The claddagh tattoo fused to Chibs' side, etched with needle and ink to his ribs, the cage on bones shielding his heart, burned beneath the tattoo artist's graceful hands when he received it fifteen years ago.

Every beautiful thing in Chibs' life hurts.

Watching Fiona stand by the sink, filling the kettle, negotiating the small parameters of the flophouse kitchen with ease.

Fidelity.

Love.

Friendship.

The fragments of their past glittering between them like shards of glass.

The sweeping loops and points that made up the crown ran without seem down to the hills of the heart, secure in the palms of two eternal hands. Slated on either hand, the inky scrawl only slightly faded around the edges now, Fiona and Kerrianne's names endured, a constant in his life. In spite of their physical absence, his wife and daughter always remained at Chibs' side.

Chibs lent against the fridge just beyond the scope of Kerrianne's periphery. The size of the kitchen meant that he and Fiona almost brush shoulders whenever one of them moves. He does not think Fiona minds; she lets him kiss her and touch her without complaint. The finger shaped bruises on her wrists the only evidence that Jimmy ever mistreated her and Kerrianne during their time in lockdown. Apart from the exhaustion hanging over both their heads, like a storm cloud, both his wife and daughter appear physically in tacked.

Blessedly whole.

Both mother and daughter wore clean clothing; Kerrianne had a coat and a hat to keep her warm, shoes free of holes, but than Chibs would look down into his daughter's face and see the same mien that Fiona used to hid all of her secrets, the dark things held close to the heart.

Chibs did not want his daughter swallowing secrets and dressing up skeletons. Digesting horror the way Fiona had since she was a child broke most people.

In the other room, Kerrianne bit her fingernails, one leg bouncing in time to the beat of whatever blasted through her headphones.

She's tall, he thinks stupidly.

Fiona lifts her eyes from the stove and Chibs realizes that he just said that out loud. "At the rate Kerri's growing, the GP thinks she'll be taller than I am in a year."

"She's beautiful, Fi" Chibs says. His heart capers every time he looks at Kerrianne. Almost as an afterthought he adds, "Jimmy was right."

"Well, I never thought I'd hear those words coming out of your mouth."

"He told me Kerrianne looked like you. 'She's all Fiona,' he said."

"Thank God for that," Fiona says with a lightness that does not meet her eyes, a frozen smile. She sets the water to boil with a slight turn of her wrist, the movement graceful with its functionality. The muscle and veins and bones flex beneath the evidence of her broken blood.

Agreeing with Jimmy leaves a sour taste in his mouth; the bile of past crimes and unpaid retribution. Ever since he was almost blown to pieces in Charming, Chibs swayed between terror for what Jimmy could do to Fiona and Kerrianne and hatred for the man himself so red it still blazes.

"Who do you think I am, one of your old ladies? Jimmy'd kill me if he knew I was hear."

"Have you seen any recent picture of Kerrianne? She's all Fiona. Gorgeous. Reaching that magical change...tight little curves, breasts popping. Timely, actually. Fiona's looks fading. Can hardly catch an edge anymore. But Kerrianne... the thoughts that enter my brain...impure, awful, I think. But then I recall she's not my daughter. So what's the sin?"

I'm going to kill him; I'm going to skin the bastard alive, Chibs thinks, without an ounce of remorse or a degree of uncertainty.

Heart pounding, Chibs stairs at her bruises aware that they no longer hurt Fiona, but memories can become a constant ache, a daily pain. Debilitating. Fiona might persevere, her heals have the tendency to dig in against animosities, but even the strongest spirit can snap.

And Kerrianne barely talks too him. She responds to any questions with as few words as possible, eyes lowered after the first fleeting glance, as if rationing her voice and her gaze.

His girl's silence feels wrong. Kerrianne screamed bloody murder the very second she could. The doctor laid her on Fiona's chest - made a passing comment about a healthy pair of lungs - before turning his attention back to Fiona. Kerrianne wailed and kicked, body and faced flushed where they were not covered in sticky fluids. Chibs feared he might break her at first, but Fiona would not hear of him not holding their daughter. She handed Kerrianne over with instructions to "support her head, Filip. Yes. Just like that, love." Chibs gazed down at his daughter's small face, looked into her eyes, and saw reflected back at him every wrong, every sin unconfessed, and he wept.

A hand on his shoulder rouses him.

"Where'd you go?" Fiona asked.

"Just...thinking," he says slowly.

