The lunch dishes were drying and Hannah and I were sitting on the couch, just quiet. She was humming to herself, slightly slumped against me, her head resting on my shoulder, her fingers busy doing a small needlepoint pattern. I had no idea where she pulled the hoop and cloth and thread from but I'd seen her work on that needlepoint before so I wasn't too worried.
Her strangeness didn't bother me. In a way her inhumanity was a relief. She was fickle, whimsical, and more than a little odd, but any betrayal of me would not be out of cruelty, not be out of a desire to hurt me, but just her nature. Once I'd shifted my thought process so that I realized that all of us, all of the Atlas crew, all of Echo-Five-Actual, were nothing more than our basic natures, it made things easier.
Made it so I could approach Hannah about how I felt about her.
As the months rolled on I stopped caring about how different she was and just cared that she was who she was.
"Are you lonely sometimes?" I asked her, breaking the silence.
She stopped stitching, leaning forward to set the needlepoint on the coffee table, before snuggling back up against me. "Often," She said quietly. "Not at Atlas, not when I am with you, but often."
"Because you're different," I said.
She nodded, her hands seeking mine out, her fingers intertwining with mine. "My blood is Aine. I see the world differently. I hear the world differently. Even at this distance I can feel the heartbeats of those we have mingled blood with, feel destiny and necessity collide, tell how things are flowing."
"Is everything OK?" I asked, noting the fact she had mentioned, obliquely, the Atlas crew.
She shook her head. "I do not know. I just know that it is not our weird to become involved, that whatever is involved is a dark road that they must walk alone together," She looked up, her eyes wide and luminous and her hair rustled at her back. "Another thread has begun to intertwine with those we love, a shining one, a strong thread," She shivered, "Aodan, Jonathon, and kelly Nagle have their own dark road to walk."
She sighed and lowered her face, cuddling against me. "But my place is here, with my Paul, and I feel no desire to leave your side."
I hugged her gently. "Will they live?" I don't know why, but the thought of Atlas, of life, without Ant, Nagle or Bomber made a flutter of fear in the emptiness. Ant had been more and more reluctant to take action, begun second guessing himself more and more the last few months since the bunker explosions had wiped out the Atlas crew. I'd seen it more than anyone else, but what the hell could I do about it?
Hannah sighed again, standing up and smoothing her dress, "I do not know," She moved into the kitchen, getting a cup down from the cupboard and pouring a cup of coffee. She stirred in hazelnut creamer and spooned in three spoonfuls of sugar. "May I tell you something? Something that he understands even if he does not realize it? Something dark and terrible?"
"Of course, Hannah," I said. She set the coffee down and returned to the kitchen to pour herself a cup of tea. The tea she made always smelled strange, odd, and it was always made with herbs and leaves from the small embroidered pouch she carried with her.
"Ant will die in some dark and cold place, howling in rage and hatred, blood on his hands, steel in his fist, and his boots on. He will die with everything taken from him, with nothing left, forgotten and alone," She said, sitting down next to me. "I have known this since we were children. John and Nancy will too, I realized that when I tasted his blood, tasted theirs, that their weirds were intertwined with his and they too would die when he did."
I hugged her, rubbing her upper arm. Most people would scoff at their girlfriend making pronouncements of doom, but I knew to take it seriously.
"So I worry about him, about all of them. About you. At times I hate that more people come into my life and I can see their weirds, see what awaits them. I do not know when their thread will end, I just often know how, know in ways I have difficulty explaining. From our beautiful Cromwell to that bright thread that is twining into our weaves of destiny," she told me and lifted her face. I closed my eyes and kissed her upraised lips. After a moment we leaned back and she blushed. "It does not bother you?"
I shook my head. "Do you worry about me?"
She nodded, sipping at her tea, "Greatly, my Paul. At times I have lain in the darkness and listened to you breathe, relishing the sound of life from you, letting the sound ease my fears. There is a darkness within you, something that was there before you stepped foot on Alfenwehr, something that gnaws at you, chewing at your feelings, smothering your desires."
I picked up my coffee cup and sipped at it, feeling that cold emptiness inside of me.
"It is more than that slattern wrapping her legs around another man, more than the fact she was not lured from your bed but rather jumped from it. That darkness is much older, and I think, has to do with how this house appeared when I arrived," She said gently. She waited until I set the cup down to wiggle so she sat sideways in my lap, her legs out on the couch, one arm draped over my shoulders, the other holding her teacup. My coffee cup sat in her lap.
She always felt so light on my lap.
"Will you speak to me of those dark things inside of you, my Paul?" She asked gently, sipping at her tea. "So that I may draw the venom out of you and help you heal?"
