#c siobhan

[vanishingreyes]

@banisheed replied to your post “[pm] Are you lonely?”:

[pm] Me. I’m asking. Are you?

​[pm] You know what. Yes. Terribly so.

#banisheed #c siobhan

[kadavernagh]

TIMING: Current LOCATION: Banshee court PARTIES: Siobhan, Regan, Wynne, Anita, and many more! SUMMARY: The day has come for Siobhan's re-trial, so that she might be allowed back into Saol Eile. But she's not the only one on trial, as Regan is being heard for her crimes against her grandmother. Faerie court is not quite what the folklore makes it out to be.

“Siobhan Dolan is here for a re-trial. Do you remember her? You may not. Her disobedience of Fate led to the death of seven of our sisters. She was exiled four decades ago and has earned a re-consideration today.”

Siobhan had been here before. Not on the same spot on the stage—why did they call it a stage?—or with her back so straight or her face dry but she had been here before. She’d been down in the audience, she’d been tossed bloodied into center stage—wasn’t it strange to call a feature of justice a stage?—and she’d begged there just as she’d once cheered from the sides. The younger banshees wouldn’t know, but entertainment was hard to come by when you were in an insular community of screaming women. No, “hard to come by” was the wrong turn of phrase, wasn’t it? Siobhan couldn’t look up, the sun was bright and just the quick glance she’d given them had pinked her vision and turned every blink into a lightshow. Everything was different: the stage used to be angled the other way, there used to be a roof, the skeletons still had skin, and Siobhan wanted to be here. Even that day—she wouldn’t think about that day—she had wanted to be here; she thought that was where the tragedy lived. All her life, all she had ever wanted was to be here. She had been here, she wanted to be here, she was here.

It was just that some fraction of her mind was doing this odd thing—it wasn’t so odd, she’d been doing it all her life—but it was such a tiny piece. An insignificant portion—no part of the brain is insignificant to the function of a creature—would occasionally interject. Siobhan was certain, however, trying to adjust her rosy vision of the court, that it wasn’t really her. She smiled over at Anita. She turned and waved and smiled at the crowd—audience. She wasn’t nervous; why would she be nervous? Because she had directly disobeyed Putrecia’s wishes? Because she wasn’t prepared? Because the last time she was here, they—no, she wasn’t thinking about that. There was no good reason to be nervous and because Siobhan was logical, and never—rarely—emotional, she wasn’t worried at all. 

They would take her back, because that’s what family did and everyone here was some extension of her family—not by blood, she’d sooner be a snail than be related to any of these women. She noted the moment she was led to the stage that the only person in attendance she did share blood with was Orla, her cousin. She did not look at Orla. Her mother once said these court proceedings were childish drivel—she didn’t seem to find anything so childish when she…

The old door creaked open and murmurs rose from the crowd-audience. Banshees didn’t hope, but something like it sat in Siobhan’s stomach when she turned around. Her pink, sun-devoured vision couldn’t decipher the form until she joined her. No, it was too short to be her—Oh, but maybe it’s—instead, it was Regan. Maybe the stage was apt after all, Siobhan’s deflating body was almost theatrical. “...Regan?” she asked, carrying the broken corpse of hope that somehow the sun had made her see spectors of annoying banshees. But that wasn’t true, the sun couldn’t do that—or maybe it could, she wasn’t the one that was the doctor. Why was she here? Was it not enough that she had their respect? Their need? A grandmother who wanted her? A lifetime of worthiness to earn, easily laid in front of her? What was it that Regan was trying to rob her of now? On the higher side of the stage, Siobhan looked unflattering beside the woman. Now, their incompatible heights were on display, and Siobhan was made to look like a giant; the tight, low-cut dress seemed like the tacky venture that it was. Now, her glamour was stupid. Now, Regan was here, and the world was a little less pink. 

———

Putrecia's legacy could be felt in every cruelty of the court. The skeletons (human, mostly) hanging on the walls of what was essentially their town hall, the uneven stage, the way the audience had nothing holding them back to keep them from climbing right up next to those on trial, the array of knives available at the judge’s podium. Most telling was the Ciorcal na Cinniúint – a big, spinning wheel that could make or break a case. With possible outcomes such as “witness to the stand” and “closing arguments” alongside “human sacrifice” and “mushroom dance”. When Regan lived here for years, she never came to watch these cases. She had no interest in seeing banshees turn their daggers on each other (on anyone; no, don’t think about that right now). Her absence seemed like a mistake now that she had little idea of what to expect, other than what she had heard from others, and what she was seeing on the wheel. And though Regan knew she was not about to die, banshees preferred to be far more inventive, anyway, so it meant nothing. (Elias had wished he were dead. Maybe that would have been better.)

Her grandmother wasn’t about to die, either. She would suffer for decades, the banshees providing palliative care, because banshees simply did not kill each other. That she facilitated the death of her grandmother – someone she should have revered – made her crime especially heinous.

Fae needed nothing but words to bind each other, so Regan wore no cuffs as she was led up to the stage – she had promised not to escape or try to harm anyone while court was in session. (Like she was someone who would harm others now. Was she? The blood on her shirt seemed relevant.) Her obedience was not rewarded. When was it? Trudging through the crowd that made her skin catch fire, she was positioned on the lower half of the sloped stage, which made the judge’s podium look a full foot taller. And there, above Regan glittering like the proud, golden statue of Talamh-Ithe, across the stage was… “Siobhan?” A wave of disgust rippled through Regan, but also confusion. The other banshee couldn’t be exiled a second time. Was this some sort of second chance? There had to be something Regan wasn’t seeing yet. There always seemed to be.

Her eyes searched for the tiniest amount of reassurance in the crowd, but no banshees would look at her; it didn’t matter how many times Regan had patched them up at the clinic, had dressed their wounds and kept infections at bay – what she had done to her grandmother was unforgivable. (Was this what Siobhan had felt when they first arrived here? Probably not. That hag thought being despised was better than being forgotten.) One of the banshees had even dusted off the band-aid dispenser and set it in the middle of the audience, a reminder that she, too, was disposable. Regan shivered at the sheer overwhelmingness and uncertainty of the situation. Just when she was about to pull her eyes away in favor of staring at her own feet, twisting her ring endlessly around her finger, she saw Wynne’s curly head of hair, and Metzli standing taller than most of the others (a hallucination?), and behind all of the banshees, a small-eared bear with sooty fur. 

Regan had wanted to leave. There. She thought it. She had come so close, so close to– but those rolling jade hills shriveled black and flattened, and the endless highway, tantalizingly close to Saol Eile, coiled and became a noose around her neck. Her grandmother was no longer an obstacle to leaving, but every single banshee packed in here was. Regan had people here who would and had fought for her, people who traveled across half the world to find her – which was stupid; humans were stupid and full of hope, though perhaps those two flaws were synonymous – and now they would watch what happened when lesser beings tried to dismantle and disentangle the threads of fate, what happened when they got their mediocre fingers jammed into the knot and were pulled inside of it instead of unraveling it.

———

“Scread go ciúin while we are in session,” Eithne reminded everyone. It was inappropriate to tell banshees they were not allowed to scream, so the best she could do was remind everyone to do so quietly. “Court will be held in English today.” Whenever that was decided, it never needed an explanation. Banshees all inherently knew it was so that the humans watching the proceedings might have a mental breakdown (they were just so fragile). And most of the banshees here, by now, realized that the aos si now had a few extra humans than they used to. They were eager to take advantage of that, a payback for humans thinking they could sneak in here and walk among them without being caught. 

“Siobhan Dolan is here for a re-trial. Do you remember her? You may not. Her disobedience of Fate led to the death of seven of our sisters. She was exiled four decades ago and has earned a re-consideration today.” A few of the banshees in the crowd did not scream so silently. “Putrecia has determined this.” That stopped the uproar. “We will know her fate first, and then move on to a new trial for Regan Kavanagh, the leanbh who pushed Cliodhna Caomhánach, her own grandmother, into Farraige na Buanachta.” Now the other banshees seemed solemn. Cliodhna was not nice, no one would call her nice, but she was respected. 

“Siobhan comes to us with her own lawyer, devoid of experience. Regan does not have a lawyer. We have issued her a pubic defender.” Eithne placed the pubis on Regan’s podium. The pubic defender did make compelling arguments sometimes, but Eithne did not think Fate would smile upon Regan Kavanagh today.

“If anyone has questions for Siobhan Dolan and Regan Kavanagh, save them. We will see if the wheel allows it. We first join Putrecia for keening and the judge selection.”

———

Putrecia wobbled onto the stage as quickly as her old legs and hunched back could carry her. Her pendulous breasts swayed with each step. Her mouth was opened in a giddy, toothless gape. She wasn’t the judge anymore, but this still filled her with a juvenile kind of excitement, bringing back fond memories of wings being plucked from the backs of exiles and knives carving up traitors. When she scuttled up, she squinted at the taller banshee on stage with foggy eyes. Who was that? Clare? Odd. Out of her old, dry throat erupted a sharp but melodic keen. Respecting Putrecia and the tradition, other banshees joined in, and the town hall filled with the sound of a hundred wails. The sound droned for about fifteen seconds before Putrecia’s mouth snapped shut. She was hungry now. And tired. Every time she came up here she was reminded how much her knees creaked and why she stopped doing this. 

The non-banshees became evident, as if they were not already. When the keening stopped, Putrecia’s eyes glazed over the audience. From behind her cataracts, everything looked like a blur. Even so, she could pick out a hare from a field of foxes. Her crooked finger pointed straight ahead. “Ár breitheamh.” Putrecia did not know English, but the meaning was obvious.

The judge had been chosen.

Putrecia’s skeletal fingers beckoned the judge up to the podium.

———

The aos sí had been abuzz with one of the most horrible sounds it could be. It wasn’t the corpse flies, though Wynne didn’t like those. It wasn’t the screams, which made their ears and head hurt. But it was the news that spread like wildfire, the whispers of Nora and Regan arrested, that had been truly terrifying. That, combined with the fact that Elias was recovering from multiple stab wounds in a dusty attic after mediocre if not bad first aid, left Wynne in a strenuous position.

They weren’t sure if there were any banshees that would petition for their friends’ release. They weren’t sure if there was any feasible way to get Elias out of this place with all this happening, either. Wynne had considered calling Emilio, but they didn’t want to alarm him too much — because this was a situation to be alarmed about, wasn’t it? Somehow they were the only person they knew not restrained or injured gravely, and responsibility was pressing on their shoulders. How were they supposed to solve this, though? They didn’t understand human law, let alone banshee law. They knew how to run away from a place like this, but only by themself, and there was no way they were running by themself. (They wondered if that was what Emilio would want them to do. To just leave now that they still could.)

Unsure of what to do, they had ventured to where all the banshees were gathering, clutching a phalange in their hand and keeping their head low. They had Elias left behind after checking his injuries, promising him that they’d return and trying not to cry at the sight of him. They stood among the crowd, somehow having ended halfway through it and stared at the stage throughout the proceedings. They had only looked away to stare at a bright white bear, vaguely in the distance, and they had wondered how Nora had gotten out, or if they were simply losing their mind.

There was only one other familiar face there — Siobhan. From the coffee and the sometimes good advice, who Emilio had warned them about. There was a spinning wheel that had them very concerned as the words ‘human sacrifice’ were on one of the options. There was Regan, eventually, and then the two women who seemed to be in charge. They knew how to look at these kinds of people with respect, but Wynne found it very hard to look anything but afraid.

So they looked afraid all through the words the tall, curly haired banshee said. They were feeling a kind of dread that was bone deep, that was not dissimilar from the dread they had felt for all of their life — but acute again, rising to press on their chest. The kind of dread that forewarned disaster, if not death. They did not know how to save Regan now.. They did not know how to save Elias. If Nora would be okay, if she appeared as a dangerous beast. They saw no road out of this.

The wheel was spun and told the crowd that a judge was to be chosen. Wynne wasn’t sure how this was done, wondered if there was some kind of ritual — but it was as simple as an old lady pointing a finger into the crowd. Around them, banshees scattered and an opening parted. Like Moses and the sea, a story they’d been taught when they’d been younger. The old lady was pointing at them.

Wynne felt the dread in their stomach grow even larger and they were frozen. The women around them, though, started pushing them towards the stage, nails and fingers pricking in their back as they started moving. Legs as heavy as lead, their stomach sinking through the ground and into the earth. They moved up on the stage, eyes piercing through Regan with quiet panic. 

———

Throughout her life, people had always told Anita that she had a unique way of fitting into any situation she found herself in. Some called it delusion, others called it confidence. The lamia never really thought much about it, until she found herself in this aos sí. Agreeing to be Siobhan’s lawyer seemed like an easy thing to do - she used to be infatuated with those Shonda Rimes legal dramas. It seemed like a lot of grandstanding and moral righteousness which were things she could feign with ease. But the reality of what was unfolding before her was beginning to set in. This wasn’t some silly thing that Anita could just put the bare minimum effort into. This was important to Siobhan so that meant it should be important to her, too, didn’t it? Seeing Regan come into the courtroom felt surreal, hearing that she would also be on trial was baffling. But Anita had to focus. She had a job to do. 

———

Metzli didn’t know what to expect at a fae trial, but everything seemed just about right. It smelled as if despair and defeat had a scent, and it was foul in a way that made the vampire shudder. Moreover, there was a bone defender. It all made sense, felt natural, even. It just wasn’t the kind of boning Metzli was looking forward to.

———

Things in that silly American town hadn’t gone quite as Max had hoped. She had killed only an insignificant few, had failed to dismember the woman Regan seemed most fond of or the child who lived in her apartment. But things here, she thought, would go better. Things were always better here; things made sense. In Wicked’s Rest, things had been so disjointed, so nonsensical. But Saol Eile, things were right. Everything fit together exactly as it should. The stupid judge who thought they were important, the wheel that gave everything a place and a purpose, the banshees on trial who would get whatever Fate delivered to them. And Max, standing beside her sister with their mother hovering behind them. Saol Eile was right. Saol Eile was home. And Saol Eile would return to her all the little things that Wicked’s Rest had taken — shard by shard.

———

Tina figured that maybe she hadn’t done the best job ever in Maine, in dumb stupid America, but she’d tried (not that trying meant anything unless there was success). She was here now with her sister and her mother, and that was where she was meant to be. It was home, it was Fate, it was where she and Max belonged. Besides, she got to watch Siobhan and Regan have all that they deserved handed to them and that made her belly warm in a sort of way that could’ve been confused for being a feeling of one sort or another if she weren’t above that. She straightened up, trying to seem as tall as she could (which, of course, wasn’t very tall) and grinning over at her sister, watching their mother, admirably stone-faced (one day Tina would be like that, she knew it), eager for the trial to begin.

———

As relieved as Clare was to be home, she was disappointed to leave before she had finished righting Siobhan’s wrongs. There was so much to clean up that she considered going back to that horrid town once this was all said and done. Those worries were an ocean away and for now, she was meant to present in the crowd to view the trial. Well, trials, apparently. It appeared that while she was away, the leanbh had come out to play and had been almost as awful as the wingless wonder. Almost. To remind Siobhan and everyone else there what it was she had done, how far she had fallen, she had borrowed Orla’s garish hat. It was hideous, something she wouldn’t want to be wearing when she received her glao cinniúint, the one announcing her own final Fate, but it felt appropriate for the occasion. The black and red spotted patterns were impossible to miss atop her head, even among the crowd of various wings and what not. She hoped Siobhan enjoyed her fashion choices. 

She noticed a handful of unfamiliar faces gathered near the wingless wonder herself. That familiar feeling of death turned on his head and gut open clawed down her back again. Another undead. What, was Siobhan collecting them, now? Every time Clare was certain she couldn’t get worse, she found a way. Disgusting. She’d have to make a note to help steer Fate back on course once the dust was settled. Again. 

