onlythebranch | (no subject)

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saoirse

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Mad Sweeney doesn't know what he's sensing, but whatever it is, it sure as fuck isn't human.

It's not like he has some sort of special talent for it, he's sure he walks past magical creatures every bloody day in Darrow and doesn't realize what they are. Sitting beside Spike in the bar he hadn't immediately been able to tell he was a vampire, but this is different. This is familiar. This is something from home.

That thought both excites him and frightens him just a little. Something familiar might be okay, but something from home might be a fucking disaster. Something from home might just be gunning for him or it might have claws or it might be something in Wednesday's pocket just as much as he is and that's not the sort of place anyone should be.

Best that he avoid it, whatever it is, but still he finds himself smoking and walking, moving in the direction that he feels pulled.

What he doesn't expect is a bloody playground, a tiny child and a big fluffy dog. It's the sort of thing that should seem like a joke, only he knows it isn't. This entire city should be a big fucking joke and it's not, it's real and he's here and whatever this little girl is, it breathes like Ireland.

As he approaches slowly, he wonders if she can feel him, too. If she has the slightest fucking idea what he is.

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A leprechaun!? Her eyes light up at the prospect, and she rushes forward. Cu barks and bounds along beside her, mostly just happy to be moving. He woofs and drops into a play pose, then sits when Saoirse points at the ground. She turns back to the man — a leprechaun! — and bounces a little on her knees. She reaches out hesitantly; she doesn't want to take the coin if she's not allowed, but she wants to see.

"You want it?" he asks, then holds the gold coin on the edge of his thumbnail and extends his hand toward her. "Go ahead. You might be the only person in this bloody place that'll recognize it for what it is."

But maybe not. The coins are old. Irish and heavy gold, but very old, too. It may be she's from a more modern time and won't recognize it at all. There's magic in her to be certain, but that doesn't always mean the same thing across the board.

When he offers her the coin, she looks shocked, amazed, and utterly touched. She hesitates to reach for it. Leprechaun money must be very special, and she can't imagine that he offers it out to very many people. But . . . she knows the stories. Leprechauns are tricky faeries, and she's just a little girl. It would be easy to trick her, most days, and since she'll be moving in with Greta soon, she doesn't want to accidentally hurt her because she was tricked.

So, her expression turns solemn, and she shakes her head, holding her shell close so she doesn't try to reach for the coin.

"Smart," he says with a grin. "But I don't make deals, lass, not the kind sealed with coin. And I don't fuck with children."

Teenagers, adults, they're another story altogether, because they're the ones who fuck him over in return. The ones who offer things to him, make him real, then take it all away when things begin to work in his favour. They're the ones who ask for love and then forget to thank him when it comes pouring down on them.

"Besides," he adds, then turns out one pocket of his jacket. A shower of gold coins falls out, raining down on the grass, and he'll leave them there. None of them are the one he wants anyway. "I got plenty."

She gasps a little, and almost drops her shell when she lifts one hand to cover her mouth. He has so many! No wonder he'd offered her one. And although he'd used a naughty word, she understands that he's not going to hurt her for taking it, even if he is a trickster. Slowly, she extends her hand out for the coin he's offered.

Carefully, Sweeney places the coin in the palm of her hand, then nods as if that's exactly where it's supposed to be.

"There y'go, lass," he says. "Perhaps it'll bring you a shade more luck than I've had in the past few months." He'll make no promises simply because he can't, not in his current state, and he'll not fuck with a child, just as he's said, but he can hope it might bring a bit of luck her way.

"And now," he adds. "What are you exactly?"

Saoirse pockets the coin carefully, pushing it deep and sound, where she knows it won't be likely to move or be lost. That done, she lifts the shell, and she plays the notes that live in her bones, that guide her fingers over the holes in the shell as they have every to me she plays. The soilse brighten up again, and swirl around her and the leprechaun both.

Saoirse has never tried this before, but she imagines the soilse creating the shape of a seal in the air. They don't listen, of course, because they have a mind of their own. But they're brighter this time, and her shadow is unmistakably inhuman as it's cast behind her. Cu woofs helpfully, once, and Saoirse turns to see it.

Even more, the shape of a seal is visible in her shadow, in the profile of her nose, and she looks at it proudly before turning to see if the leprechaun has noticed.

Mad Sweeney watches the lights, then the shadow taking shape and he looks back to the girl, an eyebrow arched before he says, "Is that right? And where's your skin these days, love?"

He's never heard of a selkie living on land by choice. Not for any length of time, anyway. There's always some asshole who steals their skin and forces them to stay and eventually they always go back, because no one wants to be forced to live out of their natural habitat.

She lifts her shoulders, and as she stops playing, the lights fade again. She can't speak without her coat, and so she can't explain that it's somewhere at home, hidden by her dad. She considers for a moment, then casts her eyes about for a stick or the like.

