It took her hours to try and make it work, perhaps that was why the results were so disappointing. She had honestly thought on some level that by changing something about her, something visual that she could feel somehow, transformed. That she might find in the streaks of color that remained after hours of stripping the black out of her hair and adding in vibrant blue, she might find reassurance, solidarity… confidence.
She fingered the still damp strands that framed her face and shook her head slowly, her shoulders sagging under the weight of resignation.

She didn’t even –look- different to herself let alone feel different. All she’d done was nearly destroy two strips of her own hair by bleaching the devil out of them.
She almost, almost wished she’d left the strips that near white blond that had made her heart ache, not only because it had been so very hard to bring them to that color, and a crispy shade at that… but because it was like the hair of her ‘family’.

They were the only people for so long, that had wanted her in this world, maybe just this country but somehow the city, the states, and hell even the house seemed to encompass the whole of the universe in that moment.

She wrenched open the bathroom cabinets till she found what she was seeking, a pair of scissors, older, long and slender with just a hint of rust staining the inside edge where they folded together. She grabbed a handful of her hair and cut, leaving a jagged bang behind before she grabbed another handful and cut that away too letting handfuls of long black and crisped blue hair falling into forlorn strands on the floor before she even realized she was crying. Ragged sobs as she clutched the edge of the sink. Staring at her now even further bedraggled expression, tears stained a faded grey though they did little to smear the ‘waterproof’ liner that ringed her vivid eyes.

She rubbed the back of her hand hard over her eyes and stared down at the hair that scattered the floor and tried to bite back the ragged sound in her throat. Everything just felt like it had gone so wrong. There were new faces everywhere but there was no sense left in her that she belonged, that she fit in. She wanted so much to care, to take care of the new people who fought in the war, but she felt… nothing. She went through the motions and it seemed only as though she were dancing a dance with no music, awkwardly tugged along by strings that were half broken.

She waited for a long moment, waiting for her hands to stop trembling enough that she could neaten her bangs. She wrote a small promise on the palm of her hand to buy the best conditioner she could and to see if a hair salon could make her hair look natural again, she splashed cold water on her face, scrubbing off the remains of her eye liner till it was just a shadow and then cleaned up the mess of hair she had left behind.

There would be no sign she had been here, no hint that this had been anything but a calm, and rational choice. She would not disappoint them while she lived under their roof, which still meant too much. She was disappointing enough in her own right because she was NOT her ‘sister’, she was not beautiful and blond and American.

She started to throw the scissors back into the cupboard and then stopped, pulled them back, clutching them tight to her chest and took them with her, clutched to her like they were a life line even as she glanced back to make sure that there was no sign that she had been there, that there was nothing left behind that said the shadow of their –true- daughter had remained.