Pacifier

🥀Sam💔

It made me sick to think about, sick to think about in a way I'd never felt before. Because I'd always been so good at ignoring the details of the things I had done.
On another night it could have been me sent to the house of a stranger, to take a strangers life. And perhaps I liked to tell myself I only killed the ones who deserved it, I knew that those people had loved ones. Loved ones who cried and screamed and felt the pain Della was twisted with now as she rested against me, wrapped up in my arms hysterical.

"Della honey listen to me," i said softly, fingers in her hair, knowing she wouldn't listen to me, knowing that she couldn't, telling her anyway, "sweetheart I know it hurts," i said softly, knowing that it did, remembering how I had wound up embroiled in this line of work. Knowing that the pain was all consuming because I had felt it before myself. "Darlin you're gonna be alright, I know it hurts," I said again, there was nothing else I could say so I didn't. Instead I leant back against the headboard and took her with me, let her lean against me, sitting in my lap, her head against my shoulder, her face buried in the crook of my neck as I twisted my head around to rest my chin in her hair. To keep her held against me, to keep her feeling secure against me. "We're gonna stay here until you're ready," i said softly, knowing that eventually we would have to leave, leave this house and never return.

It was something I should have thought about before now. I shouldn't have waited for bad news to plan this move but I had. I'd been distracted by her, by the game we had been playing, the little world which housed only me and her and kept us wrapped up in eachother and nothing else. I'd allowed myself to forget about the war that was waging whilst I tried to figure her out, tried to win her trust.

I'd forgotten what was really important. It wasn't getting her to like me, it was keeping her safe. Whether she liked me for it or not. That had been my job, that was what Van had hired me to do.

He hadn't hired me to fall in love with the girl... Not that that was what I'd done. He'd hired me to keep her safe and that was what I needed to do now. He'd told me to treat her as though she were the most precious thing in the world to me, but what Van had failed to predict, or so I thought, was that as a lad who had no one, Della would easily slip into that role. That Della would become the most precious thing in the world to me without even having to try.

And now that she was she couldn't know it. Now that she was it was clouding my mind. I didn't want to hurt her and yet if I did what I had to i would. All I wanted was to sooth her, to lie here with her until she stopped crying, until her heart stopped aching. But we didn't have time and i couldnt lie back and let her wallow in her pain when i knew that the longer we remained here the more in danger her life became.

But one look at our reflection in the mirror on the opposite wall, one look down at her when she pulled away slightly, looked up at me with these big wide watery eyes, so lost and so broken. I couldn't move her now. I couldn't do the things I knew I needed to.

I couldn't tell her to stand up, to help me pack a bag, i couldnt leave her on her own whilst I gathered supplies. I couldn't force her to pull my hood up and crouch down in the foot well of my car whilst I drove us away off into a deeper sort of hiding.

I couldn't add to her confusion, her turmoil or her fear.

All I could do was care for her, be gentle with her, brush her tears from her cheek with my thumb and place a kiss on her forehead. Tell her everything would be alright. A little white lie i knew she needed more than ever.

"Why would they..." she started but i shook my head, held her head in the palm of my hand and smoothed her hair down as I pulled her back into a hug, pressed against my body, nice and steady and gentle and safe.

"You have to try not to think about it darlin, dont torture yourself..." I said gently, struggling to swallow the sickness down myself. She was right, it was needless, it was vile and inhumane. Her grandmother had nothing to do with the bottlemen, in fact she hated them for this very reason. The violence and the needless killing. Now she was a victim of that and her dear granddaughter who she had spent the last years of her life trying to protect was left sobbing into the arms of another villain.