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North's POV
Location: Lockheart Estate
Date: November 1st
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If I wasn't so irritated and pissed with the plans Leninora has set at our feet, I'd be impressed.
The Lockheart Estate looks like something out a European fairy tale. My mother's stories from when I was a child come to mind as I jump out of the armored vehicle we've been riding in and I get a good look at my surroundings.
I note first that there are four separate roads that lead right up to the circular driveway of a sprawling glass and brick building.
Naturally my eyes are next drawn to the few dozen ivy-covered stone houses lined down the narrow paved road that we just came from. Some are on the rough side. Some look well kept. Some even look like they've been recently remodeled.
Silas and I have spent a lot of time helping fix up old houses to pass the time by. A small part of me is looking forward to looking around and seeing the inside of those old relics.
Each road branches off in different directions, and as far as I can see there are just more English-village-inspired houses along the roads, and a smattering of hedged gardens, and shimmering water features strategically placed to be the centerpieces of the grounds.
Tree's that look thousands of years old are also scattered around the landscaping, creating shade for the manicured lawns. It should be eerie, but instead it has this welcoming aura. It's as if the laughter that has filled this place is still ringing out, filling the still air in the midday light.
Even with the beautiful scenery, my shit mood is still running high. I try my best to tamper it down though.
I've let my anger control me for a long time, and contrary to popular opinion I have been working on it. It's just that my old friends bring out that youthful side of me, and I'm helpless to hold back my true opinions in the face of their familiarity.
It doesn't help when Leninora is doing everything in her power to be a fucking dick.
I turn around, remembering my reasoning for rushing to get out of the vehicle and lift my arms up just as Sang appears at the threshold of the wide back door.
Her bright eyes meet mine, and her plush mouth turns up in a smile. If I were a lesser man, I'd admit that my heart gives a little throb at the expression.
She allows me to place my hands on her hips, and I help her down the steep drop as gently as I can.
When her feet touch the ground, she immediately steps away from me to survey the area.
My hands tingle a little as she slips from my grasp.
"It's so pretty." She says to me, as she too gazes around us.
I nod, even as I turn back to the doorway of the vehicle and give a helping hand to Luke and Dr. Green.
Both let me help, even if it is perfectly within their ability to hop down on their own.
I appreciate them humoring me; it would kill me if either of them shattered a knee cap from jumping the admittedly short distance to the ground. The likelihood of it happening is slim to none but still. It could happen.
"It's a miracle the place still stands." Leninora comments as she surveys the area. She meanders around the car, looking out at the village of houses, and sighs.
"What do you mean?" Sang ask.
Leninora hooks one of her arms with Sang's and continues to look around with a critical eye. It's an odd scene, to see Leninora in her shiny latex bondage-wear, and Sang in a loose fitting button up and casual dark leggings.
While both of them are pale, everything else about them is night and day. Where Leninora is tall, sharp and bleak, Sang is curvaceous, short and, at least to me, in full technicolor. Her blonde hair glimmers gold in the light of day, her eyes are a shock of green and her cheeks are a soft pink from the slight chill in the air. Next to Leninora's black-and-white aesthetic, Sang is all color.
"With all the fires, earthquakes, floods, and who the fuck knows what else that's happened in California, I thought that this place would have been a pile of rubble by now." Leninora replies.
Sang just hums.
"How long has the Lockheart Estate been around?" Dr. Green asks. He's rubbing his arms with a pout on his face.
We left our homes pretty quick when this all started, and didn't even think to bring seasonal wear. It's getting cold here in Sacramento, and I think we'll have to go pick up some jackets and shit soon.
Who knew it gets fucking cold in California?
"Feels like forever sometimes." Leninora responds with a lopsided smile. "But it's probably only been a few hundred years. The village was built around the same time as the original city of Sacramento."
"That's cool." Luke says, with that stupid day-dreaming face of his. He gazes at a wooden gazebo, surrounded by a particularly well-cared for cluster of flowers with some indescribable look on his face that kind of makes me want to punch him. Especially when he turns that look on Sang.
Sang tries to hum some response, but it's engulfed as she starts to cough. Leninora releases Sang's arm, and one of her hands cover Sang's mouth and the other gently presses against Sang's back.
I step toward her as it goes on for a long moment. From Sean's worried expression it's not good that she's coughing so much. Leninora's eyes dart from Sean's face to Sang's wrenching figure.
"You should go grab some water." Leninora releases Sang and turns her to face the stairway leading up to the double doors of the mansion. Sang covers her mouth, with watery eyes and nods vehemently. "Take Lucian and the Doctor with you. I'd like a word with the younger Taylor brother."
