It seemed like every time subsequent time I'd gotten into a car, things had gotten worse. The first drive was fine, if a little awkward. I was stuck in the back of a car with people I hardly knew, that was to be expected.

The ride to Tayto Park was a little more painful, like there was a dagger pointed at my head. Mullet hadn’t been in too good a mood, I’m beginning to feel like he really does hate me. I only strengthened his disdain with the fiasco at the roller coaster.

In the third car ride, or rather, the hour and a half we were trapped in a closed non-air-conditioned space, with dirt under our finger nails from searching beneath the tracks for someone's lost ring.

He had the gall to blame me. I can almost understand why, I did abandon him to wait in line for hours on end while I got to have fun with Saoirse. I can see how that would easily get mixed up with his frustration, but he had said it himself before the disaster: “Whatever happens next, I’ve got no one to blame but myself” he had said.

Saoirse was angry at him for that reason, maybe I am too. When push came to shove, when something horrible had happened to him he rationalised it by pointing the finger, directing his anger at me.

The dagger I'd felt pressed against my head had become a rocket launcher. Right now, it was a cold, lifeless piece of metal, that was just a little intimidating from the sheer scale of it, but that wasn’t what had me so full of anxiety.

It was the fact that with a pull of the trigger, he could be set off at any moment.

I’d survive, of course. An explosion won’t kill, but I’d rather not deal with it.

Not while there was still another day of the trip.

I was thinking of everybody else. Adonis’ group were enjoying themselves; I was almost certain of that. Almost. The thought that I had somehow brought the mood down simply by being here... it was stupid, obviously untrue, I was almost certain that Saoirse was happier because I was with her.

However, Mullet was right in one regard. When he said we were similar.

I’ve been seized by a creeping irrationality, something that I shouldn’t even consider, an emotion, a feeling that I know is miss placed, but my heart keeps beating through every inch of my body.

I feel like I'm doing this. I feel like a complete negative influence.

I’m sure they argue and bicker when I'm not around, Adonis and TGFMAC had done as much at dinner in the hotel, but the beat marches on, propelled by Mullet’s disposition and Iggy’s general attitude.

She never brought up the ring, Mullet’s proposal.

Honestly, I'm glad it hasn’t come up, at least not while I’ve been around them. Them arguing would just make me feel even more sick.

I haven’t slept, I haven’t eaten anything but potatoes, and I was still hung up on how me and Saoirse were getting on. I’d expected for her to be the one to say something, but she was fixated on the window ever since we’d gotten back in the car. It felt like she wasn’t even there. Maybe she wasn’t. She must have been thinking of home.

Derry would be hours away. It was an hour's drive from Dublin to the Irish border, and from there another couple hours to her home.

Adonis had paid for a hotel in Belfast, so that’s where we’d be staying. Of course, Saoirse was planning on dropping by her house, she’d told me that much.

She’d told Shamrock that much. I understand that she told him because he needed to know, but shouldn’t she have brought that up with me? Why wouldn’t she?

Was she planning something else? Maybe visiting home was code for her checking in with her remaining troops...

Either way, I was sure there’d be a stretch of time where I was going to be alone, without her. I wasn’t looking forward to it, that sickly taste in my mouth was slowly fusing with the feeling in my heart.

Things just didn’t feel like they were going well, or rather, it just didn’t seem like things were going to get any better.

How many fights have I gotten into? How many times have I gotten a brand-new costume only to have it ripped to shreds along with any hope of being the person I want to be. I guess what I'm trying to say is, how many more times will I build myself up only to be dismantled piece by piece?

Did I really ever believe that I'd win against Belfast?

I haven’t fought them yet, but looking back to just yesterday, I was so confident that I'd be able take on five units, all the thugs in the north, and come out unscathed, unburdened- unchanged?

I’ve been ignorant. Grown ignorant. Like the police I hate so much, the system. How many bodies did I pass in my bout with the Channeler? How many were because I'd allowed him to gain some momentum?

