(Inspired by BYU Vocal Point's cover of the song. Strongly recommend listening while reading this chapter, for the full experience.)

Chapter Nine - Oh Danny Boy

"Oh Danny boy, the pipes, the pipes are calling from glen to glen, and down the mountain side."

The feeling of grief was an odd one.

It hit a person differently, depending on who they were. Sometimes it was a sharp pain, like a dagger being pressed into one's heart, and it seemed impossible to keep living, as a sword through the heart is usually fatal.

Grief wasn't fatal.

Sometimes the pain was more of a weight than anything else. It was as if the memories of times you'd had with the lost had turned to stone and they were pushing you into the earth, to rejoin the departed. It seemed impossible to live with such a weight on one's person. The constant pain, the constant stumbles from the crushing agony of separation- and there was no relief, no one else to share the pain with you when everyone else was suffering as well.

Grief wasn't fatal.

Sometimes it came and went, here and there, to a person who lived their life in joy and happiness. One could forget, in an instant, and make believe that everything is fine. An escape from reality wasn't a true escape, for one always returned in the end. It was if one was climbing a rope to get out of a bottomless pit. Try as they might, pull as might pull, no one will ever get out of the pit. One will simply get more and more trying to climb higher, until they ultimately succumbed back into the pit of despair like everyone else.

Grief wasn't fatal.

Some chose to leave, to distance themselves from the pain they felt deep within their hearts. They thought distance would make the ache dull in a way that staying in a place where everything reminded them of the lost soul never could let them forget. Anything, they try to justify, anything is better than this… this hurt. Run away from everything. Leave others to deal with it.

Grief wasn't fatal.

Some took to false stimulants of happiness. Drugs, alcohol, sex… all playthings of someone incapable of coping with grief. Whether for the first of the five hundredth time, it was always a fallback option. Something to get your mind off of them, for just a second, just a minute… just forever. They took pills and hoped it would delete their memories, but it never worked. Only blurred the ages for a few minutes until they took more and more and more and it was never enough… never enough to forget…

Grief wasn't fatal.

Nothing truly took one's mind off of the loss, however, and that fact was worse than it being fatal all together.

"The summer's gone, and all the roses falling. It's you, it's you must go and I must bide."

Weston Sinclair was far too young to be wearing black for two events in a row. They all were, really. It wasn't fair, he thought bitterly, it wasn't fair that he had been out here for his father's funeral just a few weeks previously and now he was out here again. It wasn't fair there was another grave, another headstone marking another fallen royal who would never again wake.

He held it together at the funeral until the very end. He gave his speech like all his siblings did, the ones related to Juliet, of course, and he thought that she would have been proud of it. He hadn't stuttered once. He'd kept his head held high and he had never even needed to look at the cards in his hands, the ones he had scrawled on with his messy script and stained with tears the day before.

It wasn't fair, he thought, that she wasn't there to see his speech.

He almost made it to the end of the funeral without crying. Kings weren't supposed to cry, and Juliet had known that and would have been mad if she'd seen him cry know. Juliet never cried, not in front of audiences, because she was raised to be a queen and they didn't cry either. Kings and queens were one in the same- they were supposed to be strong for their people.

Weston wasn't strong.

Juliet was strong.

Had been strong.

And it was unfair, it was so unfair that she was not here now to be strong. It was unfair that the two had never gotten the chance to be that close. It was unfair that he had never gotten to talk with her after the Report like he had promised.

It was unfair that his life was just a series of broken promises that no one, not even himself, could keep.

And as he watched Juliet's casket being lowered into the ground, as his heart felt like it was being stabbed and that his soul was shattering into a thousand, unfixable pieces, the tears that he had been holding back trickled down his face and Weston thought it unfair… unfair that she was not here, next to him, to chide him gently about crying like she had done at their father's wake.

It was raining, however, and it was impossible to tell whether he was crying or not as he had refused to stand under Elyse's umbrella.

Rain wasn't fatal, not in the long run. And somehow, it was appropriate, in some horribly real poetic sense in the world. Funerals were supposed to be dismal, gloomy places, if one relied on the words of literature to decide. Rain made it look like the entire universe was crying over his lost sister, taken from the world too soon by some cruel twist of face.

It had been raining, he remembered in a flash of pain, that it had been raining at the funeral for Juliet's mother, as well. The prince hoped that she was with her now, and that they were happy, wherever they ended up. Mother and daughter reunited, perhaps sooner than anyone would have expected.

And Weston was not a religious person, but he hoped for that there was a Heaven up there in the sky for his little sister.

