Pacifier

🌹Van🌿

I'd waited until Izzy was asleep to start gathering our things.

She'd been so sweet, so good to me, holding me in her arms until I could get my head together, she'd held me together all evening so that I could fall apart.

But now she was sleeping and my mind was settling, clarity returning in that franticly calm way it does sometimes when the worlds caving in and you've not a lot left to lose.

My best friend was dead and I was certain we'd lost everything.

We weren't safe here, we never really had been, the whole thing had been a childish hope to hold onto. Something to save Izzy more than anything.

Well now I couldn't see how we could stay here and remain safe.

I couldn't justify waiting another day for anybody. Not even her brother. Not when I'd no belief left in me that anyone would be coming.

So I moved quickly, quietly packing the place up, quietly clearing any signs of our short lived sanctuary in the cottage. Izzy slept, peacefully and I let her, I wasn't looking forward to the moment Id have to break her heart.

I knew that when she awoke she would argue, she would want to stay and wait. So full of hope for her brother.

She would do as she had done earlier, try to calm me, try to talk me down, she would think I was panicking again and when she realised that I wasn't, that I was perfectly calm, thinking rationally, clearly, she would cry.

She would stop thinking all together and I wouldnt be able to convince her to leave without breaking her heart or destroying her faith in me.

Either way we'd leave in tears.

I stood in the bedroom doorway, the room was dark, countryside dark, but my eyes had adjusted to the gloom and i could make out the curve of her sleeping features. Her lips soft, the bridge of her nose a cute slope which caught the light. She looked content, didn't look sad, didn't look pained.

But she would. She would when she woke and realised what I'd done with all our things. The bags I'd shoved in the boot of the car.

She would when she saw the dust covers pulled back across the furniture.

It wouldn't be enough to hide our traces, I couldn't replace 10 years worth of dust in half an hour, but it would have to do. It was the best I could do to hide that we'd ever been here at all. And that was what I had to do.

I had to take her far enough away that no one would find us. All those whimsical plans we'd made yesterday, which we'd not taken seriously at all, convinced that we wouldn't need them, suddenly I was seriously considering them. Thinking about a way to get her out the country, thinking about a way to drop off the radar completely.

The more I thought about it the more I became convinced we had no other option.

The Reids had taken out Larry after we'd taken out the Reids. They were relentless even when their leader had been killed. Their bases burnt down, their profits corrupted or stolen. And still they were bitter and out for revenge.

It felt like a curse, like a cruel punishment. Though I knew that if it was it was one I had deserved.

It was a curse which I had earned, all the cruelty I'd inflicted, all the things that I had done.

And now it was going to be the death of us both if u couldnt get us away from it all.

So we had to leave. It was the only option and though I knew it would break her heart to abandon her brother, I knew that one day she would come to understand.