That disgust and that feeling that I've been nothing but a minus in the world... I’ve finally remembered this feeling. It had subsided since I got out of Irminsul, when I had convinced myself that I could do some good.

It’s the feeling of SP2. It’s back, though I suppose it was never really gone. It had grown crude due to neglect, but it was ready as ever. I feel like it’s alive, but I'm nearly certain it isn’t.

Nearly. Maybe I was sure at one stage, back when I was using it passively to stop myself from smelling. It seems so fucking petty, but that’s what I primarily used it for.

It’s no coincidence that I stopped using it when I became unsure if there was something more to it. The Woman Wearing Shamrock. She, or whatever it was, put me off.

Yeah, that’s an understatement.

I feel like whatever it is, it’s antithetical to me.

In comparison to Mullet losing his ring, my thought on the drive to the border seemed a little more important. It toughened me up a little, knowing that no matter what problems Sam encountered on this trip, I could handle them.

What I really found out was that the world, even without super powers, is a cold and heartless place.

A que started to build at the border, the posts were three or four cars ahead of us.

“You have the money ready?” Izzy folded her arms coldly and turned to her boyfriend.

“Yeah. I got some.”

He jingled his pocket, then took something out.

Then he screamed, before putting it back in. He covered his mouth realising that he just screamed at the top of his lungs at the country border.

Saoirse shook her head, not once looking at him, “Of course.”

I could totally believe that Mullet would be the type to lose something only to check in his pocket to find it there.

He didn’t have to scream about it though, that seemed completely unnecessary. How much does a wedding ring cost anyway, fifty, maybe sixty euro? I don’t know.

The more ridiculous I found the whole thing, the more I thought about how ridiculous this situation was, the more I drifted away from it all, just like Saoirse, I was staring out the window blindly.

I didn’t even notice the person speaking through Mullet’s window, or maybe I was under the impression it was just the woman at the toll booth taking the money.

Saoirse woke me out of my funk, repeating my name. I turned to her, then looked around dumbly.

Police.

The garde, or guard, is what we call them in Ireland.

I could hear the door of the boot open up, and other shuffling noises behind me. Suddenly I was very, very worried.

I wanted to ask if we were being searched, but that didn’t seem like the case, I thought it might just be a part of customs.

The one at the window had asked, “You going sightseeing? You don’t look like you're going over the border for work.”

He looked into the back, seeing me sitting against the car door. I straightened myself up slowly and looked away.

“Aye, yeah,” said Mullet at last, “a little holiday just.”

There was a clear unease in his voice, which is understandable enough for a new driver who’s been randomly pulled over by a cop.

I theorised that there might be more, only because I knew Mullet. He wouldn’t be stupid enough to bring any weed with him, would he? If this sort of search was to be expected, then he wouldn’t be afraid, would he?

I looked to Saoirse, someone who’d frequented the border. Her face was in a mix of confusion and worry, and though she did her best to hide it, the expression was clear.

It only raised tension, seeing everybody else's expression. Seeing Clover like that told me that there was a real threat here. To our little trip, sure, but far superseding that was the threat to our mission.

If Belfast had support from the Internationals, then buying a few cops would be like going for groceries.

“What exactly is this about? If this has anything to do with me screaming a minute ago-”

The officer smiled, checking the passing cars as he answered, “Oh no, it’s nothing you’ve done, it’s just things at the border have gotten a lot more... well, not to get into it, but there's been a significant increase in trafficking over the last few months.”

The officer turned his attention away from us and back to his car, “It really is nothing to worry about, we do a hundred searches like this and we’ve never had cause to see anything more than identification and the larger storage spaces of vehicles.”

I realised he was lying. Or at least he wasn’t taking his job seriously if he was only checking the boot. It’s not like a bag of coke takes up that much space, an addicted sooner stuff it in their ass than keep it out in the open.

Seriously, what did he expect to find stuffed in the trunk?

