Pacifier

🌿Sam🌹

I cut the engine on the outskirts of town, she'd been quiet the whole journey, pretending to sleep but i could see that she wasn't. I didn't have to look to know.

We pulled up on the hard shoulder, the sun was rising in the milky sky but it was dark still, we were still shadows in the car and I knew we would be safe if we didn't stop for long.

I took out my cigs, wound the window slightly and turned to Della. She had her head resting against the glass, her eyes were dead and sad, but when she felt my hand on her thigh she turned slowly as if waking from a dream. She'd been so deep in thought she'd been lost for a moment, but when she looked back at me I saw a flicker of recognition, saw the smallest of smiles forced.

I could tell before she spoke that she was going to break my heart, so before she could, because I wasn't sure I could take it if I wasn't holding her when she said it, I opened my arms for her.

"Cmere little one," I said softly, relieved only when her eyes sparkled with a softness, heart touched kind of light. And when she moved, when she slipped into my arms I felt only relief and an ache in my chest because I couldn't stand the sadness with which she moved. Not heavy but without effort. Like she was falling from one place to the next.

She settled in my arms, her head against my chest, her eyes fixed on the passenger side window. She was still and quiet and her heart was heavy and she'd lost everything.

"Stop waiting for me to cry Sam," she said softly, so quietly that for a second I didn't think I'd heard her right and then, when I realised I had I couldn't help but smirk a little. Shake my head because she was right, I had been waiting, but I couldn't admit that to her.

"Am not waiting for anything Della," I said quietly, bowing my head to let a kiss fall upon hers.

I could sense the smile on her lips and when I glanced down at her I could see the corner of her mouth twitch.

"Yes you are," she said before turning around, surprising me as she nestled in against my chest, her cheek to the fabric of my tshirt as she closed her eyes and sighed. She was soft in my arms, sorrowful but settled against me, curled up and small in my arms and it meant everything to me to be able to hold her like that then. When she needed someone most.

"Am not," I smirked waiting for her argument and when she gave it I said it again, "not," I said and let us fall into a quiet. There was nothing else that could be done. There was nothing I could say, nothing that could be done. There was no soothing that loss, no painkiller for the hollow way she felt now.

All that could be done I was already doing.

Holding her, driving her away, taking her somewhere safe so that she could grieve with the only family she had left.

So we said nothing, just sat quietly, I played with her hair and I watched the sunrise and I watched the light glow and dance on her skin through the windshield. I watched the fain fall and refract flickering orange and sunrise hues, it speckled us with light as the droplets gathered, rainfall heavier and heavier against the car. The pitter patter a white noise to sooth us both, to ease our troubled minds.

I tried to concentrate on that. On the rhythm of the water drumming and streaming and moving staticy as it rolled off the glass. But when she spoke all that faded out and it was only her that I heard once again.

"You know you're not allowed to leave me now," she said, a quiet smirk in her voice which confused me. I felt my nose and my brow crinkle with a frown and when she turned to look up at me she saw it too and smirked.

"When we get to Vans," she said, "you're not allowed to just give me back and go..."

Her words surprised me, made me feel uneasy, because I wasn't sure the fight I'd have to put up to keep her where I wanted her. Where I needed her now.
I wasn't sure he wouldn't kill me.

Still I wouldn't admit that to Della, not now, not when she needed that promise from me, not when she needed the certainty. Me and her together now for as long as the world would let us be, and long after that too.

So I smirked, let out an almost laugh, tried to make it seem easy to simply shake my head and kiss her nose. Promise something I wasn't sure I could.

"Why would a do that lass," I asked, smiling, mirroring hers when for a second she seemed self concious, smirking and shrugging her shoulders. She bit back a smile when I copied her, shrugging my shoulders and pulling a face, letting us fade out again into that strange melancholic quiet. A sadness with half a smile.

And then in the quiet she spoke again, soft with the softest of smiles on her lips.

"You're the only person I've got left to love..."

The world teetered on the edge of her tongue, so delicate. If she'd said it even a day or so ago I'd have refused to believe her, id have been cynical though desperate to trust her. But then, in the low morning light, the rain refracting dewy yellow and amber across her cheeks, flecking her sad eyes and highlighting the truth in them, I was certain of her answer when I asked.

"Do you?"

She blinked back at me, no hesitation, as if it was a contraversial question, her brow creasing only slightly as her fingers reached to graze along my cheek. Her eyes so sad and yet so settled, settled with that love she felt for me.

"yeah..." she said, barely whispering, almost raspy, she was tired, too tired, worn out, her soul dissolving and yet still shed found those words somewhere in her heart for me,

"Do you?" she asked, lips slightly parted as she looked up at me, quiet, waiting patiently, she lacked the certainty she'd had only moments before when she asked. I could see the light on her milky teeth, I could see the white in her eyes. The waiting. The hesitance. The anxiety.

Like she needed to hear me say it before she'd accept it as truth.
It amazed me, left me momentarily speechless, as if I'd forgotten how to say it. That one word which would mean so much to me if only I could choke it out.

"Yeah,"

And when I said it her lips twitched a small smile, just the corner of her mouth coming to life, only for a moment. She looked happy, just for a moment.

"Della this isnt work to us anymore like, am not keeping you safe for Van, I haven't been for quite awhile," I said, admitting it as though that were a confession and one which would shine a weak light on me. I stroked her cheek with my thumb, cupped her face in the palm of my hand and leant down to her, smiled softly as she shifted in my lap to lean up and meet me in the middle. Our lips brushing delicate at first, a quiet, sorry affection, as though we knew we were doomed. As if we knew we should never have wound up intertwined the way that we were. As if we knew all the trouble we could cause and the happy endings we could never hope for.

I held her in my lap, my hand shifting her hair, I held the back of her head in my palm and when she closed her eyes her lashes fluttered and she moved into me in that feline manner she often moved with which I adored.

"Am not giving you away to anyone little one," I mumbled against her lips, a promise I couldn't keep but would, even if it killed me. Id made up my eyes when I'd watched her heart break. I'd held her when her world had been torn apart and now I was certain, I wouldn't just take her back to him and the family that she'd been held to ransome over and by. I wouldn't just leave her with them, even if they were her flesh and blood.

She was mine now and I was hers, and anyone who came between us, Id already decided I could kill. If it came to it, I could do it.