———

Nora sat in the back of the crowd, a bear among banshees. The additional height made for a great advantage in the crowd, she could see clearly over the banshees heads as they gathered like little ants waiting for carnage. Every now and then a banshee would take too much interest in the bear and the back, and the bear would display her teeth. She meant it as a threat each time, but the banshees always took it as a delightful display. Freaks. A numb nervousness spread over her as she saw Wynne center stage, Wynne who just wanted to leave. There was also a shock to see Metzli here. She hoped Metzli, Wynne and Regan would all escape with ease, but was settled in to watch the show. 

———

There were few surprises in human courts. The idea of “discovery” tried to keep things fair between the two opposing sides, however fair irrational humans were capable of pretending to be. Court here was different; that had become immediately clear. And Eithne surely relished Regan’s shock (however muted) at seeing Siobhan when she had walked up here. Eithne spoke of a retrial, which made… some sense; it lined up with her initial thought. Even though Siobhan had fetched Regan and brought her here like a dog wishing to please, they turned her away, because there was more, always more, whenever there was space for it. And with how desperately Siobhan wished to return, there was plenty of space. 

Elias was insistent behind her eyes, even when they were open; her grandmother still screeched in her ears; the ring on Regan’s finger begged almost compulsively to be squeezed. Jade had said she had the soggiest, wettest heart. Right now, she couldn’t slow it. Regan knew her best chance of getting out of this was to maintain composure and prove to the other banshees that she was one of them. The thought of that lie coated her stomach in iron. She was not one of them. She had never been one of them. Never had that been more obvious than when she almost watched Elias die.

She glanced desperately at the pubis. It was lovely, but offered no advice. It was really more pubic than defender.

Regan stayed silent during the keening, certain that if she attempted it, a shrill scream would come out instead, and such an embarrassment would not help her right now (actually, she’d prefer to never scream again). But when Putrecia lifted her finger toward the crowd, long, dirty nail pointing at someone she knew, Regan was paying attention. Wynne. She pointed at Wynne. Regan fished for their eyes, but the look she gave was anything but reassuring. It begged Wynne to listen, to obey, which came with a guilt all its own; she knew how many years of Wynne’s life had been spent doing just that. But nothing could change the course of things now, and Wynne was pulled up to the platform, ushered to approach the wheel. To Regan’s relief, Wynne listened. 

———

In the years Siobhan was away—exiled—they must’ve developed a new form of comedic justice: a bone-rattling Shakespearan imitation of a court-room tale. All the world’s a stage, and so on. But Regan wouldn’t agree to do something like this because Regan wasn’t fun, and comedy was supposed to be fun. Siobhan wasn’t having fun; Regan didn’t seem like she was having fun; the banshees were serious insofar as they could be with the big wheel and the nonsensical pick of judge who—was that Wynne? Siobhan bit her lip to keep herself from laughing. Reality came to her with new tidings: dead magpies rattling out the news. So, Regan did push her grandmother into Farraige na Buanachta. The pubic defender was silent. Wynne was here. Wynne was the judge. Wynne was going to do a terrible job. When life happened on a stage, it was easy to abstract; when it happened because of Fate, when it happened to performers, when it happened and one was not meant to feel anything at all. They didn’t care. Why would they care? When had they ever cared? 

That was her life, her greatest shame, that Eithne had just shared like the morning update on which humans had sunk more into Farraige na Buanachta overnight. Her face burned as she glanced around, hoping to find at least one face that wasn’t horrified. Most had no real expression at all. Of course, this was her life, not theirs. She was on a stage. Why did she care? Why had she ever cared? 

Had Regan’s childishness ruined what would have been an easy reunion? Or had it never mattered? Finally, Siobhan turned to Orla, and…who was that there? Those neat strands of blonde hair under a…hat? A very familiar hat? Who gave Clare the hat Orla made from her torn wings? Orla, probably. Orla who grinned at her in a sea of solemn faces, holding two thumbs up in a gesture for something that didn’t exist. Siobhan turned back to the judge’s podium, shaking off fantasies of murdering Clare, and held two thumbs up for Wynne; no matter what they did, it wouldn’t be right. Siobhan had been here before—now she understood why they called it a stage. There was only one thing to do when on one. She didn’t care if Regan understood that when all that mattered was if Wynne did. 

———

Eithne paid the human ushered onto the stage little mind. They were nothing if not a tool to spin the wheel. They could be replaced by a humerus or femur. It was nice to spin the wheel with one of those, to push the little rods with the tip of the bone. She preferred it, because it meant she got to hold a bone and wave it around as she spoke. It added weight to her words. But a human would do, too, and she could just use her hands. So she gestured to the wheel and said in her accented English, “Spin the wheel.” She looked at the human for a moment, wondering if they needed to hear the instruction repeated. Sometimes they were a little slow to process a banshee’s demands. 

They had been raised obedient. Wynne knew nothing of what was happening around them but they knew what was expected of them. They knew how to act on a stage like this, how to hold themself and how to keep their mouth sealed. How to obey those that stood above them – which were no longer Regan or even Siobhan, but a strange woman who held herself like an elder would. 

How many times had they stood like they stood now back at home? Looking over the people that made up the community they belonged to? There was no altar here, but there was sacrifice. There was tradition. There were people to make an example out of. They had done that too, at home, though not in a way like this. In subtler ways, behind closed doors. Not with a large spinning wheel that they had seen only once before. They realized with a pang that it’d been at the renaissance fair they’d attended with Elias.

They moved closer to the wheel and gave it a hefty tug, the noise of the wheel clicking echoing in their bones. They held their breath as the various options passed, their eyes constantly following the portion of the wheel reserved for human sacrifice. It didn’t land close to it, though. Instead the yellow wedge slowly passed over ‘bring out the worms’ before it eventually landed on the next thing: ‘opening statement’. They didn’t say anything.

Eithne glared daggers at the mute human. (This was one of her favorite expressions, if only she could make her glowers send daggers.) It was the judge’s duty to speak the words for those in the crowd who might not be able to read what the result was. Her voice was a cold hiss, “Announce it,” she instructed. It was a very courteous thing for her to do. The humans couldn’t help that they were slow to understand their very logical ways. It was only their shortcoming nature.

Wynne cleared their throat. “Opening statement.” A beat. “Please.” 

———

Once the judge? Yes, they seemed to be the judge. Once they asked for an opening statement, Anita quickly rose to her feet and made her way up to the stage - the gentle clack of her stilettos echoing throughout the room muddled only by some faint whispers undoubtedly regarding her aforementioned lack of experience. Surely she didn’t look like she lacked experience. None of the clothes she had brought with her were sufficient for a fae courtroom so she had gone out to the city one day and found a white pantsuit that she looked devastatingly sexy in. After all, that did seem to be a crucial part of the lawyer thing according to Siobhan. 

“Go raibh maith agat,” Anita offered as she got to the stage and stood beside Siobhan, but the looks of confusion and disdain that she received from the audience informed her that she had likely butchered the Irish thank you beyond recognition. “Lucanidae - commonly known as stag beetles -are the rarest beetle species in the world. Because of how rare they are, many cultures believe that they symbolize strength and power. Those who collect and preserve beetles will pay several thousands of dollars to acquire a stag for their collection.” Gesturing over towards Siobhan, she continued, “The woman before you is a similarly rare specimen. And I am not just talking about how long her leg bones are.” Anita paused for a laughter that never came. Clearing her throat, she shrugged off the slight awkward silence. 

“She is the kind of person you want to have in your community. Like the stag beetle she brings with her beauty, value, strength, and power. I can say from experience that life is never boring when Siobhan Dolan is around. Cheek bones that could draw blood and probably have. Today you will see things like I do, to deny Siobhan would be to deny Fate.” Anita didn’t know a whole lot about the banshees relationship with Fate, but from what she had gathered it was a significant one. Maybe it was a bit of a hail mary, but hell, it wasn’t like she couldn’t tell a lie. 

———

Everyone has to die. Some people live longer than others, but every person comes into being and then ceasing. It is the cycle that everyone knows, and the one that banshees revere and forewarn. To Metzli, for a while, it did not matter what choices you made, but the commands you obey. 

As long as you follow those, as this supposed Fate wills, all will be right. There is no room for one’s existence outside of what duty calls of them. Metzli would make the argument that that was simply surviving in worship. But they had no voice to give at that moment. They had their own obligation in love, staying silent in a courtroom that looked nothing like the ones on television. That alone felt like a freedom that could only derive from escape. Was that possible for all of them? All Metzli could do was hope, silently, with a reassuring nod to Wynne. 

———

It was starting. It was starting and Max, like so many of the banshees here, craved the sense of it. The wheel would spin, the cards would fall, and Regan Kavanagh and Siobhan Dolan would each get exactly what they deserved. Max shot Tina a pleased look. This was what they’d been waiting for. This was what they’d wanted since the first day Regan dared step foot in the same classroom as them, since she’d had the audacity to pretend herself an equal. Whatever justice Fate decided. 

———

Clare was certain her eyes were going to roll out her head before the trial was over. A human sacrifice for a judge? What was Putrecia thinking? Clare knew her eyes were going but was her mind gone with it? At least the “lawyer” in question was pitiful. She didn’t know the first thing about Fate or how it worked. And her Irish was dreadful. “Booo,” she hummed under her breath once the statement was finished, one hand obscuring her mouth as if it would help disguise where the sound came from. The daggers Putrecia shot her way was enough to make her stand a little straighter, her fingers lacing together as her hands dropped down towards her waist. Fine, she had enough respect for Fate to play nice. For now.

———

They understood what needed to be done once the lawyer woman was done. The wheel was spun again. Instead of Siors or an absent demon deciding how the proceedings went, it was a spinning wheel of fortune. Wynne spun it again. Once more, the option ‘human sacrifice’ was skipped. They wanted to ask the tall banshee who had instructed them before if judges could be human sacrifices, but instead opened their mouth to announce the result: “Statement from leprechaun.” 

Once they’d addressed the crowd their eyes fell on Metzli. That didn’t make sense — why would Metzli be here? Why was Metzli watching them on this stage? Wynne blinked viciously as they stared at their employer and friend. They gave them a look of reassurance and they wondered what that meant — was Metzli here as a savior again? They didn’t dare hope like that and thus averted their gaze, lest they give something away to all the other banshees eyeing the stage.

———

It was a good idea to have Anita as her lawyer. Wise Anita, who would always wear the correct outfits. Smart Anita, who would always praise her appropriately. Ireland so far had been a series of mistakes, but assigning Anita as her lawyer had not been one. Siobhan had enough sense to keep from praising Anita vocally, and in front of several banshees who, for all they cared, probably thought Anita was human. (And Clare, who she knew she heard booing, and whom she didn’t want to do anything in front unless it was stabbing her) Anita’s Irish could use some work though. 

It took a moment for her to realize that the wheel had been spun again, and to the only option she had been dreading (she would’ve taken ‘human sacrifice’ any day). “There will be no leprechaun.” Siobhan tried to keep her voice steady despite the rattling inside her chest. The audience erupted into gasps and murmurs, as if she’d conducted the sound out of them. She wouldn’t talk about how she’d kidnapped the one she found (because she couldn’t ask a friend to lie for her) and then how she’d let it go (because she couldn’t ask a friend to endure trauma for her sake; a friend that couldn’t even attend the trial). That was the sort of thing the stage might like, but it was her life. Also, extremely embarrassing. And, they didn’t care about all that, anyway. They hadn’t cared when she tried to explain herself forty-two years ago, they wouldn’t care now about the way she felt concerning lesser creatures—her friends. She was a shameful banshee; had she learned nothing? 

The rising whispers were burning her ears. A banshee wouldn’t lie in court but who would expect whole honesty from an actress? Wasn’t the truth elastic? Taking a cue from Anita (also a friend), she channeled the woman’s confidence and bolstered herself. “Why must we bother the leprechauns?” Siobhan straightened up, giving one coordinated boob jiggle. Putrecia didn’t look happy, but Siobhan didn’t care—wasn’t that the point? 

She raised her voice carefully, speaking over the din. “How would you feel if you were taken away from your important business to speak on the affairs of some other fae?” The murmurs rose; she was leading them the wrong way. “If you were cleaning your bones, or watching a body decompose, would it seem urgent to abandon your obligation to appreciate Death? To speak to strangers?” She could hear the room split; grumbles of agreement against groans of disapproval and the banshees that didn’t understand English who just wanted to start screaming. Siobhan turned and greeted them, boobs and all. “This court is for us,” Siobhan switched to Irish, “what we want is more bones, more blood, more screaming…not to hear the leprechauns. When have they ever said anything good?” Or comprehensible. 

The audience was stirred, if they agreed with her—and Siobhan had just enough self-esteem left to assume they did—they needed a place to go. If she pulled them into a crescendo—and she assumed she did—she needed to deliver them to a final. “Worms,” she said, “péist.” She pointed at Regan (why did she get the more flattering, shorter side?). “Her worms are gray. And tiny. I saw them!” Siobhan pointed at the dispenser, who had been standing in the audience all this time; a little dented from being tossed around, she thought. “Has our old doctor ever pushed any grandmothers? I only want to know how we can trust this leanbh not to push my grandmother?” 

———

Regan had been in courtrooms before, many of them, actually, as a distinguished expert witness discussing her autopsy determinations. It was routine, easy, with no surprises. She dressed crisp and conservatively and had an answer for every question. There were no wings on her back or mousey-blonde roots in her hair, and she was so deeply, richly in her element that she didn’t have a spare second to consider the flawed, human stage fright lighting up her brain. She could always defend her work more than she could defend herself. That was a world away. Never before had she felt like some child in front of a jury – awkward, scrawny-limbed, with no nametag (,MD) or lofty introduction. It was Siobhan, it was the stage, it was a hundred looks of reproach, like she was back in school belting out the poorly-pitched notes of Oklahoma, trying to disappear beneath the bare, cardboard branches of her Tree #2 costume. 

She had never been able to hit any of the notes, even then, and this presentation was immeasurably worse; she had not even been given the script. Were they supposed to bring leprechauns? Bás síoraí, that must have been customary. Wynne… was pretty short. Maybe they could all pretend they were the leprechaun. No, she had told more than enough lies these last few weeks. They came pouring out of her stomach at least twice a day, mixed with blood and bile. At least she wasn’t on trial for those. No one seemed to know about the lie she’d told to save the ham child’s skin, even if it all fell apart, or the lie to buy Wynne and Elias some time – even though the selection of Wynne had a judge had her worry she might be wrong about that. Well, her grandmother might have known about Wynne, but that seemed– that wouldn’t come up here. No, it seemed to be the lies she told herself that were most apt to get her in trouble. So Regan let Siobhan carve out the path of disappointment, not lying but also not willing to tell the audience just yet that she didn’t have a leprechaun either. 

Siobhan seemed to have no such anxieties. Of course she didn’t. She was a banshee, proud and true, on a literal pedestal, here for forgiveness instead of punishment. Her poise made sense. She could roar with the same pride she had when they’d first arrived here, before she realized her name had been forgotten and Putrecia sent her packing (somewhere, presumably). She could work all of this in her favor where Regan could not. Except Siobhan was spinning off in some other direction (as were her breasts) and… what was this, some fae form of veganism? Banshees were not going to see anything wrong with taking something and dragging it here if they thought it belonged in this place. Regan knew that. She knew that down to her shaking bones – every one other than the noble pubis her thumbs smoothed over in her hands. Siobhan did belong here. If others agreed with her, they, like her, were thinking about this backwards – how wrong it would be to be anywhere else.

Despite this, Regan thought this would work for Siobhan. Anita made a strong case for her (sort of… also, why was Anita here?). Siobhan wouldn’t have been receiving this retrial if a return was off the table. This was being handed to her. 

And she was using it, her power, her time to appeal, to turn everyone against Regan. Those hundreds of eyes, now sharpened like iron daggers, were set on her again, and her flesh crawled with oppressive fae presence like an army of ants pinched at her skin. Regan flashed Siobhan a sharp look that said are you kidding? They weren’t even on trial against each other. This was not a debate. Why did Jade like this foul banshee? Why did Anita and Metzli? Regan was able to ignore everyone for just as long as it took to snipe at Siobhan. “They were good enough for your worms to lay with, weren’t they?” Siobhan wouldn’t appreciate her speaking of this. So she was. “How embarrassed you were by their tubes of sperm and wriggling affection. How coddled yours were, as if you were used to living in such a manner yourself. I was not the one leaking at the sight of them. Your tear ducts are defective. They work.” Regan crossed her arms, chin pointed up. She had just cried for three days straight. No one had to know that.

