Deirdre Dolan || 31 || Banshee || Life Actuary Nor law, nor duty bade me fight, Nor public men, nor cheering crowds; A lonely impulse of delight {RP blog with TOS}
Hey guys! Just wanted to let everyone know that I’m leaving the RP as of now. I also want everyone know that I have enjoyed RPing with you all so much! I genuinely enjoy seeing everyone’s plots and reading all the amazing stuff you guys write, and I’ll probably jump in to read stuff from time to time. You’re all such great and amazing people and I wish you all the best with everything!! I’ll probably be back in May, though I’m not certain, I just can’t stay now. Either way, I love you all dearly and have enjoyed my time here so much thanks to ALL OF YOU AND you’re all welcome to message me on skype or come and get my skype if you want it ;);;;)));) i had a terrible edit to post with this but idk where i put it
alright thank u good bye xoxo gossip ria im crying i should go
Some time between asking a friend to ship out her belongings and planning a murder—Deirdre fell to the floor, her world flooding into darkness.
“Deirdre, did you fill out your death wishes?”
Deirdre couldn’t help but to laugh, there was something darkly hilarious about her own mother asking her to submit an informal last will and testament when they both were beyond averagely healthy. It was funnier, even, when Deirdre remembered that they were banshees, and that death would never be a surprise to them.
“No,” Deirdre replied with a shrug, “I’ve been in Ireland for hardly a couple of hours, mother.”
Her mother, on the other hand, was far less amused. “No,” she countered, “you’ve been here long enough. Long enough to sit down and watch an episode of….what is that?” Deirdre’s mother pointed at the screen stubbornly, demanding through no real words that Deirdre finish the thought for her.
“The Soprano’s?”
“Crap is what I’d call it,” Deirdre’s mother sat down beside her, back impeccably straight even with their old and sinking couch. “Have you watched Schitt’s Creek? It’s on that Netflix thing.”
“Shit’s creek, mother?”
“Language, Deirdre. You know what I said.”
Instead of humoring her mother, Deirdre reached forward took the paper and pen that her mother had left there for her. “Chloe gets most of my stuff,” Deirdre jotted that down, ignoring the way her mother rolled her eyes. “I own nothing else of real worth.”
“Your knife?”
“I don’t have a daughter,” Deirdre tapped her pen against the table, pretending to think for a moment before she wrote the only name she’d ever write in a situation like this.
Her mother, nosy as she was, leaned forward and frowned, “Regan?”
“She can have my whole house. The knife, the books, grandmother’s knife if you don’t wish to take it.”
“And what of the rest of your belongings? Your car or your collection of blades?”
“I haven’t thought about that yet,” Deirdre paused, “I have time.”
Her mother sighed, “And how will you die?”
Deirdre had always wondered two things: why bosom buddies were called such, and why she was named after such a gruesome tale (Deirdre an Bhróin, Deirdre of Sorrows, hardly something to call someone and not a myth that inspired any motivation). For once, she had the answer to one of those questions, though hardly the answer she really wanted to know about.
It didn’t take long for her to realize what had happened, she’d always been smart, after all. For whatever good her intelligence served her, at least. The cold metal against her cheek when she finally woke up gave it away, and the the small stream of light that shot through the even smaller barred window reinforced it. Any idiot could tell, really.
Sore, shackled and in some rumbling vehicle off to a place she didn’t belong—even Deirdre knew when to call a defeat. Nadene had won, and like some asshole had tried to explain to her minutes ago, criminals needed to answer for their crimes. The collar around her neck that prevented anything more than talking was a nice touch, as if they didn’t think just killing her wasn’t as bad.
Deirdre an Bhróin threw herself against rocks when all that she had was taken away from her. Jumped right from a carriage, head smashed into pieces. Her blood probably painted the ground, and Deirdre wanted that too. That freedom was better than this. Sacrifice was better than this humiliation. They should have killed her, she should have killed them. Yet, neither happened.
Deirdre an Bhróin was probably a braver woman, or one who wasn’t stuck in a van with no windows large enough to fit a humanoid body. She could throw herself at the doors, but they’d chained her down like they expected it. The two guards stared at her with no sympathy, no warmth. If she provoked them, she was sure they’d kill her and for a second she considered it. To be dead would be better than to be trapped. To die before she let herself be thrown away would the the Dolan method.
But she’d never give any human the satisfaction of having killed her.
