✓ Chaos Theory | Diego Hargreeves [1]

【CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE】

—chapter twenty-three.

❝tis the season for...❞

ELODIE VERBECK HAD NOT BEEN EXCITED FOR CHRISTMAS in a long, long time.

Truthfully, she couldn't remember a time when she had really looked forward to the holiday. She had celebrated it before for Ellis' sake, but it wasn't much when she herself had no concept of what 'good tidings' the holiday should bring. All she had to offer were small gifts and fake smiles, trying to hold herself together as her father and later her grandmother watched on. 

It wasn't that she didn't want the holiday to mean something. Elodie tried to imagine a good feeling up when the time came around, but she only ever found herself feeling miserable and wishing she could just sleep through the entire month of December. Christmastime brought forward the worst in herself; the anger towards her father's abuse and her mother's ignorance of it, the self-pity and regret, and a whole new bucket of shame to douse herself in every morning she forced herself awake for. There was never any money for frivolities like gifts - that, or he just did not want to waste the money on the sack of magical bones he scammed from some adoptive agency. Not to mention zero interest in spending time with the little girl who was only good for lighting fires. 

Elodie spent her time alone until her brother came around, and even then it was a chore to celebrate, for his sake. When she got back to the city, she cursed at the snowy sludge and too-bright lights and the Christmas trees that never came right. Turkey was always too dry and mashed potatoes too runny, leaving her vomiting up cheap alcohol and fast food alone in her apartment - a poor excuse of a cheery holiday meal. 

Or worse, she would be working and pretending not to be miserable for the sake of those who were, because her customers livelihoods mattered more than her's ever would. Tears were shed and she would get angry, too angry, throwing and breaking and melting things when her rage grew too much. She would wake up hungover in the middle of the floor, surrounding by ashes and smashed glass and still-glowing hot weapons created the night before. Ashamed and broken, too scared to face the truth about herself.

But the Christmas of 2012 was different. 

Ellis came to her that year. He rode the train up with Grandmother to stay in her shoebox apartment, and for a whole week, not just Christmas day. Elodie took most of that time off, using up all the sick days she never used for the sake of her little brother. And she cleaned the place -- not just in the 'shoving everything into a drawer way', but really cleaned it so it actually looked like she took care of herself. She bought baubles a plenty to hide from the disfigurements her angry self had made, and even purchased a tree, even if she was sure Grandmother would hate the way she decorated it.