It was the mention of the old doctor, of pushing grandmothers, that shot a bullet through Regan’s moment of confidence. The worms in her mind scattered. Was her pubic defender not supposed to do something here? Did it work without the ilia and ischia? When Regan heard the word leanbh, it had not come from Siobhan, but from the tar pit across town. And predictably, the coward that she was, Regan shrank back. That voice said banshees do not fear, do not cower, just as often as it called her a child. It was right on both counts. Regan was no banshee. A banshee would not have pushed her grandmother to her inevitable death. Whatever she was, it did feel fear. Maybe not for Siobhan. She didn’t care very much about Siobhan. But the banshees in the crowd were full of spite, and it was no longer for Siobhan.

———

The pubic defender did not say anything about how Siobhan’s statements against its client were unfair, or irrelevant to the matter at hand. It did not say anything, because it was a bone.

———

The arguments regarding worms caught Anita off guard, she wasn’t expecting her actual area of expertise to come up. “Objection!” She said and stood up from her seat, channeling her inner Elle Woods. “The claims of leaking are, uh, hearsay.” After receiving some unwelcome stares, she quietly sat back down. 

———

The phonies did well to block out the noise of the room, but they couldn’t do much more than that. No tool could dull out a banshee’s scream, nor could it block it. A few seconds alone could tear the flesh away and turn Metzli into dust, but they found that outcome far preferable to losing people they cared about. Having to exist in a world where love and freedom were ripped from their friends and replaced with obedience and rot was worse. Time and distance had given both Regan and Siobhan the chance to experience what it meant to connect and love and care. Even as it no longer remained the priority in the Aos Sí, Metzli could see how their time away affected them, changed them to be who they were meant to be as they sat at their podium. 

They weren’t sure if they believed in Fate, but for all intents and purposes wasn’t that Fate, too? Weren’t connections a direct cause of Fate? Wasn’t that why the distance between Metzli and their loved ones only made the pull in their chest stronger? As if each connection wound itself tightly like a string and grew taut with each step away. Metzli didn’t understand why that didn’t matter to the crowd that despised their abhorrent existence, but they found they didn’t care anymore. Why would they listen to loveless and cruel creatures that reminded them of their clan? If Metzli deserved to be dead, so did they. But they had to behave. Be better. 

———

The human was good at making the wheel spin, though that was hardly something to compliment. A child could do it. As could a gust of wind. As could a bone. Eithne watched them swing at it again and hoped for a little bit of respite. A nice sacrifice or a dance break. She was tired of hearing Siobhan talk of worms, as if her having girthier worms was (though admirable) in any way relevant. It was kind of amusing to see the two banshees argue, though. “We all know by now Regan Kavanagh has no regard for Worms. It is not yet her turn, though, is it?” Eyes flashed at Siobhan. She was no fan of big displays of emotion but plenty of banshees cried over worms. Especially on worm remembrance day, which the leanbh had made all about her. “Spin.” 

———

Wynne watched with a weary look on their face how Siobhan and Regan argued about worms. All of the words were white noise, jumbling together like the clacking of the wheel that would come again. It all seemed like filler. Like the air bubbles that formed when you baked sourdough bread, trapped and surrounded and at the end of the day, not all that important. They were there because of a process but they added nothing when you cut the bread. They released hot, baked air and when you put jam or butter on a slice of bread, you had to maneuver around it. They thought this was like that. Baked air.

But who were they to protest? Who had they ever been to protest? Even when they had ran they had not left a long letter, even when they had returned they hadn’t offered a great speech. They looked at Regan with wide eyes but remained quiet and eventually just spun the wheel again, the clicking and clacking as monotone as the words that had been spoken. They wondered how long this would go on. If this really was all a charade and how long this postponed would take until a judgment was passed.

Because if what they were saying was true — if Regan had killed her grandmother, then what did it matter? She would be punished. What did this stage offer? Why were they there, if not to be looked at with a kind of mirth, and not the reverence they had once been used to. Maybe it was a blessing they were all focused on Siobhan now, who Wynne knew less well. Who they were slightly afraid of. Who had been unkind to them, at times, even if she had also offered them a kind of clarity way back when. 

Wynne stood very still, afraid that any wrong move might reveal the way they were teetering on the edge of collapse. If regression had given them anything it was composure. They shot into action when they were told to spin again, waiting with baited breath as the wheel clicked around and watching it land on ‘sketch artist’ with a sense of dull relief. 

———

She’d gotten a totally dope (that was an American word that she could maybe get on board with) role in this trial, and she wasn’t going to disappoint. She’d spent the whole time carefully observing everyone, her pencil hardly ever leaving the page. Tina might have not killed the child and Regan’s woman back in Maine, but she could do a good job here and now.

So when the scared and beautifully sacrificial human spun the wheel and it finally landed on her, she nearly leapt up (but that would’ve been showing too much emotion, so she didn’t) and held up her drawing. She’d been paying attention so much, and her drawing showed – well, it showed something. Regan, drawn extremely lifelike, being nibbled on by an army of worms, bits of her flesh being consumed. It was delightful and gruesome and her mother had to be proud of this. “It’s something. It’ll be a good and solid memory to have.” Her lips twisted with a certain sense of pride. Tina couldn’t help herself. 

———

Eithne moved off the stage for a short moment to approach Tina. She held an important role, as it was good to freeze these kinds of moments in time. The community hadn’t really gotten the hang off backing up mobile phone pictures in the cloud yet, so drawings were still preferable. And so she considered the drawing with an expert’s eye and nodded approvingly after a few beats. “Great, yes — it is certainly a good start. It requires more anguish, though. Keep at it.” 

With a swish she turned around, back onto the stage. She cleared her throat just once, which was enough to kick the human in motion.

———

Wynne thought of spinning a bottle with their friends back at home in a game of truth or dare as they pulled at the wheel again. The urge to cry rose and disappeared and they continued to be as they had once been. In control of their emotions, exuding a level of calmness that had been called a gift back at home. The wheel turned. They hoped for a finale.

———

The Ciorcal na Cinniúint clicked and clacked. The yellow wedge it stopped on indicated that it was time for what the crowd clamored for: Siobhan’s judgment. Eithne was a generous soul. She would help the human judge out once again, because humans did not always respect the roles they were meant to fulfill. It was a grand kindness, she thought. She was having a very kind day, so far. “You must decide.”

Everyone looked at Wynne for the verdict, hundreds of eyes staring at the pitiful, trembling human who was clearly trying very hard not to tremble. Eithne offered a little more help, because she was very gracious that day, “Tibia, or fibula?” 

———

Wynne blinked at the banshee. They wanted to ask what bones had to do with the so-called judgment, but then remembered where they stood. They turned their head to look at Siobhan and wondered if the next word out of their mouth would determine the course of her life. She already hated them because they hadn’t promised their bones to her, and now they also had to cast judgment. 

They thought for a moment, scoured their mind in an attempt to remember what they knew of tibias and fibulas. They were in the lower leg, that was simple enough — one of them was thicker and more supportive, the other was for … stability, something of that sort. They tried to remember which was which, as if this was one of those exams outsiders had to take. Tibia, yes, tibia was the stronger one. The more prominent one. The fibula? Sometimes it was merged with the tibia, in some animals, they remembered that too, from the cattle skeletons at home. Horses barely had a visible one. But did it matter? Was it even a metaphor? Siobhan had once thought their idea that femurs were good for spontaneity was ridiculous, after all. Bones were bones. Bones here were seemingly treasured for rarity and quality, not for function. (Though femurs did seem to be favored.) 

And Emilio had said Siobhan was bad, so where did that leave them? Did that mean they should be malicious and choose what they figured to be the worst option? Or should they extend mercy in the face of this court? Their mind was spinning with considerations, with fears of what might happen if they said tibia or what might happen if they said fibula. What Siobhan might do if they chose wrong. 

They didn’t want to choose, that was where the dread in their stomach mostly came from. They did not want to participate in a place like this, to once again be a cog in a machine that took part in human sacrifice and other cruel methods. They didn’t want to say either of the two words. They didn’t want to know what would happen once they moved onto Regan or what would happen if they made the wheel land on ‘human sacrifice’ and most of all they did not want to be here, they had never even wanted to be here, even if it had felt like the right thing to do. They didn’t want the banshees to look at them any longer but all of them did, and all of them grew restless with every second the judge did not cast their judgment.

They were no longer feeling calm. They looked away from Siobhan and said, “Tibia.”

———

It took the human long enough. Eithne was pretty sure they would start crying even though she had asked them a very simple and straightforward question. She could have made it harder! She could have asked them the average circumference of a fox’ third rib, after all. She could have asked them to stand on their head while delivering the judgment. It was always very disappointing when she was faced with the frailty of humans, though it was never surprising.

No matter. The human picked tibia, which was a good answer. There were bad answers, of course — like um, or what do you mean, or please let me off the stage, I don’t know what I’m doing and I am going to have a mental breakdown! — and so she was satisfied. Not that it mattered very much, how the human ruled.

As if banshees would let a human decide their verdicts.

Eithne took a step forward and announced the verdict: “Siobhan Dolan will be allowed to return to us. After today, there will be no further stipulations.”

———

Metzli gasped quietly and whipped their gaze toward Siobhan. The verdict had been what she longed for, regardless of some failure. Since they’d arrived, Metzli had prepared themself for the possibility for her illusion to become reality, and still, they found themself mourning. They were supposed to be relieved and happy for her, but they couldn’t fight the sorrow inside. Despite this, Metzli offered yet another lie, and smiled. 

———

Anita wasn’t disillusioned enough to think that anything she said in her opening statements made much impact on this decision, but it still felt like a bit of a victory. She looked over at her “client,” someone who would no longer be her co-worker, possibly someone who she could truly call a friend. The reality of the loss took a moment to settle in but she didn’t let her face betray her and reveal those emotions. Instead, she tried to make sense of the expression on Siobhan’s face. There was little sense about much of what was going on, however, she had figured that much out. What she was able to determine was that with Siobhan’s trial concluded, her role was completed, and it was time for her to exit off stage left and rejoin the crowd for act two. 

———

It wasn’t what Max had wanted, though like many of the banshees present, she was far less interested in Siobhan’s verdict than Regan’s. After all, she’d never known Siobhan, hadn’t been directly affected by her betrayal. Siobhan’s disgusting mistakes had taken place long before Max and her sister were born, and even longer before they were born as things that mattered. Still, she thought of the terrible, undead thing Siobhan had cared for back in Wicked’s Rest. It would be difficult, sharing a community with someone who could stoop themselves to such levels. Max would make sure Siobhan knew, now and forever, where she stood — that Max was the better banshee, and that Siobhan was little more than a failure being given a second chance she hadn’t earned. Max was good at reminding people of such things.

———

Clare could feel a scream boiling her lungs, like oil bubbling and splashing, trying to spill over a burst through her chest. Siobhan was allowed to return? She was allowed to return to the place she had nearly destroyed with her own arrogance even though it was clear she had learned nothing in her decades away. Clare turned to look at Putrecia, hoping that she would intervene, say there had been a mistake, that the sad, pathetic excuse of a human sacrifice was, in fact, not the proper judge, that this was not the will of Fate.

Siobhan had snapped Fate in two the last time she tried to bend it to her own will, she was the reason that Clare lost her mother, the reason why six other banshees fell before their true fated end, too. This time, though, this time Fate bent to shape itself around her, granted her immunity for her crimes and let her reclaim what she had rightfully had stripped away from her. 

It was all she could do not to scream to Fate and ask why it had betrayed her for a second time. Why it favored Siobhan in ways she couldn’t understand. Instead, she pulled the horrendous hat off her head and let a focused, concentrated scream echo within the repurposed wing. It was a more emotional display than she should have allowed herself, Clare knew that, and it almost pulled her down to the wingless wonder’s own level in a way – another way she’d been wronged by Siobhan – but she couldn’t help it. 

It was tempting to storm out right then and there to toss the stupid hat into Farraige na Buanachta so it could join its pair but there was more to witness. Maybe Fate would grant at least some rightful justice today. 

———

How easy it was to sway a room; how simple to thread the lines of their little play. Stories, like life, were commanded by Fate. Could Romeo comment on the inevitably of his end? Or his idiocy in believing Juliet to be dead? In falling in love at all? Could Wynne say anything to the matter between Tibia and Fibula? And did it matter? Siobhan had what she wanted, even if she’d been one word away from something else. Fate favored her today—No, that wasn’t right. What was that about stories? They were written, chosen, made. What had she been thinking about the room? Those were her words about the Regan’s worms, her words about her grandmother. This stage was made at the direction of someone else. The wheel spun because it was pushed. Wynne was the judge because they were picked out; Wynne’s choice wasn’t Fate, Fate didn’t exist in a coin toss. Who had placed the coin? Who was flipping it? Who said it needed to be done at all? What was Fate? Was it Fate that took her wings—no, that was her mother. Was it Fate that pushed Cliodhna—no, that was Regan. 

Siobhan peered down at Regan, staring at her from under her lashes and over the tip of her nose. She was so small but more than just the slope of the stage, she appeared shriveled into herself—thin and sad like her worms. And it was Siobhan that had done that, in some way, not Fate. Regan looked wrong, not because a banshee ought to stand tall and proud but because she remembered the woman that met her with an indignant gaze as she dumped her gray worms out. This was the woman that called her a hag. This was the woman that said she hated her, just the start of this month, and now she was small. It was wrong for Regan, and that wrongness twisted Siobhan’s stomach. Why did she care? She didn’t like Regan; she hadn’t lied when she said she hated her too. She hated her childishness, she hated her lack of humor, she hated how much she envied her. Why did she care? Let the woman feel small. She was, after all. 

Siobhan got what she wanted. She won. She was going home. What had she been thinking before about Fate and stories? Oh, it was nonsense anyway. Fate adored her, Fate was appreciative of her almost-century of dedicated service. She loved Fate. She was so happy—no, she didn’t feel much of anything except the twisting in her stomach. If Siobhan assigned the synonyms in her head, she could author her reality. Happy, gleeful, content, joyous, relieved, jovial, merry—she tried to form herself under those words. She was swarming with cheer as she turned and met Orla’s gaze, who wiped a tear. She could feel nothing but pleasure as she turned the other way and found Metzli, who looked sad. Happiness clawed and tore her innards when she met Anita’s gaze, who she would never see again. It was glee inside of her as she looked up at Wynne, who was probably confused. She could imagine the Siobhan that would’ve felt a thesaurus of contentment, but she couldn’t find her. 

In reality, there was only a short burst of delight as she met Clare’s gaze and blew her a kiss—she ought to feel more remorse, but it was Clare and she had her wings on her head. So, fuck Clare, boo-hoo and so on. Siobhan won! Clare lost! And the thing Clare lost was…her mother, actually. Clare had lost a long time ago. And now there was Siobhan and she should have been feeling something, a particular way, a sentiment less contradictory. She should’ve been whole. 

She was Siobhan and not Siobhan. A shell encased around the woman who carried that name, but also that set of brown eyes and silky brown hair and those memories. And still, the terrible swirling inside and the thoughts that battled and snapped and the expanse of life that couldn’t be put on stage; that words would always fail and that the question of tibia or fibula would never answer. She was haunted by a thousand twins; each of them humiliated by the others and by herself, most of all. The interjecting voice was her. The one who cared was her and she was the one who always had. The woman who berated Regan and would gladly do so again was her. She chose to act on the stage, and she chose to spin the story and she wasn’t happy at all, even now that she’d been given all that she wanted. And she was the one that felt ungrateful and indignant and shamed—why hadn’t her mother come to see her?—and proud and warm—she had friends!—and guilty and annoyed—even at her lowest, Regan could inspire someone to care when no one had ever cared for Siobhan when the stage swallowed her. To be a banshee would mean the rejection of these emotional selves but to be Siobhan meant the acceptance of her own contradictions and confusions; her pain, her life, her words, her mutilated skin, her sympathy for helpless things and her revelry in chaos. 

