Ciara Devaney - Tumblr Posts
Call me.
It was not a place she had expected to go looking for Ciara Devaney, but it was her most reliable lead in a field of unreliable leads.
The doors were heavy and it took a moment for her to push one to open. A young man hopped to her aid and between them, the two of them were able to get her inside. “Not sure why they’re always closed,” he told her sheepishly.
Milli grinned, shook her head. “It’s alright. Thanks for the help.”
Predictably, there was a front desk. Milli stood, waiting for the woman with the tan and beige dress and severely pinned hair to look up from her paperwork. “How may I help you?” the woman asked, her tone conveying that bothering her was a mistake.
Milli responded quickly. “I’m looking for someone…”
The woman pointed wordlessly down the hall with an expression of deep resentment. Milli nodded a quick, “Thanks,” and headed where she was directed.
The halls were quiet, dark. Doors lined either side. None were open.
At the end sat another desk with another prim and proper woman in beige. She looked up, more pleasant than the first. “Who are ya lookin’ for, miss?” she asked with a slight country accent.
"Ciara Devaney," Milli said quietly. "I…I think she might be here."
"Lemme have a look-see, miss," the young nurse said, pulling out a clipboard with a list of names. She ran a finger down it and tapped the correct name. "Got ‘er right here. Ciara Devaney. She’s right troubled, though. Wounds and nightmares. Wakin’ ones. The doctors say she’s best off alone right now."
Milli nodded, shaking a bit. She’d found her. Oh, she’d found her. “It’s fine. What room?”
"Down here on the left, miss, 56. You want ‘elp?"
Shaking her head, Milli kept herself from running by willpower and clenched fists alone. At the door labeled 56 she stopped. With shaking fingers she took the key hanging next to it, as there was beside each door in this hall, and unlocked the door. It squeaked when she opened it.
Curled on the bed inside was a ragged, huddled figure. Seeing the bandages, Milli wanted to weep. But instead she took two stumbling steps forward.
"Cia?"
I don’t know what the hell I was thinking.
…just that they’d look… pretty on her.
Tell me.
Only one lamp still burned in the shop, but the door was unlocked. A bad idea this late at night in Lion’s Arch. But the only person to open the door and steal inside was turquoise-haired and familiar. At first glance, the place looked empty. But Cia eventually found Milli, leaning up against the wall next to the security box behind the counter, her bad leg sticking out in front of her and the other drawn up under her chin. An empty whiskey bottle dangled from her fingertips. The engineer seemed to be examining it quite closely in the flickering light.
Her gaze passed near Cia, not sticking, before it returned to the bottle. “Ev’ryone says he lies,” she drawled. “Says I shouldn’t trust him. And they’re right, he does lie. Prolly to me, too. But sometimes he tells the truth. And he’s always cared about me. And I ‘preciate those things ‘cause I know how rare they are.” Milli paused, taking a few deep breaths.
"He’ll never love me."
She let it hang there, like setting the words free in the universe made them solid, made them true.
"But he wants me ta be happy." Her eyes came up again, bloodshot blue, to finally really focus on Ciara. "Are ya gonna make me happy? ‘Cause I don’t know yet. And I’m scared to let him go, to let Tom go, in case ya won’t."
Back to the bottle. “I hear alcohol causes blackouts. I sure as hell hope so. I don’ wanna remember none’a this.”
Break me.
She did not greet the harsh light of morning happily. Her head ached, her eyes were dry and tired. Her stomach roiled as if she’d been on a boat in unquiet seas. She was quite, quite hung over.
But not, as fate would have it, hung over enough. She remembered.
Briefly Milli contemplated returning to bed. Sleep, perchance to dream, made her hesitate. She didn’t want to dream about her lovers. About words and a future uncertain.
She wanted to drown the ache in her heart with something else. Liquor had done nothing but made her sick. And the last time she’d been so sickly hung over, she’d gone to the Foxtail and Jack had…
No.
She needed something stronger than liquor or grief. But it seemed nothing stronger was easily available in her arsenal of emotions. And so she went to work. Because that, at least, made her focus.
It was habit to check if Cia was sitting in the shaded spot next to her shop. And Milli was trying so hard to concentrate on anything other than her heart that she didn’t check the habitual impulse.
She sucked in a breath. A dark-clad leg stuck out from the shadows, bearing a brace she knew all too well.
And suddenly, there it was, all too easy to hand. Anger. Stronger than the liquor souring her stomach and the grief crushing her heart.
