The Sweet Release of Death
"Ialtóg bheag, it's...it's time."
Niamh turned from the window she was standing at to look at her adoptive brother, Cahir. Long gone was the tall, lanky boy that she had grown up alongside and played games with, replaced with a man now with thirty-seven years of life under his belt. Twenty more than she would ever show, her features frozen in time at seventeen. And, horribly, as he aged he was starting to look so much more like their father.
Rohan Hancóc had been the only father she had ever known, her own dead some twenty odd years ago and never knowing of her survival. Her mother had given birth to her and then died to her own knife, leaving Rohan's wife Máire as her only mother. Then Máire had died when they had all been young still, just a few years after Niamh's cursed blood had reared its ugly head. Now her husband was going to follow her into death and all his children could do was watch.
Nodding slightly, Niamh turned away from the window and followed Cahir down the halls of Dún Másc to the open, airy bedroom where he had laid dying for days. Thankfully it was not a sickness that could force his family to remove themselves - except for her, the only one unaffected by such things - but the wasting of his body had done no favors to the smell in the room. Their father was simply...old.
When they arrived in the room, Ayne and Elinor were already there, both of them sitting on a bench at the side of the room. Their arms were wrapped tightly around each other and both were crying, but Elinor looked like she was comforting Ayne more than her older sister was her. Cahir's eldest, Arte, was standing in the middle of the room near the end of the bed, his eyes wide with panic and pain as he watched his normally so strong aunts fall apart.
Arte was only fifteen but, amongst the sect, that was old enough to begin being involved with more than just being taught how to wield their magic. Thus, it was old enough to be here in this moment coming to a sorrowful end.
As the door opened, he turned towards them and Niamh forced a smile for him as he hurried forward. "Father," he asked, a little breathlessly in his panic, "should I...should I be doing something? For them?"
Cahir reached out to clasp his son's shoulder, smiling gently as he shook his head. "No," he replied, "you're doing exactly what you need to do, son. Let them have their grief. This is the way of the world."
Niamh reached out to gently pat her nephew's face - gods, when had he grown so much taller than her - and added gently, "We grieve now, little flame, but tomorrow we will celebrate the life lived with music and stories and drink."
Arte smiled at her, a soft little expression on his features that were slowly hardening with age, and asked, "Will there be dancing with the music, Auntie?"
She laughed softly and replied, "Of course there will be dancing. Shall I save you from the affections of all of the young girls who may be brought by their parents to celebrate the life he lived?"
"Please," he whispered desperately.
"Always, nephew."
As he smiled and nodded gratefully, Niamh turned away with a nod to Cahir and moved towards her sisters. Elinor looked up at her approach and smiled before laying her head back down on top of Ayne's where it was tucked into her shoulder.
"Sister," she said gently, her voice soft as the wings of a bird, "we are all here now. It's time."
"It can't be the end," Ayne sobbed, her voice muffled. "We have magic. Why can't we just keep him?"
Niamh flinched at the question, looking at Elinor's stricken features. She then leaned forward, wrapping her arms around Ayne and bending down to kiss her sister on the back of the neck. Leaning her forehead against the back of Ayne's skull, Niamh whispered a question.
"What did Father tell us when Mother died?"
Ayne cried but replied, her voice shaking with strain and years, "That which is lost c-cannot be held by magic." Then she pushed upward and Niamh pulled back as their sister sat up, her face mottled and blotchy from her tears. Elinor offered a handkerchief but Ayne refused it with a raised hand, lifting her reddened eyes to Niamh. "To do so would be cruel," she finished in a whisper.
Nodding, Niamh curled one hand around the back of her sister's neck and leaned forward to press their foreheads together. "We need to let him rest," she said quietly, ever so gently. Even though she didn't want to be the strong one in this very moment.
She wanted to curl up on the bed next to their father and hold his hand to her face, to have him call her my little girl again in his gentle rumble. The one that always let her know that she was safe. That despite her history as the daughter of a hunter who had forsaken her calling, as the sister to a killer from all of the rumors of Darragh Ó Conaill, and as the blood-cursed spawn of one of the worst vampires in current history, she was worth something.
But Niamh bound herself together with what felt like twine and fragile limbs like some mockery of a witches effigy and made herself be strong. At least for a little while.
She and Elinor helped Ayne stand and then they slowly approached the bed where Rohan Hancóc laid, his once large form wasted away, eyes shut in a dreamless sleep that had taken him a month or so ago. When both of her sisters nodded to her, Niamh moved around the bed to stand next to Cahir, gently squeezing Arte's arm as she moved past him where he stayed standing at the end of the bed. Once she was in place, her brother leaned forward and placed a gentle hand on their father's forehead before closing his eyes in concentration.
When he spoke again there was magic coating the tones of his voice and even though she had none of it in her bones, it made Niamh shiver.
"We're here, Father," he said gently. "All of us. Me, Niamh, Ayne, and Elinor. You can..." And her brother - her brave, brilliant brother who had never feared her cursed blood and defended her valiantly - choked on his own breath. Niamh slid her hand into his and didn't make a sound as Cahir's hand closed around hers with all of his strength. She had a constitution closer to a vampire than a mortal now, she could take pain. "You can let go now, Father."
