Returned

The ship rolled over ocean waves. She groaned as loudly as the swollen timbers, restlessly craving fresh air and solid ground beneath her feet.  She needed to run.  A week in the belly of a ship was enough to drive anyone mad... and she was anything but the most clear-minded of women.  She was quite sure that it was only the pitiful cries of the little red-haired girl that lay on the bunk pale, feverish, and near-death that kept her from dashing up that ladder and diving overboard.

Her daughter was ill.  The captain said it was merely seasickness, but that didn't calm the raging beast inside, the beast that would do -anything- to save the ones she loved, the few who could lay claim to her loyalties.  She'd killed before, she'd kill again... but that impulse was absolutely useless within the confines of the wooden cage.

And so she paced and more than once memory drew her lips back in a snarl that seemed awfully out of place on her feminine features.

~*~

The same woman, but so much younger, was sitting in a shady thicket with a blonde-haired, blue-eyed lawman.  Haden... Quiet conversation had passed the time.  She'd quite liked him, and then he'd done it:  He'd grabbed her.

"I'll keep your little secrets safe.  Nobody will know.  If you don't, I'll have you and your sister both arrested... it'll be your word against mine."

Her dagger had proven the better argument, and she'd left him with a nearly severed finger.

~*~

The girl, pressed against a wall, cornered by a dark-skinned, sneering Tyen.  Vasteel... She'd almost enjoyed taunting him, until he'd touched her.

"I am the law, girl.  And trust me, you'll enjoy every moment of this if you stop your struggling..."

Again, her knives had proved her saving grace... though the Tyen had managed to evade the emasculating blow.

~*~

The memories back, beyond that were hazy.  She strained for even glimpses, fragments of her past.  Bright blue eyes kept flitting to the foreground and were pushed away, forcibly.  Not that it mattered.  Every time she looked into her darling little girl's eyes, she saw his.  Still, somehow she knew that there had been other issues in her past.  There had to have been; this rage didn't spring from nowhere in her otherwise placid, quiet temperment.

Wherever they came from, they'd done it this time - no, she'd done it this time.  The forest lands of Tarkas had been her haven, the tribe she'd found there was a solace in her time of grief and need.  But now they were behind her, forever...

Those cold grey eyes - she'd never forget them.  The way his fingers curled around her arms... she shuddered still at the memories.  And this time, it hadn't been daggers that had secured her freedom, it'd been her teeth.  And he... had not walked away.  When she'd realized what she'd done, it was too late.  Too late to do anything but face the consequences or run.

And here she was on board the ship with her two innocent children, returning to a land that was just as bleak for her as the one she'd left.

She sighed and wiped a tear from her scarred cheek before turning to look over at her son.  His green eyes were the only thing that spared her the heartache of looking into the mirror of her past.  The Gods had been merciful in that, at least.  She touched the slumbering child's cheek, smoothed his long, tousled hair, and sat down on the bunk beside him, closing her eyes wearily.

Had she done the right thing?