Sang saunters off, without another word. She must really be looking forward to some water, because she takes the stairs three steps at a time and at a quick pace. Luke and Dr. Green look over at me, and I urge them on with a jerking nod. I especially try to nudge Dr. Green on. Sang doesn't look so good. She's too pale, and that cough sounds pretty bad.
Not only that, but I'm not afraid of Leninora Lockheart.
I'm more concerned with what she may have in store for us. Her intentions sound noble, and if it were anyone else I really would believe she's trying to help us....except this is Leninora Lockheart we're talking about.
Her track record of 'good deeds' doesn't exactly give me the warm and fuzzies.
"What do you want?" I ask, as Leninora turns back to the beast of the vehicle and pulls out a pack of cigarettes and a lighter from the glove box. I turn away from her bent over figure in disgust. She's got no fucking dignity. That outfit is ridiculous.
"I wanted to talk about your role here." Leninora answers, slamming shut the passenger door and leaning against it. "And to discuss your expectations."
I try to mask my confusion with indifference. My eyes dart up as the guys follow Sang into the building and the large double doors close with an ominous thump. "My expectations for what?"
I step back and take in a deep breath of fresh air before Leninora pulls out a single cigarette and slides it between her lips.
Like a jackass, she drops the whole pack on the ground in favor of cupping both of her hands up and around the butt of her cigarette so the flame from her lighter catches and grows to a soft glow.
"Your expectations for your stay here. What are you expecting to take away from this whole situation?" Leninora stares at me, and sucks on the orange end of the cigarette. Tendrils of smoke seep from her nose after a long second.
I'm not sure I even know at this point. "I want to make sure Sang is okay. Or rather I want to be here to support her while she heals. She was a close friend when we were younger. Silas and I would like a chance to get to know her again," I respond, which is all I can really come up with.
"Why?" Leninora presses, a derisive gleam in her eye, "Why have you spent so much time looking for this one girl? You didn't even know if she was still alive."
I stare Leninora down, hating the implications of her words.
Why Sang?
Why did I so pathetically insist on chasing the ghost of this one dead girl?
Why couldn't I move on, after so many years?
"I love her." I state simply.
Leninora shakes her head slowly, her eyes scanning me from head to toe with an almost amused expression on her face. My face twists at that mean gleam in her eyes.
"Love fades. Keep trying." Leninora implores.
"I did. I do. I love her." I insist.
"Or...."Leninora looks off in the distance, something in her expression forming into something irritating as fuck.
Like she fucking understands me.
"Or did you and Silas love her, and it was something you both shared. Something that, while mixed with an already close relationship, became a reason for you two to stay together after everything else fell apart?"
"What the fuck are you talking about?" I ask, confusion mixing with anger making my voice come out hostile and confrontational. Something about her tone comes off wrong. She's using this inflection in her voice, and it sound too personal, and too sympathetic. I don't like it.
"It's not like I don't get it. Relationships when you're young are simple. You like a girl, she likes you. You date, you kiss, you fuck, you make a baby and then you get married. It gets more complicated when you try to make a go of a relationship when you're older." Leninora sighs again, dropping my gaze to look around us. "And it only gets more complicated the more people are a part of it."
Leninora's words reflect exactly what I was afraid of. The moment Leninora mentioned Sang's mom having multiple partners, I knew Leninora was going to see through our casual interest and see the real reasoning behind actions. Our true intentions regarding Sang.
"We're just looking to support a friend." I try to persuade. It might be a lost cause at this point, but I can at least try. "Sang was a close friend and when she was kidnapped--"
Leninora raises her hand and cuts me off. "Cut the shit. I'm going to go make a wild guess and say you and your friends fell for the same girl. And instead of succumbing to the reality that polyandrous relationships rarely work for anyone, you thought you'd try to all date the same girl. When she got kidnapped, it didn't just effect you personally. It effected your whole group dynamic."
I don't respond, mostly because I don't know how to. It made sense when we were younger. The way she's talking about it, she makes us sound naive. And she still has that understanding quality to her tone.
"And now, after years of thinking she was dead, you feel obligated. You want to make up for thinking she was dead by being a part of her recovery. You want to integrate her back into your group with hopes that it will fill that gap that she left behind." Leninora finishes with a bored tone, "Despite having no real connection to who she's become."
I hate what she's implying. Sang isn't the same person? I knew that. Silas knows that too, but we still want to be here for her. And sure, we all would like to explore the idea of her being apart of our group again.
Even so, maybe Leninora is right.
Maybe this is mostly about the residual emotions.
The young youthful hope we held in a single girl.
We want to be here for her, because we weren't there for her when we should have been. She was taken away, and it shouldn't have happened with us near her.
We should have kept her from getting kidnapped. If we had, none of this would have happened.
