#lost eye in horrific attack to save bonnie

[thebirthofvenusfly]

i love that siffrin is the rogue of party with his clever wit and quick reflexes and cool gloves and dagger and fun vibes and mysterious eye patch and it's literally all a trauma response and/or nervous habit

[the-metal-reaper]

An Eye for an Eye - Chapter 5

Well, here’s the final chapter of An Eye for an Eye! I loved experimenting with a different setup for this tale, placing it outside of one of the games. It’s been a lot of fun! 

did i cry while writing this? yes. a lot. i love my kiddos, sue me.

---

Those eyes. She had seen them far more times than any person should. She had seen them on Michael, while he stood paralyzed in front of those nightmare-fueled steel monstrosities. Charlie had seen them on herself in the reflection of the rain-soaked glass of the window looking into Fazbear’s Family Diner, with the silhouette of her killer behind her. She had even seen them on her own father, as he stared into the emotionless eyes of Charlie’s former suit. And yesterday, she saw them on William as he stared at her through the mask of the Spring Bonnie suit just before the springlocks thrust themselves into his skin, shoving jagged mechanical parts right into his ribcage. Even when she shuts her eyelids as tight as she can, and feels her tears dripping down her face, those eyes still haunt her. They’re burned into her retinas. 

Charlie hates this, hates that she’s crying, and hates herself most of all. Why was she so easily convinced to kill? Charlie was supposed to be the protector of lost souls, and yet she had created more. She was no better than William.

She looks up at Michael, who’s sitting next to her, facing the television. Neither of them had gotten much sleep. A rerun of an old soap opera, one that Michael had watched religiously in his youth, plays on the set, but neither of them are really watching it. 

Michael wraps an arm around Charlie’s shoulder and pulls her closer. He runs his gloved fingers through her short brown locks and smiles a little to himself. He had almost forgotten what satisfaction and contentment felt like, but now it flowed through him like blood. His mission was complete.

On his side, he feels something cool. He looks down at Charlie, eyebrows quirking up with worry, and sees her tears. All at once, his peace drains to gnawing anxiety.

“Hey,” Michael smiles down at Charlie, who wipes her tears with a damp sleeve before meeting his gaze. “What do you say we… go stop by Fazbears? Say hi to your dad?”

Blood rushes to Charlie’s ears. She can barely hear Michael over the sound of her racing heartbeat, and she struggles to keep her face calm. The simple thought of that place is barely tolerable without her consciousness getting hijacked by images of the horrific monstrosities Charlie had committed the night before. But she needed to stay positive. She had to. 

If she didn’t have her cheer, what did she have?

“Sure,” Charlie smiles for the first time that day. Michael smiles back, relieved.

They hop into the car, and Michael skids down the street, almost jumping the curb. Charlie hangs onto the seat behind her for dear life. 

She laughs, “Why the heck are you driving so fast?!”

“Because,” Michael blows past the ‘Speed Limit: 20 mph’ street sign at 60, “it’s fun.”

Leaving dark tracks behind it, the purple Oldsmobile screeches to a halt in front of Fazbear’s glistening glass doors. The sun has just barely passed the horizon, so Michael’s face is cast in shadow as he lightly taps on the front door to the Pizzaria. No response. The main room, which is visible through the slightly frosted glass, is silent and dark. It may have been early, but Henry should’ve been there. He managed the place.

Charlie sees Michael’s confusion and concern. “Hey, I can unlock the door if we need.”

“That sounds good.” 

With a nod, Charlie pushes herself through the glass and clicks the lock open. She goes deeper into the restaurant, reaching for the light switch to turn on the lights, when she sees them.

Freddy, Bonnie, Chica, Foxy. Staring down at her from the stage with lifeless eyes. Eyes that had been filled with life by the Marionette, and emptied of it by the same hand. 

Charlie hadn’t realized she was crying until she felt Michael’s hand on her shoulder.

“Let’s find your dad and get out of here,” he murmurs. The spirit wraps her arms around Michael in response. Together, they walk through the restaurant, while Charlie tilts her head away from the stage. 

Michael sees a dim light from a doorway down the hall. He leads Charlie there, only to see a man slumped over at the manager’s desk, beer bottle in hand and tiny television screen illuminating his face.

 Sighing, Michael reaches over the desk and shakes him awake. “Henry.”

Henry’s eyebrows quirk up in confusion, then he smiles with recognition. “Hey, guys.”

