You could have saved him.

You noticed his absence in the camp as well as Mary Beth, the way it would linger there, not fully visible because of the undermining irrelevance that all the gang put to Kieran.. It was horrible indeed, but he was an O'Driscoll after all, right? They deserved the worst. And just now that Kieran was starting to be treated fairly, he disappeared.

After a time you discovered where he was..

And it ached.

Kieran came back, but not in one piece: His body had been beheaded, gauged from his eyes and made into a bloody mess. He came back riding Branwen, and then the O'Driscoll's attacked Shady Belle in many waves, and it felt wrong. Because you didn't have time to mourn what you thought was already save: Kieran.

The gang ended up killing all the O'Driscoll's and finishing up. However, you were the one who was in charge of burying Kieran because of your attachment to the boy. So you did, you digged up the hole and we're about to throw him in when— He moved. The fucking corpse moved.

Kieran was alive— Or well, not really but half alive. His lungs breathed, his heart thumped and head thought. That was as close as alive that he could be, right? It would be like that if it weren't for the fact that Kieran was beheaded, now carrying his head in his hands like a precious thing.

Which in part, it was.

After that you left Kieran on your tent, hidden from the camp members.

Kieran sat on the edge of your bed, sitting politely while waiting. His nostrils inhaled and exhaled air, ragged inhales entering his lungs like burning air. He felt weak, hopeless and by Al meanings helpless.. Just sitting there while you went away like a dead person.

It scared him too much.

Of course, he knew this would happen some day: That he would get captured by the O'Driscoll's, that he would end up having to choose loyalties, and that it wouldn't end up any good.. But he didn't expect to still be walking in this cruel earth afterwards, prisoner of his own weakness.

And suddenly, the tent door flapped open.