Gone with the sin [Liam]

[Jethro]

how is jethro here, you may ask?
the answer, my little children, is SPARKLESHIFTER MAGIC THATS HOW

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For the first time in years, sleep is comfortable. Her slumber is wrapped in a fog of familiarity, an echo of something that she’s missed for a long, long time. There is another warm body dangerously close to her own, and Jethro finds that she is more comfortable than alarmed by the all-too-familiar presence. What she feels now isn’t the cold branch of a tree, or a rough ground made of stone—and what she smells now is not that of the forest or the city. It’s something different entirely—it’s home.

As close to home as home can be, at least. As tired blue eyes drift open, the first thing to meet her field of vision is a clean wall and the light that floods the room. There’s an old pain in her bones from one too many injuries that makes itself immediately present, and with a sigh, Jethro feels content to lay here quietly until whatever dream she’s experiencing decides to cut itself off. Reality is a brutal animal, never known to be kind and certainly never generous, and yet the old witch finds that this may just be the most cruel of all. If it weren’t for the ache of creeping nostalgia that swells and makes a home there in her chest, she may have never wanted it to end.

All good things must come to an end… Or maybe not.

There is something starkly real about her setting— about the unmistakable scent of an occupied home, the all-too-real human heat that no dream could ever recreate so realistically—that makes Jethro’s eyes snap open a little wider. Because a shattering realization comes that quickly shakes away the remains of her sleepy stupor, that she is not where she should be. The paint on the walls are not disguising the trees and the wildlife of the mountains. Worn, scarred hands run cautiously over the edge of the mattress as if it may crumble beneath her fingertips, testing what may possibly become shark infested waters before daring to plunge into the deep. The supernatural world has always been something riddled with mystery and caution as well as unexpected events, but even Jethro cannot justify or decode the offense that begins to make itself more and more apparent with each passing second.

Afraid of what she may see, she doesn’t want to turn around, but with a deliberately slow movement on baited breath, Jethro forces herself to look over her shoulder, and what she sees causes her to freeze in her spot. The woman has lived blind her entire life, from the moment that she had turned eight eight up until just years ago, under pressure and pain, the woman had managed to reverse this. There had only ever been a few things that she had been able to pull from her life with Liam—the freckled, red-haired man, one of the few of his breed that had managed to be born far away from the “ugly” stereotype that had been smacked onto their foreheads.

It is not a husband, a friend nor a foe that sleeps so soundly beside her—it is the past, an old scar that Jethro had inflicted upon herself the day that she had left, one that had healed badly under the cracking force of heartache that had caused the stone-solid shifter to self-destruct. The man had crumbled under her grip just moments before she had abandoned him, leaving the man a broken shell of a father and a husband. Maybe it had taken him longer to heal, and maybe the years that are etched onto the face of a tired, sleeping man would wipe away once he awoke, but Jethro feels the stitches coming undone before she has the next opportunity to breathe.

Fear and regret are things that are not often felt by such a viciously prideful creature, but there is nothing left here to fill the void that begins to grow again.

It’s now that Jethro finally finds herself again. With one forceful movement, she pushes herself backwards, off of the bed and away from Liam, back against the wall where the feeling of something solid there gives her the feeling of stability that she craves again. She leaves the protection that the blanket had offered a pale, skinny and now naked figure, riddled with scars and bruises that are hard-earned against her hard-lived environment. Even the wedding and engagement bands that still cling loosely to thin, bony figures seem to shine a little less bright now. And with arms wrapped around knees that are quickly drawn to her chest, she stares in silent bewilderment.

Jethro had always expected to be punished for her sins one day—but never this way. Not by the ache and the pain that she knows she will see etched into a worn man’s face, and not by the return of every cold, burning feeling of regret in her chest that she had tried so hard to leave behind.

[Liam]

The encounter with Namira had shaken him to his core. The Portugese island was not the sanctuary that he had once thought and in these moments, when it feels like he may drown, Liam can understand why his father drank. It puts fire in his veins, but it also dulls the throb of his mind and the ache in his chest--it's better than being sober, and after all, no drug was without its side effect.

There was a toll to cross the River Styx and he was more than willing to pay.

It takes a good amount of bourbon to put Liam under but he manages it. He locks the apartment door and the windows, to keep Namira from coming in and to keep the ocean breeze from sneaking inside and strangling him. It's a fanciful thought, that such meager barriers could stop him from invading this temporary home and bring him to his knees again--with her screams echoing through his mind. Those pleas, the begging... He swallows and pours himself another glass of the dark liquor, determined to chase out the visions.

Here in Sao Miguel, he had created a suitable lie for himself. Liam was young and unmarried, freed of all the burdens and duties that had made him what he was. He liked his lie, it was believable and nearly as real as the life he had led with Jethro and Marcus. No one expected him home, in fact there was little expected of him at all beyond Jericho, and that was less of an expectation and more of a game of chess played by two masters.

