustrated and his need to please his twin overrode every reasonable instinct he had. He decided that the Lumos spell would be the smallest one to start off with. It wasn't exactly big magic, and he supposed he could explain it away as they had no other means of seeing, since it was getting too dark. And so he murmured the spell and a bright light flashed suddenly. There was no way of predicting what happened next, it was all so shocking. One second, Tristan was exclaiming over how "bloody brilliant" the spell was and then the next Apollo and Artemis were whinnying in an alarmed fashion and bucking under them. Ted managed to grab onto the reigns in the last instant, but Tristan wasn't so lucky and there was a thump of hooves, a shriek and Tristan lying in a crumpled heap while Ted screamed for his father.

He wasn't dead; the outcome was worse and better. He was alive, but he was paralyzed from the waist down, and they didn't know if he would ever be able to walk again. Ted was horrified – this was his fault. It was his irresponsibility, his stupidity. He locked himself in his room that night, unable to face his family, unable to handle the guilt, unable to handle it if Tristan blamed him – except he didn't. Tristan accepted it was no one's fault; no one could have guessed the horses would react that way. He was just glad Ted was okay. What should have been reassured sent Ted to his room for another crying spell. He didn't want this…this acceptance. He needed Tristan to yell at him, scream at him, hate him. He deserved it, and Anna seemed to agree; for the rest of the summer, his mother pretended he didn't exist, and that just made everything even worse. She didn't say it, but he knew she was thinking it: he was a horrible Christian and he was going to hell for what he had done to his brother. Ted spent as much time possible out on the fields, ploughing the Earth, feeding the chickens, milking the cows – anything to be away from his family. He couldn't look at Tristan in his wheelchair; he just couldn't. Tristan, like him, had always been an active person and seeing him locked to something like that was heartbreaking, no matter how accepting he was of it. Jeremy was significantly better than Anna; he didn't seem to blame Ted, but that didn't make him feel better because somehow his mother's expression and looks and mumblings blocked out anything else until it was all he could think about. He went into his fourth year hating everything about magic, convinced it had ruined his life. He almost failed all his classes that year, barely hanging onto a passing grade with the skin of his teeth by the end of the year. He hadn't written to his family once, although he had gotten a plethora of letters from both his brother and his father. He'd ignored them all, keeping them at the bottom of his trunk. He didn’t deserve their love, their sympathy – he was a bad person and treated himself as such.

When he returned that summer, it was to a surprise: Tristan was getting feeling in his legs again. The doctors said it meant there was hope for him yet. Evidently, he'd been going through physical therapy. He couldn't walk, but there was hope yet. Slim hope – very slim. But there was still hope, and the family clung onto that. Ted went into his fifth year feeling like the crushing weight had been lifted, however slightly. He reconnected with his friends, and his school work improved tremendously. However, as the months became years and there was still no improvement, however, the already slim hope began to diminish. While Tristan's hope never ceased, Ted's dwindled as the guilt grew once more, the realization that Tristan really might be bound the chair for the rest of his life hitting home, like a punch to the gut. Even though she pretended not to, he knew his mother still blamed him. Every look she gave him, every word she spoke to him was coated with acid. His father and brother knew it killed him, but they could do nothing to stop it. Every time Jeremy tried to confront her about it, she gave him a confused little smile and told him she had no idea what he was talking about. Whether she sincerely didn't know or she was faking it, they had no idea. All Ted knew was it seemed he was going to live with the heavy knowledge that it was his fault his brother was wheelchair-bound. He didn't let that knowledge reflect on him too much, however, burying the guilt because if Tristan knew how he felt he'd tell him to stop. He doesn't talk about what happened anymore – he never did, really. It's just better to keep it buried and pretend life is normal, right?

Right.

Sample Post: See posts by Lily Evans, Benjamin Burke, Kieran Sullivan, Olivia Thompson or Gabriella Rivera s'il vous plait (:

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{ C O N T R A C T }

I solemnly swear that I, NAJOOJ, have read the rules, understand clearly what my responsibilities are now that I am joining ISS, and will abide by these standards set by the staff.

[Andromeda Black]

accepted!