Water trailed down every curve and contour of her face: her jaw, her chin, her brow, her nose. The droplets fell silently into the basin of the sink. She stared into that porcelain void, for how long she did not know, but the commode had long stopped running. Eyes clenched shut, kept closed, and she caught herself between intermittent sighs. She tried to slow, if not still the erratic surplus of firing synapses she was sure would be thoughts if they would just coagulate. Something began its descent from her nose, something warm, to her upper lip and off its widow's peak and into the sink. She parted her mouth, tasting the offender. Water? No, metal. Her eyes peeled open and stared blankly at the red now dotting the sink. Suddenly angry and the sink wrenched on, she brought handfuls of water to her face again and again.

"Stiff upper lip, Weiss!"

The anguishing yell that birthed from her throat brought her more anger. She brought another handful of water to her face and almost attempted to breathe it in before it fell back into the sink. She looked back down, the drain washing away streams of rushing pink. She turned the sink off and straightened her back to look in the mirror. He nose was bleeding slowly now, but still invaded her mouth with that awful rusted taste. Her fair bangs stuck to her forehead, lightly slicked with water. On a whim, she smeared them aside to the right and revealed a raised pink scar over a slightly clouded eye.

'I Hate you.'

"Hate me too, brother."

The mirror was broken before she'd even known that she was going to break it. Her condo would be mirrorless before the day broke. She turned and left the bathroom, no need to turn off the light at present. She never turned it on and instead left the room bereft of light save for what trailed in from the kitchen as she occupied it. She wiped her nose. Blood still, unsurprisingly. She hadn't eaten in three days; she hadn't slept in three days. Such disarray. When the hallway broke to the living room, her foot foolishly towered over and descended onto a large shard of glass. The pain rendered her unable to stand and to the floor she fell.

"Fuck!"

That was all she could scream as she hit the ground, the palms of her hands pierced by smaller pieces of the shattered mirror that used to adorn her wall when she attempted to catch herself. Foolish. She scooted herself from the field of glass on the hardwood floor, her phone buzzing desperately in the thick of it all during her mostly silent warfare. She stared at the useless device, its screen now broken from when it collided with the mirror. She knew who the incessant calls were coming from.

'You say and do mean, hateful things to the people who care about you Weiss! There will be a point when we stop calling after you!'

"And yet you're still calling me despite myself." Weiss looked around the room, then down at herself, and then back around the room as if she were seeing it for the first time. "What a fucking horror show.. ." And it was. Broken glass from the mirror and a drinking glass was strewn everywhere and the condo stunk of cigarettes, marijuana, and whiskey. Two of those were normal, well not for inside and blanketing the house, but she'd never smoked a cigarette before today in her life. There were also several droplets of blood from her nose in the hall that she nearly looked over as she took in the sight, and large splotches of blood near and around the mouth of the hall from her foot. And suddenly, realizing that her phone had been silent for too long, she knew that if Winter couldn't and had stopped trying to get in contact with her, that she was well on her way to her. Instead of making to clean up the glass, clean up the blood, and air out the house, she made for the first aid kit in the kitchen leaving bloody footprints in her wake. She sat at a barstool beside the island and, with a short pained scream, pulled the large glass shard from her foot. She wrapped it clumsily, arguably uncaringly, and shoved both feet into shoes before washing the now dry blood from her face, nosebleed recently staunched. She forgot about her hands.

Grabbing her satchel and her keys, she finished the remaining hard liquor in her glass before leaving the unsettling scene behind her as she went through the front door. The night was dark, the stars and the moon obscured by clouds threatening to dump a torrential wrath on everything below them. She didn't know where she was going, but her feet took her there anyway. She didn't drive, hadn't for three years or so since she drove her car into a guard rail in high school, but that didn't much matter now. She was slowly going blind in her left eye and knew that even if she ever wanted to drive again, her now failing sight in one eye would present itself as a roadblock to that.

Where was she going? Her subconscious kept count of the fenceposts on her route. Thirty-four, thirty-five.. she was headed to the convenience store. Where would she go after that? Home? No, it looked like a crime scene. She could make it one. No, Winter still lived there. Where was she going? Fifteen, sixteen fenceposts on a the final block before the convenience store. The sign beamed in the not so far off distance. Where should she go?

'Where could I go?'

Her mind raged and her right foot squelched now with every other step she took. Twenty-one, Twenty-two..