Sometimes he won, sometimes he lost, but principally it was enjoyable and the challenge was welcomed with open arms and undone buttons.

He sleeps like the dead with his arms curled around a memory and his nose tucked into the long hair of his wife, dreaming of the scents of pine and the air heavy and metallic just before it rains. Except it is raining, he can hear it in that strange, peaceful place between sleep and consciousness, the gentle sound of it hitting the roof and beading down the windows. He turns in bed and the soft flesh beneath his finger tips isn't the covers balled up against his chest, but skin. Human, woman and achingly real. Liam barely has the chance to open his eyes before her face fills his view, blue eyes wide with fear. A mirror of the visions Namira had implanted in his mind.

It's the first thing he registers, and the next is the crippling throb of his head, a hangover the like of which he hasn't experienced since the seventies in Paris, drinking absinthe in an underground club with a woman on each arm and America an ocean away. "Jethro?" He croaks, the covers pooled around his waist and the dark bruises beneath his eyes feeling deeper today than ever before. What was real beneath his hands can't be real there--pressed against the wall and quivering, bones and pale flesh, scars rippling with each dragged in breath.

He tries to throw himself out of bed, to put energy and compulsion into this worn body of his, but Liam manages only a scrambling sort of motion. "No, can't, got rid of you." He drops into muttered Gaelic and makes a hasty retreat for the kitchen, for the liquor cabinet and absolution from this cruel hallucination. "Ní féidir léi a bheith fíor-"There is a single mindedness to his actions and Liam only stops his murmuring and the twitching of his fingers when there's a glass in his hands and the hair of the dog to burn out everything from the hell whence it came.

Demons existed, and so did ghosts, Liam only wished she was one of those so he could exorcise her, to banish this vision of a terrified, skinny woman for good.

[Jethro]

Jethro has always been an individual prone to nightmares—all of the terrible things that walk in broad daylight and the worse that prowl at night work their way into her head at times, leaving her shaking and whimpering in her sleep for some release. But none of them amount to what she sees now. Liam is only a shadow of what he had been only days before Marcus had been taken. They had been happy, carefree, living under the illusion of perfection and their own little slice of what they could have called the American dream. Jethro had loved her son fiercely and Liam passionately, and through all of their strife in the past, she had managed to convince herself that things might actually stay positive for once in her life. She had been horribly, horribly wrong—and there is no feeling in the world that could compare to watching her own son be stolen away from her, nor the forced and beyond difficult effort to keep Liam from killing himself in the process.

That old ache returns, a dull throb in the center of her chest that she tries to banish by taking a long, deep breath. Every year spent alone, fighting and defending, weighs a heavy guilt on her shoulders—and she realizes now that Liam had not only lost his son. Somewhere in the days, weeks, months and years that he had lived with the loss of both child wife, Liam had lost himself along the way too.

But despite every crawling instinct to look away and to avoid pained green eyes, Jethro can’t force herself to do anything but watch with growing anxiety as the man stumbles out of bed. She cringes at the sound of her own name, pressing her back hard against the cold wall behind her. The second that he’s out of the room, the skinny form lifts away from the floor and the wall, moving quickly to tear through Liam’s clothing, finding a random shirt and shorts to throw on in an effort to feel less vulnerable. As a woman who is almost always prepared for any bad experience to come her way, the sudden arrival to Liam’s bed leaves Jethro rolling the waistband and pulling the shirt on with shaking, uncoordinated fingers. It’s an adrenaline rush that she hasn’t felt since—

Since she left.

The two rings on her left hand nearly slip off in the process, barely clinging to thin skin, loosely guarded by the bend of her knuckle and the unconscious adjustment with her other.

How long has it been since she’s walked? Ran? She moves cautiously out of the bedroom, using unsteady hands on the wall for support. “Cad é an ifreann atá ar siúl...” Her voice is low and hoarse, faded from a lack of use, and when the shifter manages to make her clumsy entrance into the kitchen, she hesitates for only a few seconds. Wide blue eyes search wildly for any means of an exit, of an escape, because she knows that the windows will not be her friend at this moment. The energy required to shift is not there, and Jethro thinks that if it were not for the pounding in her chest and the trembling adrenaline in her veins, she may have just collapsed to the floor. Her eyes settle on the tired man across the room, and her expression changes from frantic to bewilderment in nearly a second flat.

And it sinks in. “Liam—” Suddenly, it seems that the air around them has become unbearably thick. Fearing that she may just choke, that need to run makes its way back into her chest. After years spent in the wild, fight or flight has become an aspect that Jethro has gotten too familiar with it. And once more, Jethro does not think that she can face what she is terrified of coming.