Some time between hating herself and plotting a murder, they took her to Antichthon. She’d spent so long making fun of the place that she scarcely recognized it. They called it supernatural prison, she called it hypocrisy. In another moment, she was in a cell, or whatever laughable dank room they wanted to pretend was a cell.
Deirdre an Bhróin was probably a bolder woman, and Deirdre couldn’t stop thinking about dashing her head against the concert walls like her namesake would have. Red was better than dark grey, and freedom was better than whatever the hell this was called.
But she couldn’t let them have the satisfaction of beating her.
Tired and beaten, she didn’t speak when they asked her why. She didn’t tell them of her family, of their duty, of the world that she single-handedly protected every day.
Deirdre would have given her life to her duty, and now she had. This was another step, another show of servitude. All of Deirdre’s life had been a series of sacrifices, but this would not be the end. Her drive might have gotten her in jail, but it was going to get her out too. When this was done, their blood would paint the dark grey of their walls—not hers.
Deirdre an Bhróin might have been a courageous woman, head in a thousand bloody pieces, but Deirdre was stronger.
“When I die, it will be by my own hand. I have given everything to this family, it will not take my life too.”
Deirdre’s mother looked at her with pride, she’d always loved her daughter best when she spoke with that conviction. The same girl that had wailed louder than any child had before, the same girl that boasted over her first kill with no shame.
“That’s not the Dolan way,” her mother smiled, “but it is your way, and I will love you for it.”
Some things became reoccurring; the sound of glass shattering, bones stacked up into tiny piles, feelings. Motifs, or concepts bent on haunting Deirdre. When she closed her eyes now, she didn’t see red. She saw cold darkness and her family’s shadows darker than the black of blindness.
Twenty years old but only twelve years of life; real life. Maturity, it seemed, came at an odd price.
Hatred fresh, hot, red and screaming for herself. Thoughts of the girl she used to be; wide-eyed, crying, weak and emotional. Violent determination to never be that girl again, crushing desire for strength in what ever form it would come; praise, approval, the clapping and cheering of her family ringing in her ears at every moment drowning out any doubt or individual thought. Screams of the family name over and over—Dolan, Dolan, Dolan, Dolan—like prayer, a conceited mantra, a war cry into the uncaring husks of fate. Maturity, it seemed, came at an odd price. Strength, just the same.
When she closed her eyes, the dark of blindness settling in. When she couldn’t see anything, not even the light, things became reoccurring; her family’s shadow, glass, bones built neatly into tiny piles and numbness.
She was not that girl anymore, she would never be. She was strong now.
Thirty. Older, wiser, stronger. It was what her mother had said at the anniversary of her awakening, the day that she took her birthright by the hair and slit its throat in the living room—except she didn’t do that, her mother did, but it was less poetic that way. Things were always about the symbolism here; knives, ashes, bones, glass and coldness. Deirdre didn’t bother to think about whether she liked it or not, it was just the way things were. She was thirty now anyway, what good did thinking about the past do her? Deirdre loved her family with her whole heart, what was once a title was now a part of her. Dolan was not a name, but a way of life and all that Deirdre was now.
Whatever Deirdre once felt was now a whisper to the winds.
Strength, as it were, was not a gradual step up but a rushed stampede down. But what did that matter now? Thirty years old but no where near close to everything she was supposed to be.
Accepting everything; the rules, the family name, the screaming, the broken glass. The casual disregard of any feeling—all of it in the name of good. In the name of a strength that never existed.
At thirty, Deirdre never dared to think of becoming anyone else. Never to think of another kind of power. A Dolan ‘till death, as her mother would always say.
Deirdre never stopped to think of what happens to a Dolan beyond death.
“Please! I’m sorry, don’t—”
In another life, maybe at another time in Deirdre’s life, she would have heard those words out. Now they were nothing but blood against Deirdre’s blade. She had never been keen on the gruesome kind of violence that beheading required, and she’d never really had the strength for it either, but some things were necessary.
“Sorry,” Deirdre smirked, kicking the body at her feet, “don’t leave witnesses and all that.” It wasn’t important anyway.
Everything that matters is weak, Deirdre. Her grandmother’s voice was hot in her ears, burning her mind as it always did. Everything that she was fed; every line, every promise, every story—what was it all for? Everything in this life is precious, weak, to be protected.
It didn’t matter anyway. She knew, she’d always known.
Some things were delicate; glass, brittle bones, feelings. Most things, in fact, were. Building took years but breaking took seconds. It was obvious, she knew that.
