"I swallow the sound and it swallows me whole, until there's nothing left inside my soul- I'm empty as that beating drum, but the sound has just begun."

He sees her, resting her tiny finger bones on either sides of her head, right by her ears, and it gnaws at him, just a little to see her stuff her fingers in her ears, curled up into herself like her womb was dying, to drown out the yelling, the voices, and this time the music doesn't really help because they're shouting and they're right next door and it hurts him to see her so hurt, so upset, and watching the breaking apart of a family like the snapping of a bone, blood and marrow and shattered calcium and carbon all messed together on a once-spotless floor, staining carpet and clothes and white underwear and her pale skin because she's a part of the family as well and this will break her bones too.

She incorporates a skeleton into her being, bones translucent and poking out of her skin with thorny, ethereal-chrome blue shooting through her arms legs hands shoulders like needle marks, like she was shooting up a cigarette and smoking it along with all the pain and fear and uncertainty that was weighing and breaking her fragile little shoulders.

He looks down on her while she sleeps and thinks about how easy it would to break her, carillon bells in his head and her bird-like bones poking out of her tank top, so easy to snap between his hands, her bird-skull shoulders, craving the snap and her sharp edges. She wouldn't look all that different, broken and shattered into pieces. She was made of them, broken shards of mirrors, sharp lines and angles all glued together, with two little lumps placed on for breasts and a face carved out of a white, soft block of stone. But he told her dad that if you love someone you should never hurt them and he'd be damned (pun intended, absolutely) if he reneged on that statement, but it's only her he wouldn't hurt and it's only her that he feels accountable to. Her dad can fuck it. They'll fuck if they want.

When he gets angry or suicidal or horny then a choir sounds off in his head, a chorus of bells, carillon and tinkling and time slows down, even more so than normal- the fever feeling clears out like tired rain clouds that are empty of tears, and his head clears up like moist fog dissipating for once. Not that it means much- one fog rolls out and another rolls in, but this one is soft and shimmery-dusky and it's a pale soft blushing pink, like her cheeks when she's been breathing hard, and it's a veil over his vision while his ship sinks and the ocean swallows it whole along with their screaming. After the explosions have stopped littering the night sky with orange sparklers with stars blooming out and the proud woman and her mast have begun to rot and break under the ocean's surface then the choir, soft and gentle, ringing out carols, finally fades out, and he's left alone in foggy darkness with a breathing, threatening house trapping him inside his feverish reality.

She reminds him of a fairy creature, all fey-like and slender with her big great hazel eyes. She looks like a child, someone he can love and protect and corrupt and she's small framed and timid and rabbit-deer shy enough for him to either hunt her and kill her or trap her and tame her. But all prey has weapons, even if they don't work, and she can run with her long doe legs, jumping bushes, biting at him, more fairy-deer than human-girl, but she's not fully alive- she loves him after all. He's dead and has patience- the afterlife doesn't offer him much in terms of love, but she's here in this dick of a house with a gimp-wearing ghost so he can't touch her, no matter how badly he wants to and no matter how much he dreams about them and no matter how desperate she is for love that won't leave her. He's dead already. He has time, and he has patience.

When he walked in on her, bent inward and barely breathing, the air was still with a sense of finality, rest, and something else he didn't really recognize but it didn't really matter because he saw that she was dying ohgodohgodohgod and the only thing he could do was scream and sob don't you die on me and make her vomit and keep her awake, cold water raining down on them and mixing in with their salty tears and her vomit. He couldn't lose her. He never could have lost her. The bells started ringing and he could hear chiming in his head- the chiming and her sobs were strangely beautiful music. Her tears gave it a mournful tune, and the bells knew what happened and played an almost-dirge for the almost-dead that could have ever died so young. But he knew that her sobs weren't all lovely music- underneath it all was the agony of a good plan failing, anything that could be beyond disappointing, everything beautiful ruined and destroyed, staying in a world that had no place for her. But she's awake now and the tears are stopping and the bells are fading and he can add a new word to the list written on the wall of the bell tower:

desperate.