“Were you here all night?

“Uh, yeah,” He blinks, rubbing his eyes, “I was watching William.”

Gesturing towards the TV screen, Henry shows Michael and Charlie the camera footage of the door to the safe room, which has remained the same since they locked the door. 

“So, how are you?” Henry smiles.

“Well…” Staring at the floor, Michael says, “We’re thinking about moving. Leaving Hurricane.”

“What? Why?”

“Too many memories. Ones that I’d rather not remember. And besides--” Michael turns to Charlie, then falls silent. She’s so dim that she’s barely visible, her face buried in Michael’s coat. He puts an arm around her shoulders.

“But you just got here!” To Michael’s surprise, Henry sounds almost angry. He rises to his feet and walks around the desk to stare Michael down. “You can’t leave Hurricane.”

“Henry. The only reason we were here was to deal with William.”

“‘Deal with him?!’ Let’s not tiptoe around this, Michael. You convinced literal children to murder him for you because you just didn’t want to do it.”

Michael practically spits, “I did what I had to. I saved your life, for God’s sake. You’re just a coward.”

“A coward? No, I just have a moral compass. On the other hand, you are exactly as your father described. Soulless.”

A blur of movement brushes past Henry and smashes into the desk behind him. Oak splinters under Michael’s curled fist, and he glares red-hot lasers through Henry’s eyes. “I’m done taking your shit, Miller. We’re leaving. That’s final.” Michael stuffs his shaking hands into his pocket to avoid attacking Henry. 

“We? If you think you’re taking my daughter from me, you’re sadly mistaken.” Henry jabs his finger into Michael’s sunken chest, not even sparing a glance at Charlie, who has long since moved away from the argument in favor of hiding in the corner. 

“I—” Turning away to look for Charlie, Michael slows. His red-hot anger is cooled by the pitiful sight of his best friend curled up on the floor, her normally fluorescent features faded with fear. “Listen, I’m not trying to make Charlie’s choices for her. She can choose whether or not to move with me.”

“You’re not pulling that, Michael. Let her choose, so that way you can pull your little voodoo magic and put her back under your spell like always. Lottie’s going to stay with me, her father.”

“‘Voodoo magic?’ You mean being her friend? That’s the thing, Henry, you don’t really care about Charlie. Not like she is now. You just want your Little Lottie back.”

“Of course I do! Your father may have taken her away from me, but you’re the one who’s corrupted her, who’s turned her into something she’s not. You’re the one who made her kill someone!”

Henry gasps in a few breaths of air, his finger wavering in the air in front of Michael’s eyes. He closes his hand into a fist, and rises to put his face in the empty air where his fist was.

“So tell me, who really killed Lottie?” Henry spits, “William, or you?”

The linoleum tiles crack under Michael’s heel as he shoves Henry back into the desk, sending the older man flying over the desk and into the wheeled chair behind him. Michael wheels around, pausing when he sees Charlie’s apparent absence from the room. 

Facing the floor, he whispers, “I’m sorry I fucked everything up.”

Just as quickly as he ended the argument, Michael storms out of the room, slamming the door behind him.

“Asshole.” Henry growls at the closed door. Slowly, he pulls himself back to his feet, muttering yet more profanities as he does so.

He looks up at his daughter with an apologetic smile. Charlie stares back with a combination of anger and fear on her face as her cheeks sparkle with tears.

Pointing at the door, Charlie stammers out, “Listen, I-I’m gonna—”

“I meant what I said.” Henry busies himself by fiddling with his desk chair, trying to get the wheels to spin again. “I know he’s your friend, Lottie, but I just don’t think Michael is trustworthy.” 

Charlie’s hands curl into fists, but the only words she can muster are, “Michael’s always there when I need him. An-and I can’t say the same for you.”

She flies through the door, barely even noting the unpleasant wave of nausea that hits her as she does. Before she can even so much as take a breath, Charlie’s in the dining room, staring up at the stage. A muffled sob escapes her lips as she stares into Fritz—Foxy’s— lifeless eyes. Charlie turns away, wanting desperately to look at anything else. As she finally regains a slice of her sense, Charlie briskly walks through the booth seats and out the front doors.

The evening sun cast long shadows across the road, obscuring most of Michael’s face. He sits on the curb, looking at some distant point in the horizon while his cigarette smoke swirls around him in a cloud, concealing his face further. Through the smoke Michael sees a familiar figure join him on the curb. They sit in silence for a moment.

