Aidan O’Reilly (alwaysathief) wrote in the_dome, @ 2013-09-20 20:49:00 |
|
|||
Entry tags: | 04-11-2017, aidan, aidan and darcy, darcy |
Dealing with Werewolves and Other Things
Who: Darcy and Aidan
Where: Werewolf encampment
When: afternoon
Darcy had slept wonderfully, curled up with Noah until the afternoon. They’d been lazy getting up, getting ready, but Aidan had promised to show her the werewolf cages or whatever and that was important. She’d promised Noah she’d come back later that night, grabbed her backpack, without the changes of clothes, which she left in his room, and headed towards the brewery to find her cousin.
Aidan was exhausted and perhaps a little bit hungover. After Darcy had left the night before, he’d stayed up talking and drinking with Eily. Then he’d gotten up this morning and continued his search for Sylvia, only to come up empty handed. He wanted to go back down to the werewolf camp and make sure everything was in order, but he figured he’d wait on Darcy, since he’d promised to show her. Then maybe he’d take a nap.
Darcy knew where to look for Aidan, smiling when she found him, despite the fight they'd had and despite the fact that things were shitty in general. They were going to look at cages they planned on putting her cousins into. That was just screwed up. And there was also all the turmoil in their family in general, but Noah had helped soothe the worst of it, which had left Darcy calmer in his wake. "Hey. Ready?" She hoped so, but Aidan didn't look good. "You okay?"
He looked up as Darcy entered the brewery, finishing up his tasks at the brewery, then grabbing his backpack. With all that was on his mind, he'd barely been able to work that morning. Tomorrow, or even the next day, would be more productive. Unless he couldn't find Sylvia. Then there was no guarantee for beer in the near future. "Yeah, ready," he said, keys in his hand to lock up behind them. "Just tired. It's been one of those weeks." The worst in a long while, actually, but he hated to complain.
“You look a lot worse than tired,” she told him, making a face. “You look exhausted. Like out there…” She hesitated in her steps, not moving right away. “You don’t have to go. You can just tell me. I’m a big girl.”
"No, I want to go. I'm going to go, even if you don't want to go," Aidan said with a small smile. There was still stuff to be done and he wasn't going to leave Lochlan and Patrick to deal with it themselves. He'd told Eily that he'd be there, and he'd stay through the night, just to make sure things were good through the morning. He might sleep up a tree, but at least he'd be there if something bad went down. "There's just a lot going on at once and it's starting to get to me. How're you doing?"
“Are you going to stay?” Darcy asked, thinking of Eily’s text about not staying, about going home. She started walking again, nodding. “Same. There’s a lot going on. This...Patrick wants me to move in with him...Avery…” She sighed a little and shrugged. “But I feel better.” Which was completely Noah’s doing. Between his kisses and his hands, he’d eased the worst of her worries, without actually easing them. Maybe he was just a distraction, but it was working for now.
"Probably. The guys don't want Eily down there, so I told her I'd stay and make sure everything's okay. I don't think they want you down there either, but there's nothing wrong with going now." He understood their concern, but he also understood the girls' wanting to be there. They were family and they wanted to be supportive in any way possible. And, if they were anything like him, they wanted to know what they were dealing with. "You going to take Patrick up on his offer?"
“They don’t. She texted me about it.” Darcy shook her head. “Not sure why, but fine. You get to be there with no back up.” Darcy tucked her hands in her pockets. “Eily texted about getting together, the three of us and watching a movie or something. Too bad I’m not sleeping at home.” She shook her head. “I don’t think if I have a choice. If Avery moves out Patrick’s showing up to collect my stuff. Which is great, his place is smaller than yours. I hate Avery for this.”
"There will be plenty of back-up. Lots of people came out to help yesterday and not all of them had been bitten. I'm sure a few of them will be there as well." Aidan thought December would be, and a few others he had met. Probably Mickey, since he designed the cages. "You could still get together with Eily," he suggested. He wasn't sure what Darcy had against his sister, but he thought it would be good for the both of them. "I said you could move in with us, but you turned it down. You do have choices, Darce."
