They had helped her to sleep the night before. Let her drift to a secure dream land where none of her daily haunts could torment her. Her mind worked like a broken puzzle, one piece not quite fitting right. In the night, the pieces were unraveled again, the puzzle was started over like usual. Piece after piece made its way into its proper place, until the last piece. It was a perfect fit today....

Those pieces came together, sending the right signals to the right places. Pieces wouldn't fall apart again; the player would make sure of it. Her mind would not be aware of the change however. But those around her would most certainly notice it.

She started the day like any other day, one foot after the other slipping from the bed. Her toes wiggled on the floor as a musical voice rang out," Morning Shane." She wasn't even aware of how long it had been.

The shower was the first trip to be made. Only then did she notice the mess that was her hair. She contributed it to something else and started the water. Fingers danced under the warm blue water, measuring the temperature. Once it was perfect enough she slid out of her PJs and under the water. It was wonderful.

A few moments past when she overheard a voice, Shane's mother was calling out to her. She wondered then if Shane had gone off to work early. Her voice called out," Just a moment and I'll come help you!"

The water was shut off. Her arm reached, groped for a towel before pulling it towards her. Stepping out of the shower, she looked around the bathroom. Something was different, but she couldn't figure it out. When she heard her name called she stepped out of the bathroom and into their bedroom.

She dressed herself. A pair of jeans and a green sweater found their way among a pair of boots and her wedding ring. She was ready for work, but first she'd see what her Mother- In- Law needed.

Coming out of her room, she glanced over the house. Again she had a feeling that something was off from yesterday. One brow rose and she moved to the living area. Shane's mother was found on the phone and speaking frantic to someone.

However, when she was spotted, Shane's mother went silent. The phone was put down by the elderly woman," Maria" Are you alright dear?"

An odd look formed on Maria Michael's face before she spoke," I feel fine." A small laugh came from her," Why wouldn't I be??

"What do you mean I've been sick!?" Maria had been cornered with this for a few days now. No matter how much Shane's mother insisted she calm down, all the woman wanted was her husband to come home. She had overheard Shane's mother doing her best, but the voice on the other end seemed so determined not to come.

In her mind, Shane had the answers. He was always there for her, always had the answers she had needed in the worst of times. When they told her it had been five years. When they told her she had been the victim of a mental disorder for years and that Shane had left because of it, she nearly lost it.

Another night had passed, still no Shane to come home, hold her, and tell her that everything was okay. Maria was getting angrier. Feeling more and more abandoned with each passing day. In the night and during the day, Shane's mother and father insisted that she be watched. Over and over they said that them watching her was for her own good.

Own good be damned. Maria was done with it, she needed to see Shane. At any cost, at any means. She was so aggravated with everyone holding her hand and squeezing it. So many people had been crying around her with joy. It made her feel like she had been dead. She had had enough of doctors checking on her, testing to see if each day started the same.

She couldn't count how many times she had told them that she couldn't see demons under the bed or people lurking in the shadows. Even her mother didn't believe her until Maria had a fit and went on doing the normal house duties as if she had never neglected to do so. When she started to pick up her normal routines the people who had watched her wither were growing with the delight that the life that had returned to her.

Another failed call to Shane had been enough. From what she had overheard, there had been other women. One had even came here while she was ill. It had been one of the forces that would drive Shane's wife to see to it that Shane couldn't avoid her being well again.

Clothes were stuffed in a bag, her deep auburn hair falling around her face. In the middle of the night Maria made her escape. When everyone slept, she climbed out of her window and towards the way to Rhy'din. In the morning Shane was sure to get a call.

Shane's mother and father would need no guess in trying to figure out where she had gone. None of them did. If Shane didn't believe it in the morning, he was sure to believe it by night fall. His wife was going to find him and find out just what he was up to. Abandoned or not, her goal was set, she was going to remind him that she was still among the living. And she was feeling very, very, well.

Harvey let him go early cause the new kid needed to do some of the work on his own. He wishes it coulda just been a half day, but he knew Harvey would want him in early tomorrow and staying late to make up the time and the work that they would surely be behind. Sometimes, though, apprenticeships needed that one-on-one time.

People were different when the crowd was gone. Just like now. It's a huge inn when its empty. Looked like it could hold twice the people it normally did and that a pin-drop could echo if you tested it. When he came in he noticed that it had gotten cooler, so he went to the hearth to put a log on the simmering-half dead coals of the fire before and then went to the bar. The kitchen. To figure out what lunch was gonna be.