Ayne sobbed and collapsed, falling to her knees next to the bed and reaching out to grasp desperately at their father's limp hand. Elinor bent with her, her expression torn between worry for their sister and her own crushing grief. As the youngest of the four of them, she was losing the most time with their father and her son at only three would likely never remember his grandfather as anything more than a ghost of a memory.
"Go," Ayne cried, laying her head against the edge of the bed as she slumped over it, gripping his hand tightly. "Mother's waiting, Father. You...you can't disappoint her."
At those words, Elinor sank to her knees next to Ayne and leaned into their sister, her own hand reaching out to cover hers and their father's. She turned her face towards his sallow, sunken features that didn't acknowledge them at all and whispered with magic on her own tongue, "We release you, Father. Go. We'll be fine."
Niamh stood watching her grieving family for a long time, her throat dry, her cursed heart breaking in her chest, and tears wetting her cheeks. Then she stepped foward, delicately seating herself on the edge of the bed on her and Cahir's side and reached out a trembling hand to take his in hers. Lifting it, she pressed a delicate kiss to the thin skin of his knuckles and breathed, "Thank you for loving me like your own and giving me a family. I have them now, Father. Always and forever, until the day I die."
It was a promise she was terrified to keep. She didn't want to watch her siblings and their children die more than anything and this was just reminding her that they would all eventually fall way from her. Time would not take her as it took them and she would grow further and further away from the year of her birth. And more alone with every year that passed and every generation of Hancóc's that lived and died.
As if that promise was what he was waiting for, Rohan Hancóc inhaled a soft, rattling breath and then didn't exhale it. Niamh's eyes filled with tears as she heard his heart stutter in its beats - thud-ump thud-ump, like a slow beat on a bodhrán drum - and then stop. She heard the blood slow in his veins and then fall still without it to push and pull the waves of sweet life through his body. And she heard the last rattle of air in his lungs as it leaked out as the muscles fluttered in one last rushing mockery of life.
When Cahir dropped to a knee beside her, Niamh fell into him, curling over and into her brother as she sobbed brokenly. As he pulled her into the floor from the bed, he cradled her into his chest as he had done with Arte and Mortagh when they had had nightmares and Elinor years before that.
"I have you, ialtóg bheag," he breathed, kissing her forehead as he held her close. "Always."
And it broke Niamh's heart that, for a moment, she heard their father in his voice over himself alongside the realization that that was a promise her dear brother of her heart could never keep.
ialtóg bheag - little bat | Irish (via Google Translate)
Timeframe: 1689
Location: County Laois, Ireland
Event: Rohan Hancóc lies on his deathbed and his children by blood - Cahir, Ayne, and Elinor - gather with their adopted sister, Niamh Ó Conaill, to see him to his rest.
Consequences: Niamh Ó Conaill begins to see the long future before her and begins to let the fear of losing her family fester inside of her.
The younger sister of Darragh and Daman Ó Conaill was hidden from the world for a long time, adopted by Rohan Hancóc after her mother came covered in blood to his door. Despite being blood cursed, Rohan raised her as his daughter and his children by birth also saw her as such, a trend which has continued to present day - though only some of Cahir Hancóc's descendants still acknowledge her. While she does think of the Hancock sect as her family, one day she hopes to still be able to reunite with her brothers.
The only son of Rohan Hancóc, he grew up with Niamh Ó Conaill as his sister - never knowing life without her as she came to their family when he was only a year old. As he and his blood sisters aged while Niamh didn't, he saw the struggles that she was going to have and did his best to stall them. He gave his sons, Arte and Mortagh, the sole task of making certain that their aunt never felt like she could not come home to her family.
The eldest daughter of Rohan Hancóc, she was only two years younger than her adopted sister. Although they were never as close as Cahir or Elinor were, she still deeply loved Niamh Ó Conaill with all of her heart. She raised her twin daughters, Grane and Jovane, to always respect their aunt despite what she was, even though eventually they saw very little of each other.
The youngest daughter of Rohan Hancóc, she was five years younger than her adopted sister. Niamh Ó Conaill was the only one who could calm a crying Elinor during thunderstorms and they grew very close despite their age difference. When her sister's cursed blood took over, Elinor made it her goal that she would become her big sister's protector when she needed it most. As Niamh had protected her from storms, Elinor would protect her from anything that came for her and hoped her son Keane would do the same.
The eldest son of Cahir Hancóc, he and his younger brother Mortagh were always pushed by their father to look after their adopted aunt, Niamh Ó Conaill. Of the two of them, Arte was the one who was always closer to her - always looking to her for advice and saving him from awkward situations, even as he grew older. Like his father, he encouraged his family to never forget their connection to his adopted aunt, to never forget that she was family. That connection, out of all of those amongst Rohan Hancóc's grandchildren, was the one that held, eventually leading to Niamh's close relationship with his descendants, Maeve Hancock and her grandson Cinaed.
As the only other person present when Marie Smith came begging for Tirlagh Hancóc's aid, he was the first person she came to. Covered in blood and slowly dying, she begged him to save her daughter even if she was blood cursed. That her baby girl deserved to live. With a young son of his own, he swore that he could protect the girl with his life...and he also was the one who burned Marie Smith's body to ash at her request as she lay dying with her own knife in her heart.
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