She was screaming. One moment I had thought she'd been sleeping, lying with her head resting on her arm at the foot of my bed where we had fallen asleep with the television on, blocking my view of the screen with her silky black hair. The next she was screaming.
A raw, dry kind of screaming that shuddered me, startled me, had me shoot up sitting bolt up right above her. She was sitting up, pale white, eyes wide, hands clasped to her cheeks in the moment before the agony set in. She was straight and still for a second but in the next she was wavering, weak in the middle about to cave in.
Her voice piercing as clutched at herself, still staring eyes wide at the television.
"What is it what's the matter lass?" i asked, a stupid question because the answer was there on the screen right in front of me, a rolling news reel to break her heart, but i wasn't looking at the tv. I was looking at her. Frantic as my arms wrapped around her tiny body just in time for her body to go weak, her heavy against my chest as she broke down and the shivering started.
Frantic hypothermic shivering as she cried, no tears just noise, just exceptional pain. An agony which clenched in every single one of her muscles and left her paralysed and leaning on me.
I held her against me, arms wrapped around her, hands holding her head to my chest, my head bowed, i was breathing in the smell of her as my nose skimmed her hair and i tried as best I could to cocoon around her, shelter her from the horror she had seen on my TV.
She couldn't speak, paralysed and silenced by her grief. She couldn't take the pain, couldn't function, couldn't process it. But I could.
When i looked up, when I read the rolling headline, when I saw the blue lights flashing outside a familiar house, Dellas house, I realised. I saw the yellow tape and i understood.
They'd killed Nana Ru. They'd killed her grandma and left her body to be found who knows how long after the fact.
"Fuck," i breathed, unable to believe it though it should have been easy to believe, my heart sinking for the poor girl in my arms, "shit," i said, hating myself for having nothing better to say. "Darlin I am so sorry," I said, my words a mumbling comfort as my fingers stroked through her hair and my lips skimmed the strands loose and hanging by her ear. "I am so sorry sweetheart, I'm.." I was cut off by a sob, a loud, heart cracking in front of you kind of sob, all the pain in the world echoing in it.
I knew there was no soothing this, and if there was I wasn't the man to do it.
I'd been charged with keeping her safe, killing anyone who came near her, to stop her coming to any harm. But not this kind of harm.
God knew I wasn't the kind of man who could help the girl in her grief. I killed for a living, i caused this kind of pain. I didn't sooth it and I didn't know how.
But i wanted to, i desperately wanted to. It hurt my heart how deeply I felt the need to hush her crying, to offer her some kind of comfort no matter how pathetic it may be.
I felt pathetic in my clueless, because I was.
"Shhh," i cooed as I stroked her hair, watching the TV in the hopes that I might catch any important details, my mind already beginning to race with the knowledge that this twist of fate meant a new plan needed putting into action.
If the Reids had murdered Nana Ru then they really did intend as Van had feared when he had contacted me. They intended to wipe them out. The whole family even those who had left, even those who had tried their best to denounce the bottlemen.
If the Reids had murdered her grandma then that night, two nights ago now, when someone had broken into my house, they had been a Reid and they had been sent to kill Della.
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.
"But..." she sniffed losing her breath, choking on her tears, her whole body shaking and shivering with the strain of her heartache. It must have hurt everywhere. That hollow, heavy pain all over her. All consuming.
"Elle," i said a little firmer this time, deciding that I wouldn't do as Van had told me, that just this once I was going to break my rules for her. Put emotions first. "Cmere," i sighed hugging her even tighter against me, "cmon lie down properly your gan hurt yourself like this," i said using my own legs to untangle hers, knocking her foot with my ankle so that she was lying flat against me, tangling our legs to warm hers. To make her feel entirely secure.
I stretched for the remote, turning the volume down on the news, the subtitles on so that I could read it, work things out in my head whilst allowing her to ignore it.
"Close your eyes for me lass," i said, "gwan do as your told, close your eyes," i said again, letting my other hand rest on her back, stroking a soothing line down her spine with my knuckles.
I was trying to be calm, breath calm for her, so that she might feel the slow rise and fall of my chest and be soothed by it.
"I can't," she said shaking her head, her face buried in my jumper, her tears slowly soaking into the fabric.
"Yes you can sweetheart," i said, knowing already why she didn't want to shut her eyes. Knowing that even if she wasn't going to tell me herself it was because she could see it, she was picturing it, the scene the police might have stumbled upon. The things her grandmother might have seen in her last moments.
"But..." she trailed off, shuddered again. Broke my heart again.
This poor girl had been given up, sent away to protect her and simultaneously cut off from her whole family.
