The girl had gone for the day, trying to avoid home as long as she could though the call had come and gone to voicemail as she ignored her buzzing phone beside her at the park. It was the forth time the man had called that afternoon within the span of an hour; trying to get her to come home by pretending he loved her and later threatening her. Emilia knew that the longer she was gone the worse it would be but she'd stayed gone for the time she had simply because she didn't want to feel it when she got back to that house. She'd never seen the average house as a home, having never known her mother except for photos and things said by their father when he was drinking or crying over one of the photo albums from before she was born. The albums held pictures of the two when they were teenagers, collage students, just getting married and pregnant, all the way up until Grant was barely two and a half, just beginning to talk; there wasn't a single picture of Emilia in that house.

The drop of blood touched a long blade of grass between her legs, the strand bowing under it's weight as if it was trying to hold the entirety of the young woman's' emotional state on the edge of that small surface though the scarlet droplet fell from it onto the earth soon enough where the dirt waited to adsorb the liquid misery. A dull throb had woven through her arm as cold spread through her veins while she looked over at her cell phone buzzing in the grass beside her again. She was alone in the park, hidden in the shade of three trees with a bush and hedge hiding her from view while she went about her silent ritual, locking away anything she could or would feel tonight when she finally walked back to the rotten mess of a home. Sometimes she wondered why she even bothered, she could just as easily end it as she slit her wrists; she could leave and never come back like other kids do when nothing is done about their horrible family life. She always remembered why though; she couldn't leave her brother alone with him, not when his misery was all her fault.

She dropped the blade in the grass, the blood beginning to dry on it's freshly sharpened edge as she reached over to pick up her cell phone. Taking a deep breath she had taken the call and listened as her father yelled at her, claiming to be worried sick about her as if there was actually someone nearby would actually hear him - like there was anyone actually near her. "Yes father." She responded, quietly and passively, already wrapping a strip of black fabric around her forearm and shook her sweater sleeve down to cover it while she swung her back over her shoulders. She slipped the knife into her pocket before heading home, having been gone for other a few hours; Grant wouldn't be home yet.

Emilia tried to be quiet as she opened the door, cautious of where the man was and what state of intoxication he was in when she walked in the door, instantly knowing that her brother wasn't home yet because he would have been waiting for her out front like he always was when she managed the make it out of the house for the day, seeing as the man rarely allowed her to leave early for school or stay out longer than just after it finished. Amazing really that no one had caught onto this, though it had been beaten into her at a young age that she was never to tell anyone what happened to her here. No outsider could know. He was her father after all, he was just hurting because mom died.

"WHERE HAVE YOU BEEN???!!!?!"

The deafening yell made the girl flinch involuntarily and she knew what was going to happen before she even got to put down her bag. He came around the corner, bottle in hand and fury in his eyes at being ignored and disobeyed today. "You were out too late. It's dangerous. One o' th'm boys coulda touched y'u." It was barely even five o'clock. He was so much bigger than her, some would wonder how much of a difference there had been between him and her mother; nobody ever brought up their mother. She had turned her gaze down, looking at the floor as she apologized and tried to slipped passed him, one giant hand catching her shoulder and holding her in place long enough for him to take another large drink out of the half empty bottle and set it down on the table beside her. He leaned down close, so that his breath washed over her face and Emilia would never admit it now, but the look he gave her hurt more than the beating that followed.

---

Emilia looked up at the mirror across the bedroom from herself, half dressed and covered in scars and bruises; he'd broken one of her ribs again and she could feet the splinter in her forearm but the blood that ran down her thighs and forearms was stark against her pale skin. She was thin, with little meat on her body at all, and almost all of the exposed flesh had some sort of scar, not all self inflicted though those that were were markings of the pain in her soul make flesh. She looked at herself, pink hair a mess from where he'd grabbed it and twisted it around her fingers, pulling to force her to look at him while she chewed the inside of her lip so hard that she tasted blood on her tongue. It was horrible to look at herself though she could never bring herself to break the mirror, it had been her mothers before hers, one of the few things she was allowed to touch or see of the woman who had birthed her.

She never heard the door open downstairs while she sat in the darkness of her room, curled up with her forehead against her knees. Waiting for her brother to come home and wake her up, to tell her she was just dreaming and that mom wanted her downstairs for a family picnic. She was afraid and a lone, with no one to turn to whenever she left the house, though scared to stay here at all.

He never touched her face. '

Emilia never cried.

The young woman lean exactly as she had a half hour ago, staring at the mirror across the room, though at the sound of steps coming up the stares the young woman moved her gaze to the door just as a knock came on the hardwood. The door was cracked at the bottom for how hard she had hit it once after a collision with their father, an old blood stain on the bottom of the wood that she did her best to ignore but it was hard since every time she came home it happened again. Standing, Emilia tugged the sleeves of her sweater down and zipped up the front of the garment she was wearing before walking over to the door and opening it quietly.

"Hey Grant."

Emilia smiled softly at him, a sweetness that hid behind her quiet shyness normally; a smile that hid the pain from their home life and the hate she felt for the man who sired her and the house her mother picked. A smile at hid the disgust she felt with her own existence and sometimes she thought that her brother could see it though today she saw a hint of hope in his eyes when she opened the door and looked up at him. She had heard people compare him and their father, talking about how similar they looked though Emilia had never really seen it since he was gentler and kind where the man was rough and abusive; no one but her ever saw that though, not with how sweetly she smiled and how good of a father he could be in public. "How was your day?" She asked him, opening the door more and stepping away so that he could come into the room that she had been assigned when she was little. It was a plain shade of purple with few things on the wall. Her bed rested against the wall away from the door, just beside her window; a small four drawer dresser sat on against the wall opposite the bed with the mirror beside it. There was a book shelf beside the dresser, holding a few binders and what books she had managed to collect and keep form her mothers collection; the shelf itself a gift from her brother a few years ago when he found the cardboard box beneath her bed when she'd gotten really sick.

Leaving the door open she him she stepped away, holding both her her hands behind her back, with the sweater she wore covering most of her skin from his gaze though the finger marked bruises around her neck weren't something she could easily hide from him. "You look like something good happened." She looked up at him with soft grey eyes; eyes that look very much like those of the woman in the pictures though her hair was died pink in an effort to look different and minimize the damage from his drunk rages. It hadn't worked well though she enjoyed the colour more than the soft honey it had been before; it was easy if she just looked away and didn't cry. She never did.