Milli stalked toward her, kneeling down, practically falling on the other woman, to place her arms to either side of her so that Cia couldn’t leave.
"How dare you?" she hissed. "How dare you stay here and make this hurt after…after last night? You don’t want to try to make me happy? Fine. But don’t hover around me like you still care!"
Milli shook her head, angrier at the tears forming in her eyes than at Cia at that moment. “Did you know that you are the only person I ever pursued? The only person I ever tried to love? Who didn’t come to me? Do you know how much that hurts?”
She leaned back, shivering. Anger hadn’t helped after all, just made the pain worse. Because she was hurting Cia and she knew it and she hated it and she couldn’t stop.
"I can’t do it anymore, Cia. I can’t be the only one reaching forward. If you don’t want to try…I will let you go." Milli stood, leaning heavily on her cane. She didn’t look at Cia. "I can’t do this alone," she whispered.
Then Milli trudged into the shop.
Remember Me.
She liked the sunlight, the movement of the leaves in the wind. Soft things. The world felt distant to her. Disconnected.
She smiled at the nurse who came to change the bandages. The woman wrote, “Does anything hurt?” on the pad of paper beside her bed. Smiling, she shook her head. The medication was more than effective on that regard. She vaguely wished she could hear people talking, but it wasn’t a dire need. Maybe that was the medication, too.
For over two weeks she’d been in this hospital, surrounded by kind doctors and nurses who took care of her, brought her food, had stilted conversations with her via the pad of paper.
There had been an accident, she was given to know. She had been…damaged. Her hearing was part of it, along with who she was. What she had been doing. No friends or family came to see her, but she found she didn’t mind the solitude. It worried the staff far more than it did her. She liked the simplicity of things. Staring out the window, watching the birds in the tree.
She had dozed off when something made her bed dip. With a flurry of hands to keep her balance, despite not being about to fall off, she awoke. A pretty woman sat on the bed beside her, bright red hair and a bouquet of flowers. Her lips were moving, but of course she couldn’t hear it.
She smiled at the woman, pointed to her own ears, and shook her head. Then she pointed to the pad and pen.
The woman looked at her, her face seeming to lose all expression for a moment. Then she wrote, “What happened, Milli?”
She cocked her head at that. She’d been told her name was Millicent. But it wasn’t important. “I don’t know,” she wrote back. “Who are you?” She softened the words with a smile.
The woman stared at her a long time, searching her face for something. She couldn’t keep smiling in the face of so much weight, so she let herself drift, stared out the window again. “My name is Cia. I’m a friend,” the woman held the pad up in front of her.
She nodded, frowning. “I’m sorry I don’t remember you,” she wrote, which seemed appropriate. Everyone was sad she didn’t remember. Except her. She was just…empty. The woman looked empty, too. Blank.
"I love you, Milli," she wrote. "Please remember me?" Despite the blank look, the woman swallowed hard.
She shook her head. There was nothing, just this shifting fog. “What did we do together?” she wrote.
The woman traded the bouquet of flowers for the pad, leaving them in her lap. She touched them delicately, not watching the woman write. After a few moments, she glanced up. Something had been written, but the motion of writing had stopped. The woman stared straight ahead, looking at nothing.
With a sudden flurry of movement the woman slapped the pad on the table and placed a quick kiss on her cheek. Then she was gone, not looking back. The only word left on the pad was, “Nothing.”
She wanted to beat something. Throw things. Make a mess, a horrible, wretched mess. Show the world what she felt like on the inside. What her heart looked like.
One of the little clockwork owls was in her hand. She didn't remember picking it up. But already she was squeezing it, fingers tightening around the delicate metal and bending it. If she smashed it in her palm, she'd throw it at the wall. If she threw it at the wall, others would join it. And if she threw them all, smashed the glass, wrecked the shelves, broke her shop...
Then what happened?
She'd lose everything. Everything.
Slowly, her fingers loosened around the owl. Breathing heavily through her nose, she set it on the worktable. There was blood there. Blood on the floor. There might even be blood on the chair in the corner where Ordran had set that useless corpse. She had to take fucking care of things. If she didn't, no one would.
She set out the 'closed for the day' sign beside the door, found a bucket and some rags -- rags she'd gotten to help with Cia NO don't think like that -- filled the bucket with rainwater from outside, and started cleaning.
Milli spent the morning on her knees, scrubbing blood from wood, emptying the bucket when it got too bloody. Not thinking. Not feeling. Desperately wishing she was being held tight by strong arms that could make this all better.