I recognised the other thing he was doing, this act, like there wasn’t going to be a problem. ‘It’s alright’, he says, as his partner finds a criminal record that’s five years out of date.

That got me thinking, Mullet did have a record. Possession of illicit substance. He'd been arrested way back when I was starting out.

Was that going to be a problem? Yeah, it might be.

The cop got a call that I couldn’t overhear. Whatever it was, he nodded along understandingly.

“Sorry guys, it seems like this is that one in a hundred. I’m going to have to ask for some identification from the rest of you as well.”

Was that procedure? Could he really do something like that? What was the point?

What would he be looking to find from the rest of us? Was he checking to see whether or not we had records too? If there was an arrest out for us? That sounded a little to fantastical, like a soap-drama my granny would watch.

Izzy handed her identification up with no problem.

Saoirse, who was also Clover had to choose between which one to hand up.

Neither of them had driver's licenses, but they had Ids to buy drinks.

I stopped looking around dumbly. I was beginning to smarten up.

The third cop came out of the car to get the Ids.

He took the two from the one officer at the window. He didn’t wait for the third. For mine.

Did you know this story is from Royal Road? Read the official version for free and support the author.

“Sir,” said the one who’d been waiting so patiently, “do you have-”

“I-I don’t have anything?”

It burst out of my mouth. Sounding more like a question than a statement. I leaned forward hard.

“I don’t have anything to give. I don’t have Id.”

I was cursing internally. I was going to mess this up, I was going to screw everything up, I was going to screw my life up.

“Ok,” he answered slowly, “well, we might be here a lot longer. You can give me your name and address, can’t you?”

It should have been an easy question to answer, or rather it was an easy question, I'm the one that made things complicated. Do I give my mother’s address or my granny’s? What would happen if either of them found out that I was somehow involved with trafficking? My granny wouldn’t be able to look at me.

And I think... despite everything she’s done, it’d break my mum’s heart to hear that

As I was spiralling, further and further into confusion and awkwardness I could feel time stretch longer, I could feel everyone’s fixation on me, I could feel the stillness creepy across me, choking at every inch of my being.

“At least your name, son.”

Could I even answer that? The spiralling muddled everything. I wasn’t thinking logically anymore.

Which one do I say? Am I Sam? Am I Shamrock? No, I should use another name, something I haven’t used in ages like Rori, or Morgan, or- Or-

Low down, I was beginning to remember that none of those were viable options. Those people didn’t exist in any system. I’d made them up. They were identities, but they were all fake.

Morgan was the name I used to give when I met somebody I didn’t like when I was a kid. Rori was the name I used to get closer to Tayanita when she was still around. Shamrock was my hero-name.

And Sam was- it was just the name I used online. So as to not give out any more clues to who I am.

“I’m-” I was about to say it.

“I’m- eh-” my name, was right there, crawling past the clog in my throat.

“My name is Em-”

There was a shout from the police car. The cop turned to check it out, and slowly the pressure lifted. I regained my senses, realising that I was wasting time.

I looked around, feeling like everyone would be watching me now.

They weren’t. The moment had only seemed like an eternity.

I covered my mouth, and Saoirse finally took notice.

She was in my periphery, but I could see she was thinking of consoling me.

Something fired up deep in me.

“Fucking Cunt...” I gritted my teeth, clenched my fists, tilted my head down, “He thinks he can just walk all over us, huh?”

When his eyes were gone, my awkward ness had gone with him.

“What the fuck!” I seethed, “Does he actually think we’re trafficking? Just because Mullet has a criminal record?” I laughed, “what horse shit!”

Saoirse had still tried to... she was trying to comfort me, though that’s not what her goal was. It’s hard to explain, but I guess I’d resolved to follow Mullet’s example, to ignore what I was really mad at and to just blame whoever I didn’t like for my problems.

“Sam,” she had said, without actually saying that particular name, “We’re going to keep going.”

She seemed sure of that. That did reassure me.

