Participants:
| Scene Title | And Then A Cage Comes Down |
|---|---|
| Synopsis | Kazimir comes looking for Eileen and revenge. Hope arises when you least expect it. But then the log title happens. |
| Date | January 16, 2009 |
Ritz-Carlton: Lucrezia's Suite
The morning of the sixteenth finds New York bathed in a luminous glow that allows the cityscape to be viewed with startling clarity. Sunlight reflects off the snow-covered streets and glitters in the trees outside the Ritz-Carlton before it filters in through the curtains of Lucrezia's room, splashing dappled patterns across the rumpled bedspread and the pale shape tangled amongst the linens. Although the legs are long and bare, curved at distinctly feminine angles, they do not belong to the mistress of the suite — they belong to her malcontent houseguest who has been awake for several hours but has yet to find the energy to kick off the covers and change out of her night shirt into something that doesn't lay bare the milky white scars on her arms or the more mysterious marks on the insides of her thighs.
Eileen is tired, not only emotionally but physically as well. Despite the warmth and favourable atmosphere of her surroundings, she hasn't been able to sleep for more than a few hours at a stretch — it's difficult to rest peacefully when you know the next time you wake up there might not be anything or anyone left to wake up to.
The sound of a door being slammed upon does little to quell those fears. It's the sound of what must be ten people hammering fists on the door all at once, followed by the empty and hollow silence of the Hotel room just as abruptly — Did the noise just happen, did she fall asleep and imagine it? The click of the lock, followed by the door swinging loudly open, only to collide with the wall adjacent is a clear indication that, no, it was truly heard. "Lucrezia!" It's Sylar's voice, strained to the point of shrieking frustration, followed by the sound of furniture shuffling across the hardwood floor. "Where is she!?"
But Lucrezia isn't here, not in the physical sense at any rate. The spiders and bees creeping and crawling at the periphery are a reminder that she is never truly gone, just present in less physical means. "I told you to keep an eye on her! I told you to keep her under control!" Another piece of furniture slides across the floor outside of the bedroom, followed by the door to the hotel room slamming shut noisily.
Kazimir is infuriated, and he's only been working himself up into this frustrated and uncontrolable spree of violence on his way through the city as the sun rose. Wu-Long's pointless death, having to deal with Odessa, all of it weighs heavily on an already weighted mind. One more thing to worry about just breaks the scales, and sends everything scattering to the floor.
In opposition to Kazimir's raging, Sylar is a silent presence. When he can't spend time in the dreamscape beach of divided consciousness, he's a quiet passenger, and he's keeping as much of himself to himself as possible, ever since Wu-Long's pointless death less than 12 hours ago. He's not going to let guilt, or sadness, or even anger and hatred be touched or sensed by Kazimir — who's too distracted by his own problems anyway.
He stirs within himself as Kazimir crashes into the room, guarded and resigned with distant curiousity. Deigning to peer out of his bars with the knowledge that that's all he can do, he says nothing, asks no questions. Braces himself. Riding along isn't so bad - it's best when he can pretend like it's him dictating such actions, and so he sinks a little, for now, into the fantasy that he's the one batting furniture across the room in fury. Because Sylar has fury. Plenty of it.
It's all very familiar. The shouting, the protesting squeal of furniture raking across the floor, the slamming of the door — it's like Eileen is four years old again and her parents are fighting, only the deep voice booming through the suite doesn't belong to her father, and her mother's shrill squalling is conspicuously absent. She's up and out of the bed quicker than she'd have thought possible if she was thinking at all, up to her elbow in one bathrobe sleeve while she furiously wrestles with the other.
By the time the gravity of the situation has caught up with her, she's fastened the sash and is standing with her back pressed up against the wall nearest to the bedroom door, hands held over her heart, fingers buried in loose folds of fabric, clasping, clutching, clenching. Lucrezia isn't here. There's not much she can do except hold her breath and hope that Kazimir is raging about somebody else.
"Where is she!?" Comes the next verbal barb, followed by footsteps storming to the bathroom. A door swings open, smashing against the wall, followed by a frustrated growl of his own impotent rage. It takes Kazimir a moment to hear anything over the sounds of his own racing blood and heartbeat, but eventually it's the ragged half-breaths Eileen takes, and the chaingun flutter of her heart that gives away where she hides. "You little whore." Not even inflection and tone like Kazimir any longer, his words are stolen directly from Sylar's vocabulary, as if they have become some mockery of their former selves; some parodied gestalt entity.
