Darerca of Ireland (prayingwithfire) wrote in nevermore_au, @ 2012-12-10 18:52:00 |
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Entry tags: | -abroad, saint darerca, saint george, saint padraig |
WHO: Saint Darerca, Saint George, and for a split second, an evil!Padraig
WHAT: A unlikely rescue
WHEN: A day after the last mini-thread here. Early January, 2010 in the Evil AU time line.
WHERE: Padraig's Dublin home
WARNINGS: Talk of death and torture.
It had taken far too long for the news that Patrick had sold his soul to reach Darerca. She had finally heard it from Saint Columba and the moment she finished the email, she had fired one off to her brother, Padraig. She had to know if he was somehow affected.
When he emailed her back, she knew he was. Padraig and Darerca didn’t speak and hadn’t in decades. She had expected a perfunctory email with a few words telling her he was fine, if any response at all. What she received instead was a long email with detail upon detail about how he was feeling just fine and what was happening in his life. The email had mentioned George’s visit in it several times and that was something else that set off alarm bells in her head. Padraig would never discuss George with her, not if he had a soul. She had killed George once, in an attempt to rescue her brother, and Padraig had never forgiven her.
She arrived in Dublin the next day and she knocked on Padraig’s door at around ten in the morning. He answered quickly and smiled when he saw her. There was nothing of her brother in there at all, but she had to play like she believed there was. “I was so glad to hear from you,” she said, moving inside his home without really being invited.
“I feel the same way, Dee. Actually I wanted to discuss something with you. I have made contact with a militant group and I know that kind of thing is right up your alley, so to speak.”
Darerca waited until Padraig had turned to lead her deeper into the house to pull the knife she had strapped to her leg out. Without another word, she leapt onto Padraig’s back and sliced his throat wide open. Padraig didn’t even have time to struggle before he fell to the ground, spilling Darerca unceremoniously into a wall.
“Fucking ow,” she grumbled, crawling forward to search his pockets. She found a set of keys and a USB drive in there, and she pocketed both items. Then she commenced a search of the house because she knew George was here somewhere.
What she did not expect, was to find George in quite the state he was in. She tested doors until she came upon one that was padlocked. “What the f-” She tested the keys on the keychain until the lock clicked open and she stepped inside the room. The moment she did, she had to clamp a hand over her nose because of the smell. “Oh my god, George,” she whispered, staring at him.
George’s eyes flashed up to stare at Darerca, wondering if he was hallucinating. He pulled his sword into his hand, but it was more of a token effort than anything. He doubted he’d be able to swing with any force.
“Darerca?” he asked, voice weak and thready.
“Jesus,” she hissed and she went to his side immediately. “Don’t cut me in half, George, I’m not going to hurt you.” She lifted his wrist so she could look at the shackles Padraig had put on him. His own brother. The lock shaft was covered with a steel plate that was screwed in. “He really didn’t want you escaping,” she whispered. “How long have you been here?”
“I...” George blinked, trying to remember. His sense of time passing had gone to hell within the first week, and he hadn’t had much of a reason to keep track of the days. “I’m not sure. A while.”
He blinked at her, trying to get his brain to work properly. “If you’re here, then is Padraig...”
Darerca rubbed her eye, which was all the emotion she was going to show for her fallen brother. “I slit his throat,” she said with a shrug. “He’ll be fine in a few days. Just wait here, okay?”
She padded away from him but left the door open so he didn’t panic that she was just messing with him. When she returned she had made some mint tea, because it worked wonders settling the stomach. She was also carrying some food which had been easy to grab; bread, cheese and some tea biscuits. She brought them all over to him and handed him the tea first. “You need to drink this slowly, alright? Don’t puke on me or I will slap you.” Then she flicked her knife open again. It still had Padraig’s blood on it. “I think I can use this to loosen the screws.”
George blinked at her, increasingly unsure if this was all a dream. He certainly wouldn’t have imagined Darerca as his subconscious savior. His eyes flicked to the door.
“Is this...you should lock him in a room or something. In case he wakes up.”
He accepted the tea with shaking hands, trying to reconcile the fact that Darerca was making him tea with...well, with everything that lay between him and Darerca. “I, er, I think he kept a screwdriver in the closet downstairs.”
Well that would probably work better. “I’ll go find it,” she said with a curt nod. Before she left though, she put the biscuits within his reach. Some sugar would do him good, followed up by something more hearty to make sure he didn’t just crash. “It’s probably a waste of time to tell you this, but will you try to eat slowly?” she said before leaving him again.