“Alright,” the cop showed back up with the thud from the boot of the car. “Go on. Told you this wouldn’t take long.”

What?

He walked away, and Mullet rolled up his window.

What just happened?

I looked over to Clover who was sitting somewhere between a frown and a smile. I knew she was responsible, but I didn’t understand how we were logically allowed to get away after my poor performance.

She kept talking to Sam, not paying attention to the speed bump we just passed, “I’m going home. No matter who gets in my way.”

Why did that sound so sad when she said it? I understood what she meant, even if she hadn’t intended for me to.

Beyond the police there was obviously Belfast, it doesn’t take a genius to realise that she was going against him by doing this.

I realised later in the drive how she’d gotten us out of there.

The Mountain has its roots dug deep into institutions like the garde, so despite Belfast gaining a foot-hold on all the produce and distribution of drugs across Ireland, they haven’t been around nearly long enough to have serious sway over the police records in the south of Ireland, the north is a different story.

Luckily for us, those were garde, not from the north of the border, they are controlled by the Mountain.

It’s a little ironic that the part of Ireland that’s under British rule is the territory of an Irish man, and the part of Ireland ruled by the Irish is under a British monarchy, but I wasn’t fixated on that.

If the reason we got across the border was because Clover is a sort of “don’t-touch” subject on the police system, some sort of convenient cover that the obedient and ignorant service men would believe.

They’d send her straight through.

But on the garde’s data base, there would be a search made for ‘Clover’. Someone could find out she crossed the border pretty easily from that. Someone in the Mountain, I mean.

Someone like Bastard, who doesn’t want her to interfere with Belfast.

That might be what she was frowning about. That there was a chance that things were going to be blown out of proportion, that there was a chance of sickening her relationship with Bastard.

I doubted that last part. Bastard and her seemed like family, he wouldn’t cut her off so quickly.

However, an unaligned Unit, like me, that could be blamed as the catalyst for the conflict...

You can guess.

It’s strange, honestly. Once we crossed the border, I thought it might be different from the rest of Ireland. Don’t get me wrong, the scenery had changed after we left Kerry- as we moved further inland- but beyond the shapes of the mountains differing, there wasn’t a lot of variety. The climate and weather is largely the same through the whole island, I guess.

Saoirse had promised that I'd realise there was more to the world if I took a trip, but I was beginning to understand how small we were. I’d been to America, ran across a sixth of it, this just wasn’t the same.

I guess for me it’s go big or go home. Either I go somewhere crazy, or I'm sitting comfortably on the mc Donalds’ roof top.

We did eventually find a place that caught my interest. After crossing the border everyone was talking again. Mullet’s problem had, almost, been resolved, and the various locations we passed by served to break the ice. Saoirse recognised more and more towns and buildings the further north we went.

“This is Newry,” she’d point out the river, “It’s sort of like Limerick, if Limerick had more robberies, and was a little nicer to look at.”

We’d drive on for another twenty minutes and she’d point out and laugh, “Oh shit, this is Kilcoo.”

I looked out to see nothing more than football stadium and a dozen houses.

“That was a town?” I asked.

She seemed to be getting into the idle conversation, “Less a town more a family. If you are a country bumpkin, they’re hillbillies, get me?”

I didn’t, and my silence said that for me,

She rolled her eyes, “Hey Mullet,” she said in a mocking voice, “do you have ‘sweet home Alabama’, that’d really fit.” She looked back at me to see if I understood.

“...”

“Christ's sake,” Izzy shouted, “they’re inbred! That’s obviously what she’s saying.”

A sudden realisation opened my mouth and widened my eyes.

“Oh.”

Mullet laughed along, “Aye, wasn’t that kid who lived west of Tralee inbred? At least his family was. Pretty fugly guy.”

“Big talk from a man with a big head,” I said, a wiry smile across my lips. I was trying to make banter. Mullet was quiet.