The bedroom door swings open with a wave of telekinetic force that causes it to smash against the wall on the other side of the doorway from Eileen, and leave a white crack in the sheet-rock behind the wallpaper. "Munin!" Hearing Sylar's voice call her by that name she's given up, it's a reminder that the man she once knew is gone so far deep into another man's subconscious as to be dead.
She can see the black silhouette, Sylar's broad shoulders and the long trail of his jacket. Ungloved hands. Pale skin, all spattered with blood. His right hand is crusted and red with it, scrapes and cuts all through his jacket with one pant leg shredded at the knee from what looks like it should have been fresh gunshot wounds; but he's not hurt. "I'm going to kill you!"
Sylar really only understands the gravity of the situation not when Kazimir focuses and Listens to Eileen's heartbeat, but only when his unwilling gaze lands on the girl huddled against the wall, and the bandages on her face. Eileen, he can't help but acknowledge. Alive. He didn't know what to expect but not quite this, the girl seemingly taken care of, and as he pays attention to what's going on around him instead of limit himself to basic sensations, things begin to make sense, while simultaneously seeming very wrong. He clamps down on his protest when Kazimir declares he's going to kill her.
The reminder is a necessary one. Without it, it would be too easy to treat Kazimir as the man whose skin he's in even if Sylar, for all the time she's known him, has never raised his voice so high, and never for such an extended length of time. The tone is familiar but the decibel at which he's accusing her is not — he's angry, that much is clear. Eileen only wishes she knew what he was angry about. At least then she might be able to defend herself, maintain her innocence. Instead, she purses her lips into a thin line and edges sideways, away from the door, away from Kazimir and into the patchy half-light of the corner. No sudden movements. No wild invitation for him to follow through with his threat.
If it is a threat.
"Kazimir— " Eileen's voice is low, hoarse — frightened. "Wait." He's a sight to behold, and if she weren't so preoccupied with trying to keep her heart from leaping up into her throat, she might pay more attention to the details: the discolouration of his skin, the rips in his clothing and the unique pattern the spatters on his face make, all telltale signs that point to what might have happened.
It appears that Sylar wasn't the only one thinking about taking a swing at their great and illustrious leader.
"You." There's a jerking motion as Kazimir raises one hand and curls his fingers, yanking Eileen off of her feet to soar weightlessly across the room before jerking to an abrupt stop in front of an outstretched palm, indicating stop. "I let you live," His teeth gnash together, practically spitting mad as he takes that last step closer towards the girl, "I leave you here where someone will care for you — " He leans forward, drawing her close to his face with an unseen hand squeezing around her throat. "Then, just when you think I'm vulnerable, you send your birds after me!"
Pushing his hand out, Kazimir sends the girl sprawling across the floor. One ungloved hand moves into his pocket, retrieving one of Wu-Long's ceramic knives — covered in blood — and throws it down onto the floor to stick into the wood near Eileen's prone form. "You spit in my face after all I've done for you! Time and again!" He's absolutely blind with rage, one hand gesturing with fingers splayed towards the girl. "You would have been raped and killed by whatever filth you associated with if it were not for me. This is the thanks I am repaid with!"
Anger grows, flourishes, and allows him to take control of her body so easily. His hand motions soon become hers, as he reaches out to one side, curling his fingers into the air which curl her fingers around the handle of the ceramic knife, blood flaking off against her fingers, "I should never have mistaken pity for concern." His hand moves, and so does hers… knife wavering in the air on a slow, shaky path towards what will eventually be her stomach.
Sylar feels his hand curl air and in the same moment as he's forced to do so, so is Eileen. He'd used that ability in the past so freely, enjoying the convenient power it had given him over others - forcing them to follow him, to hurt themselves, to stand still while he sliced through their skull. He'd never imagined— hadn't bothered to imagine— that it would be like this.
Stop it, he murmurs, voice savage and torn sounding, as if he had a throat to be ravaged by screaming or crying. You're like a child, Kazimir. You have all these new toys to play with and not a clue in the world. For all your years. Let her go or I swear I'll kill you. Not a very meaningful threat, all things considered, but it has enough conviction as to sound real. She didn't do anything.
And at this close range, perhaps Eileen will sense an intuitive shimmer of— something from Kazimir. Whatever it is, it's anger, which makes sense, but pain as well. Like a panicked caged bird might feel in too close a quarters, but further away from her senses than a bird.
