Tay Barnam

"Sticks and stones are hard on bones.
Armed with angry art,
Words can sting like anything.
But silence breaks the heart."
-Phyllis McGinley

Taylor Barnam is holding a gun, and Milo's standing next to her.

When a gun is fired outside the confines of battle, of a fight, it's almost a comfort, when you're raised like a Barnam. It's when there's a single shot, maybe two, and then stillness that it eats at you. The echo ringing in your ears, your hands tingling with the slight numbness of the retort, the smell of it in the air, and stillness all around you, the sudden absence where a missing soul should be.

Taylor Barnam is holding a gun. Her wings are out, Milo's shaggy form is pressed against her legs, and the only sounds in the deafening silence are Milo's faint whines and her own ragged breath. I had to do it! she wants to scream. I had no choice - I did the right thing! But even if she could force the words out, Milo already knows. The only other person in the room is dead. She knows because his Other is gone.

She tries to breathe, tries to remember that he's been trying to kill her for nearly three years, tries to act like an adult, like a professional. It was him or her. He'd've killed her ward, and killed her to get him, if he'd had to. She was expendable. Useless. Traitor.

She's a Guardian Angel, she eliminated a long-standing threat to her ward's life and her own, she has nothing to be ashamed of, and no reason to be upset. No reason to be holding herself back from collapsing into sobs because she shouldn't be sobbing at all. There's no reason Milo should look so miserable. They did their job. She did the right thing. The silence rages on.

There's a teenaged girl holding a gun, her Other at her side.

Her father lies dead on the floor.

Word Count: 308