wear your |broken| crown :: ella

( E L L A W R E N D A H L - M O R E N O )

She may contain the urge to run away
But hold her down with soggy clothes and breezeblocks
Citrezene, your fever’s gripped me again
Never kisses, all you ever send are fullstops
La la la la

I pace.

The world as I know it has been destroyed. Everything I thought I knew has been flipped around into such stark opposites that I can't deny the way old, marrow-deep truths have turned into witching hour ghost stories that still hold the power to shake me. And, oh, how I shake.

Whenever Auggie leaves me, my body itches and quakes, lungs rattling out of sync with my hurricane heartbeat. The fact of his life is still so much harder to believe than the newly-minted fiction of his death. So in his absence, my nervous footsteps carry me back and forth with the ebb and flow of my worries until floorboards threaten to ignite from the relentless friction. Honestly, I don't know what to do with myself now that everything is alright; it has been such a long time since I felt happy that I'm feeling it backwards and upside-down. Life has gone out of its way one too many times in order to teach me that few things are more wrong than when they're right and now paranoia won't leave me be. None of this can last.

Although I've grown all too used to destruction since my brother's death, I never expected that the collapse of my day to day misery could push me so far out of my element that I don't even feel as though I have an element anymore. Who is Ella Dahl if she's not being haunted by ghosts who endlessly torment her with the darkest moments of her personal hell? I was redefined by the wreckage of my soul and now that Auggie has single-handedly put me back together by merely existing, time is rewinding into emotional territory that I have not so much forgotten as purged. His simple presence still stuns me, punching me in the heart each time he walks through the door until the glorious agony becomes a stupor of numb idiocy that leaves me gaping at him, slack-jawed and shivering. The kinds of feelings I'm supposed to react with have been entirely removed from the spectrum of my soul.

Do you know where the wilds things go
They go along to take your honey
La la la la
Break down, now weep, build up, breakfast now
Let’s eat my love, my love, love, love

If losing him once ruined me this way, then I don't want to know what I'll become when the world tries to take him from me again, but I know that someday I'll find out. One of my first lessons in life was that if you have something worth holding onto, then someone will try to take it from you. Back then I didn't know that applied to people too — and now I can't forget it. I suppose it's about time someone as greedy as I am learned the proper definition of value.

Maybe that's why being back in this pathetic excuse for a shack has never felt so extravagant. The walls lean, the roof sags, and the wind sings through the cracks in the windows (the whistling tunes have always sounded like a mother's lullaby to me... now they sound like Tiva), but I swear I'm living like royalty. I can't remember the last time a mattress felt so comfortable or when a kitchen struck me as so warm. Wherever life has worn holes through something — curtains, couches, clothing — I'm discovering remembering that it's just another opportunity to see more, like how there is a place where the roof needs patching and I swear you can glimpse stars through the ceiling there. Knowing my brother, there is nothing accidental about this. Whenever Auggie is away (because when he is here I forget about myself and that is altogether new), I seek out these empty spaces that are secretly so full. When I look at the nothingness that is actually more something than anything tangible, I start to think that maybe there's more of me left than I think there is.

And so I pace. From one side of the shack to the other, my footsteps echoing history in their wake. I pause occasionally to scrutinize a patch of chipped and dented drywall or to crouch down and examine the creaking woodwork beneath me. Somewhere, in all these damaged details, there must be evidence of Ella Dahl. In these splinters is where I spy the remnants of my past and my future must be here too. Everything has led me back to this place and so if this is my present, then this is mine. I am here... somewhere.

Wherever there is ruination, there is Ella Dahl.

