The ride home seemed as though it had been going on for hours, but when she opened her eyes, the sea was a familiar blur. Her head swam with the finesse of a drowning person. Why dis she drink so much? She let her eyelids fall in a futile attempt to bring buoyancy to her head, to stop t wretched world from spinning. And she remembered why she drank so much. Regardless of how many drinks it took, she wanted her mind arrested and put to sleep.

"Weiss, we are home." She didn't know when the car had stopped or when Winter had appeared at her side. She felt hands on her, one on her cheek and the other gently combing through her bangs. For a brie moment that one hand paused on her forehead as though checking for a fever before it resumed its comb. "Let's go inside Weiss. Okay?" Winter's voice was as gentle as her touch.

'Mum is dead Winter, stop trying to take her place!"

"Okay." Her reply came softly before she heaved the lids of her eyes open. Everything was still a familiar blur. Winter appeared as dual apparitions before her, almost incorporeal. She felt one of them snake an arm around her and start to pull her carefully up. Standing now, she was being led slowly up the walk and through the gate to the patio. Dizzy. She closed her eyes as sick writhed in and terrorized her stomach.

"I'm going to be sick." She anticipated the volume, or lack thereof, but what she didn't anticipate was the burn. Pulling away from her sister and collapsing in front of a vacant garden pot, she retched into it a guttural fury. Given this burning and knowing her rate of consumption for the past several days, she was sure that whatever it was she just regurgitated was at least ninety proof.

"Breathe," she hear Winter say as small circles started being rubbed into her back. She thought she was done, but another eruption forced itself up her throat. The taste was sour, or bitter. Probably bile. "Breathe," she heard her sister saying again, steadying her as she resurfaced from the garden pot. Was she not breathing? Surely she'd be a faded, stillborn blue by now if she hadn't been.

It was between her jagged breaths that she could hear a car quickly parking, then footsteps seemingly heading towards their gate. And then it was snatched open. Her eyes honed in on the gate as best they could. She stared through layer of haphazard layer of fatigue at the new arrival. Whitley.

"Weiss." His face bore something resembling anger that she couldn't quite place as her look from her to Winter, and then back to her. "God Winter, your fucking voicemail. What happened?" He said that as he took the least number of strides necessary to reach her. She didn't know what she expected of him when reached her but when he did he crouched next to her and pulled her into his torso before settling his chin atop her head. His hold was similar to Winter's, yet different. The way his broad frame and his long arms enveloped her and how his head hooded her was as though even if she were to dissipate, every particle of her would remain right there. Contained. Floating. Fragmented.

"Help me get her inside Whitley."

"Okay. Weiss, can you stand?"

"Not exceptionally well, no." He exhaustion was burying her. More so, none of her faculties seemed to be terribly intact.

"It's okay, I've got you." A word grunted and she felt her brother's arms wave under her knees and behind her back in one swift motion. It reminded her that she and her fraternal sibling were no longer children anymore. They were still the same age, though Weiss was the by a mere two minutes, but Whitley was much taller than her now. His shoulders were broad and his muscles stronger by nature. He was a young man now.

"The couch," she heard Winter direct after two clicks from the locks. She felt the wind of travel and descent before she felt the couch materialize under her, cushions soft, back firm. She reclined and brought her hands to her head. Her mind was almost a blank canvas now. Almost. It was more akin to being a piece of paper written on with a pencil many times, then erased over and over and over again. Surely holes would be appearing now if they hadn't already. She feared any stimuli that could spark to life another train yard of formless thoughts, displaced anger, and all consuming anguish.

"Winter, what happened?" Whitley was taking in her smoldering personal battlefield. She felt her right foot being lifted and the shoe being removed. "Jesus.. did she walk on that?" She imagined her foot looking fairly grotesque. "Winter, what the hell happened?"

"I don't know!" Winter snapped, her poise's structural integrity suffering. Did she do that to her sister? She could feel the almost non-existent shake in Winter's hands as she undid the careless wrap from around her foot.