Her head turns and her eyes snap onto a promising looking door, one that would lead her away from this place, away from here, away from him. With clumsy movements, like a foal taking its first stand, Jethro staggers forward in a desperate attempt to get away, across the kitchen and to the door that might give her a taste of freedom again. She does not know where she will go, nor how she will get there—with bare feet, not a cent to her name and a complete inability to take to the skies, Jethro is starkly reminded of when she was 19 years old. Living with nothing—truly nothing, it is nothing that Jethro has not already experienced in her lifetime. Her eyes are set on the handle to the door.

Running away, it is cowardly at best, and Jethro would rather die than be called a coward. But even death and cowardice seem better than having to see that look in his eyes one more time.

[Liam]

Liam knew what a hallucination looked like. He had seen a few in his lifetime, conjured by a Hoodoo witch in Louisiana, brought on by drugs, or a grief so strong that his mind created visions of those who he had lost. Jethro was not any of those things and she wouldn't fade with the coming of the morning light as they had. As he choked down desperate mouthfuls of whiskey, she was huddled in the corner of his bedroom, and he would have to face her one way or another.

Unfortunately, it was sooner rather than later. Liam barely has finished the first half of the drink he's poured before Jethro comes stumbling out of the hallway, murmuring Gaelic and looking like hell. As much as he wants to believe otherwise, Namira hadn't lied. She hadn't flown off and skimmed the great lakes and feasted herself on salmon for the rest of her life. His wife walks like someone only just released from the hospital and her eyes are nearly as empty as his when he allows the humor to fade from his face and looks into the mirror. There is damage beyond that though, beyond what he had done. Jagged scars dart across her jawline and they peak out at the edges of the shirt she wears.

Hard, undeniable evidence that somewhere in the time they'd been separated, Jeth had not come away from a fight without wounds. Someone had tried to hurt her--badly and they had nearly succeeded.

As filled with lead as his muscles feel, Liam is still faster than her and reaches the door just as she's opened it. It would be easy enough to let her walk out, but his heart jolts into his mouth and a child's panic makes his fingers curl around her wrist and tug her back from the wide open world, from freedom or rescue.

She seems like a small bird, so frail that he might crush her wings with the slightest touch. He binds her to his chest with shaking arms and unsure hands, he had broken her long ago, what was this in the scheme of things? "It's raining, you can't leave." The winds are bending the palms and he can see the ocean crashing against the shoreline, turned dark and perilous. Liam reaches out to close the door and switch the lock back in place before she can think of going out in that awful weather.

He shifts his fingers through her hair wearily and he holds her for as long as he can stand, before his throat closes and his stomach tightens. With a strangled sound he lets loose, the feel of her still imprinted against his body, a memory Liam can't decide if he wants to keep or forget, to nurse him through the nights when his bed is empty and cold. Liam sinks back into his chair, grasping for purchase--and soon find it in the form of his unfinished drink. "I forgot you spoke Irish." Liam says gently over the rim of his glass, once he's emptied it. It had been years since he had last heard the language of his childhood and longer still since he had heard it spoken so beautifully. Jethro had a gift for learning and he had taught her in the early days, long before either of them had worn rings, when the only promises they had made were spoken words and a key to the other's apartment.

"Conas atá tú anseo?"

He speaks like a ghost, and Liam yearns for the moments when he could play the talented musician, full of charisma, and when his gaze wasn't divided between the shivering form of his wife and the bottle of whiskey on the table. With that in perspective the shifter decides he could do little worse with another drink and he pours the liquor, droplets sprinkling over the table from his shaking grip. A pitiful bartender he would make, unable to pour a glass under pressure.

[Jethro]

Liam is quick, but once upon a time, she had been quicker. In the days where she had flown frequently, when she was healthy and agile, her small size and quick reflexes was a near equal match to her husband’s. But now, on wobbling, unsteady legs, Liam is able to nearly effortlessly stop her. Something in her stomach drops when she feels cold fingers wrap around her wrist, and it takes little strength to pull her off of what little balance she has and back to him. She feels like she’s 15 again—making a desperate, fruitless attempt to escape the four walls of her foster home, her prison. But this time it is not an angry, drunk, abusive foster father that shuts the door to her freedom—instead, it’s Liam, and when he holds her close to him, Jethro can feel the guilt chewing away at her bones again.

Rain… she would have taken the rain, the storm, the danger, any day to avoid this.

There is little comfort to be gained from the warmth of his body and the smell of liquor on his breath, but the woman cannot bring herself to fight him anymore. She instead chooses to stare at the middle of his chest, focusing with all attention left on the sounds of the rain hitting the roof and the ocean crashing at the shore. Throughout their relationship there had been a rollercoaster of the two of them fixing their wrongdoings to the other, a countless amount of times that they had done everything that they could just to get under the other’s skin. But there’s no fixing this. She’s a child with a broken mirror, struggling to figure out how to pick up the pieces that she had shattered.

