A Sisters Failure.

The silence almost ached around them, like a third person in the room neither would acknowledge despite being intensely aware of its presence.
Ella extended her nimble hand toward her sister. She couldn't believe how it shook, as if the cold December winter had slipped beneath her skin and frozen her very soul.
Though now, Ella felt as though it might have.

Veronica's revelation had torn Ella's heart not just in two, but ripped it into pathetically unfixable pieces. She had realised that Veronica was an adult and that she couldn't protect her any longer.
That Veronica was old enough to make her own decisions, and that she was making the wrong ones.

Ella's unsteady hand make contact with Veronica's unnaturally cold hand. Both girls looked down at if for a moment, before Veronica snatched it away, instinctively putting distance between Ella and herself.

Veronica wanted to leave. She had only told Ella because she had been drunk and stupid enough to let hints slip last night, and she had decided it was better to come clean by herself, sober and able-minded, then to wait around for Ella to catch her out.
Dread weighed down on her chest, wanting Ella to shout. Wanted to be screamed at, punished for how she had hurt everyone. For how she'd hurt herself.
Except Ella didn't yell. She merely looked at Veronica, pain and fear set so deep in her cloudy green eyes, that Veronica wanted to close them, in hopes of destroying the pained, torturous expression that should never have touched her care-free, free-spirited sister.

With one last decisive breath, Veronica began to explain her problem with a cold detached voice. Ella however had stopped listening, focusing only on Veronica's trembling hands, and telling herself,
"I failed her. What did I do wrong?"