The blonde girl shook uncontrollably as she stirred from short and painful sleep, the moonless sky outside still pitch black. Her eyes, fatigued as they were snapped open and she almost bit out her tongue in panic as she slowly dared a look at the room around her.
Loud satisfied yawns rang from down the hallway, the yawns of her still sleeping father after another long and exhausting day in the woods. A kindly man, her father was, working his back off hand and foot each day so that he might put food on the table for his beloved daughter, the only family he had left since his dear wife who he cherished with all his heart left him.
Her departure had shattered him so that even now, happy and grateful as he seemed each day to have her by his side, would never smile or laugh in the carefree manner he once did. He had given up being a man long ago, and what poor Viola saw now was an empty shell of what remained.
That only increased her respect and admiration for the humble, hard working hunter who despite his gentle, altruistic nature was not afraid to get his dirty when it was the right thing to do.
"What a kind man." Thought Viola to herself despite the terrible shock she was still in. And hearing the tiredness in his voice as he continued to snooze contentedly down the hallway, she resisted the urge to rush out of her bedroom and beg for him to comfort her, as happy as that would have made her. Her father needed his rest, and she was not about to trouble him needlessly. Not that he could have helped her much anyhow. And not that he hadn't tried.
Viola sighed angrily, as she buried her face in her palms. She really deserved no better, she told herself.
"So get over it, come on. The past is in the past. Your friend is dead now, and no amount of begging or pleading can bring the poor girl back." she muttered desperately, as she battled to keep a fresh flow of tears leaking from her already red and painful eyes.
"Focusing on what's happened will only make things worse. You've made new friends since then, and your old friend would want you to be happy wherever you were. You have a lovely father who cherishes you dearly and sticks by you no matter what too."
Another long painful sigh, but somehow, no tears came despite her relaxing herself to let them flow freely out if they came.
"You're lucky to still be alive. You should have died back there in that dangerous house where everyone and everything wanted you dead. It was sheer luck you made it. Shouldn't you be happy that you've made it out of there in one piece."
But even as she said those words, she knew them to be as hollow as her heart had been since the day she lost her very best friend.
That poor girl really did not deserve such a horrific death in such a painful manner.
But alas, sometimes life was taken away from a person even when they did not deserve it. And not all friends or families got to spend the time they would have liked with each other as close as they were. She had learned this the hard way long ago.
"Three years it's been and still you continue to cry over spilled milk. Three long years have passed and you still can't move on even though you know full well it was your fault your friend ended up how she did. You really are pathetic, you know that." she muttered disappointed.
Viola stared out of the window at the beautiful forest outside.
Even in the pitch blackness with no moonlight, she still made out the unmistakable shape of where her and her long dead friend would play together on the days when her friend could spare even the smallest amount of time for her.
That house, eerie and sinister as it appeared to most others, was for her a place of memories and joy when she thought of the happy and fun times she had spent there with her one and only friend, who wanted to get to know her and saw the good in her even after everyone else had left her for dead and chosen to outright shun her existence.
A house where her heart still lay even now.
Three years to most people must have seemed short and superficial with how quickly they must have passed, but for poor Viola, they seemed to crawl by like centuries. She felt as if she had lived not just a whole life by now, but for a long time on borrowed time as well.
She was but sixteen this year, but the pain in her chest and her aching and weakened joints made her feel at least eighty five, if not older still.
Survivor's guilt, it seemed, really did exist after all. And it really did hurt so much worse than any malady or plague that could be treated or at least numbed with medicines, ointments and tonics.
Wounds could be stitched up, and broken bones could be held together with splints and tape while they healed while a crutch and prosthetic limbs could help a paralyzed person to walk.
But despite the many advances in medicines and science that Viola had seen in the rapidly industrializing world that she and her father were lucky to live in, she knew full well none of them could even begin to try and soothe the never ending pains that seemed only to grow daily worse and worse.
Before they might have, but certainly not now.
So much had happened in three short years and she had grown so much as a young lady, but Viola's pining for that girl she once called "friend" had never waned or faltered.
She had changed so much and looked so different, but ultimately she felt no better about herself. Her nightmares had grown more monstrous still with every attempt to sleep, so that even sleeping pills which she had began taking some one year ago, did little to help the insomnia she had slowly developed.
Her love for her father was the one thing that had never changed along with her guilt, and it was the one thing that gave her hope for the dark days ahead, which would no doubt only darken still. And even that was only a poor excuse for why she still saw reason to live.
She called him "Father", even though still it was clear that she had once referred to someone else by the same title. "Stepfather" would have been more appropriate but of course, but the time for that had passed long ago, and she would simply sound rude and irrational calling him that now.
But alas, if she did take her own life (a thought that had indeed crossed her mind time and time again) he would be left depressed and sad.
And if the one promise she would never break, regardless of the many she hadn't kept before, was the one she had made to her friend on her deathbed even as she turned away from her dying friend for the last time. This was one vow she'd keep, she'd even swore to herself.
She'd promised her friend to love her father. And that meant keeping him happy and safe at all costs. And even though it pained her to keep this facade she had kept for so long now despite it seeming no realer to her now than when she began it those 3 years ago, she knew that for once it was better to lie than tell the truth as wrong as that sounded.
Even now she thought of that rope in the attic she had prepared in secret some time ago. The attic was a place her and her father left largely unused so he had not yet seen the stool she had also left in that room, which even now continued to gather dust.
She managed with shaking legs and half closed eyes to stand and make her way to the doorway.
She managed with shallow and rattling breath to take several steps forward so that she was halfway down the hall, and the stairs to the attic were but a few steps within sight.
She was about to take one step more forward when she managed with a jerk, to slap herself in the face.
"No. Stop being such a coward. That's the easy way out you promised everyone including yourself you wouldn't take." she yelled, accidentally raising her voice. Not caring if anyone heard her now or not.
"And wasn't the entire reason you let her down so you could keep on living long after you weren't supposed to."
She blinked, and shook once more as she dragged herself back to her bedroom, slapping herself once more as she did so.
"I let you down." she whispered, as she stared at a photo of herself her father had taken to celebrate her thirteenth birthday. "I'm sorry. Really I am. I'm really sorry"
And as she trudged wearily back into bed, and almost fell with exhaustion onto the sheets, she finally understood what could be worse than 3 years ago when she didn't have the strong and healthy body she had today, and when her throat struggled to form even short syllables without it feeling like an arsonist had lit a roaring fire in it.
When every movement caused her to spasm and often cry out in agony, with how seized up her muscles were.
When she spent not just the night, but the entire day from the small hours of dawn, on a bed unable to leave it.
She had left behind her old pains when she made her plans, only to miss them.
Her new pain which came as a result of the regret which at first she felt she could ignore, made death seem like a welcoming sensation.
She imagined herself talking happily to her friend as she lay on what used to be her bed, and promised that this was how she would remember the relationship they once shared and still did now even beyond the grave.
She looked at another picture on her nightstand where she and her stepfather who she called her father sat contentedly side by side at the fireplace after a hard day of gathering firewood in the forest. She promised that this was how she would remember her family, or at least the family she was part of now, and rubbed the image of the man and woman who had ruthlessly disregarded her before out of her thoughts, like an eraser and a pencil drawing.
It helped that so long had passed she barely remembered what they even looked like or were called.
"It's a lie" she whispered to herself, as she set down to try and glean what little sleep this fatigue she had built up would gift to her before morning and another hard day of helping her father work would begin. "It's all a lie.".