Renee was at the end of her rope.
She was ready to meet her mother and father now.
The world had nothing to offer her but pain.
She was ready to move on...
...When her brother suddenly appeared at her doorstep.
Bruised... battered... and in tears...
"...."
"She left me Ren..."
"She left me..."
Noah cried at her doorstep.
Left only in his undergarments with welts and bruises all over, the older of the Pendleton siblings continued to repeat the words over and over.
Seemingly driven to his breaking point by the woman he seemed to have fallen in love with...
It was months... Months and months of them being together, of him finding solitude in someone after everything was taken from him.
Absurd as it might sound, Noah had a genuine love for the abusive demon.
A deluded and one sided love that ultimately saw him take false comfort in the belief that she felt the same way about him.
Madame Wednesday was his anchor to deal with daily life.
The only shame is that he wasn't hers.
But that's what a parasite does.
They leech off of something else and drain it of all it's life before moving on to something new.
Something full to the brim with life and energy to give.
For Madame Wednesday this wasn't Noah anymore.
His innocence had been taken from him.
With his life, vigour and energy drained.
Noah was no longer the solution she sought to heal the empty feeling that tormented her.
He no longer was of any use to her.
So after months of using the older of the Pendleton siblings to whatever whim she had, she had grown bored of him.
And so she threw him away...
What followed was the continuous spiral of the other sibling down the stairs of sanity, striking a near poetic note with his sister who's own spiral coincided with his.
Could them having a cordial conversation at this time had eased the pains that now tortured them?
By the time the broken Noah had retreated to his sister...
He had just found out that he had been replaced.
A new piece of information that broke him multiple times over when the Madame toyed with her new favourite in plain view of the siblings.
Occasionally even asking him to watch.
To stand there and be reminded that the person he loved had chosen someone else over him.
That he was simply not enough for her so she moved on.
Many a time Noah tried to repair his relations with Madame Wednesday...
Dressing up in more luxury clothing, being more affirmative... stronger!
...And sometimes these advances would work, with his beloved Madame consequently treating him to a full night's worth of sweet nothings...
His attempts to reclaim his standing with the demon that headed the red light district were to no avail however...
Because for the demon that now sat at the summit of the entire red light district, his pleas were nothing if not desperate.
A pathetic display that showed an unsightly side of him that reminded her all too much of the path she crawled to get as far as she did.
She detested him for it.
And without knowing, all Noah's efforts were doing was pushing her further and further away from his grasp...
It was only a matter of time at this point before she eventually kicked the siblings out...
And after she had got her fill of whatever 'goodbye' she desired from the young lord of the Pendleton household, the time came for Renee and Noah to be cast out...
"..."
Now without a lover and a home, the devastation Noah felt from his current predicament drove him to attempt, on numerous occasions, to take his own life.
He had already lost his parents and livelihood.
So what else was there for him to live for?
The young lord of the Pendleton household thought to himself on a daily as he played with the thoughts.
Consistently trying to take his own life but failing because of his sister...
For unlike Noah who was devastated from the whole ordeal that seemed to only build year on year...
The effect of being kicked out and her brother's spiral into insanity had a different effect on the younger sibling.
Who, for the first time in nearly two years, finally felt like her life was gifted to her once more...
Returned to it's rightful owner with the right, to write her narrative and carve out a new future for herself.
This thought alone allowed Renee to feel empowered.
She wasn't going to let the opportunity to carve out a new future for slip through her fingers... Not after all they had been through!
"..."
...The coming months were brutal on the Pendleton siblings.
Continuously falling down the social ladder.
They were gradually made aware of what living in the 'city of dreams' actually entailed.
Especially as they begun to go face to face with enemies they knew all too well.
Hatred... and segregation that shone a new light on the passive aggressive residents of Fernworth.
Renee stayed strong despite all this however.
Supporting and watching over her brother by any means she deemed necessary even as they fell all the way down into the Vita Slums.
And the district commonly referred to as 'twenty one'...
Here, the pair settled on the outskirts of the district in an abandoned shack at the rail and sewers end.
A place even most residents of the Vita Slums avoided for fear of radiation poisoning from the below deteroxite ore.
...Unimpressive as the shack was, it was a new start for Renee.
A home she, and she alone, owned.
The fire to live not just for her own sake but her broken brother as well was reignited and starting to burn in Renee's core.
She could start anew here... And she knew exactly what she needed to do to get a leg up in the coming trials...
".."
Initially starting off by trading whatever luxury goods she had from the imperial domes for basic living needs...
Renee was able to manoeuvre herself over from your typical vendor to a reputable and registered broker in the front office auctions.
...Black market deals in which the higher society of Hatchett City would use an intermediary to get ahold of products not easily available to the society at large...
Renee had begun to slowly build up the Pendleton name once more.
And even though they were now bitter memories, the things she learned from growing up in Pendleton manor in Fernworth and eye for detail she honed in the imperial dome were to thank for her growth.
Of course their living conditions still weren't ideal... but with time that would change as well.
"..."
The changes in the Pendleton siblings day to day lives were becoming more and more apparent with each passing day.
So it came as no surprise to anyone in the twenty first district when her eye for detail begun to be noticed by the big wigs over in the upper city of Hatchett.
Who, once her name begun to make waves among the high class society, attempted to lock her to lifetime contracts that would monoplise her particular skillset
Renee, predictably, declined every single offer that came her way.
Choosing to continue her work for peas and on a free lance basis.
Whether she liked it or not, Renee Pendleton's eye for detail of high value products had being acknowledged by Hatchett's City's elite.
For better... Or worse.
"..."
A couple months in and Renee had been able to build them back up to what most would consider the middle class of society.
Capable of comfortably affording the basic living necessities both her and her brother needed as well as providing the bare minimum health options for her still stunted brother.
Despite all the trials and tribulations the world threw at her, a new year had dawned for Renee who was now succeeding once more at this 'life thing'.
With the only thing that was stopping her and her brother from returning to the imperial dome now being her herself.
The trauma she faced the year prior while living with Madame Wednesday still very fresh in her mind.
The hard work was finally paying off.
A few months more months... just a little bit more savings and her and her brother would finally be able to relocate out of the Demon-realm and back to the realm of humanity.
Getting here was tough, the journey rough...
But the time had come for all of it to reach its natural conclusion.
For her and her brother to return to some semblance of normalcy after two years of unending lows.
Well...
Atleast that's what she thought.
But fate truly is a cruel mistress Renee.
And in her hand was one more card left to play.
"..."
"..."
-To Be Continued-