"I think you and Silas need to talk about the relationship between you two, before you even consider trying to create one with Cyan." Leninora breaks into my thoughts before I can continue my line of thinking. The dark thoughts disintegrate at the mention of Silas.
"Silas and I aren't together." I growl at her. "We're friends."
Even as I say the words, I know they're at least partly a lie.
Silas and I are a lot more than friends. We've been....together...in a lot of ways that friends wouldn't be. We've done things that friends would never consider doing. Both together and....together.
But that's just because we spend so much time out at sea together.
It gets lonely traveling around the world by sea, even together, and at first it was even more so. We were both so deep in grief.
Minutes felt like hours.
Hours felt like days.
Time went by so slowly as we sailed. A few years went by.
Urges cropped up.
We're both perfectly healthy men.
It started simply.
We both were attracted to the same girl. She was no one; just some lost girl working in some pub in Ireland. Silas and I were working an angle on some sex trafficking thing in town: we were always chasing down some lead, not that it ever got us anywhere.
Sang was no where to be found, it had been years and we had nothing to show for it.
There were never any leads that panned out. It was depressing as fuck. We started to doubt everything.
Lala tried to help us pick our pieces back together.
One thing lead to another, and it just....happened.
It felt wrong. Horrible. 'What would Sang think?' Silas had asked me, eyes dark with self-hatred. I'd never felt worse about something we'd done together than I did after that one night. I hadn't forced him to drink with me, but I should have known better. No good decision was ever made piss drunk.
It took us a long time to recover after that. Not just individually, or as a team, but as friends.
And then one night, we were drinking and reminiscing about the past.
It had been a while since leaving Lala, and the subject of the relationship we might have pursued with Sang came up.
The implication of a polyandrous relationship, and what we'd have liked to happen led into what we might have done together with her. With Sang.
It was one small comment, a drunken slur about sleeping together without Sang, for Sang, that brought us into our own relationship.
It was good, great even, and we kind of...just kept doing it. It was easier than trying to forget our one special girl. It was better than the overwhelming guilt about cheating on our one and only.
Over the years, it's progressed to more than casually getting our rocks off.
I don't know where that leaves us now though. Sang is alive. She's broken, and bleeding inside, but she's alive, and as happy as that makes me, I just don't know what her reappearance means for Silas and I.
Will he want to pursue a relationship with her? Do I want to? How do we explain...everything?
Either way, it's not any of Leninora Lockheart's business.
"I don't know what you're talking about." I dismiss her. I don't want Leninora rooting around my and Si's...whatever.
"Look, you can tell yourself whatever you want, but I see the way you look at him, and the way you look at her. I know your relationships are none of my business. But her affairs are my affairs."
Leninora blows out smoke and my nose twitches at the sharp scent. The sharpness of the tobacco and the thought of the thousands of chemicals in that one breath makes my stomach turn.
I don't say a thing. I won't let her mess with my mind.
Until Leninora continues.
"I want to say though, I see the way he looks at you, and the way he looks at her. And from experience, I can tell you that guilt and misplaced feelings have no place in a multiple person relationship."
"How does he look at me?" I ask, not able to help myself. I've never let myself consider a relationship with Silas. It seemed like too much, after everything. I never imagined anything happening past our physical relationship, never let myself bring it up. "How does he look at her?"
"I'm sorry, kid." Leninora looks me over with obvious pity. It makes me want to pound my fist into her face. "But you've got to examine that in your own time. I just wanted to warn you...If you and he don't figure out the root of your feelings, and the root of your relationship, any other addition to your dynamic will suffer. And the stress of it will eventually tear you and it apart. Cy is fragile. I don't want you to start something with her that might potentially lead to hurt feelings."
I don't want to think that Leninora is right. I hate the thought that she might have anything at all to say that might be accurate. But what she's saying makes sense. I hate her, more than almost anyone I've ever met, but she really does sound like she might know what she's talking about.
"Was that all you wanted to talk about?" I ask, irritated and angry that I'm even considering listening to Leninora Lockheart of all people.
"Not quite. I did a background check on you. And your friends." Leninora flicks some ashes off her cigarette and my mind flashes back to the radio. No one else was listening but me, and the stories about the huge fires going down in California sit heavily on my mind. I bite my tongue, literally, to keep myself from telling her to find a fucking ash tray before she burns the whole goddamn place down.
"And?" I edge away from Leninora, trying to implement at least a little of my patience. Jesus, I'm trying.
"I invited you here because I need someone for a job. A construction job." Leninora's voice is low, and there's a little bit of a vulnerability in it.
"What type of project?" I ask, glad that she's not trying to dissect my fucking relationships anymore. Glad that she's giving me an opening into her intentions.
