Chapter 44 - Sometimes life is grief and loss.
December 30, 2005

There was a firm knock at the door as Gareth and Deirdre made their way down the stairs with their luggage. "I've got it, they're my people," Lina called, coming in from the kitchen to open the door.

Gareth froze mid-step as two people followed Lina into the house. "What in the world…" he heard Deirdre whisper. The pair was made up to look just like them. Oh, it wouldn't haven't fooled anyone from up close, probably not even passport officials. But it was an uncanny feeling. The man was thicker than he was, more muscled, but he was wearing one of Isabel's concert shirts under a blue button down and had his hair cut and styled almost exactly like his own.

"What's going on?" Gareth asked cautiously.

Lina smiled. "Nothing sinister. It's how we're getting out of the country and throwing Valentina off your trail at the same time. This is Miguelito and Irina."

The pair nodded at him. "I brought all things we need," Irina said, holding up a large duffle bag. She had a thick accent, Russian or Eastern European, Gareth thought. The woman was shorter than Deirdre and looked older, but like his doppelgänger, the clothing and hairstyle were eerily similar.

"Excellent. Come into the kitchen." Lina lead them back, turning to look at Gareth and Deirdre, still watching from the stairs. "Come on you two. I promise, you won't want to miss this."

"Daisy, are you sure you don't have any other details?" Catherine asked. "On timing or the order she might attack, anything?"

Remus could hear the frustration in her voice, and Daisy made a helpless sort of gesture with her hands. After her phone call to Gareth, she had shared some of what she'd seen, and Remus then found himself in the unfortunate position of attempting to mediate a barrage of opinions going back and forth on what to do next. Perched on the front edge of an old over-stuffed chair, Artemis sitting on the floor in front of him, he cleared his throat. "I think we've exhausted Daisy's memory," he said, his fingers absently running through his wife's long hair.

Catherine opened her mouth to protest further, and Xavier laid a hand on her arm. "Losing your temper won't make this any easier," he said softly. "We're all worried."

"I think we need to split up," Ellie said firmly. "There's nowhere safe to accommodate nine children and leave enough others here to fight. Let the farm go, if we have to, and start over somewhere else."

"Oh, I don't think Joshua will leave—" Daisy started to say.

Xavier shook his head firmly. "This is our home," he said, raising his voice ever so slightly. "I will send Cat and the boys somewhere else, but I'm staying here. I'm not going to just roll over and play dead for some crazy witch."

"We left to fight at Hogwarts during the war," Remus pointed out.

"That was different. That was taking the fight to an enemy that didn't know our location," Xavier stated, crossing his arms over his chest.

"Even if we leave, this doesn't have to be a surrender," Hawthorne said. "It's just an…evasive maneuver…a temporary shift in the front line."

"I for one would definitely feel better if the kids were elsewhere," Artemis sighed, leaning back against Remus' legs. "But think back to all your training. The truth is you fight better as a pack. Staying together gives us a decided advantage."

"I understand what Xavier means. Part of me wants to go back to Hogsmeade," Jane admitted, making a face. "I've started over so many times now. If she knows where we all are and is going to pick us off one by one…to think about someone wrecking my shop…like they did your house, Remus, well, part of me wants to be there to try and defend it." She tucked a wisp of hair back into her scarf and shrugged. "But I'll pick defending my family over defending my shop."

The door swung open, Kieran, Joshua, Gemma, and Finn coming in. Ellie jumped up to give Finn a swift, firm hug and run a hand over his head. "You are in plenty of trouble over that stunt, young man," she said sharply. "Now go help Cadmus with the others." Finn nodded and dashed out, probably thankful to have escaped a lecture and punishment in the moment.

Gemma tried to unobtrusively edge around the group and take a seat in the corner. Ellie pressed her lips together, frowning. "I'm of a mind to send you off with the children," she snapped.

"I am sorry about what happened, Mum," Gemma said, sounding truly humble and contrite. "But I want to know what's going on." She lifted her chin slightly. "I am an adult under wizarding law."

"We aren't going to debate your legal status right now," Kieran huffed, beginning to pace around the room. "Daisy, what did you see?"

Joshua had gone to his wife immediately, placing a hand on her shoulder. "I believe she's going to try and attack different locations," Daisy said, leaning back against Joshua as if she could absorb some of his strength, her voice tired and resigned. "There was a travel center with people screaming, some large and dark hallway, and a forest with shadowy sort of people moving through it."

"Then I'm taking my boys and leaving," Catherine said. She was shaking, her arms wrapped around herself. "It's crazy to keep them here when who knows what might happen. Ellie took the kids away during the war. We need to do the same now."

