Cya, after the apocalypse but before her kids go to Addergoole

Cya knew she was one of the good guys.

That was: she knew she was one of Boom, and she knew Boom were the good guys.

She knew that was all that kept her from going off the rails most days.

Some days, all it did was remind her how to cover it up.

She looked at the boy – man – the Kept in front of her and sighed. “You’re a mess, darling,” she muttered. He was sleeping. The Working she’d done would keep him that way for a while.

She wrote him a note anyway, because Cya believed in planning ahead. I had to run an errand. If I’m not back by Wednesday night, take this note to Howard and tell him “look South.”

Of course, almost everything was south from the Ranch, except Canada, but she didn’t want her Kept to guess where she was going.

She took her car. It shouldn’t still be running, but at this stage, she wasn’t the only one with a much-repaired vehicle still on the road, and hey, she could turn dirt into gas, which did help matters.

She tried not to hold on too tight to the steering wheel, but there was a small fire of anger deep in her gut. It was, like everything she felt at that point, a cold fire, a lump rather than a storm.

It was going to hurt someone anyway.

The man sleeping in her bed… When she talked to Addergoole, they told her things were better. They were old fae and had old memories, and they meant Things like what happened to Eris will never happen again. They meant, if it was Luke, who had seen it, or Mike, who paid more attention than he was given credit for, they meant we’ll try to make sure what happened to Leo doesn’t happen again. Leo was harder. She knew that, even though she didn’t really forgive it. Leo’s breaking hadn’t been nearly as visible as Eris bleeding in the halls.

They told her things were better, but there was only so far they were willing to go. Some people just weren’t meant to Keep and some people just shouldn’t be Kept, and those mistakes, Addergoole wasn’t going to fix any time soon.

And sometimes people were just too good at hiding their poison; some people were just too good at hiding their wounds. Agi, the man sleeping on her bed – he was one of those. His keeper had been sharp with her knife and careful, and her abuse had been subtle enough that it had never been picked up on. He’d gone through the next three years at Addergoole thinking it’d been his fault.

She knew the story too well. This time, someone was going to pay.

She held onto the steering wheel a little too tightly and whispered Repair Workings at the road ahead of her. There was no reason not to clean up as she went, and if this went south instead of just South, Howard would have a trail to follow.

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