She bruises, coughs, she splutters pistol shots
But hold her down with soggy clothes and breezeblocks
She’s morphine, queen of my vaccine
My love, my love, love, love
La la la la

This fact of life is echoing through my veins as Kaelen Dempsey bursts in. The door screams against its hinges and the way it seems to be wailing my name jerks me to attention more than the boy who triggered the sound. The door is in pain and pain is so familiar that I'm certain I'll find myself in it. "I ought to rip your lungs out through your throat, you cowardly, sniveling little bitch!" Kaelen is yelling and although his voice doesn't resonate as deeply within me as his violent entrance, his tone is tinged with a similar agony. An impulse to reach out and take him into my arms, to steal some of his damage away for myself, flickers through me (it is a strangely selfish impulse and that's how I know there is truth and honesty in it), but his arms find me before I can even take a breath of preparation. He slams my body into the wall, my shoulder contributing to the very damage I was so captivated by only moments earlier. My flesh aches and I focus in on each detail of the sensation, pushing my soul into it rather than attempting to shut it out. I can feel the beginning of a bruise promising to bloom across the side of my ribcage and I find myself wanting to nurture it. I find myself wanting to nurture it —

I find myself.

Kaelen is not done with me, threading his fingers into my hair so he can find a proper grip for tugging me away from the wall and hurling me to the floor. My body is a little too compliant, moving in accord with his vicious whims as if on cue. In a way we might be dancing: a partnered pair anticipating each movement with well-matched ease. "What, you thought you could just send Kiera off to the Arena and no one would have anything to say about it while you lived your happy little life?" My mouth drops open automatically at his accusation that I'm happy. The retort is on my tongue, second nature and searing, before the now-of-me remembers that he's right. I am no longer a misery-ridden runaway hiding in the forest with Zane. "That's my family, practically my sister you just screwed over, Dahl!" My hip throbs where it hit the ground before the rest of me and so I close my eyes and encourage my consciousness to sink into the damage, adrenaline slinking into my veins to remind me of all my past-truths. My memories of anguish are so much easier to deal with than this foreign happiness. Or Kaelen's anger, for that matter.

All my potential retaliations feel wrong now —unfamiliar — and so I lay there, captured in compliance. The lost and wandering Ella would have turned feral by now, clawing and snapping at her attacker until his skin and everything that lurked beneath it were shredded to useless fragments, but I'm not that girl anymore. I don't have it in me. I don't have Auggie's death in me. "And trust me, sweetheart, I'm the last person you want pissed off at you. Hi. I'm back. And you are the first person on my list." But Kaelen, he's got Kiera's death in him, even as she continues to live and breathe. It doesn't matter if she's alive or dead as of this moment, because all her maybes have killed something in her cousin. I see it in him the same as I felt it in myself. Auggie wasn't dead then any more than Kiera is now, but I thought that he was and now Kaelen thinks the same of Kiera.

Muscle to muscle and toe to toe
The fear has gripped me
But here I go
My heart sinks as I jump up
Your hand grips hand as my eyes shut

The weight of his foot presses into my chest and I cough reflexively in response. My mouth tastes like blood and I'm pretty sure I must have bitten my tongue in the fall. Dropping my head to the side, I spit and can't help the hint of a smile that curls into the corner of my lips as speckles of red spray out to decorate the floor. It's hard to breathe and I'm lightheaded with the whiplash, but it's all such an Ella kind of feeling that I don't want the pain to leave me alone. Perhaps my edges are unraveling. Maybe he'll punch me until there are holes in my skin that are hollow with so much nothing that they have to be full of something or it could be that my bones are cracking and soon the wind will whistle though me until Tiva's voice fills me up up up once more.

"Hi, Kaelen. Long time no see." Because I am happy and he knows it, my hint of a smile tugs my lips wide. "Missed you too." Despite the lack of irony to the grin, there must be something off about it. It feels so obviously unnatural. The muscles of my cheeks don't remember the expression quite right, settling into it with awkward uncertainty. "I'm first on a lot of lists though, so you'll have to be more specific than that." A laugh tries to jolt through my lungs, but the rise in my chest just adds to the weight Kaelen's using to hold me down, another round of pain blossoming through me. I settle for patting his shoe in a comforting gesture of backwards-sincerity.

