Title: Endless
Author: sailorraspberry
Theme: Family Portrait
Genre: AU / Angst
Version: Anime
Rating: G
She could hear the argument: screaming and shouting and pure, bitter cold hatred. Soon, though, her mind and vision numbed and became too clouded with unshed tears to think of anything but that sharp pain in her chest.
As she cowered at the bottom of the staircase, fingers clenched around the spires, she stared out on the living room, where the television was off and the lights were dimmed. They were in the kitchen, dueling out another fight that seemed endless, as endless as their angry voices, their hurtful eyes and words. As endless as the sky.
Her hands would blister; she knew they would, knuckles dyed white as she fought with her towering emotions. They always fought. And she always cried. It never changed.
Glass shattered, mother screamed, father elbowed a path out of the kitchen, eyes rimmed red with a somnolent anger and jaw set in naked determination. If he saw her sitting there, trembling and pale and pleading with unspoken words for peace, he did not acknowledge her. He never did.
The front door slammed, windowpanes rattled, and Mina heard her mother begin to sob.
She rose slowly, hair stuck to damp cheeks and mouth sticky with saliva, and descended the last step.
A teapot on the stove whistled, steam rising toward the ceiling, and she sank to her knees on the tiled floor. She held her mother's head to her lap, stroking her hair and murmuring what she hoped were words of comfort.
It was then that her eye caught sight of a picture frame, shattered across the floor. The glass had cracked in the middle, cutting across her beaming smile.
She wiped her face with the back of her hand and pulled the portrait over to her side. They all looked pleased to be there, shoulder to shoulder and smiling. But, as she looked a bit more closely, she wondered if that was truly happiness in their eyes.
She wondered, with a clenched, weeping heart, if all that was there was a masked, endless hatred.
For some reason, she did not doubt it.
Mina patted her mother's head, and hoped that maybe tomorrow would be different. Maybe.
The thought stung, because she knew things would never change, no matter how desperately she wanted it to. Nothing would be different.
She had no doubt of that, either.