Chapter II
The violet dress had been so pretty, once, just like her. At least she'd survived that night, the last time she'd worn it, while the same could hardly be said for the tortured fabric. It was a sorry sight now, torn in places, stained in others, and wrinkled everywhere from being crumpled and wadded in the corner for nearly a week. At least her own scars from the ordeal were internal.
Mostly internal, she thought with a growl as she scratched at her shamefully bare neck. The lack of weight there was an unending nuisance, like an itch crawling outside her reach beneath her skin, but what greater disrespect would there be than hanging some mortal bauble there as a replacement?
She was better than that. No matter who’d beaten her, or what they’d stolen from her.
The dress, though. That could go. She’d let it stain her room for too long—why it’d taken her close to seven days to think that, she didn’t want to dwell on. But at least she was up before noon and thinking about keeping her room tidy. That put her leagues ahead of Aria.
She knelt down and snatched up the dress from the corner, wrinkling her nose at the revolting feel and scent of ripped fabric and more dried-up liquids than she’d bothered to identify.
Still, Adagio ran her fingers over it. It had been a favorite of hers, once. She stared at it, only briefly. But, just before she’d written it off and walked towards the garbage, she froze. Familiar flecks of red winked at her. A few slivers of ruby, tangled in the fabric.
As soon as she touched them, a feeling stirred in her breast. Invigorating hope, from a source she’d feared had been extinguished. She felt her flesh warming, comforted as if by a hearth.
They were still there. Those little slivers, they hadn’t forgotten about her. They’d come home with her when all the mayhem of her defeat had made her drop the rest. No matter who’d tried to take them away from her, they’d come back.
The gems had broken. Shattered. She’d assumed they’d died on that stage, but if they’d followed her home, if there was still something in there…
She worked to tug the shards out of the dress, and let them rest in her palm. She hurried over to her desk and sat down, pouring the shards on the table and already feeling excitement quickening her pulse.
Thoughts and schemes bloomed in her head, nourished by that newfound hope.
And then a sound reached her, from somewhere outside the room. It careened down the hall, screeching and shrieking. It pulled and tugged and wrenched at Adagio’s nerves until she could focus on nothing else.
In all honesty, she could admit that, however imperfect the voice may have been, it carried just a faint enough echo of majesty to elevate it above what she’d heard from many mortal girls. Not that it was enough.
Her fingernails dug into the flesh of her palm. With a fist at her side and a scowl on her face, Adagio pushed herself out of her chair, pushing all her machinations out of her mind as she stormed out the door.
It was a quick jaunt down the hall to another door, the one with a plaque and a terminal rhinestone infection. Strings of tiny baubles too trifling to be called sparkling spelled out the same name that occupied Adagio’s thoughts.
She paused when the sound faltered, the gap in the melody filled by a faint sob.
Clenching her teeth, Adagio slipped inside.
And there, sitting on the side of a bed with her back to the door, hair down and still in her thin nightwear, was Sonata, her face buried in her palms.
A moment of silence passed. Then, Sonata lifted her head up, breathed deeply, and tried again. Another desperate attempt left her mouth, perhaps ever so slightly more graceful than the last.
But it was still hideous, and they both realized it. Sonata’s effort tapered off almost immediately, pinched off by shamefully sealing lips.
Adagio sighed quietly. She peered at the doorframe, lifted her hand to the wood and rapped her knuckles on it.
Sonata flinched, spinning in place to face her with bloodshot, puffy eyes. She said nothing, only turned her mournful eyes to the floor. “Oh. I- I didn’t realize you were—” She sniffled, rubbing her nose on the back of her hand. “Are you mad at me?”
Adagio paused, drumming her fingers on the wood. The tirade that had been on her tongue before faded. She approached slowly, and ran her fingers through Sonata’s hair as she sat beside her. “You’re chasing an echo,” she murmured. “And it’s never going to get closer like this, no matter how many days or weeks or years you listen for it.”
Thoughts of those shards made a smile come easily. “I know you want to make things right. But this isn’t getting us what we want.”