“You’re not coming with me, are you,” Michael says quietly. The smoke disperses, and Charlie can see the resigned frown on Michael’s face.

Charlie’s eyebrows quirk up in horror. She bites her lip, choosing her words carefully. “I’m not sure if I ever talked about it much, but… my years as the Marionette were hell.”

Michael looks up quickly, confusion dancing across his face.

“I was so alone, Mike. My d—Henry stopped coming to the restaurant, you never went back, even William left. I was so… cold.” Tears begin to well in Charlie’s eyes once again, but she grits her teeth and blinks rapidly. She shouldn’t cry again. She can’t. “Gabe, Jeremy, Suzy, even Fritz were always angry. Not just at William, at the world too. And I let myself get angry too.” Charlie pulls Michael’s arm into her lap and rests her head on his shoulder. “But then you came along.” A smile dawns on her face. “You helped me remember who I was, Mike. Who I am now. I don’t think I ever thanked you for that. So, thank you.” 

Michael pulls Charlie into a tight embrace, pushing her cheek up against his razor-like collarbone. His arms are shaking. 

“That’s a no to staying, by the way.” Charlie laughs. Michael smiles gratefully as a response. 

They sit in each other’s arms for a while, watching the golden sun light the horizon on fire as it sinks below. 

Michael glances down at his companion. “Are you okay?”

“I don’t know,” she frowns. “I guess I just thought he’d be different.” 

“I’m sorry.”

Charlie looks up at him, catching his gaze. “Don’t be. I have you, Mike. You’re all I need.”

---

Thank you so much for reading!! I’ll be posting art again starting next week.

Previous | Where it all started

[imagineclaireandjamie]

Flood my Mornings: Fight

This story takes place in an AU in which Jamie travels through the stones two years after Culloden and finds Claire and his child in 1950 Boston.

See all past installments via Bonnie’s Master List

Previous installment: Wee hours

August, 1951

It was a blissful serendipity, and so rare, so unheard of as to be little short of  breathtaking: 

....having awakened well before dawn to find myself not only feeling oddly refreshed and rested, but with both children still sound asleep, the entire house to myself, and energy to be at my own personal leisure. 

Not that I would have minded if Jamie had been about; quite the contrary, for unoccupied hours together were more rare these days, what with the constant demands of the children and the need for Jamie to keep a regular schedule at the barn. We still utilized Penelope, of course, but mostly to keep Bree occupied during the day, give us all a fighting chance at being well-fed, and allow me to get a bit of sleep. By the time Jamie got home most days, Penelope had gone, meaning that we were both on-duty in those evening hours. 

Yes, I would have loved to share the morning stillness with Jamie, and it was still possible, as he could return from his Saturday morning walk at any moment. Still, I was luxuriating in the solitude, soaking it up into my tired limbs like water into parched roots.  I kept on pricking up my ears, waiting in dread for a tell-tale wail or, worse yet, a ‘Mummyyyyyy?’ from the other end of the house. None came, which meant that every single minute as I made tea and toast, as I took a hot bath while reading a few chapters of Simone de Beauvoir, was an unexpected gift, filling me up like a helium balloon with contentment and, dare I say it...glee! 

As I finished toweling off and slipped into my robe, I was still more ecstatic to learn from the chiming of the hall clock that it was only 6:00. Feeling like I could conquer anything motherhood had to throw at me that day, I was positively striding as I made my way to the kitchen to make another cup of tea, such that I nearly ran headlong into Jamie, who had apparently just come in by the back door. My gasp was a horrific sound, arrowing around the narrow walls. 

It wasn’t the simple reflex of being startled, seeing him suddenly when I’d thought myself all alone. No, in my unusually-present state of mind, my eyes had immediately taken in his actual appearance. “What the bloody hell happened to you?” came the urgent whisper painfully from my throat as I stared at him, wide-eyed in alarm. 

His skin was beet-red from head to toe, with sweat having soaked through his clothing and saturated his hair. There were runnels flowing freely down his face and neck, and his breathing was so labored that I leapt forward at once to check his heart. He waved me off, and I gasped even louder at seeing his hands. The skin of all his knuckles was raw and bleeding, flayed off in terrible, dirty grazes.  “Dear God!! Jamie, were you attacked??” I demanded, my voice raising several octaves in panic. “Did—?” 