And when it was done, she made her way home and collapsed on the bed in a sort of half-sleep, staring at the door. Hoping it would open. Not knowing who she hoped would be on the other side.
Enamour me.
(In the beforetimes…)
Cia had brought her flowers. It was a gift people gave someone special. And so it was only fair…
Milli worked one night and put it together. It wasn’t sappy or sentimental. She wasn’t good at making things like that. Even the clockwork toys in her shop at least moved or played tinkling music. She was practical. So when she next found Cia skulking about her shop, she dragged her inside.
"I, um, made something. I thought you might like it. I mean, someone like you," she said quickly, knowing how Cia hated gifts. "So if you could try it on?"
Cia gave her a speculative look. “Why? Does it explode?”
Milli laughed. “No, silly, of course not. It’s just…useful.” Milli kept her eye on Cia the whole time she was digging the box out from under the counter, just in case Cia tried to bolt. It was always a possibility. Always seemed Cia’s go-to course of action.
She placed the little box on the table and opened it. Inside was a long strip of black leather, matte black metal cinches attached to the sides. “It holds knives,” Milli explained. “The clamps keep the knives attached, but if you press this button at the edge,” she gestured to it, “it will unlock and you can pull the knife. So it’s always on you, but safe from being pulled by someone else.”
Cia grunted, “So what do you want me to do with it?”
"Try it on. Please?" Milli asked with a smile that was perhaps a touch too bright.
Reluctantly, Cia nodded. She let Milli wind the leather around her waist and cinch it tight. She didn’t notice as Milli made a small, deep mark in the edge of the excess leather pulled through the buckle.
Cia placed one of her knives in the closest cinch. She was surprised at how quickly and easily it stayed. “What’s keeping it in there?”
"Magnets," Milli grinned. "I figured having magnets close at hand wouldn’t hurt and would keep the guns or knives closer. Do you like it?"
"Am I…supposed to?" she asked, arching a brow.
Milli’s face fell. “Oh, well no. You don’t have to. I just wanted to try it on someone,” she said, continuing her parade of excuses.
Cia’s hand caught hers. “I didn’t say I didn’t like it,” Cia clarified. “Just wondering if it’s for me.”
"Of course it is," Milli said, then backtracked. "I mean, it’s for someone like you. For the shop.” She quickly worked at the leather and metal of the buckle. Pulled it off and went immediately to look at the cut she’d made. “Oh no, it’s marred,” she said with exaggerated surprise. She showed Cia the mark. “Nobody will buy it from me like this.”
Cia frowned. “Sure they will, it’s only a little mark and it doesn’t hurt the design at all.”
Milli just kept shaking her head. “I can’t sell it. Maybe I could give it to someone?” She eyed Cia sidelong.
"I was not born yesterday, Milli," Cia grumbled, snatching the belt back and putting it on.
"I know," Milli said, leaning close and kissing her on the cheek. "But I didn’t want to fight about giving something to someone who’s special to me." Happily, she began puttering about the shop, leaving Cia staring after her with a spreading blush on her cheeks.
Nurse me. {SINCE IT IS NOW SO APPLICABLE! :D}
(In the beforetimes. Obviously.)
She sat on the floor beside the cot, watching Cia sleep. With everyone else gone, she could finally submit to tears. And so they slid quietly down Milli’s face as she held back sobs with great effort.
Her fingers weren’t still. She softly stroked Ciara’s turquoise hair, gentle touches meant to soothe them both. Cia needed the rest. She needed time to recover. Milli did, too.
Cia had said she couldn’t make Milli happy. Milli wasn’t so sure. Or at least her aching heart said she couldn’t be sure like this. Not after watching the woman nearly bleed to death, hovering close for so long as every barber in shouting distance had been called down and urged to use magic that left Milli’s dead eye twitching still. But such things were minor, transitory. What mattered was that Cia was whole. Her knees…
Milli had seen injuries, her own and others. Never had she seen something so painful and gruesome intentionally done. The way the nail had protruded from flesh and bone, how swollen the joint had been…she couldn’t imagine the pain Cia had been in. If it had been her Fox had come for…
She’d have talked. Said anything he wanted her to say. He wouldn’t have had to try even half so hard as he did with Cia. Milli was weak and she knew it. She needed protection. She should be stronger, but she didn’t know how. And so she leaned on people, depended on them because she had no other choice. She was a liability and she hated it, even as she craved the comfort of another’s protection.