Maria had lost out in his search at the home address of her husband. At least that's what she assumed was his home. There was no way in hell she was going to stick around when she saw the dog keeping watch. It was a good thing it was obvious no one was home. The next place she had gone to was the place she had assumed he worked, but even there the trail was cold. The man said he had already left. It was not boding well for Shane or for his wife. The longer he took being found the more aggravated she was getting.

She had seen a few issues of Gangstar on her way here, even picked up the old articles. Play boy Shane was what the man Franco called him. Through those articles she had learned that there had been two women, one named Jacinta and one named Darcy. It was not boding well for Shane indeed.

Boot covered feet shifted up the stairs in her path to finding Shane. She had come to the Inn for a cup of coffee before she started a new in her search. Right as Shane had entered the kitchen, Maria entered the Inn, plucking the cap from atop her head. Brown locks dropped free, flowing like dark waves down past her shoulders. Soft green eyes peered this way and that, towards cold coals then to the bar. Her destination was set, she was moving with ease for the coffee pot behind the bar.

The kitchen grumbles with the noise of him fixing lunch. It wasn't covert or muted in any way. It was as he closed the sandwich together that he heard that inn wasn't so echoing hollow and grinned, cause it pleased him. Shane had always liked crowds and affection and generally, being around people. When he stepped out he saw her but— of course did not think it her. Even with his mother's warning ringing in his ears this was not, WAS NOT, how they were supposed to reunite in his mind. He set his plate down atop the bar and moved over, stepped around her for a glass to mix up his whiskey sour, "Excuse m—" and stopped, rather dead, when it WAS her.

Eyes turned as the kitchen door opened. The sight of him almost, almost had her in tears. Yet, she reminded herself that he was in trouble, that she was angrier than a spitting cobra. Her fine brows narrowed on him when he stopped dead. The Irish woman did the first thing that came to mind. She smacked him, hard, but it was softened by the glove covering her hand.

Her mouth opened and she went off," You left me Shane! You left me so that you could come here and do what?" That's when she looked to his hand, the absence of his ring hurt, it showed," Where's your ring" Shane Michael did you think I was going to be—-." That's when she realized she had smacked him. Her hands shot up to her lips as her eyes went wide. Tears burst from her eyes and she began to blubber like a whale," Oh God...Oh Shane....What did I do."

It still clapped across the room and left the cheek flushed and him, stunned to begin with, was almost shocked to the point that English just wasn't registering. Her lips were moving and she was talking and suddenly it occured to him she was saying something to him. He opens his mouth and nothing. Nothing is coming out and he feels like a fish gasping for air. The empty glass in his hand and his stomach in his shoes. She's looking at his hand and still it just isn't registering to him that it could be her. No, it can't. It has to be just another false moment of clarity. His hands drop at his sides and he struggles to know what to say, what to tell her but all that comes out is, "What told you to come here, Maria?"

There she was sobbing and whaling. Weaping all over the fact that she had smacked him. She didn't want to do that to him, it was one of those vows she had took on their wedding day. But he just knew how to make her angry again. When he asked that question she stopped crying," I am your wife Shane Michael! When you didn't come to me, what did you think I was going to do"! Sit there and accept being abandoned because you wouldn't believe the fact that I was actually better!?" Emotional wasn't the half of it. She was on a roller coaster of confusion," For a week I have been poked and prodded by doctors. Harassed by your mother to stay calm when all I wanted was my husband and I find out that you've been here, running around and sharing your bed with other women!?" Bum bum bum. That's right, she knew.

"You've been....impossible for the last five years!!" it was his turn to raise his voice, to be angry. Though his tone didn't come out of any righteousness, but out of being defensive. He set the glass down with a loud, hollow "thunk" and then looked at her, hands up in the air, "You know you were having conversations with the air, right' The thin-god-air!! Like it was this whole person and I was crazy for not offering them something to eat!! You took all of our food and put it under the bed so that people wouldn't eat it while you were asleep. Or how about Victor, huh?" his hands rest the flesh wing between thumb and index finger on the turn of his hips, "You know, that imaginary friend you convinced my mom exists when he doesn't."