Artemis tilted her head back to look at him, and Remus reluctantly met her gaze. He was pretty sure she was going to be even more stubborn about any discussions that involved keeping her out of a fight than she'd been during the war.

"I…I don't have to shave, do I?" asked Sirius, turning puppy dog eyes on his wife. Deirdre hid a smile. It was one thing for Lina to bring in some of her hired muscle to pose as them, they at least were getting paid for it. But Sirius sounded so pitiful.

"Yes, of course you have to shave," Lina said in some exasperation.

"But maybe people would think Gareth decided to grow a mustache?" he suggested, glancing at Gareth with a pleading face.

"I just had my picture taken a million times by reporters this morning with no mustache," Gareth said apologetically. He cocked his head, studying Sirius. "But maybe people would think it was me trying to disguise myself with a mustache?"

Lina rolled her eyes. "Fine, keep the mustache. But it has to be dyed like your hair, and your hair has to be cut."

"If it helps, I think you'll look smashing," Deirdre whispered, giving Sirius' shoulder a quick squeeze. "Not many people could pull off such a drastic change, but you can. Why aren't you using potions or a spell to make them look like us?" Deirdre asked, in a normal tone of voice. "Like how Valentina impersonated Ramón?"

"International travel has security measures in place to detect Polyjuice Potion and Glamours, spells that change your appearance," Professor Snape said in a long-suffering voice. He and Professor Price were sitting at the kitchen table with black plastic sheets draped over them as Irina mixed up strong smelling hair dyes and Miguelito arranged wardrobe options on the empty chairs. Deirdre thought he was submitting to the process with surprisingly good grace, since she was pretty sure his skin tone was not going to look at all natural or attractive with blonde hair.

"When I was in my last year of school the girls I ran around with used to change their hair every week," Professor Price said cheerfully. "The most outlandish colors too. My favorite was a bright blue with this pink stripe down the side." Professor Snape was eyeing her skeptically out of the corner of his eye, and she blushed. "It was the eighties," she said with a grin and a shrug.

"Now, let's go over the itinerary," Lina said, pulling out her notebook. "Sirius and I will attempt to leave through the Apparation Centre. My paperwork will say I can use side-along apparation only, like Deirdre's. So that will draw some attention from someone. Miguelito and Irina will try sneaking across the border and leaving from the Apparation Centre in Ecuador. Severus, you and Eglantine will travel by Muggle airline, direct from Lima to London Gatwick. We'll avoid Heathrow since we know she was nearby. Juan Carlos said his job was to plant a Muggle bomb here, so I have a couple of my UK people headed to Heathrow, and they will sweep for spells or bombs in case she was planning to try the same thing there."

"Where are the real Gareth and Deirdre going?" Gareth asked, watching the whole thing with a mixture of amusement and disbelief.

"You two are flying with a Muggle airline to New York. You'll stay with George and Isabel until after her concert tomorrow, and then apparate with them back England. Of course, no one is traveling under their real names or your names. I have new passports for all of us. Deirdre, hand us that case on the floor."

Lina passed out the new identifications. Deirdre flipped hers open and stared at it. A dark-haired, brown-eyed version of her face stared back at her. "Oh, you're changing us too," she remarked in surprise, handing it to Gareth to inspect.

"How long does it take for the hair color to wear off?" he asked, glancing at her.

Lina arched an eyebrow at him. "Is that a pressing concern?"

Gareth hesitated and then mumbled something as he set the passport down, turning away towards the living room. "I'm going to check that all the lights are off and the house is ready to be locked up," he added over his shoulder.

Deirdre looked at Lina. "What's the problem?" she whispered.

Lina laughed and shook her head. "He muttered that he just really likes your hair color. You can go tell him it should fade over the next couple of weeks. If he pouts you can tell him as soon as you're back home he could use a spell to change it back. And hurry up. We don't have a lot of time."

"Okay," she said softly, smiling as she picked up her new passport and tucked it into her purse. She took the other passport Lina handed her, but as she flipped it open to look at a darker, solemn version of Gareth she thought she understood exactly what he meant. Funny how this made him look so much more like Oscar and Joshua, but so not like himself.

She followed Gareth, catching up to him on the upstairs landing. "Here's yours," she said, handing it to him.

"How do I look as a swarthy Latin lover?" he asked, shaking his head with a hint of a smile.

"About as good as I do," she snorted, going further down the hall and peeking into her room to make sure she'd left it tidy. "We're both too pale. We look more Celtic than Latin."

"You're still beautiful," he laughed. "It's just—"

"I know what you mean. It's not me. And that's not you," she said over her shoulder. "You actually look more like Joshua in that picture."

Gareth flipped open the passport. He stood there still and silent for so long Deirdre finally looked back. His face was so worrying she came back over towards him.