“And get stuck there all night. I promised I’d be back tonight,” she told Aidan, frowning a little. He wouldn’t understand, wanting to stay with Noah instead of her family. She let out a sigh and shook her head. “I could but Avery will probably be there. They’ll whine about Lochlan. And after telling Patrick about Avery and Lochlan moving out, he said living with you wasn’t an option either. Just him. Fuuun.” She gnawed at her lip for a moment. “I’d rather go with you tonight.”
Aidan sighed. He had the feeling neither of the girls were going to take Eily up on her offer and then she'd be alone. If that was the case, he was going to take her with him, if she wanted to go. He didn't really care what Patrick or Lochlan had to say on the matter. "Eily's upset about Lochlan wanting to move out and I get it. He just moved in, so why now? She said neither you or Avery had responded, so I said she could come down with me. You're welcome to come too if you promise to play nice."
“I answered, just probably late. Slept most of the day,” Darcy admitted with a shrug. She bit her lip, twisting a loose strand of hair around her fingers. “Avery didn’t really explain why he wanted to move out. She wants to move out because she doesn’t like living with me because we’re not best friends, but Lochlan? I can’t see him actually living in one place. He’ll be back on your couch in three days.” She looked at Aidan, eyes wide. “Really? You’d let me go? Because I want to. For a little while I think. I want to see it.”
"Yeah, I talked to her earlier. Thanks for at least getting back to her," Aidan said. Eily had seemed a little more sensitive lately and, though he thought it was mostly due to Lochlan moving out, he knew the rest of it was due to feeling like the family was falling apart. If they were falling apart, it was because they'd stopped communicating. While he was annoyed with a few things, he wasn't sure it was dramatic as all that, but he knew it was everything to Eily. "If you can get out of Avery why Lochlan wants out as soon as he got in, I'd appreciate it. But yeah, I'm with you. He'll be back." At least, he kind of hoped so. "I'll let you go if you stay with me and will go back home afterwards. I don't want you out wandering tonight. There's no guarantee all the werewolves are locked up."
“I don’t ignore her,” Darcy pointed out with a frown. “I was just asleep. I didn’t sleep last night at all, so I skipped school and crashed at Noah’s.” She gave Aidan a look. “Avery’s not going to tell me jack. She barely told me why she’s moving out. I think she said something about him being a werewolf, so maybe he just wants to put space between everyone and him. Not that it matters.” She shook her head. “I’ll stick with you and you can walk me back, but I’m not going home. I’m going back to Noah’s. I promised.”
“I probably talked to her before you did,” Aidan pointed out. He was starting to lose track of when things happened, functioning in a state of half wakefulness that he used to be more adept at. He’d gotten out of practice, it seemed, since living in the dome. “That doesn’t even make sense. If he wanted to put space between himself and everyone else, why would he live with his sister?” He didn’t expect Darcy to have the answer, but he felt the need to voice the question anyways. “Stay wherever you want, so long as you stay there,” he said, then was quiet for a moment. “Has Noah heard from Sylvia?”
“Probably.” Darcy made a face and rolled her eyes. “Who the hell knows? It’s Lochlan. That’s probably his logic. Or it’s Avery being Avery and thinking she’s invincible.” She didn’t care. “Fine, I will stay there. Promise.” When Aidan went quiet she watched him, wondering what he was thinking, at least until he asked his question she was. “Not that he’s told me. He said she was afraid of me, which is stupid considering...what she is.” Which made her more of a threat to Darcy than Darcy was to her.