Everything was delicate, but Deirdre could never afford that luxury. Strength, in the end, was as simple as a sense of duty to which there would never be any prize. Blind devotion to nothing. If she could be anyone else, she wasn’t even sure she would. This life, lonely and empty, was all she had. Strangely, she didn’t mind. Being anyone else would require a strength she didn’t have.
After all, things were delicate; glass, brittle bones, Deirdre. And she knew it all too well.
Actually, ma’am, I’d really like to apologize for my behavior. I want you to know that it was no indication as to how I nor the ACPD treat members of our community here. If you’d like to reach me I’ll happily provide my information. If you’d like to discuss this in person, I’d be happy to as well, ma’am. Once again I’m sorry for how I acted.
[user is offline but if she were online she’d be really disappointed, though mildly impressed, by this show of professionalism]
Are you alright? I have no complaints about you thinking I am amazing, but I would like to make sure.
You are quite wonderful, yourself. If I’ve not said that enough yet. Certainly my favourite Irish individual I have ever met. I suppose the Irish can be alright – and quite beautiful, too.
In other news, I think all of Harris Island is suffering from quite the bout of nightmares right now.
[pm] Why is it important that I kill I would try to do it through legal ramifications.
[pause] If I knew I could do it and get away with it without there ever being a chance of it coming back to bite me in the ass, then possibly. I’d consider the options but I wouldn’t do it unless I absolutely had to. Maybe I’d get someone else to do it. Legally. But that comes at the expense of losing relationships with people I care about as well, regardless of the law. There are other ways of accomplishing things that don’t involve killing, and I’d sooner take those roads than such an extreme route. Killing is the very, very, very last option.
So the legal way is the safest way.
A dog isn’t considered a human life so it wouldn’t be justified.
[pm] What? Legally kill someone?
I’d understand if you did, I think most might. Loved ones are important, they need to be protected. Killing should be a first option, it’s people that think it’s too extreme that end up getting themselves killed instead. Get the problem solved quickly.
Well, I was going to say your mother, but I thought that to be too crass...and I don’t even particularly like even the hypothetical idea of family dying.
[pm] Frankly speaking, I would not mind doing most anything with you. You are always welcome in my home, should you wish – though I know it can be out of the way, and it is totally iron-free, so you would not have to worry. Though if you have an activity to suggest, I am certain I would be up for it.
[pm] Why are you so amazing?
[new pm, moments later] I mean, I feel the same way! Ignore that first message it just kind of slipped out...I mean you ARE amazing so It’s not a false sentence but something you just [user hits send too early]
[pm] [del: Maybe we could...press flowers together? No that sounds boring. My grandmother and I used to do that though.] Do you find any other activities calming, Evelyn? [del: Maybe we can do THOSE together]
[pm] Great! So you waste all that time and energy and hope for what? So you can get them into a human prison just so they can escape? You’ll be teaching them a valuable life lesson then, they’ll just learn to cover their tracks better. Or what, you toss them into Antichthon so someone else can eventually kill them? At that point, it’s just the same as killing them yourself.
Well, that’s debatable.
[pm] I can’t kill them, unless I had justifiable reason, I would go to prison! And what good would I be to anyone if I wound up in I would lose my job There are legal loopholes.
[pm] And them killing your dog isn't justifiable to you? "Dog" of course, can be replaced with anyone that you love. Would it no be justifiable then? And you'd be lucky anyway, since vampires turn to dust, so I doubt there'd be any evidence there.
[pm] I would try to find the vampire or vampires responsible so, if I knew this were a vampire, I would try to learn as much about their type as I could to learn their weaknesses and strengths. I would take any and all available measures to supervise the area, I would warn my friends and family, and also the entire town if a pattern, or their M.O., develops. I would stay up through the night because I recognize any surveillance I do have might be more limited than me in capturing them, I might enlist the help of slayers bounty hunters if they would volunteer to help me in my search. Throughout all of this, I would collect evidence as it comes — if there is any — and interview people who have experienced similar. I would try to figure out a way to entice them to lure the vampire out, maybe by using their weakness or M.O. against them. Then I would find a way to apprehend them.
For good reason.
[pm] Great! So you waste all that time and energy and hope for what? So you can get them into a human prison just so they can escape? You’ll be teaching them a valuable life lesson then, they’ll just learn to cover their tracks better. Or what, you toss them into Antichthon so someone else can eventually kill them? At that point, it’s just the same as killing them yourself.