When she finds one, she has to push Cu off from trying to play with her so she can draw in the dirt. She draws her island, with Mac Lir neighboring it, and her coat floating somewhere overhead with a question mark.

That's not odd, he thinks, that she doesn't know. That seems to be the entire theme of what the selkies are, women who get trapped on land by the men who don't want them to go. It's got to be different for a child, but even so, he thinks it's pretty fucked up.

"Someone took it, then?" he asks. "Hid it from you?"

She doesn't talk, but he doesn't think that's such an odd thing. There are plenty of reasons not to talk and for a very long time, he didn't either. Then again, he'd been a fucking bird.

She nods, and taps her throat, trying to indicate that that's why she can't speak. Then she uses her foot to scrape away her drawing. In its place, she writes, dad took it. I think he's scarred Ill leave like mum did. Her writing isn't as tidy or correct as it would be in her notebook, but it's hard to write with a big stick as a pen! So she hopes that the big leprechaun still understands her.

Mad Sweeney reads the words she scratches into the dirt, frowning deeply as he does. People are selfish, it's just an inherent part of their nature and there's no avoiding it, but there always seems to be an exception in someone's life. Usually, from what he's seen for hundreds of years, the one thing that can make someone less selfish than they usually are is their child.

Not in this case. And that's fucked up.

"And now you're here instead," he says. "Fuck of a lot of good it did him, then, taking your skin."

She watches him solemnly for a moment, then scratches out the writing in the sand and scrawls out, I think it is making me sick. She looks at him, tips her head to the side, then adds, I think I need my coat or I will go away like mum did.

It makes Mad Sweeney want to find her father and punch him until he tells her where her bloody coat is. The poor child thinks it's making her sick, not having it, and any parent who'd do that isn't much of a parent at all, in his opinion.

Not that he's ever given being a parent much real thought.

"Y'think it's here?" he asks. "In Darrow?"

She shakes her head. Putting down her stick and taking up her shell, she looks at him pointedly. Then she plays a few notes. The soilse rise up at the sound and twinkle around the leprechaun, then fade when she stops playing. Once more trading her shell for the stick, she writes, They take me to my coat. And, as he's witnessed, they haven't gone very far, so Saoirse has determined that it's not anywhere in Darrow.

Then, realizing they've been talking all this time and they don't even know each other's names, she writes Saoirse on the dirt, and makes an arrow pointing to herself. Then she writes Cu with an arrow pointing to her dog, even though his collar has a name tag.

"Fine Irish name," he says with a smile when she writes her name in the dirt.

There aren't many people in Darrow who know him as his true name and he thinks he prefers to keep it that way. But it's a name that she might recognize and so he leans in slightly, as if someone else might here.

"I was born Suibhne mac Colmain," he tells her. "But don't you call me that. For a long time now I've been known as Mad Sweeney."

She's never heard the name before, and he doesn't have to worry about her every calling him that: she can't call him anything, since she can't speak, after all! But she knows the name 'Sweeney' at least. Greta's mentioned a Sweeney that she leaves things for, but she had no idea he was actually real. Like maybe he was a story that Greta made up to make Saoirse feel better about being the only Irish magic person in all of Darrow.

"So now we're well and met," he says, "you tell me if your skin ever shows up here. I'll help you t'find it, lass."

Because it's fucked that someone's hid it from her, just as it's fucked Shadow gave away his lucky coin. They're not in the same boat, not entirely, but he feels a bit of a kinship with her loss, because his own loss often feels like a piece of him has gone missing. As if it's been taken and tossed away and no one knows where it find it.

And that pisses him the fuck off.

She nods, face turning grateful. She thinks the soilse will help her find it very easily, but she'll still take all the help she can get. She cleans up the writing in the dirt with her foot, then scrawls out Greta's name with a wobbly question-mark next to it. She wants to know if this is the same Sweeney that she's told him about. Just because his name is Irish doesn't mean he's the only one. Saoirse knows there are a lot of people named 'Jack.' Like Jack the giant killer! That's not the same Jack as her Jack.

"Oh, yeah, I know Greta," Mad Sweeney answers with a smirk. Most of the time he thinks Greta probably wishes she'd never run into him in the first place, never started leaving offerings for him. He's a pain in the ass, he's an asshole and he's not about to soften himself for her.

"That who's lookin' after you?" he asks.

It's gotta be better than the Home, he figures, but fucked if he knows anything about any of that. No one in their right mind would trust him with a child's welfare.

She nods. The story is far too much to write out, especially with a stick and some dirt, so instead she writes 'new mum', and she smiles quite proudly. Perhaps her leaving offerings for him has been good luck for them both. And now that she has a leprechaun coin of her very own, she'll have even more luck!

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