Aidan just shook his head, annoyed with Avery and Lochlan for upsetting things as they had. It left Darcy feeling like Avery wanted to get rid of her, and Eily feeling deserted by Lochlan, and all for what? He didn’t have a good enough explanation to find it acceptable behavior. It felt like they were both just being contrary. “Thank you,” he said, glad that she agreed to stay somewhere, since he didn’t care where. He wasn’t her father. If someone else wanted to get on to her about staying with her new boyfriend, then they could, but he felt like she’d earned the ability to behave like an adult by surviving this long. “It’s a matter of perspective,” Aidan sighed, not wanting to argue with Darcy again on this. “But okay. Thanks. I just didn’t know if he’d found her yet.” Or if he’d even been looking, since Darcy spent the day there yesterday.
Darcy was playing with the loose strand of her hair again. “Well when you find her, you can change her perspective. I don’t want anything to do with her and I wish you didn’t either.” And if she hurt Aidan, Darcy wouldn’t sit idly by, as dangerous as it might be. But she had her family on her side didn’t she? They were what? Werewolves? That could take on a vampire. “I don’t know if he’d tell me,” she said, looking over at Aidan. “I don’t...I don’t know if I want to know.”
Aidan could feel his teeth grinding, the hair on his neck bristling. Darcy had been the one to scare Sylvia off and now she had the nerve to keep this up, that Sylvia was a threat and he should have nothing to do with her. He didn’t want to hear it and found he had nothing to say to her in return. If she didn’t want to know if they found Sylvia or not, then he wouldn’t tell her. He shouldn’t have told her in the first place. “We’re almost there,” he said, focus on the path ahead.
She could tell he was upset. She’d known him long enough, spent plenty of hours with him, and didn’t understand why he was mad at her. What she hoped it wasn’t was the spell that Noah talked about. Even if he’d tried to prove otherwise, he was probably still looking for Sylvia as they spoke. Which maybe made sense, they were together out there, but what if Sylvia didn’t want him to be around Darcy? Losing both Aidan and Noah didn’t seem fair. “Okay.” She took a few more steps then looked at Aidan. “Do you know how she feels about him? About Noah?”
“You’re the one who told me Noah was her friend,” Aidan said as he continued down the path. “She never mentioned him to me.” They’re really only spent time together twice. The third time was when she was leaving, and she’d barely been willing to tell him anything. At no point had she mentioned Noah by name and he had trouble recalling if she’d even talked about a friend. She’d instead insisted that people didn’t like her.
Darcy bit her lip and nodded. That was good she supposed. He was thinking of you, she told herself, forcing away thoughts of jealousy.
Though he’d only met Noah once, Aidan had begun to form an opinion about him. Yes, he’d wanted to find Sylvia, but apparently not that much if he’d been spending all his time with Darcy. He knew she wasn’t out looking for Sylvia. “He doesn’t seem like a very good friend to her,” Aidan said after a minute. “He better treat you better than he treats her.”
That had Darcy frowning opening her mouth to answer, but not sure what to say. She wanted to defend him, but what did she know? “Why would you say he isn’t?” she said instead of the snap thought of insisting that he treated her wonderfully.
“Because as desperate as he sounded to find her, it also sounds like he gave up looking for her to hang out with you. He described himself as her closest friend… and it’s pretty shitty if he’s the best she’s got.” All he could think about was Sylvia out there tonight, alone in the dark, in more danger than ever before. And Noah would be having a slumber party with Darcy.
Darcy opened her mouth, then turned away from Aidan completely. “I showed up at dawn and we slept through the day,” she told him, not looking at her cousin. “But maybe he should have just ignored me being there and run off to find a girl who doesn’t want to be found.” And it made Darcy feel like shit for liking him being there for her like Noah had been. She was quiet for a few steps and then moved so she was as far from Aidan as she could get and still be on the right path. “Maybe I needed someone too Aidan. But what would you know?” Her voice was quieter, arms around herself.
It was the last straw for Aidan, who exploded suddenly, unable to keep his voice down, not caring if every werewolf within a one mile radius could hear him. “I know that you are a spoiled brat who pushes her family away, then accuses them of not liking her! That you’ve successfully run off a person I care about, don’t regret it, and are practically proud of it! Nothing happened to you, Darcy. You didn’t need anything but attention and Noah was willing to give it to you over his supposed best friend. Sounds like a perfect fucking match.” With that, he continued on, not looking back at her. She could follow, but he didn’t care at this point.