Some things were delicate; glass, brittle bones, feelings. Deirdre never had a concept of it. Her five-year-old brain could try all it wanted to grasp the idea, but it was beyond her.
What was wrong with being broken? Glass could be replaced, new bones could be found and feelings could be fixed.
Daniel Slate was crying, lividly so in that unbelievable only-in-a-cartoon kind of way. Deirdre could only stare at him in amazement as people rushed around her. Blood dripped down his face and when it hit the ground it splashed like rain into a puddle. She hadn’t meant to hurt him, but he’d started it. He made fun of her, which was nothing new, but this time she pushed him. It felt good, some strange kind of power and an ever stranger sense of accomplishment after.
They said his nose must have been broken, and that he must of tripped (they didn’t think it was Deirdre, they didn’t think she’d ever have the courage to hurt someone). It didn’t make sense. Deirdre had fallen over plenty of times, she was pushed over plenty more, but she’d never broken anything. It didn’t look to painful anyway, and her mother never liked it when she cried in front of people (and especially in front of her).
So why was Daniel?
The rabbits were quick, darting in and out and between the trees. She might have gotten lost in their movement if she hadn’t been mustering as much focus as a six-year-old could.
“Sophie, stop wiggling. I’m trying to see,” Deirdre frowned, eyes still trained on the forest beyond the small pond that they dangled their even smaller feet into.
Sophie’s parents insisted on taking Sophie out to do something called “camping”; Deirdre didn’t get it. Deirdre didn’t get a lot of things, and people especially didn’t get her, but she really didn’t get the point of camping. Why sleep anywhere but at home? She liked the forest as much as any adventurous kid could, but she’d never want to sleep here. Then, when they’d brought a giant car with beds and a toilet, it made even less sense.
But Sophie wanted to bring Deirdre and for some reason Deirdre’s mother insisted that she go. It was supposed to be fun, but even the excitable and and ever-pleasant Sophie was dipping her feet in and out of the water in an act of boredom.
“I don’t wanna stare at the trees,” Sophie whined, she always did. Deirdre, why do we have to poke the roadkill? Deirdre, I don’t like touching the bones. Still, no matter what she said and how she said it, she’d always stay with Deirdre. Friendship was another concept Deirdre didn’t really understand, but Sophie was her friend and she could feel what that meant almost. There was no one else that would sit by a pond with her like this.
“Not the trees,” Deirdre smiled, “the coyote.”
“What coyote?” Sophie wanted to add “what’s a coyote” but refrained. They weren’t in her animal sounds book but neither were foxes and she knew was a fox was. And a raccoon. And a bat! Sophie started to list off the animals she knew in her head, and what sounds she thought they might make while Deirdre looked ahead.
Patience was rewarded and in seconds an animal ripped through the treeline and dove at a rabbit. Sophie wasn’t paying attention but it didn’t matter, this was for Deirdre. This was hers. The coyote slunk back into the dark, a part Deirdre couldn’t make out with her eyes but that didn’t matter either. She’d gotten to see it first hand, the thing she had only pictured in her head for so long; death.
“It’s so sad that bunnies aren’t tough,” Sophie perked up, finally picking up on what happened by the tense animal life around her. “Like a lion, or a bear or that weird thing we learned about in class before. You know, the one that goes really fast? What was it called? Cheeto? Oh! I like cheetos…” Sophie droned on, something about how she wondered if the cheetos you ate were like the cheeots in the wild; Deirdre didn’t pay attention. Her mind was stuck on a thought as well.
Her mother had said that there was a strength in embracing your place in the world, but what did that mean for the rabbits who were just food for the coyotes?
At eight, and packing and trying not to say anything, Deirdre came to a couple of realizations.
First: it was like she hadn’t known her mother at all for the past eight years. Suddenly there was this woman with unnerving enthusiasm, who talked fast and passionately. She’d never seen her mother smile so much before, and Deirdre could tell it was only temporary but it felt nice. She was happy because of her. Even if Deirdre still could wrap her head around what she’d done to deserve any of this, it felt nice.
Second, just like the feeling of the first, that being drowned with kindness and love was nice. Sophie had always been enthusiastic, she was always affectionate and loud, but this was different. There were people she didn’t even know that proclaimed that they loved her now, that they believed in her.
