—chapter twenty.

  ❛ and I fall apart. ❜  

ELODIE'S HANDS WERE SHAKING AS THEY held up the concealer, swiping it across her face in rushed, messy motions. The colour was a shade too light, but she hardly noticed; pressed into the puffy dark circles that decorated her under-eyes, everything was a little too light. She'd just make do.

"Fuck," she swore, lunging down for the bottle dropped for the third time in a row. Smears of creamy product stained her bedroom carpet; she had long since abandoned cleaning up her mess, knowing full well it wouldn't be the last time she did it. "Just work, you stupid fucking things!"

Her own reflection sneered back at her as she worked. It was ugly and drawn with exhaustion, painting a dour look to the normally quite plain face. The makeup wasn't doing as much as she thought it would. Nothing was covering up the discolouration or the angry flush that kept creeping up her face no matter how she fought it -- and at that point in the morning, she wasn't sure if anything would.

"Just relax," Elodie muttered to herself, like those words would make a difference. She used both hands to hold her mascara wand and yet still, flecks of black scattered all over her half-done-up face, leaving her freckled and even worser off.

She wanted to scream. Maybe break a few more things, like she hadn't already destroyed half of her apartment.

"Come on, Elodie. Get over yourself."

Those words hung over her head as she worked, pressing into her wrinkles and her aching limbs. The small room was covered in similar, empty phrases of encouragement; they coated the walls and floors in ink, waiting for her to pick one up and finally heed by their warnings. She never would, not in her state of disarray, but they waited anyways.

None of it felt fair. She was supposed to have weeks more to prepare herself. She had so much more to do, ways to help her brother if he did get out, or find a way to get him stuck in a hole forever where she never had to see him again. Not four days of complete misery, trying to figure out a solution to a problem that had already been decided. He wasn't supposed to cheat his way out -- that just was not fair.

Then again, Elodie mused bitterly, when had Archibald Morticelli ever played fair?

She straightened her back for the umpteenth time and swiped the product across her lips. Her bitten wounds stung, but she ignored it for the sake of a professional appearance. That was all that mattered, after all. She just had to get through the trial and wait for the chance to worm her way free of his forked-tongued ways, and prove that he was the snake all along. The court wouldn't believe a foul-tempered girl with burning hands, but they might believe someone who looked like they had their shit together.

At least it was only her. If Grandmother had to be there, let alone Ellis, she would lose her mind. But they didn't even know about the rescheduling, much less the ache in her gut or the fear that had gripped her every day that week. And if things went to plan, they wouldn't have to know until it was all over.

"It will go to plan," she told herself, her tone light and hardly convincing. "It will. It has to, for him. Right? You have to do this for his sake."

Elodie twisted the lipstick lid back on and glanced at her expression. Certainly, physically she looked better with her face made up and her fears coated in colourful products. Her tight smile looked forced, but it was better than nothing, and the most she could do under such short notice. She might be going in vulnerable, but at least the mask would help disguise her worries as concern for her father.

She heaved a heavy sigh and set down her things. Her gaze slipped from her reflection in the mirror to her lap, to her hands. The burn had raged under her skin since she had taken the call, and not much was helping. She had settled for ice baths, but the hours soaking her skin in piles of frozen water had only made things feel worse. Even then, still damp from her latest session, they tingled and warned her of what could be coming. A sign of what was to come.

A part of her knew that whatever happened that day was going to hurt. Whether he won or lost or found something in between. Him being in her life was enough to fuck things up, but this trial would resolve the fate of him and was the key factor in deciding whether or not she could ever live a normal life. 

But for the sake of her brother, she couldn't consider the consequences as options. Not if she was going to survive. So she packed her bag and left her apartment with knocking knees and hands digging deep into her jacket pockets, hoping that no one needed to touch her. She clung to her last bits of hope and stared through the car's window, only half-listening to Matialli's prattles on about court conduct. And the entire ride, she thought of Ellis and only Ellis, and prayed she could do it.

For him.

IN THE FINAL ACT, ELODIE FELL APART.

It was a dismal part to play. No one ever wanted to be the character doomed from the start, but she supposed she did it well. They had unraveled her like a spool of yarn and threw her out tangled and torn. The rain left the colourful string dark and haggard. Unwanted.

Useless.