Darcy stared at Aidan like he was insane. Actually insane. When he started away she reached for him, dragging him to a stop. “Stop it Aidan! She ran herself off! Or did you tell her I would actually try and hurt her? Do you really think that’s what I am? And fuck you Aidan. If she’s so goddman important why are you here? If she’s the person you care about and you hate Noah for sleeping and not searching for her, why are you even bothering with this? With us? Just fucking go out there and find your damn girlfriend. I hope she bites you hard enough to hurt you!” She pushed him away from the direction they’d been walking. “Just go! This isn’t about my family hating me because I don’t like them, this is about everything falling apart! Patrick said he’d be fine and he’s not! Lochlan and Avery are screwing up everything! And you can’t see straight over something that’s supposed to feed off the blood that keeps you alive! Everything is a mess! I can’t even trust the one person I care about more than anything else because he thinks I’m awful for not wanting him to be eaten!” She pushed him again, harder.
“You are acting like a child!” he snapped, annoyed at being pushed around when she knew he wouldn’t push her back. “Your family has never hated you. Get that out of your fucking head. Lochlan and Avery are being idiots, but that’s not the end of the world. And when I’m not here, I have been searching for her. I’m not placing her over family or family over her, so don’t even go there.” When she pushed him again, harder, he caught her by the wrists. “If you push me again, I will push you back,” he said, glaring down at her. “Understand this, Darcy-- you know nothing about her or what she is, so stop making assumptions. If you care about me, act like it, because right now, you’re not.”
“And you’re blinded by a sixteen year old vampire!” Darcy insisted. “It might not be the end of the world, but their upsetting what tiny little world I have! They get whatever the fuck they want and it’s not fair! I just want to be normal!” She felt tears pricking at her eyes and hated Aidan for it. She tugged at her hands to get them loose but he was stronger. “Push me all you want. This is me caring about you, you fucking idiot. If what I missed about her is that she’s some special vampire that doesn’t need blood to survive, I’m not making wrong assumptions! I don’t understand what makes you so stupid about this. What? Are Loch and Pat going to turn into big fluffy dogs? Is that why they need cages! God, think Aidan. Think. See it from where I’m standing where I’m not in love with her.” She pulled at her hands again, feeling hot tears running down her cheek. Aidan. Her Aidan. Gone.
He released her, just wanting to be free of her and her verbal assault. Everything she said just made things worse. She couldn’t seem to see that they were doing everything they could for Patrick and Lochlan. That he was doing everything he could to keep her safe, yet still be fair to her. She wanted to be free to do her own thing, to sleep where she wanted, with whomever she wanted, but then wanted to turn around and tell him not to. She’d hated Sylvia before she knew what she was, and now knowing had made everything worse. “I don’t love her,” he said quietly, continuing on his way. He couldn’t love a girl he’d only seen a handful of times, but she was something special to him and Darcy couldn’t seem to accept that and move on.
All of that and that was all she got. Darcy wiped her face with her hands trying to brush the tears away. “Then why else Aidan?” she asked, following after him because even though he didn’t seem to want her there, she didn’t have anywhere else to go? Back to Noah’s? What if Aidan was wrong and he was a good friend, a better friend to Sylvia than to Darcy and he was gone, looking for her? What did she do then? How could they both feel so strongly about someone who wasn’t even all that nice? “What am I supposed to do without you Aidan?” She didn’t say it, but it was there, in her tone. She’d lost too many people already. He had a brother and a sister. Avery had Lochlan, but Darcy didn’t have anyone. Just cousins. Her parents were gone, brothers, sisters, gone.