Reigning my voice into a whisper, I know the drop in volume is half because I'm selfish enough not to want to truly think about what I'm saying and half because I want him to lean closer to me, to press his weight down until my ribs threaten to snap. I've spent hours searching for a new way to find myself and in mere minutes Kaelen has presented me with a destruction so familiar I'm practically begging him for it — to bring me home to myself. "But you know even better than I do that I didn't send anyone to the Arena. Kiera screwed herself, not to mention Wednesdae Drummond. It's not my fault you weren't here to save your precious sister from herself. That blame is all yours, sweetheart." Just the same as the blame for my idiot-abandonment of Auggie is mine. Then my comforting hand gives a sharp yank at his ankle, pulling him off balance so he comes tumbling down to my level in more ways than one.

She may contain the urge to run away
But hold her down with soggy clothes and breezeblocks
Germaline, disinfect the scene, my love, my love, love, love
But please don’t go I love you so, my lovely
Please break my heart

( E L L A W R E N D A H L - M O R E N O )

I found my beat and it's in your sound
If I'm too late I'll curse the ground
Because I'm just waiting to come down
Call my name when you're around
Because it's dark again

Maybe it's that I don't believe Kaelen Dempsey any more than he believes himself. The only truths I have ever truly believed are my own, the sordid fragments of horrid honesty that have stitched each moment of my history together. "You sat there and let her go." Be it his words or his intentions, there is the sense that everything is just out of reach for him and so my faith in him follows into failure. He doesn't really believe that all of this blame belongs to me. That's why he won't kill me. Or maybe the both of us are picking and choosing what to believe.

There's no crack as Kaelen's foot presses against my throat and that's how I know I'm still alive, even as my skin begins to numb beneath his weight. "What the fuck was that, you're supposed to be a Moreno." I would laugh if my lungs weren't so restricted. Moreno. Ha! For all the lies Kaelen and his self-righteous indignation are preaching to me now, this is the one that rings through me, striking a chord of absurdity that is impossible to overlook even in this situation. The first thing he called me was Dahl, because he knows me at least that well. There is no Moreno blood in my veins. Especially now. "And you just go jumping off the stage when Kiera volunteers? You can't put this on me, Ella. I'm blameless."

Hilariously, the only people who want me dead more than Kaelen Dempsey at this point are the Morenos. He can rant and rave and spit venom at me with all the deadly ferocity he possesses, but in the end even his pathetic, murderous soul can't hate me as much as Elspeth Moreno. "But it's so good to know you missed me. Maybe just for that, I'll kill you a little less painfully." Even as his fingers press against my windpipe with more force than expected, I don't struggle. Kaelen won't kill me. The thought spins dizzy through me as oxygen becomes little more than a fairytale memory of impossibility. A punch-drunk smile faintly tugs at my lips as I close my eyes and allow myself to sink into the floorboards, pressed into a surprisingly warm space between Kaelen and the foundation of a home I've missed too desperately. Kaelen won't kill me. He won't. He can't. He doesn't know how. (Somehow Zane's distant voice is echoing through my shimmer-twist thoughts, promising that "Ella, you're indestructible." And he is so far away. He is so, so far away. He is so, so, so very —)

We've been living with the lights off
Been moving in the night
Keep swimming through the white wash
We're losing sight of everything
Of everything

"You should have known, Ella. You should have known that people like us never get to be happy." And it's hard to tell when everything is so wrapped up in this softly infinite numbness, the only sensation remaining within my body a tingling that burns pale across my skin (and thuds in my heart like I miss you and I miss you and I'm an idiot girl who misses so much), but I think I'm crying. The wounds Elspeth sliced into my shoulder blades last night have surely been split open, the back of my shirt damp with fresh blood, but this is not the same. It traces fragile patterns across my cheeks before curling down my neck and burns so differently. "At least going out in the Arena would have been respectable. This? This is just pathetic. Dying at the hands of a ghost. No one even knows I'm here. They will never catch me." Elspeth nearly tore me apart, but there is a depth to the pain Kaelen could inflict upon me that neither of them know anything about. Yet, it continues to hurt in the gentlest way, even as I tell myself one more time: Ella, you're indestructible. Kae won't kill you.

