☽ w o l f ☾

And there was the other shoe, dropping right smack on Roan’s face as always. He’d managed to help a few bystanders find shelter behind the bar he’d been working all evening (minus the “breaks” he took when he spotted a familiar face), but being pinned down under reckless gunfire was about as far from where he wanted to be as he could imagine. He chanced a peak over the bar, but had to duck back down as another hailstorm of bullets flew mere inches overhead, shattering bottles along the wall behind him. It was too loud in here to think properly, and panic was overtaking him by the minute. Despite his fervent desire to escape the mafia game, to leave behind the violence he’d ingrained in himself since youth, Roan knew he was going to have to put it to use if he wanted to make it out of here alive. He’d just... rather put it off until it was absolutely necessary.

Just as he was committing to that thought, he spotted her. Across the room, hunkered down, trying desperately to stay out of the line of fire. He should have known she’d be here, and yet somehow the possibility hadn’t occurred to him until this exact moment. And in that moment, tactical planning went out the window, as did any concern he had for anyone else at the party. Roan Ó Faoláin was not a good man, even by his own reckoning. He would wrestle with the moral quandary his actions posed later—for now, he was focused on keeping Natasha Ivanov safe, because who was he if not the sorry sonofabitch who was still in love with her in spite of everything? Disregarding the bullets still flying everywhere, Roan abandoned the people cowering behind the bar and made a dash for it, circling the room, cover-to-cover until he reached her and could clasp a hand on one of her slim shoulders. “I’m getting you out of here. Now.” It was a promise. An order. A declaration.

EVENT #1: A Star is Born

ROAN Ó FAOLÁIN attending working the 19th birthday celebrations of Miss Bunny Golightly

Daniel nodded, “thanks.” He took a drink before sighing at the bartender and shrugging. “It’s a long and slightly overwhelming story. Not too much venting can be done, but uh… I was kind of a dick to my wife, well,” he shook his head realizing how dumb he sounded and how this was just going to make sound like more of a dick. “I don’t even know how to explain it.” He chuckled.

Sympathy wrote itself on Roan’s face in a heartbeat. “Oh, long and slightly overwhelming, eh? My favorite kinda story.” He reached down and poured himself a glass of water—he refused to drink on the job after all—and shook his head. “Yer preachin’ to the choir there, mate. I’ve not been married, but I’m all too familiar with bein’ a dick to the woman I love.” He raised the water glass a little. “Here’s to recognizing our dickishness, eh?”

“Well you seem to be doing a pretty okay job rolling with it.” She said with a laugh. “I’ll bet your name is Seamus or Aodhan.” Nat mused, a grin tugging at her features. “Look at you. So very,very close.” She leaned her chin on her palm. “Nathalie but most call me Nat. So… you think I’m classy, huh?”

Roan shrugged again, a self-effacing gesture he’d grown accustomed to giving whenever anyone showed too much interest in him. “I do me best. It is a bit harder when you get an older person who can’t read so well in these lights, and they decide to call you ‘Sierra’ fer the rest of the night. But hey, whatever gets the tips, y’know?” He raised an eyebrow with an impressed smirk, ignoring the little roll in his stomach at the mention of ‘Nat’. He wasn’t going to think about the massive can of worms he associated with that name. “Look at us both! Me dad was a Seamus, actually. And hell yeah, you’re clearly a class act. Look atcha, you got great taste comin here, yer stylish. Bet yer a model or somethin’ like that.”

“Well I can see that..” She said looking around and giving a small nod “I also suspect that were surely were a group of highly prudish costumers that surely weren’t too happy but, for the looks of things it doesn’t seem to matter.” But that was with anything really, those types of people complained about everything, and yet she knew some of them would be here too. “About once a week if I can, I just really love the gardens and well the other amenities that it offers are good too.”

He laughed, still shaking up the cocktail while he listened to her. “Spot on intuition, you have there. Yeah, there were a bunch o’ folk who weren’t happy ‘bout it. But I think we’re gonna be alright without ‘em.” Satisfied that the drink was fully mixed, Roan began pouring it out into a glass. “Goodonya. The gardens really are somethin’ else. Don’t get to see ‘em often, but every time I do, it’s a rare treat. D’you have a favorite?”

I’m sorry.