“I know.” Sonata looked away, wilting and wrapping her arms around herself. “B-but maybe if I get better, then—”
“Sonata.” Adagio cupped Sonata’s cheek. “I miss it too, and if there’s any way to get it back I’m going to find one.” She felt a smile coming on as she thought of the shards in her room, but pushed it aside, saving it for a more opportune moment. “But this? Don’t settle for something less.”
“But I want to keep singing.” Sonata reached up and touched the back of Adagio’s hand. Her eyes were wide, pleading and desperate. “Just let me try. It’s something, right? Even if it’s not the same, isn’t it—”
“Don’t lie to yourself. Look at you. You’re already on the verge of tears and you’ve just started. It is only going to hurt more from here.”
“How do you know?”
Adagio stared into Sonata’s eyes, eventually looking away and sighing as she lowered her hand. “We’re sirens, Sonata. We’re not like all those other people.” And we’re going to sing again, one day.
“Are we, though?”
Cocking an eyebrow, Adagio turned back to Sonata.
Sonata shrank back further, both hands fidgeting in front of her chest. “Sirens are supposed to sing, aren’t they? So if we can’t… doesn’t that mean we’re not sirens anymore?”
“Sonata…” Adagio pressed her fingers into her forehead. Her heart sank, despite her attempts to make it stop. “It doesn’t matter what we can or can’t do. We’re sirens.” She wished her gem was there to give her the hope she longed to feel instead of the half-hearted thing she mustered. “And if we have to claw our back up to the top all over again… then that’s exactly what we’ll do. What you’re doing right now…”
A first tear welled up in Sonata’s eye and trailed down her cheek as she shook her head. Her hands trembled, as did her legs when she stood up. “I think it’ll help. What’s so wrong about trying?” With another tear down her other cheek, she clamped her eyes shut and hurried out the door.
Adagio turned to watch her almost run headlong into Aria, who appeared by the doorway. The two shared a look, Sonata’s pleading and Aria’s inscrutable, before Sonata vanished around the corner.
Aria kept looking the way Sonata had gone, then yawned and rubbed her eyes. She leaned her head against the doorway, muttering a curse under her breath. “Have you thought about waiting till the afternoon before you make someone miserable?”
“Are you worried about her?” Adagio let herself chuckle and flash a smirk. “When did you get so selfless?”
“Hey, she can cry all she wants, but you know how it always goes. She storms off, sulks for an hour or two, and next thing you know she’s bawling on my shoulder. So don’t pretend it’s just her problem.” Aria grumbled, folding her arms. “I get that she’s being stupid, but would it kill you to let her do her thing and spare me from all this touchy-feely crap you girls get off to?”
“Forgive me for keeping her best interests in mind,” Adagio said as she stood up and smirked at Aria. “I could leave her to it, if you’d prefer. But, really, how well do you see that going for her?”
Aria stared back, her face stony. “You know how much we all liked singing. If… whatever she’s doing makes her happier, then what’s the problem? As annoying as she is when she’s cheerful, she’s even worse when she’s gloomy and mopey and stuff, and we’ve all got enough to put up with as is.”
“Maybe, Aria…” Adagio stood next to Aria, slipping an arm around her waist. “I don’t want her torturing herself and thought I’d spare her the heartbreak. You must’ve seen how hard it was for her. Besides…” Her lips spread into a wide smile. “I think we can find something more fulfilling.”
“Oh?” Aria’s expression remained neutral.
“We’re going to pay those girls a visit and make sure they get the punishment they deserve.”
“Is that so?” Aria’s eyes narrowed. “Sorry if I’m less than enthusiastic, but isn’t it… oh, I don’t know, kind of a terrible idea to go right back for more after the first smackdown?”
Adagio scoffed, and shot Aria a withering glare. “That depends. How likely do you think it they’ll squeak by with another fluke? We’ll be more careful, they won’t be as lucky. Problem solved.”
“And if they just decide to love us to pieces the second we show our faces?” Aria broke away from Adagio’s grip. “You’d better have a hell of a lot more than ‘we’ll be careful’ if you want us to go back so soon.”
“And what would you have us do, if you’re so much wiser?” Adagio put one hand on her hip and reached to her neck with the other. “Look what they did to us. How can you see the same things I do and say they don’t deserve punishment?”
