Pacifier

🌹Bondy🌙

I awoke in the early hours of the morning, pale moonlight through the window where I'd left the curtains open. I hadn't been keeping lookout so to speak, but i liked to see the empty street outside, i liked to look at the shadows knowing that that was all they were.

Camille had been sleeping, curled up in my lap, her body weight a comfort to feel against my chest. My arms wrapped around her, lazy and relaxed as I leant back into the chair. It wasn't comfortable but i didn't care for my own comfort anymore.

As long as I could have her, safe in my arms, as long as I could watch over my little sister, sleeping soundly in my bed, then i didnt care for the ache in my back or my neck whenever I moved.

Camille had been sleeping and I had been drifting, on the brink of falling asleep but not quite, never able to completely let go of consciousness.

Isabelle had slept through the first knock but when he started hammering so hard against the bedroom door I thought he might break it down she jumped out of bed with eyes so wide i thought I could see the blood vessels in them.

She was pale and frozen and it was her i saw before i saw him.

Camille stirred slowly, relaxed and dosed up with lethargy, but when I felt one hand slip from my neck to my waist I knew she was wide awake.

Her fingers moved delicately so that from the doorway he wouldn't have seen a thing, and when they found what they were looking for they curled around it.

And just like that she was poised, sitting up straight in my lap, fierce and rigid, arm outstretched, my gun aimed between his eyes.

And then izzy let out a little whimper, the kind which broke my heart, she had looked petrified before but now she only looked relieved and in my arms I felt Camille shaking. Her spine relaxed beneath my fingertips and as she lowered the gun I let a sigh of relief escape me, bowing my head to kiss Millys forehead as I stood and she slipped from her place in my lap.

"A little warning next time ey lad," i said with a smirk coming face to face with Van who looked tired, a little out of breath, with an urgency i couldnt understand.

Like finally someone had set his wick burning down.

"Bond downstairs, now," he said only looking to me for the most breif of seconds. He was frantic, chaotic and in the moment his words left his lips he'd turned and gone, shouting orders down the hall, waking anyone he could already rapping on Ben's door, moving quickly, a mess, down the stairs and into the office.

I followed suit, looking to Camille as I paused in the doorway, knowing I wouldn't see her again that night, not realising I might never see her again as my eyes flickered between her and my little sister who was scrambling to pull a sweater over her head.

She tripped over her own sock as she stumbled into me, my hand on her shoulder halting her, stopping her from running after us down the hallway and into the office. I knew that's what she would have done, knew she felt the same weight, the same oppressive force of time, relentless as it was, always ticking always catching up to us. The mechanisms turning, our world shaking like the ground beneath our feet.

I knew she could tell the seriousness of the situation. I knew she had seen it too. That darkness in Vans eyes. The shadow of death, death that had passed or a death to be. Whichever it lingered as a warning in our leaders eyes and i knew Izzy had seen it too.

She was frightened, white rabbit eyes locked on mine, begging me for an answer but i had none. And when I looked to Camille I saw the concern in her eyes despite her smirk.