Who: Emilie and Ezra Where: their place What: bad things When: just after this
Ezra had witnessed what happened with the dogs. Witnessed what Emilie had done with the dogs. He needed to be honest with himself. She’d done that. She’d taken someone, and fucking fed them alive to practically feral dogs. Emilie. His sister. His twin. The most important person in his entire fucking universe, and he didn’t even recognize her anymore.
He didn’t think she’d noticed him - then again he was pretty sure she was too enthralled with her own savagery to notice anything but that. He’d not alerted her to his presence at all, and he was pretty damn good at not being spotted when he didn’t want to be.
He’d gone back to their ‘home’, and taken a long look around. It wasn’t a home. It had been, sort of, once upon a time. When they’d first got there, when Emilie had tried very hard to make the place feel ‘homey’, as she put it. She’d gotten furniture for them, she’d painted things brighter colors to help push back the oppressive dark outside the train car’s door. She’d put effort in to make it feel welcoming, at least to them.
And it was a hole now. Everything was run down, half broken or just trashed off in a corner. Some of it was from her fits. Her more and more epic fits as she fell farther into addiction. As he watched her slip farther and farther away.
Sitting down on ‘his’ side of the mattress, he found the stub of an old carpenter’s pencil again, and he carefully added another word to the wall above where he laid his head at night.
The wall was littered with the word. A lot of them were small, and a lot were smudged - Emilie had tried to rub them all off the wall at one point when she was angry with him, and because he didn’t explain to her what it was, why he was doing it. How did you tell someone that it was your personal tally of all the moments you watched someone lose their humanity? Lose themselves?
It was his way of keeping track of the times she did things even he couldn’t come up with an excuse for. Lately, the word had been getting bigger, for bigger offenses. This last one was the biggest yet. He traced it over another time, and stared at the words there. going, going, Going, GOING…
His mind flashed back to the expression on her face when she came out of the crowd, enjoying every fucking second of it, and his stomach turned. He was scribbling again, adding until he wrote too hard and the pencil lead snapped. He threw it hard against the wall, squeezing his eyes shut as he rocked forward and backward, forehead bumping softly against the cold wall.
Going, going, going. He heard her coming, and fought back another hard roll of his stomach, the fucking innocent man’s screams echoing in his mind. I can’t fucking do this. I can’t. You’re not even you anymore, you fucking-- who are you?
He lashed out before thought properly connected in his mind that it was happening, and he punched the metal wall as hard as he could, bright pain spiking through his hand, up his arm. But it helped steady him, just a little, even if as he felt blood seeping from split skin. It meant he wouldn’t hit her. He hit it twice more before he felt like he’d gotten that high level of emotionally wounded energy out. Or at least bled off some, the pressure wasn’t exactly gone. But it was going to have to do because the girl who’d just fed someone who was simply in the wrong place at the wrong time to dogs had meandered home, and he was willing to bet she was in a fucking fantastic mood.
--
No one but Ezra knew the real Emilie, the one that came before the Prax. Even after the assault, she never would have done something like that. Never. But a year on the bright, crystalline drug had made her into something mean and cruel and hardly recognizable. Most people didn’t make it a year, maybe a few months, but most people didn’t have a twin brother looking out for them. Had it not been for Ezra, she would’ve been another body in the tunnel, riddled with infected wounds or missing limbs altogether.
She had snorted a fresh line before she’d gone to get the dogs, and she snorted another once they were dropped off back in the room. Still donning the makeup and the assortment of furs and leathers, Emilie made her way back to the train car, steps slow and clumsy through the maze of tunnels, and by the time she made it back, her eyes were nothing but blown out pupils.
Of course she was in a fantastic mood, but it had less to do with what she’d done and everything to do with the Prax. She thought she’d feel giddy about the man; he’d been trespassing, after all, but instead she just felt empty. At her core, Emilie wasn’t a terrible person. She was a scared, miserable, trapped girl. But oh, the Prax made her feel like she could do anything and everything, including feeding a screaming man to a pack of her dogs.
When she climbed into the car and saw Ezra, Emilie smiled brightly, the expression almost macabre in the layers of black and white makeup. “Ezraaa,” she cooed, and he’d be able to see that she was high as a kite. When in the past year had Emilie not been high? She hardly remembered what it was like to be off Prax.
Maybe if she did, she’d fight harder to get off of it.