“I don’t.” Aria scowled, a low snarl coming from her mouth. “If they get run over by a bus in the morning, I’ll bring fireworks to their funeral. But if they did something like this” —she clawed at her bare neck— “how much worse do you think it’ll be the second time?”
“So we… what? Scamper off with our tails between our legs?” Adagio stepped forward, clenching one hand into a fist. “We’re better than that, Aria.”
Aria bored into Adagio’s eyes, face twisted into a hateful glower. “So we wait. Ten years from now, they’ll either have keeled over in their own time or they’ll have forgotten about us.”
“You want us to wait? They mutilated us. Stripped of us our power, of our beauty.”
“You think I don’t know that?”
“I know that the last thing we need right now is you—”
“Girls!”
Aria and Adagio whipped their heads to the side to scowl in synchrony at a trembling Sonata.
Fixed by two wordless demands, Sonata bit her lip and gulped. “H-how does this help?”
Exchanging scowls, Aria and Adagio slowly backed off from each other. Adagio’s eyes flitted over to cast a momentary glare on Sonata, but then she pushed past Aria. “We’ll finish this later,” she hissed as she marched back to her bedroom and slammed the door behind her.
The next morning, Adagio hauled herself out of bed, casting a lingering stare at the shards on her desk as she sat up and stretched. She threw a robe around herself, tied it loosely, and stepped outside her door.
It was there that the lack of activity became apparent, first with a lack of scent. Sonata almost invariably had something or other cooking in the morning, but this time Adagio detected not even a subtle waft.
From there, a glance into Aria’s bedroom revealed an empty bed, with the covers in disarray as always, but the room itself ever so slightly neater. Trinkets and baubles she’d grown used to seeing on the shelves and walls were replaced by blank space, and even the star-shaped hairclips that tended to find sanctuary on the nightstand were conspicuously absent.
Sonata’s room existed in a similar state. A few stuffed animals were missing—an otter and a walrus, if Adagio recalled correctly—as was the spectrum-spanning rack of nail polish.
Adagio stared at the empty, diminished rooms, eventually curling her lip and closing the doors. One last sweep led her past the kitchen, where two sets of house keys had vanished, and into the garage, where the solitary occupant was nowhere to be found.
The evidence was damning.
“Fine,” Adagio murmured to herself. “Let them see how long they can last without me.”
It was only then that the house’s emptiness became fully apparent. Deprived of savory odors, or sounds either grating or soothing, the building felt desolate.
But it was no matter. They’d come crawling back to her once they got their heads screwed on straight. Even they weren’t that thick.
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So, I was originally planning on posting this chapter tomorrow, but then I remembered tomorrow was Thanksgiving, so I went ahead and posted it a day early. I’ll probably plan on updating every Thursday going onwards, though, so the next chapter should be coming on the 29th.
And the descriptions of Aria and Sonata's bedrooms after they'd gone, with them ever so slightly neater, and missing trinkets, was a lovely touch. Especially with Adagio remembering which cuddlies weren't there
Is there a significance to it being an otter and a walrus?
Poor Adagio! So quickly turned on!
I find it interesting that Adagio is the one that wants to strike back immediately and Aria the one that suggests to simply hold out. I suppose inaction is a branch of her usual apathy. Though she might have an interesting point. For High Schoolers in senior year, just waiting a few years and life itself might do more of a job breaking up the humane 7 than anything else.
In anycase, love the emotions in this, even if it leaves our poofy haired leader without any subjects.
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Otters are cute, walruses are goofy-looking, and they both like water, which is, like, every Sonata-approval-box checked.
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This is an odd one--Aria's confrontational verbally, and quick to jump down people's throats, but in Rainbow Rocks, Adagio's the one who gets physical more often (Both with Sunset and with Aria), even though she tends to shut conflicts down rather than drag them out like Aria does. Between that aggression and the same inflated ego she has here that makes her livid that somebody else looks like her... obviously, there's a lot of room to fiddle with them, but I think Adagio being the vengeful one isn't entirely out of the question.
I'm glad you're liking the emotion so far
There should be plenty more to come!
... Wait, was this a flashback from last chapter? It's... not clear.
9574031 It's set before the first chapter, revealing what happened to leave Adagio on her own. I want to say it's about ten months earlier, but I'm not certain.