—chapter twenty-nine.
❛ a (couple or so) wrinkle(s) in time. ❜
FEBRUARY 7th, 2013.
"WHAT THE HELL ARE YOU DOING OUT HERE?!"
The voice didn't deter her. Nor did it make her flinch like maybe it was expected to. Truth be told, she could hardly hear him, floating oh so far away as she roasted from the inside out. The snow was puddles around her burning toes, bare and gripping tight to the frozen concrete even as it poured around her and it was hopeless, but it was all she had, all that was there too--
"--go back home." The voice didn't really come from her. It was a different deity that spoke in hollow, sorrowful tones that didn't quite work with her destruction. She couldn't figure out how her mind and body had separated so, but she let it be, swarmed in an ungodly heat that wouldn't let go of her limbs. "Leave me alone."
"Are you kidding?! You're gonna freeze to death, out here."
Elodie shook her head. Strands of hair whipped around with the motion and for a moment it was like they, too, were a part of the flame, scattering ash in violent circles around her. But she blinked and the moment passed, and she could see through the fire to him again.
She had had panic like that before. But it used to be easier to control -- and she used to be able to subdue her emotions and just not let them bubble to the surface. With Diego, though, she couldn't. She was supposed to communicate and she was supposed to fight to find a solution -- but that particular fight had started to eat her alive, and suddenly her blood was pounding in her ears and she knew she was going to explode if she stayed another second inside of her apartment.
So she ran.
"I'm fine," she murmured, pressing her hands against the fleeing patches of snow. One by one the white turned into grey-green slush and she moaned, trying to find that delectable cold sensation again. "M'just...hell. This used to work!"
"Elodie, for fuck's--"
"--you need to go. I'll figure this out."
She pulled away from his reaching arms even as he pushed forward. There was no way he could even get near her -- not in the state of supernova she had found herself in. She could blow at any second and didn't he see that? Couldn't he see the way her skin pulsed and glowed, threatening an explosion that would rival any man-made event seen before? Just one wrong step, one shaky inhale for breath and he would be nothing.
It had happen before. Faces blurred before her as steam rolled off the snow. Some were crying, others screaming, while others sat slumped, already accepting their horrific fate. The fate he had made her cause but the fate she had still caused, and --
"--let's just go upstairs," Diego called softly. His voice trembled; he sounded scared. Elodie couldn't blame him. The fear was intoxicating, a vibrant flavour that choked through her lips and down his throat, the worst form of second-hand smoke. "We...we won't fight about this. We'll just let it go."
Elodie's eyes darted away, tracing the trails of slush that followed behind her warpath. She was suffocating in the heat. The snow didn't help. Nothing helped, she might as well be seated in the embers of hell's fury and at the mercy of Lucifer's hand.
"Baby, c'mon. Ellis'll be home soon."
She sighed, heaving through corrupted lungs. "I'm...I can't..."
"You can't be out here. It's not safe."
For the world, maybe. It wasn't her own safety he worried for, but the rest of the universe. For him, for the innocent men, women and children that lived around her. She could kill them all, with just one little push--
"--Elodie?"
She stared down at her hands. They rippled with all the rage, frustration and hurt she couldn't find a way to control. It had just been one argument, one they had had a thousand times before -- and yet that had been the tipping point.
"Just...promise, you won't touch me."
Diego nodded frantically. A promise probably easy to make, given her combustible condition.
"I'm so sorry," she choked. Her lungs cried out for relief, shriveling into blackened wreckage within her chest. "I'm...I...I can't stop it..."
He tried to smile at her, but his lips quivered and fell too fast. "We'll work on this. We'll figure it out, okay?"
And Elodie nodded, pulling herself to her feet and stalking away from him. Silently she made a promise to herself, one that she would hold herself to, even if it killed her. She would find a way to control the power or submerge herself in the iciest, deepest of depths and let that take her fire away.
Because there was no way she could live in that state of concern any longer. She had had too many close calls lately, with the threat of her father looming and Ellis' safety on the line and -- that day had proven, she could not control herself with emotional suffocation.
Elodie squared her shoulders and walked faster. She would do it. She had to.
OCTOBER 13, 2014.
DIEGO HAD LEFT THAT MORNING HEAD HIGH AND SHOULDERS DRAWN. A cruel, black-covered prince with a stubborn gleam to his gaze that sought to maim at whatever cost. Kill, if the thorns dug in enough.