--
going, going, going, going... He knew the next word. He did. He wasn't quite there where he could even think it, but it wasn't beyond reach anymore. He heard her saying his name like that and it was like nails digging into a festering wound. He reached up, fists against his short hair, fingers knotting in what they could, pulling hard.
He squeezed his eyes shut and tried to breathe, even if it felt like the walls had very abruptly closed in on him. And he knew it wasn't the walls. It was her. It was like she sucked everything from him. She'd been draining him since the day she'd started on that shit and she wasn't ever going to stop.
Not when apparently, she was moving on to public executions of such a vicious, horrific nature that she was officially a stranger. One who couldn't be trusted, was using him for everything he was worth, and who, for all he knew at this point, would sic a dog on him next time he did something she didn't like.
Part of him wanted to deny that, to steadfastly say she wouldn't hurt him but that was bullshit. She hurt him all the time. Sometimes bad. She'd come out for the crowd and done that like it was nothing. Christ, that guy could have been him, not too long ago.
“Did you enjoy your little play?” he said, voice seeming to come from an outside source, even if it was from his own rough throat. There was a disconnect happening, one that scared him but he knew it was a defense mechanism. And he needed one of those right now more than he needed to keep breathing. “Was that fun for you? Miss fucking Queen of the Ghouls?” He looked at her but it was only for a second. He couldn't hold it. Couldn't even look at her.
--
”Did you enjoy your little play?”
Emilie knew right away that Ezra was angry with her, and it spoke fucking volumes that she had to think about why he might be. He made it clear soon enough, but even then, she furrowed her dark eyebrows in confusion and moved closer, head tilted to the side. It was just a man, a stranger. What did it matter that he was gone?
For all they knew, he would’ve done the same thing to them if given the chance. The world was a shitty place, and so were the people that inhabited it. Everyone could burn, for all Emilie cared. Let them all meet messy deaths.
Except for Ezra.
“Trespassing,” she mused, eyes moving to the wall. Going, going, GOING. Emilie frowned, hard, and shrugged out of the handmade fur coat. The Prax made her hot, and she was already sweating, even when she stripped down to just a bra and panties. Even in her underwear, that fucking makeup made her seem more creature than human.
--
“Trespassing. Are you--” he didn't even have words, so he stopped. Just like he'd more or less stopped talking to anyone else a long time ago. Why he found himself more and more silent in general. He was aware of her presence, and he wanted away from her. She was truly making him sick, and he hated that. Hated it with all of his being but this time it wasn't being outshined by his deep, damaged love for her.
Tears of anguish and frustration having built up for far too long stung the backs of his eyes but didn't make it farther than that. He smeared blood on the wall, forming another 'g' over the mess of the other words.
--
When she saw what he was doing, Emilie scrambled forward onto their bed. Even she knew what came after going, going, and she couldn’t fucking think about that, because she was thinking about Ezra being gone, not herself. After all, she was right here. She wasn’t going anywhere. Not physically, anyway.
In reality, Emilie had been gone for about a year, with only brief, fleeting glimpses in between.
“Stop,” she whispered, reaching out to desperately try and smear the blood and words. “Stop, stop, stop, stopstopstop!” She’d done this before, the smearing and smudging, but he always put it back up.
Emilie physically put herself between him and the wall, all but shoving herself between the two so he couldn’t write anymore. Fuck, she was a mess. Her hair was a thick tangle of waves, her makeup beginning to blur because of the sweat, and now that she was in her underwear, her ribs showed like a ladder of sickness. There were a variety of fresh bruises, some of them self-inflicted, but the worst was her eyes. Without the bright blue surrounding the pupils, she looked like some kind of demon in the shadows.
--
He thought he would scramble across the room to get away from her – hell, he'd planned to, if she got near enough to touch him. He wanted nothing to do with any contact from her right then. But that wasn't what happened. What happened was he shoved her back against the wall and his fist pulled back and rapidly punched the wall right next to her head more times than he could count, as hard as he could, a deep, ragged growl escaping him as he did so. He only stopped when fatigue set in and he was left breathing hard, eyes glaring into hers from only inches away.
Or what passed for her. That was really what he was looking at. Something wearing Emilie's skin. Because it sure as fuck wasn't her. He kept her trapped there, hands against the wall on either side of her head and he tried to drag up the words he needed to say – though everything else about him was speaking loud and clear, screaming it at her in every tremor of tension through his body, in the look in his eyes, in everything about him.