"A house. It's a bit," Leninora pauses, and she looks down with this amused expression and shakes her head, "The architecture is unique. It was designed by my wife, who knew absolutely nothing about structural integrity or energy-efficiency. It needs some serious work. I'd like you, and Silas Korba hopefully, to fix it up."
"And why would I do anything for you?" I ask. Despite my hesitation though, my curiosity is peaked. What type of house would Sang's mom design? Why would someone with no experience in architecture try to build a house? "Why should I do anything for you?"
"It was supposed to be the house we raised our daughter in." Leninora answers. "Auroura wanted our daughter to have the perfect home. A place to feel safe, somewhere she didn't have to hide. I was hoping you shared the sentiment."
Her words send a pang throughout my heart. That's so fucking sad. Sang had a mom, a and a parent who would build her a house without any fucking idea how to actually do it.
"I'll do it." I answer. But still. "On one condition."
Leninora meets my eyes, but the self satisfied smirk on her face has me clenching my teeth.
"And just what would that be?" She cocks her head at me, the red end of her cigarette looking ominous in the late noon sun.
"When Silas and I figure out our shit," And I do mean figure out, because I'll be fucking damned if I lose Silas after the long years we've had together, "You'll counsel us, those of us who want to be a part of Sang's...life... and help us figure out how to do it painlessly. If we're going to make this work, we need open communication. And I'm not sure we can do it on our own anymore."
"Just how many of you expect to be a part of this relationship with her?" Leninora counters, with a raised brow.
"All of us." I answer. There's no use in being dishonest. I don't think it's going to help to lie at this point. "We all had a strong connection to Sang when we first met her, and it only got stronger the more we got to know her. I'd like to think that even now, we could be a part of that type of relationship."
"I doubt all of you will make the cut, but sure. I can do that." Leninora tells me, without any hesitation.
My lip pulls back and I growl at her. Animalistic, sure.
But I fucking hate that blunt, uninhibited honesty of hers.
I wouldn't from anyone else.
If it was anyone else, I think I could even respect the way she doesn't hold back anything but the way Leninora just drops her truths like a bombs is just destructive.
She doesn't care about anything.
She's a heartless fucking black hole, callously sucking up all hope and life without any consideration for the lives she might destroy.
A bleak, dark hole of a human being, Leninora Lockheart is.
"And why is that?" I ask, the edge of my words cutting.
"Because some of your team won't make it." Leninora answers. "I've been where you are. I've lived this. Some of you....just won't make it."
Leninora sighs, and takes a long drag of her cigarette. The flaming end meets the orange bit and she grunts as it meets her fingers. She holds the smoke in her lungs as she drops the butt and grinds it into the ground.
"Cyan's been sexually assaulted, and raped for years. She's been abused in ways you only see in porno's and read in bodice-ripper books. There are people on your team that can't be what she needs. Some are too broken themselves. Some have...urges, that won't make it possible to be with her right now or in the near future and I doubt those individuals can curb their impulses until she's completely healed to make that jump in a relationship." Leninora stops smashing her cigarette into the ground and goes back to leaning against the armored vehicle.
I shift uncomfortably. We all knew that might be a possibility; that some of us might not connect with Sang like we once did. It stings to hear it from Leninora though.
"I won't allow them to be on this property without explicit understanding and a promise from each of them: No one touches Cyan until Dontavion Mav and his family are in custody. Or dead. And even then, not a single person lays a finger on her until she's been cleared through a psych eval." Leninora turns and meets my gaze head on.
She's got this look in her eye. It's a look that brings to mind parents that have hired Silas and I. The look of a parent that's just trying to protect her kid.
"And that's with us assuming that Cyan would even want to pursue such an unorthodox relationship. Or any relationship with any of you." Leninora sighs deeply, and runs her hands through her hair. "She's been dragged through hell and back. I want to do right by her. And if that means protecting her from you lot, or pushing you together, than by all means. I'll be the bad guy. But if you hurt my kid, in any capacity, I'll put a bullet between those bushy brows of your's faster than you can say 'Leninora's got a dick.'"
Her words make me hate her a little less. Leninora is a dick, and an asshole, and a million other derogatory terms, but at least she's got one redeeming quality: She loves her child. It just so happens that I love her child too.
It isn't until I'm shuffling up the stone stairs and opening the door of the main building that something occurs to me. Something that boils and freezes my blood simultaneously. My anger builds, and the sentiment behind Leninora's words melt and twist into something sinister to my ears.
If Leninora loves her child so much, why did all those horrible things I read about in Sang's file happen to her? What type of person lets her child go through that shit?
What type of person is Leninora Lockheart?