"Ah." She was here. And after, she would go to the bridge.

She put the weight of her body into the door of the convenience store and followed it open.

"Welcome in!" She was greeted by a cheery voice that lofted from somewhere she couldn't place. The lights were too bright and her head was too full. Heavily, she walked to the counter and leaned onto to it putting her head on her arms. Heavy, just heavy.

"Hey! Sorry, what can I help you with?" She was startled by the sudden appearance of the attendant from below the counter and jumped because of it, looking up to meet the eyes of whoever was standing above her. She saw a girl about her height, maybe about her age, with short black hair looking at her questionably. "See.. you kind of smell like a brewery so I can't sell you alcohol."

"That's fine," she snapped at the attendant. "Give me a pack of cigarettes and a book of matches."

"We don't carry matches."

"Fine. Then a lighter." She saw the attendant eyeing her suspiciously through her bangs. She wondered why before a barrage of thoughts and memories reminded her that she probably looked absolutely ghastly. She looked down at her blood speckled hands and clenched them in abject affirmation.

"Can I see your I.D. please?" The attendant's tone was polite, yet demanding.

"Fine," she bit for a third time. She hated that word. Fishing it from her bag, she threw it on the counter.

"Play nice." A light warning.

"Listen," she pulled her eyes to the attendant's nametag, "Ruby. May I please purchase my cigarettes and lighter and leave?" She saw the attendant scan her I.D., glance curiously back to her, and then look back at her I.D.

"I suppose. You're twenty. Old enough to smoke, but not old enough to have been drinking. Can I call somebody for you?"

"Butt right out, please." Her anger was mounting again. Her head was over-capacity and she yearned for nothing but to be done with being outside.

"Fine—" The attendant started with a shrug before she was cut right off.

"I hate that word. Don't use it with me," she snapped, again leaning onto the counter. She clenched her eyes closed and began silently mouthing something to herself.

"Look. Ma'am." Weiss snapped her head up, a dangerous scowl on her face as she locked eyes with the attendant who just leveled half a smile, half a smirk at her, eyes full of conviction.

"Don't go so far. Do I look like a ma'am to you?" she spat.

"No, but you look like if I had anyone else in my line, I'd have denied you service for your garbage attitude." Weiss saw that the attendant's eyes were grey, no, cobalt? A mixture of the grey-blue found in gunmetal. She was at a loss for a color name. And they were sharp. "But I'm being lenient. And you seem like you need kindness more than anything right now. Has it been a night?"

"Oh its been a night. An unfortunate and consecutive string of them rather, and followed by mornings too." She laughed sardonically and straightened, pushing her bangs back as she paced in small, lost circles in front of the counter. She was being difficult, a brat. She knew it and she couldn't control it. She felt such disarray. She couldn't explain the anger that pervaded most of her day today, many days, and she couldn't explain the anguish that muddied the moments she wasn't stricken with fury. A heavy woe boiled in her abruptly. Her mismatched vision blurred with tears. What the fuck was she doing? What the fuck had she done?

'Weiss, I haven't heard from you in almost a week and Whitley said he hasn't seen you in nearly two. Call me and tell me that you are alright, please.'

'I haven't slept, haven't been sleeping. I just, I can't wake up anymore. I don't want to.'

"What kind of cigarettes would you like?"

She stopped walking her small, slightly ataxic circles and brought a hand to her bangs to ruffle them over her eye, slowly realizing that she had been addressed. She stood this way for a few seconds before she reached her hand into her satchel and pulled out an empty, crumpled, and lightly bloodied pack of cigarettes and stared at it for moments more. "Camel No. 9, please.. ."

She saw the attendant Ruby fetch her request out of her periphery and return to the counter, thinking she should do the same. Wordlessly she paid for her items and began to walk out, but she stopped just before exiting as she pressed all of her weight against the door. "Thank you.." was what she breathed before she left. She walked a short ways from the door and sat right out front of the convenience store. She struggled as she tried to open her own first ever pack of cigarettes, her hands terribly unsteady.

"Hey!" Her head snapped to the call from the bursting door. The attendant. "I'll smoke with you. Sign says I'll be back in fifteen." She turned back to her task after that, making nothing of it. "Need some help?"

"No! Why are my hands goddamned shaking?!" She tore at the pack in anger, finally releasing what she was sure would become a new habit. She freed a singular cigarette and placed it between her lips.