--
The real Emilie, the one whose brain wasn’t riddled and destroyed with wash, would’ve known that Ezra wouldn’t hit her, but when he shoved her back against the wall and cocked his fist, she closed her eyes and prepared for the contact. Ezra was strong; she knew it would hurt. Her nose had been broken a few months ago in a brawl with another ghoul, and she wondered if he’d break it all over again.
The pain never came, and she realized sometime after the third or fourth punch to the wall that he was hitting the metal of the train car, not her. Even high, she chastised herself for thinking Ezra, of all people, would actually hit her. Of all the times she’d hit him, slap him, bit him, he’d never hurt her back.
She deserved it, that much she knew.
When he finished, his breaths hard and warm against her face, she slowly opened her dilated eyes. She wouldn’t have moved, not even if his hands weren’t on either side of her head, caging her in. For the first time in a long time, Emilie was speechless.
Moments later, when she did speak, it was rough and slurred. “Want to hit me?” she asked, momentarily thinking back to Sparrow, to the way he’d slapped her so hard it made her vision spin. “Hit me. Hit me, Ezra.” With lightning fast hands, she grabbed his shoulders and yanked him even closer. “Do it!”
Anything to feel something, right?
--
He shut his eyes and set his jaw, head canting to the side a little as he breathed. “No,” he managed to grind out of his throat. His eyes opened again and locked to hers. He got even closer, almost like he was going to kiss her, but that was the farthest thing from his mind. “Know why?” he continued. “Because it won't. Fucking. Matter. Nothing does with you. I could hurt you, and you'd cry, or feel better, or both, and maybe you'd get angry and fight back, and hurt me, because it's your favorite fucking passtime. Nothing I do matters. Nothing I do sinks into that empty head of yours. I could disappear tomorrow and the only reason you'd notice is your punching bag would be gone.”
He rested his forehead against hers, eyes falling shut again, but his words were just as laced with anger, even if they were soft as a whisper now, that hard edge beneath every syllable. “You just fed a man to dogs, you psychotic. Cunt, and you didn't even notice that was over the line. That that might be wrong. You didn't even know what I was upset about at first, don't think I didn't notice that. The line doesn't exist to you anymore, there is no line. You wanted to put on a show for the other deranged lunatics down here and congratulations, they loved it. They loved you, whoever the fuck you are because you're not my sister. Not anymore.”
--
Emilie wanted him to hurt her. She wanted him to break bones and bruise flesh because he was right; she’d feel better. It would hurt, but those kind of wounds healed, and she would feel them. The only time she felt anything other than the hollow place that was her soul was when she was high on Prax, and even then it was just a band-aid. A wonderful, addicting, expensive band-aid that made her feel like she was on top of the world.
Or under it.
When he rested his forehead against her own, she breathed a sigh of relief and leaned into the touch, thinking maybe the storm was over and that his anger had subsided. But then he spoke, and he told her she wasn’t his sister anymore, and Emilie froze. Her muscles tensed, her fingers curled into fists at her side, and even her breathing seemed to stop.
And then she grabbed either side of his face. For a moment, it had been a toss up whether she would hit him or something else, but apparently she chose the other option. For now. “No,” she whimpered, shaking her head. “No, don’t say that. Don’t. Don’t fucking say that.”
--
“You dressed yourself up like Queen of the Texas Chainsaw Massacre family and fed someone to dogs! someone who was probably just fucking down here avoiding the blobs, someone who just wanted out of the open for a night! Someone who screamed and begged for their fucking life, and you didn't even flinch. I watched you, and there was nothing, because you don't live here anymore. You burned out your own fucking soul with a smile on your face, and begged me to stay while you left me one painful shred at a time, and I know now. I know. I saw you today, and Emilie is gone.”
He dug his teeth into the inside of his bottom lip hard enough to draw blood, swallowing down the lump in his throat. He pulled back and looked at her again, pushing her arms apart so she wouldn't have hold of his face anymore. But he reached for hers. His swelling hand, bloody and probably a little broken now, flesh heated from the injury, sticky with blood pressed against her cheek, and he brushed his thumb over the swell of it, so gaunt where it used to be so full.