"I am right here if anyone wants to ask me themselves." Anger was rising. "My answer won't be much different though.. Fuck!" She recoiled her foot and jolted forward, suddenly accosted as her wound seared against something soft and wet.

"I need to clean it." Her foot was eased back into the alcohol soaked washcloth. "You shouldn't need stitches so long as you rest it enough for the gash to close."

"You've been drinking." Whitley's investigation had taken him to the nearly empty bottle f whiskey that rested on the island. He picked it up and examined it with furrowed brow as though it would give him a witness statement.

"I've been drinking since high school, but blame this on inebriation if it's easier."

"..What?" Winter paused briefly as she was finishing the wrap on her foot before an automation of sorts compelled her movements onward.

"This isn't news, Winter.." She averted her eyes from the general direction of her sisters gaze.

"Whitley?" Winter turned to her brother, searching for a confirmation or, ideally, a declination. She was met with silence and her face hung aghast. "Weiss, you were raised to be smarter than that." She heard and felt something snap in her brain at her sister's response. A rotting fury consumed her and a gaseous despair filled her.

"I don't need a lecture!" She snatched her foot away and shot up from the couch. What sense did any of this make? Her mind tried to derive the answer from every memory she possessed. Her hands were raking through her hair hard enough to move her scalp with the gesture. "I need someone to ask me why I'm a borderline fucking alcoholic before I'm even old enough to legally fucking drink."

"Weiss calm down—" She was screaming. And Whitley tried, he did, but anything he could have said wouldn't have been what she wanted to hear.

"I will not calm down! I'd rather you throw another mirror at me!" Silence. No, something less than that. Or more than that, like a world devoid of the presence and absence of silence.

"You know, you're the only one who throws shit back up in people's faces like you're some fucking paragon of how to treat people! People hurt you because you're evil to them." He freed his keys from his pocket and made towards the door. "That's why you have no one but your family, and you barely have us." The front door opened then slammed and Whitley was gone.

The kitchen floor was hard and cold, and the all her back rested against was equally as comfortless. She didn't know when she'd moved to sit down, how long she'd be sitting, or how long she'd been silently crying. She fixed her much more sobered gaze to her hands, unsure of when they opened or if they had closed, and unsure of why her hands felt stiff. Bandages. She vaguely remembers Winter cleaning and wrapping her hands. She was almost sure she said nothing during. The sound of glass being corralled into a dustpan faded into her aural range. She carried her gaze to her sister, crouched down gathering the last of the shattered mirror. She could just barely make out that the area around her sister's eyes was red.

She watched Winter in silence. Her mind was mostly calm now after her loss of time and space. She wasn't angry, and she wasn't grieving. She felt unable to embody anything but placidity. "What am I like?" Winter's attention startled towards her at the sudden breach in the silence.

"Weiss.. I—"

"How am I like?" Her sister seemed to brace herself for something when she asked her again. She lowered her eyes letting her bangs fall into them. She knew that particular brand of flinch.

"..I'm not sure how you mean." Winter's response was cautious.

"I don't.." Something inside of her was begging her to try. 'Understanding,' she remembered. She needed to try while her cognition was untroubled. "I don't have a point of reference. And there's no anchor." She shook her head to loosen the thought forms now flowing like porridge. "I," a vain attempt, "can't explain what it's like.."

"What it's like?" Winter repeated her in inquiry as she came and took a knee in front of her.

"This." She gestured at the space including and surrounding them. "I've always been this burdening, haven't I?"

"Weiss." Winter grabbed her stiff hands and stared into her. "My burden comes from shouldering your burden when it becomes too heavy. When your world I a bit too much, and I carry it because I love you and will be your strength if and when you need it."

"It's always too much." She sobbed a harrowing sob. The hyper activity in her brain was recently faded, and along with it went everything else she had. She was left hollow to be invade in agony by way of some principle for the distribution of grief. She felt Winter's embrace again, that binding embrace that held her put and gave her continuity. She cried lost tears and found tears. She was held fast all the while by her sister, her dear sister a she mourned another vague loss over a simple promise, sound and earnest:

"I'll find you help."