Serafíne
Literally - 911.
It is just after sunset and it is Tuesday and there are places still where the sky is bright, where the last rays of sunlight can be seen reflected against the upper slopes of some front-range mountain but it is dusk in Denver. Warm and shadowed and there are sirens.
There are always sirens.
Somewhere, someone's dying.
Tonight, by the sparest of frayed threads: it is not him.
--
There is an ambulance. He is in bad enough shape that there are lights and sirens when the rig peels away from Garfield Lake Park. Lena in the back with him and Sera - whose eyes are red, whose nose is running, who is crying so hard sometimes she starts hiccoughing - refuses treatment and cannot force herself to get into the ambulance, no matter how much she wants to go with them.
So, she watches it pull away, the lights that haunting red and white, the air smeared with the lights from the cop cars and they're asking her questions there's a dead fucking body in the bushes but she is so upset and so spent and covered in Pan's blood and she can hardly think with anything like a clear mind and she's so clearly a victim that the detectives must recognize that they will get nothing from her. Not tonight.
Still: they have questions. Questions they ask, again and again. She doesn't precisely remember the trail of blood and she doesn't precisely remember what happened next just movement in the bushes - and - and - and -
By then she's on a fucking park bench. Someone's talking to her; and someone else. There are cops in uniforms and cops out of uniforms and she has LSD in her fucking bag not just pot and clove cigarettes but they aren't searching her. She's hunched over, her spine all sharp, face in her hands and it gets rapidly to the point where she just shakes her head in response to every question the detective asks her. They tell her: she should go too. Get treated. Let someone look at that. and she can hardly begin to do anything except: refuse, refuse, refuse.
--
They finally leave her alone on the park bench. On, they are still all around. Spread out through the park, combing the grass, searching through the lake. Following the tracks in the grass, what the fuck ever, Sera doesn't care. They've left her alone and she has time to make calls.
To Jim. "Pan's in the hospital. St. Luke's. It's bad. Lena's there. These - things - I don't even," and just saying it aloud has her crying again. Not so hard this time, and her voice is so raw. " - you have to go. Okay? Fucking -- " she can hardly say anything more.
To Justin. "We got attacked by these things. Pan's in bad shape. They took him to St. Luke's."
To Hawksley. First silence. Then, "Come get me? I wanna go home."
--
And, much, much later. When the edge of that terrible rawness from screaming and crying and sobbing has eased from her voice: much, much later, Sera makes another call. To Rosa. Tells her that they were attacked by dogs. That Pan's in the hospital. Gives her the latest update from Lena, and asks her for Rafa's number. She'll call him too, Sera. She'll let him know.
Pan
Lena is the one to experience the joy and frustration of being absolutely nothing to an unconscious trauma patient in a busy emergency department.
They do not take him to St. Luke's because St. Luke's is not a regional trauma center and they can't tell from looking at him that he's an Anglican priest and might prefer an Episcopalian establishment. They might transfer him there if he survives surgery and awakens to voice an opinion ever but until then they take him to Denver Health Medical Center and pillage his wallet to find his driver's license and his insurance card and the American Red Cross donor card that states his blood type is O-negative.
He quickly becomes a pain in DG's ass and won't even regain consciousness to enjoy it. Not unless a miracle occurs.
And Lena has his name and where he works but she doesn't know his emergency contact or his next of kin and nobody working in the ED when he rolls in does either. That doesn't stop them from wheeling him behind a curtain and slicing off his clothes and attaching tubes and wires to him to keep him from bleeding to death. It just means they don't know about certain minor things like the fact that he wouldn't want CPR performed on him if his heart decided it had had enough or that he is a recovering addict who has been clean from heroin since before most of the city's Awakened were even thought of and would want Tramadol if he wakes up instead of Dilaudid.
These are all ifs. It isn't the wounds that make the staff nervous but the fact that he appears to be bleeding internally for no apparent goddamn reason and it's hard to stop something if you don't know the cause of it so they rustle up a trauma surgeon and wheel him upstairs. They leave Lena sitting in the family-only waiting room off the corridor where the ambulance crews dump their cargo. She wound up in there by virtue of the fact that she came in off the ambulance with the patient.
Once the charge nurse realizes they have no legal obligation to keep Lena informed, they don't. Maybe she sees a gurney go rushing out of the trauma bay and into an elevator at some point, four fucking people steering it and a 220-pound patient and Lord knows how much medical equipment piled onto it. Someone at some point gives her a scrub top since the shirt she was wearing ended up being used as abdominal dressing and is now in a biohazard bag en route to the incinerator with the rest of the stuff Pan's blood drenched tonight.
The C shift medical secretary is overcaffeinated and sleep deprived but at least she doesn't ignore Lena. She tells her where he is when Lena asks and she is able to keep track of him that way. But Lena has to approach the reception desk herself and half the time the blue wheelie desk chair is bereft of staff.
---
Francisco Echeverría spends all of Tuesday night and most of Wednesday morning in the surgical unit upstairs and then they turn him over to the ICU. Only family is allowed in the room to see him until he regains consciousness and depending on who's on the floor at the time they won't even talk to non-family about his case.
When Sera pulls it together enough to get ahold of Rosa she learns - already knew - the priest's next of kin is a young man named Rafael Sánchez. Someone will get ahold of him but it isn't going to be Sera. Rosa doesn't give her this information. She intends to give it to the hospital staff her own self.
---
Fun fact: another person who technically has no legal obligation to remain informed will eventually find out what happens because the patient doesn't actually bleed to death and this person happens to be the nurse manager of the ICU and the mother of said next of kin.