Once, she might have melted at the sound of those words. Her rage would have subsided, flickering out like the burst of light after a firecracker. She could smell it – feel it, and hear it. The unmistakable sweet smell. Hand in hand with the sizzle on a stove top and a morning breeze drifting lazily in through the window. Natasha nearly closed her eyes in attempt to savor the memories that had so long been caged at the back of her mind, take a deep breath and let herself remember those words and that feeling. Once, she might have craved it all.

I’m sorry.

She had no such craving. Now, her gaze was razor sharp, digging into Roan’s with no intention of releasing him. She wanted him to see her pain. To see all that he’d done with her heart, her mind. It had been one of her girlfriends who’d sent the picture that morning. Nothing more than an innocent bystander, unattached to the mafia or mob or crime rings of the Big Apple. No, Taylor was simply that – a civilian. Isn’t this your ex? The text had read. The text that had caused this… interaction. The chance meeting of strange circumstances, where an older and different – so, so different – Roan was saying i’m sorry.

“Are you fucking kidding me?” She asked, words like a ice-pick chipping away at solid steel. Natasha rarely cursed – she’d been raised to think it beneath her, that there were better way to express one’s self without using such awful language. But – damnit! – nothing else seemed to fit. “You’re sorry? Sorry? Is that all you have to say for yourself? After everything you’ve done.”

Not a question – a command, accusing and poisoned as it dripped from her tongue and seemed to heat up the room. Her palm pulsed – a tingle ran through her fingertips, and she flexed her hand. Then, she balled it into a fist, tiny crescent moons digging into her flesh. The throb they caused suddenly seemed to be the only thing keeping her from turning and leaving him this time. Walking out of his life, as he had hers. Living with the satisfaction that he would cry over her, that he would feel all of that pain she’d bottled.

No. She thought. No, this isn’t about that. This is… This was about Nicollo, how Roan had taken a life and vanished without a trace… Or was it?

“Why? Why, Roan? Wasn’t leaving enough?”

How could he condense nearly a decade of pain into an easy-to-digest form for her? How could he organize his words to ease her pain and take it into himself, weave it into the tapestry of heartache that he’d made for himself, that he carried with him every day like a crucifix of shame?Was there enough time in the world for him to manage such a titanic feat?

At the very least, he could start small, and work his way forward from the beginning.

“I never wanted to leave,” Roan muttered. He found himself incapable of tearing away from Natasha’s gaze, now that she’d locked him in. And though trying to offer up an explanation would be easier if he didn’t have to look into the eyes of the only woman he’d ever loved and hurt beyond words... he didn’t really want to look away. Time could do many things, cure many wounds, but it had not been able to work the miracle of erasing his feelings for her. For seven years, she had been at the forefront of his mind. Every waking and sleeping hour had been plagued by reminders of her laugh, her lips, her walk, her perfume, her skin caressing his in the dark under a single comforter while rain beat on the windows and lulled them into blissful sleep. No matter where he’d gone, who he’d slept with, what he’d done, she haunted him—a phantom limb he would never grow accustomed to, or the lingering brush of a kiss on the cheek.

Natasha’s words seeped into him like acid, eating a path into his bones until they ached with guilt. He’d hoped for years that she’d never find out who killed her Italian fiance, but the way she spat “after everything you’ve done?”, there was no doubt in his mind that she knew. At last, his tendency to avoid thinking about things in the hopes that they’d never come to pass was catching up to him. He was struck dumb, a giant moron hunched over in the hall with his thumbs up his ass and no clue how to get out of the corner he’d backed himself into with his own stupidity. At least this proved she was better off without him, feckin’ eejit that he was.

So... perhaps that was the way forward. The only way out. Remind her that she was too good for him. He’d always known it, had told her as much repeatedly while they were together. Years apart should surely have taught her that. Roan Ó Faoláin wasn’t good for much, but he was good for playing the thug. So a thug he would be, the tactless git who Natasha Ivanov was lucky to be without.

“You mean yer Italian boytoy?” he said, straightening himself up a bit and shoving his hands in his pockets. “That was accidental. I mean, I meant to do it, obviously. But I didn’t know you were marrying the minger until later. He shoulda known better than to come pick a fight in Boston." This sucked. This sucked so badly and he hated every word coming out of his mouth. But it was all the truth, and if Natasha was still even half the woman he’d fallen for, she would be able to take it. “Which, by the way, I wouldn’ta been down there at all if yer dear ol’ da hadn’t sold me whole crew out to them minestrone-fuckers. You wanna blame anyone fer me havin’ ta hightail it outta here, you can thank him.”