"I left her on her own," she said, her voice muffled and then drowned out completely by her tears, tears which broke her voice and scratched her throat. She was going to cry until she lost her voice, cry until she made herself sore. Her lips, her eyes, her throat. Her muscles would ache with grief for weeks.
And there was nothing I could do but hold onto her. Hold her chest to my heart and hope she could hear it beating. Hope that if i held her close enough to me she would just feel it - the love I felt for her - and know she wasn't alone. Know that I was going to do my best for her.
"Elle don't do that," i said, sighing softly, "don't blame yourself," i stroked her cheek with my thumb, "if you'd been there you'd be dead now too," i said knowing I was right, the worst thing was that she knew it too. She didn't even argue she just nodded her head.
"I know," she sniffed, "but at least..."
"Oi, no," i said quickly, cutting her off, refusing to allow her to finish that sentence. Refusing to allow her to say that out loud. "I mean it Della no, you do not deserve to die... Especially not at the hands of a Reid," i tried not to grit my teeth but the idea was abhorrent. The idea of her alone in that house, she'd have fought the reids the way she had fought me, but she would have been tiny and they'd have tortured her grandmother in front of her before they'd forced her to watch her murder. That would have been her punishment for the fire in her, the fight. Then they'd have killed her too and she'd have become another statistic. Another victim of gang violence forgotten by most in a week or two.
The thought made me sick but it didn't phase her. Didn't stop her speaking. Even if her words were only whispered.
"Neither did she," she said softly, quietly, her eyes blinking, fixed on the wall. She wasn't doing as I'd told her at all.
"Elle lass," i said, fingers entangled in her hair, she wasn't going to listen to me but I said it anyway, "you need to sleep,"
"I can't," she whispered, her shivering had subsided now but every now and then a sob would escape and shake her momentarily. I would rub my hand over her arm and she would shift to get comfortable again. I would wonder whether she could feel my heart beating.
I was trying so hard for her, to remain calm for her. To remain gentle.
All I really wanted to do was kill each and every man responsible for her pain, Billy Reid and his men, the police who hadn't done enough for her grandmother or for her, who had always dismissed their fears, perhaps even Van, for allowing this war to get so out of hand.
Della really was the first person to matter to me for a very long time. It had just taken until now, seeing her in so much pain, to realise just how fond of her i was. Just how much i cared for her now.
"You're exhausted you need to try, ill be here i wont move," i tried to reassure her but i knew it wasn't that she feared. She feared, just as anyone else who has experienced this kind of unforgiving grief, that she would never find peace again.
"I can't," she said again, and though her crying had at first subsided, she was beginning to tremble again. Her voice, her body, her fingers as she reached out for the remote.
She picked it up from the side of the bed and looked up at me. It took me a moment to realise that she was handing it to me.
"What do you want on?" i asked, trying to work it out from the look in her eyes but the look in her eyes was simply a lost one. She was reliant on me entirely, she had no idea anymore.
And then she surprised me. Really surprised me.
"I want a hug," she said before she started sobbing again, wrapping her arms around my neck and pulling herself into me, tight against me, shocking me so that for a moment I was still, completely confused.
"Ey shhh," i breathed, the smallest of shocked sort of smiles as I wrapped my arms around her too, sat up and let her wrap her legs around my waist, burying her face into the crook of my neck. She cried and cried, sniffling and sobbing as I shushed her and soothed her and struggled to change the chanel over her shoulder.
"salright little one its gonna be alright, a promise you," i mumbled knowing that I couldn't really promise her that, making a vow to myself that I would give my life if I had to, if it could secure her safety and her happiness. Vowing to myself that I wouldn't leave her side until I knew that my promise had been fulfilled.
"I want me brother," she sobbed her fists balled up and gripping my shirt. Breaking my heart with her words, because I knew that her brothers was the least safe place for her now.
"I know lass I know," i said, kissing her hair again, wishing I could take her pain and carry it myself. Drain it from her and absorb it so that it was my bones that ached with it. "When it's safe little one a promise,"
But she wasn't listening to me anymore and she wouldn't. Not for awhile.
Not until she'd drifted into a tormented sleep, not until she'd woken up and continued to lie by my side, her head resting on my chest or my shoulder.
She wouldn't listen for the rest of the day when I told her she needed to shower and eat, she wouldn't listen when I made her a brew and told her to drink. She couldn't listen.
Deaf and blind with grief. Lost for a day.
As I lay beside her, hand on her back drawing little patterns through the cotton of her t-shirt, i tried to plan my next moves. Tried to work out where we could go from here. How long we really had, how long I could let her grieve like this for before i had to force her to move. Force her to runaway with me again, even deeper into our isolation.
I knew we didn't have long.