For now, Cia was hers to protect. And she would keep watch over her until she woke. Or at least until dawn. Then she would go to Jack. Because whether Fox was the cause of or the reason for Cia’s injury, he needed to be brought in. Someone would be made to pay for this.
Milli stroked her fingers over the paleness of Cia’s cheek, seeing the blood loss in the lack of color, the delicacy the woman never showed while awake.
Maybe this would make a difference. Maybe Cia would see how much Milli cared. Maybe she would reconsider whether or not the two of them could be happy together. Milli could hope. Half the time, hope was what she lived on.
I called you 'doll' because you remind me of one - perfect, fragile, and something I have no business being anywhere near. The best thing I can do for you is stay away. You may think no one loves you; everyone does. You're the best of all of us. The best I ever hoped to find. ~C *the package contained a delicate golden clockwork bracelet that rotates a faceted smoky topaz and a handful of apple candies*
Milli looked at the package in her hands, left on her doorstep like a present. Opening the door, she stepped into her shop, still staring at the note. She read it a second time. A third. It made no sense.
She set the bag on the counter, noting the clink of metal, the shuffle of candy wrappers. The note was set aside, the bag opened. Milli held the bracelet delicately, shifting it about to catch the light, to see its startling beauty. Absently, she reached in and pulled out one of the candies, started to open it.
Stopped.
If she took this, if she accepted it, it meant that Cia had never hurt her. It meant that Cia would keep on hurting her. Because she could. Because Milli was giving her that power. Just because she'd never laid a hand on Milli, didn't mean she couldn't make her hurt.
Angrily Milli crumpled the note. It went in the waste basket. Along with the candies, making a sad thunking sound as they struck the bottom. At the bracelet, she paused.
It was lovely. Good workmanship. Something she would like to wear if she was pretty, stylish. Something she could never wear, because Cia would see it and know.
It didn't mean it had to be broken, though. She didn't have to be broken, either.
So with a heavy heart, Milli placed the bracelet under the counter, far in the back behind several boxes. Where she alone would know. She alone.
X me.
Milli watched. Saw the turquoise-haired woman fleetingly, hat pulled low. Saw her disappearing into darkened corners, speaking with unquiet souls. Sending others out to do her work.
Milli listened. People said things when they were around her that gave clues. Cia was a lord now. Had power and authority. Ran operations in Lion’s Arch with even more force behind her than before.
Milli pondered. Had Cia changed so much? Was that why Jack had put her in charge of the Fleas? Or had she never changed? Was this always who she was, and Milli had been blind to it? Or, worse, had Milli changed and never even noticed.
The thought kept her up nights.
She lingered in front of the store. If anyone asked, she'd claim professional curiosity. Checking out competition and pricing. But really, she was looking at the way the cogs hung delicately from the mannequin's finger and wondering what it would feel like to wear something so pretty. It was a momentary weakness, nothing more. But likely one that didn't go unobserved.
I don't know why I'm helping Cia make her life more miserable, but there it is...
No one would ever see the marks. The bruises. They had been so pleasurable at the time. Something she hoped to get to experience again and again with the woman. Learning to love those nips and suckling lips.
It was a good thing she wore all those clothes. She didn’t want to explain. Didn’t want to name names. She wanted to forget. And to some extent, she had.
Everything that came before, the pleasure and the petting and the kisses…it all seemed like a dream. Fading fast.
What she couldn’t shake was what came after, the blonde whore’s spiteful laughter at finding them naked on the beach together, cut off in a wet gurgle. Blood dripping from Cia’s fingers. That dead crimson glow in her eyes.
She wouldn’t think about it. She would work until she passed out from exhaustion and then throw herself into work again. She would put that night firmly in the realm of dreams: ephemeral, hazy, unreal.
She would wear the bee-charm bracelet Lachesis had given her.
She would never speak to Ciara again
For one brief, horrific moment, she'd thought someone had sent her a human head.
Then she saw the gears and mechanical bits, made sense of it as a machine. A device of some sort. Milli lifted it out carefully with both hands and found the key in the back. She wound it and then watched it go.
Despite the initial horror of the thing, it was rather interesting to watch. She turned it on the table, leaning over and peering underneath to see where the pistons went and what they did. "Sorta neat," she breathed in the soft silence of her shop.
If she put any thought into it, she might have been able to place who'd sent it to her. But she very carefully didn't think about it, just found a place for it on one of her shelves and put a little 'NOT FOR SALE' placard next to it.
She wound it often when she was alone, especially on rainy days, and sat, watching the gears turn.
