#fiveyanet

Vanya stared at the ceiling blankly. It was dark out, and quiet, and though she’d gone to bed a good hour ago she had yet to feel even a hint of tiredness.

Her mind was running a mile a minute, determined to refuse her sleep, and didn’t seem like it would be letting up anytime soon. So she sat up abruptly and slid her feet into a pair of her slippers. 

The halls were cold- colder than usual -or maybe that was just her imagination. It probably was. Especially since when she got to her destination the temperature seemed to stop even lower and she started to shiver. 

She glared up at the portrait.

Five, she thought icily, you selfish asshole. 

She’d tried to ignore it all day; how all the others were tiptoeing around her. How they looked at her with sad eyes and handled her with cautious hands, as though they expected her to shatter at any given second. 

Vanya almost scoffed. 

She wasn’t sad. She wasn’t devastated. 

She was just...angry. 

She remembered how she’d begged Five not to confront their father. 

She remembered how he’d promised that he wouldn’t. 

And she remembered how he’d broken that promise as though it were nothing, and that now- six months later on Christmas Eve -he was still gone. 

Vanya doesn’t really know why today of all days set her off. Or at least that’s what she tells herself. 

She knows it’s not true.

She was angry because once again Five left behind yet another broken promise.

“How about this year we do something special,” he’d said, “just the two of us. I can sneak us out and we can go into the city to look at the lights.”

Vanya hadn’t been sure at first, but the more she’d thought about it the more excited she became. 

Really, she should have known better. Nothing amazing like that ever happened to people like her.

She should have realized something terrible was about to happen at the root of it all she knew that was the real reason she was so mad today. 

But what’s the use in pointing the finger at herself. Five was a much easier target. He wasn’t here to defend himself- not that he could’ve. 

Vanya blinked, her gaze tearing away from the portrait, her fists clenched.