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She doesn’t know the in’s and out’s or when’s and why’s of how it started. Can’t remember wanting this. Can’t remember getting here, getting to be this bad.
She thinks maybe she was born this way. An itch implanted in utero, too far beneath the surface to truly scratch, and carved into her very being. A need of genetic disposition - a crack baby addicted to her own undoing. Nature over nurture, or whatever it is that they say.
Or, perhaps, it was the world she was brought into. The rift of poverty that deprived her of so much more than just warmth and love.
The rumbling in her stomach was her first and only friend.
The trembling of her muscles showed her she endured.
She never had any say in the matter, regardless. Choices stripped from her before she was old enough to make them, herself.
Her body was only ever hers in the moments it could break; toeing the line between frailty and fatality like a child balancing on the curbside. Always one step away from the bittersweet release of the end. Pushing her mind and body to its limits just to feel alive.
She is too old for such games, now, but too young for such a death.
Now, the choice is hers.
That’s what the media say, at least. That she had the power and responsibility to put a stop to it all at any given point. To end the downward spiral of exploitation and destruction long before it reached the point of no return.
It’s a bold lie to tell. An even harsher truth to hear.
She closes her eyes at night and imagines a world in which her ‘no’ could ever mean something. Imagines a world without the pain, punishment, and persecution suffered at the hands of man.
Wonders if they would say the same, if they knew.
They’re right, though. She could’ve stopped it. Still can.
(She doesn’t think she knows how.)
Her story starts as all stories do; with the creation of man and man’s creation of his own.
Except her birth was a catalyst in the equation. Conceived too late and born too soon - condemned to a fate far worse than death before she could even take her first, wailing breath.
Her sister would tell her the tale with wet, glassy eyes. A far-off look filled with emotion she still cannot name, recalling the memory of a small, pink-fleshed creature kept in a plastic box, far too fragile for such a cruel world.
It was a miracle she even survived, the doctors said.
She disagrees. She has suffered every day since for that same damned miracle.
Three long months later, they brought her home in a car seat she was still too small to fit in, overshadowed by the lifetime of debt it carried. Their father already worked two jobs to break even. Their struggling could only afford so much.
The bank foreclosed on their mortgage a week after her first birthday, Karen would explain, and they were left with no choice but to move towns. Move states. Start over.
A completely fresh start.
It did nothing to stop the cycle from repeating. After all, places may change, but people do not. She knows that, now - words becoming her weapon; sharpened like a blade against flint and steel and holding her logical mind ransom.
Places may change, but people do not. On or off the island, she will always be that little girl with fiery hair and a fire within that burns for more than life could ever provide. Starving for a way from this hunger-filled life made of gray. She cannot fix all that long broken and bent.
That’s her excuse, at least, when she jerks her fingers down her throat in a vain attempt to rid herself of far more than calories and grams. When she catches a glimpse of herself in the mirror above the sink between heaves, only to see the ghost of the girl she will never not be.
She finds home in the emptiness and lack. In the bitter cold affection of rough, gripping hands and open-palmed slaps.
Men are simple. Much easier to understand than the complexities of cellulite and fundamental neglect. The cycle never does end.
The trial ends, six weeks after the events of the park. Another week later, the press move on, too.
She’s left alone to pick up the broken pieces of herself, in the aftermath, staring at them like water in her hands. They escape her so easily. She wonders if there ever were a way to hold them together, in the first place.
The hole inside cannot be filled. For someone who once thrived off of nothing, she is bare. Empty. Nothing but the shadow of guilt and thinning flesh of blame in a bottomless pit, dressed in a designer suit and cracked-tooth smile.
She cannot purge the burden. Cannot rid herself of all that she has ever felt since she was old enough to form memories that last.
Still, she tries.
Binging on all that’ll bring her harm like it’s the last thing she’ll ever do, for it just may well be. Adding salt to the wound for the thrill of the sting, knowing no punishment could ever be enough to heal the cut that always bleeds.
She’s a killer by default. Remorseless and rotten to her very core, she ruins all that she touches.
Her father used to tell her that struggle was easy and mercy was for the weak. Pain only made her stronger, he’d remind her, just to leave her broken in the aftermath. There are parts of her beyond repair. Burdens that nobody but herself should shoulder.