Sometime later, he waltzes into her bedroom, and she's glancing at a book on birds, one he recognizes. She stares intently at the checkout card, and some shadow of regret and disillusionment passes over her face- the air around her becomes grey and sad and her eyes become a shade lighter, like soul leaving body. He supposed it was a mark that they were meant for each other, a superstition, that he could walk to her and gather her emotions from the air around her, that something about that area was different, that he could read her aura, that the electricity in the air conducted her feelings to him, that he could tell what she was going to do, simply from the feeling of the air. He knows she knows that he's there, but it isn't until he says something that she looks up at his face in surprise, but he knows she knows. He asks her if she'll spill her secrets out of her black bag and send the bones rolling over the table for her parents to gnaw and choke on, and she says that she sleeps and that she's sad and he can tell because he feels the exact same way. He sees her eyes tearing and her soul ripping out, surrendering to dark-grey purple rainclouds and stormy winds in the grey meadow of her mind, and he knows once she walks into the tall black trees that border there she'll be gone forever, so he does all he can to keep her where the clouds aren't so thick, the wind is a gentle breeze, and the thick, dark forest is a grove with holly and oak underneath a sky strewn with ribbons of grey. He'd prefer that they were in the desert- solitary and alone and surrounded by red clay earth, with pure blue skies and bleeding jewel sunsets, where lonely cowboys and smoke thrive, where there was nothing for them except each other. He confesses he loves her, that his message on the chalkboard was true, and he can feel her emotions rolling and unsettling like waves, and he knows he'd do anything for her, to calm her down- leave her alone.

Her response is to invite him on the bed and they fall asleep holding hands, her body curled around his, sleeping soundly without bells, for once.

Time passes, day to day, and he thinks that they should talk, actually talk and not just him spilling his guts because even though he knows she appreciates it and loves him just as much as he does her it's still reassuring to hear her say that she feels or doesn't feel the same. He doesn't know what's going on, caught up in the thrill of first love and terror at the fact that she may vanish and leave him so easily, that he'd be without her and the bells would be ringing nonstop is a sinking, swelling feeling, one that causes him to almost vomit in fear, because where would they go, and what would happen to them then? So he goes to look for her and finds her dragging a razor across her skin, and it's too soon for him to be dealing with harm and sadness so he mini-freaks and she promises that she'll never do it again. She finds the turnaround in him unusual and too quick to swallow down. Ever since her chalkboard and the shower, the dynamics have changed, and she's not so sure how to play with him anymore. She isn't sure if she ever knew how in the first place, because he's changed from someone who lit her cigarette and choked her in the basement to someone who cries while confessing their sins and what the hell happened to comparing their cuts? She doesn't know what she thinks- that it's nice to have someone who loves her so much, or what happened to the Helter-Skelter boy.

Things change.

And later things work out in the end, and he's curled up in her bed without a shirt on, grinning at her with his head propped up, and she's nervous but not so nervous that she can't reach out and graze his chin, and he's warm and soft and living, and for the moment there isn't anything to be scared of, because he said he'll always be there, and he's the only one she trusts when the bones of the family are breaking apart in so many ways, and she just ducks her head against his and hopes that there isn't anything after this, no future, because she'd rather stay like this forever than see all the opportunities that the future holds within itself, because good things come to an end and they'd like to prolong some little happiness without paying for it later.

(Leave? Not now, and not yet.)

A Few Things: this was written over the course of a few late nights, and I realize this is basically a huge run-on sentence but I like it. Because the dynamics have changed between Tate and Violet, and they don't really know how to navigate new waters, if they knew at all. I also hope you caught the "Lenore" poem reference I placed in the story. Opening quote is from "Drumming Song" by Florence + the Machine- the bells were originally drums and this was only Tate.