Izzy shouted back, “Like your one to talk! Look at your jaw, jutting out like that!” Saoirse just laughed as I shot back, “you can work on the shape of your jaw, but you can’t change the shape of his oblong skull.”

It seemed like light hearted fun was creeping back, if only for that momentary banter.

It sort of turned into a game after that, to point at a group of buildings and to have Saoirse name the village.

“That’s Castlewellan. Nothing there.”

Not three minutes had passed before she pointed out again, “And this is Annsborough! It’s most well known for being at the bottom of the hill Castlewellan's on. So, even less here.”

A couple minutes passed and she’d take a second to think about it, “And this is Ardnabannon, it’s at the top of the hill opposite Castlewellan, so you have to drive for a couple minutes before you get to no-where.”

She stared out over the lake we were passing, and I looked her way. She must have eyes in the back of her head, because she turned back to me, “Enjoying the scenery?”

I tried to think of what else to say.

“You cheated on that last one. It was written on a road sign,” I thumbed back, she sneered, “Don’t try and pull that on me. I know what I'm talking about.”

She was leaning in pretty close.

I-

I know it wasn’t real, Irminsul, I mean- I know it was made to satisfy me- but couldn’t I cut just a slice out of that fantasy? Couldn’t I believe that there was a chance of something?

Mullet said, “Right Sam, I’m sure she read a few. Why would she memorise a bunch of villages a couple miles away from her house?”

I stopped looking at the lake, turning away to my own window, “uh-huh.”

I resolved to not disappoint myself.

Saoirse sort of noticed my flicker in mood. When we got to the next village, I could see it sitting on the top of a hill, we were driving up the main road of the town, Belfast was fairly close now, we were half way between the border and our destination.

I looked out the window, seeing that the street lights were all decorated with the British flag. There must’ve been a dozen flags leading to the first turn.

“What’s this place called,” Mullet had a bit of curiosity, but it seemed like there was something else in his voice, something I didn’t yet understand.

Saoirse held her tongue between her teeth before saying, “I don’t remember the name of this one.”

She had a bit of shame ringing in her voice. She looked down. The traffic was bad, we were making zero progress moving forward.

“Clough,” Mullet read off a sign, he shrugged, “guess you can’t know them all.”

I finally made a comment on the flags, “They sure are patriotic, huh.”

Izzy tutted, putting her hand to her face like I'd just said something incredibly stupid.

I took a second look out the window as we finally came to the first turn.

“Hey,” my eyes were stuck to a line of buildings I saw, “look at that! Those rooves have totally collapsed- the windows are fake too.”

Izzy had enough, “You fucking idiot!” The severity of her tone was real, I’d gotten used to differentiating between when she was normally angry, to when she was really angry. This was the latter.

“They’re more than patriotic! Their bloody orange-men! Unionists!” I shrunk back, half understanding what that might mean for us, or at least for a car with a license plate from the Irish republic.

I don’t understand Irish history to well, but I know that there are the those loyal to Britain, and the Irish natives. Protestants and Catholics is what it generally gets boiled down to.

So it seemed like this was a place had a high Protestant population, that made sense, we were technically in the UK.

I tried to joke. It was horrible thing to do about something I knew very little, but I tried to bringing back the mood from earlier.

“Saoirse’s a protestant, isn’t she? If I’m remembering correctly, Izzy, weren’t you pretty mean to her because of that? That was a little dis...cri...”

I stopped myself.

I understood that I'd made a horrible mistake. Never mind that paranoia I'd felt about the others hating me, everyone in that car was suddenly against me. Their faces cast in scowls.

As per usual, Saoirse was the one to clear things up for me, “He doesn’t know what he’s talking about. Can you really blame him? He’s closed off, and nobody talks about this sort of thing, people are trying to keep it dead and buried.”

“Right,” Izzy’s voice was like ice.

Saoirse had basically apologised for me. I needed to understand why.

So I asked, “What- what actually happened here.”