“Do you want to know the worst part?” he whispered to her. There was almost a smile on his lips, some truly shattered part of himself rising to the surface. “This isn't going to matter either. All that's going to happen is you're going to find yourself some more poison and you're going to dive right in, so you can forget all about this. So you can erase me. So you can not have to think about anything, not have to examine yourself, not have to learn anything. And that's it. And maybe next time you sic your animals on someone, it's me, only you don't notice because you're too fucking high to. But won't matter anyway, right? Because I'd be trespassing.”
--
There were tears rolling down Emilie’s face, but it was always hard to tell whether that was genuine emotion or just the roller coaster that was Prax. With wash, the euphoria was intense, but it also left its users unable to control their emotions. One moment, they’d be in the clouds, the next they’d feel like they were buried beneath six feet of dirt.
“Not you,” she murmured, because full sentences were a thing of the past. She could hardly make sense of the few words she did speak, much less make full, logical sentences. “Not you. Never you.” Emilie was referring to the dogs. She’d never hurt Ezra — except when she did. But she’d never kill him. The thought of living in a world without her brother was intolerable. She always told him she would die without him, and it was true.
“Sorry. I’m sorry.” She wasn’t sorry for what she did; she was sorry that Ezra was angry. Emilie wanted to go back to enjoying her high, and she couldn’t do that if she was sad. “Let’s … shh, let’s play pretend.” Her synapses were firing all over the fucking place, and she smiled against the hand that brushed her cheek.
“We can pretend.”
--
It broke his heart, and he'd pretty much thought that was already done, and he couldn't be hurt anymore by this. But that did it. It was like grinding the fractured shards to dust. Pretend. Right. And her apology...he knew it wasn't for anything she'd done. He didn't see guilt in her eyes, just sadness. She was sorry she was suffering consequences, not that she'd become a vicious, empty bag of bones in the first place. Not that she'd just killed someone in a horrific way. Ezra had certainly killed before and he'd even done so when he might not have strictly had to.
But he'd never tortured anyone. He'd never treated them like they were entertainment for the masses. Treated them like they were dog food.
Tears did sting his eyes but didn't fall as he stared at her, and his hand shook. He had the urge to end it, right there. Unbidden, he wanted to strangle her, put her out of her misery then kill himself. Wipe them both off the map. But he couldn't. Just like he wouldn't hit her. As much as he hated her for what she'd done to herself, to him, to them and every ripple on the pond outward from there, he couldn't.
“No,” he told her, a simple statement. He stared at her a long moment more, those black eyes barely hinting at their true ice blue, too wide from the shit in her system. He leaned in and pressed his cheek against her other one. “I loved her more than life itself. But there is no more pretend. I can't.” It hurts so fucking bad I can't even tell you. I can't express what this has been like, I can't tell you how soul crushingly lonely it's been without you. But what I saw today wasn't even a person anymore. Not really. And if I have to stay here with the walking skeleton shell you are, I'm going to blow my fucking brains out.
--
”I loved her more than life itself.”
Her. Not Emilie, not who she was now. It was like a kick in the gut, realizing that Ezra didn’t love her, and her body shook with a sob she quieted by biting into her tongue until she tasted blood. Maybe the Chaplain to the Dog King was right. He told her that Ezra didn’t choose her; he was just stuck with her.
How long would it be until he cut his ties and went away?
“Her,” she repeated, fingers curling into Ezra’s clothing to keep him from pulling away. “Her, not me.” Who could blame him? Emilie’s mood was as mercurial as the ocean surface, glassy and smooth one moment and then cresting violently, drowning everything in its path.
“But I still love you.” That was true. There were only two things left in the world that she cared about, and that was Ezra and Prax.
“Can’t you … can’t you just pretend I’m her?”
--
“You aren't my sister anymore. That girl? Would never even have thought what you so casually did today. It would have been unfathomable. You have surpassed the people who broke us in the first place, because what you've become is a cruel, heartless shell.” He shook his head, having to swallow hard.
“And you don't. You love Prax. You can't look me in the eye and tell me you actually feel anything anymore. Not for me. You're just upset because you don't want to be alone, not because of any of this. And you know what? For the longest time, I just couldn't leave because...because I just loved you so fucking much, and I didn't care that you hit me, that you attack for no reason that you blow hot and cold so fast I get emotional whiplash. I just wanted to protect you, I wanted to save you. But...” that broken part of him was abruptly in his eyes, his voice. The part of him that had never stopped screaming after the zombies started, the part that needed her more than anything else. The part that hadn't seen her in a long, long time, and was suffocating from that loss.
