Crown of a Prince (Finn Shelby)

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I'm sorry about the cliffhanger. This is a long one and it's a big one - we're very close to the end! This was the only thing I knew was going to happen when I started writing Season 6. I hope you enjoy xxx M

Playlist (the vibe)

Don't Blame Me // Taylor Swift

Way Down We Go // Kaleo

House of Memories // Panic! At the Disco

The smell of jasmine and cigarette smoke was all that she could feel, could taste and smell. Ailbhe had been surrounded by and engulfed by the smell enough times throughout her life to know exactly who it belonged to. But Ailbhe knew it must be a lie.

Aunt Pol was dead. Ailbhe had seen her for herself. Had held her cold, pale hand and sobbed into her chest, had screamed and clung to her lifeless body when Niall and Finn had tried to pull her away. Had visited the grave more often than she had visited her own mothers.

She had sat night after night in the dark, lighting Pol's old candles and reaching out for her only for no one to reach back. It was an agony every time. Knowing that Aunt Pol was so far gone she couldn't be reached. At peace. And knowing that Ailbhe wished she wasn't, which would make her feel so guilty and ashamed she would despise herself.

Finn knew where she was on those nights when he would wake alone and reach for her, find her crouched by the window in the small library and he would coax her back to bed, wiping the tears off her cheeks and blowing out the candles.

Ailbhe knew that her Aunt Pol was dead. But she had always wished she wasn't gone entirely.

That comforting voice that was more razor sharp than it was soft, the accent that Ailbhe had learned from more than anyone.

It'll be alright, sweetheart but you have to wake up.

The smell was comfort. Until it was ripped away and left only pain and heat in its place. As if Aunt Pol herself had shaken her awake and out of whatever quiet bliss she had slipped in.

The cold, hard ground beneath her was pain especially when she was pulled from the floor up into someone's arms. Their arms were warm and strong around her but they had dragged her against the concrete and she felt the sting across her arms where the gravel bit into her flesh. Her head throbbed and she felt the warm and wet of blood on herself.

"I'm sorry Alv... come on...work with me. Hold onto me"

It was more of a groan than a whisper and while she searched for the energy to open her eyes she found that she didn't even have the control to stop her head from lolling forward where it collided with the soft and damp of his shirt and the hardness of his shoulder.

Her hand was wet, wet with something sticky that dripped from her fingers. But she put every bit of will power she had into grabbing onto him by the fabric under her hand and hanging on, making it that bit easier for him.

Her lungs burned and she was so hot she could feel sweat soaking her back and face. She hurt. More than it had hurt when Changretta's men had choked her, more than when Maggie Brennan's comrades had beat her and sentenced her to death, more than the look Finn had given her when she had told tell him she couldn't have children.

The baby.

That was the thought that slammed through her subconscious. Whatever her body was feeling, the pain and hurt she knew that the baby wouldn't be safe if she wasn't. And she knew that when she started shaking in his arms, it was tears that wet her cheeks and not blood and sweat mingling like the blood that was the dampness on her legs and arms.