The song was commonplace. Most knew the melody even if they didn't know the name or composer, and because of this it would most assuredly stand the test of time. A melody mankind might hum to themselves in a distant, futile future. The first movement of Beethoven's Moonlight Sonata. Her mother used to play it for her when she was unable to sleep as a child, and so here she was, playing it for herself over and over again. After the fourth time through, she knew it wouldn't lull her to sleep as it so often did in her childhood. The hands that slurred over the keys now were her own, drunk on endless days of sleeplessness. The hands that could pull emotion from even the hollowest of beings were very nearly bone, she imagined, rotting a world away in Gloucestershire. That pained her the most, being unable to mourn at her mother's grave any anniversary of her death. Her father wasn't keen on returning to England, and she'd learned not to ask long ago. Resentment would occasionally burn in her heart toward him because of that. It burned in her now. She leaned into the keys of the grand piano, dynamics increasing in a slip of control, having to compensate with more volume because she inflated the pianissimo, finding that it was louder than her thoughts. She drove the volume sloppily, tears falling onto the keys. Between every sound her mind would pulse with images, words, sounds of anguish from that terrible evening. She wasn't supposed to see. She wished she'd never seen, her mother's lovely skin, tinted blue and accented by the red that dribbled from her nose. She never knew a neck was so long until it was stretched to the fullest by a length of cord and a body slack under gravity. The only thing she knew to do was to grab Whitley by the hand before he made it down the hall and divert them to her room. Now was not the time to ask Mum for ice cream. Perhaps, in retrospect, she was in shock. They had played hand games in her room for a full thirty minutes before her father's torn voice called for Klein.

"That is enough, Weiss. Let it rest." She clenched her eyes shut and played on. If there was silence, if the volume receded, she would be unable to bear it. She couldn't sit alone at the mercy of her thoughts, not tonight. "I said that is enough!" Anger burned in her for her father abruptly and with abandon. He let her die. The music stopped suddenly. Only the reverberation of the notes were suspended in the air as the piano bench slid forcefully back, scratching a scar into the floor with a painfully sharp noise that clawed at her eardrum. She descended on her father. He let her die.

"You let her die! YOU let her die!" She was attacking him in an alien fury, trying to tear him into the pieces that she was in with her meager strength. She could feel his skin break and collect underneath her nails, the smell of whiskey that clung to his breaths as he said things she couldn't understand. Whatever dead language he was speaking was lost on her. Despite his attempts to shield himself, her hands crossed no man's land and tore at his face, drawing blood, but she was only able to see an afterimage of red as she exploded backwards. She collided with her tool of reprieve, the impact taking her breath away and riddling her side with a terrible pain as she collapsed onto the floor in a heap. Time slowed for her, yet her thoughts increased in speed as they were shaken free of the binds of language that regulated their form. Air was a resource scarce to her as she struggled to her feet. She saw nothing but her father's blue eyes. He was formless, just a gaze before her. It was impossible to discern the expression without his entire visage's presence, but the throb in her side that bowed her forward.. he pushed her? The realization startled her to her core and her amalgam of thoughts coalesced into one choir of voices that told her she needed to leave, that she couldn't stay here. Despite her side's protests and her inability to catch her breath, despite the words those blue eyes lost on her, despite physician's orders, she found herself driving away from her house .

She didn't have the sight for this, the detriment further exacerbated by the tears that flooded her eyes quite uncontrollably. Making the best decision she would make that night, she pulled onto the shoulder and came to a stop. Her heart raced, and dull surgical pains were forming a headache behind her left eye that pulsed just as erratically. She clenched her eyes shut only to snap them open when vague blue eyes, bodiless and indiscernible, filled her mind. He pushed her. She tried again to darken the world, putting her head into her hands and resting her entire lot against the steering wheel, wincing as she leaned forward, crying still. He pushed her.. because she was tearing at him..

..because he let her die.

Something was lying to her, wasn't it? Her mind was weaving conspiracies, and she couldn't falsify the night. She was driving again, unsure of reality, yet destination familiar and her objective singular despite the many directions she was pulled in. She was grieving, the lamentations of her mind singing haunting acappellas while the fury in her instigated an enraged orchestra to clash against them. A tectonic standoff that would give rise to waves inside of her capable of drowning out entire peoples. Where was she to find the chord that David played that would appease the merciless God conducting the movements that clashed inside her head?

He wasn't as gentle as she would prefer him to be, but more than that she preferred the rise that was starting in her and the way that rise disrupted the chaotic symphonies in her mind. She brought a hand back to reestablish a distance between their hips, to coax a more moderate pace that wouldn't aggravate the bruise forming over her left side. He was keen this time. She buried a grotesque moan of pleasure and reprieve into the cushion of her backseat as her mind was forced as blank as it was able by climax. A suspension of existence, she was neither here nor there, abandoned by time and space at a point prior to creation where thought simply could not be, as fleeting a moment as it would turn out to truly be.

"I have a hybrid nightcap with our name on it," he breathed as they separated, making to pull her pants back around her waist once they were. "Some new flower came in that I think you'll like." He holds his hand out to her once he's gotten out of the car.

"I didn't come by to smoke." She bypasses his hand in favor of climbing into the driver's seat.

"Come by tomorrow. We can zone out to Dark Side of The Moon. Parents are still out of town for a month." She started her car and left. Despite the wealth of his parents, despite the intelligence he acquired from a top private school and his renown in athletics, he was still simpleton with the hubris befitting his affluence. And despite her intent of coming here and using him as an instrument for her own satisfaction, a million thoughts coagulated to convince her that he had somehow used her more. Her stomach turned dangerously, and suddenly she was filled with an intense loathing for herself fueled by unbearable remorse, vague and all encompassing. Her foot dug into the floor. Trees rushed by and the curve in the road lay perpendicular before her, an analgesic to her tormented mind. She was told her car broke through the guard rail and flipped once. She was told that despite the bruised torso and the left orbital fracture (amongst other minor grievances), that she was lucky her injuries weren't more severe. And yet despite the heavy sedation presently slurred her mind, despite the gratefulness she was expected to feel, despite the life she would continue to live, she was acutely aware of the fact that she had tried to die that night.

…..

Author's Note:

I was unsure for a time how I wanted to present this part of the (back)story into fold, an imparting of information to those who would read it that would detail events that Weiss' character wouldn't disclose in full. Yesterday it began to take form in my mind in a way that I ended up translating (or trying to at least) into a somewhat disjointed and/or abstract memory chapter.

So far there will be at least one more, the day Whitley blinded Weiss.

I hope you enjoy and please look forward to more,

Ivel