Chapter 1

Y’all know that, “no relation to any person, living or dead,” disclaimer? Yeah. All the names have been changed, to protect the innocent, etc.

Note: The Protagonist’s name is Sion - pronounsed John, but with the “J” softer, almost slurred, but harder than a “sh” sound. An Irish name, for boys, but now girls are being named it. My guess is because Siobhan is too confusing for non Gaelic speakers.

I could feel her, there, even as I approached the building that first day.

Her aura, full of muddy browns of despair, with only a few peeks of the brilliant azure, that bespoke a beautiful person.

Her emotional distress spoke to me, begging for aide, begging for healing.

I tried to ignore it. I didn’t WANT to accept another person’s pain, again.

Their healing has never benefited me.

I almost turned away. I could live with out this job. I could live without this new pain.

Yet, as I started to retreat, a feeling washed over me. “This girl is important to the future.”

My future? No, not mine. Someone else future? That didn’t seem right. The world’s future? I felt a click. Somehow, this girl was important to the future of the world.

Fuck. Me.

I went into the assembly building, to start my new job.

A year of high drama. Shit I was tired.

Ciara had never had luck with men, going from one abusive ass hole to another manipulative cheater to the next suicidal whiner to another insanely jealous paranoid.

Ciara needed more emotional support than I could provide.

This did not please my wife.

And yet, even though there were a thousand and more reasons to walk away, I always found one reason to stay. Ciara was important.

I love her.

No, no. Not IN love with her. I just love her.

I don’t mean that I wanted sex with Ciara. I honestly didn’t, and don’t. I think of her, as the little sister, that I never had. And, I always have found incest fantasies rather, well, eww.

I have one older sister. If you’d ever met her, you’d understand. Eww. Hack, spit...

Still, there are those times, when she’s made a bad choice, that I want to knock her to her knees, and jamb my hard on down her throat, just to get her attention.

Love has been described as setting the welfare and happiness of the other person’s, ahead of your own.

Yep. That’s what I was doing. This, as I have said, did NOT make my wife, the Madam of my House, feel all warm and fuzzy, towards Ciara.

Ciara was not of our House.

Ciara wasn’t even of our lifestyle.

Ciara was --Oh, what term am I looking for? Vanilla? That’ll have to do.

Goddess knows, I did everything I could, to help Ciara. Any time I saw her feeling bad, I was right there, with my arms open, to give her a hug, if she’d accept one. She rarely did.

When she spoke of wanting to make extra money, by making ammunition, I loaned her the tools, and told her, to sell enough to buy her own tools, then return mine.

She never even started. Kept the tools, though.

I loaned her cash, and never expected it back.

She met my expectations.

I treated her as family. She treated me as something to have around, only because it was useful.

I had (as I knew would happen, from the start) invested a huge amount of the emotional me, into this girl, for no return, on that investment, except pain.

My wife was not pleased. “So, are you in love with her?” my Wife asked

“No, I can’t say as I am,” I replied. “I care for her, I care about her, but it’s kinda the way you’d care for a stray kitten you picked up along the street in a rainstorm. You want it to be warm and dry and purring, not all wet and miserable and lonely.”

“Well, just never forget the consequences of rescuing a kitten, Hon.”

Maybe it is that Ciara is just too feral. Or, maybe I didn’t rescue her, at all.

When I started that job, Ciara was in a 17 year long, abusive relationship. She came to work, at least once a week, bearing his marks. Yeah, he beat her. I supported her, through the divorce, driving her to, and being at her side, at the courthouse, every single time.

I laughed, to myself, about her ex-hole believing I was Ciara’s sugar-daddy. My interest in Ciara wasn’t sexual.

I watched her move from being physically abused, to being emotionally abused, by her new guy.

He’s a whinging little fuck, that immediately worked to get her alienated from all her friends. Oh, not me. Ciara didn’t need to be alienated from me. She never formed any affection to me, that I could see.

I warned Ciara, that alienating her from her friends, making her feel that he was the only one she could turn to, was the classic first step of almost every abuser.

I warned her friends. DON’T let the wanker drive them away from Ciara. Keep her near, and dear. And, watch for the signs of abuse.

Needless to say, all this pissed her off.

I’m good at that. Pissing people off. Probably because I don’t follow that P. C. crap. I’m blunt. I won’t hide the truth behind a comforting lie. That just doesn’t make sense, to me.

For example, after Ciara’s ex-hole moved out, and before her next-hole moved in, I suggested that she needed to be someone who made her happy, not WITH someone who made her happy.

“I know,” she replied, “but I’ve never been alone.”

After Wanker moved in, and started his guilt-tripping mind fucks, I’d asked her, “Why?”

“He keeps my ass warm,” she said.

“You’re letting your pussy trick your heart, into thinking good sex is love,” I warned.

“No, I love him,” was her response.

“And I love you,” was my response. “Not the kind of love you have to worry about,” I continued, smiling at the shocked look on her face. “It’s the kind of love, that just is.”

Oh, Ciara didn’t like that, at all.

“You don’t love me,” she said. “I can tell.”

“You don’t know what love is,” I replied. “You think that I must not love you, because I’m not trying to get into your pants.”

Bingo. The look on her face said it all.

“Look,” I tried to explain. “Love is not sex, and sex is not love...”

She wasn’t listening.

We were sitting on one of those cheap replica park benches, so I scooted over, and --despite her protest-- put my arm around her shoulder, and hugged her. “You’ve been hurt, so often, and for so long, that you just don’t know what to do, when a man loves you for you.” Ciara stopped her struggling, to listen, now.