Girl in the Moon

Those first few months after Abi had come back had been hard. Some part of him wanted to push the past away, giving them an entirely fresh start here in Mystic Falls, but what had been years for him had been almost instant for Abi. What had happened in those final minutes in the kitchen in New Orleans spilling into waking up at the warehouse with her aunt and the coven Karin had talked into helping her surrounding her instead of her parents. He still wasn’t sure how much Abi remembered of those last few minutes. There were people in town he’d considered taking her to then, the sort of specialists who could help unpack it all, but he’d hesitated. Now Michael wasn’t sure he’d been right. Maybe now was the time to take up one of those recommendations – the guy supposedly dealing with this side of things.

Walking into the kitchen Michael could almost feel the crackle of Abi’s nerves in the air – or was that his own? He glanced at her, one corner of his mouth lifting in a half smile. It should’ve been reassuring, but today, he doubted there was gonna be much reassurance in anything. The sun was already heading down, the shadows slanting low across the kitchen walls, beginning to take on that golden glow that meant soon it would vanish entirely to be replaced by that silvery full moon. They wouldn’t see much of it, the change would start then, its presence all that was needed to transform them. They could have been a hundred foot below ground and it would have been no different.

Michael raked his teeth over his upper lip, reaching out to squeeze her shoulder lightly as he moved past her to the fridge. Usually he’d have pushed her, just a slice, a sandwich, something in her stomach even if she only took a few bites. It was the bargain you made with kids when they were being stubborn, but this wasn’t that. ”You’re nervous, it’s understandable. It ties you up in knots.” He’d already had no appetite before his first full moon. Karin had tried to watch out for him in those intervening weeks, but the clothes he’d dragged back on over his dirt smudged skin had hung loose, the shadows beneath his eyes when he looked at himself in the mirror afterwards deep and dark. He’d looked for the same signs in Abi since the accident, had tried to do everything to make sure she knew she had nothing to feel guilty for. Michael knew all of that was easier said and done though.

He opened the fridge, retrieved a soda for himself. He set it down on the counter, picking through the cupboards for bread, peanut butter, grape jelly. It wasn’t gonna be much in his own stomach for now, but maybe it would encourage Abi to pick at something. ”Did you eat at school earlier?” If she hadn’t he’d double down on the pressure, although he didn’t want to do it. There was enough tension around the whole situation as it was. ”We’ll head out about an hour before. So about an hour from now. I’ve got almost everything ready in the car. I’ll show you where I go at this time of month.” They’d already gone through this a half dozen times since Abi had hit the man, but still it didn’t feel any easier. Michael glanced at his daughter as he spread the peanut butter over one of the slices of bread. ”Have you thought about your anchor?” he asked lightly. That was going to be the biggest part of the preparation. Slipping the chains around his daughter was going to be hard, hearing the snap of his kid’s bones instead of his. The only thing that would make it less painful was what Abi was going to be able to hold onto in her mind, in her heart.

Tagged: AUBREY SHEPARD * Word Count: 655

The one blessing – God, and it had been small in the centre of all the pain that had been hollowing him out at the time – was that Abi would never have to go through what he did. Every parent wished the best for their kids, but accidents happened, they got caught in circumstances way beyond their control and people did die. As an office drone for the agency Michael had never expected for someone to die at his hands. He’d known it was a possibility on the job, you could never guarantee that you’d remain in the safety of an office forever, but he’d never imagined it would happen so close to home. Abi should never have been in any sort of situation where it could happen at all.

Failing to save his daughter from that pain had torn a fresh hole through him. Seeing only the faintest traces of a smile on her face now yanked at the raw edges of that wound. The half smile he’d managed froze on his face, melting away as he moved past his daughter – where Abi couldn’t see how much this was troubling him too. For her he’d tried to put on a brave face, making sure she knew there was nothing to be feared her. Life wouldn’t be the same again but this didn’t have to be the end of it.

On his own he’d picked up the pieces, learning to cope with what he’d become. Abi had her dad, she wasn’t going to be alone through any of this. He might’ve lost his touch with parenting a little in the years that he’d been alone, but in the years that Abi had been back they’d started to find their way again. Michael made a low sound in his throat as she admitted how little she’d eaten at school. ”Abi, that’s not enough …” he started, then pinched his mouth shut. When she’d been a baby they could usually coax food into her, working through those fussy spells, drawing up her high chair at the family table on Sundays, making her a part of it all usually meaning that she’d try just about anything that the adults had on their plates. When it came to trying to get a teenager to do the same, especially one who’d just been through another tragedy in her short life, it was a lot tougher.

He wouldn’t have asked her if she wanted one, just made the sandwich and set it down in front of her. Abi seemed to have read between the lines though, the request making him feel a little better about the whole thing. ”Sure. How ‘bout you grab some potato chips from the cupboard?” It wouldn’t add much to the meal, but it made it more of a dinner. Tomorrow morning he’d go heavy on the breakfast, and hopefully by then Abi’s stomach would’ve settled some.

Michael spread the peanut butter thick, the same way he had done when Abi was younger. He glanced back at her at the short answer he got to their plans, his expression crumpling a little with concern. ”It’s gonna be alright. I’m gonna be right there with you through all of this tonight.” Years of practice meant he could control it long enough to make sure that his daughter had turned before he did. Each month it would get a little easier, although he’d never grown entirely comfortable with what he was now and what that meant for his life.

”The two of you were always mine,” Michael admitted hoarsely, the corner of his mouth kicking up. He added the jelly to Abi’s sandwich, cutting it into triangles like he’d done when she’d been younger too. He carried the plate to the table, set it down in front of her before he went back to quickly make his own. ”When you were little and we’d read you bed time stories in our bed, or we’d be at grandpa and grandma’s, all of us settled around the table. It meant I kept you both with me and it helps. I know it might not seem much like it now, but it will. Did you try looking anything else up about it?” There were a million bullshit stories out there on the internet, ones he could argue into insignificance, but he couldn’t stop Abi from reading them if she tried to educate herself. It wasn’t like the two of them had a pack here for added support.