He ignored her first question because he felt like he’d answered it so many times already, but she’d never seemed to listen. Or care. Because no matter what answer he gave, Darcy’s opinion on the matter was going to remain the same. But when she posed her second question, he stopped and closed his eyes, looking up at the sun. “I’m not going anywhere,” he said with a sigh. “I’m mad at you, Darcy. I’m pissed that you hate the first person I’ve taken an interest in in years. That you can’t seem to see how much it bothers me that you hate her. Nor do you seem to care why I don’t. Because your opinion apparently matters more than mine. I’m not going to get over that easily, but that doesn’t mean I’m leaving you.”
Darcy bit at her lip, looking at her feet. “I don’t hate her Aidan. I just...it just all seems like a bad idea. She’s a vampire, you’re vampire bait, she’s young, and she’s...strange. And she’s not that nice to anyone but you really. And you kind of hate Noah too considering what you said.” She looked at her hands for a moment then wiped at her cheeks again, the last of her tears still betraying her and falling. “It already feels like you’re gone.”
He hated to see her cry, but this wasn’t one of those times where he was going to wrap his arms around her and comfort her. She was upset because of a situation she’d put herself in, one that he was annoyed with her for, and it was hard for him to let it go. “I don’t hate Noah,” he said, rolling his eyes. “But I’m getting tired of the double standard. You want to spend the night with this guy you barely know and I’m supposed to be okay with it, so I am, but turn it around and you don’t want me seeing Sylvia, vampire or not. She is young, and she is strange, but that’s one of the things I like about her. I’m no more afraid of her as a vampire, than I am of Lochlan as a werewolf, but you obviously see them differently.”
Darcy listened to him, making a little face. “Please tell me you don’t like her because she’s young because that’s bad news.” She hoped he meant the strange. She assumed he did, but in the moment, she wanted to make sure she got his words right. “No, think they’re both scary. Well, not Lochlan. He’s probably going to be the laziest werewolf ever, but Patrick? He’s always angry? God...he’ll kill people.” She tried to keep her tone light, but her concern for the eldest of the O’Reilly clan was there, laced in her tone. Shrugging one shoulder she didn’t know how to answer about Noah. “Noah gets me. I think. He says I’m interesting and pretty. And nothing...happened. Not like you’re thinking.”
“No, not because she’s young,” Aidan said, shoulders slumping. He hated going over this. It felt like he was constantly losing an uphill battle, not making any headway while falling farther back each time. “I can’t be scared of them till I see what happens. Maybe they’ll be monsters on the full moon, but themselves all the rest of the time. I can deal with that. Sylvia is always Sylvia. She doesn’t turn into some crazy, blood-sucking monster. And I’m not scared of her either.” He didn’t need an answer about Noah because that wasn’t the point he was trying to make. It was that she was getting mad at him for doing exactly what she was doing herself. Just with a vampire. “Yeah, well, what happened with Sylvia wasn’t what you were thinking either. All I mean is, I let you make your own decisions and I support you. It’d be nice if you’d do the same for me.”
Darcy shook her head. “I don’t think either one of them are acting like themselves. Not Lochlan at least.” She listened to Aidan, wanting him to see things differently, but realizing he just wasn’t going to. “I’m scared of her,” she admitted. “You can tell her that when you find her.” There was a long pause. “Maybe it’ll make her come back.” There. She was supporting a decision. Sort of. She still hoped maybe no one would find Sylvia, but she knew her cousin, if she was out there, he’d find her.
“They’ve got new instincts to deal with,” Aidan said, trying to remember everything he’d heard from Jack and Lochlan. “That doesn’t mean it’s not still them beneath it all. I think they just need time to adjust.” He couldn’t imagine what all they were dealing with, but he knew it must be difficult to handle. There were probably changes to their lives that they couldn’t possibly prepare for. “She’s the same person she was before you knew what she was,” Aidan reminded her. “She’s really not a threat, but… okay.” He supposed that was the best he was going to get out of Darcy. It wasn’t really acceptance, or support, but it was something.