A stiff laugh came out of Izzy, “Don’t you mean what happens here? Go on Saoirse, you’re the local expert, yeah? You tell him.” Just a twinge of venom in the request.

Saoirse obliged, “Well, I honestly don’t know much about this place specifically, though I can pretty much guess. Those flags aren’t put up because they’re proud of their identity- don't get me wrong, the people living here probably make them build themselves around the fact they’re British, that’s just not why they fly those colours and banners on the street.”

The traffic led us up to a roundabout with a large steel statue of a man and cow in the middle, “Flags are meant to mark territory. And that’s exactly what they’re for.”

We were passing by a barn, and Saoirse used it, “Take that for example, a large property, land... Something that can give a person a seat of power in a small community like this. Before you even properly enter this place, those flags are to let people know what the deal is.”

Izzy spat out, “They used to be able to write it down on paper till a law was passed against it a few years back. “Catholics need not apply”. No work ‘n no ownership fer Catholics. That’s the rule in towns like these.”

I leaned forward, “That can’t be legal-” Saoirse saved me from saying anything stupid, “It’s an unsaid rule.”

She paused, “What do you think happened to those buildings in the middle of the town?”

I couldn’t find the words.

“No way...” I finally said, “There’s no way stuff like that can happen, not over a grudge from over a hundred years-” I stopped myself, remembering that Feoli’s people had held a grudge for a hundred thousand years longer. I had been so sure that people living here would at least be above something like what Saoirse was implying.

I made an attempt to rationalise it, that it wasn’t the regular people, it was the corrupt elite, the oppressors, the system- my old mantra.

“To be fair,” Izzy started, a little remorse in her voice, “that didn’t look like a hate attack. Looked like an act of terror to me. That’d explain why the windows were boarded up. It was probably a bomb planted in there, rather than a fire from a molotov.”

What she was saying was something I'd never expect from a regular girl, but then again none of what they were describing sounded like it was regular.

“How could you possibly... recognise something like that?” It felt like a question I shouldn’t be asking, but I did anyway. It caught Saoirse’s attention as well.

Izzy... seemed proud. At least a little.

“Me da was in the RA.”

In other words, a terrorist. To wrongly summarise, they were a catholic terror group.

To properly summarise, the IRA were the guerrilla forces that opposed the British occupation of Ireland. Some of them were content with the formation of the Republic of Ireland, but some weren’t, they were still prevalent in the North as a militia, until they formed a political party called Sinn Fein, cleaned up just a little. They killed a thousand people in their thirty-year history. Half of which were civilians. They justified it with the fact that they were killing protestants either way.

Izzy had decided to point that out to me for a reason. I’m sure she thought of the protestants as her enemy, her people's enemy, but there was no reason they should be mine.

There was no point perpetuating a good and evil dynamic when either way they were simply people doing what they thought was right, even if it meant doing things they knew were wrong.

I was just a little predisposed to thinking whoever’s on top is the bad guy, that whoever was in charge of this unfair world was clearly to blame. It isn’t black and white, but I'm dumb enough to think it is. To feel like it is.

Izzy could at least put that aside for Saoirse, who was very clearly a Loyalist. That made me a little hopeful for the future of this rock.

Mullet perked up, “Man, so this really is your first-time hearing about all this? Saoirse, aren’t the bonfire burnings around this time of year? Holy crap, those’d be crazy to see in person”

I was going to ask what he was talking about, but Izzy shouted at him, “Nah, that’s enough about that shite. Let’s just get along and laugh at the goat fuckers we drive on by, yeah?”

That really made me wonder, which would be better: to forget or to remember? These sorts of conflicts live through grudges, so you could argue that by leaving them in the past you’re killing them. You could also argue that to forget would be a disservice to those who suffered, to let crimes go unpunished... it’s not entirely right, is it?

I guess the only think people can do is decide for themselves.

In the end the only person whose moral judgement you can rely on is your own. You choose when to lie, when to be honest; when to turn tail and when to fight.

At least, that’s what I, a complete nobody believes.