<span style="font-family: 'Arial'"><span class="fixed-color" style="color:#ff9999">Rory whipped around so fast she almost toppled herself if it wasn’t for her hand that grabbed the doorframe. She felt breathless, tired, stressed, her heart aching more than it should when she faced him again because she had hesitated in that doorway. In her other hand, the stone throbbed with a pulse of its own in her hand. She squeezed it for support and for reassurance as she jerked her chin up and looked Dante in the eye with her own tear-blurred stare.<br/>
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“You don’t understand,” she snapped out, her old fire laced in her emotion laden voice. “You don’t understand, Dante, and that’s what hurts me so much. You think I just left you. You think I just… you think I just… did it on purpose.” She crumpled then, her shoulders slumping and her face falling as the tears flowed freely down her face. She tried to pull herself back up, but the best she could do was take the sleeve of his shirt to swipe at the tears that made her cheeks ruddy and her voice ugly. “I was trapped and couldn’t come back,” she yelled this time, her voice pitched too high, right up in his face as she gained momentum.<br/>
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Now it was her turn to press her finger solidly into the center of his chest. Her eyes were more green than they had been, lit up by the onslaught of emotions as they stood in the doorway of a dead man’s house. A man that Dante had killed. Her body trembled and shook as she choked out the next words that she needed to. “And she’s your daughter--” <br/>
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That broke her. Saying it out loud. Her face bled of all its color and she stumbled back, her hand falling limply at her side. The trembling became less out of anger and more out of sadness, out of shame, and more importantly, out of uncertainty. “But I don’t want to add another thing to the long list of troubles I’ve dragged you through, Dante,” she said finally, her voice trembling, but filled with quiet. “I didn’t know… that I was such a burden… when we were together. So I don’t want myself or Eoin to be something else you have to deal with. It looks like you have a lot going on here for yourself, Dante.”<br/>
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What she didn’t say is that she had come back, when it was all said and done, but saw just what kind of man that he was turning into. With Eoin being an infant, and with his violent ways, she had freaked out in her own right, and made the longer decision to stay away until she could make sure that herself and her daughter were safe once and for all.<br/>
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She hadn’t meant to bump into him again. Not yet.<br/>
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And now she didn’t really know what to do.</span></span>