There's a flicker of something in Eileen's gray-green eyes, wide with panic, but it doesn't last any longer than the shimmer does. To the best of her knowledge, only three people in New York City possess the ability to master the minds of birds. One of them is missing, one of them is no longer in control of his own body… and the third is sprawled out on the bedroom floor, knife in hand, the gaunt reflection of her face glinting off the blade. She recognizes the weapon but does not assume the worst about its keeper — as difficult as it is to remain optimistic, Wu-Long might still be alive, even if it's looking like she won't be much longer.
"Impossible," she slurs, still dazed, disoriented from being flung across the room. Fortunately, she didn't hit her head when she connected with the ground, and is processing Kazimir's accusations as swiftly as can be expected given the current situation. "I haven't left— I'm not that strong."
And it's true. Eileen is young and even though she's been using her ability longer than many of the people who have recently discovered their innate talents, she's always been extremely limited with what she can do with it. What happened to Kazimir at Eagle Electric is nothing like anything Eileen has ever done in his presence, especially at such a vast distance.
She did everything she possibly could to ruin this! Kazimir curls his fingers tighter, directing the knife down towards the silken cloth of Eileen's robe, parting it to reveal the whiteness of her stomach with the knife he puppeteers, pressing the tip of the ceramic knife against that soft belly. "You did. You had to have, there was no one else who can command ravens to attack me." His lips pull back in a snarl, more Kazimir than Sylar in mannerism there. You be silent, phantom of this host. She's going to pay in blood for this, for once.
"You and Wu-Long, working together to try and kill me, to take me out of this host." He walks over to the girl, crouching down to grasp at her face with one hand, yanking her focus away from the knife that dangerously presses against soft skin. His fingrs cause her cheeks to blister, veins blackening around his touch as sharp pain wells against the pressure of his hand squeezing her cheeks. "You tried to help him, and now you're going to join him."
Sylar has long since stopped attempting to dig his heels in and resist the movement of his actions. It just doesn't work that way. He knows, now, with the lingering effects of an ability to understand, that this body is no longer his own. If he couldn't save one of the few people in the world he didn't want dying from dying, then he truly is powerless. So he doesn't resist as Kazimir grips Eileen's face, as her skin reacts to the death-touch. There have to be other ways to fight.
She's paying for nothing, Sylar snaps back, defiantly, as loud as he can with what he has. Hesitation, unwilling to allow Kazimir to see the one window he has, but unwilling to be forced to kill yet another friend as well. As much of a friend as someone like Sylar can have. He can live without a window, if Kazimir found a way to shut it. But he's not sure he can take yet another blow like this. It was me, Volken. I did it, I called them. She couldn't. She didn't know. Touch her and see for yourself. The suggestion comes impulsively, knowing that his words would easily be dismissed as lies - it's a lie, after all, he'd give if it weren't actually true.
So that's it — Wu-Long is dead, another casualty of a war none of them should ever have had any stake in. There will be a time to grieve, a time to make good on promises made, but right now all Eileen can spare for him are a few tears that spill out from the corners of her eyes and trickle hot and wet over Kazimir's fingers. They are as much a response to the pain as they are a response to his words ringing hollow in her ears.
She can't deny that she would have helped him had she been in the position to. That, if nothing else, makes her as guilty as Kazimir demands she is — if this is the way she's going to die, in slow and painful retaliation for something she wishes she'd done, then maybe ritual suicide isn't the worst way to go.
Then again—
The touch, bare skin on skin, all of Eileen's guilt — Something that the brief touch of his hand to her cheek didn't trigger bfore does now. It's a horrifying bombardment of psychic energy, an assault of body and mind as all of Eileen's unresolved emotions, all of her feelings, needs, desires, fears, dreams, hopes, wants, regrets — It all comes flooding to him like water from a broken dam. There's a choking, hissing rupture of strangled words that burble up from his throat.
His hand jerks away from her face, mind reeling from the images that simple won't stop bombarding his mind. All of the places she's been, seen, all of the terrible things she's done, been ordered to do. Blood, pain, tears, drugs, sex, all flooding the senses as Kazimir smashes into the wall, choking on his own tongue as his body goes into convulsions from the unexpected shock.