“Good. Lazy werewolf and angry werewolf,” Darcy said shaking her head. She hoped they were still the same, but she had to admit, she was a little worried. “I was a little scared of her before. Only now, me being taller doesn’t seem to help my situation.” She wrapped her arms around herself, and looked at him as they walked. “I’m not going to do anything to hurt her. Or try and tell her to leave you alone again. Promise.”
“Why were you even scared of her before?” Aidan asked, needing to understand how anyone could find Sylvia frightening. Even when she’d broken his neck, he hadn’t been scared of her. Maybe that said more about him than her, but Aidan didn’t know any other way to look at it. “There’s really nothing to be scared of, but I guess if it means you’ll leave her alone, then fine. It’d just be nice if I could see where it goes without my family hoping it’ll fall apart.”
“Because she’s weird. She acts weird. Those people wind up being crazy,” Darcy shuddered a little before looking at Aidan and letting out a sigh. “Family?”
Sure, Sylvia was a little weird, but it didn’t grate on Aidan the way it seemed to with Darcy. He liked her little quirks and found her fascinating… and beautiful. “Eily’s not thrilled about her age,” Aidan said. “And I get it. I know she’s young. But I don’t think it matters as much as it used to.”
“Eily’s not wrong,” Darcy said, relieved that she wasn’t the only one who wasn’t okay with things. Though it made Aidan not listening even worse. “Why wouldn’t it matter?”
“Because it’s not really a law anymore. She’s a consenting adult,” Aidan said, bristling at having to continually defend his attraction to her. Was it really that unusual to find a sixteen year old girl attractive? “It’s not like I’m fifty.”
“Yeah but it’s also not like you’re nineteen,” Darcy pointed out and shook her head. “I don’t know if it is. I mean…I still had to go to school once we got here and what’s the point of that? So did she. Maybe it’s not a law, but...shouldn’t it still be?”
“You have to go to school because you missed out on years of education that should help you do something with your life,” Aidan sighed. “Unless you want to work at the pub forever?” He kind of hoped she aspired to something more, but she knew that wasn’t the case for everyone. If they didn’t educate their youth, then they had no real chance of rebuilding. “If there is a law, then it’s fifteen, since I think that’s the age that you can’t live alone. You have to live at the orphanage,” he said. “She’s not a child, Darcy.”
“Aidan...not sure there is much else to do beyond being a waitress,” she said. She thought of Noah and his decision to be a politician or in charge or whatever, and yeah, she’d like to do more, but what else was there? “So what if Noah was twenty-six?” she ventured, gently, but wanting him to see what she meant.
He thought about that for a second, quite capable of doing the math in his head. Twenty-six sounded so much older than twenty-four to him, and he never really felt like he was twenty-four. “Do you want me to say I’d have an issue with it?” he asked, raising a brow. “I wouldn’t really care if I thought he really cared about you. I’d want to meet him, see if he could take care of you, but… it’s your life.”
Darcy gave her cousin a look. “Really? You’d just be fine like that?” she said. She wasn’t so sure she believed him if she was dating a guy close in on thirty, but maybe she was wrong.
“I didn’t say I’d be fine with it,” Aidan said. “I said I’d want to meet him, make sure he was a good guy, not some douchebag looking for a piece of ass.” He wondered then if that was how Darcy saw him, like some creeper that was into Sylvia because of her age. He hadn’t even intended on things getting physical with her. It was the connection he had with her that mattered to him, the kind he almost never found.
She watched him, biting her lip. What was she supposed to say to him? “‘Cause you’re a good guy like that,” Darcy said softly. She reached for him, fingers curling around his arm to pull him closer.
“I’d like to think I am,” he said, though he wasn’t sure Darcy knew enough of that side of him to make that call. She thought he’d slept with Sylvia the night she followed him, so maybe she did think that was all he was after. He looked to her when she pulled him closer, not entirely sure what she wanted. He couldn’t seem to make her see things from his point of view.
