Run Over

I was being poked.

I counted them in my head.

One. Pause. Two, three. Pause. Fourfivesixseveneightninetenelev—

"What the hell do you want?!" I yelled into my pillow as I crushed it to my face. It felt as if I had only closed my eyes an hour ago.

"Oh my gosh! You're alive!" A delicate voice cried out.

Well duh...I thought moodily as I buried my face deeper into the pillow.

After a few moments of silence, I decided that I was curious enough to see who was delivering my tedious torture and lifted my head from the pillow. I was peering at a fifteen year-old girl who had black and pink hair. She jumped from her crouch beside me and gracefully fell onto my bed sitting Indian style. She stared at me.

"And you are...?" I started. She smiled widely and opened her mouth to respond.

"AVA!!" It wasn’t the girl’s voice since she grimaced. The shout had made the walls tremble. I looked at her curiously as she nodded.

"Hey, Winry have you seen--" My door had swung open to reveal a disheveled, out of breath Cian. He stopped mid-sentence and looked at the girl; she looked back with a weak, embarrassed smile. Cian’s lips turned down at the corners as he stepped into the room. He was like an exasperated father.

"Ava...Do you know how long I've been looking for you?" It sounded like she disappeared all of the time. Cian looked at the pleasantly confused look on my face and indulged me as he composed himself.

"Winry, I'd like you to meet my sister, Ava." Cian looked thoroughly annoyed and Ava pretended he never made the introduction.

"I heard that you brought a mortal back and I wanted to see her. You know that I've never seen one before..." Ava made the cutest pout that made me want to “aw” out loud but, that stopped when Cian shook his head and grabbed Ava by her upper arm. He began to drag her to the door

"Yes, you have and you won’t be repeating what you did." He looked over his shoulder at me. “Go back to sleep it’s only been a few hours.”

"But that was over two hundred years ago…" Cian looked down at the whining Ava, a threatening look in his eye.

"But you treated them like animals. You're not doing that to Winry."

The way he said my name struck me. It was completely different from Nate’s version because Cian said it gently and protectively. It gave me warm shivers all over, (is it’s even possible to get warm shivers) while Nate thoroughly freaked me out when he said it. Well anyway, once Cian had closed the door (chastising Ava all the way out), I flopped my head back down on my pillow and gave into the sleep tugging at my mind.

I was in my room. My parents yelling downstairs. The tears that I didn't want, were falling down my cheeks. I heard movement downstairs and a cry of pain and a thump. Daddy had hit Mommy again.

Slowly and carefully, I crawled out of bed and grabbed the duffel bag that I kept near my window. Gramps wouldn't mind if I stayed at his house again. He always understood. But as I walked up the steps of his house I saw something that --

I woke up and felt the trails of tears on my cheeks. It had been a while since I had that dream, ever since my parents got a divorce I pushed that dream away. I put the dream out of my mind and tried to turn over, but something prevented me from doing just that. I turned my head to look into grey eyes.

I squirmed out of Cian's arms and pulled the blankets up to my neck tightly. He sat up with a worried look.

The back of my hand wiped at the tears that had escaped from my dream.

"It's nothing..." I looked away from his face, shame bubbled thick in my gut. I was a lost puppy again: no idea what to do or where to go with my life.

"Not from what you mumbled."

My eyes shot to his and then to the ground, ashamed. Cian surprised me as wrapped his arms around me and pulled my body to his. I didn't react for a little while and then I just began to cry.

Cry for how my life had been, the dream I hadn't had for years, the screwed up situation I was in right now, the fact that my life could end at any moment. I just clutched the front of Cian's shirt and cried. He simply sat there, only moving to pull me onto his lap and to stroke my hair. In that moment, for the first time in a long time, I had someone to hold me when I cried and I took it for all it was worth.

When I began to hiccup, I pulled my head back and looked at the huge wet stain that I had left on his brown shirt. Roughly, I wiped my eyes with my sleeves and mumbled.

"Sorry. I didn't mean to....cry all over you like that." I continued to look at the bedspread like it was the most interesting thing in the world.

Wow, it looks so shiny in the afternoon light...Ack! Am I actually really interested in the bedspread?

I could see Cian shake his head out of the corner of my eye. I just couldn't face him right now. That dream...I hadn't seen it since I was thirteen; the dream of the night that everything went wrong.

After that night I didn't want anyone to take pity on me. It was the night all comfort was stripped away and I was in the real world. That pity was reserved for my grandfather and he was—I stopped thinking those painful thoughts and blinked away the few stray tears that had risen.

Heh, I must seem pretty pathetic right now...

A shaking sigh escaped me and Cian tightened his grip on me. He moved a hand from my waist and gently pushed my head onto his chest where he put his head on top of mine. I felt instantly warm to my toes and relaxed my tense muscles.

