Madeline Smyth was shivering, her arms wrapped around her as she listened to this man that she did not know make a deal with her brother for the life of Clenna. She was shaken to her very core. She couldn't stop the tears from rolling down her face, quick and hot. Her throat and eyes were burning and she wanted to be thrown overboard to drown. She was alone. She was alone and she had watched the only man that she had ever loved die in front of her. She looked down at her hands as they shook. They were clean. Her fingers, wrinkled from her time overboard were moving of their own accord as she simply stared at them. Her sight was blurry, her thoughts muddled. She was whispering something but even she couldn't understand what it was.
She and her brother, Michael were all that they'd had… until they'd come across Tom and Clenna Dolan anyway.
The four of them had become a sort of family and maybe it was partially because they never spoke to anyone except each other but the four of them had easily transitioned in to a system that more or less worked. Madeline and Tom had gravitated towards each other much like their siblings had done.
Madeline 'Maddie' Smyth was more than smitten with Tom and he with her. They had been that way for quite some time now. He had been her first kiss, that boy, and they would be married one day. That was what they had planned anyway, when they'd laid awake at night beneath the stars. They'd done so because they couldn't afford a roof over their head, but it had felt like recreation and time away from reality to Maddie. They would be together forever. She knew it and he knew it and her brother knew it and his sister knew it. They had thought the four of them would be a family.
Not anymore.
No. Not anymore.
Blood. His blood had splattered on to her. She had watched. She had seen Tom die right in front of her, shot dead like some sort of animal. And Clenna had run off and been chased by men. Michael had taken one side of the ship and she the other. She had jumped head first in to the water below. She was an average swimmer, as she was with everything. She had managed. She had gotten to shore and been met with the sight of boots. Stupid, stupid, boots. She had been hauled to her feet and dragged back to the stupid damned ship and she had found herself starring at him- at Tom, the man that she'd grown up thinking she would marry, as he laid in a pool of his blood. She had found herself looking at Tom, shaking uncontrollably and crying to herself and then she had found it. She had found it somewhere deep beneath her fear, her heartache, the way that she felt about herself and the way that she felt about Michael, beneath her inhabitations, beside her optimism, on a shelf opposite of her pain- her will to live, a little more than dusty with cracks big enough for light to shine through. She'd made another run for it. She had thrown the closest thing she could manage at the nearest man and when his comrades had gone to help relieve some of his distress she had run for it. Maddie had run for it and thrown something off of the ship to sound like she'd taken to the water again and then she'd rushed down a series of steps faster than she thought physically possible.
She had taken the stairs two at a time and when she'd been yanked to the side as soon as she'd reached the bottom she had let out a short yelp that was instantly silenced by her brother's hand over her mouth. He had yanked her in to him and she had broken down further. She wasn't sure how she had found it inside of her to run before, but her legs were absolutely worthless then.
They gave out.
Michael had pulled her in to a corner behind quite a number of merchandise, wooden barrels and the works and he had sat far too close to her for comfort as they hid for their very lives.
She had lost herself. Maddie remembered that. She'd taken to a corner and she'd cried. She'd cried for herself and her brother and Clenna and God, she cried for Tom. She cried for all the things that he would never get to do. She cried for all that he wished he could accomplish and would never get the chance. She cried silently and hugged her knees to her chest. That was how her travel was spent; crying and sleeping.
They'd been discovered. She remembered that. She remembered them both being dragged up to the main deck. Her brother had done something. Yes, he had done something in order to save their lives. She couldn't remember what. He had saved the pair of them and they had been fed- Michael more than her. She had no appetite. She ate what her elder brother all but stuffed down her throat and she drank water, a lot of it. She didn't speak, but she did listen.
Maddie was glued to her brother's side.
When Michael had been summoned to speak to the man whowas supposedly in charge she had followed without an invitation. She had followed him inside and now she sat in a corner of the room, her hands shaking again.
She was used to being poor. She was used to not having enough to eat. She accepted that. She accepted the fact that some people starved and some froze and never made it through the winter. Those were facts. Those were things that simply happened… but this… this was different. She had seen a dead person or two but she had never seen a man die and never had she thought she would see it in such a violent manner and right before her very eyes.
Tom.
Maddie took a few quick breaths and swallowed her spit despite the fact that her mouth seemed drier than it had ever been in all of her days of living.
There was two of them up there with her brother. She had never noticed the younger one. He didn't seem to like Michael. Maddie clasped her hands together and tried to get her head to stop spinning. She pinched her leg with one of her nails, hard enough to leave marks through her clothing, partially to wake herself up and partially so that for the first time in several days she could feel something- anything at all.
The pounding in Maddie's skull settled just a little and she looked up and at her brother with her bloodshot eyes and tear stained cheeks and she could hear what they were saying for what seemed like some sort of otherworldly experience.
Declan.
Maddie kept her head down and eyes diverted.
Whoever this man was, he wanted her brother to do something for him for Clenna's safety. He wanted Michael to do something to this man- to Declan Harp.
