The fight changed everything. Clark realized talking, begging, or just trying to stay safe wouldn't work. To keep themselves, especially Christina, safe, he needed to be strong... Really strong. He started training very much, almost too much. He ran all over the tough highlands until his lungs burned, and his legs felt like bricks. He lifted big, rough stones until his muscles ached and shook. He spent hours in the manor's courtyard, practicing fighting moves while the usually gloomy Scottish sky watched.
Christina was always there, quietly watching, like his shadow. She'd sit on the cold stone steps, hugging her knees, and observe him with an intensity that made him uncomfortable. She never cheered or clapped; she just watched, her blue eyes catching everything: how his weight shifted, how his foot moved, how his fist lined up, how he turned his anger into power.
One afternoon, she asked, "Why are you doing this?" Her voice was flat, barely audible over the wind.
He grunted, sweat dripping down his face, his chest rising and falling fast. "To protect us", he said. "So no one can ever hurt us again."
"Teach me", she said. It wasn't a request; she needed to learn.
So he did. He showed her how to stand, how to punch without hurting herself, how to use someone else's weight against them. He figured she'd be awkward, clumsy, like a kid playing around
But he was dead wrong.
Christina was a natural, a fighting genius, a prodigy of violence. She was small, but she was strong and smart about how she moved. She understood how to use her body and how other people's bodies worked. She could pick up complicated moves after seeing them just once and do them with a cold, precise way that was scary. What was even more disturbing was how she acted. Clark fought with passion, wanting to keep people safe, but Christina fought calmly, like she was solving a puzzle. No emotion. No anger, no fear, no excitement. Just pure, calculating action. Once, while they were practicing, she accidentally gave him a bloody nose with a perfect palm strike. Clark stumbled back, surprised and tearing up from the pain. She didn't say sorry or even look worried. She just looked, thought about what happened, and said, "Your guard was down. That was an easy mistake."
She was building a wall around herself, and fighting was her strongest defense. It was the one thing she could control in her messy life.
Meanwhile, Alistair's paranoia got worse in the dark corners of the house. He started drinking earlier, and his crazy talk got even crazier. He'd nail boards over the windows himself, his hands shaking. He'd check the locks over and over all night, mumbling about the shadow man who would return. He'll come back for the curse, he'd slur at Christina during dinner, his eyes empty. He'll finish what he started. Maybe he should. Maybe that would be best for everyone.
They learned to ignore him, to create their own world within his broken one. They had each other. In the highlands, during their secret moments of freedom, they were almost normal. Clark would tell funny, exaggerated stories about Celtic heroes, making her laugh. Sometimes, she would smile—a small, weak thing that was like a ray of sunlight breaking through storm clouds. It was an expression that never quite reached her eyes. Those were the moments Clark lived for: the little glimpses of the sister he knew was trapped inside her wall of pain. He held onto those moments with all his might. He told her everything was going to be better. He kept telling her.
He knew that they had both gone through terrible things in recent years. But as he grew both physically and mentally stronger day by day, he knew that his sister had changed and closed off her own mind.