Pacifier

\\ Van //

The journey back up north seemed to drag, thoughts of Isabelle heavy on my mind the whole drive home.
Everything Will had told me was beginning to settle, beginning to set in stone. No longer just a shocking story, it was beginning to write itself down, beginning to solidify. I was beginning to be forced to accept that it was all true. Every last word of it was all true.

Little Isabelle wasn't who we thought she was. She was perhaps even more precious that we'd known.
Now more than ever I knew I needed to get to her. To be by her side always. To adore her, to protect her.
To kill for her if i had to and I would, have to that is.

It was a strain to concentrate on the road, a strain not to see her in the faces of strangers. Not to see her mother in the faces of strangers.
Not to see her mother in the memories i had of Isabelle.
It was difficult not to feel naive when I looked back.

In the days when our parents had all still been alive, when Bondy was barely 15 years old and I was younger still. When Isabelle had been only a tiny little girl. Before she'd worn Bondys flatcap on her head, before shed worn Lyras necklace around her neck. Resting at home between her collar bones.

Before the war had broken out, before we'd lost almost everyone.

In those days which seemed so long ago to me now, Lyra had been like a mother to all of us. An older sister figure who was always there to bandage us up when we came home from fights and long, brutal nights. She'd sat with Isabelle in her lap every night, running a comb through the little girls hair ever so tenderly. She'd rocked her to sleep, been at her side every waking hour. She'd been devoted to her and now I was feeling so blind, so oblivious. So easily lied to and mislead by the family.

How I'd ever believed that Isabelle was anyone other than Lyras daughter, the most important thing in the world to that girl, was beyond me.

It was obvious. It had been obvious.

Obvious in the way she had cradled Isabelle to her chest, sung her to sleep, gazed into her crib every night, eyes full of love. Obvious in the way her tenderness had always been reserved for Isabelle.

It was difficult to concentrate on the road when Wills words had left a sickness lining my stomach which lingered on the roof of my mouth.

It was difficult to concentrate on anything when so many memories I'd been forced to swallow down and forget had been unlocked and thrown under the spotlight again.

All those memories of my family. Of my mother and my father.
Of the people we were when we were young.

Of Lyra.

Lyra the heavensent girl who had cared for us all so deeply, so beautifully. Lyra who had been our guiding light, who had nurtured us. Tried to teach us mercy and gentleness, tried to teach us love over hate. Tried to show us that carefullness and tenderness were just as important as the violence, the brutality, that our fathers had ruled Manchester and our family with.

The Bottlemen had been ruthless and as boys that ruthlessness was drummed into us. We hadn't suffered but we'd lived in danger since the days we were born and Lyra had always tried her best to be warm for us. To love us all dearly and let us be loved.

To know that all those nights shed bathed my wounds or held my hand, hugged me close to her chest when I was just a boy, when she'd let me cry into her jumper when it was late at night and I was scared. To know that all those nights her mind had been wandering to the thought of some Reid, not just any Reid but Harry, a man I'd shot and left for dead only a few weeks before.

That thought filled me with dread and a depression so deep it left me fearful.
Something wasn't right and yet I didn't believe William Hall was a liar.