She’d been Siobhan for so long—whatever it meant to be that undignified, embarrassed, fraying woman. For forty-two years she’d been ingloriously Siobhan. And for all one hundred and six years, shamefully, never anything but herself. She couldn’t be a banshee now. Unlike herself and the most like herself she had ever felt, all she wanted to do now was tell Regan she was sorry, but there was nothing she could do to stop a play in its second act. 

———

Regan’s gan úsáid human fear still kept her feet from moving (more freeze than fight, flight, or fawn, only one of which was correct for a banshee), and she felt like she was being electrocuted on a wire, but Siobhan’s verdict reached her through it. No further stipulations after today. That was distinct from right now. Had Siobhan noticed that part, or was she basking in the glow of finally getting what she wanted, willing to overlook what should have been obvious, and the opaque and subjective meanings of tibia and fibula here? Regan had spent recent years interacting with other banshees, trying not to become tangled in their words, keeping an ear for any attempts to humiliate her more than she already had herself. Siobhan had not. She might have grown up around banshees, but how carefully did she listen, really? It was how she had ended up in the middle seat in the Economy section of a seven hour flight.

Regan wouldn’t look up at Siobhan to assess her response. Maybe she couldn’t. Regan wasn’t sure if it was a conscious choice or she only convinced herself it was. But she decided – because she could decide things now, or had at least once, which was why she was standing here – that she did not care what Siobhan’s future would look like. She stared straight ahead, her face flat, a distant soldier her grandmother probably would have approved of. “Congratulations,” she muttered, still refusing to look at the other banshee, but she spoke against the shockwave still running through her. “You are perfect for this place”.

#writing #c siobhan #c wynne #c eithne #c anita #c metzli #c max #c tina #c clare #c nora

[ariadnewhitlock]

@banisheed replied to your post “[pm] Ariadne :( You didn’t send in your homework...”:

[pm] It’s pictures! Of a bone! How hard can that be? Dance your body into the museum and snap a picture for all I care. How is this something you need an extension with? What’s going on with you? Dance class can’t be so important that you forget about bone class. This may just be an elective to you, but to me? This is bones. I mean important. Bones is how I say important sometimes.

​[pm] Nothing. I just sometimes don't sleep well! I don't consider your class just an elective. I think that it's very important. I've just been bad at doing my work on time recently. I'm going to fix that. Can I please just have until tonight?

I think that's a good way to say important! Using words that are important to you to highlight importance is good. I like that. It's very [user pauses for a moment]... ballet slippers or maybe museum, to me.

#c siobhan

[verumviderete]

@banisheed

You have enough children to form a small army. How do you plan on employing these children?

Well, I'd like to hope they have a while to go before entering the career world. I'm just getting them started. Y'know, making sure they know their ABC's and such.

#asks #c siobhan

[rain-dere]

Some of my favorite Tula and Viola moments from this episode so far. Love these two wary and weary sisters.

Bonus:

#burrow's end #c: tula and viola #dimension 20 #brennan lee mulligan #siobhan thompson #rashawn scott

[andi-o-geyser]

LET CHAOS REIGN

#sam knew exactly what the fuck he was doing when he planned this episode #C H A O S #dropout #dropout tv #game changer #game changer spoilers #d20 cast #siobhan thompson #brennan lee mulligan #lou wilson #andis thought geyser

[muertarte]

@banisheed replied to your post “[pm] Metzli! It’s been so long how are you? Have...”:

[pm] But murder is so fun :( Wait, you locked yourself away? To protect the people you love? I’m sorry. I’m having trouble following the logic.

​[pm] Something happen. I helped save people but I scare them with how I tear people apart. Then I got hungry and almost attack the people I was helping.

Was just monster. Am monster. There was reason master locked me away. Am going to make sure I never make people I love bleed.

#dash #c: siobhan #pm: siobhan

[banisheed]

TIMING: Current LOCATION: A Latte to Love PARTIES: Parker (@wonder-in-wings) and Siobhan (@banisheed) SUMMARY: Parker and Siobhan go on a "date".

Mornings always had a sickly quality to them; the sun, hungover, struggled to push through the din of night and dispel the haze of morning humidity. It laid sleepily across the horizon, shyly burning the backs of buildings. Siobhan always hated the mornings; she, like the sun, hungover, struggled to push through the delicate two hours she claimed to be restful slumber and start her day among the human crowds marching to their schedules. She sipped absently at her tea, watching the door for a face that looked vaguely like Parker Wright’s blurry one from the website. A Latte to Love was busy on this groggy morning, full of the ecstatic buzz of several patrons, human and supernatural alike--as Siobhan noted the presence of at least one other fae, who was embroiled in their own scheme. Wynne, thankfully, wasn’t working; Siobhan had been careful to pick a time when she couldn’t see them through the glass windows. 

“You’re late,” she smiled as the doors chimed, her Irish accent ever present with each elongated syllable. “Or am I early?” Siobhan stood to greet the man, taking his entirety in. Taller than her by about seven centimetres; cold blue eyes; common brown hair; broad-shouldered. Siobhan extended one gloved hand toward him; she was dressed in her usual fashion, toe-to-tip in black, leaving nothing of her scarred skin visible. The black leather gloves were worn with use, spotted in the odd area with old stains she couldn’t quite work out of the fabric. “It’s impolite to leave a lady waiting, regardless.” 

— One day he’d learn to just… not engage with strangers online when they acted in such ludicrous manners. If it wasn’t Beau with his flagrant asking people for their names publicly, it was the one named Van going on insane ramblings about worms in the trees and if it wasn’t that, it was someone like Siobhan just… publicly posting about a ‘consensual’ abduction. Then again, wasn’t that just called ‘eloping’? Parker wasn’t the right person to ask about that, nor was he the right person to ask advice on how to avoid talking to strange people online. It seemed to be another unpleasant combination of things that attributed to his latent irritation towards the world as he approached the busy coffee shop that early morning. Fortunately, Parker had been getting more regular sleep now. Unfortunately, he hated coffee shops, getting up early in the morning when he could avoid it and having his time wasted and if Siobhan was anything in person like how she was online, he could already tell that this was going to be wasted time. He hesitated near the door for a few moments, glancing up at the sign and standing unnaturally still, almost as though he were mentally steeling himself. Which he was. ‘Pull it out like a splinter.’ Parker nodded and opened the door where he was greeted with a myriad of things - the smell of the coffee and baked goods, the hum of machinery mixed with music mixed with chatter that was punctuated by the occasional blender that served as a harshly unwelcome sensation to his good ear. He could see several more bodies than he’d have liked, as well and he could feel a faint buzz from where he stood, which meant a nymph was in the area. Instinctively, like a moth drawn to a flame, he turned and started to look for it, all but forgetting that he was scheduled to meet with Siobhan. It wasn’t to be, however as the moment he entered, before he got too distracted and yet after the instantaneous wave of information supplied to him, a voice spoke to him and told him he was late. Parker turned his head sharply where his cold blue eyes found who he assumed was Siobhan - if it wasn’t the lady who now stood before him to greet the Warden, it could’ve been her doppelganger. Curiouser still was her choice in attire, which was a far cry from his casual gray Henley that was unbuttoned at the top and a pair of blue jeans tucked into his steel-toed boots. Granted, the holster on his thigh and his recognizable utility belt made him stand out a little bit but they were safety items most of the time. “You’re early.” He replied, his eyes going from hers down to the hand she offered. “Which means I’m late regardless.” Parker started to reach out to take her hand when the subtle swirl in his blood suddenly turned into its much more familiar roiling and his fist clenched just before making contact. She was a fae. His eyes danced over her hand then onto her face, her dark features and hair that definitely wasn’t the result of her rolling out of bed, rhetorically or otherwise. He inhaled deeply before taking her hand and giving it a brief, but firm shake. “I… apologize.”

—

Parker Wright didn't need someone to tell him that he was weird, Siobhan guessed, but the desire to do it anyway was ever present all the same. It burned at the back of her throat and shaped itself in her mouth. Something was not right with this human, which was slightly ironic given his last name—doubtlessly this humor must have been lost on Parker. Humans that weren’t right meant a handful of things but it was nothing Siobhan could discern from shaking his hand. He was polite enough, if not too polite, and careful, if not too careful. Her gaze dropped to his belt and then his holster; she kept her hand firmly locked with his all the while. Something tickled in the back of her head, like spare change bouncing around a pocket. Her mind was still groggy, like the day, and forty years of slumming with humans had twisted her sharp intellect into something that meandered. If there was a point her brain wanted her to get to, she’d be taking her time getting there. 

“I accept your apology.” Siobhan glanced back up at him, smiling sharply. “A little too prepared for a date, are you?” She emphasized; she wasn’t romantically interested in Parker just as she assumed he wasn’t in her, but where buttons that demanded to be pushed were concerned, she was deeply, madly in love. “Do you think you’ll need all that at a coffee shop? With me?” She tried to look wounded, as though Parker had offended her, but she was too delighted to force her features to contort. Finally, she released his hand. Siobhan knew exactly what she was getting out of this meeting, what her companion stood to gain was a much larger mystery. Was he the sort of man that simply went along with things as he was told them? He seemed too smart for that and he seemed too strange to be anything less than too smart. 

“Let’s order.” She gestured to the counter. “Are you a coffee or a tea person?” In the gambling pool of her mind, she was betting on tea; she’d be out of a lot of money if he went for hot chocolate. Water made the bets null. Of course, Siobhan still had her tea on the table, but she wasn’t going to miss an opportunity to scour Parker’s mind for the truth behind his strangeness. It didn’t occur to her that she wasn’t right either. 

—

He bit back what he wanted to say when she sarcastically, playfully ‘forgave him’ for his apology, which he’d only given out of obligation and admittedly distraction. Furthermore, Parker couldn’t keep himself from glancing down at his belt briefly when she asked rhetorically if he was ‘too prepared’. No, he wasn’t. In fact, he didn’t feel prepared enough. He… opted not to verbalize any of what was going through his head. She had held onto his hand much longer than he was comfortable with, both as the type of person he was and her status as a fae. Then Parker remembered… Of course she was fae, he figured this out by their online interactions. Why was he surprised? Perhaps he was caught off-guard by this selection of circumstances that brewed together to create a cocktail of things that would disorient the Warden otherwise. He didn’t like these types of environments. He didn’t like interacting with people. He didn’t like coffee, he didn’t like early mornings and he especially didn’t like being flirted with by fae. Indeed, Parker knew she was doing it to get something from him. People weren’t interested in him, he wasn’t a person. He was described as a machine that was genetically designed to eradicate the fae and even then, he didn’t perform that function as intended, at least not nearly as often as his late father would’ve wanted. He analyzed art, the form and shape of the coveted things that served no purpose outside of aesthetics, the things that were regarded as status symbols. Things to hold over the heads of others. He harvested these things, added his own creative vision to them and either hoarded them like the dragon he was or distributed them to the affluent and collectors of the strange. The second she released it, his hand was pulled close to his stomach in a blur faster than the human eye could catch, as though she were keeping it extended for it to snap back to its resting place. “This isn’t a date.” Parker felt the need to respond first. Then what was it? Sharp blue eyes darted over to the counter and he inhaled through his arrow-straight nose, absently reaching up to rotate the spinner ring on on his left middle finger. “Coffee. Black.” Honestly he wasn’t a big fan of either and if he was here of his own volition he probably would’ve picked tea with lemon and ginger but he supposed he was trying to give her reasons why she shouldn’t be interested in him, as a target or otherwise. He paused. “You already ordered.” He remarked, glancing past her down at the table where her cup was sitting.

—

Siobhan had met all manner of humans in her life—most of them were bland, predictable and cried like new-born babies when stabbed. Parker wasn’t interesting because he was charming or exciting (he was no Teddy) but because his boringness exceeded the usual human boringness. There was something about him that was particularly irresistible to Siobhan, like a jigsaw puzzle of a mundane landscape; the fun wasn’t in the picture, but in putting it together. Whether he wanted to be or not, Parker had been designated as Siobhan’s new toy and until she got bored of him, he wouldn’t be free of her. “It’s not?” Manicured brows pulled together, setting a small crease in her forehead. Her big brown eyes stared at him, unwavering in where their gaze had set itself upon his face. Siobhan’s beauty was an uncontested fact; at least, she thought so. If it wasn’t a more intimate interest then it was an aesthetic one and so, most people tended to react a certain way around her. She was used to it; she expected it. “You’re going to break my heart, Wright. Can’t we just call it a date?” She waited for him to respond the way she wanted him to; to be moved by the pressure of her beauty. 

If Parker was ever going to call her beautiful, she should have guessed that it would have happened already. Coffee. Black. Siobhan clicked her tongue against her teeth. “Not what I would have guessed for you.” She was lucky her bet was only figurative, she’d have been out a good chunk of change otherwise. “You don’t like drinking, I thought you wouldn’t like caffeine also.” Not that tea was free of it, but it was certainly less than a black coffee. She followed his gaze, twisting around, to the cup on their table. “Oh.” She waved her hand in the air, skipping to his side. “I’d rather have an excuse to spend more time with you. Should I sit all lonely on that table while you order? Me? This face?” She slipped her hands around his arm, lightly enough that he could easily free himself from her touch if he desired, but that would require him to make a large, sudden movement, which she wasn’t sure he was capable of. She assumed that Parker didn’t enjoy attention drawn to him. “I’ll just come up with you and order something new. We can get more time to get to know each other.” She smiled. “Crack on, Wright.” 

—

She looked at him for a long few moments, her expression one of mock hurt and Parker quickly came to the conclusion that she was indeed confident about her appearance and perhaps used it to her advantage whenever she could. He was willing to wager that if he was either a little more like his brother or a little less like himself he might’ve been affected but between her being a fae and his assigned ‘curiosities’, he was sure her beauty (and indeed, he wasn’t going to deny that she was attractive by the standards set by society, at the very least) was being wasted on him. “...Call it what you want.” He rolled his eyes to himself. He still wasn’t sure what to call this. It wasn’t a business exchange. There was no transaction. Maybe he was just really hoping to dissuade her from making a fool of them online. Not that he helped that exchange. She apparently didn’t peg him for a coffee drinker and she was correct on that, obviously, though he wasn’t about to admit that she was right. “Caffeine serves a purpose.” He replied, his flat tone lacking strong emotion one way or the other though it was accompanied with a small rumble as he very momentarily lost part of his breath with the churning of his blood. Parker cleared his throat and started to turn back to regard where the line was and if he even wanted to stand in it when she flounced around the table and sidled up to him and– He sucked in a sharp inhale through his nose as she effortlessly placed her hands around one of his arms. He should’ve seen this coming, really. It was obvious from the second she suggested that they have sex. She was cruel, controlling, with a fake smile and faker words behind the big brown eyes and soft locks of hair. She was a fae. And Parker turned unnaturally still for a moment or several, he wasn’t keeping track of the time as he froze under contact. Instinctively, as his blood frothed and roiled in his veins, he wanted to use it to his advantage. Diffuse the iron in it, draw it to the surface and burn her. Burn through the gloves, burn her palms. Show her who was really in control. ‘Boy, if you do that right now and she reacts, everyone’s gon’ think it was you.’ Parker’s blue eyes moved from their unfocused, yet intense stare forward. Father was right. This place was busy and he was already remarkably uncomfortable just being there, more so now that she was touching him. He had the feeling that she could hone in on his innate awkwardness and partially did it as a form of her own control. He could reciprocate by exerting control of his own. He breathed deeply through his mouth this time, his hands flexing and extending before they were lifted to rest on his belt once more. His blood was still unhappy, protesting in prickly needles where her gloved hands met his exposed arm but as he kept breathing, he managed to assuage the rest of his system, if only just enough that he could interact in this public place without drawing too much more attention. She was going to do that for them, he could tell. “...Very well.” He finally spoke again and he didn’t wait for her to be ready before he walked over to stand in line, the arm she was clinging to bending at the elbow gently so he could place his hand on the belt in its familiar location. He… mostly managed to get the black blood that stained it from his excursion with the leviathan off of it.

