[C/N: This chapter is gonna get into the character's backstories, and I think my changes might require a slightly spoilery trigger warning. There will be some talk of debt, faith, pedophilia and grooming, car accidents, and scarring. After this, things will be a lot nicer and less upsetting, I hope.]

Eleanor was not reading. Eleanor was crying on her bed. It was... a common issue for her.

She was swiftly reaching the conclusion that being here was a massive mistake – not just the apartment, but 'here' as a whole concept. Grad school was already feeling impossible and she was having difficulty making friends, and now even one of her own roommates clearly hated her. Maybe going straight from high school to college, then immediately working on a masters, was a bad plan. Clearly she wasn't mature enough for this stuff. After all, one rude comment and she was hiding in her room and crying. Just like always.

A sudden knock at the door shocked her out of her self-pity. She sat up from where she was stretched out and hastily wiped at her eyes. "C-Come in..."

She had kind of been expecting it to be Velvet, coming to apologize or explain or something, so she was a bit surprised when it turned out to be Maggie instead. "Hey." It was one of those one-word sentences that spoke volumes.

"Hey," she offered softly in return.

Although she was at least kind enough to knock, Maggie made no attempt to ask for permission to walk in. She simply entered and went to Eleanor's modest desk, taking her chair and instantly claiming it for her own. Her sitting posture was odd, sort of curling her legs up under and around herself, but she seemed infinitely comfortable. "You know, when me and Velvet and our other friends Roku and Eizen all hooked up, we kinda jokingly called ourselves the Lords of Calamity. We've all had pretty terrible luck in life, and banding together was like... just accepting the chaos and daring it to keep coming at us. When we got this apartment, I started affectionately referring to it as Casa Calamity."

Eleanor was so grateful for the fact that she was actually learning things and she began to brighten up, wiping at her eyes again without self-consciousness. "What kind of bad luck?"

She sighed, for a moment her face going serious and thoughtful. "Mm, not my place to speak for the others, and my story is so horribly boring I wouldn't want to burden you with dullness. But I'll say this much, we've all had some pretty bad experiences with religious folks. And I'm sure that's really saying something considering you're the one we picked to move in. You seem like a nice enough kid, well-meaning in a not-destructive kind of way." She looked around her, perhaps actually taking in Eleanor's decorations for the first time since she'd walked in. "So it's complicated. Like pretty much anything in life. We've been burned, so we brace for the worst. But at the same time, you're innocent until proven guilty here. Velvet doesn't hate you, she's just grumpy all the time. You get used to it."

That seemed to be the end of things, so she pushed herself back up to her feet and started moving for the door. It occurred to Eleanor that even if she was 'innocent', an olive branch wouldn't be a bad idea. "I don't want to go around comparing wounds or anything, but I have had some 'terrible luck' myself. So... I get it. Sometimes, there must be a wall."

One of Maggie's eyebrows went up, and her mouth curved into a slightly wicked smile. "Yes, a wall. I'm glad we all understand each other. Toodles~"

And then she was gone. Eleanor felt strangely comforted and rather confused, but at least she wasn't crying anymore.


She was certain that would be the end of things. And for a little while it was. It was a week before anything came of her curious Sunday afternoon. Eleanor had been home from her last class that Friday for a while, sitting in her room and not doing anything because, again, she had no social life. That was when she heard some rather energetic conversation coming from the living room. Initially, she planned to just ignore it, but then she heard Maggie's rather shrill voice loudly calling out for her in particular. "Eleanoooooor~! There are some lovely ladies in the lounge that long to... to... augh, dammit, alliteration is so hard when you're drunk... Get out here!"

This was definitely a weird new development. Driven more by curiosity than by the tone of her roommate's voice, she crept out of her room and moved into the living room area. Velvet was occupying one chair, drinking from a half-gone bottle of wine. Maggie was splayed out across the couch with her own bottle. "Um, you... need something?"

Maggie was shaking her head as she motioned to another chair with a bottle of wine set reverentially against it. "Mmm-mmm, I wanted to chat. Because... Because there's... no wait I had a thing... I may not..." Her face grew stony and she stared hard at nothing. "I may not have an army of Hebrews or a bunch of horns, but I know how to tear down the walls all the same. Hah! Still got it."

Oh. Jericho. Walls. She... broke them? That was her plan?

"Anyway, we were just talking about how fucked up we are and I was like... Eleanor should probably be here for this. So she knows what she's in for, ya know?" Maggie gave her a little playful wink as she took her seat and undid the screw cap.

Velvet's eyes began to narrow, although she was very decidedly still drinking her wine. "Wait. Did you trick me into opening up?"

The blonde's smile was wide as the ocean and sharp as a knife. "No. I bought you wine and got you talking about stuff. Everything else is totally unexpected and completely unplanned."

She was obviously unconvinced, but also seemingly uninterested in pressing the point any further. "So..."


So...

My parents died when I was pretty young. Car accident. It was awful, but at least I still had my big sister Celica and my little brother Laphicet. We looked after one another, we took care of one another. Even when we found out that Laphi had some kind of terrible sickness. We were a family. And when my sister met this sweet missionary named Arthur, our family started to grow. They got married. They were going to have a kid.

A family. Hah...

Everything was just going so great, and I thought... maybe it's time to tell them the truth. We were in the car, which really should have been my fucking clue, you know? If I had just waited until we got home, or if I had told them one at a time, they'd still be alive. But I was a dumb teen, so I just said it. "I'm gay."