She was ruined. Everything was ruined. Had been ruined by him, the snake-devil heathen spawn who sent one red-eyed look and destroyed every piece of courage she had ever had. She should have known he had the power, that handcuffs and men in fancy suits couldn't hold an evil like him down. He didn't need guns and whips to commit his deeds, after all. The spoken word was weapon of choice, and none of them ever thought to take that from him.

It was raining. She hadn't even noticed, at first. It took several minutes of staring out into the crowds bewildered, watching the umbrellas and cross-faced citizens ignore her to come to that fact. It swept down her sallow frame, eating away at whatever pickings her father had left. She didn't feel it.

Elodie stood alone and shriveled, waiting for someone to come and help her. But everyone was gone. Patch, with her kind eyes and green desire for justice, Matialli and her too-tall heels that clinked so obnoxiously on the court room floor. She had pushed Diego away and had lost Ellis even before she could try to hold on; he slipped right out of her arms. She would lose him forever, just like she had lost everything else, the second Archibald got out.

Six months, she silently mused. Six months, and he'd be out.

Elodie wanted to burn him. She wanted to hold her hands against his skin and watch as it eroded into nothing, splintering into a thousand ashes and then nothing at all. She wanted to hear him scream her name for mercy, ask her to stop, beg for her to give him the kindness that he never dared show her -- let him think that he had it for even just a moment in time, before crushing his gray remains under her hands and letting them slip into the wind. She wanted to watch him suffer at her own hands -- and then do it all again, just to feel the power of knowing she could. And she wanted --

"--sorry," a voice said, chipper despite the rainfall, "but are you alright, miss?"

Elodie didn't turn. Her gaze remained straight ahead at the racing cars. She didn't notice his cavalier grin, or his too-bright umbrella or how he looked at her like the sort of filth one would scrap off their shoe. He was just sound, and she wasn't even sure she was real for a moment, listening to the heels and boots and tiny sneakers that stomped into the earth around her.

She wished she could be crushed, too.

"Ma'am? I--"

"--no," she rasped, and pulled away from him. She didn't look back to see him fall backwards onto the pavement. His wavering voice called after her, but Elodie was too lost in the thunder and the pounding of blood in her eardrums to understand a hear of it. He wasn't even there, anyways, just a phantom in her head. Or was it her, that was evaporating?

Downtown was horrifying in her state of delirium. Cars whooshed past far too fast and loud and every single honk made her think it was them ready to collide with her body; when they didn't, she wasn't sure if it was another miracle, or a curse. People were blurs of black and red and white, bloodied and pale no matter what way she tried to look at them, slices of smiles as they gawked at her broken form. She couldn't look at them, they were too disfigured in her state of shock; they were just ghouls, watching as she swayed through the streets and waited for her end.

Elodie sucked in a gasp of air, choking through the sobs that were destroying her throat. She could hardly breath in the smog and static; if there was any oxygen left, it must have been devoured by the faceless demons around her, because she couldn't find it. Tears crept past her bleeding lips and stained her tongue with salt; she coughed more then, trying to free herself from the taste but finding it followed her regardless.

There wasn't an escape. So why was she still looking for it?

Panic surged through her faster, harder, coursing through her veins just as blood had before. She didn't know where she was or where to go. She had no one, nothing, nowhere to be or to find -- just strangers chomping at their bits, waiting to swallow her alive. And that wasn't fair, was it? She needed someone in her corner, someone to offer a hand and tell her things would be alright --

-- but they weren't. They never could be, not because of what she had --

Elodie started to run. Her shoes slammed hard and heavy against the pavement and somehow, she managed to stay upright on the slippery streets. Curses and calls back for her to 'watch it' were swept away by the rain and the thunder and she carried on through heavy tears, searching side streets and the biggest of roads for a way out. Her clothes stuck to her and left her colder than she had ever felt in her life; like she had never felt the warmth of life a day of her existence, like the sun had been struck right down by her father himself and stranded her in a dark, loveless misery.

She cried out again. No one answered.

Elodie had no idea where she was or where to go. Wallow's was gone, the bookstore was gone, her apartment was gone and everything was lost in her panic. The streets blurred together and she was lost like she had been the first day she arrived -- but at least then, she still had her wits. She didn't have anything left, after he robbed her.

