clio delacroix {d9} fin

You are born. You live—and then you die.

I was born and was immediately cast aside beneath a cloak of shame. It drowned me like how the eyes of a sinner do; it kept me lost within the difficulty. I struggled, I wormed and wriggled but nothing would remove it. I could feel it as it moved through my body as the clock struck every hour.  And with each call of the cuckoo, it trickled into my blood and turned me from an angel to a devil.

Clio Delacroix: born a bastard just like the rest of them. A title that sits on my head like a crown, except I am not a princess or a queen.

I am just another body of  in the graveyard of the living.

Still, I walk these corridors with tall walls, painted with the faces of the unholy. Shadows beneath their eyes; tired and shattered like a mirror hit by a bullet. It's a family thing—childish eyes only become weaker with time and knowledge, and a naive and innocent mind quickly becomes plagued with disaster upon disaster.

A normal little girl would hide, but I am not a normal girl, for I know all too well that dark things will only come to seek.

I am a bastard, I am just another body in the graveyard of the living. A girl without a father is fatherless too—and I remember that night for the heat from the sparks which burned through my mind. 

Incredible, really, how a series of simple events can turn the world on it's head. I'd heard of it before: how misfortune manages tears open wounds and feast on the resurgence of pain it causes, but never really did I believe it could happen to me. I was stupid and naive—I should have realised that being a Delacroix means punishment.

And I'd seen it before when Calypso was fifteen. I didn't understand it, how a ceremony could cleanse a person of the sins they had committed.

I thought that sins were like the scars you'd get whilst falling down trees; they would stay with you forever and a day.

Someone tried to save her, she told me about it and I just remember feeling so confused and bitter and upset. Saving does not mean hurting, and hurting does not mean purity, and purity does not mean a loss of innocence. But Calypso was too far gone; sin after sin would only conclude in a nightmare spun by the hands of demons.

Those demons helped her clear up the mess she'd caused. Blood on her hands and a body on the floor—she told me about it one night when the moonlight slipped in through a gap in the curtains. It seemed mellow and comforting because she told it to me like a bedtime story.

She explained why we had to run from the danger with mother clutching at our childish hands as she dragged us through the normal homes, through the homes of children who did not have to suffer such horrific circumstances and tainted dreams like us. All it amounted to was a poverty like never before, and poverty is known to drive people to do bad things.

Unjust things.

Illegal things.

Eight years old with a pale face and small hands, I wasn't surprised that drugs were being smuggled through the hands of my sister. She built a status for herself by going against simple laws, setting up a line of dominoes which are morphing into landmines. The blood of my blood has doomed me to a lifetime of supposed villainy.

I tell myself that perhaps it doesn't have to be that way, this way. Isn't there even the slightest of chance that I could use this status for good?

Truthfully, I'm tired.

Tired of always needing saving but failing to have a shoulder or hand to hold; tired of sleeping only to feel numb and see nothing but darkness, and tired of believing that something, somewhere can pull me from this life.

Because I'm tired of realising that nothing can.

And so, I have to rely on myself to be the hero.

I am determined to make the word a loose term. Clio Delacroix, the hero; whether it's using my own hands for deeds of sin, or following in the footsteps of Percy and turning to nothing but a BOOM and a face made up of feigned stars. Actions have consequences and consequences means a legacy has been made, and that is the work of someone super.

Super, just like Percy for her strength. Like Calypso for saving us all, and like my Mother who knew when to run when the time was right.

Villains to the outside looking in, but heroes in our own books. I decide that is what really matters, because people cannot judge choices without understanding reasons. No, they can't and they won't.

Even if I am a bastard girl who becomes nothing but a slave to burnt bodies and falling religions, I will be a hero.

I'll look normal, still: dry hair like rat's tails and a china face just like Percy. A cute little button nose and eyes which mask the history behind the name; the world will just see me as a girl who walks normal floors and lives behind normal walls. 

But beyond the bright eyes of a stranger is sin, and they won't know what's coming.

I'll be Clio Delacroix: the hero who thrives in chaos and puts rights above laws. Following the pathway carved by my sisters' secrets, I will become a hero for myself.

No, for my sisters, and for good.