Whichever of Denver's Awakened population is bold enough to go into the ICU of a major metropolitan hospital the morning after one of their Disciples was torn apart by undead dogs and Paradox to ask after man active during the Ascension War, now un-fucking-conscious and possibly plugged right into whatever matrix the Technocracy keeps an eye on, gets to meet Ana Sánchez.
Just what she always wanted. More Mages in her life.
Shoshannah
Eventually, one imagines the word trickles down to everyone's favorite Dreamspeaker, the shivery cold ferryman. Quite probably, it's Justin who has the distinct (dis)pleasure of telling her that one of the two people she truly gives a shit about in this city is in ICU at some hospital at least a half an hour away from where she is - by car, which she doesn't have and doesn't know how to drive if she did. So she hears, and for a long moment she simply looks at the bearer of bad news, still as a statue or a painting or some similar work of art that might portray a girl-as-death's-handmaiden. For that moment, it might seem as if all the life and breath were sucked out of her, out of the room, maybe out of the whole house, and then, blessedly, she walks out. Not just up to her own room, the smallest and least windowed in the house
[we accept what we think we deserve]
but outside to her trusty, reliable bike, and eventually off the property. It's a relief when she's gone, she knows but doesn't care. If the Chantry is a half hour by car from the city, it's an hour to an hour and a half by bike, and then there's the matter of finding the hospital. However she ends up there, though - and it's quite possible that she won't remember when all is said and done - get there she does. And so it starts - the ghostly gorgeous white girl pacing in the waiting room of ICU, by the chairs at the bank of elevators, whatever. Ana will see her, no doubt, given that Shoshannah is all but impossible not to notice. Maybe it's the ripple of unease that goes through whatever other family members and friends are waiting for news of their loved ones, or maybe it's some other nurse grumbling about the scary girl who just glares and won't talk to anyone or go away, who is clearly at least as uncomfortable and uneasy as she's making everyone else, who stills like a listening animal whenever a doctor comes in to speak with a family, or when anyone comes near at all.
So it goes, until someone finally gets up the nerve to speak to her.
"I would like to see Francisco Echeverria, please. I'm his . . . daughter?"
She's a shitty liar, though, this girl. And while she's obviously interested in his well being, she's not family. Coffee happens with Ana, the mother of Padre's real son, and more spills out of the Dreamspeaker than she tells anyone, ever. It's far more than Ana wants to know, probably, but she's a nurse - it's part of her job to deal with distraught family, and blood or not so Shoshannah appears to be. In her perceptions, anyway.
+++++++++++++++++++
However coffee with Ana ends (I can protect him from ours that might hurt him, she'd offer if given the chance, until he can do it himself again.), be it with Shoshannah back in the waiting area or in Padre's room (given that she's most definitely not actual family, chances are good it's the former), there's a tall, thin, creepily beautiful young woman sitting curled in on herself, worrying at the covers on her wrists and mumbling something, and counting as she goes. I used to be Jewish, she'd said once, and half of what she says is in Hebrew.
For the Conductor, a psalm by David. May the Lord answer you on the day of distress; may the Name of the God of Jacob fortify you. May He send your help from the Sanctuary, and support you from Zion. May He remember all your offerings, and always accept favorably your sacrifices. May He grant you your heart's desire, and fulfill your every counsel. We will rejoice in your deliverance, and raise our banners in the name of our God; may the Lord fulfill all your wishes. Now I know that the Lord has delivered His anointed one, answering him from His holy heavens with the mighty saving power of His right hand. Some [rely] upon chariots and some upon horses, but we [rely upon and] invoke the Name of the Lord our God. They bend and fall, but we rise and stand firm. Lord, deliver us; may the King answer us on the day we call.
====================
[For OOC reference, the Jewish cycle of psalms for the sick/injured/incapacitated is as follows: 20, 6, 9, 13, 16-18, 22-23, 28, 30-33, 37-39, 41, 49, 55-56, 69, 86, 88-91, 102-104, 107, 116, 118, 142-143, 148, and the stanzas of 119 that coincide with the letters of the target's Hebrew name (which Shoshannah'd translate from his actual name).]
Justin
Justin was in town when he got the call from Sera, and it didn't take him long to arrive at the park. The cops were still there when he pulled up in his car, taping off the area of the bushes where they'd found the body. Justin eyed them warily when he got out, but it didn't slow his progress.
The first thing he did when he reached Sera's side was put a hand out to touch her shoulder: slowly so that she'd see it coming and have time to indicate if she would rather not be touched. If she accepted it, he hugged her, long and quiet and with that same calm grounding that he always seemed to embody when comforting someone he cared about.
"I called a friend," he said. "She wasn't home and she doesn't have a cell, but I'll keep trying until I reach her. I think she can help. Better than I can, anyway."
"Here, hold still..."
He didn't ask why Sera wouldn't go to the hospital. A question for another time, maybe. But he had a bag with him that contained what looked like some kind of Verbena apothecary (pouches of herbs and jars of odd-smelling salves,) along with a standard first-aid kit. Justin looked at Sera's arm and touched her delicately near the wound, focusing his awareness on the state of her pattern. It told him things she may not have known (may not have been in a state to think about.) Like the fact that whatever had caused this bite had left a residue of poisonous bacteria that, if not properly treated, would cause infection.
It was a lucky thing he'd brought his medicinals.
So he set to work cleaning the wound, applying some strange mixture that felt cool and tingled slightly when it touched her skin. It seemed to numb the pain a little. He applied something else too - something that smelled sharp and clean - before retrieving stitching tools from the first-aid kit.
That part hurt, but not as bad as expected. (The salve helped.)
By the time she was fully bandaged, the bite would already be healing. Maybe Hawksley had arrived at that point, maybe not. Either way, Justin stepped away to call Katiana again (and again - no answer.) That was when it occurred to him that Shoshannah would want to know what had happened, so he dialed her next.
