She stood, face downcast, staring at her fidgeting hands.

He stood behind their mother, smirking in triumph, with a look of smugness that never should have belonged to a twelve-year-old.

She looked at the floor, tears flooding her eyes. She closed her eyes tightly to keep them at bay, but, as the ranting continued, she found it harder and harder to fight the burning behind her eyelids.

Her red-faced mother swung her hands this way and that in elaborate gestures to express the anger she believed her words couldn't. But, she was wrong. It was the words that hurt the girl most. She'd done nothing to warrant such a verbal attack.

But who'd believe the quiet, forgotten daughter over the wonderful, favorite son?

She flinched as her mother's tirade because a pitch louder and a hand passed too close to her face. This only added to the fire. Her mother continued screaming about ungrateful children, liars, and a whole host of other topics that had all been visited before.

Liar.

Know-it-all.

Ungrateful.

Burden.

Bitch.

Useless.

What more could be said? The girl's tears flowed free as she released any strength she had left. There was no use in fighting – the battle had already been won. Her mother screeched one final time before sending the girl to her room.

"You're a pain in the ass and unwanted, get out of my sight!"

Not lifting her eyes from the floor, the daughter trekked up her stairs in an all-too-familiar slump of exhausted, emotional pain. Reaching her room, she quietly shut the door and slid down the front to sit on the floor. Grasping her knees close to her chest, she quietly sobbed into her jeans.

This was the part where heroes and knights in shining armor would rush in to save the damsel in distress. The girl looked around her barren room in a hopeless grasp for anything that could be her savior. There was no one. She wasn't a beautiful princess with a prince on the way. She wasn't a noble maiden worth fighting a dragon to save. She was a nobody who had no one.

Punished for a crime she'd never committed, she sat alone in her anguish, crying out for any sign of rescue. Where's my savior?