Steam of Consciousness Handmade polyurethane skull (1/2 scale) with fully functioning custom built miniature steam engine. Materials: Brass, carbon steel, stainless steel, glass, polyurethane, and wood. Size: 6” x 9” (15 cm x 23 cm) including glass dome. Christopher Conte
She watched the woman often. Well, there were many she watched in the haunting twilight between the world and the Mists where she was trapped, but some seemed to shine more brightly than others. Rae wasn't sure why.
She had been a girl, once, just sixteen. Lovely and in love. But that was gone now and something had snapped inside her when she died, some connection that left her lost, stranded. Wandering.
But the woman was interesting. She spoke harshly to some, gently to others. She laughed at herself. But not in a way that seemed a joke, and that made Rae sad. When the woman did so, usually all alone, Rae would hover near, an echo at her shoulder. The woman wouldn't see her, she knew, wouldn't feel her. But such a person shouldn't be left all alone, Rae thought.
And when the woman sat in front of her fire on the outskirts of nowhere, Rae sat beside her. Though her voice had not seen use for decades, she spoke, "You are not alone. You are still free. You should smile." The sound was a croak in her own ears and likely sounded like nothing more than the wind to the woman, but she had said it. Made it plain. That was all she could do for her, really.
Her obsession grew. She knew the woman would die, pass into the Mists and leave her alone again. But what else was there to do with eternity. So she followed this one that needed someone and had none. Another lost soul.
It took some time and some intense concentration, but eventually she was able to make out the woman's name from another person's lips, whispery and vague.
Though the name itself sounded like a whisper, even to Rae. She spoke it quietly beside her charge that night. "Ciara."
She’d never been on the sea before. But Ciara had gone and Rae had followed, curious and eager. She hovered near the woman — teal-haired now, she changed it at irregular intervals for reasons unknown — and watched the land disappear.
Rae wondered what the sea looked like in the real world. In her in-between place it was a sad slip of waves quickly lost to the fog. One night she looked over the edge and caught sight of her reflection in the water. It was curious to see herself again, but the image was gone after a moment.
Ciara was displeased. The crew was rowdy, and Rae stayed out of their way. She pressed close, watching Ciara’s face as she muttered her curses and disgust. Rae couldn’t rightly hear the words, not unless she concentrated very, very hard. And really, she could understand what Ciara was saying just by watching her. She had a very expressive face. Far too often it expressed little at all.
Sometimes Rae touched her, gliding ghostly fingers over her cheek just to pretend she could make the woman smile.
The battle was…strange. Hugely chaotic in a way that was felt more than heard. And as someone without a body, that was unique for Rae. She was close to Ciara, but there were little eruptions all around her, a brightness when someone died. Then the light faded, as it always did. When she had first died, she had watched many deaths, hoping to find another like her. She never did.
Rae turned at the feel of an explosion, the brightness of several nearby souls drawing her attention. And she saw a man charging Ciara with a rapier.
"Ciara!" she cried, tripping back past the woman. Rae didn’t know if she’d been heard or if Ciara merely sensed the attacker, but she turned and parried his blade, firing a shot through the man’s chin that almost immediately separated his spirit.
If she’d had a heart, it would have been pounding. As it was, she just felt shaky, the world a little out of focus. Except for Ciara. Rae scrambled to her feet and stayed near the woman, her anchor in the whirl.
She wasn’t able to save Ciara from all injuries. The woman racked up many and Rae winced to see all that precious blood flowing free. But Ciara didn’t seem to care. It was only when the fight was over that she appeared drained at all, but only at the edges. Only when no one else was looking. But Rae was always looking.
It was only when they were safe again that the world seemed to right itself, move from murky to clear. Rae scolded herself. She shouldn’t have come to sea. What would have happened if she’d fallen overboard? Or been caught in that murky time completely? But Ciara had stayed clear and focused the entire time. And she might have saved the woman’s life. That was worth a little risk, right?
Ciara, though, was still tensed, like a fist. One wrong move and she would jerk, hitting someone. Only with her pistols instead of her fist. Rae didn’t want to see that. Didn’t want to see her…whatever Ciara was to her, thrown overboard. She didn’t want to have to watch her drown. Or worse, get lost in the ocean’s depths with Ciara’s body.
"Calm, Ciara," Rae whispered, huddling close. She rubbed her hands, insubstantial, but she remembered it to be a soothing thing. She laid her head against Ciara’s back. "Calm down. You are safe. Relax. Rest. Soon you’ll be home. I’ll watch you till then," she promised. An easy thing. She needed no rest.
