((This is some downtime stuff I’ve been meaning to get in since before the break-in, and haven’t gotten around to it.  So, now it’s time for character monologue montage!))

The past nights have been like hell.  Not like this entire life hasn’t been like hell.  But then again, Dante wrote about all those layers, so maybe she’s been in one of those deeper rings.  In any case:  hell.

She’s been thinking about those kids she killed in the park.  She’s been feeling guilty about that; really, they probably didn’t deserve what she gave them.  But then she pictures them, slouching on the playground equipment, their eyes leering at her, the loping way they walked towards her.  Like any of the scores of similar hoods in the slums of Dublin and London, the ones who would follow her like starving wolves, too afraid to run in for the kill, yet licking their chops and just imagining the blood dripping down their slathering jaws.  Just like the ones who had raped Erin and shot her in that back alley behind the club…

Deirdre tries to think of Erin, and to her frustration only pulls up a blurry, hazy image.  Like seeing a face in a dream:  only the vague outlines are there, the impression of a real person with real features and real details.  And when you try to focus on those details, they only become more and more blurred, and you realize just how little you know of that person.  That’s all that Erin seems to her now, that or some figure out of a history book.  You knew they existed at one point, lived and breathed and loved and died, but they are only a character to you now.  Deirdre remembers that she had red-gold hair, like a sunset spun out and woven into lustrous strands.  But that’s really the only detail she can remember.  It should sadden her, shouldn’t it?  But instead she just feels numb about the whole deal.  That seems to be what everything is slowly fading to:  a shallow numbness devoid of any feeling.

Or, at least that’s how it seemed to be before the past few nights.  Now, the entire world seems to have turned once again, just like that night 21 years ago.  And just like that night, there’s some feeling, some sense deep inside, of being reborn.  Except back then she had all but squandered that birth.  She was something new, something more than human, the black-haired, grey-eyed, smooth-voiced Mark had told her.  It was her opportunity to rise above the masses, to realize her full potential and claim her place among immortality.  But of course, all that had gone downhill rather quickly, and before long she was once again on the streets eking out a living.  But Mark had been just as responsible for that as he’d been for picking her off the streets to begin with, hadn’t he?  Still, there was the feeling that there had been something more she could have done, should have done.  She’d wasted this “gift” just at the moment that it had been presented to her.

Once again, she’s been dipped in fire and turmoil, with the opportunity to rise out of the cataclysm and make something new of herself.  And this time, she’s hoping – she’s telling herself – that she won’t squander that opportunity.  This time, the change will be for real.  This time, she’s going to make something different of herself.  At least, that’s what she’s been telling herself.

After the night she watched the Sheriff chop off her brother’s head, she had pledged to herself to change things.  To rise up in righteous vengeance and take them all down with her.  She had stormed into the streets of the slums, had found those gang kids, and had let the waiting beast inside loose upon them.  It had felt good, for a little while.  But then she’d returned to Thorns, found Harry, and the full weight of it all had come pressing down on her.  And just as quickly as the rage had boiled up, it subsided.  And once again, she was left with the numbness and vacancy.  There had been those few brief moments of action, of initiative:  those moments when she had told Harry of her secret existence and had give him the shot glass with her own blood.  In those moments, she thought she could have done everything and anything.  She thought she really could bring fire and hellstorm down on the rest of them.  And then it had subsided, like a pot being taken off the boil.  And the bubbling heat had cooled, and in the absence of that heat she felt colder than ever before.

Still, there’d been a remnant of that bubbling.  She had finally decided to take Harry’s advice and try to once again make something of herself.  If she could not win the struggle in the world of the Kindred, then she could at least make her way in the world of mortals.  It was an opportunity she had been presented with once before, and had wasted.  Hopefully, perhaps, the door had not entirely closed on that opportunity.  But even now, she has to admit to herself, her plans had been more or less empty.  A framework of designs with no substance to carry them out.  Hollow, empty thoughts of what she should do and would do.  But who was she kidding?  Was she really going to go through with it?

Then Zaine’s cronies had trashed the bar, and once again the heat rose in her veins.  Something had clicked, like it hadn’t clicked when she saw her brother executed.  A new desire – and not just desire, but true and real drive, like a centrifugal force throwing her forward – rose up.  She hardly knew what she was doing when she had made that speech.  She hardly thought of the words coming out of her mouth.  But there was conviction there, and real meaning.  And now that she has taken the step forward, she knows she can’t take a step back.  She doesn’t know if she is being pushed forward or pulled onward, or if she is moving of her own accord.

This is a different kind of heat though from the night of her brother’s death.  That had been red, boiling, laced with black veins of death and grief.  This is something altogether different, something white and fiery, with the satisfying burning sensation of a shot of whiskey in the gullet, or the ache of muscles after a long hard night of lovemaking.  The heat of that first night had weighed her down with a ponderous oppression; now this heat stokes her and energizes her like a dynamo.

Deirdre had never been the active, decisive one.  This is something entirely new to her.  She was always the one to mull over a decision, to think of every option and outcome…and, ultimately, to come to no conclusion.  Her brother had been the active one, sometimes too much so.  He had always been the one to run off and do things without thinking.  Well, look where that got him.  And if his fault had been action without thought, Deirdre’s has always been thought without action.
Now that seems to be shifting drastically.  She knows she walks a thin line here.  She must balance the two sides – act too much, think too little, and she could overstep herself.  Think too much, act too little, and she could easily slip back into her usual depressive melancholy.  And this time, she has a feeling, she might not be able to clamber out.  No, best to take little steps.  The wheels have already been set in motion, and now she must take little motions to keep the machine turning.  Best to take things slowly, but surely.  Each step careful, well-placed.  She’s already taken those first few steps:  the impromptu rally in front of the club.  The meeting with Sebastion.  Her talk with Slater.  Those are the first tiny steps.  The next few:  raising money and rebuilding Thorns.  Presenting her case in front of Arturo or the Prince.  And beyond that…

It’s a fine line, and a dangerous one.  She’s already been thinking about her own safety, and the security of Thorns once it’s re-opened.  Not to mention Harry’s well-being.  She doesn’t know what she would do if something happened to him.  Deirdre has already taken to spending a few nights a week at the shooting range, honing her accuracy.  She’d bought the gun awhile ago, after…after Erin.  But she’d never taken much to using it.  Now, if shit hits the fan, she may well have to depend upon it.  As far as the club goes, Slater might be able to provide some security when he’s around, but she’s also wary of the punker.  His type can tend to be a little brash and over-the-top.  Besides, the Sheriff’s goons struck during the day, and neither she nor Slater nor Sebastion can be there to protect against that.  She has that long list of people who signed up after her rallying speech; surely one of them would be eager to be hired on as a new bouncer.  And if possibly she could bind his loyalty with a taste of her vitae, all the better.

The wheels are in motion, the steps taken, the path entered.  There is no turning back, and if she falters in this, then very well her whole life might seem a waste.  She must keep moving forward, step by step.  For once, she feels like she is on some kind of solid footing, as narrow and precarious as it may be.  Now is the moment when she must make of herself what she can, or destroy herself in her failure.