—

Siobhan had enough self awareness to realize she was conceited; whether it was a defense against insecurity or a genuine belief in her superiority, she wasn’t going to ask. Siobhan never gave more thought to herself than was strictly necessary. She assumed everyone looked at her like she was the most beautiful woman they’d ever seen and when she noticed Parker’s hand move to his belt, she assumed it was because the physical contact had excited him. She didn’t think about what he held on his belt, or why he felt the need to have a utility belt in the first place, or why he was humouring her so much despite clearly not liking her. She should have been thinking about it; if she was serious about filling in the puzzle that was Parker, she should have cared more. To possess the power to kill anyone with just the sound of her voice, Siobhan didn’t remember what it was like to be cautious anymore and her memories of fear were the sort she buried deep. 

She leaned back from where she had squished herself against his arm and looked at him. For a moment she wondered if his hand at his belt wasn’t a reaction of sexual excitement but she couldn’t see anything on his face. It was like staring at a wall; sometimes, with the shadows, she thought she saw something, but when the lights swung back over him, it was blank again. Their place in line came, and it was time to order, but instead of allowing it to happen, she asked a simple question: “why don’t you like me?” It wasn’t a plea or tragic admittance of loneliness, Siobhan held nothing in her voice except curiosity. She wasn’t likable, but she was attractive: the people who liked her were obvious, the people who hated her were even more obvious. Parker was nothing. And yet, he was here. He was entertaining her hands around the crook of his elbow. He was going to order a coffee and sit down and drink it with her. He was wasting his time, why? Finally, the question bothered her. 

“Oh.” Siobhan turned to the barista. “I’ll have whatever my husband’s having.” And she pointed to Parker.

— 

There was a question she directed at him instead of ordering something for herself and offering him just a few more seconds to deliberate on whether or not he was actually willing to go through with the idea of getting black coffee. ‘What a waste of money. You aren’t wasting money again, are you, boy?’ “I’m not her husband.” Parker insisted first in retaliation as the barista turned her apathetic gaze to him instead, returning it with a slightly furrowed brow and an unamused stare. A pause as he chewed on the question Siobhan asked him, masked in the false impression that he had too many options to choose from. Which… well, that wasn’t entirely inaccurate. There seemed to be four options that essentially meant the same thing, just with a different type of milk. His mind was actually thinking of three things at once, in this instance and Parker was rearranging them in order of priority and which ones could be addressed in which order. He was looking at the menu for something rather specific, or at least something he could use to his advantage - or instead, just her disadvantage. “I’m feeling… adventurous.” He wasn’t sure how much of that was a lie considering he could feel himself wanting to turn inside-out at the prolonged contact with the fae that still wrapped herself around his arm. “I’ll take a green smoothie. If you can add cucumber and orange, that’d be preferable.” He explained, pointing up to the option on the menu. “...Make that… two.” He added with a quiet exhale. “Why don’t you actually care about that answer?” He asked in response first, filling the lulls in conversation as they waited for their kale-and-spinach-rich smoothies to be ground for them.

—

Siobhan’s nose wrinkled; green smoothies were an abomination on the precious classification of smoothies. Full of iron—thank you kale and spinach and all the other detestable leafy greens—it was both inaccessible to Siobhan and unappealing to her sweet-inclined teeth. Was Parker a green smoothie sort of man? She looked over at him; under a certain light, he seemed like he could be. He seemed like he could be the sort of man that had an obsessive and clinical approach to health: green smoothies, granola, chia seeds and whey powder protein for the days he wasn’t overcooking chicken breasts. In a certain light, at least. Siobhan wasn’t sure what light she was looking at him in right now. In another light, he seemed like the kind of man that would order a green smoothie as a particular slight against her. Thinking about the sort of man that would do that to her made her mind ping again. 

“I do care,” she said softly, with an honesty she hoped he would misinterpret. “I can’t puzzle you out. Clearly, you’re not attracted to me.” She paused on that note, wanting to let it sit with him how irregular that was and how sad and tragic and etcetera. “Which is fine—honestly. I’m not so conceited that I don’t know people who can’t be attracted to me exist.” Though she hoped he still had an objective aesthetic approval for her only redeeming quality. Her beauty was the first knife she shoved into the chest of the world, the thing she wore to manipulate tides to pull towards her; the other knives were more literal and tucked into various places under her clothing. “But you’re humoring me. It’s obvious you’re humoring me; you don’t like me. Then, why? What amusement am I possibly giving you?” Her grip tightened around his arm.

—

She said she cared and Parker’s immediate reaction was ‘no, you don’t.’ Were they his words or someone else’s, though? And, and this was the frustrating part, was she being serious or was this another blatant lie? Instinctively, as they stepped aside to wait for the awful-looking green smoothies, he exchanged glances with her, gauging her body language to see if her natural fae inclination would betray her words. And he found nothing. She must’ve been old, experienced, or both. Or… she was telling the truth. She continued, stating the obvious followed by the less obvious - he honestly could’ve been fooled if she was so deluded into believing that there wasn’t legitimately anyone who would’ve been able to resist her beauty, stunning physique and cleverness. Her biting wit through a blindingly unhinged smile. Then came the question he’d been asking since he first agreed to this arrangement: Why? Parker had been attempting to find an answer throughout the duration of their interaction up until this point. “I’m studying you.” He replied and rather than turning his icy blue stare to her, he looked ahead though the pressure on his arm didn’t go by him unnoticed under the blood that flinched and twisted in his veins. “I was curious to see what other things you were capable of when you couldn’t rely solely on your beauty or… innate skills.” He chose the word carefully; they were still in a public space, after all. He looked sideways at her. “So what else do you have? Pride? Assumption? A haughty attitude? A birthright, maybe?” He asked, recalling what he’d learned about banshees a while back; he still wasn’t sure if she was a banshee but her obsession with death was certainly a good indicator. “You don’t like me either, so what amusement am I possibly giving you? Is anything actually happening in this exchange?” He paused. “...Or were both of us wanting to see if the other would give in, first?”

—

Siobhan’s arm slipped from Parker’s. He’d hit a terrible truth, like a gravedigger denting their shovel on stone. All she had was her beauty, she’d grown into it; but did he notice how she’d covered her skin so carefully? All she had was her face and the outline of a toned body, really. She could scream, but screaming wasn’t a skill she earned, it was just a thing she had like a child with a doll; she could wave it around and say she had the strongest, prettiest doll but all the children like her had dolls and their dolls did the same thing. She had pride, but not really; it was taped together, reattached and pressed down so many times that it wasn’t even sticky anymore. If she stopped moving for long enough, it fell off, broke apart. Everything else was the same: the assumption, the haughty attitude. What did the birthright matter if she’d been cast out from her family? Who was she performing for now? She glanced around the shop, staring at the humans engaged in conversation and books and laptop screens; no applause, no praise, no one looked up to see how amazing she was. She turned back to Parker. 

There was something very obvious, more obvious than the puzzle of him, that he could give. Something that she was desperate to be given. Siobhan crossed her arms over her chest. He knew more about her than she had ever told him, but that was probably why, it was the things she never said that echoed louder than the things she did. She was obvious, she was predictable, she was boring. The drinks arrived and she stared at the murky green sludge behind the plastic cups. She snatched the drink up and sucked it down through the wide straw. It burned down her esophagus and seared her stomach. Under her black clothing, her skin erupted into hives but she kept drinking until nothing was left but ice and grit. Gingerly, like her body wasn’t rioting, she placed the empty cup down and grinned at him. 

He knew what she was, Siobhan guessed, and there was only one way he could have known. “How lovely,” she smiled, suppressing an acid burp. “I think we both know it’ll never happen, right? Not while either of us still breathes. Sure, and, we’ve both learned the thing we came here to learn, haven’t we?” Siobhan threw her arms around Parker and hugged him lightly, partially because she didn’t possess the strength to hold him tighter. “I’m capable of all the obvious things,” she whispered into his ear, “and aren’t you exactly the same?” 

Siobhan pulled away, extending a finger to tap one of the closed pouches on his toolbelt. “I could kill you, you could kill me…doesn’t it always go this way? How many times have you danced like this? The routine is comforting, isn’t it? The predictability is so soothing. We’ll disappoint each other in the end, when it’s the same as it’s always been. You’re a baby by my standards, so maybe you haven’t learned yet, but nothing ever changes. No one ever surprises you.” She paused. “But you did, Parker. You surprised me, just a little bit. If you become less robotic, you might approach charming, but I think I prefer you this way; you’re like a scalpel, surgical but subtle. Well…” She gestured to the smoothies. “Not that subtle.” Her smile widened. “Now, I need to go…” Because she couldn’t out-stubborn kale. “...but I hope we do this again, my cute, wittle sweetie snake.” 

—   

There was a sense of relief when she removed her arm from his; it was a quiet victory, a respite from his blood protesting underneath the skin in retaliation to being so consistently touched by that which it existed to reject and destroy. He knew that there was something in his explanation that managed to burrow through Siobhan’s carefully constructed and heavily-maintained exterior, a worm that finds its way through an apple because it can smell the rotten core. Maybe some of it was true. Maybe none of it was. That wasn’t Parker’s prerogative. He had gotten her to disengage first and now they were there, not strapped together by an uncomfortably smug arm around his, receiving their ghastly green iron-rich smoothies. Their ghastly green iron-rich smoothies that she had taken the liberty to make sure she drank all of. All the while, Parker simply stared at her, not blinking, moving or drinking his own smoothie. No, he kept his drink on the table, crossing his arms lightly as he studied her, her stubbornness, her need to show him that she wasn’t weak or something to be disregarded as soon as she didn’t have every aspect of control anymore. If she wasn’t a fae, he almost thought he would’ve… perhaps not enjoyed spending time with her but there was something undoubtedly useful in being associated with extroverts; they were sufficient at commanding a room, they knew how to get their way. They talked, participated in conversation. And Siobhan wasn’t stupid, Parker knew. She was handsy, for certain and had this way about her that was either false bravado or genuine delusion - ‘women’, his father scoffed - but they weren’t necessarily traits that Parker held with disdain. They were just aspects of who she was. The disdain came from how she flagrantly believed that those were all that were required to manipulate people. She finished her smoothie and gave him a look, one that he could identify as painful and venomous, no doubt reflecting the indigestion that was turning her stomach over, wanting to swell her skin with the intolerance of the iron in the rich shake. She had pieced together what he was and the words she said, while he considered them empty at this point, didn’t surprise him, he was still taken aback as she gave him another hug (though how weak it was in comparison to before didn’t go by him unnoticed). Then she started whispering to him and, either fortunately or unfortunately, she happened to be speaking into his functional ear. ‘Aren’t you exactly the same?’ The sentence was still making its way through Parker’s head when she continued, distancing their heads and his eyes went down with a furrow of his brow to watch her hands sharply. He didn’t love her messing with anything on his utility belt, a more novel version of discomfort that was associated with someone touching things that weren’t theirs, but he loved what she was saying, the things about predictability and (this was strange but) how young he was compared to her, even less. It was a dance, wasn’t it? Two sides of the same coin, with similar goals, desires and duties that were a part of their identities. Nothing changed, Parker knew that. He certainly didn’t change and the fae he harvested from were no different. Siobhan wasn’t going to change and that was where the predictability lay, right? When she said she had to go, it took considerable effort for Parker himself not to leave first, wanting to place as much distance between himself and her and the shop and everything else. ‘Don’t show her that weakness’, his father hissed. ‘She don’t got to know that you’re uneasy. Let her leave first. Establish dominance.’ So he stood there stiffly, arms still crossed, internally reeling when she said she wanted to do this again. “Ms. Dolan.” He cleared his throat, keeping his eyes on her with a muted expression. Leaving his green smoothie untouched. If both of them were lucky, they’d never see each other again.

#the banshee and the serpent #c: parker #writing #s1 #parker to be upgraded to ex-husband #you might think ex-husband is a downgrade but to siobhan being divorced is how she shows love

[hellhunde]

Some OCs I've been playing around with. They came to me in a dream.

#art tag #s: unnamed oisin story #c: oisin #c: siobhan #c: roark #ocs #original #ignore my pomegranate typo

[alexithykia]

nobody asked 4 it but i compiled a wedding dress 4 each ship as what i wld roughly wear (m vry self conscious n’ picky… so like i wld make sooooo many adjustments..)

left to right; aventurine, ratio, sunday

left to right; topaz, jingliu, diluc

#its missin siobhan n’ wriothesley !! #jingliu n’ a beach wedding #i said wut i said ! #it wud b dat or snow weddin… #anyways c: can u tell i like a specific style.. oops #⋆𐙚₊ avenlexi ˚⊹♡ #⋆𐙚₊ aletio ˚⊹♡ #⋆𐙚₊ sunlexi ˚⊹♡ #⋆𐙚₊ lexiluc ˚⊹♡ #⋆𐙚₊ jingexi ˚⊹♡ #⋆𐙚₊ lexipaz ˚⊹♡ #raison d’être ᯓ ᡣ𐭩

[wastheheart]

@alyafae (siobhan) asked: “ what can i do to help? ” (thank you!)

Esme hums momentarily, glancing around her as chicken sizzles against a pre-heated wok. "Uh, can you pass me those herbs?" she asks, pointing with a wooden spoon towards the other countertop adorned with pre-picked herbs and spices. "I always do this, think I've got everything I need until I'm halfway through."

Esme laughs, rolling her eyes at herself. In the midst of cooking, Esme has forgotten how entirely strange it must be for another vampire (one with the traditional diet at that) seeing her prepare and cook food.

"I just need to make sure everything's cooked through and then I can leave it to simmer away," she continues, talking to herself more than Siobhan. "Sorry, I don't mean to rope you into my tasks, but I appreciate your help regardless."

#alyafae #c; siobhan #v; undetermined #answered ask #hope this works for you!

[vanishingreyes]

[pm] Are you lonely?

[pm] Well, yes, actually

Depends on who's asking.

#c siobhan #// i'm just sorry for her already

[kadavernagh]

I wanna fly away || Regan & Siobhan

TIMING: Current, right after the trial LOCATION: The clinic PARTIES: Regan and Siobhan SUMMARY: The two banshees carry out what became a joint sentence. CONTENT: Surgery, medical blood, domestic abuse (version without surgery and med blood available on request)

“I finally pushed back. And I saved him. It was an easy choice.” And even as she lied here, anticipating enormous pain, it was one of the few things she could say she did not regret.

100 years. Staying in Saol Eile for 100 years, just as her heart began beating for Maine again. No, it had never stopped doing that – it was only now that Regan could hear it again. Everyone seemed to have an ear up against her sinus rhythm this whole time, and she, the actual physician, had not listened. And now it was too late, wasn’t it? There was no escape. Elias had been near death, Wynne might have been grabbed as soon as the trial concluded, and the soot-covered bear in the audience had learned what happened to those who tried to chart their own destinations here. 

There was a procession behind the two of them as they walked to the clinic, because they hungered to hear Regan scream for what she had done. None more than Max and Tina, Regan was certain. Banshees were not supposed to be killers, but guardians and tools. They were not supposed to froth at the thought of a knife twisting through flesh, or cheer at the toll of pain. But this? This was Fate-mandated, so of course they were permitted to swarm and grin (for the more emotionally-inclined banshees) and rejoice. Their local flight risk was having her wings removed. She would not leave again. She would be here to heal their wounds and perpetuate their ugliness for hundreds of years. Everyone knew that Regan, the banshee who had been spirited enough, or at least confused enough to leave in the past, could be given a no more fitting sentence, no matter how much it had been framed as light and forgiving. And the wings? To the others, they were an accompaniment, more symbolic than anything… and an excuse to hear what choice, agency had wrought, so mothers could tell their daughters for generations to come.

