darker_london | Ampersand (Deirdre, Flynn) (Reply)

Deirdre stood by the window of the high rise hotel they had in Helsingborg. She was looking at the city, which was actually quite beautiful, but this place held such bad memories for her that she couldn't be charmed by it. "It's cold here." She said quietly.

"'Tis." Flynn conceded in his lilting, quiet voice. He rose from the bed, where he had been staring at the rather hideously pattered bedspread for the past twenty minutes, and he went to join her at the window. "Do you really think Mara's down there?"

Deirdre sighed and she turned to look at her friend. "I don't...I really doubt the traders are still here. I think they do the auctions all over. I just wanted to start here because they were here last time and someone might have stayed behind. Someone that knows something. I know for sure Madam Butterfly won't be in the same place. We burned it to the ground. But we can't find them if we don't have a place to start."

Flynn nodded, as every word Deirdre had spoken made complete sense. "Sounds like it could take time. I wish...I wish we could find her right away."

"So do I." Deirdre leaned her head against the cool glass and her breath made a little opaque cloud against the glass, obscuring part of the city from view. She lifted a finger to the little frosty circle and she drew a 'D' inside a heart unconsciously. "If they have her...I'll want to kill them."

Flynn said nothing, but he would probably feel the same way, he was just less likely to follow through on that. "When you said...when you told us that those people had girls Mara's age...did you mean Madam Butterfly's?"

"Yeah." Deirdre admitted quietly. "They were there when we rescued them. They were so small and scared. I don't know how long they'd been there or what they did, though it's not hard to guess the latter..."

Flynn shuddered and he shook his head in dismay. "What is wrong with people?" He hissed and he immediately wrapped his arms around Deirdre because thinking about her in a place like that was enough to make him sick to his stomach. He rested his head against her shoulder and kissed her cheek.

"Everything." Deirdre muttered quietly. "Everything is wrong with people. The world is a fucked up place full of people who haven't advanced beyond animal instincts even though they surround themselves with modern things like cars and fridges and trams and they tell themselves they're above it all. I'll tell you what, take someone away from their supermarkets and their heaters and their SuperSoft mattress sets and they're right back there in the stone age beating the shit out of little furry creatures and eating the flesh raw."

Flynn's eyes were wide and he looked up at Deirdre with a rattled expression. "Er...I don't think I turned into a caveman... And I didn't have a mattress set..."

Deirdre snapped out of whatever reverie she had been in and she realised that she'd been talking out of her arse to someone who would know better. Flynn had been homeless for six years. Deirdre had been raised with incredible wealth, lost it, been poor for about four months and then come into incredible wealth again...even more than she grew up with. She couldn't talk. And while she might be right about some people, and humans were still clearly driven by their basic instincts, Flynn could prove that he hadn't lost his humanity. He had lost a lot, but never that. "I...I'm sorry. I don't think you were a caveman either. I was...once Peter and David were locked in this underground bunker for two weeks, yeah? And they ended up attacking someone by shoving razors in her eyes. The someone was Svetlana and she was the one keeping them there and she had fucked with them pretty bad, but under normal circumstances, Peter would rather shove a razor in his own eye before doing it to someone else. They ate a rat too. And David ate Peter but that wasn't willingly and it was one of the reasons for the razor thing."

Flynn swallowed quickly before he felt ill and then he nodded slowly. "Hunger makes people do all kinds of things. Though I never razored someone's eyes or ate rats. But I did eat garbage. Which I guess...is kind of cavemanlike."

"Maybe a little." Deirdre reached out and she took Flynn's hand firmly into her own. "Thank you for coming with me. I...being here is..." Deirdre let out a deep breath and the window was obscured once again. "Last time, I was so lost...Peter said in his vision that I was singing. They had me up there for the auction, and I thought I was on stage, so I sang."

Flynn licked his lips and then he kissed Deirdre's forehead. "They won't touch you again." Slowly, he traced his own name into Deirdre's window fog and then he smiled at her. "No one is messing with my Deirdre while I'm here."

"How can you be so calm all the time?" Deirdre asked quietly. Flynn just sort of exuded calm.

Flynn, however, didn't think he was that calm at all. "I'm...not! Not on the inside. But I just figure my panic is for me alone. And Deirdre, I'm calm about this because I believe in us. We're a pretty good team, you and I. Come on. I'll make you a drink and you can relax a little."

That was music to Deirdre's ears. "I suppose I could be in on that." She said with a smile. "You promise you won't let the scary people touch me?"

"I'll cut their goddamn fingers off." Flynn growled and for a moment, Deirdre was actually scared of his conviction, but then he winked at her and her fear trickled away.

"Then I can call them Stubs and laugh at them."

"Ah, the perfect revenge. What do you want, Beautiful?"

"Something purple." Deirdre said, moving to the bed because she couldn't watch the city anymore. The people below who had no idea what had happened in their midst. Who went about their daily lives with no clue that their city held a nightmare for her in it's depths.

"Purple it is, though your taste scares me." Flynn set about mixing her drink, which he was quite good at since he had worked in a bar for quite a while. When he was done, he brought it to her in a tall glass, and he carried his own whiskey along with him. "Here you are, Hero. Bravery comes in purple."

Deirdre laughed and she accepted the drink. "You know...it also comes in Flynn.

"N'awwww, you're trying to make me blush!" Flynn squealed, and he took a sip of the whiskey, loving the way it warmed him inside. He needed that here. Their real purpose was never far from the front of his mind. They were here to find poor, little Mara. Until then, they needed to stay sane. Flynn was going to do everything in his power to keep Deirdre from remembering the horrors she had experienced here in February. It had only been eight months. Almost exactly. Flynn realised that if she had kept the baby it would have been born soon and that was a thought he needed to move on from because it made him think of what Reagan had told him recently. That he had once had a child too. Or the promise of one before Reagan had terminated the pregnancy. "Do you think you'll be able to sleep?"

"I don't know." Deirdre said, swirling her fingers in the purple concoction because she never was very decent. She liked poking things. "Maybe..."

"How about if I sleep with you?" Flynn asked, inching closer to her. They had always slept in the same bed while touring. It was just nicer that way.

"As long as you don't get fresh, Mister!"

Flynn looked scandalised. "Deirdre, out of the two of us, who is the more likely to get fresh?!"

"Yeah, yeah!" Deirdre took a deep drink from her glass and she poked Flynn in the leg with her toes.

"I rest my case, Grabby." Flynn's expression was still entirely fond. "We don't need to sleep if you can't. We can do anything."

"Will you do your impression of Winston Churchill on speed?" Deirdre asked cutely.

"Fiend. It's always the impressions." But Flynn did exactly as she asked, because he loved her. He did his impression over and over and finally they fell asleep, cuddled up together on one of the beds, the other one forgotten. They lay facing each other, fingers and legs intertwined and Deirdre knew she need fear nothing while Flynn was at her side.