Wonder • Five Hargreeves

52

The White Violin

Vanya walked through her childhood home as it crumbled. Her eyes were a glowing white and her body pulsated with power.

She watched the way the walls spread spines of breakage like lightning across the sky. Dark, pretty veins that made the house look delicate and so close to just spilling apart.

Delicate- that had never been a word she would have used to describe her home. That word was banished from its mere presence within the walls. Nothing in the house was delicate. Iron statues that could withstand war, bricks and marble bought for the sole purpose of longevity, people... carved and tormented so all their edges were deadly. That house was an everlasting prison built by a man that had no love for delicacy.

And yet... there it crumbled. By Vanya. The weakest and useless child. Was that why Reginald tried so hard to suppress her? Could she have always ripped it apart so easily?

This amused Vanya tremendously and made her feel somewhat untethered from the world. She felt like a kite with a cut string.

Free...

Free...

But free in a storm. Free in a manner that made her light up with both glee and terror. Free like a kite not cut free, but torn away into lighting, thunder, cutting winds and cold rain.

It was a all encompassing feeling. She felt awake and other and not a person. Free... free... finally herself. But herself in a way that broke who she was all her life. Finally in touch with her terrible and great powers; shaking her soul, her bones, the foundation of her home.

She wasnt held to anything she loved anymore. She wasnt Vanya Hargreeves, sister, daughter, neglected child of the Hargreeves. She wasn't the mediocre violinist of her past, desperately trying to find a deeper connection to her music.

How tiny she used to be. How wrong her existence was prior. How could she have practiced music for so long, half deaf? Half numb? She could feel everything again.

The world was singing. And she was finally listening.

Bright white eyes of the woman who was previously Vanya Hargreeves looked around. She saw her rich home of her upbringing and found it lacking. So many windows and frames and pretty paintings. They sang to her too, wanting to be more. To be louder. She could help them be free too.

They exploded apart. Splinters of cracked wood and thread of canvas littered around her. So loud and beautiful.

"Stop, please Ms.Vanya. This is enough."

This voice was ugly. It came from vocal cords that were sculpted by a scientist, not an artist. How could they have been? Reginald was a pragmatist. Artistry would have never factored into his equations and no regular human could hear the difference.

But Vanya did.

"You let him lock me up. Drug me." Vanya cocked her head at the monkey servant, condemning him and observing the way he would react.

"What do you have to say for yourself?" Her voice was hollow and so were her thoughts. Her powers and glee and sadness overwhelmed her entirely and felt like she was.. forgetting...Pogo.

Was he something to her? Before she gave in, did she care about the monkey man? What did she... care about?

That didn't interest her though. Because she heard his false heartbeat uptick and she remembered he was something her father built and she hated her father. Pogo was a puppet. So how would he jump?