*Violet walks back to her room, clad in long-sleeved lavender pajamas. Bleary-eyed and hazy, she drops onto her plumb sheets, still trying to process what just happened. She didn't understand... They'd done this before... It'd been BAD before... So why was it that it was really starting to eat away at her security? Maybe because her mom had just forced her to unpack the rest of her things, against Violet's better judgment, and she was letting herself slip into that false cocoon they called "settling down." Or maybe it was because Dash had to see it again... Again. And she had to walk down the hallway and see his face after it all died down... again. Or maybe it was because the word "divorce" may not have only been floating around in her head anymore... Around when her father came home that night, when earlier he'd left in the middle of a dinner gone war-zone, he manged to lie, talk down to his wife, and break a few laws all within about an hour. Her mother topped off the evening with an extra coarse of shouting followed by teaming up with her husband to sugar-coat everything that was happening. How did it ever get this bad? It hadn't always been like this. Violet had no idea how it suddenly got so bad...

No. No... it had always been this way. At least, for most of what she can remember. She had a few memories from when she was very little where there were no lawyers, no moving trucks. None of that... But for the most part, there was always something growing just beneath the surface, so slowly that no one could ever notice it. Not util it was out of control. That's how it got so bad. Se remembered the times she tried to help when she was younger, her feeble attempts at getting them to stop fighting and moving. But by now, she'd resigned herself to sitting in her room and remaining silent til whatever storm was currently blowing passed over, learning that her efforts didn't help. If anything, they made things worse. It had to have been that... Things stayed pretty quiet til she brought something up. So, now she just kept her mouth shut.

It was no use anyway. She knew three years was too long. They'd moved eight times in her life; it was routine. To stay somewhere this long was abnormal. She'd actually let her mom talk her into painting her room and hanging pictures on the walls. Big mistake. She still wasn't totally settled, thankfully, but it was enough. Enough for her to have to slam her head into her desk over and over again til she remembered not to put down roots. Til she heeded her own advice to not get comfortable. She might as well have started packing now. Not like she kept much just to move it around and not see it half the time for the boxes it was kept in anyway.

She reluctantly crawled under the covers, as if she were trying to convince herself that she'd actually be able to go back to sleep. Between her glazed-over eyes and still half-empty, extremely nervous stomach, she was looking at one especially miserable day at school tomorrow... scratch that, today. It's 2:14 by now...

*scoff* Sleep well, Violet...*