Her hand holding the knife relaxes, stops pressing against supple flesh. His legs kick out from under him, sending the man crashing to the floor with a heavy thud as his fingers curl closed against his palms. In this moment of weakness — terrible and violent — a door is left open for an ever fleeting moment.
Opportunity.
And he takes it.
It was not a thought out plan. It was a last ditch effort to save someone's life. To be a hero or something so useless. But Sylar recognises this was what it is, the glimmer of life, all of those muted feelings coming back to him as if they were his own. He reaches, as if a door were slamming shut, fingers catching—
And as if he were suddenly drawn out of water from drowning, Sylar draws in a choking gasp, body convulsing when suddenly physical control, something he hadn't hoped to experience again, is handed back to him and for a few seconds, he doesn't know what to do with it. A hoarse cry comes tearing from his throat, not so different to Kazimir's reaction of being assaulted by the young woman's plaguing thoughts and feelings, eyes shutting against the light in the room as if it were blinding.
He is, for now, about as helpless as Kazimir was a moment ago, shock rendering him immobile, curling in on himself… before mentally scrabbling to get his wits together, shaking hands digging fingers into the luxurious carpeting, breathing hard.
It doesn't take more than a few heartbeats for Eileen to realize what has just happened. Her breath hitches momentarily in her throat, and when she lets it out again the sound is something ragged and desperate. Here lies the man who would lay ruin to the world and everyone in it, as helpless and prone as she was not thirty seconds ago — if she doesn't act now, Sylar and Wu-long will have given up everything for nothing, and she's not sure she'd be able to live with herself… for however long she has left.
Grasping the knife in one small, white-knuckled hand, Eileen shakily pushes herself to her knees with the aid of the other, looks down at Kazimir — or rather the man she believes to be Kazimir — and grabs a fistful of his dark hair, yanking his head upright to gain access to the hollow of his throat and the artery pulsing beneath his blood-caked skin.
What are you supposed to say before you kill someone?
Please, don't! The words aren't Kazimir's, they are Eileen's, the panicked voice of a girl forced against her will at a too-young age to experience untold horrors at the hands of her brother. These images, these terrible things are forced upon Kazimir's mind like words burned onto paper. He struggles, bodyless, fighting against an unrelenting tide of pain and sadness that threatens to crush his will like an aluminum can.
He doesn't understand, doesn't have the capacity to understand. It hurts, it hurts, but he can't piece together why, because at his core he himself is a frightened young teenager unable to cope with the world that was rudely forced upon him. He is unable to relate to or empathize with others, which makes the emotional bombardment all the more disturbing and disorienting — however temporary.
Sylar's attention is drawn back from himself at the sharp tug to his hair, head easily tilting back, exposing his throat to the sharp bite of the knife in the young woman's hand. Sylar's eyes are dazed still, seeing only a blur of ceiling before his gaze shifts— he can move his eyes, he can see what he chooses, h-he can— he— and focuses on Eileen's as she comes to terms with what she's about to do.
He should let her. But if there's anything linking every single being on the planet, it's survival.
"No," he rasps out, a basic word, one that isn't too hard to shape. Doesn't use any one of his immense powers to fend off the killing move. Streaks of instinctive tears course out from the corners of his eyes, making tracks to the blood smeared even that far up. "Ei. Eileen. Eileen." Kazimir had once told him— likely lied to him— about the power of names, and lie or not, Sylar attempts to invoke it now. "It's me, I promise, he's lost in it." His voice is slurred, getting used to this again.
Eileen's hand lowers as if gradually making the transition from flesh to lead. She begins to lose her grip on the knife but closes her fingers back around the handle at the last possible moment, letting the weapon come to rest against the floor with a gentle thunk. It could be a trick, another one of Kazimir's clever ploys designed to deceive and misdirect — there's something about the way he says her name, however, that causes the young woman to leave her arm where it is, slack at her side. The hand with the fingers buried in Sylar's hair, nails pressing into his scalp, brings his face up close to hers as she studies his features, wordlessly scrutizing the rough landscape composed of his sloping jaw, the prominent peak of his nose and the curve of his mouth. It's too bad she can't tell the difference between Kazimir and her friend just by looking at him; if it had been that easy, they might never have gotten into this mess in the first place.
"Prove it."