She repeats his words in her mind when she shows up unannounced at Karen’s house with nothing but her childhood scars and a change of clothes. It is not a reward, but a chance to apologise and say her last goodbyes. Cut them off and set them free.
Her smile wavers as the door opens. Flinch unbidden when her sister pulls her into her arms.
Karen’s face takes her back in time to when they were both younger. Smaller. Crammed inside their bedroom closet as trembling hands cupped her cheeks, brushing over bruising skin.
There was no denying what happened, then. Karen never asked. Never had to.
After all, they both lived through it.
But it’s different, now. They’re both older. Changed. Weary and worn from the hand they’ve been dealt and the lives they’ve lived, different as that may be.
Still, trembling hands cup her cheeks just as they used to. Fingers brushing over sunken flesh just as gently as she recalls, tracing the sharp edge of bone - the silent warning of something bigger and scarier than their father and his drunken rage, and twice as deadly. Karen still doesn’t ask.
Their understanding is not the same, but the bones of it is. Starving was cheap. They survived worse than skipped meals and stolen childhoods.
They bled the same and scarred differently. Forged into womanhood too early, manipulated for different functions.
This is a truth they do not share.
“Come in,” Karen encourages, voice as gentle as she remembers it. Eight years old and watching her sister leave for the first time, “You must be freezing.”
She shudders in the warmth of plush thrown over her shoulders. Offered tea and niceties she does not deserve, but cannot bring herself to decline.
The mug thrown in her hands smells of Zara and tastes of grief. She hugs it close to her chest and wonders just how long it’ll take to burn off the small comfort she almost let herself bask in.
“I’m sorry.” She mumbles, after a beat. “I-I shouldn’t have come here. I…I don’t know what I’m doing.”
The tea splashes over the rim of her mug. Burning her hands and sending her back to the island. Flare in her palm. Phosphorous dripping onto her skin.
She wonders if she can run like she did then. Run, like it’ll be the last thing she ever does. Run, like she’s never ran before. Run, and not look back.
She did that, once. Eighteen and naive, still so unaware of the horrors of the world.
She vowed to never make the same mistakes again.
“I should go,” She says - more to herself, than anything, “I-I…sorry. I’m so sorry.”
She chokes on a sob like she chokes on her bile. Falling to her knees on the floor and pressing her hand to her mouth, trying to contain the poison before it can escape.
Karen only stares, not recognising the person she’s become.
“I think you need help.” Owen tells her. Curled around her in bed, fingers running up and down the ridges of her spine. She shudders against him. “This is more than guilt and grief, or whatever else you wanna argue it is. And I think you know that.”
She turns to him the best she can. Wide eyes dulled by exhaustion she cannot seem to shake, and face pale in the moonlight. “You’re projecting.”
He frowns. Not unkind, but stern, all the same. “And you’re in denial.”
Her breath is harsh through her nose. Sharp against her ribs and trembling as she exhales.
He seems bigger than she remembers. Older. Wiser.
Or maybe she’s just smaller. Worn down by the lifetime of blame forced onto her shoulders and thrown back in time to that broken, little girl she never truly stopped being.
“Karen called,” He admits and she presses her forehead to his bare chest. Breathing in the safety of his hold and how young it makes her feel, “She hasn’t heard from you, in a while. She’s worried. Frankly, she has good reason to be.”
The scoff dies out in her throat at the guilt of how things went, the last time she was in Wisconsin.
“You’re gonna kill yourself if you keep going the way you are.” Owen states. He blinks back the wetness in his eyes and her brow furrows, fingers stretching out to brush against his stubble. “I don’t know what scares me more. That, or the thought that you want it to happen.”
She frowns.
She’s lived this battle for three decades. Spent a lifetime fighting for peace that will not come, broken down and hungry for so much more than the force of love she cannot comprehend.
“Do you want to die?” He asks so bluntly she can’t help but flinch. Wide-eyed and unable to deny such a simple truth.
“I don’t know.”
It’s the wrong answer. She can see that much on his face. Nobody who has a life worth living answers that question the way she did.
