What was it about him?
His deep blue eyes? His hidden smile? The softness of his voice when he spoke to her? His expressive features displaying every emotion that he felt whether it was good or bad?
She didn't know. No matter how much she tried she couldn't turn her thoughts from him. He enthralled her. When she thought of him a confusing medley of feelings rushed towards her, each conflicting, none making sense. Her frightened her. She knew what he was and yet sometimes it seemed as if he were two different people. One a killer, the other a kind hearted man but she couldn't escape the bitter fact that both were manifestations of the same person. The man that had made her feel safe when he held her in his arms was the same man that had taken two lives and was perhaps responsible for the loss of many more.
There was so much about him she didn't know and yet she found herself wanting to know him better, to know those things that she had warned herself from. She was like a moth pulled by an unbreakable string to a flame that with one fatal kiss of knowledge's rapture on her wings would kill her. To know him would be to surrender herself to him completely. When once she knew him totally there would be no time for her left on the earth and she would crumble into darkness.
Locked within her fatal thoughts of self-destruction Robyn didn't notice that someone had entered the room, someone who had not entered her thoughts for hours.
At once predatory, Lily sauntered across the floor, neither emotion nor thought playing about her face. Her footsteps were silent even upon the worn carpet of the room but she didn't attempt to startle her daughter as she drew closer, instead she spoke her name softly. Robyn turned to look at her shortly after, puzzlement clear on her features. Lily answered that puzzlement with a question.
"What are you doing in that chair?" She asked, her tone as neutral as her face.
Robyn looked at the chair she was in before looking back at Lily; "I'm sitting down. What does it look like?"
Lily smiled slightly at the answer before starting to walk away but she paused in her motion. Her smile faded and whirling round she slapped Robyn hard around the face. The blow was such that it knocked Robyn from the chair onto the rough floor.
Swiftly swooping down upon her dazed child Lily grabbed a handful of Robyn's hair and pulled her up roughly. Bringing her face dangerously close to that of her errant child she revealed the anger that had been boiling beneath the surface, her eyes glowing in their bloodthirsty wish for answers.
"No one sits in that chair!" Lily yelled dropping her daughter like an old, unwanted doll.
Lily stepped back from her daughter, debating with herself whether or not to continue her discipline but in the interval of her decision something happened that she hadn't at all expected.
With a fluidity of motion equal to her own, Robyn kicked her legs from under her. She was unable to regain her balance before falling, sprawling, to the ground. Stunned as she was she didn't get up immediately and only watched dumbstruck as her daughter stood up and looked down at her. Slowly the realisation of what had happened dawned upon her and her anger returned but she could also feel something else just below it, an unfamiliar feeling to her in regards to her daughter.
Pride.
Standing just a meter from her daughter she tried to stare her down, to rip away every vestige of confidence that had made the girl hit back but it wasn't working. Robyn's show of courage was not to be diminished. She refused to back down and stood levelling her mother's devastating glare with one of her own.
Instead of enhancing her pride for her daughter this show enflamed Lily's anger still further. She had had enough. Breaching the space between them in less than a second she hit out with another stinging slap to her daughter's face that brought blood to the girl's mouth.
This was the first blow of many that pushed her daughter back, crushing her spirit. With every new blow Robyn was finding it harder and harder to defend herself. She tried to match her opponent blow for blow and those that she managed to strike out with hit home but it wasn't enough to stop the raging onslaught. She was tiring quickly but surrender was not an option, she could only be defeated.
Taking full advantage of her daughter's failing strength, Lily made her final attack. With cat like reflexes she grabbed one of Robyn's wrists as she made to hit her and yanked the girl's arm back, forcing her to stumble forward or risk breaking her arm. With her daughter in such close proximity she hit her harder than she had done before with the back of her hand, stunning her into submission.
Ready to finish her opponent she dropped the limp wrist from her hands and moved them to Robyn's neck, her grip firm and her arms stiff. Her fingers dug into the soft flesh of the throat beneath her grasp but it was not her intention to strangle the life from her child, she was going to kill her by another means, a move she had made many times before and one that had never failed her. She would have snapped her daughter's neck had it not been for the appearance of her son.
Morgan stood at his full height in the doorway his deadly knife unsheathed, offering a clear warning that she was not stupid enough to ignore. Though defiant she had no choice but to comply and dropping her daughter where she was she left the room, pausing only a few seconds to spare her son a threatening look.
It was one that he could neither ignore nor challenge. It was a look that told him that if he interfered again it would be his life in jeopardy. He did not wish to encourage her to make good on her threat so he lowered his eyes in submission as she passed.
With his mother gone, Morgan crossed the floor to where Robyn was now sitting up. He stood for a few moments looking down at her, wondering what had possessed her to insight her mother's anger so but he shook it off and sat down beside her. Without saying anything he looked at her and then looked away, fixing his eyes on the wall beyond them.
He was almost surprised at how quickly Robyn had brushed off what had happened just minutes before. It almost seemed as if nothing had happened at all, as if he'd imagined everything. It was almost surreal in the way that she was just sitting there, lip bleeding, and playing with her hair. What was real was his confusion. He just couldn't understand.
What was it about her?
Her spirit? Her smile? The way she looked at him when he came near her? Her courage? Her gleaming eyes filled with so many secrets? The way she seemed to calm him when he was around her?
There were so many questions, so little answers and no way of untangling the jumbled mess of emotions tugging at him. He wanted to scream in frustration but there was nothing there. His head thumped with the need to leave the house and do something, anything to take his mind from the two women in his life. One that would eventually destroy him the other that had a chance of saving him but he just didn't know which one was which.
Not sure about what her brother was thinking and not wishing to probe his mind to find out, Robyn joined him in staring at the wall. After a few moments her attention span waned and she closed her eyes and shook her head, sighing slightly as she turned her head to look at something more interesting than old, faded wallpaper.
"I don't know what you can see on that wall but surely it can't be that interesting." Robyn said, confused about what could have caught his attention so.
Morgan didn't take his eyes from the wall as he replied, "Hmmmm?"
"Nothing," Robyn shrugged and pulled herself up onto her feet.
Brushing herself down she left her brother in the front room and headed out in search of her mother. There was a certain amount of information she wanted to gain from her and was willing to do anything to get the answers she needed.