What she's really asking him is to think fast, which is so very hard to do when you've been handed a moment you've longed for so suddenly that you have no clue what to do with it— or for how long it lasts. Add to that the panic of Kazimir's mind surging, broiling in the back of his own, incredibly distracting if at least, in some ways, distant, and you have a very scattered attention span. But slowly Sylar is calming, feeling the draw of air in his lungs as his own action, heart beating for him alone, not someone else, and the outwardly migraine-like symptoms of tactile telepathy don't seem to be occurring. Or, Kazimir is lying and resisting mightily.
A hand drifts up, as if to touch the bandages plastered to her face, but his fingers only hover a couple of inches away. He blinks, rapidly, to clear his sight of salty tears. "The beach," he whispers, as if any louder might break his good fortune and she'll descend the knife to his throat. And he might not be willing to stop her. "You have a memory, one I took from you— there's a beach." With the rocks and the sand and the water and come on Sylar there has to be something better than that, as much as that separate memory means to him, feels like it means to her. "And you called me an addict." A point of connection, and his mouth even curls wanly in a smile. A harsh, mirthless chuckle. "This. Sort of a rough…" He swallows, dryly. "…rough twelve-step program. Don't you think so."
Although Eileen doesn't release her grip on Sylar's hair, she leans forward until her forehead is touching his and closes her eyes. She'd sigh if she didn't think her entire body would deflate like a balloon in the process. It's him. "I'm sorry," she hisses coarsely, and finally lets go of the knife, hand coming away from its grip with deliberate slowness. She reaches up as if to wipe away some of his tears with her fingertips, but ends up smearing them across his stubble-lined cheeks instead — unlike Sylar, she's been in control of her body almost this whole time, and even she can't keep from trembling.
Relief, short-lived through it may be, floods through her, fuels the emotions she feels bubbling to the surface after being contained for so long. Penitence. Remorse. "We should have gone with you. All of us. We could have stopped it— "
Stop it. Stop it. Stop it! Kazimir rages against the ebbing tide of emotions, felt as a throb of a headache at the back of Sylar's mind, a stronger will, a suffocating will slowly regaining its strength as the flickering beats of Eileen's life wind away into the recesses of his mind like the echo of a painful wound. This freedom, this respite from his cloying prison is given a sense of earthly finality, an approaching end like dark stormclouds that threatened his peaceful beach.
"And then everyone would be dead," Sylar murmurs, only remembering a fraction later to shake his head. That may not be true. Kazimir can't be invincible and if there was a group in this world powerful enough to bring him down, it could well be Vanguard. But the last week or so of this torment has drilled it into him that Kazimir cannot be beaten, despite all his threats, despite this one show of weakness. It doesn't help that he can feel his return, see it on the horizon.
His hands settle on her arms for a moment, and there's no prickle of lifeforce being drawn out of her, only rough skin and dry blood. Wu-Long's. It's a struggle for the next few seconds to simply not break down, and it certainly looks like he will, before determination sets back in. "He's still there. He'll take it back. I need to— " His gaze focuses on her again. "You need to go. While you still can."
Stay back or I'll find a way to keep you in there, he growls back at Kazimir, but it's a bit like yelling into a hurricane. It's petulant, shaken. Surrounded by memories and pain, see how you like it.
"If I go, he'll hunt me, kill me for running." Kazimir may kill her anyway, but Eileen prefers not to incur his wrath any more than she already has if what Sylar is telling her is true. There are also Lucrezia's sentries to consider — death by any one of Sylar's powers is almost preferable to the prolonged suffering brought on by anaphylactic shock. "I won't leave you alone. You shouldn't have to be alone." The hand on his head drops to his back, palm flat, holding him to her the same way a mother might cradle her child.
Survival might be one of the things linking every single being on the planet, but so does togetherness, intimacy, love. Eileen can't promise they'll find a way to bring him back, to depose Kazimir for good, but she can stay with Sylar until it's over. For everything he's ever done for her, she owes him that much.
What's the matter Sylar? Do you long for the pleasures of flesh? He's free. I can hear your voice cracking, was it crocodile tears for that man I bludgeoned in the skull of? It's different when the person who's murdered is your friend isn't it? That lurching, sucking sensation of claustrophobia begins to grow and intensity, as if the walls in the room are closing in around Sylar. Wait, I take that back… An animal like you is incapable of friendship, of love, as much as I am. Darkness creeps around the edges of Sylar's vision, blotting out peripheral sight and stealing breaths between breaths. You and I are monsters, Sylar. But the difference is… I'm the stronger one.