The rain fell on his face when he looked up at the sky, and it blurred his vision even more than the tears had. From his vantage, the sky looked too far away… Juliet had always made reaching for the whole world look easy. He hoped that she had finally caught it, and that it made her happy, at long last.

If he could touch the sky, Weston thought, he'd like nothing more than to bring his sister back to earth where she belonged. With him. With Jasper. With all of them.

Reaching Heaven wasn't fatal, wasn't the cause of death the prince knew, but it wasn't fair either.

"But come ye back when summer's in the meadow or when the valley's hushed and white with snow."

Beau woke up his daughter in the middle of the night, about twelve hours after the funeral for his brother's younger sister. Despite having no relationship with Juliet, the young man couldn't help but pick up on the fear and grief that now lurked in every corner of the palace. He didn't like it… There was something wrong in the palace. There was something wrong, and he couldn't stay.

"Belle," he whispered to the sleeping child and picked her up gently in his arms. "Ma chérie, we must go. Now, s'il vous plaît."

The child blinked sleep from her eyes and held her father close. "Why, Papa? The sun is still asleep."

He held her tightly, refusing to put her down even though she was by far old enough to walk on her own. But she was his daughter, the only thing he had left of Evangeline, and as much as he wanted to be there for his brother and sister in their time of need, he would not risk the safety of his treasure to stay at some palace that had never wanted him in general.

"I know, Belle-baby, but please. Hush now, we're going home." He walked out of the guest bedroom the two had been inhabiting and started for the stairs. The staff had already loaded their two suitcases into his car, and everything was set to leave.

Afraid of the suddenly, the child started to bawl, and bawl loudly. "I don't wanna go!" Belle was a smart child, and knew the palace was much nicer than where she lived most of the year, though she and her father certainly had a nice enough cottage. Not to mention, however, that her aunt and uncle were here, not at home, and she didn't want to leave them.

Desperately, her father tried to shush her before she woke up the entire palace, but it was too late. The door next to him creaked open, and Elyse stuck her head out with unkempt hair and eyes bloodshot with tears. Underneath his breath, Beau cursed. He had forgotten how close his sister's room was to the one he occupied.

"Beau?" Her voice was a whisper, a ghost of the cheerful shout it usually was. "Beau, what's happening? Why is she crying?" She asked, but there were more unsaid questions on her lips that she bit back in fear of scaring her niece. Belle herself was far more reassured now, and had seemingly cried herself to sleep in the safety of her father's arms.

"Everything is fine, Elysie. But I-we have to go." Beau swallowed the guilt that threatened to cause himself to burst. This was what had to happen. He could not be the father that Belle needed if someone targeted him like Juliet. And as much as he loved his younger sister and wanted to take her with him, that was not his choice to make. She, like Weston, belonged in the palace.

He and his daughter belonged at home, at their own home, and he would be persuaded to stay by no amount of tears or sobs from Elyse. It was time to leave.

His younger sister broke down and began begging him to stay with her, not to leave him, and Beau had to harden his heart to her pleas. It was a choice of family, really, of which side of him he was going to choice. He loved Elyse. He had been there when she had been born, with Weston, and had been the first to hold the child before anyone else, besides his mother. It had been him who had taught his sister, in one of the few visits to the palace the King had allowed him, how to ride a bike. Weston had been there, as well, but he was absolutely useless when it came to instructing anyone.

But as his sleeping daughter shifted peacefully in his arms, he knew that there was absolutely no choice in the world.

"I'm sorry, Elysie… I'm sorry." He apologized and he meant it, but then he turned his back on her. He left her where she stood, right outside her door, and he got into the car that one of the footmen had brought to him. Beau buckled his daughter into the carseat and gave one look at the palace, and its dark abyss of windows, and where he knew Elyse still stood even though he could no longer see her, and he hoped that one day she would understand why he made the choice he had to.

And he turned the key in the ignition and pressed his foot on the gas pedal, and he was gone from the palace without a goodbye to anyone else.

Goodbyes weren't fatal but sometimes they felt like forever, and Beau was afraid, he was so afraid, of forever.

"'Tis I'll be here in sunshine or in shadow. O Danny Boy, O Danny Boy, I love you so."

"When winter's come and all the flowers are dying, and I am dead, as dead I well may be, you'll come and find the place where I am lying and kneel and say an "Ave" there for me."

Rosemary wanted someone to blame, and she didn't have anyone to pin the guilt on.

Her sister was dead, murdered, and no one knew how or why. Their one shred of evidence was the stupid scrap of paper that Juliet had tried to show Weston an hour before she was killed, and that had been soaked in too much of her blood to be remotely readable.