"I don't know why, but I feel so connected to you. I felt a stab in my chest and immediately thought of you. So I ran up here, past a very stunned looking couple who had been making out in the hallway," that part made me smile a little, it was the tone he used when he said it, "and I opened your door to see you sobbing in your sheets mumbling something about your grandfather..." His voice trailed off as I tensed in his hold. A few more tears escaped my eyes and I was about to wipe them away, but Cian beat me to it.

He lifted my chin and stared at the trails that the tears had left as he wiped away the new ones. I felt connected to him too. It was strange. It felt like I had been in his arms before.

“I just hadn’t had that dream in a while. I wasn’t ready for it again.” It wasn’t a complete lie and I felt a tiny bit better for being honest with him, even if the reason I was there was a falsity.

Cian brushed a few stray strands of hair behind my ear and let his hand linger on my jaw. I really wanted to know why it felt like I had known him for forever, why his warmth and touch wasn’t as foreign as it should have been. He seemed to be thinking the same thing. We both knew that the kiss last night felt like it hadn't been the first.

We stayed there looking into each others’ eyes as if they held the answer to the question we were both thinking of...

The red parlor couch was littered with various documents. Scribbles made them almost illegible and the writing wasn’t coherent. Only a few lights were on in the room where Winry had once practiced her fluttering lashes for the mongrels.

"So, Nate. How is the girl fairing?" the platinum blonde man asked as he waltzed in smiling widely.

I continued to stare out the window, but I felt a twinge of anger run through me. Quickly, I calmed and turned to the man, speaking evenly.

"Everything is not going according to plan.” I sighed letting his head fall back onto the arm of my couch. I tried to ignore the tightening knot of annoyance in my stomach. “Gregor...don't ask me that again you are not involved in this any longer. And the act you put on when you circled Winry and ordered me around did not please me..."

Gregor's eyes went wide with poorly disguised terror, "But that is what you told me to--"

"I KNOW WHAT I SAID," I bellowed sitting up faster than any human eye could follow. Gregor cowered for a minute, barely able to even look at me in the eye for fear of being struck. Only when I sat down heavily on the couch in the parlor, rubbing my temples was he able to look up at my face.

“I told you to give her the impression that I didn’t have a high rank. I didn't tell you to undermine me." I sounded exhausted even to my own ears when I fell back on the couch again.

Gregor looked at the ground, the shame evident in his eyes, "I'm sorry your majesty, I thought that was what you had wanted."

I sighed heavily then stretched my arms over the back over the couch and glared at the servant before me. The anger and annoyance was too much for me to bear. I put a hand to my head again to stop the pounding.

Well, my cover isn't blown yet, so at least she won't get weird around me...yet. Winry...how long has it been since I said your name...?

I had felt a jolt of sadness wash over me before and it had unsettled me. For me to feel her emotions unconsciously meant that it was intense, concentrated and I wondered what could have happened in her life to make her have such a severe reaction.

“Uh…sir?” Gregor’s cautious voice broke my thought.

I kept my hand over my face to prevent my anger from spilling out onto the floor, “What?”

“The decisions, sir?” I looked over the papers that were spread over the floor and couch for a few seconds. I sighed once again and pulled myself up and felt lost in the sea of words.

“We need an answer, sir.”

My hand fell from my face. “I know that!” My anger made him jump as it tumbled out onto the pages. “Leave.” Gregor bowed and left a little too quickly, closing the doors behind him.
I placed my head in my hands again and concentrated on a few words on a paper in front of me. After counting back from twenty, I gave a harsh laugh and spoke to the papers. “Just like my life.” I stood and walked out of the parlor, leaving the papers to their chaos.

Cian had finally gotten me to get out of bed and made me eat something. I became a little wary around him. That whole knew-you-before feeling was creeping me out a little. So, as I nibbled on the toast with butter he had made me (that was pretty much all I felt like eating at the time) he kept staring at me. Intently. Really intently. I kept shifting uncomfortably under his gaze until he finally got the clue and shook himself out of his thoughts.

“Sorry” was all he mumbled. Couldn't blame him. I felt the same way. We went from flirty to depressed in a matter of hours.

“How's Ava doing?”

Cian chuckled lightly at my comment, “I didn't exactly want you to meet her yet. She gets a little weird around mortals.”

I smiled and let a quiet chuckle escape me. That was when I began to think about how I was going to stay here for a while. I mean, Cian had told me that I could stay as long as I wanted, but I couldn't help but think that he might get a little suspicious when no one tried to contact me or if I didn't bother to try to contact anyone.

A sigh escaped me and Cian's attention turned back to me sharply. I blushed a little at his concern for me. It was still strange that we barely knew each other and yet we felt as though we had never spent a minute apart.

Ugh, I really have to stop thinking so deeply on these things...I could end up getting an aneurism.

