“Stop here,” Lucy said quickly. When Mack cut her a sharp look and raised an eyebrow, she sighed and looked at him. “Please, Mack,” she said, her voice strained with weariness. She hadn’t slept more than a few hours at a time since the incident three days ago. He growled something really nasty but jerked the truck to the side of the road. A cloud of dust enveloped them as rocks from the gravel road flew out from under the tires.

“Thank you,” she murmured, reaching for the handle.

“Fuck that!” he snapped and grabbed her arm so fast, his hand slapped down like the bite of a snake. She jumped, her gasp reverberating in the interior of the truck. She bit her lip but refused to look at him. “Not fucking letting you out in the middle of nowhere, Lucy. What the fuck’s wrong with you?”

His language had always been bad, but it seemed to have deteriorated even more since she decided to go back to the farm. His state of edginess was worse than she’d ever seen and she was tiptoeing around him. They were virtual strangers again. She knew it was her fault, but she couldn’t seem to bring herself to care. The state of numbness that wrapped itself around her like a cocoon since the kidnapping persisted.

“This is far enough,” Lucy insisted, keeping her voice low so as not to antagonize him further. “The farm is only a few more miles up the road. I want to go the rest of the way on my own.”

“Not. Fucking. Happening.” He said each word through gritted teeth.

Lucy placed her hand over top of his and looked down at his long, broad fingers. “This is it, Mack,” she said gently. “I need you to let me go home. I’m safe now.” Her voice caught, and she blinked, wondering where the tears came from.

She didn’t think he would let her go. Had they come all this way, just for him to insist that she stay with him? Then she felt the tension slowly ease out of him and his hand loosened on her arm until she was able to slip away from him. Before she opened the door to the truck, he spoke.

“This is temporary, baby,” he said in a low voice, almost as though he were holding back tears as well. “You’re coming back to me… once you’re feeling better.”

She didn’t say anything more. Anything else, any words of reassurance would be a lie. Instead she opened the door and slid off the seat onto the gravel road. The last thing she heard before she slammed the door shut was his deep voice growling, “love you.” She didn’t look back. She couldn’t.

Immediately, the familiar feeling of dirt and rocks beneath her boots felt like home. She waited for Mack to turn the truck around and drive away from her before she began the trek toward her parent’s farm. She needed to be completely alone. To cleanse herself of the city and everything that had happened to her while she was there. Maybe if she somehow managed to get some distance, she would begin to heal.

The first to greet her as she approached the edge of the property was their dog. He recognized her immediately and barked and leapt in excitement. Despite her depression and weariness, Lucy broke into a grin and dropped to her knees in the dirt to hug him close. He licked her face and chin, ecstatic to see the human that used to sneak him the best table scraps and find him the choicest places in the barn to sleep.

“Have you been a good boy?” she asked, standing up to shade her eyes to scan the property for a sign of her father. Though she loved her mother, she preferred to greet her father first. She didn’t see him but assumed given the time of day he would either be in the fields or the barn. She glanced at her companion, then up at the sun shining warmly down on them. Her papa loved to work in the sun before it became too hot in the late afternoon. “The fields,” she decided.

She found him about ten minutes later, deep in the corn fields. The stalks were about chest height at that time of year. He heard her coming first, her skirt swishing against the stalks, and then looked up to watch as she approached. Finally, a wide grin split him face and he held his arms out, silently welcoming his youngest home. Lucy smiled back, her heart lurching, happiness flooding her chest for the first time in days. She launched herself through the rows, careful to tuck her arms in. Very little hurt as much as a vicious cut from a corn stalk.

Joseph caught his daughter as she ran full tilt into his chest. Laughter rumbled through his chest as they both stumbled back and he braced himself against his cart, taking her weight against him and holding her tight. She didn’t need to see his weathered face to know there were tears in his eyes. She’s seen him every single day of her twenty-one years except for the last six months. Though she’d loved the city, at least until her kidnapping, he’d always been in her heart. And she knew she was close to his as well.

“Vader,” Lucy murmured against his neck, automatically reverting back to her birth language.

“Dochter,” he replied, a smile in his voice.

After another bone crushing hug he finally released her, holding her out so he could inspect her. He raised an eyebrow when his eyes lit on her hair, then his grin grew wide as his gaze touched on her stomach and hips.

“I see you’ve had more to eat in the city than you did here. You are looking better fed than my horse,” he laughed and patted her shoulder affectionately.