Carefully, Rae wrapped her arms around Ciara, holding her close, pretending that the woman accepted the embrace. It was comforting. “I’m here, Ciara. Just relax.”
She hoped the woman would somehow understand.
At night, on the ship, she could almost hear the real world. The creak of the timbers, the splash of the water against the hull, the faint sound of the wind in the sails...all of them seemed close at hand. So on the second night, with the moon shining down coldly, Rae concentrated on doing something she'd not done for a very long time.
Touching something.
Newly dead, she'd tried often, attempting to move objects, to press against people. Anything to show them she was there, more than just an odd draft, a strange feeling. It had cost her, making her feel even more ephemeral and weak for hours after. And she had rarely accomplished anything.
Rae wasn't sure if it was the presence of her person -- and she had begun to think of Ciara as hers in way that was more fond than possessive -- or the late hour or the utter silence, but she knew she had to try.
First, it was shifting a screw. She'd noted it when Ciara had settled down for the night. Now, she concentrated very hard, focusing all of her being on her hand. And gently, slowly she reached out and brushed her hand against the screw.
It twirled in a little circle for a moment before coming to a halt.
Rae had the biggest grin on her face. She turned to Ciara, wishing she could share her happiness with someone. But the only person she had didn't know she existed.
Scooting to the sleeping woman's side, Rae reached out again. She wasn't as tired as she'd expected and she wanted to touch Ciara. Show her gentleness and caring. Focusing on her hand, she brushed at the woman's forehead, sweeping a long lock of aqua hair away from her face.
The touch was electrifying. Warm in a way she didn't know she'd lost. And she felt stronger for having done so. She did it again, then a third time. Gentle caresses. But despite the strength she'd gained from touching the woman, she was still exhausted quickly.
Rae lay down beside Ciara, grinning and watching her sleep. "Thank you," she spoke. "You've given me back something I lost. Hope."
Things seem...different once they leave the boat. It's like the world is brighter. Rae keeps pace with Ciara, following the woman but also marveling at the things around her. The brilliance of the sunlight on water, the radiant color of flowers on the hillside, the depth of blue of Ciara's aqua eyes.
Rae sits just in front of her while the woman eats her meager rations. She follows the woman's eyes with her own, lowering her head to keep catching glimpses of that color. So beautiful. She's never seen such a thing. And she's pretty sure that's an accurate assessment, as another person's eyes never made her stop and stare, even when she was alive. Not just from the color.
"I wish I could tell you you're pretty," she says, the vocalizations feeling more natural now. She knows the woman can't hear her, but the sound of her own voice isn't so strange anymore. "I wish you could see it, because you're always so sad."
Like the impulsive girl she once was, Rae leaned forward and hugged Ciara, focusing on her arms, the feel of flesh against her indistinct body. It was momentary and she felt Ciara stiffen, but she sat back, grinning ridiculously. Just as on the ship, she felt better, more real after touching Ciara. She moved away, not wanting to startle the woman more than she already had.
But she was happy. For the first time in longer than she could remember, Rae was happy.
Ciara seemed to have a...fondness for getting herself into trouble. Rae noticed this, saw how the woman flung herself into danger, sometimes to save another, sometimes not. If she'd had a body and a heart within, she'd have said it made her heart pound.
The woman's bravery was without question. But sometimes Rae wondered if her methods weren't...too much. Too brazen. Without care for her own safety.
Far too often, Rae would be the only one sitting beside her as Ciara stitched yet another cut, wrapped yet another busted joint. "Ciara, you cannot keep hurting yourself so," she admonished, knowing her words wouldn't reach the woman, but wanting to say them anyway. "You must save a part of you for you."
With a steady hand, Rae touched Ciara just over her heart, pressed her hand there. As always, it was a rewarding jolt, a burst of energy and strength. A connection she'd never had with anyone else. "You are still important," she whispered, willing the words to be heard. Then she released the other woman.
Her eyes searched the lovely face, kept so blank most of the time except when she was alone. And then...always so sad. Rae drifted close, hovered as only a spectre could. She ran her hands over Ciara's hair comfortingly, pushing the locks away from her face. Touching her was always exhausting, but worth it.
After she did, Rae nearly felt...human. Like perhaps she could care about Ciara as more than just a connection to the world, a curiosity. An oddity that she had to share with no one else.
But then, where would she go anyway?
secrecy. on We Heart It. http://weheartit.com/entry/8002349?utm_campaign=share&utm_medium=image_share&utm_source=tumblr