She needed a ride.
"Sera, where do you want me to take you?"
He asked this with a soft tone, waiting for her to give him some instruction. If the answer was: Hawksley's taking me home, then he'd nod and they'd part ways. If, on the other hand, she wished for him to take her somewhere, then he'd do so.
Whatever she needed.
Eventually he'd make his way back to the chantry for Shoshannah, but not before stopping off at Kat's place.
------------
[Sera's bite will heal within a day, and he was able to stop the infection. As for Shoshannah, Justin will totally give her a ride to the hospital.]
Justin @ 9:49AM [First thing: Healer's Sight] Roll: 2 d10 TN3 (7, 9) ( success x 3 ) [WP] VALID
Justin @ 9:49AM [Med roll difficulty reduced by 2]
Justin @ 9:50AM [Int+Medicine] Roll: 4 d10 TN4 (1, 6, 9, 10) ( success x 4 ) [WP] VALID
CC Witness @ 9:51AM witnessed!
Hawksley
"Sera!"
Of course he sounds jubilant, jarring and bright and off-key like waking up past noon when you thought you were waking up before dawn and find the light searing your eyes, then breaking over you so new and glorious and unabashed that you hate it a little, and maybe feel a little guilty for hating it, or maybe you just feel grateful that the sun keeps coming up no matter what fucking thing happens to you.
Sera doesn't say a goddamn thing, and on his end, Hawksley frowns, his brows tugging together and the corners of his mouth turning down and he takes his phone from his ear to look at it to make sure it wasn't a butt-dial, Call Ended, all that. He puts the phone back on his ear and listens very closely until he hears a breath in, a breath out, distant and shallow, and that frown deepens and that mouth of his flattens out.
Quieter then. The sun is just a molten line of gold on the horizon, then, or feels like it should be, when he quiets down. "Sera?"
--
Jim she tells: go. It is a plea, and it is also a demand.
Justin she tells: things but gives him no order, makes no request.
Hawskley she calls last, or at least third, and doesn't tell him a thing about what's going on, and she tells him: come.
And so he does.
--
There's a bit of back and forth while he's getting on his shoes and grabbing his keys and briefly taking the phone from his face because he's yelling COLLINS. WHERE'S MY WALLET? but mostly he's asking Sera where she is and ferreting the information out of her with surprising patience, considering the way he so robustly snaps and shouts at his-man-Collins.
It takes him fifteen minutes to get to her. Maybe a bit less, but time is fluid and all time is Now, so perhaps she hangs up the phone and there he is, that low dark raptor of a car landing not with a rustle of feathers but a purr of the engine. It cuts off. Hawksley gets out and
his stomach drops. Justin is there, and he is stitching something up on Sera. But say this for Hawksley, or for Hawksley's past, or just something in him: he doesn't freak out. He has that little frown on his face, a thoughtful-tight furrow to his brow. He shuts the door firmly. He walks from lot to bench with a stride that is neither hurried nor lax and then just. Well. Stands the hell back. Note this: out of the light, what light there is, until Justin has tied that quick and tidy knot. Then he walks over, and sits down on the bench to Sera's side, his keys dangling from one hand, his shoulder to her shoulder.
His face may as well be carved in stone, but not because he is hiding some otherwise overpowering emotion, and not because there is a lack of it. He has a stoicism and deliberation to him that Justin, at least, has never seen before, and may not be interested in seeing now.
Perhaps one of them tells him what the hell happened.
Perhaps they don't.
--
Hawksley gives Justin a nod, and it's greeting and goodbye and how-you-doin' and whatever else, but when he goes, his hand slips under Sera's, and his fingers lace with hers, and he walks back to the car. He hasn't said much, if anything. What would he say? Tell Pan and Lena I said 'sup. or I wonder if Shoshannah would explode if you tickled her. or Dude, field stitching? Who are you? Let's get dinner.
But he doesn't say any of that. He takes Sera's hand, he gets her in the car, which happens to be a 911, and -- because of her arm -- he reaches over and clips her safety belt into place. Normally he wouldn't. Not unless she were so drunk and high she can't make her hands work. Not unless she were, as she is now, covered in someone's blood and wounded and maaaybe a bit in shock. So tonight he does, and drives her home. Her home. It doesn't occur to him to take her anywhere else unless she changes her mind.
Dan and Dee are more than capable of dealing with some pretty fucked-up stuff. Dan is a consor. Dee is friends with derby dolls who would roll their eyes at Sera's wound and tell her about the time they saw their shin-bone poking through their skin and then brag about their scar. All the same, he gets out of the car with her and walks her to the door. He goes inside because he takes it for granted that he's welcome to hang out there whether he's with Sera or not (nevermind that someone like Hawksley takes it for granted that he's welcome to hang out just about anywhere). And he's useless when it comes to Taking Care Of People and some part of his mind assumes That's What Dan Is For, so he's likely not involved in any cleaning-off-of-blood or changing-of-clothes or any of that, but:
he goes upstairs with her unless he's told not to. There's a chair-shaped pile of clothes over there and he's pretty sure if he digs long enough he can excavate a chair-shaped chair, and he has a phone and that phone has games and the internet, and
Sera can tell him what the fuck when she's slept a bit.
Serafíne
Under what circumstances has Sera ever indicated that she didn't want to be touched? She is touch. She requires it the way most people require ordinary things like sunlight and oxygen and vitamins A and B and C and D and E and all their iterations and subsets.