"Gareth?" she asked softly, touching his arm. He looked at her, his eyes glassy with unshed tears.

"Um, do you remember when I told you I'd always been jealous of Josh?" he asked, sniffing back the tears.

She nodded. It had been just a few weeks after Alec and Oscar were killed, the first night she'd organized the kids to have a werewolf slumber party like Gareth had always had with his siblings.

"My whole life I wished I looked more like Josh," he said hoarsely. "And now I'm finally going to get my wish. But…I'm not like him. He's good and steady and…" His voice trailed off and he took a shaky breath. "She called me a pretender to the throne," he whispered, "and she was right. I've thought that myself a million times—"

She was right?! The surge of anger Deirdre felt towards Valentina rushed in, heating her cheeks and making her heart pound. It was infuriating that she still had such a hold on him, spewing lies that made him question his worth. "Bollocks," she snapped, grabbing the passport out of his hand. "Oscar chose you. He could have trained Joshua to take over the company and he didn't." She took a deep breath and stepped closer, running her fingertips through the hair that flopped down over his forehead. "You gave up whatever else you ever thought you might do with your life," she said fiercely. "You trained and studied and moved away from everything and everyone you'd ever known to take care of your family."

He closed his eyes and tried to pull away. She dropped her hand. "Gareth, I won't compete with Valentina," she said flatly. "If you choose to listen to her over me then you're playing right into her hands. There's no throne now anyway! That's a ridiculous analogy, you split the company with Maria and Fernán! You can't…" she stopped herself as she heard her voice growing louder. Are you really going to fight with him now? This isn't about you or Valentina. This is about him feeling like a failure. She sighed, as the anger left in a rush, leaning against the wall and crossing her arms. "You can't undo what's been done anymore than I can," she said softly. "I've told myself off a hundred times for not coming with you to begin with, for staying away last year, for being so afraid of my own feelings and shortcomings. But we have a chance now to move forward and make different choices. Don't let her poison you anymore."

Gareth took a deep breath and roughly rubbed his eyes. "I think I'm going to be…kind of a mess for a while. I didn't realize how bad I was at…emotions… I mean, I can think or I can get all stuck in how I feel. I can't seem to do both…I can't…can't feel the feelings and still think clearly. Even good feelings…I mean, my brain shuts down when I kiss you. My whole body seems to go on the fritz when I have to deal with Valentina… I'm a train wreck." He scrubbed a hand over his face, then shook his head. "No wonder Lina treats me like a child she's having to nanny."

"She doesn't think of you like that," Deirdre protested.

"Sure she does," he huffed ruefully. "And maybe that's what that man meant, the glowing one. He said it wasn't my fight. I just…I don't know what I'm supposed to do. I get angry when it seems like other people are making all the decisions for me, and I don't want them to feel they're having to come in and clean up my life and that I'm not trying to help or take responsibility…" His voice trailed away.

Oh my. She sure hadn't taken enough psychology classes for this. She was completely out of her depth. Deirdre tapped her fingertips against her leg as she thought. "I don't know," she finally said, shrugging her shoulders helplessly. "I don't know how we're supposed to navigate all this. I just know I want us to do it together."

"Even if we don't look anything like ourselves?" he asked in a dry voice, gesturing to the passport in her hand.

"So I prefer the blue eyes the same way you prefer the red hair," she admitted with an attempt at a smile. "But you are still you, no matter what color your hair and eyes are. And I love you, Gareth Rodriguez." She stepped closer and took his hand, threading their fingers together. "You are—" She stopped and thought for a moment, wanting to get the words just right. "You take care of the company and shepherd those employees the way Joshua takes care of his farm and flocks. Maybe you had a bit of a wild season, but Joshua acted pretty wild in that fight at the reservation too. Unexpected things can make us feel and act crazy once in a while. But you are just as good and just as steady as he is, because you are just as much Oscar and Rosa's son."

Gareth took a shaky breath and looked up at the ceiling, blinking hard. "I wish I felt that way."

"I think someday you'll be able to. And in the meantime, just keep reminding yourself that it's true." She squeezed his hand. "Now, how about we check these rooms and then submit to the stylists, eh?"

Daisy felt completely torn between frustration with her sister and frustration with herself, with everything she didn't know. Didn't Cat understand she felt the same way? She didn't want Valentina to find the children, to find any of them. She leaned into Joshua, and he wrapped his arms around her, holding her against his chest.

"All right, let's proceed assuming those that can stay here will stay and fight, and we move the children someplace else," Remus said, his teacher-ish voice clearly trying to keep things calm and practical. "Where could they go?"

"We can take them back to the Roberts' farm," Ellie suggested. "It's practically on the other side of the country."