“Father,” she scolded with a grin. “You shouldn’t say such things! And I ate the same amount there than I did here… there’s just more sugary temptations in the city and less walking.”

“I see,” he said with a nod, his gaze lingering on her multi-coloured hair. His grin turned rueful.

Lucy fingered the wavy mass. “You don’t like it?”

His face softened with the instant affection he always felt for his youngest child. “You are always beautiful to my eyes, daughter. Your mother though, she will have kittens when she sees what you’ve done to yourself.”

“The hair isn’t all that’s new,” Lucy admitted, biting her lip. She lifted her hair past her ear and turned around to show him her new tattoo. She wondered for a moment if her papa would become furious like Mack. She only had a second to wait for his response.

Emotion filled his voice as he gently touched the mark behind her ear. “Ah Lucy, my girl, it’s as perfect as you are.” Gently he turned her around until she faced him. Tears filled his kind caramel-coloured eyes as he smiled down at her. First, he touched her face next to her eyes and then her chest, just over her heart. “Stars in your eyes and a smile in your heart. Always a dreamer.”

Lucy blinked back tears. Her father knew her in a way no one else could. Not her mother, not her sister, not her friends. Not even Mack.

“Whatever you do, keep your hair down around your mother. She’ll stab you with a broom handle if she sees that mark,” he said gruffly, shaking his head.

Lucy burst out laughing at the image of her mother snapping a broom in half and chasing her around the kitchen. “I’ll already be in the doghouse when she sees my hair,” Lucy agreed. She chose to remain silent on the subject of her belly piercing. She suspected neither of her parents would approve of that particular body modification.

“Indeed,” Joseph agreed. “Let us go and get this over with. Perhaps Kathryn will be so pleased to see you home she’ll be willing to look past the treachery you have committed upon your precious hair.”

Lucy laughed out loud and helped her father with the wagon. He didn’t ask her why she was home half a year early. He didn’t question her about her time in the city. He simply walked with her, allowing her to quietly soak in her home. The warmth of the sun bled across the landscape, gradually heating everything in its path. Where once Lucy despised the sticky layered feeling of her smock and apron, she now appreciated the weight against her legs as she walked next to her father. The rough texture of the wooden wagon grated against her palm, now soft from city living. The familiarity of these things was comforting. Her heart beat in her chest as her feet hit the dirt. She felt these things once more and she was grateful.

Unfortunately, Lucy’s mother was less polite about interrogating Lucy. She wanted to know exactly why Lucy was back early and what evils the city had perpetuated upon her youngest daughter. Lucy made her responses as vague as possible and was able to deflect her mother with Joseph’s help. Lucy was pleasantly surprised by the relative warmth of her mother’s reception to her homecoming. Kathryn was not known for her finer emotions or ability to bond with her children. But almost from the moment Lucy walked in the door on her first evening back, her mother had her seated with a constant line-up of food until Lucy felt as though she would explode if she ate one more bite. She side-eyed her father at one point, silently begging him to intervene in her mother’s heavy-handed idea of coddling, but he simply looked down, a smile curving his lips and shook his head slightly.

Kathryn was horrified by Lucy’s new hair, but managed to keep most of her disgust in, except for the occasional comment in between her constant criticisms of the city. Lucy rather thought Kathryn’s hatred of city life was hilarious considering Kathryn had never been to a city. Her mother had refused to go on Rumspringa as a teen, instead choosing to marry early and settle down. Of her two parents, Kathryn was more devout, more settled into the community. A part of Lucy always wondered if her father regretted his decision not to leave the community for good, but she’d never been able to bring herself to ask. Not because he would reprove the question. Joseph always welcomed her curious spirit. No, she didn’t want to bring up a potentially painful subject.

Though they seemed to enjoy their Rumspringa, the majority of youth in the community came back home in the end, settling back into the community as if they never left. Lucy had always been curious as to why. Later as she snuggled into her bed, in her old room, her familiar old quilt pressed against her face, she realized that she understood. The city was perhaps a new and shiny place, filled with wondrous things. But it was also filled with horrifying and dangerous things. Dangerous people. Here in the community they were safe. They wouldn’t become collateral in a war they didn’t understand.

As she drifted off to sleep, for the first time since being buried alive she didn’t dream of death. She dreamed of the man she was trying to leave behind. He held her close, wrapped in his arms, pressed against his broad chest and whispered in her ear. Of vengeance.