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{Sell Your Freedoms} She was known as a sweet girl, but in truth, she had become bitter, corrupted, dead. She was unable to hold onto the world she wanted. She kept herself in the fantasy world she built for herself. A world where Iain was never frustrated, a sweet older brother who regularly sewed her sheep plushies. A world where AOife was the sister she could always confide in, where Finny boy never ran away, where Arthur got better with her best efforts and they were a family, happy, even if a little broken.

But she acknowledged the truth, even if it was somewhat rudimentary in how she did. She wasn't the kind of perosn you would expect to take up such a trade, but at the same time, she was the perfect person to do so. She made herself known as a true neutral as a broker, a fairness that took no sides. It probably began when she was younger, when she know how to play off her sibling's fights in her own small ways. She found lying about certain things would calm things down. That fabricating information sometimes was the best way to peace, that the truth could choose the winning side. Of course, her approach today was different.

Of course, she never believed that she deserved the places that she dwelled in. Call it the idea of holiness. But how holy was she, selling information on her siblings? Of course she HAD some conscience and didn't sell them out when she judged that it wouldn't be in her favor, but even that was a fuzzy line. Sometimes it was the subconscious desire to punish those that broke her world that drove her to sell. The only clearly defined bound was to never sell anything regarding Arthur. Never would she sell a word on him. He did no harm in her world, she believed.

She found the easiest way to a man's secrets were through his heart. She established herself as a goody (or as good as an actress could be considered) in the world of the stage and the backstage, but she was careful. She let the aphrodisiac in her kiss and a smooth legato from her soprano voice slowly draw the hallelujah out of them. They would forget and she would have their secrets. If only she didn't have the weight of remembering and the occassional genuine feelings.

Regret is something she had become bed fellows with. Maybe she took after Estelle in this respect. She considered the French woman one of her closest friends, perhaps because Estelle had given her the power to win the chess game. Maybe it was her sympathy for the underdogs that was her downhall. Or her desire for just a bit of revenge for the people who took away her perfect world with their selfishness (though it was perhaps selfish of her to expect perfection from something so fragmented). But she fell from grace and there was no climbing up again.

Seamus had come to her on his knees, begging for absolution. Had she known what his absolution was... she had not forseen that she would be on her knees and murmuring a secondhand solliloquy to the heavens. She wanted the underdog to get a taste of victory, the sinner a piece of salvation, the lost lover a last word with the bride before she would be given away.

He had been plagued, as she was told, with drunken sadness as he watched life go by. He watched Donald and Lili's wedding from the shadows, watched as the two of them made a family and built a normal life together. A life that he couldn't have. He seethed with jealousy and turned around to go pursue a path he thought would get him such a life, but even she was gone. Aoife had found her own happiness. He continued waiting and wasting away, wary-eyed as her belly billowed like sails and bore Vash a daughter.

If only it was my own child.

He found more fault when she had accepted the proposal. Around that time, he began to plot. He had considered murdering Vash, but rationalized that would only leave her in melancholy. Not his intention. Same with taking he child and threatening to end her life if Aoife wasn't his. And so he found his plan.

Oh my dear, how I love and hate you so. But forever is how long I will be with you.

She sold him the information. When the night before the wedding was, where the couple would be, when they would be separated for the evening, even her dress colour... It was a plea to reconcile his past. And perhaps she wanted something to happen to her sister. Maybe she thought it wasn't fair for her sister to be so happy, yet she herself hasn't reconciled. She murdered her sister without remorse and she didn't know just how much she meant it.

Aoife Saoirse O'Neill was murdered the night before her wedding. She was put in bed, two hearts painted on the covers in her blood. He climbed into bed and closed her eyes, the traces of her last thought etched in them. He wasn't quite comfortable knowing what that last thought was. He shot himself in the temple and there was no pain. Only the pleasure of feeling Miss Aoife's bare body embraced in his.

Together forever.

Lea had watched.

Cerys sold her freedoms and kept to herself what she knew. She would punish herself in time and quietly wait as the loneliness ate away at her.

The church pews were empty. She felt the coldness of the cathedral upon her. She turned around, looking at the aisle Aoife would have walked down. Cerys walked the opposite direction, upon the aisle and through the church doors, disappearing into the night. There was a show at the cabaret tonight, and the show must go on.

{Broken Hearts, Broken Spirits} Once upon a time, he knew what he wanted. His future was very clear-cut, bright as a diamond, and the blue box was in the drawer, a choice he could make at any time. He just never worked up the courage to ask the question he knew the answer to. She was his golden apple, and she was the fairest of them all.

And she was unobtainable.

They lived together for two years, and he waited much too long. Miss Amelia Brownell Jones never became Mrs. Amelia Zwingli. He lost momentum and was dragged into duty against his will. He was bitter and that was that.

Then he found what he wanted. He perhaps would have been much faster had he not had bitterness and denial as his mistresses. He never learned from his mistakes. She took the form of the fiery Aoife Saoirse O'Neill, whose demeanor was a far cry from his dear Amelia. She was simply a colleague, an ally, trustable. Maybe that was the chink in the wall. Vash could trust no one, and she somehow earned that trust.

Their relationship was much more long-term. Fitting, given the circumstances. Along the way, there was a little bump in the road with the conception and birth of their daughter, a beauty by the name Lea Ailis O'Neill-Zwingli, who was unlike her mother with her feminine tendencies and unlike her father in how easily she threw her trust around. She had her mother's bravery (and admittedly, her badassery later on) and her father's worrisome disposition. They lived as a little family, and Vash, being the slow one he was, was not pushed into asking the question until Aoife had caught he bouquet at Lili's wedding (though technically, Peter caught it first and threw it again)

Cerys and Lili had gotten right to wedding planning, the bride rolling her eyes as the two of them "ooh'd" and "ahh'd" at colour swatches and dress designs. There was always Donald in the corner who kept sneering "It's about time" every time Vash was in the general area. Lea was to be the flower girl, Elliot the ring bearer.

That was, until he came home the night befor ehte wedding to find Aoife in bed with the bare body of a blue-eyed Irishman, her arms embracing his cold deadness. The bed was bloody, and not a breath passed through either of their bodies. Miss Aoife Saoirse O'Neill was most certainly dead, and her daughter had witnessed the vile deed.

Maybe it was the shock, but what was done was done.

Seamus had obviously committed the atrocity and there was no one left to take out his anger. Vash lost and his passions and exaltations were not enough. He lost strength and neglected Lea, failing to console his daughter, the sole witness of such an event. Lea was left to Lili as he fell into himself and wondered why things like this happened. Why his first loved failed with even his best efforts and his second taken away in such a manner. He didn't bother anymore. It was lucky Lili and her small family often took Lea in. If she didn't have at least that, who knows which path she would have repeated. Donald was her protection from the road he went down.

Vash sat at the top of a building, legs over the edge, but no intention to jump. He couldn't find worth in even that. Beside him was Miss Amelia Brownell Jones. There was a passion absent in both of their eyes, a perpetual silence that permeated their worlds. It wasn't going to be better and there would be no going back to how it was before. It was simply a mutual feeling at looking back at what was left. She put her head on his shoulder, but it was no gesture of affection or re-found intimacy. She was weary and wanted rest. He didn't protest. He put his arm around her shoulders, as if needing support to continue walking.

"I suppose we've made it full circle."

And then there was silence.