When he yelled she backed up a bit, greens wider than wide. As he spoke her brow furrowed. She didn't remember anything of what he was saying, it showed clearly on her face. Dark locks shifted behind her and the tears came again," What about the vows Shane....In sickness and in health' How long did you wait before you took that ring off and let a woman share your bed" Did you even think of me, even wear my ring while you were here" Or did you take off your ring before then and come here pretending to be a single man with an ill wife back in Ireland?" Her brows furrowed, she was still trying to remember the last five years, but they didn't matter to her because," When I woke up from whatever happened I still had my ring on. I still love you Shane." She was going to stand by that for a long time.

"No I didn't," he was still snapping at her, "cause I was a stupid eighteen year old boy who didn't know what to do with a heart much less a marriage," He sucks in a breath after that and lifts his hands, "and I wish I had been a better man at the time, but I wasn't. I was alone, and scared, and my family needed money and people were starving to death. I got a job here, where the money is better and when I send some back, it helped. It kept my younger brothers and sisters in some kinda school so maybe, just maybe they could be something bigger and better than I was cause really," he waved a hand like he was waving it at the world, "the only thing I get to be is a decent tailor and a half-shot writer. I don't get Shakespeare. I don't get numbers and how they come together to mean something. This is all I'll ever be and I thought maybe, maybe, maybe, if one of us could be something than maybe the Michael name would have some pride behind it."

"Why didn't you come home Shane" Why didn't you come home when your mother called" Were you afraid that I'd relapse?" She watched him carefully, a nod coming from her instantly," You did, didn't you." She was speaking calmly," You lost faith in me getting better. In a wife that loves you returning back to normal and you having to give up what you have here. Didn't you?" Her lips pursed into a fine thin line. Her eyes were blotched with tears, almost stinging with her pain.

She was hurt, hurt that he didn't come when she needed him," When I woke up, when I realized what had happened I was scared Shane. I needed you and you wouldn't come. I was abandoned by the man I love." She shook her head," So what if I was sick, so what if I had an imaginary friend. You knew I would need you someday and still you stayed away and ignored me like a fly on the wall so that you could live without me being ill at your side." Her bottom lip was quivering, but she held firm, being a strong woman like she had been before she was ill," I'm not sick Shane. I'm not...I know where my heart lies, but I see your heart has changed."

"Ma never really wanted to say anything was wrong, you know" She gave me a lot of false alarms. You'd have like....one good day and suddenly I was suppose to drop everything here and go home." His tone was starting to soften, to lower like his shoulders. "They told me so many times you weren't ever getting better."

When she asked him the so what he sighed heavily, "It wasn't just you, or you being sick. It was having to deal with the things you'd do and say. Some days....you were mean. Like you wanted me dead and I was so young and scared. Everyone was hurt and dyeing all around me it seemed and one day I just stepped out of the house and cried and cried and thought that if I went back in there....I dunno. That I'd rather be dead. That I just did NOT have the strength for it. It had nothing to do with loving you less or losing love for you. I wanted someday to have a family and be with someone who....helped me out for a change. Who told ME that it would be all right. Cause at home....I was the foundation for ten people and I couldn't take it. No one was telling me it'd be all right but Ma, and Ma's are suppose to do that so it didn't help much. I was like the father of all my siblings and wife and," he sighed when he realized the argument was futile, "I don't suppose you could understand. It's all just been a blink for you and not something that's like to be eternal punishment."

Listening to him did more than he thought it would. It wasn't some useless statement or fatal choice. It was her trying understand why he left her behind. When he said the last part she swallowed hard. Very hard. That swollen lump in her throat just wouldn't go down. It was like cutting off air, cutting off everything and turning at the strings attached to her chest. More and more of it pulled and tugged at her chest, making a painful motion mirrored in her breath.

The tears no longer stung at her red cheeks, she couldn't cry when she understood that he needed understanding and strength. But could he ever understand that she was better. Would he always be afraid that she was going to be better for a while and get ill again?

There were no voices, hidden people, or imaginary friends. She had not seen one since she had woken to an empty bed. The week was filled with her crying for Shane, begging for him to come home. She just wanted him to come home and wrap his arms around her. She wanted him to hold her and tell her it would be okay. But at that moment, with both of them behind the bar she did the opposite.

She wrapped him up in her arms, held him close to her after all that he had said. A soft whisper fell from her lips as she swallowed at that lump again," Shane....I'm here now, I don't know what that means to you....But I can tell you now that I do understand, I was scared and stupid, too angry to try and see it. I'm here, I'm better now....Don't you see that?" Her voice broke. She needed him to see that, to have faith in that again. She needed that from him.