Justin finds her first on this splintering bench in Garfield Lake Park, its concrete base covered in graffiti. The whole park is tagged and there's a messiness to the place that reminds you of: where you are. There are cigarette butts on the ground at her feet, but they are not hers. She has forgotten that she smokes. By the time Justin arrives after that call Sera has stopped crying but his hand on her shoulder and the sudden assertion of his resonance charges that and changes that and she doesn't get up because how do her legs work but she does lean into his embrace, crying again, but not-quite-bawling.
Justin, Pan's blood has dried enough that it does not come off on you, but there is Sera-snot on your torso and shoulder. And also: salt-tears.
--
Her shoulders are hitch-hitching with each breath she takes and her gut-wrenching resonance is prominent enough that Justin and then Hawksley must feel it, taste it, perhaps even shiver from it when they come close. The lingering residue of her magic, because she spent herself and spent herself and spent herself until her Will was virtually exhausted.
So: see, she is maaaybe in shock and certainly spent and pliant as a ragdoll, word salading this story about dreams and moths and dogs-they-weren't-alive and also blood-rain, which is way more than the cops got out of her but finally and most prominently, Pan Pan Pan, because she wants to be where he is with such intensity and could not make herself climb into the ambulance and cannot now make herself even think about it, any of it, her desire to go, her failure to go, her want to be where he is.
Somewhere in here a correction from Lena, right? She said she'd keep Sera informed and so (we are assuming) she does. Texts the proper hospital so what happens then is this corrective text to everyone magickal in her phone:
Sry. He's in Denver Health Medical Center no t ST. Ls.
Which means: to Pan's damn pager and to Jim and to Grace and to Justin and to Sid and to Mara and to Hawksley and even to Táltos if she has his phone number, which she may not, because who knows if he even has a phone. Out of context for most. One of those weird mass-texts you might ignore without said context, except Justin and Jim and Hawksley have context.
The only reason Shoshannah does not get a text is that Shoshannah does not have a phone.
--
So Justin examines her and he has a first aid kit he's prepared for these things and boy scout she tells him with a sniff when he's unpacking something-she-doesn't-understand and then also Hawksley, that low dark car with brightness dusted through the dark paint and she is not remotely surprised by his steadiness, by his stoicism, by the way he holds himself and keeps himself out of Justin's light as Justin works, as Justin applies ungent to her skin with gentle hands and stitches her up see, all needle-and-thread, but Justin may be surprised, must be, if he takes the time to notice.
Hawksley sits beside her on the park bench and takes her hand and Sera laces her fingers into his and she does not so much tell Hawksley the story as babble enough about her worry and concern that the Hermetic has some context for the blood on her ribs and stomach and soaked into her cut-offs and crusting some over the dark leather of her Docs. That context comes in part from the cops spread out around the park and also animal control van and also the coroner's van and the body bag they load into it.
And that context involves flights of fancy about her dream-of-blood and things that sound more like a Very Bad Trip than anything real except he well knows how reality bends but mostly again: Pan. Nearly dead.
The ambulance.
The hospital.
That's his blood, not her own.
Justin asks her where she wants to go and Sera sniffs and lifts Hawksley's hand and it is an explanation. If the Verbena mentions Shoshannah Sera says I don't have her number! and cue - fresh tears. God knows where they come from. God knows how this can keep happening except that Serafíne feels everything and there is nothing left of her superego to rein the bright electric impulses of her scrubbed raw nerves.
--
At her house: Dan and Dee and of course Hawksley's welcome to wander in, with or without her. There's poor Rick at the kitchen table but Dan takes one look at her and swears shit beneath / over his breath and then takes charge and hurries Sera upstairs and Hawksley follows and digs through the chair-shaped pile of clothes to find a chair-shaped chair, beneath the wide windows in her room, with a glimmering view of the dark back garden, which is alternately overgrown and withering depending on the recent rainfall. That chair-shaped chair is a lovely chair, by the by, vintage brocade and remarkably comfortable. He has his phone and games and the internet and there are also a few books on her bookshelf, mostly poetry but also, perhaps surprisingly since she is not really a Book sort of girl, a handful that seem Rather More Interesting.
Dan is Taking Care of Her. The pair disappear into the bathroom. Dee wants to help, is hovering a bit, but there's Sera's resonance and how exhausted she is and how very little will she has left to her so mostly Dan is all, I got this, and Dee wants to be useful, she's awesome, she's concerned, all the color is drained from her skin which is like-milk. She brings Hawksley a bottle of beer or a bottle of Scotch or a bottle of water and sits on the bed looking worried but not, you know, panicked or distressed and grabs some clothes when Dan needs them and disappears into the bathroom to help get Sera into them and assures herself that Sera is indeed more-or-less fine. She's injured and sore but her wounds are dressed, are stitched and stitched well. All that blood was someone else's.
So Dee lets herself out and then Sera gets it together enough to check her phone again, hoping for another update from Justin or Lena. And Sera gets it together enough to call Rosa and ask for Rafa's number. Starts crying again, quietly this time, after Rosa refuses to give it to her (but I have to talk to him you don't understand) and this is how Hawksley learns that Pan has a son and Pan's son is named Rafael and is also Awake and is a Euthanatos.
There's no bending Rosa and no updates at this hour and nothing more to be done except: let her sleep.
So, darlings, they let her sleep.
Hawksley
Dee is clearly not used to people who Take Care Of Things. Dee's anxiety and hovering and worry-not-panic strikes Hawksley as terribly odd, but all the same, when she sits on the bed and he's sitting on the chair with a glass of scotch and the bottle nearby and a heavy ice cube melting in the amber, Hawksley takes a moment and goes over, settling a broad and long-fingered hand on her dark hair and scritching at her scalp while he sips languidly, far-too-calmly, from his glass.