The fog hung down in thick curtains, turning the emerald and jade hills a squalid grey. Regan wasn’t sure if the clouds had ever pulled back or ever would again. It was like this by Farraige na Buanachta a few days ago, wasn’t it? Perhaps this was her grandmother’s way of hanging over her, watching. Would she hear the screams from where she stood, immobilized? Would she hate the destruction of Regan’s wings (and only her wings) or would she think, finally, listening to her screams, now she sounds proper? Once this was over, would the other banshees crowd around Cliodhna, telling her about the blood staining her bandages, and the howling? Regan’s pain tolerance was on the higher end, built up beyond what it should have been, but this was not something any banshee could bear without opening their mouth and letting their lungs express the pain they never could.

Elias had it worse. She thought of him more than her grandmother. Maybe that would change with time, when the reality of what she had done fell on her skull like a dead magpie hurtling to the earth. Good tidings, not so much. But then, Siobhan had taken the bird, and Putrecia had taken it from her. It had never been Regan’s. 

Regan closed her eyes and swallowed what felt like a femur stuck in her throat when they reached the threshold of the clinic door. It was the place she spent more time than anywhere else while she was confined in this town. The place that, once, she thought of as the last of the tissue bridges tethering her sanity to the rest of the body, no matter how deep the lacerations ran, as she was allowed to remain a doctor. Now she was here with Siobhan, who was going to be turning Regan’s own scalpels on herself. Had Siobhan craved this for months? Did she feel smug? Was this every bit of what Siobhan had in mind as she had watched Regan pull victims from their cars and administer aid while she did nothing but blow hot air out of her lungs? As she watched her girthy worms abandon her for a life with such small, unimpressive adversaries? Good. Siobhan might realize years, decades from now, that Regan still held her future right now, on this day that would mark the victory she had waited over 40 years for. Siobhan didn’t hold her own future. This was no victory for Regan, but it would never be Siobhan’s.

Regan unlocked the door and led Siobhan into her clinic, the examination room, where she had healed the wings of so many others and, in some unfortunate cases, even removed them herself. The two of them never did talk to each other very much, which was for the better (had they conversed in the car ride on the way here, the car might have driven off a cliffside – and Regan wasn’t even the one driving.) But despite their dearth of conversation, there was one sentiment that neither of them had hesitated to express. It had become one of Regan’s favorite refrains.

“I hate you.” 

And what was Siobhan going to do about it, that she was not already going to do in the first place?

Once more, Regan reflected on who held the power here. Regan was going to lose her wings. But Siobhan could no more reject her role in this than Regan could reject her punishment. She had seen that look in Eithne’s eyes, dissecting her words. Siobhan was still just a kicked dog who would be relegated back to wherever she had stayed the last few weeks when she failed to roll over. Or maybe she just wouldn’t even realize she was rolling over, instead blindly trailing after Eithne and the others, seeking scraps or a bone to gnaw on, for the rest of her painfully long life.  

Regan couldn’t be angry in her hatred. She didn’t feel much of anything. Her grandmother would have liked that. “I could see it. The way you looked at me back h– in Wicked’s Rest, while I– we pulled people from the ooze. I had something you wanted.” Wanted. Banshees weren’t even supposed to do that. Regan sat stiffly on her own chair, the one she stood over on any other day, patching up the self-inflicted wounds of other banshees, usually children. Without fanfare, Regan rolled her shirt up and off, revealing the bandaged gash across her stomach – a gift from iron, naturally – and more importantly, her lack of resistance. She tried not to think of her wings, but their anxious flicking traveled up her spine. Was this a fraction of how Declan had felt when he had sat here, resigning himself to things and forces much bigger than him? When she spoke again, Regan’s tone was flat, almost bored. “I hope you got it today, you cailleach briste. Because for as long as I am stuck here, I will make sure you never get anything again, and I will remind you that you would have remained nothing without me, only a forgotten hag in a place that had no reason to remember you as soon as you left their sight. I hate you. And you should appreciate that, because even once you walk out of here with my wings, you will continue to cross no one’s thoughts but mine.”

———

A win and a loss, could it have been as simple as that? Her victory over Regan; her prize for enduring the child’s drivel. She was getting everything she wanted and then some—what a wonderful gift to take away what Regan took for granted!—and Regan never would have anything again. But Siobhan wasn’t thinking in the language of retribution and penance. Her thoughts were her own, cloistered in her mind where a good banshee ought to keep them. But she wasn’t thinking in that language either. 

Mostly, she was thinking about how stupid everything was. Occasionally, she thought about how nothing really mattered, did it? By the end of Regan’s one hundred years, they would forget what she did and scramble for some excuse for a re-trial. It’d only been forty-two years for her, and that was exactly what had happened. How many of these banshees that walked beside her remembered what she’d done? How many knew her by the day of her exile and in their hunger for scraps of entertainment? How many of them were happy to have cleared her from their minds? Besides the odd Clare—someone she had a personal history with, and had personally hurt—how many of them even remembered her name? This was history in the making: one life fossilized into one moment. They weren’t people, they didn’t live people lives; they were insects frozen in a drop of sap. The collective banshee memory would only see Regan in her amber: in this moment, in this role, forever. 

Siobhan had the great misfortune of actually knowing Regan; she couldn’t be the amber. She’d be the buzzing insect, the annoying gnat. Her image of her, forever, would be the dynamic shape of every juvenile corner of her personality. She knew her well enough to hate her; knew her well enough that when the clinic door clicked shut behind them, she was imagining where she’d display Regan’s wings. Was the mantle too cliché? 

But even someone she hated could offer her brand-new experiences: she’d never once been completely disinterested in a woman undressing. Even the bandage was uncompelling: injury was a common sight in Saol Eile. Instinctively, she flexed her fingers over scarred stomach. How many of those did she have? Siobhan drew her hand back, picking off imaginary lint. “It’s a little too late to try to seduce me.” She smiled like an actress with applause, too pleased with her own performance. “At any rate, you’re hardly my type: I prefer people with at least an iota of maturity.” She never could have entertained it anyway; Regan was right, she did envy her, and Siobhan never understood the appeal of sleeping with people who could pull one’s introverted self-hatred to the dancefloor. She much preferred the ones that would take hers to an open grave. 

Siobhan kept her eyes away from Regan’s wings, as if that, more than her shirtlessness, was obscene. Instead, she ambled from one corner of the clinic to the next, appraising the space like an interested buyer: opening and closing drawers, tracing surfaces, poking the walls. “You don’t understand how power works, do you? Oh, of course you don’t. You killed—no, sorry, pushed your grandmother.” Which was, of course, embarrassingly childish. Much like Siobhan’s unashamed glee when she found Regan’s tools. She was drawn to the latex gloves first, pulling them from the box and dropping them like confetti.  “You shouldn’t tell the woman who controls your well-being that you hate her.” She picked up tools and set them down, picking up new tools and repeating the energetic process, everything moved out of its place. She grabbed the stethoscope by the earpiece and shook the tubing like someone who didn’t quite understand how a yo-yo worked. She threw the stethoscope over her shoulder and picked up a scalpel. “Why are your knives so tiny? And thin? And gray?” Siobhan smiled; she knew what scalpels were. “You know they make girthier knives, right?” 

Scalpel in hand, she strolled up to Regan’s chair. “You would be the one not getting anything again: not a friend, not a…whatever that human girl was.” Siobhan pressed her palm into the headrest; she hoped it hurt to think about them. She hoped Regan knew what it was like to possess a fraction of the pain she had endured. “Do you even know me, Regan? You call me cailleach without understanding my years, my knowledge, my wisdom. You throw words around without caring for their weight. Did you expect Wynne would suddenly learn the lesson that has evaded you?” 

Siobhan stomped down on one of the petals and the chair squealed as it flattened. She drew her lips close to Regan’s ear, her hair brushing her face, her breath stabbing her skin. “Fate isn’t in control of your punishment.” With the delicate flick of her wrist, she pressed the scalpel to Regan’s cheek, grinning at her. “Would you like to try again?” 

———

So far, the most invasive part of having her wings torn from her back was Siobhan’s ransacking of the examination room. Regan scowled at each cabinet ripped open and then slammed when the intruder decided she wasn’t interested in the contents (didn’t even know what they were). Medications did not interest her. Cleaning supplies seemed to bore her even more. It was only the sharp instruments and vaguely-torturesque equipment that captured her attention, and probably imagination. “Don’t touch– that isn’t how–” How was it that Regan’s biggest protest right now had more to do with how Siobhan chose to handle her scalpels and stethoscope instead of the procedure she was about to undergo? 

No, not procedure. This was no procedure. A procedure was when she had to remove a wing – a surging infection, an unhealing cold iron wound – while a patient was under anesthesia (the best they could find available out here) because it was either their wing or their life. While Cliodhna always believed such measures were provocative, attempting to steer Fate from where it wished to go, pushing against the pull of its tide, Regan’s patients disagreed after they had been helped. (And would her grandmother, now completely reliant on the charitability of other banshees, change her mind now, if only to live to hear about her granddaughter suffering? That might make the salve of life-saving support sweet enough to endure.)

“She’s not dead!” Regan protested, the most her voice oscillated in days – since she had pleaded for Elias’s life. “She– that’s right, she was pushed. She is not dead. I didn't kill anyone.” She did not need to think about how being pushed into a tar pit that kept one rooted there like a half-carved statue for decades was far less merciful than a death. Siobhan was thinking it for her. And this was not for her grandmother. It was for the lie. For almost killing those she cared about. For the child and Elias and Wynne coming to harm. She accepted a punishment for that. She did not need to accept who was carrying it out. “I don’t see your mother around here.” Regan's voice went low, seething, though she didn’t think Siobhan had done anything to her mother. More likely, her mother stopped wishing to look at her daughter the moment Siobhan’s crime against Saol Eile – whatever it had been – came to light, and her daughter was pushed into the shadows.

“You’re not in control of it either,” Regan said simply, with more confidence than she felt, though she understood that was only partially true. Banshees could act independently. They were often punished for it, as Siobhan knew personally, but most had a flaw or two – something that still marked them as an individual with interests and desires – that was more stubborn, even impossible to eliminate. And Siobhan, in her exile, could have picked up additional flaws like ticks on a stray dog. After all, jealousy bled out of her if you knew where to slice. 

Regan was not supposed to die right now. There was no scream building in her lungs, and none of the other banshees would tolerate such a crime. They wanted her here, did they not? That was the point. Siobhan was in their hand, but her fingers were slippery and liberal on the scalpel where Regan’s had always been sure and adept. “What else is there to know? Enlighten me. I know your bones are brittle and unimpressive, so you try to keep others from seeing them by utilizing absurd dresses with designated holes for your breasts.” The attempt to pull others where she wanted them with flashiness was not unfamiliar to Regan, but she did not want to think about that comparison more than she had to. Which right now was not at all. “I know you’re old. And your bitterness makes you bloated.” There was more, too, but that wandered more into the territory of speculation. Regan didn’t care very much for speculation at the moment. 

Siobhan stood over her, even sitting, occupying the chair Regan normally sat in herself. She cast a dark shadow that fell over her own face, too, making every pore more noticeable, making her hair appear dull. Siobhan really did look old right now. And what Regan would have given for more visible pores. So what if some of her leanbh flesh was cut? ”I don’t need my cheek. And you will either let me explain how this is done, let me insist on the use of even rudimentary anesthesia, or you will not. I’m not going to beg.” She had already tried begging a few days ago. Her grandmother took in her pleas and wielded them as dangerously as she had the knife. Her pleas did not spare Elias. They made things worse. Regan stared at the scalpel in Siobhan’s hand, but did not move her head to do so. “That is the wrong size.” She pointed back toward the counter, where Siobhan had made an indelicate arrangement of tools she did not know anything about. (A blade was a blade, she probably thought.) 

“Even my grandmother would not approve of this sentence. Not this part. The imprisonment here… but not this part.” Regan didn’t look at Siobhan, not really. “She would prefer if you tore up the rest of me and left my wings.” Siobhan didn't seem interested in her wings at all, actually. Curious. Regan twisted around on the examination chair slightly, managing to lift a tired brow.

———

Siobhan pushed her long legs out, flying down on the chair—the doctor’s chair, with wheels! She occupied herself with a new game, pushing off the walls, bouncing around the room like a ball. Anything to avoid the wings. Anything to avoid talking about her mother. Siobhan looked up, finding a crowd of squirming brown blobs standing on the other side of a thick window. The glass, if it could even be called that, was layered and covered and coated and rearranged all so errant screams couldn’t shatter it. The effect was something like frosted plastic and though Siobhan knew the banshees had gathered on the other side to look in—if it could even be called looking—she couldn’t discern their faces any more than they could actually see inside. She waved. None of them waved back. 

Her mother liked glass: delicate glass trinkets, old stained glass windows, things that could and would shatter. Being around her mother was to walk on glass shards—everything was a lesson. Siobhan didn't want to think about any of it; Regan couldn’t understand what it was like trying to please a woman that was always miserable. Whatever Regan thought she understood about banshee family dynamics from Cliodhna didn’t begin to skim the surface of reality. All Regan had to disappoint was her grandmother, who she clearly didn’t fear so much that she couldn’t push her. She didn’t know what it was like to be born from a Cliodhna, who came from her own Cliodhna, who came from another and another threaded through generations. No two Ó Dúbhláin’s were the same, but each of them understood legacy the way a rabbit recognizes fangs sunken into its flesh. Just the idea of her mother made Siobhan shiver. 

“You could say that about anything,” she said, wheeling around, “you don’t need your hair or your legs or Jade. Oh, Jade. Certainly not Jade, not anymore.” Siobhan hoped it burned to hear her name. Siobhan hoped Regan would cry and beg, just as she had. She wanted the world where she wasn’t the only defective banshee who enfeebled herself thinking family would offer her grace, the only one who thought she could trust another. But Regan hated her, and Siobhan still loved her mother. “Did you tell your grandmother about the rings?” Siobhan pointed her chin to the window. “Did you tell them? Where did you keep it? Did you bring it?” And then she couldn’t help herself, she looked. There was something there, sitting around Regan’s finger. She averted her gaze quickly. Of course she did. “You’re a sentimental creature; you leak with it like a defrosting corpse.” They were both a little bit like that; bruised like a dropped fruit, rotten and gooey on the inside. Regan had an excuse carved into her existence: her age, her experience living among the humans, her father. Regan didn’t have to be a perfect banshee just yet, all she needed to be was one that was good enough and still she couldn’t manage that. Then she supposed, that was precisely Regan’s problem. 

Was she better? What excuse did she have for straining her eyes reading Austen under moonlight? For the poetry books she had stashed in trees? For laughing? For crying? For craving life as described by the humans? For now, having only asked about the ring because she wanted to see it (better, up close) and know if love really was as she’d read it, all those years ago. When Siobhan pushed herself back to Regan—and her wings—she had dropped the glamour on her skin, and bore every scar Saol Eile had given her. “I loved her, my great-great-grandmother. She taught me useless things: how to plant flowers, how to paint, where to pet a cat, how to nurse an injured magpie. In the summer, we bottled fruit, boiling them for hours together; her whole cabin stank of sweetness. In the winter, we rolled snow up and carved sculptures of femurs and vertebrae.” Siobhan rolled herself to the tools again, trading her small scalpel for one of a more appropriate size. “She would’ve been tortured for days. That was her death as Fate made it. And I…” Siobhan pushed herself back. 

Someone like Regan couldn’t understand what Siobhan was about to say, that was how she felt—her opinion of Regan was too low to expect any sympathy—but she unraveled the story and she couldn’t leave it undone. “Fate doesn’t care about the specifics.” Normally. Normally. “So, I did it. But that wasn’t the crime. That happens often around here—have they told you, yet? As long as someone is fated to die, does it really matter how? Sometimes you need to make sure it happens, anyway; disobedience is a fault of nature.” Sometimes. Sometimes. “The crime was not something I intended: when the people that would have tortured her came, confused about where their banshee went, they went looking for more. Seven died in the end, because I wanted a kinder Fate for someone I loved.” And yet, when she relived the day, she never changed what she did; maybe she’d stay in the cabin to pick the wardens off herself but she’d never let them have her great-great-grandmother. 

“Rónnait. That was her name. She thanked me.” Finally, Siobhan looked at the wings. “Why did you do it?” 