Why?

All Rose wanted to know was why?

Sitting in the hospital, with all these needles and pills and things that she didn't understand around her, wasn't going to give them an answer. Only searching for something, anything, would give them clues to the culprit and the motive, but no one was doing anything. And she was stuck in this stupid bed all the time because she had been shot, and she needed bedrest, or something as ridiculous as that.

Rosemary didn't trust anything the doctors told her. She knew how doctors worked. They pretended to be your friends but really, they were just looking at ways to fix you.

Fixing required you to be broken, and Rosemary was not broken.

All she wanted was someone to blame and here, in this hospital, she had no one to blame but herself. Not simply for Juliet's death, but for everything in her life. She wanted to be out there, avenging her sister's death, not here where things were scary and the princess felt like a child when people talked softly to her and explained things she didn't know or care about.

For the first time in her life, that she could remember, Rose was scared. Not just for herself, but for the rest of her siblings, too. They were in danger. They could be killed at any minute, and Rose would still be here in this stupid bed with the stupid nurse who begged the girl to take her medicine, which she refused to do. Because they were lying, lying about the medicine, lying to her, and she wanted out.

And she wanted someone to blame, give her soMEONE TO BLAME. She screamed and screamed at the walls and the doctors, and the voices screamed back at her, until Rosemary had to cover her ears like a little girl again to block out the voices.

It didn't work, because she was the only one making the noise, but sometimes it was hard to understand that.

Her life was so… loud.

The voices and the loud, they weren't fatal… but they spoke of wanting to kill her. And Rosemary wasn't sure that there was really a difference between those things, after all.

"O Danny Boy, the stream flows cool and slowly; and pipes still call and echo 'cross the glen. Your broken brother sighs and feels so lowly, for you have not returned to smile again."

Jasper wasn't sure how he had made it through the funeral the day before. Thinking back on it now, he wasn't sure how it hadn't killed him. Maybe it had, and all he was seeing now was the hell he deserved after being the way he was, for being the person he was. He had been getting better, he knew. He had been getting better and then the universe had taken his sister away and now he was so, so much worse than when he had started.

Everything he did reminded Jasper of her. Everywhere he went, everything… she was his whole life, had been his whole life. And she had wanted him to get better, and would have been mad if she had seen how much worse that he was becoming.

His breath smelled like alcohol at the funeral. It smelled so strongly of the substance that people had moved away from him as he walked by. No one said anything, but they were thinking it, and by God, the whispers were worse than if they had simply said it to his face.

Jasper didn't care.

She would have.

He had woken up with a strange girl curled next to him, a maid probably, and he had no memory of asking her to be there. The prince was sure he had, though, asked her at one point or another.

Jasper didn't care.

She would have.

Juliet was the only one that had seemed to care about him for his whole life, and now she was gone. Jasper thought that in some ways, it might be a relief. He had no one left, now, no one to care what he was becoming or ask him to change. Juliet had been the only one. Now, he shouldn't have cared if he was a monster or not because no one alive had an opinion that valued that much to him anymore.

But he still thought about

And Jasper hurled every breakable thing against the wall he had and watched them shatter, like his heart, and he thought he didn't care, but he did. Because she would have cared, because she would have been angry at him for doing such a thing, and all he wanted was for her back to judge him.

Funny. He'd spent his whole life wanting nothing more than to escape judgement and now he would have given his life for one last piece of advice.

He wondered if she was somewhere, judging him right now. If she would always be there, judging him. That was what some people believed, that those we loved were always with us no matter where we ventured, but it sure as hell didn't feel like she was here with him now. And she should have been. God, she should have been there.

Jasper had punched her slimy ex when he had tried to come to the funeral, right in his ugly jaw. The photographers had a field day with the story, but his siblings had been proud of him. Elyse had even smiled, for the first time since they'd discovered the body.

That didn't matter. Not to the prince.

He wondered if she would have cared, though.

An opinion wasn't fatal, but to Jasper, it seemed like life or death.

"So if you've died and crossed the stream before us, we pray that angels met you on the shore."

Grief wasn't supposed to be fatal.

But to the lives left behind… oh, how lives were fragile things.

"And you'll look down, and gently you'll implore us to live so we may see your smiling face once more, once more."

This chapter was short and angsty, so I'm sorry, but it wouldn't have worked to start the next chapter. Next chapter, the girls will be at the palace and the pace will start kicking up. This was also written more like a first person POV with the thoughts than I've ever written, so that's why there's a lot of incorrect sentence starting.