Of course it can't last. Nothing can. Sylar resists for a few moments, as if giving into the embrace is to admit defeat. It is, really. But he does so, in the end, arms winding around her and hiding against her, as Kazimir's consciousness comes knocking. Slowly. Deliberately. His forehead rests against her shoulder, hands clench the fabric of her gown, and he's reminded of a woman whom he'd thought was the second occupant of a chance, serendipitous meeting, who had held him similarly after his first murder, after his attempt at ending his life. The parallels demand he cry, break apart, but he doesn't. Shuts it down, determined not to give into that, at least. At the very least. He's learned that much, hasn't he?
You have power enough to take it back, Sylar admits to Kazimir, and there's a weakness about his internal voice as they begin to shift places once more. But that doesn't mean you're stronger.
But if he loved Eileen, wouldn't he run? Selfishly, he doesn't.
"There are people who care about you," Eileen whispers fiercely, her breath hot in Sylar's ear, warmth curling against his neck as she speaks — no matter how much ferocity her words contain, nothing spoken can possibly represent how strongly she feels about the subject at hand. "Gillian. Odessa. Ethan." Wu-Long too, she imagines, before he died. "People who aren't going to rest until this is over. Don't you ever fucking forget that."
"Sweet sentiments." Sylar whispers back, and in that moment all of Eileen's skin begins to tingle, a terrible and prickling feeling she has become all too accustomed to. There's a shove, gentler than before, a telekinetic nudge that pushes the girl back and onto the floor and allows Sylar — allows Kazimir — to rise from where he sits, wiping at the side of his neck with one hand. "You're more dangerous a bird than I had first imagined, filling my dear Sylar's head with such wonderful, honeyed words." He flicks his hand to the side, a distant backhand to send her to the floor.
There's momentary silence, reminiscing on what he had seen. None of it, though, changes anything to him, "But you did not do what I thought you had. And in that, you are innocent, but your precious Sylar…" The outstretched hand flexes, and that ceramic knife flips through the air towards it, caught in mid-flight and pocketed in his jacket. "I'll find a way to bury him, so deep… and so dark, he'll wish he had never tested the bars of his prison again."
And as if those words could be made manifest, Sylar awakens with hastened breathing in something that feels so much like reality. Arms straining against something that holds him down, an uncomfortable and invasive feeling of plastic in his nose. The beep of a machine nearby monitors his heartrate, and a leather strap over his forehead keeps him down when sedation fails. They are four, familiar stone walls, and a single glass window with which to be viewed like an animal through.
Saline drip.
Cold table.
Needles.
The cell constricts.
Frozen realisation. And then, Sylar thrashes, just once, against restraints both sharp and blunt, a primal scream echoing off the walls of this new cage just once, in a flash. But the sedation, imagined or not, is ice in his veins. Drags him down in darkness even smaller than this box of cement, clouds memories of recent words, fiercely spoken but now so distant, like a dream. Calm. Heart rate lowers. Breathing slows. Eyes hood.
The world spins in a reality he can't touch. Not any more.
Eileen's hand covers her face — the half of it that isn't plastered in bandages — and she watches Kazimir in her peripheral vision, saying nothing. The knife is away, pocketed, a temporary reprieve from a death that she won't be able to avoid if things continue on their current course. Although she wasn't able to promise Sylar they'd come up with a workable solution, there are very few things that will stop her from trying. The biggest obstacle is standing right in front of her, gloating, relishing in his hard-fought victory. And why shouldn't he?
She turns, putting her back to Kazimir, one shoulder bare where Lucrezia's bathrobe has slipped down and bunched up in the crook of her skinny little arm. He's seen things, experienced things that — until now — were hers and Sylar's alone. As much as this makes her want to retch, stomach and bowels twisting and squirming into terrible knots, she focuses on regulating her breathing instead. Slow. Steady. Pained but even.
She won't even look at him.
"Tell Lucrezia I said hello." Kazimir drolls out the useless words, for the lady of the house is well aware of what has happened. Turning to leave the room with heavy footfalls. He even feigns the common courtesy to slam the door shut on the bedroom with an unseen hand, and it is only when the second door slams shut, closing off the hotel room from the hallway again, that Eileen is left to nurse the emotional and physical wounds added on to the ones she has already been gifted with.
The loving scars of family.
 January 16th: Circles Within Circles |
 January 16th: Past The Mission |