———

“Enough,” Regan said with a roll of her eyes, and no true authority at all. She couldn’t watch another second of Siobhan shooting across the room in her chair. Never mind that Regan had considered doing the same a few times but reminded herself she had to be more dignified than that (it was a child’s activity – she was not a child). And despite Siobhan’s behavior, she was tall and elegant enough to get away with it. “Stop treating my chair like a toy and stop waving out the window. You know they can’t see us. Adhlacadh domhain iad for trying to watch; they are like the humans who gather around death scenes to see a cadaver, or the ones who ask me the wrong questions, about the bloodiest scenes and serial killers instead of how things work. If they are so eager, they can push each other into Farraige na Buanachta themselves next time.”

For just a blink, she thought she did hear some of her old confidence, but when she saw the scalpel in Siobhan’s hand again, it was the first thing severed from her. It was as if the scalpel poked another hole in her at Jade’s name. Regan’s eyes seared to Siobhan’s. She cared even less about her cheek now, but her pulse didn’t recognize that. “Shut up.” Leanbh. No one even needed to supply the word. “You don’t talk about her, I said shut up. It was never about needing her! You know nothing about this, and it’s impossible for me to change that. Just as it’s impossible for me to stop knowing about it now.” Wanting. She had wanted Jade. And even thinking that word made the scars on Regan’s hands feel like they had opened up again. She still hadn’t stopped thinking about how at least once, in Wicked’s Rest, she had known how to want something.

Siobhan saw the open wound and would stick her fingers right in it, stretching it to see how far it could go. 

Regan’s ring was not difficult to see; it was the brightest part of her. She saw Siobhan flick her eyes toward it, then away like they couldn’t move fast enough. She would not be shamed for this ring or for Jade. But she had said rings, plural, so how did she know about Jade’s, the one Regan had given her? The obvious answer sent her stomach dropping into her intestines. Jade had told her. Why were they–  “That’s none of your business. And what does it matter to you? What do you know of rings? Hm? Someone who has lived as long as you, with no one who would give you one.” Regan was sentimental. Disgustingly so. It was one of her worst qualities, one she and her grandmother had both tried to correct. And here she was, despite trying once more to stop being what she was. Sentimental. All of it wrapped up in Jade’s jacket. “If I knew listening to you orating was going to be part of this, I would have pulled my wings off myself.” Not that such a thing was possible, really; Regan had tried.

At least Siobhan had stopped rolling across Regan’s clinic. It was still hers. No matter what was happening now, it was hers. For a hundred years, it…

Regan closed her eyes, exhaled through tense teeth, trying to seeth less. They had all been so close.

“What is it? Can we move on? I only have a century to listen to you gesticulate.” It turned out Siobhan could still surprise her. Regan sat up more, impatient, even as Siobhan tried to lower her. That was nothing new. But the other banshee changed, her flawless skin awash with scars – patches of every shape, color, and texture revealed themselves. Nearly every inch of her exposed skin was covered in this tapestry, and Regan was stunned speechless, her mouth hanging, any retort she might have come up with dead on arrival. Her eyes trailed across Siobhan like she was a map. There were scars that went deep and inflated as they healed, others that were shallow but vast. Some shined under the sterile exam room lighting; others puckered dark. The neat and precise incised scars contrasted with the haphazard blind stabs. Some resembled electrocardiograms, others like tracing mountaintops into one’s skin. There were squared off margins, there were narrow, whiplike lines, there were concentric ripples and some vaguely skeletal in shape wrapping around her arm; one shoulder bore hypertrophic gashes; on her hand, a spray of atrophic scars. Regan couldn’t stop herself from staring, from finally seeing what had been there the whole time, the truth of Siobhan Dolan. 

The other banshee was speaking of her great-great-grandmother, but Regan heard only the distant agony, forty two years ago, of someone who had endured her entire community cutting her loose with blades rather than words.

Regan flopped back down on the chair, forcing herself to pull away. To think, not stare. Siobhan carried on so casually, perhaps even enjoying how disarming this was. And Regan… fine, she was disarmed.

If such a victim were on her autopsy table, this would have been the rare examination that stretched days instead of hours. She would have gotten lost in Siobhan’s body, trying to understand each mark. If she did that now, ran her fingers over them one by one, took measurements, searched Saol Eile’s endless weapons and tools, she might have figured out which instruments had inflicted some of them. But that wasn’t really understanding, was it? In their own way, these went down to the bone. For once, she had to admit, an autopsy would have told her very little.

She wasn’t sure what Siobhan was saying about Fate – always something about Fate – but it didn’t matter. No words that could pass between them would matter. Siobhan was going to do this because something immeasurably worse had been done to her, and maybe, if she inflicted a fraction of that suffering on someone else, she could subtract a year or two of her own suffering from the sum of it. (In that case, Siobhan was bad at math.) Regan did catch the end of this story: her actions resulted in the death of seven banshees. And banshees, Regan thought, scanning over every place a weapon made brutal contact with Siobhan’s skin, did not kill each other.

Regan could still see the scars, though her eyes were on the ceiling, tracing the straight edges of the square tiles. When Siobhan looked down at her – not unlike a dentist might, from above – she had traded the scalpel for one that was (more) correct for the job. Regan wasn’t really thinking about that. It all felt so faraway now, like so many other parts of her life. This would just be another loss, less substantial than what she had already given up. (Except– they really had been so close–)

It was only Siobhan’s expectant stare that alerted Regan she had asked a question, and was waiting for an answer. She played back the reel of her thoughts. There had been a name. Why did you do it?

Why? Somehow that simple, obvious question was the last one she had expected from Siobhan. Regan’s mouth felt numb; it took her a moment to use it, and even longer to find the right words. They ended up being quite simple, and sounded just as childish as Siobhan would have expected. “My grandmother pushed me, first.” Even Regan could appreciate how easily that could have been adapted to a preschool playground. “She was going to kill someone important to me. She was going to kill my–” She had called Elias a friend with such ease when he was at the point of a knife. Now it clogged her throat like a scabbed wound. Could she even be sure he’d ever want to see her again? “She was going to kill someone I cared about, because I could not pretend I didn’t care. Or… or to not care in the first place. Pretending isn’t sufficient.” Siobhan might disagree; that was all she did: pretend. “So she pushed me. She has done nothing but push me. She pushed me into a birthright I never asked for, pushed me across the Atlantic, pushed me to try to become something I’m not and could never be, and pushed me away from those who believed I could be something that wasn’t to be pushed.”

Regan studied Siobhan from below. Her eyes traced more scars – a long one that ran from the edge of Siobhan’s jaw and alongside her carotid like a river. “I finally pushed back. And I saved him. It was an easy choice.” And even as she lied here, anticipating enormous pain, it was one of the few things she could say she did not regret. “I know that an untrained banshee is like a bomb. I am not foolish enough to believe there’s another way. But I don’t think this… this can’t be it, either.” Regan held her hand up, turning it above her head, studying the ring from underneath, wishing that could be it, instead, the way. 

Regan eventually rolled over, her wings flicking. “I didn't see your wings. And your glamour is gone.” Brilliant observation. Regan was capable of putting two and two together (her math was better than Siobhan’s math), especially after what Eithne said. Siobhan knows about this. And Siobhan had already supplied an answer to the next question, hadn’t she? Did it hurt? Of course it did. She bled for forty two years and would continue to bleed after today, even if she thought otherwise.

“And you came back to them.”

How could that be a victory? 

Regan stayed silent, anticipating (and feeling strangely hypocritical for some reason, probably hunger). She decided she would not insist on anesthesia. She did not trust this woman not to carve her up, thinking it would distribute her pain between the two of them. A topical analgesic would do very little. Alcohol was not a bad idea, for several reasons, but she had none. She nearly asked what Siobhan would do with her wings once they had been removed, but she didn’t wish to know that, either. This was as ready as she would ever be. So Regan stretched out as much as she could now, and spread her wings for the last time. 

And then… she detracted from this no doubt glorious moment. Because doctors made terrible patients. “First of all, put gloves on. The instruments – your grip is poor, by the way – should be set up on the tray before you even think about cutting into me; it is sloppy to go back and forth. And the surgical towels are in the cabinet up there.” She nudged her head toward it. “And no PPE? For shame. Go to the closet and get it. You will start with the upper wings. They carry a higher risk of associated spinal injury, so I would prefer to be conscious enough to walk you through your inevitable teipeanna. There will be a lot of blood. Be ready with gauze.” She paused, wishing she could twist around and read Siobhan’s face. “Do not forget,” Regan said, her voice coming out far steadier than she felt, “you still need me.”

———

Siobhan wanted to strike a nerve; tear open her chest and prise out of ribs one at a time. But the glee at finally exposing Regan’s sternum was smothered quickly by the guilt of having used Jade to do it. She liked the young hunter well enough—and did Regan know she was a hunter at all?—and she had no reason to wield her name like, well, a scalpel. If she was really trying, she could throw the blade away and use Jade to cut Regan open instead. Their bloodless bloodbath came with its own set of consequences though: for all Siobhan could do to torment Regan, the young banshee could do the same. Even at the end, with a century of pain staring back at her, she could summon the energy to be annoying. Every so often, Regan could find the stapes in the haystack. Every so often, something Regan said cut her open too. 

Everything she knew about romantic love came from the words of humans: Austen, Keats, Wordsworth, Yeats, Shakespeare, Brontë (Charlotte, not Emily). Everything she knew about rings came from them too. No one had given her one: yes, no one had ever wanted to. Did she want someone to? Siobhan was aware of her Romantic—capital R—proclivities. How else was one to think of Death? Or Fate? Or Duty? But the translation of romantic love was a mystery. She hated that Regan had held something that her fingers had only ever brushed. It hadn’t been about wanting a ring for herself—or some equally shameful Jade waiting for her—it’d been about the one notion that kept her in the dark. She couldn’t even close her fist around the idea of her friends, but she’d been so close; all she had for understanding was a dead grandmother. Siobhan respected love, how else was one to think of it?

With one apology whispered in a breath for Jade, Siobhan said nothing more about it. She was sorry to Regan too, but she’d sooner cut her wings off than apologize. Speaking of… Siobhan couldn’t stop staring at them. Regan was talking about being pushed and Siobhan was thinking about how beautiful they were. Regan mentioned saving someone and Siobhan wanted them under her fingers. They looked like glass. And you came back to them, Regan said. Could her wings shatter from just a touch? Forty-two years ago, it felt like hers had. What hurt most was that it’d been her mother. And then her mother’s grip, bunching them together like stalks of wheat. It didn’t hurt so much when her mother finally dug her knife in, rooting around her flesh. And when she pulled, uprooting her wings like a weed, all of the hurt had already been spent. Perhaps things would’ve been different if she felt love in how her mother butchered her; for years, she’d searched for it. Siobhan could always forgive the pain but she couldn’t condone the apathy. 

Not anymore. 

“So you fought back.” Siobhan averted her gaze as Regan adjusted herself for the last time, again as though there was something obscene in the act. “And now you’re resigned. Haven’t you legs, leanbh? Haven’t you hands? Arms? Don’t you know what a door is?” She stood and did as Regan asked, dressing herself appropriately as a doctor; she would not be her mother. She set everything up on the table in a way she thought Regan would approve of, keeping everything close by and ready. If Regan wanted her to be clean, she would be clean. If Regan wanted it to be surgical, it would be surgical. She would not be her mother. 

“You’re right, leanbh: I know nothing of rings. Here, no one remains who loves me. Perhaps there is not a soul in this world that does.” Siobhan settled into the doctor’s chair, feet planted to keep herself from rolling. “And I have no wings. It was my mother who ripped mine out.” Siobhan pressed her gloved hand to the base of Regan’s upper wing, laying the cold latex there. “If you do not cut it from the root, they might grow back. It is not a removal; they will not be happy. But it will look like one…for long enough, anyway. I will take them and I will show them off and should someone walk back in here after they’re done celebrating, and should they find this clinic empty…well, I hear there’s a wonderful bandaid dispenser available for rehire.” Siobhan dropped her hand and readjusted the grip on the scalpel in her right hand. “If you decide you are done being pushed, leanbh, and if you remember that you have legs and that there might be a matching ring somewhere that’d like to see its other half again, wouldn’t it have been a strange oversight on my part that I left you alone?” Siobhan lifted one of Regan’s upper wings tenderly, like the pane of stained glass that it was. “Are you ready, leanbh?” 

And though she was calling her a child, and though she once wielded that word the same way it had been leveled against them both, she had begun holding it the way her great-great-grandmother had. Leanbh softly. Leanbh with a smile and a howling laugh. Leanbh bounced on a knee. Leanbh through a green pasture. Leanbh as though it was okay to be leanbh. Leanbh as it was meant by the first mother, holding the first daughter. Leanbh as if Rónnait was still alive, calling a little girl home. 

Leanbh with the paltry love that Siobhan could offer. 

———

Regan fought back; that was what Siobhan thought. “I listened to her for eight years, I tried to be good,” she said, and her voice was so tired she didn’t recognize it at first. “I was not made for any of this. My grandmother would be the first to agree. She would not have been so shamed by me if she hadn’t done this to me to begin with.” Was it fighting back? “Why should she spend the next couple hundred years of her life attempting something that will never…” The words started to sting as they came out, like a lie. Not that. Regan hadn’t done this to spare her grandmother a thing. “She almost killed someone. I told you that.” A friend, her best friend, which – again – was much harder to say now that his throat was not being pushed against a blade. That was true, but not a direct response to what Siobhan had said. “Her cooking was bad.” Also true but completely irrelevant. Regan tried to reach for Siobhan’s words, pull them close, and accept them. Regan fought back. Regan fought back. That was what Siobhan thought. And maybe it was true. 

It wasn’t an accident, she had told the ham child. You’re a person, too, Jade wrote, and sometimes Regan believed it enough. 

Regan fought back. “I may have. I don’t regret it. She taught me to not look behind.” The irony cut the air. “But… it doesn’t feel like I fought for anything. I’m here, and Elias is here, and everything is the same except I’ll be trapped and your leash is longer.” Regan would not miss an opportunity to remind Siobhan of what was fastened to her neck.

Have you no legs? Was she implying that the right thing to do was simply walk out of here? That was impossible now. Siobhan had resolved to do this for her own gain, and the entire aos si would be waiting to see a leanbh shamble out of here wrapped in bandages (they were surely still crowded around outside, frothing, climbing each other for the best viewing angle, ready). Regan turned her head to the side, eyes attempting to steal a look at Siobhan. (Right– the scars.) She had expected a hyena's grin, or an imitation of Cliodhna's dark eyes conveying everything Regan needed to know about how foolish she'd been to believe Siobhan. But no. Siobhan was just Siobhan, scarred, expectant – waiting for an answer. 

Regan was too tired to humor whatever this was. “You can see that I have legs, hands, and arms. See them? They are there. Limbs. If I didn’t know what a door was, I would not be able to do my job here each day. My patients would be displeased. They would leave low ratings on Yell.” Her job. Like this was her job. She sent Declan to his death. And the ham child still didn’t know that, about the hours Regan had snatched from them, because it was not something she could have brought up in that shared cell. And now would she ever know? And would she ever be free of that promise? Her job. Right. “I don’t understand why you’re asking about that. Neither of us leave here.”

Even prone on the chair, she again twisted her neck slightly to watch what Siobhan was doing. The snapping of gloves and clanging of metal was not to be ignored. And… Siobhan was listening. Siobhan was doing what Regan had asked of her. Why? Regan believed humans often acted in nonsensical ways; banshees, even if they were incorrect, acted in predictable ways, adhering to guidelines and rules and the needs of greater forces (in theory). This seemed more like an attempt to be considerate or respectful; it was not required, not something a banshee would usually do. Her eyes tracked Siobhan around the room, focusing on the maze of scars etched into her skin. So was this not about wanting Regan to “suffer as she had suffered”? What was she doing this for, then? Simple obedience to return here?

