"W-who are you… are you my sister?" The voice was cracked from sleep and her eyes were white and dazed from the morphine, but both held a sweet naivety that made my stomach sick.
I frowned and with barely shaking hands flipped to a new page, wrote and held it up for her to see, Adopted.
"Oh… are we best friends?" My blood boiled at her words.
How could she forget? How could anyone forget the pain and horror that this woman (this girl) had brought onto me, our family and the whole world. I kept my composure as best as I could and held up my note pad for her to see, You don't remember anything, do you?
After "No," her words were lost on me. I was angry and hurt and every inch of me writhed with the need to exact a painful revenge on her. On the White Violin, the mass killer with destructive powers beyond any of our imagination. On Vanya Hargreeves who abandoned me and our family because she pitied herself. On my sister. My only sister.
I didn't think of what I was doing, but soon I had her strapped in a chair facing a dozen television screens all broadcasting the catastrophic events that had unfolded as a result of the White Violin. Her eyes welled with tears and I forced my sense of guilt away. She had taken so much from me, and I wanted her to know exactly what it was she had done.
As I left her to this form of torture I ignored her pleading. I needed solace, somewhere quiet and secluded where I didn't have to face any more of my adopted siblings.
It seemed like hours before I reached the room that Vanya and I shared when we were much younger. Two beds the right size for children were pushed against opposite walls. There were toys, some musical instruments and a small collection of books (Father didn't like us wasting time like that, but let Vanya keep them anyway). When I stepped into the room I came face to face with a full-length mirror, various childish stickers fading or peeling from it.
In the light I could see my lithe frame surrounded by thick leather, my purple hair hanging just above my shoulders. The angry, red scar with black stitches stretched across my neck. I couldn't be bothered to hide it with a scarf. It didn't bother me as much as what it had caused. Loss of vocal cords.
I opened my mouth, trying to form words in the mirror even though I knew I couldn't. Vanya had made sure of that. With just a single note on her violin she had slit me, ear to ear. No more Rumor.
I sat on the edge of Vanya's old bed and lay down, surrounded by the smell of musk and a girl from long ago. With my eyes closed I could remember exactly how she looked, long black hair and sad green eyes. Almost every night we'd either push our beds together or one of us would join the other.
There wasn't any real reason for it. Neither of us had nightmares (not even about zombie Gustave Eiffel) and we didn't always get along. Still, maybe it was because she was so lonely and I just wanted to be a little more normal, we'd snuggle together in silence, sleeping until day broke.
I climbed out of the small, cramped crib and with a silence sigh began to walk again, trudging slowly. It didn't matter that she had been kept away from the rest of us, or that father considered her useless, she had always been my sister.