"Dangerous," She says, her smile looks a little less cold now.

"Does Kerrianne remember anything about me?"

Fiona stilled, humor fading. "Do you remember anything from when you were six?" She eventually asked, gentle as he ever heard her.

"Not much," Chibs said, throat tight.

"Sometimes," Fiona said. "Sometimes, when Kerri asked, when Jimmy wasn't around, I'd tell her about you. I'd - " Her voice broke and died, her whole body tensed. She covered her face with a trembling hand, breathing ragged.

"Fi." Chibs reached for her, startled, hand brushing her shoulder. The barest pressure and Fiona straightened and moved away, as far as she could get in the small kitchen. She began rifling through the cabinets.

"Fi -"

"I'm - Oh!" She drew in a sharp breath, a hiss of pain escaping from between clenched teeth. Slowly she lowered her left arm, blanching.

"Here," Chibs said, "I've got it."

"I can manage," Fiona snapped. She lowered her left arm, reaching instead with her right. Their fingers meet over the top of a box of tea, the slightest brush of skin on skin. He has seen ever mile of her naked skin; mapped it with hands and mouth and tongue, but these short glancing touches feel more intimate somehow, like the ones from their first days together before they had done anything, been through everything. Maybe it's being back in Ireland, or their daughter sitting in the other room, but everything feels so fragile and more important.

Fiona turns around, leaning into the counter. Chibs places his hands on either side of her body, leaning close.

"How are you really, Fi?"

"I'm fine, love." She reaches up, fingers stroking over his check, running up over beard and scar to card through his hair. "How's the jet lag?"

"Oh, its grand. I feel like I've been hit over the head with a mallet."

"Um." Fiona sighed, arms lowering to wrap around his waist, her weight leaning against him rather than the counter. Chibs ran a hand over her hair, kissed her temple; his hands trailed up her sides, bumping her breasts (Fiona shifted against him) on his way up to her shoulders, finding the tense muscles, kneading.

"You look like I feel," Fiona said after a moment.

"Which is?"

"Haggard."

Chibs lifted one hand, brought the inside of the wrist to his mouth. He kissed the abused skin, working his way around. "So how are you really?"

Fiona's stilled. "It's nothing that won't heal."

On the stove, the kettle whistled. Fiona moved away, leaving him feeling cold as he watched her pour tea into mugs, adding milk and sugar to one and a generous amount of whiskey into two.

"Take that to Kerri," she instructed, handing him the virgin one.

A million things rest on the tip of his tongue; the impulse to try and confer them - how happy seeing her makes him feel, how beautiful she is, the bone deep relief that both she and her mother are safe, that he will keep Jimmy from darkening their doorsteps - and his fear of inserting his foot directly into his mouth warring within him.

He gives Kerrianne her tea with a gentle, "Here you are, darling," and a smile.

Kerrianne glances up and quickly looks down at her lap again. "Thanks," she murmurs in a small voice.

Chibs walks back into the kitchen, resumes his post by the fridge and by Fiona. A hand on Chibs shoulder steals his attention.

"You should talk to her," Fiona advises, pressing a mug into his hands, sipping from her own. "She'll like you - you aren't her mother."

"Yeah, well..."

"You're the best example she has of what a father should be," Fiona insisted.

"So, no pressure than," He said with a lightness he does not feel.

Fiona's expression twisted, he could see the sorrow hollowing her out from within. "She loves you, Filip. I swear she's never wanted someone to like her so much before in her life. She's so nervous meeting you."

"What's she have to be nervous about?" Chibs demanded. "She's my little girl. I don't just like her, I love her. Always have; always will. That's a fact."

"Why don't you tell her that," Fiona suggested. And he's reminded of her handing him, despite his fears, his daughter for the first time. "I'll take my tea, go have a gossip with Mo. Give you two some privacy, yeah?"

"Okay," he said, surprised when she reaches up to kiss him, mouth soft and pliant. The motion chaste and easy. "You really okay, love?"

Fiona wavered. A smile came to her face. She won't pretend that everything is rosy but she's not ready to break down either. "I'm much better now for having seen you."

He grabs the curve of her waist and kisses her, hard and long, in full view of their daughter and everyone else in the living room. He imagines he can feel Kerrianne's eyes on his back, but when he breaks the kiss and turns, she's looking down at her iPod again. The door closes with a small pop, leaving him alone with his daughter for the first time in nine years.