I thought for a long moment about it. To tell her would be to admit it happened. To acknowledge what had been done to me. I would have to finally face it. I had sworn to myself I would never tell another person as long as I lived what had happened to me.
I looked down at the top of Hannah's head and her hair rustled gently, moving with a life all its own, and I realized she was not quite a person. Like me she was not quite human, but unlike me, she had been born that way.
She kept Ant's secrets, she would keep mine close to her heart also.
"My parents were musicians," I told her, closing my eyes for a moment. She remained silent, sipping quietly at her tea. I reached down, lifted up my coffee cup for a drink, then set it back between her legs. "My father played bass guitar, my mother sang and played guitar."
I could almost hear them playing, and went silent.
"Speak, my Paul, their rude shades cannot touch you. I will not permit it," Hannah said gently. She laid her head against my chest for a moment. "I will keep you safe."
"They were both junkies," I took the leap, feeling that cold flutter of fears, "Everything you heard about sixties junkies was true in their case. Neglect, beatings, they were all part of my life. If they were coming down, I was a good target to take their misery out on. If they were high and I harshed their buzz, they took it out on me for being hungry or cold or bored or needing them."
I looked around the frontroom and realized how strange it looked. I had never seen it that clean, never seen it so spotless. It looked like June Cleaver would come down the hall any second and that Ward Cleaver would come in the door, home from work.
Nothing about it resembled the house I had grown up in.
Maybe that's what made it easier. Maybe that's why I admitted to what had happened.
"The worst part was when they let their junky friends fuck me," I told her. "Either looked the other way, encouraged it, or traded me for their next high." The emptiness inside me tried to fill me up, to sweet away everything else, but the thick warmth of Hannah's love and presence smothered it, pushed it back, and let me speak.
She nodded slowly, lifting her tea and sipping it. I looked down to see her hair had pulled itself into a tight bun at the back of her head, protecting her neck, and I could see sparks dancing along the intertwined crimson threads of her hair. The dress and blouse were gone, replaced by gingham and her feet were bare and stained by grass.
She smelled of apple blossoms and a wild, feral smell that made my groin ache. The scent bloomed around us and I realized that she was darkly and coldly furious.
"When I tried to complain to my mother it was either my fault or I just needed to deal with it, that bad things happened. Or that everyone in this house should pull their own weight," I told her. "More than once I came into the frontroom, hungry and hoping some food had been left out so I could get something to eat, only to find her unconscious on the floor, naked, with someone I was used to seeing around the house fucking her." Anger at my mother started to well up, to fill me, and that emptiness tried to push it back. "More than once my father was encouraging them, or just watching them, stoned, from the couch, while they took my mother's limp body."
I shook my head. "She was pretty in that strung out junky musician kind of way. Black hair, raven hair my father used to call it, dark eyes, and of course, like most addicts, skinny." I waved my hand, "She'd shoot up, sometimes in front of me, and everything would go away."
The house was quiet for a long moment and I hugged Hannah close to me. "I wondered, sometimes, what had gone wrong in her life." That emptiness began to ache, began to hurt.
Hannah shook her head. "Nothing." She said, her voice once again choral, multiple versions of her own voice twined about each other, "She was born to comfort. She liked how the poisons made her feel. She was a creature of base desires who felt that anything she did was justified as long as it made her feel good and benefited her."
"Are you sure?" I asked her. For some reason I was almost desperate to hear that something, anything, had pushed my mother into caring more about her next high than me.
"She denies it, even now, but it is true," Hannah told me. She sipped at her tea, "Do not mistake my meaning, my Paul. She did love you, as best as she could. She kept that bracelet you bought her for Christmas, never exchanged it for poisons, and in her own way, as best as she could, she did love you."
For some reason that just made it worse.
"Your father, however, was much worse, Paul," she said softly. "He took pleasure in your degradation and pain. He hated every bit of attention your mother gave you, felt it diminished him, felt it lessened her feelings for him." She shuddered, "His spirit was vile and evil."
"Sometimes he would wake me up, take me into the front room, and tell me he was going to teach me to fight," I told her, remembering all of those times. "He'd 'teach me to take a punch' by hitting me, telling me to learn to block. He was a grownup, hitting a child. Looking back, he always had a black eye or a busted lip, and I know he was just taking out an ass kicking he'd gotten on me."
I sighed. "Still, I felt like a failure."
We were silent for a long time.
"Do you still love me, Hannah?" I asked.
"Why would I not, my Paul?" She asked softly, and I realized she was crying. "We both have things that weigh up on us," She bent her head, "I've done terrible things also, my Paul, things that make me afraid that you would no longer love me, but unlike you, I fear telling you about the darkness within me while I play the hypocrite and encourage you to tell me about your own darkness."