And he doesn't. For a moment there is something like disappointment as the bliss of near-death withdraws from me, teasing that I can only be a ghost to myself. I am an impatient girl with all the wrong ideas and so dying is not my privilege. Not today. "I c-can't... I... can't?" Our confusion is mutual, whether or not he knows it. In a way, by not killing me, he is damning me to a future of inevitable misery and I can't tell if he sincerely knows that or not, because this is not why he has withdrawn his hands from my throat. This isn't about Ella Dahl or Ella Moreno and who wants her to live or die. This isn't about my indestructibility. "I told her she could win." His voice holds more power to break me than his hands and I can't help wondering how much more dangerous Kaelen Dempsey could become if he knew that. "I told her, but I never thought... I never wanted..."

The hounds bring hate, man, they're so loud
They bark and break their way through town
That violence makes me feel so proud
Because my silence takes you to the clouds
Because it's dark again

Withdrawing from me and his own intentions, he curls into a tragic mess on the floor beside me, far more broken than I am, even as my lungs gasp desperately for air, my lips trembling with every breath. "People like us never get to be happy, Ella. Everything we touch dies." He didn't kill me and I knew he wouldn't, by some blind faith I didn't know I even had, but he's right about one thing. I'm not happy about it. Neither of us has ever believed in happiness, after all. No one has to tell me that we are damned to a different kind of deadliness, something beyond Kaelen's fists or Elspeth Moreno's knives.

It takes several minutes to regain a normal pace of breathing and the ability to pull myself up into a slump beside him. "I know," I tell him in a ragged whisper, as if making a promise. I've always known there was no such thing as happiness, but it was always such a pretty story. Reaching out, I take his hand in mine with little thought for gentleness, intertwining my fingers into his like it's a demand. "So don't forget that Kiera's just like us." My voice hardens as my hand squeezes into a fist around Kaelen's, because the awful truth might just be the best reassurance I can give him now. Despite the Moreno name they tried to give me, we both know I'm still Ella Dahl and I've always been a lot of terrible things, but I've never been a liar. "So —" maybe "— everything she touches will die too." All twenty-three of them. Silence stretches awkward and uncomfortable between us, but I don't let go of his hand. If a twitch or a shiver trembles through his body, I pretend it's him pulling away and just hold on more tightly. I am stubborn and, damn it, this is as close to comforting as I know how to be.

A thick beat of laughter jolts through me as adrenaline continues to spin within my head in the wake of my almost-death. "They can't kill Kiera any more than you can kill me, Kae." It's true that there is something indestructible that within me and there is something just as indestructible within Kaelen and Kiera. It's no easy task to destroy stubborn souls like ours. That stupid defiance is all we've ever had. "The only person in that Arena capable of killing Kiera is Kiera." And I mean it. "You can punch me a few more times if it'll make you feel better though." I'm still struggling to breathe as I slouch against him for support — not that he has much to give at this point. Tucking my head into his shoulder, I wrap my free arm around my stomach and try to ignore the shooting pains gnawing at my body. New bruises scream at me as they declare their existence, as if each possesses its own electric pulse, and old damage seeks to remind me of its presence as thin lines of blood seep through my clothing. "Elspeth Moreno beat you to it though —" I pause as another heady rush of laughter skitters through me. Holding my free hand up, my fingers are dappled with the evidence of my own blood and I wave it in front of Kaelen for a moment, as if giving him a present. I'm lightheaded and my vision is blurred around the edges, but all this damage feels like home to me. It's familiar enough to believe in. "Beat you to giving me a beating, that is."

Deep thinker, ship sinker, channel me on your way down
Slow drinker, hard liquor, this sea won't let you drown
Deep sleeper, slow blinker, wake up to what you found
Slow faker, heart breaker, broke free, we're heaven bound
Because it's dark again