Still, he doesn't say a damn thing about it. Not she'll be fine or don't worry or anything that might be construed as an attempt to be helpful. One must do what is most helpful for the circumstance, mustn't one? Of course. And at the moment, words are far, far from the most helpful thing. He scritches her hair and sips his scotch as though nothing at all is wrong in the world, which for him may be annoyingly true. He goes back to the chair.
He sips, and he thumbs through his phone but settles on nothing. He looks up when Sera comes back in and watches her while she calls Rosa and every time he sees her cry he imagines his heart getting held to the ropes and pummeled, but he doesn't go over and envelope her and nuzzle her and urge her to stop, stop, please just stop crying. He listens, and overhears that the priest has a kid, but that kid is grown, and that kid is Awake, and that kid does some of the dirtiest, hardest work there is to do in the world.
Which Hawksley was not expecting. But decides not to be surprised by. Singers and Wheel-Turners, he thinks, glancing at his phone again. Maybe a rigid sense of duty (and hey: maybe a tendency to be judgey-judgey) runs in the blood.
Sera collapses into sleep. Hawksley drinks just the one glass, and the truth is that as soon as Dan has left and Dee has left and Sera has passed out, he turns off his phone and puts the glass aside and leans back in the chair, cheek on his fist. He is a tall man, but even taking that into account, he takes up more space than necessary with his legs wide and his body relaxed. His eyes are aimed at her but he's not watching her, not really. He's just frowning at the air, and he does what he does on many such long nights and simply thinks.
Later on, however later that is, Sera will find him sleeping in her chair with its lovely brocade, his face still on his fist, his elbow on the arm of the chair.
Katiana
It is quiet at the farm house. The sort of still, hot summer quiet that hangs heavily over everything. Suffocating. Katiana needs a house pet to break up the stillness, or a wind chime, or some other purposeful agent of benign chaos. Something to offset the insistence of the (let's call it mid-century modern [antique]) heavy touch tone phone on her kitchen counter. To make it seem less plaintive, less singularly disruptive. For the uninitiated or painfully young, this is sort of apparatus which requires a thin line connecting its base and the wall, and a fixed-curl coil connecting its base and its handset: a thing that leaves no mystery in its allusion to functional interconnectedness.
Unbeknownst to the Verbena, that phone has been ringing intermittently for hours, sounding out whenever Justin had both pause and presence of mind to call her. When he finally reaches her, it must seem like quite the surprise.
"Hello." No sense of urgency. No recognition -- far be it for Katiana to have invested in technology new enough to display caller ID. Even call waiting was rather unnecessary in her unplugged lifestyle. Her tone does warm when she recognizes Justin's voice, then muddles with concern as he inevitably explains.
It doesn't take long before that for the climate in her kitchen to shift from oppressive stillness to purposeful action. Katiana moves decisively, gathers exactly and only the tools that she needs. Their conversation is undoubtedly short, almost perfunctory. Katiana's support is unquestioningly complete.
Lena
Of all the Awakened in the city, Lena might be one of the least likely to ride with Pan in an ambulance to the hospital. This isn't due to any kind of remote enmity or even personality clash, necessarily; she has simply remained a bit on the outside of the community of Tradition members and Orphans in Denver, either by choice or by circumstance. She floats in and out, one foot on either side of the involvement line.
But sometimes fate throws her in with them, and such happened last night. It was probably to Pan's benefit, as she is familiar enough with hospitals and with calling 911 that she could do it, allowing Serafine to try and hold the good Father together until help arrived. And when Sera was panicked and unable to ride along with, she volunteered without a second thought. She had her own wounds that needed to be checked out after all, albeit minor and in no way a priority compared to Pan's.
She promised Sera that she would keep her updated, and she does. As we've covered, Lena is familiar with medical facilities both as a visitor and as a patient. And she knows exactly how many rights (zero) she has as a non-family member. She doesn't try to bullshit them and say that she is, because that would be silly. So she provides the information they ask, answering honestly at times when she doesn't know. She asks from time to time, but she doesn't push. The people on staff have enough to deal with. So she remains a presence just reminding them that she's there, and any tidbit she gleans is passed along to Sera via text.
She doesn't sleep throughout the night; she's never been able to sleep in hospitals. She doesn't have a fear of them, per se, but rather a healthy respect. There's a good chance she'll die in one, and thus...well, it's just not a place you want to sleep if that's the case. So she stays there, she goes outside to smoke from time to time, she passes along information. She listens to her iPod. The latter relaxes her the most.
When Shoshanna comes in, she smiles to the woman. She tells Shoshanna everything she knows about it, if the Dreamspeaker is willing to listen. She doesn't try argue when she tries to suggest that she's Pan's daughter, though she doubts it will succeed. She doesn't. And now there are two Awakened waiting there.
Lena makes an effort to distract the Dreamspeaker with some small talk, to put her at ease. The problem with doing so is that she doesn't know Shoshanna; they haven't spent a moment's time together since that incident a good two months back when they were in a young girl's mind. It's not understatement to say they didn't exactly bond at that moment, so any attempt to do so is awkward. Still though, she tries. She asks how Shoshanna's been, tries to follow up from that. If the other isn't interested though, she lets it go easily.
Day comes. The two women are still there, and Shoshanna clearly wants to handle things. She knows Pan better. Lena's just the person who happened to be there. So she waits in the lobby, peeks in on Pan while Ana and the other mage are having coffee, but mostly waits. And when Shoshanna's back, she asks if there's anything she should say to update Serafine and the others.
Sid
The first tidbit that hits Sid's phone is
Sry. He's in Denver Health Medical Center no t ST. Ls.
