<The second part of a two-part vignette. The first part is trigger warning for domestic abuse.>
“Just go,” his mother whispered, “Please. Don’t make it worse.”
The woman tenderly traced her hand over his brow as Will struggled to sit up. He took hold of her hand and kissed the back of it.
“This ain’t over,” he said quietly. “I promise you, mum.”
Her pained expression made his heart sink.
“Let it go, Thom,” she said, using his given name as she always did. She was the only person who did.
He realized then that he had to let it go. He couldn’t win, she had resigned herself and he had to live with her choice. It burned him up inside. He felt every bit the worthless, feckless cur his father had always said he was.
Will left the home he had grown up in and stumbled out into the late afternoon sunshine. The sun didn’t care who was broken or hurting, it shined nonetheless. Will felt his stomach lurch and he emptied it into a bush. He felt empty when his body sat hard in the grass, unable to stand at that moment. He stayed there for a long while.
When the day started to end, and his father hadn’t returned, he decided he should head back to town. The promise of something to take the edge off of the shooting pain in his side sounded appealing. He approached The Comb and Wattle, an old haunt of his, and trudged up the stone steps. He was sure they would be here long after the building had crumbled to dust.
He was about to venture inside when he spotted Sicarra standing out on the edge of the wooden deck. The woman hadn’t seemed too keen to know him when they’d met before. Her protectiveness of her friend seemed a little misplaced, but what did he know? They were strangers then and still were now.
But right then, he wanted to see a familiar face, even if it wasn’t a friendly one. He approached and kicked his heel against the boards to alert the deaf woman to his presence. He had been surprised to see her smoking a pipe but didn’t say anything about it. Apparently, his face looked worse than he thought, based on the look she gave him. He hadn’t had a chance to look at it properly yet.
The conversation was frosty, to say the least. He tried to make a bit of small talk but found that he had been much too distracted by the day’s altercation. And when her red-haired friend approached them, he would have been a dead man if looks could kill. He decided he had worn out his welcome in the town of Combe for the day.
Before he went, Will asked Sicarra to pass a greeting to Emmawynn. She was inside, apparently from what Sicarra told him, but the look the woman had given him upon seeing his face made him think twice about venturing in to offer the greeting himself, even with the offer of potentially seeing a healer, none other than the red-haired lass.
He was uncertain to say the least, and when Sicarra hadn’t exactly welcomed him to come inside when their conversation was done, he just left. He had had enough bad times that day to want to avoid walking into yet another place that had no love lost for him.