He returned a sopping, limping pile of blood and rain all clumped together and thrown into the flooding thunderstorms he used to thrive in. He didn't sneak through the window, he fell in, a heap of limbs and busted lips that groaned and writhed in misery.
It used to be a sight that Elodie would melt at. Before the commitment, before the conditions and before she had to really grow up, she would nudge him up and into her hold, gently bringing him to the couch and caring for him like one would a puppy, or a child who tripped over a sidewalk crack. She'd kiss his forehead and tell him to be careful, and tease that one day he would be the death of her.
But the day had been too long, and it had been too often a sight for her heart to beat gently. He left early in the morning, huffy and annoyed that she doubted him -- and when she tried to ask him to just be safe, he took that as a sign that she had no faith in her at all. The emotional wounds in both hearts that they never cared for was once again ripped open and it bled freely all throughout her day, ruining any chance at it being a good one.
It hadn't just been him, though. The once-grim Wallow's, her newly purchased property, was a product of stress and sent her head into a pounding migraine the second she traipsed through the doors. Contractors and financial assistants and something called a productive design guru wanted a piece of her, and all Elodie could do was hold back her screams and try to find a way to appease them all. Only, she had failed on every chart and it became another day of chaos, trying to force herself to feel good about the life-changing decision she had taken on.
And being alone, with no one to call, made everything a thousand times worse.
The afternoon had bled worse. Ellis had an after-school breakdown, revealing a classmate decided it was his job to personally torment him every day. It broke her heart to hold her little brother and try to soothe him -- especially so, knowing her words wouldn't make much difference. Kids were cruel and jealousy bred deep and her brother was an easy target. He was small and smart and sweet, and too good to realise when he had gone too far. And no matter what she could threaten...she could never change that.
"It's four in the fucking morning, Diego."
A mug slammed down hard against the kitchen counter. Something cracked; neither took notice.
"Work ran late. You know how it goes."
Elodie scoffed. "How it goes...yeah. You know, the career that leaves your fiancée worried all day and night with no idea where you are, just begging that you'll return home in one piece. And oh! -- the job where you come back to that same worried fiancée looking half dead and covered in blood that she then has to soak out of the carpets and out of everything because you give zero shits about anything but yourself!"
Diego barely had the strength to sink into a seated position, but he managed anyways, alone and with the help of the window sill. He seemed to ignore her snide carpet comments, slumping down against the wall. "I'm not in the mood to do this."
"You're not -- I wasn't in the mood for any of this. But here I am anyways, exhausted and waiting for you to drag yourself home -- only to tell me you're not in the mood, like we're a sad married couple try'na schedule in a half-assed sex session."
"Don't act like I'm the only one guilty here," he grunted. His one leg carried awkwardly behind him as he limped into the kitchen -- on a normal day, her eyes would immediately catch on the strange stance and she would be all over him like a worried mother. "You told me to leave."
"I didn't mean ignore me the entire day and let me think you were dead."
"What, am I supposed to be a mind reader, now? I thought you wanted me to leave you alone."
"No! Just..." Elodie groaned and dropped her head to her hands. Gaze pointed down, she let the frustrated tears drip and roll off her cheeks. "Is it so wrong for me to expect just a simple update from you? A little catch-up on where you are, how dead you're gonna roll up, how available you'll be for me? Is that a crime now?"
He didn't look her way. "I got held up. It wasn't planned." His short, cut words warned her that he was going to reach his own tipping point soon.
Normally so late, Elodie wouldn't push. But that night she didn't care. "What, did the Joker himself run down from Gotham? Did he cut all the phone lines in the city too? Let me guess, he forced you to leave this morning, ignoring me calling after you? Let you leave me hanging just for the fun of it?"
"You really think this is a joke, that what I do is just some joke? I-you think I want to do this, Elodie?"
"Yeah, Diego, of course I do!" She rose from her seat and jabbed at him from across the counter, pointer finger hovering a foot away from his chest. "You do this all the time. You get caught up in this world of comic books and you forget that you have someone who loves you, who puts up with all this shit for your sake and who is dying over it all the time. You chalk it up to a guilty conscience, an -- daddy issues, whatever you wanna call it--"
"--daddy issues? Come the fuck on, 'Lodie, hypocr--"
"--you like this game. But that doesn't mean I have to, too." She heaved a deep, gasping breath before continuing. "I had a shitty day. I'm not getting into this with you tonight. I...you're not gonna bleed out, right?"
When he didn't answer, she took that in itself and rolled on. "Clean yourself up, put that shit in to soak so it doesn't leave a stain. And be quiet, okay? Ellis had a hard enough day, he's not having you ruin it, too."