"Here." The attendant swooped down with an open flame at the ready, sitting beside her to steady it.

"Thank you.." she inhaled sweet, toxic suffocation and butane. Hold, and release. Her head was light already. "And I'm sorry. I'm usually better than this.. ." She cut off her speech as her eyes welled with tears before they could bleed into her voice.

"Are you living on the street?"

Weiss shook her head before barely saying "I'm a student."

"That makes more sense. You seem too pretty to be a street kid. Are you in trouble?"

"No, I'm not." She wasn't sure she even believed those words, but no, no one was coming after her if that is what the attendant implied.

"Your foot is bleeding.. and your hands." She could hear the uncertainty in her voice mingled with concern. "If you're a student, then I'm sure there's someone I could call for you if you need me to?"

"I don't! I just need to, to go somewhere." She brought her head down on top of one of her wrists briefly before a burning sensation started on her forearm. "Fuck!"

"Be careful!" She felt the attendant gently pull her cigarette arm away from her other. Where should she go? "Where are you going?"

"I," her stomach was sinking, bottoming out really. "I need to," her eyes welled with tears. "I need to call my sister," they gushed freely from her eyes and yet, she didn't sob.

"Okay. Here's my phone. Tell me the number and I can put it for you." Right. Her hands probably weren't still enough for such a suddenly dexterous task.

"It's," she imparted Winter's number to the attendant and received the phone as her sister's line rang on the speaker.

"Hello? Who is this?" Winter's voice sounded panicked.

"Winter, I'm—"

"Weiss? Where are you? I was about to call the police.. The house, are you alright?"

"The house.. I, did that. I'm sorry.. ." She felt such shame in the sudden clarity hearing her sister's voice brought her and, relief? Safety perhaps. "I'm fine. I'm.. fine," she sighed.

"You are not fine." Her sister roared that. "There is broken glass and cigarettes, and blood everywhere. You don't send someone a text message like that, and then don't pick up!" Winter was furious, almost hysterical, and scared. "You stopped communicating with Whitley, with me. Weiss, where are you?!"

"I'm at the convenience store down the street.."

"I'm on my way, don't leave. Whose phone is this?"

"It's mine," the attendant cut in. "I'm the attendant at the store. She's in good hands and will be here when you arrive."

"Thank you."

End call. The moments following the it were immediately dead silent. She could hear no cars, no sounds from the city, nothing. Winter would be peeling up in less than five minutes. Her eyes were unable to lock onto anything, so she stared at everything as her mind registered nothing but visual ambiguity. The world was nothing; the world was fine. "She's angry.."

"She sounds more scared and concerned than angry.. ." She turned her head to the attendant, this 'Ruby', who has been more patient with her than she imagined a stranger could be given the private fit she was having and inflicting on the world.

"I bet I've made for a wretched night."

"Hardly. I've had worse, actually wretched things happen. You just seem like you needed patience. Understanding even. Maybe a friend? Well as much friend as a neighborhood stranger could be." This 'Ruby' barely got a beat of her chuckle out before a car peeled into the lot.

"Weiss!" Winter jumped out and approached her. She raised her assuredly haggard visage to meet her elder sister's pale, worried countenance. She doesn't know why she expected a lecture upon her sister's arrival, but she did. Though instead of that she was met with a fierce and protective embrace. Winter held onto her as though if she didn't hold her tight enough, she would dissipate into the night. She collapsed into that embrace and sobbed. "It's okay. You're okay." Winter's voice shook.

"I'm sorry!" She made her muffled voice heard through her sobs, through the dampening from her sister's bosom.

"It's okay." She felt her face being pulled back and up to look into her sister's eyes. She looked so concerned, as though she was hurting for her. "Let's go home and get you taken care of, okay?"

"Okay." Her reply was a childlike sob. She knew where she was going and she wanted to be there now more than anything. Winter helped her to her feet, shouldering most of the burden because she at present found it hard to stand on her own, and led her to the car.

"Thank you very much," her sister called back to the convenience store attendant after she was deposited into the passenger seat with the door closed behind her. She could hear the muffled reply, but it was faint through her waning consciousness. She let her eyelids fall as she barely registered her sister climbing into the driver's seat. Exhaustion surmounted and her head swam sickeningly, head bursting with those synapses she was sure would be thoughts if they ever coagulated.

…

Author's Notes:

Had a thought. Hope you enjoy and please look forward to more, Ivel.