And Arthur just... saw red I guess. And he got so into telling me that it was a sin and I shouldn't seem so proud about it. Even as Celica tried to be supportive and Laphi tried to mediate. My world was spinning figuratively, and then it was spinning literally as we got hit by a big truck. It struck us on the passenger side and sent is flying. The passenger side where Celica and Laphi were sitting. If I had taken the front seat, she would still be there for him, they'd still have their kid.

Of course, everything went black there for a while. I came to in a hospital room with my left arm completely bandaged. Arthur was sitting there with his arm in a sling. His nerves had been severed and the entire limb was useless. Mine, well...


Eleanor watched as Velvet took her long glove and slid it off, revealing a series of scars and burns all along the pale skin. "I stayed just long enough for the funeral, and then I got out of there." She took another big swig from her bottle and sighed sadly. "So. There's my damage. Mags?"


Ugh, she fucking loves making that reveal. Anyway.

So.

I never knew my parents. They gave me up. They didn't want me, so really, I say screw 'em, right? I mean, that's what I say. Doesn't make it suck less.

I went through the usual round of foster homes and they were all garbage. Sometimes they were those people who like to hoard kids so they can take advantage of state money. Others were heavily Christian families who didn't like the fact that I wanted to know more about my Jewish heritage or the fact that I kept telling them I was definitely a girl. But they still made me pray to Jesus and called me by my deadname.

But finally, finally, finally, I was saved from those terrible people by a man named Mel. He was a philosopher, a friendly old Jewish man who was more than happy to call me Maggie. Mel was great. He took care of me, he taught me about philosophy and how to think about things. He bought me whatever I wanted. He really was the father I'd never had.

Then uh... then one day... So uh... Well, he came home with a present for me. I opened it to find a really pretty dress that he'd got just for me. Only it uh... it was kinda more like a dress that a guy would buy for a girl, right? Pretty short with these flimsy little straps and...

But he was my dad, and he was there for me. And so I figured you know. Put it on and just humor him. Everything felt weird and bad and once I was wearing it he started to get more handsy – petting my hair and trying to kiss me and...

Well, I mean, I did what I could. I kneed him in the balls, packed a bag and got the fuck outta Dodge. I hitchiked my way to the big city and before I know it I'm slumming it with a bunch of squatters. And it felt more like home than anything else. Velvet and the guys became my real family.


Eleanor's chest felt tight. These sad lives that these two were trying to make better in their own ways. She felt bad for telling Maggie that she had her own tough story because now it seemed so small and easy by comparison.

"Alright, that's my piece. You know a bit more about us. So tell us, oh baby pastor, how about you? What do you suppose made Fate bring you here to the house of Chaos?"

Eleanor quickly drank from her bottle, trying to sort out her own story from all these other things she was hearing. These were real stories, the kind of thing that made her want to become a religious leader, to heal the world. Did she actually deserve to live with women like these who had seen the world at its darkest? Women who had been personally injured by the religion she loved so much?

"Eleanor?" Velvet's voice shocked her out of her pathetic interior monologue. "Don't let Mags scare you. Your life is your own and you don't have to tell us anything."

Perhaps, but they had been kind enough (if drunk enough) to tell her, and Eleanor figured the least she could do was try and meet them halfway. "My mother and I never knew who my real dad was, so it was just the two of us. A few years ago, she started feeling really tired all the time, having trouble breathing. She finally went to the doctor and found out it was a congenital heart condition that had never been caught before. It was... too late to do anything about it. She just... died slowly in this assisted facility and... and some people from my church helped look after me and they were putting all their money together to pay for the bills because technically she had a pre-existing condition even though we didn't know about it. And now I'm here going to school to be a pastor even though I don't know if I necessarily believe all of this stuff anymore and I can't drop out because what if I disappoint the people supporting me and they stop helping and then I'm saddled with so much debt that it crushes me and..."

Eleanor was crying again, practically hyperventilating. The bottle dropped from her hand, and she could only watch in wonder as Velvet moved with shocking speed to catch it before all the wine spilled out over the carpet. Maggie pulled a handkerchief seemingly from nowhere and passed it over to her. "Nora, welcome to the Lords of Calamity."

She sniffled pathetically and did her best to wipe away her tears and clear away her snot, fully aware that at some point she had to pass this back to her roommate. Would she care? And why the hell was that the first concern that came to her mind? "W-Wait, why? It's not really that bad. Definitely not as bad as either of you. I-I'm just a whiny burden."

Velvet passed the wine bottle back to her, almost like she was trading off some important relic or taking part in a ceremony. "Because it's not about a dick-measuring contest – no offense Mags."

"None taken, Vel."

"You've had a hard life, and somehow you ended up here, with us. Things happen, and the only way we can survive is by accepting that things are going to keep on happening and support one another. We take it a day at a time, a step at a time. Okay?"

Eleanor blew her nose before passing back the handkerchief. If Maggie was bothered, she didn't show it, merely tossing it into her room. "Take a nice deep breath, kiddo. You're one of us, like it or not."

Laughing, Eleanor finally caved to this very bizarre peer pressure. "Okay. Um, thanks, both of you. This means a lot."

"Ha, don't get used to it. Before you know it we'll be back to arguing with one another about dishes and vacuuming. Because sooner or later the little things will crop back up. But in the meantime, why don't I make us something to eat."

"Yaaayyy!" Maggie bounced excitedly with her hands thrown up in the air.

Eleanor giggled softly and followed them into the kitchen, grateful that something had brought her here. God or chaos or fate or whatever. She would figure it out, in time.