"What, you get the last word now? You're not even going to listen to me?!"
"Tonight, yeah. Abso-fuckin-lutely." She whirled away, flipping her messy hair over her shoulder and stomping away. "We'll talk about this tomorrow."
Her gritted, iron-clad words dissolved by the next morning, though. He half-assed an apology and she didn't bother to explain her anger, only asking yet again for him to keep her in the loop.
Maybe they should have realised earlier, leaving fights to simmer in the back of their minds did not lead down blessed paths. Only violent ends.
AUGUST 27th, 2015.
SHRINKS USED TO BE DANGEROUS PEOPLE, IN HER EYES.
Her father used to call them the devil's minions. He told her they couldn't be trusted, that their only goal was to snatch away children and create monsters out of the purest of souls. Honestly, Elodie wasn't sure why that was something she listened to him on (Archibald Morticelli really wasn't a grand man for life advice) but for years, she had been terrified of therapists.
"So, uh...where do we start, with this?" She squinted suspiciously down at the woman's notepad, trying to somehow read through the pages and decipher the other side. "Do I talk? You talk? We sit in awkward silence and wait for the other to break?"
Truth be told, she still was.
A soft laugh tittered from Dr. Gomez -- a small, slight woman with billowy gusts of reddish-brown hair. "I sense you're a little uncomfortable here, Elodie."
"Yeah, well--" she shrugged a shoulder. "Never thought I'd be in this position. I've always been of the, uh, non-believers, with this stuff. Didn't think it could help."
Dr. Gomez nodded thoughtfully and scribbled something out. "That's perfectly fine, but I do want to say, I'm happy you've made the decision to come in and try therapy. I find a lot of people are hesitant to the practice because they're scared they won't know how to fix their problems -- but sometimes, a second opinion is all it takes to help the mind. Do you know what I mean?"
Elodie wasn't so eager to fall for the soft-spoken woman's delicate words. She knew that talking to someone only went so far when she had to lie for most of it -- after all, confessing she could light up like a firecracker at the slightest inconvenience and how fascinated her nefarious father was with that probably wouldn't get her anywhere good. A part of her already believed that she was a lost cause.
But Charlie had told her that therapy might help. If only to have someone to talk to. And while maybe she couldn't discuss most of her feelings...having someone to talk to, did sound a little nice.
"Let's start off this then with just a very general discussion," Dr. Gomez said. She smiled over to Elodie. Purple colour had smeared underneath her bottom lip and a little stained her front teeth, and it made her a little less scary to look at. "Why did you decide to come to therapy?"
Her hands knotted and came undone over and over in her lap, trying to manage the uncomfortable burn that roiled beneath the skin. "Uh...honestly, because of my brother."
"Your brother?"
Elodie nodded stiffly. "Yeah. Ellis. I'm...I'm his guardian now, I basically raised the kid as my own. I signed him up for something like this, uh a coupl'a years back just to make sure he was okay. Rough early years, all that. But that -- well, really I just wanted to make sure I was a good, uh, person in his life. Thought I'd just sign up for this and talk stuff out to guarantee that."
An abysmal massacre of the truth, but she'd live with it.
The woman nodded thoughtfully, pausing another long moment to scribble more down. "It sounds like you care a lot about your brother."
"Yeah. I do. He's...he's the only family I got left. And I want to do right by him."
"And you worry you haven't."
Elodie pursed her lips, trying to figure out how best to answer such a loaded question. "I...yeah, I guess so. I don't think I was cut off to take care of other people. I don't care about kids, having them or otherwise. But I always wanted to do right for Ellie, and I don't want to ruin things for him 'cause of the way I was raised."
She heaved in a long breath, frightened of the words that came out of her own mouth. Was that too much? She didn't really want to unpack all her childhood trauma right then and there and most of it wasn't light first-meeting talk anyways...but she couldn't just lie. She was there for Ellis and to make sure she did him right. And that meant putting a sharp curb on her anger, and stepping up as a person.
"Alright, Elodie," Dr. Gomez sang. She set down her pen and folded her willowy fingers onto her desk. "You know, you sound like you're trying very hard, and that's an admirable thing to do. Now, I just want to ask -- is there anyone else in the picture? Parents, siblings, a partner of your own who helps with Ellis? Or helps you?"
If the organ wasn't already in fragments crumpled up in her chest, she would have been certain it would have collapsed right then, all over again. Solemnly, Elodie shook her head. "No. No, it's just me. I'm...I'm all alone."
