District One - Virgo Alizé [1]
Rosie didn't remember letting go of Orion's hand. She didn't remember her father telling her not to scream. She didn't remember the click of Jace's heels as she tried to detach herself from the older Victor that held her back. Rosie didn't remember somebody crying out or her knees buckling like they couldn't support her anymore or the exact moment when she realized what had happened. She didn't remember falling asleep, only falling down. Everything was gone by the time her brother caught her and by then it didn't matter. She'd shut down, she'd embarrassed herself and her family.
"Virgo... Virgo, look at me."
"Leave her be, Dad. She didn't mean to do it."
What Rosie did remember was waking up in an unfamiliar place, which she had always hated with a passion. She blinked to clear the sleep out of her eyes and glanced around. It was a fancy room, one like the room in Magnus' house that she and Orion weren't allowed to enter. She'd peeked anyways. It was a dull sort of room. It was pretty in a boring way but nothing special. This one was similar but she knew that the room itself wasn't what mattered. It was the contents that mattered.
"I told her that she needed to be calm."
"It doesn't work like that."
The room seemed to contain only a couch, a rather ugly vase on a little end table, and her family. The one that mattered, not the mother that had abandoned her and the stepfather who wanted nothing to do with her. Her thoughts were a bit jumbled but she felt less tired than before. She knew that it wasn't going to last long. The drowsy feeling always came back to bother her. She'd been living with it for ten years and in those ten years, it had never gotten easier.
"How is she supposed to fight like that?"
"Don't scare her about it."
Her father and Orion were speaking in hushed voices. Adults often did that when she was around, like she wasn't mature enough to understand them. It had always bothered her but she knew that they did it for a reason. They wanted to protect her; it was always about protecting her. Her parents had sheltered her for most of her life but they did it to protect her. Orion always told her that it was because she was their baby but she knew that he was wrong. They did it because she was different.
She was lying across Orion's lap. Most ten year old girls would be too big to sleep on their brother's laps but not Rosie. She had always been smaller than other girls, more grown up but still childish in her own way. He was stroking her hair idly and glancing at her with worried eyes. She'd seen him do the same to Jace after she returned from the Victory Tour. Her brother wasn't a nervous person but Rosie could tell that he was unhappy. It was her fault, she was making them unhappy.
"Orion, I have to go, don't I?" She felt left out in the conversation that was clearly about her. If her mother had been there, she would've reprimanded her for interrupting. But Rosie's mother wasn't there and that was the problem. Her mother wasn't there to save her the way a mother was supposed to do. She had left them for Magnus and his money and his stupid hair. Rosie had tried to understand the decision that her mother had made but as she thought about what was happening to her, she found that it was hard to do so.
Her father looked like he was searching for the right words to say, that's why she hadn't asked him. She didn't want some long and boring speech about how she would have to be brave and strong and careful. He loved her, she knew that he did, but he would only dance around the subject to "protect her". Protecting her wouldn't do any good now; there was nothing that he could do. There were a lot of things that Rosie didn't know but she knew that for sure.
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Writer Games | Masquerade of Martyrs & Family Ties
ActionWriter Games: Masquerade of Martyrs: last updated February 3 2015 Writer Games: Family Ties: last updated April 14 2015 Reuploaded with permission from AEKersey 2019