birthright_rpg | The World is Tiny

With a wadded up hand towel, Rhiannon wiped fog from the mirror in Cian’s bathroom and looked at herself. Her hair was wet from the shower, and there were raccoon circles under her eyes, remnants of yesterday’s makeup. She spun some toilet paper from the roll and used it to wipe away the mascara. As she tipped her face left and right, she saw the mark that Cian’s mouth left on her neck; it was somewhere between a bite and a bruise, but it was faint and wouldn’t last the day. There was a comb near the sink. She parted her hair and brushed the tangles out of the lengths.

It was after noon. Early in the morning, Cian had left the cabin to take a boat of passengers on a day cruise. Rhiannon just rolled over and went back to sleep, tucked safely in covers that smelled like the two of them and their lovemaking. When she woke up again, she was surprised to have been out so long, and she sat on the edge of the bed feeling disoriented by heavy slumber and a bad dream she couldn’t quite remember.

Rhiannon pulled on her sweater, jeans, and boots and rummaged through Cian’s cabinets until she found what she needed to brew a pot of coffee. She took a mug of it onto the front steps and sat down, blowing across the steaming surface.

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“Jesus, Cian…” Her hands released the cup, which now rested precariously in her lap, one pressing into the leather upholstery of the couch, the other touching the center of her abdomen. A reaction not to his story, but the sudden stab of grief in her body, which she felt as clearly as if it had been her family. Rhiannon thought of the death of her mother and how badly it hurt; what if she had lost four instead of one?

"You were right to do what you did," she said. There was no other reaction that would make sense to her.

"Courts migh' think diff'rent," he huffed, lifting his cup to drain the rest of the coffee. As he lowered it he felt a strange warmth wash through him, something he'd never felt before, and he glanced across at her, a puzzled frown on his face.

Rhiannon shook her head. “They’d be hypocrites. You had the means to do what other people who’ve lost someone can only dream about,” she said. “If cancer was a physical entity I could kill, I would’ve done it a dozen times for my mother.” Cancer, another lawless thing that took lives indiscriminately, but there had been no one to blame, no justice to exact, and she had been a helpless girl of twelve. Not yet a slayer.

It should bother her, she thought. Cian had murdered men. It should at least send a buzz of warning down her spine, but it didn't. He wasn't some sociopath. What she sensed from him was tightly reined sadness.

There was nothing that could be said that would ease that type of loss, and he didn't diminish it by attempting any sort of platitudes. Instead he looked at her and nodded, reaching a hand over and taking hers, interlacing their fingers and letting their hands rest on the couch between them.

"Does someone know you were responsible? The IRA, the police?" Rhiannon still searched for the reason he had fled Ireland, if the attacks had been carried out in Siofra's form. Who could make that connection? Would he be considered a suspect, just by virtue of his family connection to the victims of the bombing?

"There were rumours startin', 'n I couldn' pu' Annie a' risk," he said, voice low and thick again. "'nd there were a therian teacher here I needed t' see, t' help me reach Siofra, 'n t' try 'n control 'im." He looked at her with an almost apologetic grimace. "It weren't always as easy f' me," he added, "'n back then, m' anger were m' biggest enemy. I'd shift, 'n not always at the best o' times. So I came here, t' learn, 'n ended up stayin'. 's a group who'd shoot first 'n ask questions later, 'n then there's the cops, 'n some professor in Leicester 's discovered this new testing, DNA or summin'."

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