REWRITTEN.
Though neither wanted to tear themselves away from eachother, they did eventually have to make their way downstairs to the memorial service.
Violet did so while picking out her old noise cancelling headphones and placing them over her ears. All those irritating background sounds filtered out and eased the tightness in her muscles.
The rain poured heavily, rapping against the windows, and it was so hard she could just about hear it.
While Violet avoided the umbrellas stacked by the back door as though they were poison, Five was the one to pick one up for the both of them. Her fingers rubbed at the scarred skin on her wrist where the umbrella logo used to be absently.
She walked in step with Five initially and leant up on her tiptoes to whisper something in his ear.
"Thank you."
He looked down at her, speaking equally as quietly. "For what?"
"Telling me the truth." She murmured softly.
He smiled at her slightly.
Once outside, she stepped away from his side and shifted back towards Ben's statue, opting to sit on the little wall beside it to observe the service from afar.
She didn't want any part of it.
Five kept his eye on her. He was banking on the fact she didn't notice, but she did.
She embraced the cool water hitting her skin, dampening her hair and jacket before she flipped her hood up to protect her headphones. Violet loved the rain, and at least that fact hadn't changed over the years.
As a kid they could always find her outside during a storm without a proper jacket on. She'd get soaked to the bone just wandering the garden in the pouring rain and Grace would scold her, saying she'd catch a cold if she didn't wrap up.
Back then she'd think to herself 'it doesn't matter. I'll be right as rain in a few hours of catching it.'
When the others finally arrived one by one with varying umbrellas and coats, Luther was the main one to notice her absence in the circle.
"Violet," he demanded. "Come on."
She glanced up through a curtain of her hair and simply shook her head, glancing back down at the droplets of water running down the blades of grass at her feet.
"Violet, it's dads funeral. The least you could do is-"
"-leave her alone," Diego cut him off in warning. "Just get on with it."
But Luther being Luther just ouldn't let it go.
Violet listened to the muffled voices through the barrier of her headphones, bouncing her knee rapidly up and down as she tried to ignore them.
He shook his head. "No, she should be here with us!" He turns to her and says sternly, "Violet."
'Do as you are told.' Rang in her ears.
She simply glared defiantly back at him, not willing to move from where she's sitting and angrily picking out blades of grass, satisfied with tiny snapping sounds.
"Luther, it's fine. Let her sit it out." Allison reasoned noting the discomfort on the girls face at having all the attention on her.
"Why is this fine to you?" He retorted, annoyed.
"We all know how dad treated her," Allison said sternly, as though reminding him in a voice low enough so Violet herself couldn't hear. "She has the right to make the choice."
Five couldn't help but look back at Violet curiously, wondering how bad things really got after he had left. He knew things were bad before, but he also knew she had to live in the house with him when everyone left, and not once had Allison ever stood up for her. Not until now.
She gave him a weak smile and trailed her fingers along the daisies by her boots, sitting tall among the grass. She found herself picking them gently and span them between her fingers, captivated by the raindrops clinging to the pure white petals.
Violet began to zone out, thinking about too many things all at once.
It wasn't until voices started raising did she snap out of it. The poorly made daisy chain fluttered to the damp earth as she stood trying to see what was going on.
Luther's voice mixed with Diegos over the rainfall and she became twitchy. Uncomfortable. Nervous. Their words were all muffled, lips moving fast but nothing but noise reaching through her headphones.
She gripped her sleeves tightly and went to stand under Fives umbrella.
He glanced down at her in question but her eyes were fixed on the two arguing.
She almost wanted to cry in frustration when her hands began shaking again, and her clothes started feeling too warm against her skin.
It was so scorched into her brain that it was her job to come in and pick up the pieces if someone got hurt that she automatically began to panic.
Someone's going to get hurt, she thought, eyes flickering back and forth between Luther and Diego.
The raised voices turned to shouting quickly and she flinched. Her hands covered her headphones and she shied back.
The thing about noise cancelling headphones was that they never really blocked out everything. And silence was exactly what Violet liked. It blocked out the harshness of voices, most background noise, and softened the edges of the general daily life.
But with a family like hers, general daily life didn't quite match up with the job description.
She barely noticed Five reach out to extend the umbrella so it covered her still.
Then the fight really broke out.
Five stepped in front of her when they got too close, while Klaus put a hand out in front of Five as though to protect them. He slapped the hand away with a look.
As the fighting grew closer and closer to Ben's statue, Violet dug her nails into her bruised hand.
Suddenly Diego ducked under one of Luthers punches and they all froze, watching his fist crack against their brothers statue.
Violet made a noise of alarm as her hands shot up to cover her face.
Everything went dead silent as they could do nothing but watch the statue topple and crack as it hit the concrete.
Her ears began to ring as she stared down at the toppled figure of her brother, and suddenly it was like she was staring at Ben's body all over again.
"there's so much blood-"
"-Violet, come on!"
Sirens blared outside the museum, blue lights flickering through the tall glass windows.
Violet was bleeding. It was all across her face. She had even fallen to the floor.
Allison was crying into someone's shoulder.
So many people were yelling at her to do something.
She remembered feeling so weak and her head bleeding and trying anyways because it was Ben.
Ben who shared his books with her, who snuck out donuts for her when she was too sick to come to Griddys, who was the first to run and find her headphones when she grew overwhelmed - Ben who was too young and sweet and kind to die, who died anyways, hating himself more than anyone could ever see, but she could, and she wished he'd have known how much she idolised him, wished she could have said something to him before he-
But she couldn't bring him back.
"You have to stop the bleeding or he's going to die!"
He was already gone.
Five was trying to talk to her but his voice was far away. He was trying to get her to look at him but it was like she couldn't hear him.
Violet was barely able to tear her eyes away from the sight, but more shouting ensued and Diego launched a knife, and Five was pulling her back quickly so she didn't have to see.
But she did.
The knife sliced through Luthers bicep and she watched crimson quickly soak through the bottle green of his coat, trickling down his arm. Staining his fingers quickly as they covered it and he hissed in pain.
Her fingers twitched. She flinched away from Five, putting her hand up to stop him from touching her, grimacing. She backed away quickly and made a noise of discomfort, shaking her head and shaking her hands out to rid herself of the awful feeling in her head, her heart, her body.
"Violet, hey, it's okay-"
She backed away from him and raced back inside.
When she got to her room she ripped of her wet jacket as quick as she could and threw the item away from her, it's weight suffocating, shaking her hands out as they began flickering through phases she couldn't control.
The sight of the blood when she closed her eyes - it was still there.
She twitched her head to the side, scrunching up her nose in irritation before ripping off her headphones too. She threw them on the bed and ran hands through her hair, pacing up and down.
After some thought she removed her jumper and folded it neatly over the end of her bed, changing into a floral top with sleeves that cut over the shoulder. She picked up an old denim jacket to keep her warm.
After a few long minutes of pacing until her fingers stopped tingling and her ears stopped buzzing and the itch in her skin went away, she finally left her room in search of the one person who made her feel okay.
When she found him, he almost knocked into her with how fast and purposeful he strode through the hall.
She stopped in front of him and his eyes lit up immediately.
"Perfect, come on, I need coffee." He gestured for her to follow him and she did so without question. He held the fabric of her sleeve to be safe and in a split second they were in the car.
She didn't even have time to question it, so didn't bother. So long as she didn't have to deal with her siblings inside that godforsaken house.
In fact, the second the dull engine of the car rumbled and Five began driving, she curled her legs in beneath her and watched the street lights pass by the window with a newfound sense of calm.
Five pretended he wasn't glancing at her every few moments to spy the peaceful, zoned out glimpse on her expression.