mad as daisies ᵗⁱᵗᵃⁿˢ

00 | the phantom of trauma (tw)

Tw! Heavy mentions of suicide.

Eleanor Shelby was like a ghost. People didn't see her because they didn't want to, people didn't notice her despite the bright pink hair and her name. It was her disguise, a chirpy teenager with colourful hair. So obvious that people ignored her unless they were giving her a dirty look or deciphering if she was who she was.

She wore her bright hair with pride. She had been dying it the same bright pink (mixing different shades to add highlights to her hair and produce the perfect vibrant pink she desired) for years, a little after her family had been murdered. Shot to death and mutilated in one cold night in Gotham City.

The mental wounds took a long time to scab over, but they never truly healed. Eleanor tried to get as better as someone could after finding their parents and her older brother mutilated in her childhood home. She was thirteen when she became an orphan.

Eleanor was a girl who didn't want to be seen. A girl who used people's ignorance to the best of her ability as she fled into the darkness every night to escape from the pain from within.

Gotham was as beautiful as it was dangerous. Nights darkened by the moon and its criminals. Days burning with the delight of survival and the awakening of pain.

Gotham was perfect for forgetting.

How could Eleanor remember their bloody bodies when she was using adrenaline to free her mind. What was a dead brother, mother and father to a night so dangerously delightful?

Sometimes she would have just sat on the highest of rooftops watching as she imagined the pain that laid in the streets, other nights she ran and ran hoping the monsters would go away. The real ones and the metaphorical ones. Sometimes she wanted the real ones to chase her to her death — to be reunited with her family and find happiness.

Eleanor enjoyed the peace and the happiness. The simplicity of wonder brought her joy. She dreamed of a world so perfectly safe, yet lived in a place demons spoke their darkest desires in the shadows.

Desires were deadly. A weapon so perfect it went unnoticed. The need and wish for something can override morals and innocence. Eleanor didn't like that.

The idea that a person's morality could be ruined by one small wish was completely and utterly wrong.

Desires bring on a lot of pain, and sometimes desire is simply to end all of the pain.

Eleanor remembered jumping, she remembered the freedom, she remembered she desired to die, she remembered the screaming and the fear, but hiding all of it was the satisfaction and desire as she neared her end.

But as she got close, her opportunity was taken. It was a miracle she survived, bones crushed and all, but someone took her and saved her. Taking her from her home in Gotham.

From her near-death rose beauty. Like a ghost or maybe like a Phantom, Eleanor arose with power. But with power came pain. No longer could she go outside and enjoy the thrill of danger — or at least she shouldn't.

It had been two years (when she survived her first attempt, most of the first year she had been in a coma) since her parents and older brother's death, and Eleanor was not willing to give up her only way of clearing her mind. Her peace and her happiness were so much more important than rules that trapped her in one building. And she stood by that.

The girl with pink hair found a home. Her home was no longer in Gotham, but a home in Covington. In her home, she found love. A love she so needed, a family filled with a certain type of pain that it connected them. She didn't realise how much family mattered.

Not at first, not until her father, mother and brother crumbled. Not until her uncle used her body and her aunt failed her. Not until she found a new family three years later. Eleanor Shelby found a home, found family and found friends.

Family and friends are important. They bring life meaning, and that's exactly what happened for Eleanor. They gave meaning to her dull life and slowly over the two years pushed light over the darkness, at least enough for her to contain the pain and ignore it.

Her family and friends had rules. Survival came at a cost. A cost that was their freedom. No longer could they roam the streets and enjoy peace.

For the most part, Eleanor tried to keep to the rules. However, at least one night a week she enjoyed the blanket of the bitter night sky.

Eleanor loved freedom. The ability to breathe and think. Or run and scream. Eleanor had loved Gotham because its danger and its flaws were what gave her hope. Out of the danger rose heroes and villains. People to root for and people to hate.

She hoped one day she could be a hero, even if it was just for one person. Knowing someone admired you was a powerful feeling. A feeling so good it made people giddy. She had known that feeling, after her immediate family had died and she lived with her uncle. Eleanor Shelby looked after her aunty and cousins, protecting them from the monster that was her uncle.

She desired that feeling again.

But her desires had to be kept in order. She didn't want to fall from grace in hopes that she could one day raise in power. But the desire wasn't the only thing that could damage her, pain also sheltered her from her own darkened mind.

Sometimes her mind got to her, leading to attempts. She once tried to hang herself, but she simply slipped through the rope. The rope went through her neck and she dropped down to the floor. Her knees hurt and were bruised for a while.

Another time she got a hold of a gun, placing it into her mouth and shot. The bullet went through her but didn't rip her skin open and leave a mess of blood behind her, instead it went through her like she was a ghost and fell to the floor just behind her.

Another time she tried to jump. She stepped off a ledge and waited to hit the floor. But she didn't, instead, she appeared on top of the building she had tried to jump off. Each time she tried, she'd simply reappear on top of the building.

Her desire to become a ghost story may have impacted her more than she believed. Desire and pain were deadly deeds that manipulated the mind, to act in certain ways. Her desire to become a ghost story always lead to her survival.

Suicide and survival was a big part of Eleanor's life. Death without glory was her life. She lived to attempt and attempted to live.

Eleanor Shelby was truly one messed up person. A life so dedicated to wanting to be a ghost story, that she became pretty close to being one.

But she was already messed up. A victim to many types of trauma of all kinds. Trauma was forced upon her from her parent's death and living with her uncle.

Trauma was glorified. People romanticised trauma and she hated it. She believed people should not desire trauma, after all, trauma wasn't beauty trauma was pain.

Eleanor had faced many forms of trauma and she wasn't always proud that she survived them. From her parent's death to being raped by her uncle, to witnessing him abuse her aunty and cousins, to surviving suicide. Eleanor collected trauma and hated it.

She hated a lot of things, but that didn't mean she didn't have happiness.

Eleanor had once tried to be happy and optimistic as much as she could and still did her best to keep some optimism in her life. Because without joy is life worth living. Each breath was an opportunity. Each survival was for a reason and she hoped the reason was good.

Eleanor always believed in the greater good. Despite the danger that freed her mind, she hoped one day that there would be a world where the innocent thrived. She hoped there was a world safe for everyone, with its protectors unneeded.