Rip the band-aid off fast, they always said.

Natasha’s mind was moving a million miles a second, flashes of a younger Roan like a sheen over the figure that was headed in her direction in long, powerful strides. The memory of him. The mocking innocence of it all, how life had seemed so much easier. But with each step, it was fading, and his true colors loomed like a mournful shrine to the past he’d abandoned.  On one side, she had as many questions as he did – what the hell was he doing back in New York, and why the hell hadn’t he told her he was leaving in the first place? On the other, there was blind fury, a red tinge like a haze over her powder blue eyes. She’d been two seconds away from grabbing the nearest empty beer bottle and chucking it at his head.

Murderer! She wanted to scream at him, her shoulders heaving as she sucked in several deep breaths. Her scowl was practically tattooed. You’re just like the rest of them! And he was – his shock at the sound and lack of verbal response to his given name was enough to confirm it.

But instead, she was lifting her pocketbook and pointing it at him accusingly as he leered closer, his face losing the shocked expression she’d initially installed on it. “Don’t you dare,” She warned, as if her purse might stop him from swooping down on her. “I swear, if you so much as touch me – “  But his arm locked around her, and Natasha’s body went as rigid as ice. It was a split second – enough to let her be herded towards the door. But it was his silence that broke the spell – what reignited her previous anger even brighter than before. She dug her heels into the tile, the sound scraping across her eardrums as the bar-goers moved fully to the back of her mind. It was only after he’d pushed her completely out of the bar that she managed to spin out of his hold.

Crack! At a slender 5′9 – taller, in heels – striking him clean across the face had come almost easily. The slap echoed in the empty hall, and she became all too aware of the tingling across her palm and the red mark appearing on his cheek. She’d hit him, and she’d hit him hard.

“You – how stupid are you?” She demanded, not bothering to lower her voice now that they were alone. Natasha hated him – her blood boiled, and despite the emptiness of the hall, there was a roar in her ears. The heartbreak he’d caused her was threatening to bubble back to the surface, to send her into a puddle of tears and sorrow like it had when he’d first left. Seeing him was like ripping her heart out again and cutting it clean in half. Natasha thrust her hand into her pocket book, letting it clatter loudly to the floor as she brought out her cell phone, unlocked it, and practically shoved it into his face.

It was a picture of him on a New York sidewalk, headed into The Garden. An image her friend had texted her only hours ago, which had spurred Natasha to leave the office and head straight there. Roan had taken everything into account – everything except that the mafia weren’t the only ones who remembered him.

“I should turn you into the police! You murdered him.” She seethed. You left me. “I should hand you over to the Italians – better yet, the damn Irish!”

She put up a fight, which wasn’t unexpected. Natasha had always been her own woman, no matter how much care she put into the politicians she managed. They didn’t own her heart or mind, and she was fiercely protective of both. But Roan did still have the advantage of strength, one of the few advantages he felt he had left to his name, and though she dug in her heels, she couldn’t stop him from hurrying her out the door. The sooner the better, too; he wasn’t much for praying, but he prayed now that everyone in the bar let it go as just another one of “those things” that happened in New York.

No sooner were they in the hall than he saw a blur out of the corner of his eye. Her palm landed squarely on the side of his face, and the skin she’d hit immediately flushed and stung. His cheek throbbed and his mouth hung open, but it happened so fast that it took him a moment to actually realize that she had indeed smacked him. One hand prodded gently at his face as he stared at her in shock. To be honest, it wasn’t the first time she’d had cause to hit him like this—when he’d been younger and even more stupid, he’d said one or two things that warranted a good wallop, and she’d rightfully delivered. But of course, this was the first time they were seeing each other after years, and this was the first smack that he felt as much in his heart as on his face.

The shock (tinged with a bizarre feeling of pride for her) melted quickly into dread that dripped like a sickly syrup into his stomach. The photo she held up to him on her phone was not what he wanted to see. No one should ever have seen this. Or him. Fuck. Natasha was ranting at him, but there was a ringing in his ears that wasn’t actually from the smack. Who took that photo? Who were they working for? How had they recognized him? Had they been told to look for him, or was it a coincidence? Millions of questions ricocheted around his skull, adding a headache to the throbbing in his face.