Joshua sighed and unwrapped his arms, taking Daisy and leading her to one of the chairs. He shook his head. "Things are different this time around. Valentina has personal information on all of us that the Death Eaters never had. I've already told Matthew what's been going on, and he's taking his family to stay with his in-laws until school starts. I've added some protective spells to their property, but I think we need to assume she's aware of every place we've ever stayed before."

"Then we leave the country," Catherine said sharply.

"With your own passports that she could easily track?" Joshua rebutted, rubbing at the side of his jaw, as he turned to look out the window. "I've thought through a dozen scenarios. Until Lina gets here and can arrange new identities and a whole lot of cash, Valentina could still find us."

"But you haven't seen anything happening here, right?" Cat asked, looking fiercely at her, desperate for some kind of reassurance.

"No, but…I never see everything," Daisy said, feeling tears prick her eyes. "I don't have any more to tell you and I don't know what we should do."

Catherine, seated at one end of a sofa, buried her face in her hands. Xavier, beside her, let out a deep breath and leaned back, putting an arm around her shoulders.

There was a tentative knock at the door, and Cadmus peered into the room, nervously. "Uh, Dad? There's something wrong with the sheep. They don't sound normal."

"Why were you outside?" Ellie's outraged voice bawled, sitting up straight in her chair as she glared at her eldest son.

"We weren't!" Cadmus fired back quickly. "Can't you hear them?"

Everyone went silent, straining to catch what he meant. After a moment it became clear. The Swaledale breed of sheep, native to their Yorkshire dales, was known for being alert and rugged. Joshua had researched for almost a year before choosing them. He thought that being a tad more high-strung was a good quality, since they didn't have regular working dogs to keep an ear on things while they weren't transformed themselves. The sheep were apt to voice their fear, disapproval, or excitement when something out of the ordinary was going on, so it wasn't totally foreign to have a ruckus of some sort break out once in a while, though hanging about in the field closest to their barn in the middle of the day shouldn't have created any consternation among them. But Cadmus was right. The flock of one highly cantankerous ram and forty-seven ewes was bleating out a chorus of desperate cries.

Joshua was about to fling open the door, wand in hand, when the spectral wolves that always hovered around the periphery of her vision, crowded in, howling a warning. "Wait!" Daisy cried, trying to heave herself up from the chair. "Don't go out there!"

"What's going on?" he asked, turning back to her.

"It's…I'm not sure," she said, looking frantically at the wolves.

She is testing your defenses.

"It's a test," she said, trying to assimilate the words and impressions she was getting. "Um…kind of like a diversion…to see what we'll do."

Xavier frowned, crossing his arms over his chest. "You mean Valentina is feigning an attack to see how we'll defend."

Daisy nodded.

"That's not feigning," Joshua said, pointing towards the door. "Those animals are in trouble." His face was distraught, and Daisy felt tears gather.

Remus sucked in a breath. "She doesn't know how many of us are here and what each of us can do. She saw Gareth and Deirdre transform…when she was Ramón," he clarified. "And she asked if we were all werewolves. I told her no, that I was, but Severus and Eglantine were not." He leaned forward, elbows resting on his knees as he folded his hand together. "If she's watching the house, and we rush out there to deal with whatever is going on, she'll see how many respond, who transforms, who has wands."

"So we just sit here until she knocks on the front door?!" Ellie burst out, covering her mouth with her hands and shaking her head in disbelief.

"She hasn't attacked anyone out right so far," Artemis said slowly.

The door slowly opened again and Finn poked his head in. "Umm, Leo and Nate were wrestling," he said softly as everyone turned to look at him. "And, um, they say they can smell a lot of blood."

"I'll talk to them," Artemis said, rising from her seat on the floor and ushering Finn and Cadmus back out the door ahead of her.

Please, Daisy pleaded silently, feeling her baby kick sharply. Those sheep are like his children. Joshua gave her an anguished look and turned, thundering up the stairs of the old farmhouse.

"I'll go with him," Kieran said, his large frame moving swiftly up the stairs as well. The rest of them sat in stunned silence, hearing the loud bleating become more frantic. After only a couple minutes, Kieran's heavy tread trudged more slowly down. He stepped into the room, closing the door behind him. "We can see the field from the attic window," he said in a low voice, glancing toward the door as if to make sure the children weren't sneaking back in to hear. "There's a pair of wild dogs down there…tearing the sheep apart." He paused and looked at Daisy, concern and anger in his eyes. "Are you absolutely sure we should stay inside? Because we'll lose the whole flock."

Hot tears streamed down her face as she nodded. "If I'd seen it sooner…I would have told him to move them into the barn," she gasped between sobs. Oh, Joshua, I'm so sorry. Please let him forgive me! her heart wailed desperately.