MAY 30th, 2016.
ELODIE HADN'T USED HER POWERS IN MONTHS.
She forced herself to avoid even the slightest twinge of heat. It exhausted her, but it was a necessary rule. She would not allow herself to hurt Ellis, or anyone else, ever again. And he could never know about the monster she really was.
But two things began to happen, after aeons of suppressing her abilities. First, the negative effects of holding it in started to have bigger reactions. Her brain was at constant work and so she forgot about important events, responsibilities, even going so far as forgetting things like eating or sleep. And for a while she made do with post-its and memory exercises -- but she knew that holding it all in would eventually kill her.
Secondly, on a more positive side, Dr. Gomez' actually did help. While the woman was a tad eccentric and obviously didn't have all the pieces, the help she offered did make life easier. Elodie didn't feel so angry all the time -- and even when thinking about people like her father, she didn't resort to physical reactions. Nothing was perfect, but the soft-spoken doctor did help.
And so, she made a plan.
In the empty basement of their new house, Elodie let her power finally burn. It rippled down her arms and legs, cascading colours of bright orange and red, burning white at the tips of her fingers as she stood alone and bare-footed.
She exhaled shakily and stepped forward, bringing the roiling heat with her. Slowly, she concentrated, cursing as she swayed and stumbled against the stone.
"C'mon," she huffed, straightening herself back up again. Her arms ached but still they rose in front of her, rippling with enormous bouts of colourful power. Elodie shut her eyes and pulled harder. "C'mon, c'mon..."
And after several moments, the rest of her body calmed and cooled. When Elodie opened her eyes again, she found that it was just her arms set aglow anymore, and the rest of her felt...normal.
"Not bad, Verbeck." She rolled her neck and allowed a soft, weary chuckle to echo around the empty room. "Not fuckin' bad."
NOVEMBER 2nd, 2017.
"WHAT DO YOU THINK OF ME LOOKING FOR MY BIRTH PARENTS?"
Ellis looked up at her from his textbook, blinking. "I...I haven't ever thought about it. You want to?"
"Yeah. Maybe. I don't know yet. I just..." lazily, her fingers circled the rim of her mug. "I want to find out where I actually came from. Or why they gave me up to you-know-who. What their lives were like. You know?"
That wasn't the whole truth. Sure, she cared about those details, wanting to make sure at least they got a good life after giving her up to monsters -- but really, her answers lied deeper than that. Her birth mother had to have known something about who she really was or what she was capable of. And if she could find her and talk to her, maybe there would be a way for Elodie to find peace with who she was. Moreover -- how to master, what she really was.
"That sounds like a good idea."
"You think so?"
"Sure," Ellis nodded. "I would want to know where I came from. And then you can distinguish yourself. Make sure the world knows where you really came from and that you weren't ever his real blood."
Elodie smiled sadly and ruffled her brother's hair, grinning a little harder when he immediately reached to fix it. "Don't worry, Ellie. As far as I'm concerned, you're not his blood either. I mean, there's no way you could have been -- that man was like, a legit alien. You'd have to be all blue and slimy to be his kid."
"He was Italian, Elodie. And...definitely not blue and slimy."
"But was he? Was he?!"
SEPTEMBER 18th, 2018.
THE MORNING HUNG GLOOMY AND GRAY OVER ELODIE'S HEAD. It suited him. Like he was trying to make a statement, a ploy with the clouds hanging so low above -- and it was like she could really hear him hissing in her ear, 'don't you feel bad?'.
No one joined her in the cemetery, that day. A privilege Elodie did not miss. Loneliness was not a virtue she often took on but when it was face-to-face with a stone that had haunted her since the day it was place, she embraced it eagerly. There wasn't a reason to bring someone else, just to watch her knees shake and her lip tremble in a way that he would have mocked.
"Hey, Dad." Her boots shuffled angrily against the collection of leaves that littered his plot. No one bothered to clean off his grave, a blessing she smiled at, staring down at the clutter. "God, you would'a hated seeing this. You hated messes...so much. This must drive you crazy, down wherever you're rotting huh?"
Her only response came whistling back from the wind, just barely brushing over her flushed cheeks and weaving through her hair. She didn't shiver at its cool touch, but embraced it, leaning into the chill that seeped into her bones.
"I didn't think we'd get this far, you n'me." She chuckled, low and raspy in her throat. "Hell, thought I'd be the one six feet under first. So many times. And you...thought you were immortal, that you'd be left when the apocalypse came scuttling along with the roaches, crunching under whatever cyborg beasts exist at that point."