I stood up, mumbled something about taking a shower before walking out, and leaving the half eaten toast on the counter of the amazingly big kitchen that I hadn't really paid attention to. I only knew that it was big.

I half-stumbled back to my room, my thoughts were somewhere else right then

Winry...

I jumped. Why in God's name was he calling me just as I was going to take a shower? I had just taken my clothes off for cripe's sakes! He had such a way with timing things when they were at their most perverted. I sighed and opened the connection to talk to the perv.

What do you want? I was just about to take a shower so hurry it up.

........Really? I wonder if I could assess your eyes from this connection. Do me a favor, stand in front of a mirror?

NO I WILL NOT YOU SICK-ASS VAMPIRE!!!

Ok, ok!! Don't shout!! Did you find anything out yet?

I stood there for a second, pinching the bridge of my nose to gather my thoughts before answering.

No, nothing that has to do with vampires or attacking them.

Hm...Have you felt strange lately? Any kind of weird feeling that made you wonder something?

I didn't know if I wanted to tell Nate about the whole crying thing and the moment that I had shared with Cian. What if Nate was the bad guy? Then again, it could go either way, but for now I liked Cian better. I'd tell Nate a half-truth, and then maybe I can figure out what was going on.

Yeah, it was like I had seen something before or been in a specific room before, but I would have remembered that.

There was no answer for a while.

I'll look into it...

But what is it?

I thought that I had sensed something when I had opened up the connection between us. I didn't know if it would stay dormant or surface. I looked through what I collected from your memories to see if there's something there...

Ok......YOU HAVE MY MEMORIES?!

Yes. And I do say that I will not need you to stand in front of a mirror now...loving the birthmark...

My frustration rose, he was thinking of my—well you don't need to know where the birthmark is. But somehow I found this situation a little funny. Don't ask me why. I might have been delirious from the lack of food. Yeah, that sounds good, let's go with that.

Fuming, I broke the contact and ignored Nate's pleading nudges at talking to me again. I knew he could force his way into my mind if he wanted to, but I liked the fact that he was at least asking permission in a way. It kind of surprised me that he wasn’t just tearing down my weak resistance and demanding that I listen. It was…nice (gag) of him.

Nevertheless, I took my shower rather angrily and sat on my bed refreshed and in new pajamas. I know I've mentioned this a hundred times before, but it was still sinking in. I was in the supernatural world now. I was being employed by a vampire to spy on a werewolf.

Just thinking that sentence made me think of a psychiatrist having a field day with me. I gave out an exasperated sigh, and flopped onto the bed, ready to pass out.

"I didn't kidnap you, ya' know." I jumped and turned my head to see Cian leaning on the doorway, smiling a little and taking in my stretched out form.

I smiled back and buried my face in the sheets, the way you do when you're embarrassed, "I know." I heard him push off of the door and jump onto the bed next to me. The bed sprung me up a little, turning me to face him slightly, and making me let out a little squeal. Cian looked at me as if I had six eyes.

"Was that you or the bed?" I buried my face into the sheets, again, but this time it was so I didn't blush. His laugh filled my ears and I flung my arm out blindly. A little “smack” was heard and then all was quiet for a long moment. Fearing him to be angry, I peeked up from the sheets only to laugh back into them.

Cian had a you-did-not-just-hit-me-and-I-will-so-get-you-back look on his face. Just to see his handsome features screwed up in that manner...oh, it was priceless.

"Are you sure that you are the leader of the werewolves?"

"Lycans." I looked at him strange for a minute. He sighed and spoke again, "The term we prefer is “lycans”. Werewolf sounds too…Hollywood. Too childish."

"Ahh."

"And yes, I am sure that I am the leader."

"Uh-huh..." I said in a playful doubting manner. He smiled broadly and I sat up to face him. "I think you're a big softie." I poked his chest lightly to emphasize my meaning, but I couldn’t keep the smile off my face.

His eyes went wide with fake shock and he looked around quickly, "How did you know?" I laughed again and he smiled wider. I loved his smile. It was so—so—well, I just can't explain it.

"But I thought the thing about the alpha males and all that..."

He nodded in understanding, "Well, that's all true. The strongest is the alpha male." Cian paused to flex his muscles while I giggled again, then he became serious, "But that doesn't mean that I have to act strong all of the time. The pack knows what I am capable of and they respect me for it. I also have to be the kind of...nurturing father that the new lycans need. When they come to us they need guidance and I give them just that."

I didn't realize that I had been staring at Cian until he reached out and brushed a lock of hair that had fell out of place behind my ear, his hand lingering on the bottom of my jaw. I felt myself blush.

UGH! DAMN YOU REDNESS!

I got the butterflies-in-the-stomach and that déjà vu feeling as well. Cian obviously felt it too because his eyes seemed to look at me but not take me in…like he was deep in thought.

Suddenly he stood up from the bed and held out his hand to me.

"Come on, I want to show you something..."