Of Pain and Silence

It's not what she wanted.  It never has been. Sigrún interacts with her daughter like she's a stranger.  There's nothing gentle here.  No tenderness.  Protectiveness, yes.  Duty, yes.  It's always been like that.  Hell, the very first thing she'd ever done to Susan was send her away, and now she was doing it again.  None of that shows in her eyes.  None of that shows in her bearing.   She'd brought /dev/grrl to meet her daughter.  To help protect her.  To take her away. Her options in this regard are limited at best, but she knows Susan will be safe with the teenaged elf.  

Whitefire probably knows.  She's only a few years older than Susan.  Sigrún isn't certain, but she figures that the technomancer probably knows.  

The Vashon Island penthouse apartment is still lovely, still expensive as all hell, though a little bit more lived in than it was before.  The carpets are deep white pile, the walls pale yellow, except for being baby blue in the bedrooms. The matched couch and armchairs are dove grey suede, and the bedrooms have blond wood nightstands and white sheets with dark blue comforters. The kitchen has granite countertops, ashwood cabinets, and modern, stainless steel fixtures. The apartment is built to let in a lot of light, with large windows facing the water and a three meters by five meter skylight in the living room. There's a fireplace with real wood in it, and several bookshelves in the living room, mostly filled with faerie tales, historical fiction, and science fiction, though the wall mounted shelf in her bedroom is all vampire novels, Stoker, Le Fanu, De Vries, and Hamilton mostly.

The rest of the team is all here, though what they think of Susan and /dev/grrl Sigrún has no idea.  "Susan," she says, and her daughter looks up, and those blue-green eyes seem much older than her eleven years.  "Yes, Aunt Alex?" the girl asks.  She knows better than to use 'Aunt Sigrún' away from home.  

"This is /dev/grrl," Sigrún says. "You're going to stay with her for a while."

"Hey Susan," /dev/grrl says cheerfully. "We're going to have some fun together.  You know how to make thermite yet?"

Susan considers /dev/grrl.  Then, without answering the question, she looks up at Sigrún once more, and the yearning in her tone is unmistakable. "Am I going to see my mom again?" she asks.  

Stab.
Twist.

Susan means Jamie.  She's always meant Jamie.  Why shouldn't she?  Jamie was the one who'd taken her in.  Though she hadn't adopted the girl, it was Jamie Finnigan who'd raised her as her own.  Sigrún hadn't expected her to.  She'd asked Jamie to help her find a good home, and Jamie had, and had even gone out of her way to include Sigrún in Susan's life.  She loved Jamie for that: she also resented her for that, just a little. Sigrún had never known how to deal with children.  Had never wanted them. Still had no idea how to be a mother. She remembers her own mother, and the warmth and love that woman had given her and her siblings, and the merry chaos that had been their daily life in Cara'sir; she remembers Björk Eiðursdottir and Sigurð Jónson.  

Home.
Family.

The world seems to blur, but Sigrún blinks it back into focus.  When she speaks, she doesn't trust her own voice; she keeps it to a low murmur that did much to hide her tone: "... I hope so."

They leave the apartment, then: Sigrún, Susan, and /dev/grrl.  

Two hours later, Sigrún returns alone.