//------------------------------//
// Midnight 
// Story: Siren Night 
// by MetaSkipper 
//------------------------------//

	Adagio flopped onto her bed. It hadn’t been a full day since Aria started talking with those damned Six. She and Sonata had gone out for the night. They hadn’t said where, but it was no secret. They were hanging out with those damned Rainbooms. Probably were sleeping over, given how late it was. She lazily rolled her head to the side. Just about midnight. She let out some strange cross between a grunt and a sigh.
Not even a day. It hadn’t taken a full day for Aria to abandon her. By the songs, the three had been together long since before recorded history, countless millennia, and before a month was over, the two had left her. Left her over one failure. Left her for the very people that ruined them all. Had they been friends? Far from it. But surely, assuredly there had been something, some sense of kinship that had bound them together? Clearly not.
She grimaced. Those two didn’t know how good they had it. Sonata was a ditz, a klutz; she couldn’t understand the magnitude of what happened if she tried. Aria was always second fiddle to her, needed her to actually come up with the schemes that had kept the three alive. They could blame her, point to her as the cause of their troubles. They could leave her, leave whatever parts of their identity they didn’t like with her.
She couldn’t run. Couldn’t run from her failures, her mistakes. She could never un-see how close they had been. Her fists clenched, her nails dug into her palms. Her masterpiece had but one stain, one tarnish. That one smear had consumed it all. Her great failure hung in front of her, dangled, on a loop of rope, hanging from the ceiling. It dared her to chase it, to try to grab it. In her heart, she smells embers and sparks.
She lay there. There was nothing to be done. So she sung. Because that will always be what sirens do.
She sung the old songs. The songs of hate, of malice. The songs of a time long since forgotten. She sung them perfectly. An eternal flame crackles. She had sung these songs before she was born into the world. They could not be taken from her. She would not, could not let go of them. The song rang perfectly in her mind. The same song rang hollow in her ears. The same song wreaked havoc on her throat. She tried to lie to herself, as she had lied to many others with her voice. But her voice betrayed her. And through it all, she sung.
Her thoughts turned to the Rainbooms. That damned band had taken everything from her. She hated them. Hate was too good for them; it implied that her dislike was merely emotional. No, her distaste ran deeper than her own soul, the soul they had torn from her and dared to shatter before her own eyes. She knew this song by now. She had sung it countless times since that day. That flame was now a fire, burning deep inside her, begging for fuel. And through it all, she sung.
Why had she come? If that princess hadn’t come, they would have been powerless to stop them, stop her. She hated her. Why had she even made the band in the first place? She shot up, slammed her fists into the bed. She quivered, eyes slammed shut, a cry, a roar of rage now weaved into her song. Stupid rainbow girl’s ego should have destroyed that band anyway. She hated her. And why had she even been let into the band? Not six months ago she had torn the school asunder, emotionally and physically, she hated her. Somehow she could still sing, sing faster, harder. That fire was now a blaze that consumed the room, consumed her as she yet stoked it more, threw more wood on that fire. And she thought she was all that, thought she could make it without her and she had stage fright, should never have been able to stand, and she had been wearing headphones, who wears headphones all the time and and she hated her had no fashion sense and he was just a dumb dog and and and she had almost given everything away she hated her and and and –
…
Silence.
She fell to her bed, slammed into it. She smothered her own flame as she fell. Her breathing could not slow. But she was tired, so tired. She couldn’t be angry, not anymore. Her song faded in between the gasps and exhales. Her eyelids drooped, but did not close. With each breath went out more of her energy, her rage. Could she not have rest? Could she not see the end of her suffering? She had lost her voice, her strength… her… her… friends. Everything. Gone. Because of them.
She opened her eyes. She saw her way out. It hung from the ceiling. She swatted at it lazily, watched it swing back and forth. Swing like a pendulum. Like a metronome, the faintest woosh keeping time. It beckoned to her, to give her sleep, the sleep she so desperately craved now. She saw the knives in the kitchen, saw the painkillers in the cabinet, faint images floating above her bed. There were not even embers now. She tried to sing, for what, she did not even know, but nothing would come. 
In the morning, she would go to school. She would walk the halls of that cursed school. She would feel the angry stares of the classmates she once had wrapped around her finger. She would grab her food. She would see, at the far table, Sonata and Aria with them. She would sigh, and take her place at the edge of the table, next to Sonata. They would barely glance at her. Sonata and Aria would spare a few words in her direction. She would come home alone. She would go into her room. There would be nothing hanging from the ceiling.
But for now, she closes her eyes and lets out one last sigh. And she will sing no more.