“No,” he got out, though his chest was still heaving as he gulped air, swaying a bit. “I’m—fine, lass—” I started to protest that he bloody the hell was NOT fine, but he cut me off. “I was only running the trails. Naught to fret over.” He bent to kiss me, then thought better of it, given the sweat, shrugged, and moved past me into the kitchen. 

“’Running?’“ I said incredulously, following him. “What, from a BEAR? Jamie, you look—” 

“I ken how I look, Sassenach,” he said, rather tersely, grabbing a glass from the cupboard and filling it at the sink. “I went a wee bit overboard wi’ the speed, but I’m fine.”

“I know you didn’t bloody up your hands running, Jamie,” I said, starting to get angry. “Even if you’d tripped and fallen, you’d have skinned the palms, not the knuckles.” He muttered something under his breath in gaelic as he finished gulping. “Well? Were you fighting someone? Did you get in a fight??” 

“No,” he said at once, still trying to catch his breath. It wasn’t just the exertion, though. His teeth were slightly gritted and—yes, damn him!— he was avoiding my eye. “Please, just believe me, Claire there’s nothing to—” 

“Just believe? When you come home bloodied, James Fraser, clearly being evasive about it,” I said, trying not to raise my voice, “I have absolutely every right to ask and worry. And you not telling me what the devil is going on is—It’s just—” 

He held up a hand, and I surprised even myself by falling silent at once. “I’ll tell ye, if ye insist, Sassenach,” he said, sounding defeated. “But will ye give me another several moments to calm my breath?” 

I opened my mouth, then nodded, crossing my arms. He drank another glass of water and closed his eyes, breathing deeply, leaning over the sink. 

“Will you at least let me bandage your hands?” I said stiffly. 

He looked over his shoulder at me in surprise, and after only a moment’s hesitation, smiled faintly and nodded. 

I retrieved the First-Aid box in silence and set it on the counter next to the sink. Just as wordlessly, he shook off his hands after rinsing them in cool water and presented them to me. Most of the dirt that had been in the raw flesh had been washed off, but I still pulled out the antiseptic and carefully cleansed the area. He winced, and had to grit his teeth against the stinging onslaught, but he didn’t pull away or cry out. 

As I was just beginning the tricky task of fastening the bandages, he very quietly said, “I punched a tree.” 

In the immediate split-second following, I very nearly burst out laughing AND unleashed a withering barrage of ‘you WHAT??’ and its subsequent questions and demands. The result of this internal war was stalemate, my face remaining blank as paper as I simply said, “Why?” 

Jamie didn’t respond at once, and I was obliged to look up into his face. He, though, was staring down at his feet, clearly not wanting to look at me. 

I resumed the bandaging, torn between loving patience and snapping at him to get the bloody hell on with it. I gave him a bit more time before firmly asking again, “Why, Jamie?” 

A beat. Then—

“After Culloden....” 

Two less likely words to emerge from his mouth in that moment, I couldn’t have fathomed. 

We had scarcely spoken of the battle, nor of the two years that followed before he came through the stones. He’d tried, from time to time, in response to careful questions on my part, but one or the other of us would change the subject in the end, the horrors of those memories doing more harm than good in the revisiting. I’d hardly any notion of what those years had been like other than the broad brushstrokes of pain, fear, loneliness, and heartbreak.  To hear him freely volunteer the information now...

“I felt the fight within me die, that very day.” He spoke in a near-monotone, the bones and muscles of his face set in a rigidity that terrified me nearly as much as the words themselves. “It wasna only the battle, little of it as I recall; but also the devastation of the battlefield as I lay in fever....hearing the Redcoats shooting the prisoners, my friends.” He spoke slowly, as though forcing himself to give every single experience the respect of full, heartbreaking acknowledgement. “Seeing the bodies heaped high to be burned....the fever burning within my flesh as I longed to be killed alongside them.... Then being brought to Lallybroch; the slow healing as I learned to walk again.... the cave.” 

I said nothing as I kept at my work of bandaging him, to give him the privacy to speak, but I very softly ran my thumb across the back of his hand. A gentle pressure warmed me in return. His voice didn’t change, though. 

 “Between the horrors of war and knowing I’d lost you forever, mo chridhe, any fight within me was gone, immediately.” His voice was steady, but hoarse and low, hardly to be heard. “Every new day was merely another bootprint, stamping it further and further into the ground. Loneliness, still more; hunger, still more; longing and regret, still more, still deeper.”