Third: she had a grandmother. Deirdre had never known, she never thought to ask. She was a really nice old lady, with a gentle smell and a warm smile. She was nothing like Deirdre’s mother—her own daughter—but Deirdre almost liked her more for it. She made the kind of jokes that felt like something Deirdre shouldn’t be hearing but best of all, she made her mother turn red in the face with just a sentence. Deirdre had never seen her mother turn any color but blue.
Fourth. She wasn’t human and that made more sense than it should have. She never got people, just as much as they didn’t get her. They were like rabbits, her mother explained later, good for the coyotes but useless for the people (the real people). They were delicate, her mother explained, not like Deirdre—like all the other people that had shown up with missing backs and grass growing out of their heads.
Like glass, brittle bones, and feelings; humans were replaceable. Humans like Daniel Slate and Sophie were nothing but fodder for the world.
They had places of no real importance, her mother explained. And Deirdre believed it all, because it made sense: she wasn’t wrong, they were.
Things that mattered were not weak, after all—or so her mother explained.
Deirdre’s voice was hoarse, water did little to sooth the burning she felt, but she hid it well. When her mother talked to her, she’d use her head to agree. When her grandmother called for her, she’d use her eyes to say that she understood. When her aunt wondered why she was drinking so much water, Deirdre simply looked ashamed. She felt—briefly—that it didn’t matter if she spoke or not, only if she agreed with them. Almost as if they didn’t really care about her—but that couldn’t have been true. She’d turned eleven a couple of days ago and her party was big. Not as big as the party they threw for Sophie’s death, and the anniversaries of it, but it was still big—according to an eleven year-old at least.
She woke up in the night again and ran down by the lake, the one that was right under the stars with the cold water and the damp grass. She couldn’t really sleep anyway, so it was fine.
She practiced screaming again and when she finally lost her voice, her family noticed—but at that point, she almost didn’t need them to.
“Deirdre, you can’t underestimate anyone. People can move quick.”
Deirdre, fifteen and haughty, looked at her grandmother with unrestrained confusion. “They’ll be asleep by the time I get to them.”
“People can move quick,” her grandmother stressed again, “you can’t think that you’ll always be better than them.”
Once, Deirdre might have taken that to heart. Believed it and lived by it. The idea that she wasn’t better, that kids would tease and push her for good reason. Now, it was foreign to her ears. And if it ever started to feel like it was true again, she pushed it away until all she could hear was her mother’s voice repeating ideas of fae pride—and her own voice parroting.
She was young, sure, maybe, what ever your definition of young was. Yet, her first kill was months ago and it went perfectly. The first fulfillment of her duty at fifteen, the youngest in her family and she’d done it all by herself. Wasn’t she better than them? Wouldn’t she always be better than them?
She was young, sure, but even then people perked up at her words. They watched her eagerly, they responded to her smiles. Finally, she understood people, and she understood how they were beneath her. She knew how to twist them, how to make them curl at her feet. Wasn’t she better than them? What was this all for if not to be better?
Deirdre, fifteen and arrogant, narrowed her eyes at her grandmother and readied her body—feet apart and shoulders squared. “Aren’t I better?” She scowled before letting a scream burst through her mouth. Her body shook and she could hear animals scrambling away. In all of it, she felt her pride swell.
When it was over, when the world stopped shaking and her voice was quiet against her lips, she looked at her work. The glass bottles carefully placed into a tower in front of her were untouched; nothing broken, no cracks. Perfect control of her wail at fifteen—the youngest in her family.
She looked at her grandmother and couldn’t help the smirk that reached her lips. “I think I am better.”
[pm] I don’t know what I will do I don’t know I don’t I won’t know until I’m put in that Give me a scenario and I’ll tell you what I’d do.
Deirdre.
[pm] That’s so much work What am I even supposed to Uh, a vampire ?? kills and eats your beloved dog. Of course, there’s no evidence of this because your dog is devoured and who would believe that a vampire did it but you know. Even if there were though, it’s not like a human jail would hold them back but you have a chance to take justice in your hands. You know they’ll go after other dogs, dogs of your friends probably. Maybe even your other dog. What do you do then?
I’ve been killing for 16 years do you really think I’ll go to jail n You worry too much, Reed.
Oh, I’m not allowed to leave the house ever since they put this thing on my ankle that beeps every time I move to far away from my house. I don’t know why, I had such fun the last time I went to the police station. They put me in a dark room and handcuffed me to a table and then my lawyer came in and...well, look at me! Getting all nostalgic! Oh, you’ll have to excuse me I didn’t mean to share my life story like that.
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