Elodie sank down to her knees, cringing at the dull pain that shot through her legs as they hit stone. She was eye-to-eye with the stone, then, staring down the smallest font size she could have picked for the grave. It was just a couple words. Nothing more than a name and two dates marking a birth and death, and no other details. She had spent a while before reading the engravings others had left -- telling her someone's mother, lover, brother or friend laid beneath her feet. Someone who was loved, who mattered.
But she didn't bother with frivolities. It had taken everything she had to accept burying him. Even then, she had just wanted to dump his body in the river and watch it sink. But her Grandmother had refused, and she had to sign off on actually acknowledging his death like he was a person.
"Archibald Morticelli," she murmured, tracing over the engravings. Her fingers glowed unnaturally bright against the gray of the world, but they dulled as they reached the final number. "Man, I hope you're paying in hell."
Her leg muscles groaned but obliged in her command to rise. "I know you never got to catch up on everything, so I'll, uh, get you up to speed. You know that son you said was a worthless pile a'shit? He's a genius. Smartest kid I've ever met. He sees numbers and formulas and just...gets it, in a way yours and mine's peabrain never could. But he's so good, too...kind, and caring, and thoughtful...he takes care of me, just as much as I do him. He's maybe the best kid I've ever known. And to think, heh to think you wanted to throw him out with Monday's garbage. World's brightest star would'a been wasted -- but that's your poor judgement, always knocking in eh?
"I'm doing well too. I own a bar, you know." Her voice carried louder than she meant and it echoes across the cemetery grounds -- but for once, Elodie did not care, for who listened. "A whole place, all my own. And a house, too! Business is booming and I have a sturdy, beautiful roof over me and Ellie's head and...man, I wish you were hear just so I could rub it in your face." She paused, thinking that over before ending with, "I don't really, 'cause I think I'd burn your stupid face off, but...it would be nice. To know you never won."
She half expected a snarl to answer her, to come out of the stone and scold her for calling him such horrible names -- 'and after everything he had done for her, too'. But nothing came. Just the soft whistling of the breeze and her heavy breaths escaping to join the wind on whatever journey it chose next.
"You lost, Dad. After every horrible thing you did to me, to Ellie, to the whole world, it didn't matter. You lost everything." She chuckled bitterly. "I hope you're proud, old man."
Only the wind, whistled back.
MARCH 27th, 2019.
THE LIGHT FLICKERED ON, leaving the padded basement walls with a sallow glow that tucked the shadows deep into their corners and offered little else for the eye to catch on. It was mostly bare, aside from the obvious work done to the room itself. All she ever left down there were cases of information she didn't want Ellis to see, or theories she definitely didn't need him reading out. And they sat tuck to the side out of harms reach, boring and unappealing to the naked eye. Not much in the decoration department.
But she didn't care for interior design when it came to the basement.
Elodie had spent the day in a haze, and it was only when the evening fell when she felt more alive. The young woman did the dishes quickly and without even taking the time to sit down, moved to run her nightly errands, picking up the necessary groceries and grabbing the mail. She had only spared a glance towards the pile before leaving it for tomorrow. Or, until Ellis looked through it -- whichever force of good came first.
She had hugged the boy extra tight that night, pressing a kiss into his hair before pulling away and giving him a sad little smile. Ellis told her to go to bed early, to rest so she could feel better the next day, and like always she shrugged it off with a laugh -- because Elodie never slept. And she was not about to when her mind was in scatters.
But that night would be different than the others. Because while her mind was in spirals from the events of the night before, there was much, much more weighing on it than just Diego. In fact, as the night had gone on, he had slipped from her brain at all, leaving her focused simply on the task ahead. Her hands gripped the clippings she had found, careful not to let the fingers overheat and spread flame, and the second Ellis was in bed, she was rushing down into the basement to resume her work.
Elodie pinned her most recent clipping to the board and stepped back, staring at it in all its messy glory. Everything from letters to newspapers to photographs were pinned to it, all connected with red thread and linked by scrawled messages, little notes that made guesses as to how she was to move forward with the investigations. Some things led to nothing at all, while others had been the start of it all and the only thing keeping the search going. It was glorious, intricate and complex, riddled with clues and messages and notes of what could be next - and yet despite it all, there was still no solution.