The morning stillness, so soothing and peaceful a quarter hour ago, now seemed to hiss with ghostly shrieks. 

“’Fight’?” I asked carefully as I gave him back his hands, wanting to make sure I understood; and feeling it the only thing right to ask, in that moment.  

“The spirit, the— power that turns man into warrior. Rage, I suppose; whatever fire within him that propels him into dangers he ought naturally to fear. I had it once, ken?”

I nodded. I had known him as Red Jamie for longer than I’d known him as Jamie of the twentieth century. I knew how that ‘fight’ within him, as he put it, had enlivened and driven him, for better or worse, along his path of life, from cattle raids to prison breaks to battle charges. I knew the certainty and the safety of that power, as well as the almighty terror it could unleash. 

“That power was incarnate within me for so long, being so one with my life as a man that when I felt it snuff out that day, along with the losses I’d suffered already..... I didna ken who I was, Claire, or if I was anything at all. Most days in that cave, when I had nothing save time to think, I was convinced I wasna.” 

A flicker of memory stirred, a flash of that that first morning after he’d found me, that same haunted voice. 

I havena been a man since you left...before Culloden

“After I found you and Brianna,” he was saying, the slightest spark lightening his voice now, “Every day since then, I’ve been—Christ, so happy, unbearably so; so blessed by joy and plenty that I scarcely gave it a thought, that warrior spirit that used to reside in my body, the man that was capable of such violence. Nor did I miss it,” he said with sudden urgency, meeting my eyes for the first time, his own burning intensely with the need to be believed. “Unlike in the cave, when such fire might have sustained me, the absence of it here, in this life—It was a relief, Claire. I no longer needed it to ken who I was or whether or not I was being a good man, ye see?” 

I did see. But I also hadn’t overlooked his use of the past tense. “And now?” 

He let out a breath, relieved. “These past few months, even before Ian arrived, I found myself more and more feeling the sparks of that fire again, blazing through my body. I couldna ignore it for long. For a time, I was able to dispatch it by hard work outdoors at the barn—or else by coming to your bed,” he said, a bit sheepishly. “But it’s a bit like your Immunities, I suppose. What might once have cured an illness immediately due to the novelty of the remedy might be insufficient to the same task years later, because the body has adapted to it, making the potency less keenly felt. Did I get that right?” he asked suddenly with a brief tug of a smile. 

“Close enough,” I said, returning it, though my belly still seemed full of writhing worms.  “So you...punched a tree as a new kind of remedy? Because it’s getting worse?” I personally had suggested that method to him years ago, on the road with the rent party. The thought of him in enough distress and frustration now to necessitate it again was both alarming and, if I were being honest, a bit hurtful. 

He nodded, shame clouding his expression again. “Whenever I can, I’ll go running. I’ve seen folk do so for recreation, and thought it might help; which it has. Rather than walking in peaceful contemplation, as I used, I’ll run, as fast as I’m able, getting as exhausted as I possibly can, and it—It helps, usually. Gets it out of my system, as it were. Only today, I’d been running and running, and I could still feel the grip of it upon me, such that once would have stoked me to kill a man with my bare hands, and I—” 

He cut off quite abruptly and turned aside, closing his eyes as he leaned his back against the counter, torn between dismay and fury at himself, by the way his mouth and jaw were working. I thought about putting my arms around him, of holding and soothing him, but I knew him well enough to know that it wasn’t yet the time. I leaned against the counter next to him without compelling him to look at me. 

“It was a relief to be free of it,” he said again, tightly, “to have moved, or so I thought, beyond it. Now that it’s back... I dinna ken what I’m to do about it.” 

“Was today the first time that it—” I groped for an appropriate word. “—overflowed like that?” 

“No. Several times a week, I’ll feel my heart quicken and my breath come fast through my nostrils and I feel as though I must do—SOMETHING—or die.” He winced as he unconsciously clenched his battered fists. “Usually I’ll just leave and stand on my own for a time until I feel myself calming, or else I’ll be short wi’ someone in my irritability. I’ve not yet resorted to physical violence, but sometimes I—” 

“I’ve never seen that from you at home,” I said softly, meaning to reassure him. “Never.” 

