Later
By KNS
Disclaimer: Still not mine. If you recognize it from somewhere else, then it belongs to someone else.
Fiona sat up, slipped on her robe, and walked towards the wardrobe where she kept her dresses.
Michael propped himself up in bed. "What are you doing?"
She switched on a lamp, dug around at the back of the closet. She fumbled for a minute, found what she was looking for: a small bottle wrapped in a yellow silk scarf. She smiled at him, went over to the kitchen and found two glasses. "Finest scotch you'll ever taste: old and expensive."
"What's the occasion?" he asked. "Catching that mob boss? Getting Nate's FBI file?"
Fiona came back to bed, sat crossed legged and handed him the glasses. She laid the scarf across her knees, wrestled with opening the bottle, then poured dark liquid into each glass. "I want to talk about Claire." She tucked the bottle between her knees, took one of the glasses.
"Your sister, Claire?" Michael asked. "You've never wanted to talk about her before," he added.
"I don't think you would have understood, before," she said quietly. "I think you might, now."
She meant since Nate had died. Now he was the one who didn't have much to say. He downed his drink – and it was a fine quality of scotch. He held out his glass, and she poured him another.
"I don't want to talk about Nate right now," he said, trying not to sound irritated. "So if that's where you're headed, just – don't."
Fi nodded. "I know. But I want to talk about Claire." She finished her drink, handed him the glass to hold while she poured more.
"Keep drinking at that rate, and it's going to be a short conversation," he said, only half joking.
She shrugged. "I need something to get me through this. You know how I talk more when I've had a few."
Which was true. So he nodded and waited.
"I know you've read my Interpol file more than once. You've seen the official story about Claire's death: a British soldier fires into a crowd, kills her by accident. Well, some of that's true, just – rearranged a bit. Makes for a kinder, gentler story." She took another drink. "But we both know how records get changed, don't we."
He raised his glass in a silent toast.
"She was so pretty," Fiona said softly, her voice cracking a little. "She had the most beautiful smile I've ever seen. And her eyes – they were the color of a clear, sunny sky." She took another swallow of her drink. "She wasn't that much younger than me, but she was everything I wasn't: poised, polite, always knew just the right thing to say. And she had great, amazing fashion sense." She laughed a little.
Michael just nodded and listened.
"She was – walking home with a group of her girlfriends after school. I was supposed to walk home with her, but I wanted to go with my own friends. The other girls with her – they could never say what exactly happened. There was a group of British guards – two or three, maybe. One girl said four. Anyway." She blinked a little, finished her drink. He held the glass while she poured more.
"When she didn't come home, Mum and Da started to worry. My brothers and I just joshed about what she was doing. But then, hours passed. It got dark. We all started to really worry. Mum called the authorities. Da took me brothers, went out lookin' for her." She was slipping back into her old accent.
She heard herself, made an effort to drop the lilt. "They looked all night. All night. Everywhere. Knocked on doors, stopped passers-by. I stayed with Mum, calling around to her friends. Nothing. Eventually Da and my brothers came home to make a new plan. Claire came home just before dawn." She started to cry, quickly wiped the tears away, looked up at the ceiling.
Michael reached out to rub her arm, but she shook her head. "Don't. I'm trying to get through this." She quickly swallowed the rest of her drink. He knew if she had more, she would probably be ill, would certainly have the world's worst hangover in the morning. Still, he held her glass while she filled it again.
"She was badly beaten. Assaulted. God, there was blood everywhere." She cleared her throat. "She made it home to the doorway, was dead by nightfall."
"I'm sorry," he said quietly.
"People say that a lot when your sibling dies, don't they?" she countered just as quietly.
He looked down at his drink. "Yeah."
"They don't know what the hell they're talking about," Fi added. "Saying sorry doesn't change a damn thing."
"No, it doesn't," he agreed. After a moment, he said, "You know, when your brother, Sean, came over when he found out about O'Neil – I thought I understood. Big brother looking out for little sister. But now, I think I really understand. I do. I couldn't go through this again. That's why – "
"– You keep warning me off," Fi finished. "It ripped my family apart. Everyone wanted to protect everyone else, so we all ended up at each others' throats. And the worst part was, we were all going through the same thing, but we didn't say one word about it. After Claire's funeral, we put her in the ground and just went about our lives. The end. Da crawled into a bottle, never really ever came out. Mum lit so many candles in church, she should've burned the place down. I ended up with the IRA, like several of my brothers. We all ended up somewhere we shouldn't, doing things we never would've dreamed of doing, if it hadn't been for Claire's death."
"What are you saying, Fi?" Michael asked, because he really wasn't sure. She was sort of starting to ramble.
Fi rubbed her forehead. "What I'm saying, is – decide right now what you need to do to make Nate's death right with you."
"Nothing can make it right." He finished he drink, and she poured him more.
"You better think of something," Fiona advised. "If you don't, you'll end up doing a lot of things you'll regret later."
He smiled at her. "You don't seem to have done too badly."
She weakly smiled back. "I have to get blink drunk just to talk about Claire. Is that how you want to be about Nate? Never say his name, remember anything good, talk about him to another soul? Michael, it's a crazy way to live."
"Then why do you do it?"
She looked into her glass, as if the answer might be hiding at the bottom. "Dunno," she shrugged. "Made the wrong choice, maybe. Too late to change now." She looked at him. "Not to late for you, though."
He turned the glass in his hands. "Justice," he said finally. "If I can just get justice for his death, then I'll be okay."
"Justice," Fi echoed. "What the hell does that mean? Kill Nate's murderer? Send him to jail? Kill that man's brother, or someone he loves? Tell me what you want. Whatever it is, I'm with you. Tell me."
He met her eyes. "I want him dead, the man who killed my brother."
Slowly Fiona nodded. "Done." She raised her glass, clicked it against his, and they both drank.
"I'm not going to remember this tomorrow," Fi added, "so you'll have to remind me."
He smiled a little. "Then why go through this?"
"Because it's necessary," she answered swiftly. She reached out, took his empty glass, set it with hers on the floor. There wasn't much alcohol left in the bottle, but she sealed it, wrapped it back in the yellow scarf. That, too, she set on the floor.
She shed the robe, laid down with her head on the pillow and sheet tucked over her shoulders. "And I wanted to tell you about Claire."
He settled down beside her, reached out to brush back a stray hair from her face. "Tell me about her."
Fiona smiled, her eyes starting to blink with sleep. "Her favorite color was yellow, and she wore a yellow scarf every chance she got," she began. "And once, when we were little girls, we found Da's bottle of scotch. We each took a drink, and it tasted so awful, we ended up spitting it out in our Mum's potted plants."
She laughed a little. The loft's single lit lamp cast slanted shadows across her face, making her look very, very young.
[end]