Monday night means she's in her own home doing her own thing instead of sitting in the chantry's library reading everything she touches. It means she's not there for Shoshannah when she inevitably gets the news. It means she has no means for context for that text, nor should she. Sid and Pan are not close, she'd be flabbergasted if he even remembered her name. Or maybe she wouldn't. There was the time spent in a cabin a few months back. That sort of thing tends to leave imprints. Point is, Sid and Pan only have the tenuous bonds of being Awakened and the fact the Venn diagram of People Sid Gives a Fuck About and People Pan Gives a Fuck About has a tiny overlap.
When she gets that text from Sera her mind makes a leap and her heart rate ramps up considerably. But, no, she tells herself. No no. She's not worrying about that one anymore, not like that. That story ended on the side of the side of the freeway.
Still, one doesn't stop caring about someone that easily. So, Sera gets back:
Who?
Then she has to wait to find out. Waiting is always the worst.
Serafíne
Sid does have to wait for an answer. And waiting is always the worst: heart-in-throat, that battering assault of adrenaline with nowhere to go and nothing to do but glance at the phone, and ask yourself if you should call someone, and assure yourself that no, no, give it time, everything is okay. Right?
That wait, that worry, because Who comes over the ether, the airwaves, the interwebs, Sera doesn't even know, doesn't understand all these pieces of connectivity, the way information soars through the air and ends up in her hands. Hell, when she wants new songs on her iPhone Dan has to handle that since she always gets confused by the connections and the options and the click-thingies that need to be clicked, and sometimes, some nights, she gets so fucked up she cannot even operate it. Just stares at it and it gleams back, buzzing hungrily as each new text comes in.
Anyway: who comes in and its small and buried and she's looking for other things and is distracted and distraught and is mostly not-crying but then starts crying again and then there is sleep.
It is ten-thirty-eight p.m.
Some nights she gets up at this hour.
--
Sera sleeps.
And nothing wakes her when she sleeps, nothing external that is, but her exhaustion is not really physical. She'd been awake for no more than seven or eight hours when Dan put her to bed, while Hawksley sat in the chair-shaped-chair uncovered from the pile of Sera's bizarre and wrinkled clean laundry. You can imagine what that consists of.
She wakes at two twelve a.m. and the house is silent and Hawklsey is asleep in her chair and she has the bizarre thought that it is dawn, that the sun is rising, and then: why isn't the sun rising, why is it still dark, tangled up in her sleeping mind.
Half-sleeping mind.
Her head aches from all that crying; throbs, really. And her arm throbs a bit too, but the wounds smell clean, antiseptic. Justin, she thinks, remembers, when she looks at the dressings, then reaches for her phone, scrolling through the updates, hoping for more.
And this time that text from Sid Who pings a bright point against her consciousness.
So somewhere in the neighborhood of two eighteen a.m. Tuesday-into-Wednesday night Sid receives a flurry of texts. They start small:
Pan.
And escalate.
Its bad, Sid.
She's slipping out of the bed, uncurling her legs, which are long not because she is tall, but because of the way her body is put together. She's wearing a Joy Division t-shirt and loose boxers which are black and covered in skull and crossbones. Half of the skulls are smiling.
The room is dark. Sera's mouth closes. It is two a.m. and this is like a confessional, this bright little device in her hand, the only light in the room.
We were attacked by these - things. Dogs.
They weren't alive.
Lena's with him @ hosp.
Remembers, abruptly, with a sharp breath out:
She was hurt too. IDK how bad.
And then, a few beats later, a few fresh tears in her eyes.
I cldnt make myself go w/them.
Call you tmrw.
More texts, at two twenty-seven a.m. Justin gets a Thank you.
And Lena does, too.
--
By now she has crossed the room, on soft bare feet. A few coils of her hair are still damp from her shower, which was hours ago. Which was Dan holding her beneath the hot water while she cried in his arms and he scrubbed the priest's blood from her skin. The garden is peaceful and so is the city and so is the room and so is the house. She looks out, through the windowpanes, which are old enough that the glass is wavy and imperfect.
There's Hawskley, sleeping in her chair-shaped-chair, all sprawled out - already a tall guy, taking up more-space-than-is-necessary. His elbow on the arm, fist beneath his chin. Sera wakes him with a hand on his shoulder, then reaches up to tuck his hair behind his ear. The gesture is likely unnecessary, won't his hair be perfectly toussled even in chair-sleep? but -
- she leans in, tips her forehead against his. Tells him, murmuring into his ear as he wakes, " - that can't be comfortable. Get up and come to bed." Holds out her hand as he stirs. Invitation, welcome, thanksgiving.
Looks up again, then. Out at the dark sky, flexes her arm and feels the stitches Justin worked into her skin. She wishes, Sera, that she had the magic to find him, whereever he is. That fucking hospital. It doesn't matter which one.
But she doesn't: not now and not yet. She's stuck in her skin, in the here and in the now. She can bend reality, yes, but only so far. And only in certain directions.
--
Sera sends a text, to Francisco Echeverría's fucking pager. Which is the stupidest thing in the world because it is a pager and the text will be gooblydigook, meaningess, nonsense, but she doesn't care.
Don't go anywhere.
You could call it a prayer.
If you die I will fucking kill you.
Sid
Sid is awake in the neighborhood of two eighteen a.m. Tuesday-into-Wednesday night. Not because she's still awake. Sid is not a particularly light sleeper, but tonight she sleeps in fits. The first time her phone gives off that odd little blip she's either just drifting off or just drifting up. Her phone goes off and for a moment she imagines or dreams an orange-rimmed hole leading into a void. Then it goes off again, and again and again and again in rapid fire succession and the holes are all over the room and Sid is frowning with her eyes closed as her consciousness starts to stir and then she moves. She squeezes her eyes open in the dark basement of her room. A hand pokes out from beneath the blankets to feel around the side table until her fingers knock into her phone.
