Part of her wants to cringe.

This is not music - it's a cacophony, the movements she could sing and pick apart like the back of her hand. Heard so many times, memorized in her sleep. Imprinted and threaded through her soul like interlaced fingers, overlayed with her memory.

But she still wants to cringe. It's the memory that does it, the memory of how she knows these songs so well. The pain ceased a long time ago - that was another lifetime, and she was another person. But it was the hours, the days, with her head laid down on her desk and a drunken ghost of a smile plastered over pale features, the songs playing through her head on repeat. Over and over and over again.

It's the same reason she still loves the songs from her youth - the memory. She plays them now and again. It doesn't burn - there were the promises, and the lies, and the bleak darkness after of hopelessness personified. She peels away the lyrics, listens to the same things she always listened to. It's all the same in so many ways.

She cringes. It so very not the same.