Re: Queens: Wren & Saint.
Wren wasn't scared. Wren wasn't worried. Bloody, dressed in black and eyes smudged dark, Luke didn't scare her. Luke could kill this entire roomful of people, and he wouldn't scare her. She just waited for him to notice her there, amid the waterfall of white powder, and she watched him with wide grey eyes once he did notice. Calm, calm, calm and everything was okay. She stayed still as his fingers traced her cheeks, as they dipped lower in search of the beating of her heart. She didn't ask how he'd known to come, how he'd known at all; she would ask, but eventually, not now. Now, she stood quiet as his fingers slid back up, as his palms pressed against her cheeks, and as he cupped her face in his hand.
Maybe she should pretend he wasn't him. Maybe she should pretend, so that Saint didn't know. She couldn't remember there, standing in bright yellow amid puddles of blood and still bodies, if Saint had ever met Luke. Maybe, she thought, at some holiday. But maybe he wouldn't remember, and maybe she could pretend. But Luke mouthed that declaration, and she forgot about pretending. "Je t'aime," she whispered.
Luke's head tipped to the side, and she watched as he regarded the man across the room. "Nothing bad happened," was her response once Luke looked back, calming and quiet and sure. They would have killed both her and Saint, but they hadn't, and they wouldn't now.
She really, really hoped Saint wouldn't need to die, though; she liked him.
She leaned against Luke, blood marring the hem of her bright yellow sundress, and she looked over her shoulder to watch as Saint spoke to the children.
"Nowhere to go," the oldest child said, and Wren knew how that was.
On the streets, people freed children from places like this, but sometimes there was nowhere better, sometimes there was nowhere else. Here, there was food and pallets for sleeping. In the system, in the system it was worse. Foster home to foster home, and bad things always happened. She looked at the boy with the curls, the one with no shoes, and he reminded her of Gus a little. She bit her lip, and she looked up at Luke. "Is there anything we can do?" she asked.
She should be concentrating on the men around them, thinking about them, about the things they'd seen. But she wasn't very practical. She pressed the tip of her sandal to Luke's shoe, and she looked back to Saint. "We can go, Saint. We don't need to tell anyone." Protective. It sounded like a suggestion, but maybe it wasn't really.