She gets the last message first and scrolls up to:
Pan.
Does it make her a bad person that Sid's first reaction is relief? She doesn't think so. As has been mentioned, she doesn't know Pan, she's not connected to him like the others are. And also: he's a Disciple. He is older. He was there for the Ascension War or whatever. If Sera isn't texting Sid to let her know the man is dead, then some part of her mind believes he's not going to die. Not tonight, anyway.
She sits up as she scrolls back down, the light of her phone's display casting her face in an eerie blue light. She can't see Sera walking around her room in the dark. Sera can't see her sitting in her own room in the dark. But in some way they are connected in this moment, these two women, by technology, by the darkness.
Sid types back:
Okay.
Okay she got it, really. Okay message received. Not It's Okay, Sid's been terrible at optimism ever since her Awakening when all the optimism in her was, shall we say, knocked out of her.
Then:
I can come over.
And she can, too. She can go and spend time with Sera, she can call in sick to work - she gets sick time now that they're taking her one full time, she gets benefits, too, whoopdee doo - and she can spend time with her friend. She realizes right after she hits SEND that she kind of wants Sera to say OK even though it's the middle of the night.
And, in the interests of being open and honest despite where that's gotten her in the last few days, she sends, before Sera can outright reject her, too:
I want to.
Serafíne
It is so fucking hard to be human. To say things. To reach out. To get them right. To figure out when it hurts and when it heals and who else is out there with you, in the dark. When to lay yourself open, all wounds, because what else are we sometimes, except scar tissue and hope and want and desire and fear and love. Some of us, and walls, and doors, and strange little windows, with half-drawn shutters and one-way blinds. Dark stairways, secrets, basements full of half-remembered monsters. Perfectly imperfect, to a one.
So: thank you goes out to Justin and thank you goes out to Lena and Sid says I can come over - it pops up on the screen in a little green box. With a tail leading to the cloud like a piece of dialogue.
And see, what will happen next is rejection or rather not rejection but something else - thanks that's not necessary, probably no longer falling apart, get some sleep. What will happen next is you don't have 2 which Sera is already typing. Because it is two twenty-nine a.m. and Sera does not have a job but she knows that Sid does even if she's never, not once, asked Sid about it. But: paychecks and I don't have the money until Friday and thrift shopping and that beaten up truck and those days in the motel, oh, Sera knows.
Then three more words: I want to.
Sera erases the half-written text and instead, responds to Sid with just two words. Listen, Then come.
--
"Sid's coming over." A moment later, to Hawksley, her raw voice quiet, as she's sliding the phone back to sleep. Then waking it one more time, hoping for another update. Then sliding it back again, closed. If Sera gives a half-smile then, it is small and a bit worn and a bit sad but also finer than she might ever think she is. And it is dark so he can't see it, but - it infects her voice, inflects her voice, just so. "She wants to."
Hawksley
At two-twelve in the morning, Hawksley is unconscious. There is a mostly-empty glass with an entirely-melted ice cube in it on the windowsill next to the still-pretty-full bottle of scotch. Yes, somehow, it seems that there should be a rising sun seen in the corner of that window, illuminating the amber liquid, but everything outside is dark and the only light hitting Hawksley's face is whatever the moon manages to get through the branches and light pollution and shades and shadows.
Sometime while Sera is texting Sid, Hawksley half-wakes. He sees her moving around, her face partly illuminated by the gleam of her phone, and without opening his eyes all the way or moving his head or speaking, he watches her for a few seconds before he decides to let sleep drag him back under for another nine minutes. Because his mind is closer to the surface than it was before, he wakes easily to the hand on his shoulder, blinking and breathing in, his chest expanding, his face turning up to look at her.
She tucks back his hair, which is entirely unnecessary, since his hair is too short to stay and just slips back from the curve like a child jumping off the bottom of the slide to yell again, again!. All the same, the gesture breaks his heart with tenderness, and both the intensity and the insubstantiality of that emotion play clearly and quickly through his eyes. His heart cannot stay broken for more than a moment.
And she leans in, and he rolls his brow and her brow together gently, while she whispers to him that sleeping in the armchair can't be comfortable.
"You don't know my life," he mutters sleepily, fondly, self-amused. His mouth has lolled into a half-grin, but he takes her hand and lifts himself from the chair, leaving phone and keys and wallet in the seat, hoping all the clothes he took off that chair don't crawl back up and cover it once more and bury his belongings forever. Or devour them.
This is the sort of thing he thinks about at two-thirty in the morning, half-awake, as he's letting himself drop to sit on the edge of Sera's bed, taking off his shoes and taking off his t-shirt and he didn't wear a belt so he doesn't take one off but he does drop his shorts and since he's a guest and someone taught him at least some modicum of manners, he keeps his boxers on even though this is decidedly not how he normally sleeps.
If he knew Sera wanted to find him, Justin, or Pan, or whoever him is in her thoughts, he would do it for her. Or tell her there are other ways, or something. He'd help. But he doesn't know a thing about reading thoughts, and as he's reclining back in that enormous bed like he's been here before, like he owns the place, like he belongs here, Sera tells him that the latest texts were with Sid, and Sid is coming over.
He huffs a soft little laugh and rolls onto his side, facing the middle of the bed, his back to the window the garden the scotch the moonlight. "Good thing you have a big bed," he murmurs, getting comfortable, folding one arm under a pillow under his head and one arm around Sera until her back or her side or, hell, her front is against his chest, which is perhaps the first nope sorry going to hold you now hope that's cool gesture he's made, and it is as slow and steady and free of panic as his arrival in Garfield Park.