“I failed, and you've been gone so long I don't even know when I saw you last. And I can't breathe, and this is all worse than anything. You proved beyond the shadow of a doubt who you are today and it's just...not Emilie.”
--
“I do!” she hissed, taking his face in her hands once again, because she couldn’t let him go. There were no words to describe what it felt like to have the one person, the only person she cared about, tell her that she was cruel, that she was a shell.
And the worst part was that it was true. He wasn’t telling her anything she didn’t already know.
“I … I won’t! I won’t hit you anymore. Not ever.” She always believed the things she said, at least when she said it, but they both knew it wasn’t true. It would only be a matter of time before she lashed out and hit him or scratched him or said something terrible.
God, the look in his eyes. It was like being stabbed. He looked so empty.
“Stop,” she begged, a fresh wave of tears rolling down her cheeks. “Don’t say that. I’ll be better. I’ll treat you better. I can be her. I can try.” Emilie was pressing frenzied, desperate kisses along his face, and she had no plans of letting him go.
--
“Yes you will! Do you have any idea how many times you've promised you'll clean up? That you'll get better? That you won't fucking abuse the shit out of me anymore, and you'll try? You promised every time at first, and every once in a while you still randomly say it, like your brain skipped a groove in the record and hit that playback spot!” He took her shoulders in his hands and shoved her back against the wall again, not wanting to feel anything from her, not after what he'd seen today. And regardless of how crushed he felt, how broken his spirit was, he still always physically responded to her.
So he cut that off before it could really get started. He got her just far enough back then finally did scramble back, backpedaling toward the door. “Don't touch me,” he said, pain clear in his unsteady voice. “Don't--” he turned, going to leave the car. He needed to get out of there, he needed to breathe, and it felt like he couldn't, like he was choking. Like his chest was locked up and he was helpless.
--
“No, no! Different! It’ll be different. I’ll —“ When he shoved her back to get away from her kisses and her clutching hands, Emilie choked on a half-gasp half-sob, and before she could grab at him again he was scrambling away from her, telling her not to touch him.
She couldn’t let him leave. If he did, he might not ever come back, and that thought was incomprehensible. “Ez, Ez, don’t.” Emilie stood to her feet and stumbled after him, her hands wrenching into his shirt once again to force him to look at her. Then, just like before, she was grabbing his face and trying to kiss him.
Had she been sober, she might’ve realized just how pathetic she looked.
“Don’t. Don’t. Don’t leave. Stay. I’ll tell a story.”
--
He was waiting for the turn, when anger kicked in because he was ruining her high, because he wasn't doing what she wanted him to. He kept trying to back away, pushing at her hands, turning his face away from her. “Don't touch me!” he pushed at her, not hard enough to hurt, but hopefully enough to get her off of him. He still felt like he was suffocating.
He needed to get out of there, away from her. He had no further plan beyond that, just on the other side of a wall from her. He didn't know where he would go, what he would do, if he would have the resolve to stay away, if he was even capable of that. It was all hopeless, and he couldn't fucking breathe.
--
She was clumsy on her feet because of the prax, and when he pushed her, she stumbled to the ground. It didn’t hurt; what hurt was watching him turn his back and leave. “Please!” she practically screamed with a spray of saliva. There was nothing beautiful or graceful about Emilie in those moments, her face smeared with tears and face paint, saliva clinging to her lips.
She was a broken addict, one who had exhausted all of her options, and now even the one lifeline she had left, she’d driven away. “Please, Ezra! Don’t fucking leave! Don’t leave me! You promised!” He promised he would take care of her.
No, he promised he would take care of Her. Not the junkie.
--
“I promised I would never leave my sister!” he snapped, door open, but his voice broke in the middle of it. “But you left me a long fucking time ago and never even blinked.” He walked out, rushing into the darkness, hoping she didn't have the coordination to follow him.
Or attack him. He still knew that was a distinct possibility. He wouldn't have been surprised if a gunshot went off behind him. He didn't think she'd have the aim to hit him but he didn't know. He didn't know anything anymore. His world had officially crashed around his ears and he was more lost than he had ever been in his life.