“I know you are,” she said, resting her head on his shoulder once he was closer, looping her arm in his. She didn’t want to fight with him. It was exhausting. Maybe Sylvia would stay gone and she just wouldn’t have to worry. Maybe this was the best she could do right now. He just couldn’t see how there was little right about what he was doing.
It wasn’t worth it to push it, not anymore. He cared about what Darcy thought, but he knew if he kept asking, he was going to keep getting answers he didn’t like. This was probably the closest he was going to get to one he did, so he let it drop, enjoying the half hug she was giving him. “The camp’s just up ahead,” he said, nodding towards the clearing. “We’ve got kind of a shelf set up, so we can keep watch from above. The cages are a little farther down.”
She stayed close to him, but looked where he directed. “We’re really going to put them in cages?” she asked softly, the realness of it sinking in on her.
“It’s for their safety and ours,” Aidan said. “We don’t know if they’ll fight once they shift, so they each have their own. And they’re sturdy enough that we don’t think they can get out. We’d rather have too much than too little.” He knew it was weird, but it really did seem like the best plan they had. Aidan was counting on it to work, just like everyone else.
Darcy shook her head. Everything he was saying made sense. Perfect sense. It just didn’t feel right. “I don’t know if I could see. I think it’d be too weird.” To see her cousins locked up, to see them not themselves. What if they turned into monsters, no better than the zombies?
“There’s nothing wrong with staying in tonight,” Aidan said, looking down at her. She’d said she wanted to be there, but he didn’t know if that was what was best for her. If she was second guessing herself, then she might be better to just stick with Noah. “I’ll let you know if anything happens that you should worry about.”
She was worrying at her lower lip again, trying to figure out what was right. “You’ll call, the instant something bad happens? And you’ll let me know what they turn into?” she asked, watching Aidan. “No more keeping Darcy in the dark?” Because he was right, she was second guessing herself and if this went badly, she wasn’t sure she could let someone hurt her cousins or stand them hurting others.
“Promise,” Aidan said. He had never intended to keep her in the dark in the first place. He just had a lot going on at once and hadn’t gotten to tell her until a couple days later. Honestly, Lochlan or Patrick should have sat the family down and told them all, but since that didn’t happen they’d all heard a little bit at a time. “I’ll call or text once we know anything.”
Darcy looked out over the clearing, trying to wrap her head around what was going to happen and wound up nodding. It was probably safer to stay in, just in case and maybe she didn’t have the heart for it. Even now she could feel the panic rising. “Okay.”
“It’s going to be okay,” Aidan said, wrapping his arm around her in a small hug. It was times like these that he remembered how young she was. She thought she could handle anything until it was actually put before her, and then it was a bit more daunting. He didn’t blame her. All the supernatural stuff should have made him weary as well, but instead he found himself curiously drawn towards it. It was probably a sign, but Aidan chose to ignore it.
She sighed leaning into her cousin. “I hope so.” Her voice was soft, trying hard not to be worried, trying hard not to panic, but it was harder than she expected it to be. “Do they need anything?” she wound up asking, looking up at Aidan. “Can I help?”
“Tonight? Probably not,” Aidan said, looking at the camp. “It looks like all the building is done, which is good. I wasn’t sure what got finished after I left yesterday. We can check everything out, though, make sure there aren’t any other little tasks that need to be done.” What would help him the most was knowing she was safe tonight, that she would stay wherever she said she was doing to stay and not put herself in danger.
Darcy took a deep breath then nodded. “Sure, we can do that. I can help until, well, until I go.” That was better than nothing and it made her shoulders ease a little more. She could do something useful and then go stay away from the parts she wasn’t sure she was able to handle.
“Come on, I’ll show you around,” Aidan said, releasing her so he could walk her down into the camp. People were still working, so there must be a few more things that needed to be done. He was glad Darcy would rather help now than come see it later; he didn’t know how safe it would be, or if he’d be able to protect her. This way, she felt like she was included in things, which was all that really mattered.