Her shoulders slumped and she pressed her back again to a building, that time under the narrow umbrella of a ritzy hotel. The doorman glared at her, but she didn't see it. Instead, she searched wildly through the strands of hair draped over her face and the rain falling in torrents for something she recognised, anything at all, even just a face that looked like she could have known it. But nothing.

She clawed at her throat with frozen fingers, fighting for every breath through the thorns that had dug deep into her skin. Tears rolled down her cheeks and stained her skin with black and brown trails of discolouration. She looked like a nightmare, but the rain still poured and she still could not find a way out of this hell she had locked herself in.

Her father's laugh fell like a children's choir on her ears. Heavy and booming through the streets, enough for her to look about in alarm; could no one hear that? Was it just her, or was the entire world his playground, again?

She was alone. This was the worst possible solution, and no matter how much she had planned for her it before, she could think of no possible hope. Her life in her eyes just then was over and she could only think of death. Everything was over, her family and her life that she had built up were done and fucking hell, she wanted to do something but could not.

Elodie slunk out from under the hotel umbrella lining and into the rain, where she simply stood and looked out into the misery as she became coated with even more rain. She had to get away. Keep moving, maybe that would silence the hurricane raging in her head.

She began to move again, still weeping, throwing herself down the winding streets in search of an address she could only barely recall. A ghost that she didn't know even still remained in her hellscape of a world. Signs and sounds followed and she cursed every inch of them all. People called after her; she didn't stop.

She only knew the location because of the coffee place nearby, famous for its doughnuts – hence the name, 'course – where she used to go a lot. After she moved across town, it was less frequent, but she had rather liked the place and the woman who worked there, Agatha or something like that. Through her tears, she saw it then, glowing dismally into the rainy night – had she not been so fixated on that one thing, perhaps she would have stopped there. But Elodie's mind was fixed, and she just kept running.

She didn't go in. She would be a fool to go in. In her panic and misery, everything was a trap and everything was somewhere where he could be, waiting already, grinning and ready to rip her to shreds. Everyone was connected and no one wanted her and she didn't want them. But she did, at least, recognise the glow of the sign and feel a little safer with it nearby.

Elodie swiped a hand through her hair, forcing the thick strands out of her eyes so she could see. She was so cold. The icy burn bit at every corner of her and she felt like she could break at any second. She would be in pieces in the middle of an alley no one frequented, shatters of hair and flesh and blood that no one would look twice at. She wouldn't even blame them for avoiding her. She would have done the same.

She felt shame then, roiling in her gut. But unlike the rest of her body, the shame felt hot, like a dozen coals burning a hole through her and waiting to fall to the ground below. It licked up her sides with a fury, fiery humiliation that scorched through the cracked ice and melted it away in mere seconds of an interval. Embarrassment, and pain, and heartbreak that swirled into one great big flame ate at her organs from the inside out until pure power surged through her skin and swept into the winds raging above.

She shuddered as the last breaths of cold were chased away. Her hands swept across her body and to her surprise, she was no long wet or trembling. Everything was burning with so much power she could almost see the glow in her blurred gaze. Her skin rippled and she fell against the wall as the itching of a thousand fire ants tore across her body, gnawing at every inch of her panic until she felt consumed by the shame and anger created.

Elodie slumped down, falling to her knees in the alley way. No rain touched her skin anymore. She was bare and burning in the dim light of the Griddy's sign. A pyre set to burn all in its path, her body the only fuel the fire craved. Her eyes slid shut, giving into her exhaustion and pain, waiting for the moment where everything would finally go dark.

Maybe this was who she was, all along, destined to destroy herself just as he had said.

"Elodie?"

The voice was a scream, a shout so loud it tore through her crumbling walls in a heartbeat. Her eyes flew open and through the blur and the glow, found his not ten paces away. Her lips, bloodied and bruised by her own vicious teeth, fell open in a silent shriek of surprise.

Diego stood at the end, staring at her in the rain. His head was dipped, staring at her fallen figure with an unreadable expression. She couldn't see what was behind his eyes, she realised dully, and that worried her when she thought nothing else could.

"Diego," she whispered, rasping. The flames flickered and died, burying back into every pore of her body. The glow dipped, the curtains fell. "I..."

 "What th-the hell are you doing here?"

My least favourite chapter. The bane of my writing skills. Sigh. But the next chapter'll be a bit more fun.

Thank you for reading, let me know what you thought.