The Little Crow

Chapter Five - [Grandmother]

Thea used her free hand to grab her brother by his shoulder and shake him. "What were you thinking?" She asked loudly, having heard the deep rumbling of the Rolls Royce as it drove off.

Her brother shoved her hand away before looking back at her in disbelief. "What was I thinking?" He scoffed. "What were you thinking? What made you think that leaving with the Aiverian Military would be a good idea? Do you know what they could have done to you? You hear the stories and read the news. You know what happened to Amara. You should know better than any─"

Her mother cut off her brother by pushing him aside and grabbing Thea, rubbing her upper arms in a soothing gesture "Are you well, child?" she asked. "Did they hurt you?"

"No, Ma," Thea responded. "They─"

"Did they touch you?" Her grandmother asked when she reached them. "Did they threaten you?"

"No, not at all," Thea said. She was going to continue, but her father came running out of the home at the sight of her. "Theavi," he said, following her name up with a relieved sigh. "Are you hurt?"

"No," she said. "I'm perfectly fine."

Though she knew she shouldn't have felt this way, she couldn't help but think that this was the most attention she had gotten in a very long time. The feeling of knowing that everyone was so worried about her... it touched her. "I'm perfectly fine," she repeated as she watched her brother walk over to the garden and pull out the rifle that he had hid there. "What were you planning on doing?" She asked her brother. "Storming the Abureth Military Base and shooting down as many soldiers as you could before they killed you?"

She was being sarcastic, but the frustrated look on her brother's face seemed to suggest that that was exactly what he was planning.

Thea straightened herself up, looking at her brother with an expression of disbelief. "Brother─"

"What did they need you for?" He asked.

"You're supposed to be the smart one," she snapped, ignoring him. "The smart one doesn't plan suicide missions!" Thea knew that her brother hated when she argued with him, but she couldn't help herself. "The Head of the Aiverian Army and the Deputy Secretary of Defense was behind that gate, Brother. General Niall Killian. What do you think he would have done to you if he saw you holding a goddamn rifle that the Crows use?"

Though everyone silenced as soon as they heard the name of the General, her brother decided to argue back. "You should have let him see it. It would have given him a reason to come to me and I could have shot that good for nothing traitor."

Now Thea scoffed. "And now you're talking like them too! Those rowdy friends of yours─"

"Don't patronize me," her brother suddenly growled, "little sister."

The tone of his voice made Thea falter, as it often did. It also reminded her that he was no longer the same man he was before those Crows got to him. He was no longer the affectionate, loving and sometimes silly brother who protected her and held her tightly in his arms when she was scared or sad or anxious. He was no longer the man she had a glimpse of last night when she came home, miserable after a horrible day.

If she was in danger, she would never want him to run into the middle of it all to protect or avenge her. She would never want that. What she wanted instead, was him to be next to her, to hold her hand and to make her feel safe with just his presence... just like he did when they were kids, when the state military was fighting against the Crows in the Civil War and the fighting had reached their town.

But all of that was gone.

He was now the gunslinging Crow who treated her like she didn't understand anything.