Something inside of Sophie had broken loose. If she wasn't sobbing she moved like a zombie. She tripped over herself more than usual and could hardly eat. Everything seemed to trivial now - fighting with Fig, breaking up with him, being angry with Fauna that she got attention from all the boys Sophie wanted. None of that mattered now. The reality of herself was strange to her - she was a girl without a mother. She was one of three girls without a mother. Her father without a wife, without his other half. She had never seen him like this. He was broken too. He sat in his studio and drank pint after pint. No one but Nana could reach him. The lot of them were like planets orbiting the same dismal news - but none of them knew how to cluster together anymore.

The worst part was knowing now what her gift had been trying to tell her in those days leading up to the accident. The bloody cards, Ruby's gaping chest wound that wasn't there, the unsettling nightmares that had remained just out of her reach. She had tried so hard. She had been so sure it had something to do with Fauna. She never would have thought in a million years she was glimpsing her own mother's death. What good was being a Seer if you never understood what you were seeing? What good was any of it - what did it matter in the long run when we all die. Everything dies. Everyone dies. She would die. This knowledge squeezed her heart like a vice. It squashed her lungs flat. She couldn't breathe in her room.

Laying on her bed, Gunner rested his head on her stomach. Thor bumped her limp fingers with his favorite toy - unaware that anything was really wrong; at least not something that couldn't be fixed by a good game of tug Sophie off the bed. She curled on her side and tucked her knees up by her chest. She couldn't do this. Life was so unfair, closing her eyes as tightly as possible she wished with every tiny fiber of her being that she could go back. She would gladly have Figaro be her biggest problem. She would live through another DADA lesson of Storm tormenting animals. She'd never fall asleep in Astronomy again - whatever Merlin or God wanted she'd give it gladly. She would give freely of herself. She'd learn to be less selfish - but she couldn't do that without her mother.

When she opened her eyes she was still in her room. No amount of bargaining or wishing would bring back her mother. She gave a deep guttural cry into her pillow and pounded the bed with a small fist. The tears came again - not hysterical tears this time; it was somewhere between heartbroken and furious. She kept screaming into the pillow but realized how futile even that was. Then she reached for her jewelry box and flung it across the room; watching it bounce off the wall and break in three pieces. Gunner and Thor cowered in the other corner as she looked for something else to hurl against the wall. The picture at her bedside was in her hand and ready to be launched when she realized it was of Ramona and her sisters. Looking at their faces she gave another sob a sunk to the floor.

How did one get out of this labyrinth of suffering? Sophie surely didn't know.

Let Nan deal with Sophie.  That been what Ruby told her to do and unable to come up with any new methods of comfort that didn't involve being awkward and uncertain... Emily kept to that.  What else was she supposed to anyway?  Holding her had been hard enough at the boat house without just all out breaking down herself.  Things only gotten worse after they'd gotten home and Emily had to admit defeat and seek her own refuge elsewhere.  Eventually, Sophie cried herself out, or Nan slipped her a sleeping draft in the broth, one or the other.  Quiet descended on the house the likes of which were not calming in the slightest.

That been two days ago.  Two days in which reality and surreality battled with one another.  The haze of grief gone from shadowy, to all out oppressive in the passing hours.  A migraine set in after the first night, pressure started behind her eyes and spread to her whole body.  Absolutely everything just... ached of it.  Her head pounded, lights and smells and movement made her sick.  Even trying to talk, which wasn't often anyway, it just rattled her to point of finally hiding away from everyone and everything.

It occurred to her after Sophie's crying picked up again, that she should have just stayed down stairs.  Sharing a wall with her and seeking sanctuary, did not go hand in hand.  A lesson she should have learned long ago, but kept forgetting instead.  Tugging a pillow over her head, she tried and failed to block out the muffled sounds of Sophie crying. "Please stop," she begged her sister, there couldn't possibly be more tears in her own body, much less any left in the smaller girls.  Her organs flopped about inside her, as if they couldn't find their rightful places any more, and for a moment, Emily leaned her head over the bed, sure she'd be sick with it.  Nothing came up, but something crashed into the wall she shared with Sophie.  The sound reverberated through the room, and her brain felt as if it smacked against her skull with the motion.

That was quite enough!  Emily didn't wait for Sophie to make another move, or for the nausea to pass again.  Instead, she flopped out of bed and drunkenly made her way to her door as quickly as she could.  Only once, did it seem like she wasn't going to make it, and that was just outside of Sophie's door when she had to pause or collapse into the room.  When it finally seemed like she wasn't going take a tumble, she turned the knob, not bothering to knock.  The small girl was on the floor, holding a picture frame.  She looked so tiny like that, it was easy to forget she was actually fifteen and not twelve anymore.  For a moment, Emily reconsidered snapping at her, but her ears rang as a reminder instead.

"What did you break," annoyance playing heavily in the background of the question.  It was hard to be sympathetic and aching in pain at the same time.  Who knew how Nan or Ruby, or even Ramona did it.  She couldn't fathom it. 

Looking at the picture in her hands hurt. It was so wretched and so beautiful. They were all laughing, their wide smiles captured forever on film. It would be the last picture she ever took of the three of them together. It would be the last frame of her mother's brilliant smile - she was one of the few women who could laugh and smile at the same time and still look beautiful. Even on photograph paper you could see the sparkle in Ramona's eyes. You could see the way Emily and Ruby adored her. It was just a silly snapshot captured over Christmas break; before everything had gone so cockeyed. They were in front of the tree; Ramona in the middle bookended by her middle babies; her psychic twins. Gunner hesitantly crept forward; whatever fit Sophie seemed to have been throwing passed for the moment. He silken head slipping under her arm as Sophie made herself as small as possible on the floor.

Then the door banged open and Emily was standing there looking perturbed and sick. Sophie didn't even look up. If she had the slight color green Em's skin tone had taken would have worried the tiny fifth year. Without looking up from the picture she gestured to the other side of the room where her jewelry box lay in pieces. "Sorry...I forgot..." her voice sounded fair away and trailed off into nothingness. It wasn't as though her explosive tantrum would have been any better if she had thrown it against another wall. It only might have annoyed her sister less. It was still childish. There was just so much anger and pain; Sophie didn't know how to keep from drowning in it. Nan had finally convinced her to take a little potion to sleep; promising she would feel better once she got some rest. Only she had awoken more angry than said - the hole in her chest filled with an anguish too big for her tiny body or her moderately larger room.

"I just...needed to break something..." it sounded stupid even as she said it, which was when she decided to finally look at Emily. Poor Emily; always stuck in the middle with her nose in a book rather than dealing with the loud emotions of the house. For the first time Sophie thought of the world as it existed outside of herself. She thought of the fact that while she was filled with anger and confusion and pain... so was every other member of her family. Em looked awful; almost pea green; she was prone to stress migraines - Sophie had known that most of her life. It was gunny how information didn't ever really sink into her brain until moments like these. Peering up at her sister she pulled her lips together in a thin line, "You look sick. Come lay down," for the first time in her life Sophie stepped into the role of care provider as she got to her feet and turned down her blankets, "I won't make anymore noise," her voice was quiet as she reached for a red vial and offered it to her sister, "Nan gave it to me last night. It helped".