She's sitting at the table alone carefully sketching in the notebook her brother had gotten her a few days ago for her seventeenth birthday. The feeling of the charcoal rubbing against the smooth paper is soothing as she becomes caught up in the sketch, not noticing who or what she was drawing.
Her mother walks into the kitchen, humming an old folk song that her father had passed down to her.
Fiona doesn't know the words, for they had been forgotten centuries ago, but she recognizes the steady tempo and the familiar melody and begins to hum along. The warmth that seems to sleep out of the song calms her as she resumes her drawing.
Until she hears a glass shatter.
She freezes for a minute, her charcoal pencil forcefully digging into the paper creating a fine dust, before she turns around.
Her mother is now behind her, staring staight through her as if she wasn't there. Her hands still held outward as if the now-shattered glass was still there and not on the floor in a million small shards.
She doesn't notice though as she continues to stand with an absent stare on her frozen features.
"Mom?" she says fearfully in her native tounge.
She doesn't move, she doesn't even blink.
Fiona looks down at the paper she had been drawing on seconds ago and turns pale.
It's a young girl, bleeding from multiple wounds, and scared flesh that is seared across her ghastly flesh.
Her dress was shaded in with dark splotches and marks in some spots. She immediately knows what it is.
Blood.
She shuts her eyes as the almost forgotten smell of gasoline and burnt flesh fills her nose.
It was her little sister.
She stands up, crumpling the forgotten paper in her hand, eyes filling up with anger and sadness.
One week later Fiona Glenanne disappears just as Nichole Halden arrives in London.
-
Once she starts running, she doesn’t stop. She travels throughout europe, getting in with all the wrong crowds, learning from them, and slipping away like a shadow whenever things go wrong.
She starts making a name for herself.
She isn't Nichole Halden or Nella Caffrey, the seductresses who will charm you for every cent you're worth.
She's Fiona Glenanne, the woman with an explosive temper who will leave you in a bloody pile of limbs if you dare cross her.
-
After that she doesn't go back to Ireland but she checks in with her brother with how her mother is doing.
She leaves before he can tell her, too afraid of what the strain of losing two children could do to an already broken woman.
-
Sometime after that she meets Michelle Westen.
She fallows her to Miami, and starts to believe in the whole american dream bullshit that Claire always talked about.
She starts working for the good guys, pulling cons and blowing up the bad guys just for kicks.
The illusion of happiness starts to fade with every fire and blood filled day.
She starts to wonder if she is one of the good guys as she attempts to wash the blood out from under her finger nails.
A year later she leaves Miami with a golden tan, and dreams of what could of been.
-
When she arrives in New York it's December.
The cold and windy weather is a familiar blanket that wraps around her, reminding her of her childhood that seemingly ended so long ago.
She's only twenty, but the cold haunted look in her once bright blue eyes lets her pass for thirty.
Nella Caffrey is not a child any more.
She remembers her father coming home, drunk as a skunk and leaving her mother in a bloody mess on the floor.
She remembers her mother's small white pills that gave her a sense of peace and happiness that her own children couldn't.
She remembers Claire.
Nella Caffrey was never a child.
-
When she meets Mozzie that faithful day she knows he has questions.
He asked a few of them.
"How did you find the queen?"
"What's your name?"
"How do you feel about a job?"
There were many other question he had about the mysterious woman he happened to meet.
"Where are you from?"
"What's your real name?"
"We're did you get those scars?"
She was thankful he left those scars, physical and mental, alone.
-
She spends those four years in jail wondering why she ever left the palm trees and freedom of Miami.
-
When she gets a visit from Michelle she knows something is wrong.
When she finds the old wine bottle, full of lost dreams and hopes she smiles reviving the message loud and clear.
It's not a good bye.
It's a hello.
-
The FBI is the first place where she knows for certain that she's fighting the good fight.
There are no vast world wide conspiracies ( despite what Mozzie believes)
There is curroption of course.
A dark mold that slowly but surely begins to spread across the crystal clear surface every so often, before it is wiped off and cleaned, leaving no evidence of it's once present self.
Then the neverending cycle of good verses evil begins again.
-
Sometimes when the weather is right and the clouds carry heavy rain her once familiar accent comes back.
She rellishes is the familiar pronunciation and articulation of words that she thought she had lost so long ago. The elongated vowels and rough R's peak through the cracks in her facade making a real smile, one that reaches her eyes, come to her face.
Then it fades as a tropical storm, also familiar, softens her voice and brings back the hint of a southern drawl along with the Irish.
She knows that Peter and the others want to ask questions, but they know that they don't want the answer at this point.
They would rather live in the illusion that Nella has created full of expensive wine and charming smiles than see Fiona Glenanne through the cracks.
As she sits in her apartment and pours herself a glass of cheep whiskey that Michelle had sent her.
She drinks the shot and smirks as the bitter liquid goes down her throat and stares at the million dollar view from her balcony.
She sees the hundreds of people going about their nightly business and the flashing lights of the city that never sleeps.
In that minute she is Fiona Glenanne.
Fiona Glenanne was the one who conned an entire city into worshiping her.
As the snow fell and the Pouge's song played in the background she felt a sense of accomplishment wash over her.
She's the queen of New York City.