Finally, he looked up at her again. For a heartbeat, he was seeing her as he’d last seen her years before, young and hopeful, graceful and ready to take on the world. Then he blinked, and time righted itself so that he could see better the difference seven years could make. She was still beautiful beyond words, still graceful, still poised and polished, but she bore herself as a woman who had already experienced her share of hardships and had come away from them stronger than ever. The way her jaw was set, the rage in her eyes that made their blue irises crackle like lightning, he knew she’d learned better than most civilians how to take punches and throw them back (literally and figuratively) harder than she was given.

He tried to come up with a response. But nothing came to mind. No words that could explain away over five years of separation, of the things he’d seen and done, why he’d left her without a word as though nothing had ever happened between them. So his mouth made do for him.

“I’m sorry.”

“Well… first time in a long time.” She said with a laugh. “Dancers, nice. They liven the place up. Not that it really needs that much livening up.” Nat paused, looking around. “It’s definitely different than I remember but I typically ended the night here.” She squinted at his name tag. “You don’t look like a Ciaran.”

“Yer tellin’ me.” Roan sighed and gave her a shrug. “I thought the place was fine without them, but hey, I just sling drinks. Boss says, ‘we’re adding some exotic dancers to our bar’, you just have to roll with it.” As if he needed more distractions at work. Though any question about his identity made his stomach lurch a little, he brushed it off with a laugh. “You’d be surprised how often I hear that. Let me guess...” He leaned forward on the bar a bit, studying her quickly. “You’re a..... Catherine? Or a Natalia? Something classy like that. Ooh, Elizabeth maybe?”

Shea had been finding herself wasting some time in the Belladonna Bar after work. She was supposed to be having dinner with some girlfriends but after a long and jarring day, she didn’t want to burden her friends with a sour attitude so she figure a drink or two would brighten her mood. She heard the bartender and she smirked. “There’s dancers. I didn’t even notice,” SHe said before handing her card. “A moscow mule please,”

“Ah, lucky you,” Roan replied with a grin, accepting the card and quickly drawing up a tab for the young woman on the nearby computer register. “Some nights it’s impossible to go five minutes without someone asking me to send a dancer over to them like I’m their manager or something.” Finished with the tab, he set about making the drink, a favorite of his as he had a great deal of fun with the various ingredients. Years of tending bars all over the place had taught him a few tricks, like how to twirl bottles of vodka and ginger beer without dropping them or spilling everywhere. "If y’don’t mind me saying, you’ve got great taste. I never see anyone order these anymore. Easily the best cocktail out there.”

“Are we going to go through this every single time I change my hair color?” Ana picked up one of her newly colored strands, the ash brown still shining under the dim bar lights as peroxide smell still lived in her nose. “I didn’t think you were that old but your eyesight is really going for you, friend.” She small girl took the open seat at the bar, glad to not have any bodies flanking her two sides. It was rare that she found herself on the other side of the bar, but if she were to be on at anyone’s, it would be Roan’s. Too many hours were passed in one of these seats, the girl remembering clear as day as she would watch the older man work, learning things that books and videos could never teach her. Even if she was busy with her own work now, Ana would try to come back to see him. There was always something more she could learn. “Is that your secret to not staring on the job? Or did you finally get a life outside of this place?”

Roan jumped a bit and did a double take. “Christ alive, Ana, ya really need to warn me before you go and muck with yer hair.” As the initial surprise wore off, he shook his head an snorted, trying to hide a grin by looking down at the floor for a moment. “Hey hey, gimme a break, this place doesn’t exactly have the greatest lighting, y’know.” Despite the teasing, it was good to see her again. Roan was nothing if not consistent—he always got a little too invested in anyone he trained. Especially girls. Good lord, when was he going to get over that chivalrous bullshit and just learn to leave well enough alone? But it was ingrained in him. He looked out for the women in his life: his mother, his sister, Natasha until that went south, all the women in the various mobs he’d worked for. That protective streak wasn’t going to fade any time soon, as far as he could tell. What was more, Ana had always felt like a kindred spirit in many ways, with that little glint in the corner of her eyes that was only visible to those who had been kicked in the teeth by life.

So rather than razz her, Roan just poured out a couple glasses of water and placed one in front of her. “Nope, my secret is that I just don’t look,” he answered with a little eyebrow raise, sipping from the other glass. “And I don’t drink on the job. Done that way too many times before. Trying to break up bar fights while drunk doesn’t go well. So, what’ve you been up to, kiddo? Staying out of trouble, I hope?”