George took slow, hesitant bites of the biscuits. It was easy at first, since he’d stopped feeling hunger around the second week. By the time he heard Darerca’s footsteps again, he’d practically inhaled the biscuits. He was straining against the cuffs without realizing it, the possibility of actually getting out of this alive suddenly very bright and real in his mind.
He hoped this wasn’t a trick.
Darerca had managed, with difficulty, to pull Padraig into a nearby room and dump him on the floor. She had left a trail of blood in her wake. Then she barricaded the door with a set of drawers, before finally going to find the screwdriver George had mentioned. It was, indeed, in the closet.
She returned and gave George an exasperated look, as if she had never been hungry and knew how it made one feel. She had, and she did, but he was George and thus, she would have been giving him such a look anyway.
“I found the screwdriver and he’s closed in a room now,” she assured him. “Give me your arm.” She waited until he let her, and then she went to work on one of the shackles. “There wasn’t a key that would really scream ‘I am for shackles’ to me on that keychain. Do you know where that is?”
“He bent it out of shape and said he was going to throw it in a fire,” George said dully, resting his head on his arm and watching her pick at the shackle. “Dunno if he really did. Probably. He’s a bit of a prick right now.”
His stomach gave an earth-shattering rumble at the presences of actual food in it, and he groaned from pain.
Darerca’s expression at the noise George’s stomach made was one of actual sympathy. She stopped what she was doing and put her hand on his face. “George, I’m sorry he did this to you.” She swallowed, unsure how much he would believe that, but it was possible it didn’t matter at this point. He had clearly been through the wars in the past few weeks.
“Here, eat something else,” she said, handing him some bread before going back to unscrewing the metal plate that was blocking the lock shaft. “I can probably pick these when I can actually get to them.”
George ate the bread in one or two bites, and he knew it was a bad idea but he also did not give any fucks at the moment. Food. When the bread was gone, he went back to leaning on knees.
“He said he contacted a militia group,” George said. The temptation not to finish was strong, because what he really wanted to do was escape, then eat, then sleep for the next month. But he had his duties. “Has anything...do you know if anything’s happened yet?’
“Nothing’s happened,” she assured him as she finally pulled the metal plate free and threw it behind her shoulder. “And I’ll go through his emails and phone records to see who he has been talking to. I can’t say I entirely disagree with the sentiment, but you know that. Just this once, I’ll let you know what he was up to.”
It was only because Padraig was soulless that she would put a stop to anything he had planned. She knew, in her core, that the real Padraig wouldn’t want anything to happen that involved violence. She was protecting the man who had been her brother, and not George at all. It just so happened that in doing so, she was aiding him anyway.
She set to work on the actual lock with a tool she always carried with her. As ever, her tool made short work of the lock and the shackle fell away.
“One down,” she said in a soothing voice. “Come here, George.” She held her arms out to hug him because he looked like he might need it.
George’s initial thought was “Oh my God, she’s going to stab me in the heart if I hug her.” But she probably could have done that anyway. And he really, desperately did need a hug.
It was less of a hug and more of a slow collapse against her, but he felt better once he was touching another person. Even if that person had shot him to death once. He was willing to declare that water under the bridge at this point.
“Just this once,” he repeated.
“Agreed,” she said, rubbing his back a little. She handed George the cheese which without anything else was a little strange, but she didn’t think he would mind. Then she went to work on the rest of the shackles.
Now that she had done one, it took very little time to get the rest of the shackles off of him. When he was free she said, “now let me take a look at you. Did he hurt you?” There was bruising on his face, but she was referring to anything she might have to patch up.
“No,” George said shortly. The damage that Padraig had done wasn’t physical, for the most part. Besides the starvation, but there wasn’t much Darerca could do for him there, besides what she was already doing.
“I think--I want to go outside, would that be allright? While you check the computer. Pretty sure I can walk.”
He stood up unsteadily, feeling a bit like a horse taking its first steps.
Darerca moved to steady him if he needed it. “Of course it’s okay,” she assured him. “I’ll cook something else too. I think you’ll travel better if you have a full stomach. And...maybe a shower?” Then she took a deep breath and asked, “do you want me to shove Padraig in here, George? Lock him in?”
George felt his stomach roll, as anger and centuries-old guilt roiled in his stomach all at once. He would have fallen were it not for Darerca and a nearby wall.
“Just for a while,” he said, his voice weaker than he would have liked. “Just a little while.”
“Alright, come on.” Darerca helped George out of the room and out the back door into Padraig’s garden. It was a delightful little place, even now that it was winter. There was a wrought iron bench in the corner near a pond which, in the spring, had a fountain in it. Dee helped him to the bench and sat with him a moment to catch her breath. George was heavy.
