Salvatore.

Three

|| A few sentences may trigger readers, if they do I ask that you skip over them. ||

Athena sat in the middle of her bedroom, gazing at the mirror in front of her, letting her eyes wonder over her features.

Her chocolate brown curls fell to the mid of her back like a waterfall, her cheeks that were slightly tinted pink stood out against her olive complexion; a scar on her right collarbone decorated her smooth skin, a product of one of her fathers drunken mistakes. Her fingers lightly traced the mark, feeling how it had healed over time. Drifting her orbs away from the scar, she finally looked into her eyes.

Athena had this baby doe like appearance, with large wide eyes that could captivate anyone. They were a greeny hazel, but if you looked into them hard enough; you could see the slightest shade of blue.

Everywhere the young girl went, she would get compliments on her beauty; people would look at her with jealousy and envy. The on lookers would mostly be jealous of her eyes, her eyes were her most enchanting feature.

Her face held so much life, so much happiness, so much good; that by just seeing her surface, you wouldn't know the horrors she held within.

Taking a sharp breath she closed her eyes; imagining her mother.
Every picture she saw of her, was like looking at a reflection. Just the thought of that caused a pain in her chest, she looked just like her mother.

Athena had never actually met her mother before, she had died when she was just an infant. But when she saw the old photographs of her, she couldn't help but stare in awe. She had the same brown hair, the same olive skin and the same doe-like eyes; the only difference was the colour, her mothers eyes on the other hand, were the richest shade of green imaginable.

Her brothers had told her many years ago, that her father once referred to their mother as his 'Armenian Queen.'

Sighing, Athena ran a hand down her face. Opening her eyes again, she took one last look at herself before the yelling outside interrupted her thoughts. Feeling her stomach go queasy, she looked at her bedroom door. The yelling didn't faze her too much anymore, every morning she would be woken up by the sound of her eldest brother Klaus and her father arguing.

They would sometimes argue over the simplest of things, like sports and the weather; but most of the time it was the more serious things; like how her father loved liquor too much, or about the family 'business'.

When they screamed and roared about the more serious issues, fear would grow in the pit of her gut. Memories would flash through her head, causing a cold sweat to spread across her forehead.

One time she accidentally got herself caught in the crossfire; she was in the wrong place at the wrong time. Athena had stepped out of her room during a fight and it caused her to almost have a small table thrown at her head. Not that that mattered, soon after came an empty beer bottle; it had smashed against the wall near her and the broken shards had caused the deep scar on her body.

She could recall that moment like it was yesterday, the way Klaus had yelled at her father in such a manic way, threatening him to get out of his house. She can still remember how her father had walked out, his head down shamefully; a beer in one hand and a cigarette in the other.
She can remember the way she cried into Klaus' arms, the way he removed the shard of glass himself, the way he stitched the wound himself; the way she sat curled in his arms, weeping for her mother, the way she wished, and she prayed for her father to not come home drunk again.

But life was funny that way, because that same night. He came home even more smashed than before.

On other mornings, she'd find Klaus constantly yelling at her father to wake up; because he was passed out on the couch from consuming too much alcohol.