“Do you want to live?” He asks, instead. Lifting her jaw enough that their eyes meet, leaving her more vulnerable than ever before.
“I think,” She tries, licking dry, cracked lips, “I think I want to try.”
He nods so surely, and she thinks that maybe, just maybe, that could be enough.
She gets worse before she gets better.
Owen comes home to find her collapsed on the bathroom floor, lying in a pool of her own vomit after she didn't have the strength to make it to the toilet.
She floats in and out of consciousness as he calls for an ambulance, and wonders if this will be the thing that pushes him to leave and not come back.
They pin her down as she kicks and bites and screams. Force a rubber tube down her nose and throat, taping it in place and forcing something thick and greasy into her stomach.
Owen holds her hand as the feed runs and promises it'll all be okay with enough conviction, she almost believes it. Almost believes him.
They send in a shrink and conduct assessment after assessment. Asking her questions she neither knows the answers to, nor knows how to verbalise. Frowning at every shrug of her shoulders and mumbled 'I don't know' she offers them.
"You need to cooperate if you want to go home." They explain, and she spits in their face.
She's not ill. She's always been like this; chemically imbalanced and latching onto the only security she has ever known with blanched-knuckled grip and pitted nails. They shake their heads with pity, and move onto the next questions.
They ask about her childhood. Her parents. Her sister.
Owen answers when she cannot. Spilling her truth like milk - leaving it to sour in the open air. Her nose crinkles and her teeth sink into her lip, but she simply lets him.
They ask about her sexual history.
Her fists clench at the memories of round-faced innocence and the flushed cheeks of a child too young for such atrocities. The way she'd chase that feeling, afterwards; looking in the faces of strangers for the man her father should've been, and letting them do exactly the same to her as he once did.
They ask about the island and she loses herself in the flash of teeth, blood, screams that washes over her.
"Stop." Owen tells them, and they do. Things are different for man, she assumes. "Look at me. Claire, look at me."
She does. Lip trembling as she meets his gaze and sinks into his hold, like a child fighting sleep. She's tired. So fucking tired.
"They're just trying to help. You gotta listen to them, okay? You gotta do what they say."
Her father said something similar, once. But men are all the same. They only ever want one thing and-
"Hey, look at me. It's okay. You're gonna be okay."
She is, with time.
The weight trickles on like the bile that used to drip off her hands and into the toilet bowl. Sharp edges giving way to something softer, something gentler.
They remove the tube and let her eat unsupervised. Her cutlery scrapes against the plate in a way that jolts her, until she realises it is the sound of metal against porcelain, and not the screech of creatures left to eat and get eaten. And, when the plate drops to the floor, she does not flinch or cower. Does not grip the shards tight enough to bleed, or stumble over apologies and drop to her knees.
The day comes for her to go home. Three long months, and yet another lifetime of debt footed to the same company that let her take a fall that was not hers to take. She holds Owen's hand as they walk out to the van and wonders exactly what she did to deserve something like this. Someone like him.
He looks at her with a smile, when she finally dares ask it aloud. Pushing her bangs out of her eyes and looking at her like she hung the moon and the stars. "You showed up with an itinerary."
Her laugh is ugly and jagged, like the lacerations on her spine. He grins even wider. "And you showed up in board shorts."
She cups his jaw in her hands and presses their lips together. Revelling in the warmth of his breath against her mouth, and the taste of spearmint on his tongue. There are a thousand things she wishes she could say. A thousand things more that she never will.
"Thank you," She whispers against his skin, "For not leaving me."
Any other man wouldn't have. Would have seen she was too much work and left long before it ever got so bad.
"Thank you," He repeats, "For not leaving me."
The road to recovery is filled with bends and forks and just as many scars as she carries. But it's not one she has to walk alone.
Her new home is warm and filled with more laughter and light than she has ever known before. Oversized t-shirts that come down to her thigh and the hum of country songs and folk tune she has yet to learn the words to. Cocky smiles that make her blush and gentle hands running through her hair at night.
It makes her feel proud. Of herself. Of them both, and just how far they have come in the past year. Just how far they have come from a failed date and a peculiar loathing.
She would choose it all again to get to this moment, she thinks. Knows that she would.