Stargazing With Beilah

Destruction

Several weeks had passed since Sophia had been abducted and, since returning, everything had changed. 

Ever since she was young, her family had been a close, tight-knit one. They had always been incredibly caring and loving, doing as much as they possibly could to ensure that all of their children were happy and healthy, spending hours at their side when they were sick, and reading the younger children in their family bedtime stories when they couldn't sleep. Their family had always been close and their parents had always been remarkably caring. They had never been helicopter parents, though. Not until Sophia's disappearance. 

Once she came back, the entire dynamic of their family changed. her parents would barely let her out of their sight, worried to even let her out of the house for long enough for her to go to school. Her siblings all kept giving her worried looks, staring at her then quickly averting their gaze once she met their eyes. They all hovered around her, refusing to give her much peace or space as she worked on things, clearly worried that she would go missing again if they left her alone for an extended period of time. Even if Sophia was just a little late coming home from school, they would worry that she had gone missing, beginning to panic until she returned home. 

She knew why they were worried- she was worried too!- but god it took a lot out of her. Her relationships with her parents and siblings had all changed so much that she felt like an outsider in her own home. She hated the way they looked at her. The sad, distant, worried look they gave her as though they were deeply psychoanalyzing her- it was the same look that Qrow fixed onto new people at their school as he tried to figure out who they were. 

She felt like her family didn't even know her anymore. 

On top of that, Sophia could barely sleep anymore, dreams plagued with nightmares of what could have happened while she was out there with the aliens, echos of memories of those three days battling her every night. Most nights, she would be too scared to sleep or would wake up screaming from the nightmares, drenched in her own freezing sweat, the dark bruises around her eyes proof of her nighttime difficulties. 

A voice over the television snapped Sophia out of her early-morning stupor, "Crazy teenager attending local high school experiences mental break-down, raving about aliens and a supposed-" before she could hear the rest, though, the TV was shut off with a definite yet quiet click. 

Frowning around her mouthful of cereal, Sophia met her mother's eyes, swallowing hard. She was met with deep brown eyes filled with motherly concern that practically surpassed her previous exploits of "mom powers". Sophia had rarely seen her mom look this worried and upset, though, recently, that had certainly changed. In the past few weeks, she had seen far more of this side of her mother than she ever had previously. 

Closing her eyes, Sophia stood, picking up her now finished bowl of cereal and heading over to the sink to rinse it out before grabbing her backpack, "I should head to school, now. Don't wanna be late..."

Her mother patted her arm supportively, but her touch was light and almost fearful as if she were worried that one wrong move would make her daughter shatter like a fragile antique or disintegrate into ash. 

Sophia simply nodded and plastered a fake, bold smile on her face, trying to act far more prepared and far less bothered than she actually was and had been for a very long time. of course, she still felt like garbage and she didn't want to go to school at all, not wanting to deal with everything that came with entering into that hellhole once more, but there was nothing she could really do to avoid that. Although she knew that her parents would let her take as much time off of school as she wanted, she didn't want to do anything that would cause them concern or bring them even more worry than the already had to endure. Besides, if she just dropped out of school altogether, the rest of her life would be far more of a disaster than it was already turning out to be and she refused to just let herself be pushed down by the world because of this. She was going to go to school, even if it would be hellishly difficult, as it had been ever since she returned from her abduction all those weeks ago.