“I won’t be long,” she promised him, returning inside to shove Padraig’s body into the room he had imprisoned his brother in. It meant moving the chest of drawers and then dragging him down the hallway and after all of it, Darerca was ready for a nap.
The biting cold air was exactly what George wanted, and he sighed and laid himself sideways against the bench once Darerca was out of sight. He would have to find a way to thank her, and he honestly had no idea how. It was much easier to stare at the ripples in the water.
He knew that he needed to start thinking about the future, about how to keep Padraig contained and undo the damage he’d done. He needed to call the American and set things in order. He needed to eat his own weight in candy.
He needed some sleep.
Once Padraig’s body was secure, Darerca carried Padraig’s laptop into his kitchen. She opened it up after putting some water on to boil. It was easy enough to load since Padraig, stupidly, didn’t have a password. With a shake of her head, she stuck the USB stick into the computer and opened the files.
There were emails saved in word documents detailing an attack on the houses of several officials. Darerca clucked her tongue at Padraig for actually saving these things without encrypting them. He had been out of the game since long before computers existed and it showed.
She fired off a quick email to Columba to look into keeping the officials safe and then she sent the files to be printed so she could show them to George. The contact details of everyone involved were right there in the document.
As she was reading, she had been cooking some macaroni and cheese. She decided George should probably have some meat too, so she rummaged in Padraig’s fridge and found enough ingredients to make a sandwich. When it was all ready, she went out to find him in the garden, documents in hand.
“I sent everything to Columba,” she said quietly. “He’ll take care of it and make sure nothing happens.” She handed him the print out. “Here.”
George took the documents and sat up, scanning through them quickly. He’d given them the time they deserved soon, but his mind felt like it was mired in mud right now.
“Padraig is not very good at terrorism,” George said with a sigh, rubbing the bridge of his nose and getting unsteadily to his feet. “At least Columba might get to shoot something. He likes that.”
When they were back inside, George pounced on the sandwich. It was only the food already in his stomach that kept him from moaning in pleasure. Around a mouthful of bread, he asked, “Is that macaroni?”
Darerca actually smiled at George and all his eagerness. He wasn’t her favourite person at all, but she still felt a sense of accomplishment in helping him. She had done a good thing and it made her feel warm inside. The fact that she had to kill a vile thing shaped like her brother to do so was an entirely different issue. “It is,” she said, pushing the entire bowl over to him so he could have as much as he wanted. If there was any left she might have some, but there was plenty of other food she could make if he needed all of it. “Go for it.”
Even if Padraig somehow came back to his body relatively quickly, he was locked in. He had made the room inescapable with the lock on the outside so it couldn’t even be picked by someone trapped inside the room. It was a nice little prison he had made for himself.
“I’m worried about trying to get you out of here, George. Do you think you would mind spending the night? Padraig isn’t getting out of that room any time soon.”
George’s eyes shot up, a look of pure panic in them before he could hide it.
“That would be fine,” he said, offering her a small smile and inhaling more of the macaroni.
“It’s going to be okay,” she said, hoping she sounded reassuring. She wasn’t really used to calming people down. It felt weird. “I’ll be here the whole time. I can stay awake if you want me to. I don’t mind playing watchdog.”
“That...would be preferable, yes.” George settled his hands on the table. “How close are you to the government? They’re not going to lock Padraig up on my word, but we can’t let him roam around where ever he wants. The real Padraig would never forgive us.”
Darerca chewed on her lip and then she said, “not as close as Columba. I am sure he could arrange something. I agree with you, but I don’t know how I feel about putting him in a government facility either.”
“He’s been focused on me, Darerca,” George said. “Without me as a target, he’ll move on to someone else. It’s not safe for him to be loose.”
Darerca chewed on her lip and she ran her fingers through her hair. “I know you’re right, I just...what if this isn’t permanent? And then he’s stuck somewhere for a long time because of something that isn’t really his fault. I mean, not completely anyway. Columba might know of an alternative.”
“Ask him, then,” George said, settling back against the chair. He stared down at his empty bowl. “I want to believe that this isn’t permanent. But I’m not sure I can afford to.”
“It’s okay, George. I’m sure I would be in the same boat if he had done this to me. Do you want me to make you something else?” He looked exhausted.
“No,” George said. If he ate anymore, he would probably throw it all up. His stomach was already protesting slightly. “No, I think I just want to sleep.”
Darerca nodded and she went to give his shoulder a gentle pat. “Alright, George. I’ll stand watch so you don’t have to worry. I’ll be awake the entire time. Tomorrow you can get cleaned up and we can get you out of here, okay?” She would call Columba after she was sure George had managed to fall asleep.
They would figure out what to do with Padraig together.