But it will fall apart again, every time.

Jethro understands almost immediately when his presence leaves her that she had wordlessly destroyed a vital part of Liam’s being by simply leaving. Her disappearance had violently torn something away, something that she knows she may never be able to get back.

The bottle shakes in his hands now and Jethro remains silent even after his words, leaning her back against the wall and sliding down again—once more seeking the firm stability that it offered her in the bedroom. “Bhí mé ag súil go bhféadfaí tú a insint dom.” She finally looks back up at him, tired blue eyes taking in the form of the miserable man that she had created. “Ná deoch níos mó.” Because she hates it—the glass held between his fingertips and the bottle that he had held just seconds before. “Please.”

She doesn’t expect him to listen—when has he ever?

There is a moment of silence that follows, where Jethro returns to avoiding his eyes and focuses on the wall—the bottle of liquor, the table, the chair, the window, the ceiling, anything but him. She had nearly had a taste of that freedom again, the addicting rush that came from a successful escape. She had seen the rain and the dark skies, the waves crashing against the docks and the brutal winds it carried with it. There is something very different about the taste of the air here. It is not Boston—it is not home. It is not the mountains that she has become so comfortable with living in. Wherever on the globe this place is, it is not her place.

“Cá bhfuil mé?”

[Liam]

The headache is receding, aided by the roar of whiskey burning down the back of his throat. There are alternatives of course--seventy plus years of roaming God's green earth and spending time in places God preferred to turn a blind eye to had rewarded Liam with a veritable library of hang over cures. There was always Tylenol.

But liquor was quicker and the reek of alcohol keeps her scent from drifting to his nose.

It stops the hitch in his breathing and makes him feel a little braver than he actually is, sitting at this table while his wife shivers on the floor. Ex-wife? It's been so long since he left their home, since he fled the empty halls and the deafening sound of silence that prevailed through the rooms and gripped him tight. They weren't perfect; there had been plenty of times Liam had found himself in an empty bed, or Marcus had walked in on them arguing with wide, pleading eyes, but she made him better. He had wanted to be good for her and he had tried.

But that wasn't enough, was it?

She speaks Gaelic for him and he finds himself surprised she even remembers so much. Liam had given it his all to forget her, to forget the life they had led. With as quickly as she had lit out, the shifter had suspected his dearly beloved wife would attempt the same.

He looks up to regard Jethro with cold eyes, mouth drawn into a thin line. Grief evaporates to leave behind anger, the bitter sort that weighs down his shoulders and makes him taste metal. "You have no right to ask me that." Liam raises the glass to his lips, an act of sheer rebellion and vengeance, but she says please in that fragile voice and Liam's resolve crumbles. He can't fight against something that's already been beaten down, huddling against his wall, clothed in too large clothes.

The tumbler clatters to the table and he reaches to re-screw the liquor bottle's cap with a violet twist of his fingers. "Faigh amach an urlár. Beidh tú ar ghabháil do bháis." He snaps, knowing he should be there to offer his hand, to lead her to the kitchen table and fix breakfast, to make this easier, but Liam doesn't think his generosity extends that far. Not now. Besides, it was the fool who reached in bare handed to catch a cornered predator, even one in as pitiful as state as Jethro. She would eat when she wanted to and no sooner than that.

Pining the loss of his drink, Liam lets the silence fill the spaces between them and trains his eyes to the wood grain. "Portugal." He chokes out eventually, sparing her a glance, side-eyed and unsure. "The Isle of São Miguel, to be specific." Living on the other side of the Atlantic apparently wasn't enough to escape the demons of the past though. He stands, unable to keep still any longer, and fingers tattooing a beat against his thigh, Liam tries to gather an explanation from thin air, to push this into the realm of the somewhat understandable.

"You're a long way from home." Whatever counted as a home for her. A large pine tree with plenty of squirrels? "Namira paid me a visit a few days ago," The blame is clear in his voice and Liam doesn't try to spare her any of it. "Painted a picture for me, you could say. A vivid one." Talking helps, it orders his thoughts and it makes things true. The fox halts his pacing for a moment, a haughty grin hanging from his lips as he looks down. He wasn't going to let Jethro see some half-dead shadow of a man, to seem less simply because he didn't wear a wedding ring anymore and she wasn't there to keep his bed warm.

He takes his mostly full glass from the table and kneels down in front of her, offering the whiskey up. A peace offering. An insult. Take your pick. "Namira has a strange sense of humor, bringing you all the way here. If you're not going to let me drink, than you might as well have one yourself." The smile eases and colors with something akin to sympathy, he places a palm against the cold hardwood floors and sits down, legs crossed Indian style. "One glass doesn't make you an alcoholic now. It'll warm you up, make things hurt a little less."

Liam believes in the whiskey's power to soothe her hurts more than his own and he waits with wavering hands and sodden hope.