He exhales like she's broken his ribs with her hold and his arms fall around her. She seemed like part of a life that was decades behind him. He could remember, then, being a kid for a moment and holding her as his young bride and she'd look up to him with her veild pushed back and baby's breath whispering in her hair and tell him that everything they were was okay cause she'd felt it with an unquestionable certainty and he believed her. He believed in...a lot of things. One of his hands smoothed along the outside of her arms, "I want to?"

"Please Shane....Please." She looked up at him, those green eyes locking with his. The tears had rosed her cheeks and were threatening to do so again. Her arms were around him, holding him just firm enough to show him that she didn't want to let go of him, of what they still could be. Those eyes were crystal clear, free of all that had fogged them for five long years. She didn't want to take her eyes off of him, she didn't dare to. If she looked away, he may let go and doubt again.

"You gotta..." he paused, wet his lips more in need for a moment than them being dry, "You gotta know that I'm not the same person." his hand drops underneath her chin, "That coming here and living as I have has....departed me from my Catholic foundation and beliefs. That I have gone through so much and have changed and you're still the young woman I left behind. I don't know how much you remember but I know I'm not the same. If you met me in cafe you might think I'm not like anyone you'd ever want to be with."

If she loved the man for his beliefs, then she wouldn't have been standing there. Her dimpled smile even came to life somewhere in the middle of his words. It was as if she knew something he didn't. All her anger had washed away; she wouldn't let it come back any time soon.

When he finished she sighed," Shane Daley Michael, I just found out I spent five years being an ill wife. I understand that you've changed, I really do. And if I didn't try and accept that change then I'd be letting you and myself down. So don't think I'm going to slink away without trying....Because I want to try and be what we can be. Don't you?"

"It's a lot for me to, you know, take in right now." he admitted honestly. He wished he were single and that would un-complicate all the screams viding for priority in his head. Eyebrows knit together as he cleared his throat and said, "I am sorta...seeing someone right now. She knows of you but not like this."

There was the first reminder that Shane had really changed. She nodded slightly, swallowing a bit for a moment then stating," Does she make you smile Shane?" It was an honest question that she needed to know the answer to.

"Yes. She makes me smile and laugh and....it's complicated, Maria," he said with a heavy sigh and looked at her with a weak, worn out smile, "I don't know what to make of us and what?s left of our marriage. Just that....perhaps we should approach each other as strangers would."

She nodded again, fingers brushing over the ring on her left hand. Again she was put in the situation, play Shane's wife, or play stranger to Shane. Either way she wanted things to be right with the man before her. Her sigh was long, heavy, and pained," So what do we do....Remove the...well I remove my ring and say we're not married?"

"I guess, separated?" he'd heard people use the adjective before, and while he wasn't sure that it correctly applied here, it was the closest thing that could come to mind. "How about I rent a room upstairs for you? I don't know where you're staying but you need to have a good place to rest at and go home to. The docks are cheaper, but rougher. You should stay here."

She could only nod to that. What else was she supposed to say' Her head lowered so that she could look at her feet," That's probably best. I will probably be finding work here in the next few days." She lifted her head again," And don't say no to me sending money to your family and helping you with them, they're my family too. They took care of me too."

"They're better now," he said offhand with a shrug, "only about three of my brothers and sisters are still at home anymore now. The famine is over and Da has steady work. It's....much better for them now than when you remember it. I guess that's why Ma held onto you so bad— you were like a daughter to her and so many of her own had grown up, married and left." but he would not stop her from sending them money if she wished— though he was surprised at her statement to stay here, "Maria, this place is, uh, crazy. It's not like Ireland. At all."

"It's a change Shane, people still doubt if I'm well there. Here I can live without people being afraid. If I need you I don't have to hop on a ship to talk to you." She held up an envelope with his address on it," I stopped by there. Saw her, I think." She thought about the pink haired woman who had stepped out of his house right as she was about to approach it," Despite the pink hair, she's kinda pretty."

"Well, she's not the one you met," softly as the recalled Jacinta going all that way to make peace with what had been Shane's past and now it had walked up to this very inn. Angry and now, somehow at peace. Was it a real peace" Could she see Skulls and Shane separate and be fine but once she saw the connection....become angry again? Become....indignant, again? Rightfully so. That was the hardest part, arguing any of his case to a situation that said he'd been at fault. He wished a lot of the time he hadn't been such a boy.