She sighed and ran her hands through her hair. The search for the truth had not been easy. Elodie had assumed after maybe a year, her answers would be somewhere. Yet there was nothing at all to answer her questions -- who the hell was she, where did she come from, and how was it that she could do the things she could do? Her father was too dead to answer (and too much of a nuisance when he wasn't, anyways) and his wife was an elusive source. And there was very little out there on mysterious women with supernatural babies. Without the source of how she was obtained, or a way to access any legal documents (another screw you to her from dear old dad) there was no starting point. Nothing that could genuinely lead her to a certain truth.
But she had done her very best.
The problem with being 'different', or possessing weird abilities she did not understand, is that it was practically unheard of aside from in specific cases. Those cases being the Umbrella Academy, a group of talented children 'rescued' by a Sir Reginald Hargreeves and trained to embrace their powers. And while there were numbers tossed around, guesses as to how many children were not obtained by him, no one was certain - really, there was no way knowing if there were any alive. The only way people could even guess that the Umbrella Academy were linked were by their birthdays, all born out of nowhere on the first of October.
As she was not born that day, well Elodie was able to cross that possibility off her list pretty quickly. The only problem with that? There were not really any other options. No one else just became a superhero, at least not a weirdo with hot-ass hands like her. There was not just a fairy coming down and cursing her with a life of hell - and if there was, well she was not banking too much on that 'theory'.
If she could find her family it would be more helpful. But there was no trace of them, as when she was adopted, her biological mother refused to have her name listed. She had done her best to track her down, through old records and lists and statistics from the orphanages in Chile, but she was still far too far away from finding a definite answer.
But soon, she hoped, there would be a breakthrough. She knew that her mother must have the information she yearned for, and Elodie just had to find a way to break down her walls and get to it. Otherwise, it would surely take much more time actually sorting through the bits and pieces to get a straightforward answer, what she actually needed. If her mother would just work with her, things would be fine. But...
Elodie sighed and kicked at the wall, grimacing as pain filled her foot. It was frustrating beyond belief, staring at it all and knowing the answer was just out of reach, too far to grab but just close enough to drive her mad. Some days, it felt like she never would know and never have closure. Like she would spend the rest of her life feeling like a freak and scared to act under any level of anger for fear of hurting anyone.
She was working on that last bit, though, had been since they got the house. Her goal was to be in total control of her powers and though it was taking much longer than she wanted too, that was easier than finding answers. Sure, some days she got too reckless or upset and would light something on fire without even meaning to, but long hours spent in total concentration had helped.
She turned away from the board and instead moved to a mirror nearby that had also been set up. Elodie's eyes grazed over it, down her frame and then shut tight. The power was always there, just hidden inside deep enough so it could not come out too fast. It took a great deal of strength, but she had trained herself to be able to draw it out and heat her frame, leave her glowing and smoking as the fire built from within. A pretty trick that did not mean much at first, until--
"--dammit," she cursed, throwing her arms back to her side. Nothing but a couple spirals of smoke billowed from her skin. It merely glowed white-hot, but that was nothing, when she had tried for years to complete the trick.
A part of her was grateful that the bandage had stuck over that bit of trauma. That her father still could not win and her promise to never produce fire again would survive still. But when he had died, so had that vow; she had only told him that for the remainder of his years, she would remain in control of her fire. And it had been years since the world rid itself of that rat -- so surely, she should be able to fix that problem, too.
But it didn't matter. She sighed and let the heat sink back down again, leaving her body tingling and weary. With heavy steps, she climbed back up the basement steps and left it dark and locked as she had entered. It always remained locked with the key hidden so Ellis would never know what she was really up to.
One day, Elodie silently promised herself as her head met her pillow. She rolled over, clutching the blanket to her chest and staring across the room. One day, she'd be able to do it again. She would prove them all wrong, all over again. She would tell her brother too, and finally be comfortable in the monstrous skin she was born into.
Her eyes slipped shut and Elodie let her body relax. Tomorrow would bring another day, another chance, and she would figure things out then. Everything, would get better tomorrow. She felt certain about it.
Okay so originally, this chapter was a mediocre sack filled with exposition and a bunch of just "oh no...diego...fire??" and it always aggravated me to no end. The original version of Elodie didn't make much sense and never had the grip to her I wanted. And the idea of fire is such a powerful, angry concept that I never explored right before, and I hope I brought more into part one, but I especially wanted to push here. Fire is such an emotional, complex element and I really wish I had explored that more in the original draft of this book, but I'm looking forward to bringing into here, now.
The next chapter will be definitely Diego heavy and drag right into the chaos of season one, I swear -- but I hope this chapter was okay too! :)
Thank you for reading, let me know what you thought.