The answer made her tired heart give a measly pump; her mind reeled but her body didn’t respond. Siobhan’s mother ripped out her wings. That was what Eithne had meant. She was having a woman who had her own wings torn out do the same to someone else. There was not a single drop of surprise in Regan’s dry throat. That was what banshees did, was it not? What were they if not a cycle? Cliodhna had given her this birthright just as her mother had, so many centuries ago. Cliodhna had trained Regan in accordance with her own training. And where had Regan’s great grandmother learned all of this? Her mother, of course. It took an extreme form of discipline to be able to pull the knife that had been twisting in your gut for hundreds of years, plunge it into the stomach of your child, and call it a great honor.

Maybe discipline was not the word.

Thinking about this was twisting her own knife. One that she’d keep there, in her own gut, not sinking it into someone else’s, forever.

Dry as her throat was, her curiosity won out. “Why? Why would she do that? Because of what you did?” Siobhan, who now wore PPE, seemed incredibly nude (and not in the usual way of obscene sweaters and long, bare legs). How could Regan care about Siobhan when all she was about to do was perpetuate cruelty? (But necessity could be cruel. It was not cruelty on its own. It was necessary. Cliodhna’s voice provided.) Why was she so weak? “You must have liked them. They were bold and flashy I assume, like a multicolored ulcer. They took your wings and cast you out... they’re taking mine but keeping me in. It would have been nice to swap places.” But Siobhan was too old. And Regan was too much a leanbh. And both of them would face their consequences without regret. 

But not without complaint. “Hey!” The hand on the base of her wing nearly made her scream. “Hey,” she yapped again, squirming at the sudden, harsh contact. “Do not– take your hand off right now. Not like that.” She tried to snap her wings closed, but the pressure from Siobhan’s hand kept that one splayed out. In hindsight, she wasn’t sure how she expected this to work if she wasn’t going to permit Siobhan to touch her wings at all. But what about this was permitted in the first place? And Siobhan had been receptive to everything else Regan had asked for so far. “No one touches– hand off.” 

The most Regan had allowed anyone to touch them was her grandmother's attempt to teach her how to glamour, which had involved pinning her wings to a tree and leaving her there until she either glamoured them, or had the pins tear through her wings if she moved. She did not learn how to glamour.

To Regan’s surprise, Siobhan listened as she had with the equipment, and Regan was then able to shuffle her forewing wing against her back again with the others. She exhaled a shaky huff, the biggest she’d taken since she was up on that stage. “I don’t like them touched.” I don’t like them might have been a little closer to the truth, but it couldn’t be the whole truth, because wouldn’t it have been much easier to just have them removed, if that were the case? This would have been an opportunity fallen on her lap, not a punishment. Except it wasn’t that simple. 

And… it didn’t seem that simple for Siobhan, either. Regan wasn’t sure she heard the woman correctly. But as Siobhan continued to… 

So she was not going to remove Regan’s wings? Had Siobhan intended to? What changed? Or had this been her intention this entire time? Being something sharp for the cycle to attempt to run over, like popping a tire? 

Regan couldn’t help but sit up again (terrible patient). "You intend to cut them..." It would hurt. It would be more physical pain than she'd endured, possibly in her life, or at least since she’d grown them in to begin with. It was possible her wings might not grow back, or not grow back right. But... it would not be akin to four amputations, digging into numerous muscles and pulling out things that were supposed to stay inside of the body (the live ones, anyway). She would not live in constant pain like Blinne. (Did Siobhan?) But... Regan wasn't a banshee. After everything that had happened over the last week, how could she possibly consider herself one? How could she look at or feel her wings and not think only of failure, or that it was the only part of her that her grandmother liked? Maybe it would be better if they were fully removed. There would be irony in the sentence. 

That also felt a lot like giving up, like watching Elias be murdered in front of her and succumbing to her grandmother’s– enough. She was too tired for such a cerebral scribble. 

Maybe it was that simple, actually. “Why would you do this? You fought to be welcomed back. Why would you risk that? Just remove them. That is what they’ll be looking for. If not today, then tomorrow, or the next day. Remove them. I permit you to remove them."

Her selfish bravery flatlined when the implications of the other thing Siobhan said hit her. Could Regan have legs, and arms, and use a door? Could she fight back, one more time? Could she cede this place to the band-aid dispenser, even when it was covered in dust and rust that it shed like beard hairs? Could she return to Jade? (Yes. Yes. Regan had to prove her right.) Regan’s eyes lit up. “An oversight.” They wouldn’t believe it. “You would risk it.” She would. Much like herself, Siobhan was not of the variety whose mind was easily changed. "I do have legs. You can see them. We have gone over the limbs. They’re acceptable legs, but they won't get me far." Even if her wings were cut and not removed, she wasn't sure she'd be able to make it anywhere she needed to be. A pause, because even then, she knew that wasn’t going to be the thing to stop her. Her eyes shined even brighter. “They would never allow me back.” Regan wasn’t conflicted. Or if there was any conflict buried in her, it didn’t come out in her voice. But Siobhan had lived this. As easy as the choice – choice? – seemed now, Siobhan would see things that Regan did not. 

But Regan saw that Siobhan was soft, too, when she stopped pushing herself into Farraige na Buanachta.

Regan was silent, trying to ignore the word leanbh that filled the room; it did not matter how it was delivered. It filled her mind, filled her nerves, necrotized them. But it already lived there and left its scars. What more could this do? “It sounds like you could benefit from reading some harsh tales of the moors yourself, while you educate your worms. You are losing your edges.” Regan paused, debating. Admitting. “I read them Tana French.”

Instead of a flat palm pressing her down, she felt light fingers lift the tip of her wing. Her body curled slightly but she forced herself straight again. There was no avoiding touch right now, but Siobhan was wielding patience more than the scalpel Regan had pointed her to. However this was going to end, Regan was ready. And Siobhan would not be slicing into her legs or her future that she had fought for. With a long breath, Regan tried to still herself. “I am sorry. For what happened to you.” That was all she could offer to the banshee who was about to cut off her wings, as she lay flat once more, ready for Siobhan to do what was necessary not in the eyes of Fate, but for the two of them.

———

“You left once. You did it once. Did you forget?” It was simple enough to say; it was a simple enough idea. Was there any difference between then and now? Was Siobhan any different from how she was a year ago? Forty-two years? A hundred? She was only ever herself and though she was discovering what that meant, she thought it was true for Regan. Who was this leanbh but herself? What was the difference between her now and the woman that left? Or the one, in Maine, that didn’t want to come at all? Where was the woman that dropped her dead raccoon on the road just to get away? That woman was here, laying with her wings up to the ceiling. 

As for her: “one needs to be wanted in order to leave. I’ve never left and I never will.” Siobhan lived in memories that pervaded Saol Eile: the clumsy girl, the arrogant teen, the insipid adult. “Physically, of course, go wherever. Part of me will always live here—I think Saol Eile claims something in all of us, as long as you want it. Even you—even the girl who refused to come—wanted to be good; wanted this place.” And Siobhan wanted it more than most. Saol Eile was her home and though it would never want her, and perhaps had never wanted her to begin with, she couldn’t leave.

Siobhan turned to the window again; the blobs seemed a little more squished against it. “You are not the first banshee who wanted to be good. You are not the first banshee to fail. You won’t be the first to leave; you weren’t even when you did. I think we have always been the same story, over and over again. Something about mothers and daughters, or grandmothers, or tar pits and graves. How many of these women want it too?” She tried to focus on Regan again, finding instead that her gaze was strangely blurred. She could only hope—why was there any doubt that she was a terrible banshee—that Regan would pretend not to notice her wiping her tears away on her sleeve. “They were like a moth’s: red and black. They were so soft, most of the time it was like walking around with a blanket. But in the light, when you could see the—when they—under the sun they…” It didn’t matter what they’d looked like, only that she loved them. “My mother said they were beautiful. The day they came in—you remember how that was, when they’re raw and blood soaked—she said they were beautiful. That’s what I remember most.”

Regan didn’t want her wings touched and Siobhan understood and obliged, hands raised up as if in surrender. “I am going to have to touch them to cut them,” she said, but at that point, it would hardly matter that she was touching them. “Why? Why, indeed. That’s the question, isn’t it?” Siobhan was still the same clumsy little girl, she thought. The one with the books. The one who was happy to be called beautiful, even if she thought her legs were too long and her hair was too wild. The one who loved to watch the animals, and held funerals for rabbits. That little girl never would’ve had the gumption to cut Regan’s wings, but for her, there was the arrogant teen. The one who loved her wings. The one with the insults ready at a whip’s crack. The one who could butcher a rabbit faster than her cousins, turning everything into a competition. She would’ve loved to cut Regan’s wings but she didn’t have any sense about her. So, there was also the insipid adult. The one who thought she knew better. The one who thought she had experience. The one who always asked too many questions and was too far inside her own head. Why would any of them do this? Because Regan should be free. Because Regan deserved some pain still, didn’t she? Because nothing would change; no matter where Siobhan was, nothing would change. She was always herself. 

So, then, why? Why let go of the only thing she’d ever wanted? Why help a woman she didn’t care about and did, by her own admission, hate? Why? Why did her mother rip her wings from her back? Why did her mother throw them aside? Why did she want her great-great-grandmother to have a better Death? Why did she still care, after all these years, about the animals? Why could she still butcher a rabbit so well for someone who didn’t eat meat? Why did she uphold her duty if there was no one to praise her? Why did she hide her skin? Why couldn’t she talk about her wings? Why did she still want her mother? Why could she not be like her mother? 

“Do you want to be allowed back?” Siobhan could feel the pulse of Regan’s slow heart through her wing. “Why become a doctor? Why concern yourself with treating people? Why do you dye your hair a shade that is entirely wrong for your complexion?” She tightened her grip around Regan’s wing. “Why do you permit me to take your wings? Why did you offer kindness to your butcher? Why did you bother with medical school?” She tightened her grip around the scalpel. “My mother said I was a round baby; I never had many edges to begin with. And I haven’t read a book in forty-two years, but I’ll start with Tana French and if her books are bad, I’ll find you and complain very loudly.” She held the blade to the edge of Regan’s wing, and the translucent chitin folded away like cut lace. Then, there was the first of several, pulsing, threads of green which branched across the wing. “Are you familiar with the fable of the scorpion and the frog?” Siobhan had killed too many creatures, most of them far more innocent than Regan, to feel guilty about the pain. They were banshees, after all; pain was an admission fee. “I could tell it to you, it might make everything more…” 

She swung the scalpel like an axe. There was a pop and tear against each of the green threads, and the resistance earned the transformation from axe to saw. Axe, saw, axe, saw; she cleaved across Regan’s wing until it was dangling in her hand, raw and bloody. “Oh,” she smiled, “the story has nothing to do with this, by the way.” 

———

Regan could picture a Siobhan of forty two years ago, almost – the flawless skin she appeared to have before today, and huge red and black wings draped around her like a royal cape. Back then, did she pretend? Did she distract? How much had all of this been about attempting to turn back a clock?

“I don’t care about being allowed back…” Regan hesitated, “Now. But I’m no cailleach.” Unfortunately. “Someday, there might be nothing left for me anywhere else. But what was here for you? Not your wings. There is no getting those back, obviously. Not smooth skin, or respect. Most at the trial probably never knew you. While you think about how you still need me, think about that, too. Before they realize you’ve done this.” But could Regan see herself fighting to return the way Siobhan had? With any desire at all? Desperate for some place that might understand her for centuries? Would she want to come back even then? 

No, no, no her heart supplied with each pump. 

The word no was a moth in the back of her throat. Better to be a human for eighty years than a banshee for hundreds. So that was what she would be, first and foremost: human. Siobhan had always been a part of this place in a way Regan had not, even if she’d succumbed to it enough to return. She huffed at Siobhan’s other questions, making her whole body lift from the chair slightly with the size of her breath. “It is bleached, not dyed.” Regan suspected Siobhan already knew the answers to the other questions, even if she grappled with them, even if she never understood them. “I wanted to help people.” Regan still did, but now it seemed impossible. She had come here for control, and she was leaving without it (if she was leaving at all). She had been in some way responsible for two deaths. Those who followed her here came to harm. So only past tense seemed right in Regan’s mouth.

She craned her neck once to see what Siobhan was doing and regretted it. The scalpel was raised in the air. Regan blanched (the first time she had around a scalpel) and returned to her former position, where she saw nothing at all except obvious truth. “You ask a lot of questions for a banshee. My grandmother despised them, as much as she could show contempt for anything. A new habit of yours within the last few decades? Or did they not care for you here even before?” She thought back to the verdict, the cryptic expression Siobhan had throughout the second half of the trial. “I was wrong… but maybe you can become perfect for this place. It’s all rather conditional, isn’t it?” Another sigh that lifted Regan by her filled lungs. “Humans are, too. So here we are.” 

A pause, before all that would come out were whimpers and screams. “I will think of you next time I see a worm.” This, Regan thought, was an honor that made up in part for the lack of a thank you.

Siobhan’s grip on her wing tightened, because Regan kept trying to pull it back to the center of her back, in the way her fists used to clench in anticipation of the blade across her palm: automatic, protective, childish. Her nerves might have been happier with the things cut off if it meant Siobhan’s hands no longer being on them.

The tearing began. Regan winced as the blade cut through the edges of each neatly-separated cell across the membrane, knowing that any second, it would reach the first vein, and it would sear like iron across the belly. (But she had done that. She had done that.) Tears leaked from her just as she’d accused Siobhan of in front of all of the banshees. Regan’s breathing hitched but she was fine. She’d gone through worse. She’d done worse to herself. But then the edge of the blade started cutting against the first cross-vein as if it were a fraying rope, and Regan bit down on the inside of her cheek, knowing that eventually, she would not be able to keep a scream in, and the crowd outside would get the grand finale they anticipated. Siobhan said something in her ear. Regan wasn’t paying attention. Scapulas and frons? “I already know about the bones,” she hissed, then the pressure grew then tore, like a net being sliced through.

The first scream came. Red and black swam across her vision. What was it called? She tried to recall the word, but that was surrounded by red and black, too. The chair rattled at her scream, but it had suffered this before. There was pounding against the windows. More, more. Three more wings. Her spine screamed with her mouth. Her back was wet. It poured down her sides. Her scalpels were sharp; she had taken good care of them. She could feel the pressure, how stubborn the veins were even against a sharp tool, how much her body wished to keep what she had almost given away in defeat. 

Photopsia. That was it. 

Regan no longer saw the wall of the exam room at all. But she could see past it. Wynne and the ham child would find each other where the trial had been held. Elias could not be far. They would come together, and they would find Regan here, bandaged and bloody, because that was what they did – they stayed for each other and they found her. Siobhan would step outside to a fervent crowd and hold up Regan’s glossy wings, declaring that she was worthy of her place among them again, and the leanbh had been punished according to the ruling of Fate. Siobhan’s aid would be discovered, eventually, and she’d be punished because Fate, when righteous, only spoke through other banshees. Wynne and the ham child would help Regan and Elias limp out the back. They would pile into the car, key still in Regan’s pocket, and they would drive until they saw nothing but the horizon in front of them.

They would land in some place they would barely recognize, one that might barely recognize them, and it would be home.

#writing #c siobhan #surgery tw #medical blood tw #domestic abuse tw #THE END WOW

[ariadnewhitlock]

@banisheed replied to your post “[pm] I do want to see the essay, Ariadne. The one...”:

[pm] Okay as in you will send it to me or...? [user is refreshing her email]

​[pm] Yes, of course. Whatever you want.

I'm sorry I'll do it now. I'm sorry for making you wait.

I'm

Did you want to kil

I'm sorry I'm an abomina

#c siobhan

[fearhims3lf]

@banisheed replied to your post “Is there someone in town you'd like to get to know...”:

I’m cuter. And more fun.

​Listen, I'm down to get to know people that are cuter and more fun. Just let me know where to hit you up.

#dash #c: siobhan

[zofiawithaz]

@banisheed replied: Thanks. I know I am. You're welcome.

[user stares at the audacity] This was.... totally about you and couldn't have possibly been about anyone else. [User facepalms]

#;; answered #;; interview with the vampire || answered asks #;; anon ask #c; siobhan dolan #banisheed