“Aye, but I work verra hard to make it so,” he said, a tinge of mournfulness now showing in his voice. “You and the bairns are my life and my joy, and would swear on my mother’s grave that I should deplete all my strength before letting myself be aught but gentle wi’ the three of ye, and yet still there are times when it comes verra close, and I—” 

Before I could interject, he swore and threw his hands up in despair. “I mean, have men changed so greatly in these two hundred years that they no longer have such feelings to control? Am I just an animal, then, that I canna—” 

“They do,” I said at once. “The world has changed, of course, and it’s no longer a fact of life that men must be physically ready to fight, but certainly, many feel some of that latent drive within them; a greater number than you’d know by looking at them, I think.” 

“And what do they do about it?” he asked, looking over at me eagerly, genuinely needing the answer. 

“Well....” I sighed, feeling the bleakness of the world suddenly crowding around me. “The worst will make headlines. They’ll murder or violate, or pursue lives of crime; perhaps they’ll become soldiers to do such things under the government’s banner. The more common sort might find simply themselves always angry, with all that energy pent inside them. A good many will drown the feelings in drink, or take that need for physical violence out upon those closest to them—their wives and children, usually.” 

I had been talking more or less without thought, letting the speculations roll from my tongue unchecked, fascinated by them even as I formed the words. Coming back to a sharper awareness, though, I looked up at Jamie, who had gone pale. “I swear to ye, Claire,” he said, face hard with resolve and hurt and fear, “I wouldna ever—EVER—” 

“I know,” I said at once, almost laughing with the absurdity of it as I came around to stand in front of him and take his face in my hands. “I know that. You made me a promise, remember?” 

Attempting to lighten the mood with oddly-fond memories of the one time he had beaten me apparently was not the correct move. He looked still more devastated at the reminder, so before he could speak, I cut him off. “You said it yourself: you are a warrior, and—” 

“Were,’  he corrected. 

“Are,” I insisted right back. “It’s in your bones and your brain, still, just as surely as your knowledge of languages or chess. It’s part of you; but you’ve never been cruel, Jamie, and I have absolute trust that you’d never allow it to consume you like those types I was blethering on about.” 

“Still...” he said with a shame-faced shrug, “I might lash out when I oughtn’t, or say something to the bairns in such a state that—” 

“Well that’s just bloody being a parent, isn’t it?” I said with feeling, and he was so shocked that he laughed. “No matter how carefully we try, there will be days when both of us will snap and shout and lash out with our words or need to leave the room to compose ourselves. That’s being a human, not being a man,” I said, my voice dropping suddenly back to tenderness. “I’m not saying I feel the same things as you, but you’re not completely alone in it, either.” 

He took my hand and kissed it before laying it back against his cheek, keeping his own atop it. 

“I think you should join Charlie’s hurling league.” 

“What??” That startled him enough that both our hands dropped. 

“I didn’t think of it before, but that’s the positive side of what men nowadays do to cope with their fighting impulses,” I said excitedly. “They’ve got more leisure time than you or your brother-in-law or your father or any of your ancestors had, and so they play athletic games, to run and knock one another about. Gives them a chance to get their rage and energy out, in a way that people enjoy and encourage! So, I think it would be a good idea for you to do likewise!” 

“Aye, it’s a thought,” he said, seeming actually to consider before shaking his head with decision. “But no. I appreciate the suggestion, but I’ll be fine.” 

“If your idea of ‘fine’ is coming home every weekend with bloodied knuckles, it absolutely is nothing of the sort,” I said dangerously. “Why not join? You adore Charlie and his mates, don’t you? It would give you a lovely chance to—” 

“I’ll not give up our spare time together, Sassenach,” he said sincerely, “at the evenings or the Week Ends only to play games with the lads. T’would be— selfish and damnably frivolous. It isna fair to ye, nor the bairns, and—” 

I stopped him with a finger over his lips. “It isn’t frivolous. It isn’t unfair to me. It’s an hour or two a week at most, and if it helps you with this, then it’s well worth it for all of us.” He was unconvinced, but I soldiered on. “Besides, when the weather is nice, and when Ian gets a bit older, the children and I can come watch you play! It’ll be good to get out and socialize more.” Slumped as he was against the counter, I was able to thunk my forehead gently against his and give him a playful, wheedling smile. “I want you to try it, love. Please?” 

He stayed stonefaced for a few moments, then a slow grin began to spread. “Alright then.” 

“Excellent,” I said, kissing him on the mouth. “Something tells me it will be MUCH more fun to punch Irishmen than trees. At least they’ll give you a run for your money!”