Tagged: AUBREY SHEPARD * Word Count: 749

Everybody acted like the Terrible Twos were some sort of war with your toddler that you had to battle through. Once you were on the other side of them the memories of just how bad your kid had been started to fade, although some of the scars (in some cases literally if he believed what the women in his office had told him when Abi had been born) remained. It hadn’t been like that with their daughter though. Maybe bad dreams had sent her running for their bed once she old enough to scramble out of her crib, or the storms that tended to rage over the bayou and light up the sky, but he and Sara would just settle her between them and those tears would rapidly dry up. Abi had been a good kid, sweet and generous and entirely undeserving of what had happened to her.

The daughter he’d been given back after years of mourning her had carried some of those scars with her, but beneath it all Abi had been the same girl who’d made both her parents so proud. He’d have given anything to make sure that Abi never had to suffer through another wound like that ever again, but Michael knew there was no way he could’ve known that a single moment’s loss of concentration on a road would plunge her into the same nightmare he’d lived through. Some small part of him realised it was better for them both that he’d gone through it first in a way, but it was cold comfort right now.

Michael watched her as she did as he asked and grabbed some chips to go with the sandwich. Each mouthful was a little more reassuring to him. He made her sandwich, caking on the peanut butter, wanting a little taste of the past himself. ”I was the first time too,” he told her with a sigh. Abandoning his sandwich half done for a moment, he crossed to her, bending to wrap an arm around her and press a kiss to the top of her head the way he’d always done when she was small. Then a hug and a kiss to whatever boo-boo she’d suffered had been enough to dry her tears. Things were a thousand times scarier now and it wasn’t that easy to heal them. ”You’re not gonna be alone the way I was. You just need to trust me tonight, OK, baby?” That first time had been the worst, the fear and pain not easing until suddenly he wasn’t the one in control anymore. Awareness had drifted away then, not returning until he’d come to the next morning, laying in the back yard, bare skin smeared with dirt and blood. It had taken Orlov educating him and the anchor of his family to start stripping away that fear.

The chuckle slipped out a little easier as he set her plate down in front of her. ”I still could if you want me to. We used to tell you it’d make your hair curl if you ate them.” Luckily they didn’t end up with a kid who was too fussy about food, she’d eat anything that was put on the table at those Sunday afternoon lunches with his parents. Maybe tomorrow he’d break out one of those recipes, give both of them the treat of a taste of the past. He returned to the table with his own plate, settling into the seat opposite her. Michael lifted one half of his sandwich and took a bite, meeting Abi’s eye as he nodded. ”Even now. It gets easier with practice, but I always hold onto my anchor. It makes turning faster, less painful. When you’re … under … it lets you control the part of you that wants to let go of everything that hurts. I know it seems like it’ll be better to just give in, but it’s not. There are too many people in this town that could be harmed if someone lost control over there.” He didn’t have to tell her that, there were enough stories in the local newspapers about the victims of animal attacks.

Tagged: AUBREY SHEPARD * Word Count: 692

As he’d rushed towards the warehouse he’d been summoned to, he’d found himself terrified that Abi wouldn’t want to go with him. She’d been through a vicious, bloody nightmare in the last couple of hours of her life. Who knew what those men had said to her before they’d taken her life. How many seeds of hatred and fear they’d planted in her young mind. Some tiny part of him had worried that she’d recoil from him, but in the end it had been the opposite. Relief had flooded through him on a wave of tears as Abi had clung to him. If any of that had happened, Abi had shown no signs of remembering it. What memories had clung to her he’d tried to work through with her, being there when she woke up from the nightmares, reaching out for help with someone who understood the truth of what had happened when he thought he couldn’t help the way she needed him to.

Michael slanted a grin at Abi as he straightened back up. There was relief again, a reassurance that he hadn’t spent the last decade and a half screwing up his daughter’s life. ”We’re gonna get through it,” he promised. ”And it will get easier, even if it’s not gonna seem it now.” That wasn’t to say he didn’t still struggle with the change for time to time, but he had faith he’d get through it now, for Abi, for Sara, and that had been in short supply when they’d both been gone.

Building their life bit by bit had slowly taken them back to almost where they’d been. Little reminders of their old life creeping in a bit from time to time. It had stabbed through him at first, grief a blade he couldn’t avoid, but now there were just prickles of discomfort he could push aside to make his kid happy on a day like this. ”Good, it means I don’t have to eat them for you,” he joked as he put together his own and headed back to the table. ”That was always my job. You got the curls from my side too. Your grandma had curls down to her waist.” He hadn’t inherited them, but he saw so much of his mom in Abi, so much of Sara in her too. They’d both have known what to do now, but they weren’t here to help, they were gonna have to do this on their own.

He made small talk through the meal, keeping one eye on the clock the entire time. This was gonna be tough enough on Abi without her reading his growing stress off of him. Practice allowed him to keep his emotions flattened out, he’d done the same with Orlov and his people. Eventually the clock ticked around to just an hour before the moon was due to rise. By now Abi had to be feeling the pull of it, that strange shift inside that threatened to turn you inside out. Michael pushed the sensation aside as he gathered up their plates and set them in the sink. ”Are you ready to get going?” he asked lightly. ”It’ll take about fifteen minutes to drive out there, at least another fifteen to set up. It might take a while for your first change to complete.” An agonising eternity that he hoped he could make easier for her somehow.

Tagged: AUBREY SHEPARD * Word Count: 567