In the quiet that falls between them he lowers his voice. He whispers, finally:
"What happened?"
And finally, Sera tells him.
Shoshannah
It bears saying, perhaps, that Shoshannah is not rude. She's creepy, and frightening, and eerie, and short tempered, and a lot of things, but rude is not one of them. When Lena tries to tell her things, she listens as well as an eighteen-year-old whose not.my.dad.not.my.anything
-- maybe she would explode if someone tickled her --
is in critical condition in a hospital can. She's quiet, and still, and says thank you for telling me in a whispersoftphonographscratch voice that's still too loud for her in this place, at this time. So whenever the thing happens with Ana, Shoshannah has at least an idea of what's going on. It helps, maybe, or not - she's uneasy here, vaguely nauseous with so many spirits halfway and hovering, clinging, cryingcryingcrying for attention, for someone to tell them where to go and
she doesn't understand
like she once did and looks like she might throw up, or faint, or both, and that's aside from the worry about the man she's called Padre almost exclusively since she met him. So she settles herself the best way she knows how (because no way in hell is she leaving this place without seeing Padre, without whispering into his ear as she had
nonono, don't think about that
her grandmother's all those years ago) - which may sound ridiculous to those who think that eighteen is equivalent to eight and she couldn't possibly know much, but it was half her life ago and that's enough to merit being thought of as all those years - without telling him . . . something. She doesn't know what, and part of the panicked (metallic) feeling at the back of her throat and nape of her neck is the sheer foreign nature of it all. It's been since her grandmother that she had to deal with anything like this - with caring about someone, with sitting at the hospital waiting for news - that, in this case, she won't even get until Rafael, a guy she's never met, is here and only then if he decides to share it with her.
It all makes Shoshannah's eyes itch.
It's abrupt, random, and probably right before Lena gives up on Shoshannah saying anything more than whatever she's mumbling as she counts the stitches in her arm warmers that Shoshannah finally says. "I need a phone. Will you go get me one? I'll give you the cash I've got." Which isn't much, granted, but is plenty for a $10 tracfone and a $15 minutes card or something. It should give her texting and calling capability, anyway, so she's not the last to know next time something happens to someone she . . .
. . . we'll leave it at 'cares about'.
Serafíne
And finally, Sera tells him.
Curled up in the bed, his arm around her. Her spine against his chest, which feels strange, rather off because Pan is out there somewhere, in surgery, under the glare of too-bright lights, his body opened up down to the glistening viscera and Sera does not know the specifics but she knows some of them, and hates them, and cannot quite contain in her mind and body how she can be in a still house in a big, soft bed, clean, right? and mostly-sober, in a way that makes her think that she should take something, though to be fair she doesn't know what - while the world is bending itself open around someone she -
Oh, she breathes, steadily in the silence. Her hair spread over the pillow smelling of strawberries because Dan used the wrong shampoo, the weird one she bought for a lark at Goodwill a few weeks ago with Sid.
--
She had a dream last night, she tells him, quiet. Just like that, head moving minutely against the pillow as she speaks. The specifics are opaque, cryptic, they always are but she remembers moths, filling the air. Gray-winged in the moonlight, swarming from the dark march of trees. She remembers this sense of grievance in the air. Not grievance, that word is too small for it. It was deeper and older and hotter. Call it rage, call it wrath, pregnant yes but old enough that it had long-since curdled and gone still and ugly and sour. There was a broken tree, just a stump, and a figure covered in owl feathers.
And blood. Blood raining down from a roiling sky.
You can understand why she shivers there.
--
So she went to see Pan; to tell him what she'd dreamt. What she'd seen, and then there was the park and the park was deserted and there was Lena - strange you know? - and
blood
on the sidewalk, smeared and dark. The blaze of the setting sun on the lake. Wind in the trees. This choking sense of rage. No magic, none that she could taste in the air around them, and then, this sudden cloud of mouths, hundreds of them, a livid, living flock so dense that Sera thought she was going to inhale one, get it stuck in her throat, fluttering and futile. From the underbrush, there were these noises they were tearing-at-flesh noises they were crunch-and-crack noises and hey, Sera would've fucking left, would've run if that were an option. Sera wasn't armed. Sera doesn't wander around with a gun a sword a cudgel hidden somewhere on her person. Where would she hide a weapon? In her bustier?
This is a quiet story though; she tells it with a wrung-out sort of calm: the dogs, not-living but still-moving. The attack; she can hardly remember how many. Fucking Pan stepping in front of her. Just the way time stops and stutterstarts again; peels back into slices. Opens up and narrows all at once. Pancho beside her bright as a solar flare, as the aftermath of a bomb blast, she tells him. And Sera, god knows how she ripped the magic out of herself again and again to send one after another of the things fleeing in fear. But she did. And the story turns round. Back to the point where they're gone, there's blood everywhere, Pancho's weaving but not - not -
- and then something just hit him, and he fell, and she couldn't catch him, he's so fucking big. He's too heavy, and all she could do was cushion the fall of his body with her own.
Sera breathes out a little shudder when she's done with the telling-of-what-happened. From a distance, from a certain distance, in the still and quiet dark, the blood scrubbed away, the muzzy, throbbing distance of her headache from all that crying receding into something else, the vaguest sort of ache, it hardly seems real.
--
It is past two-thirty in the morning and Sid's coming over but the house is quiet and the street is quiet and the city is quiet and Sera finishes her story and isn't going back to sleep, see, and figures she'll hear: the truck or footsteps on the steps up to the front porch or the bell.
Or maybe she figures that Sid will know or understand that the door to this house is hardly-ever locked if the inhabitants are home.
Sid
There may come a day when Sid can quickly transport herself from here to there with a thought and a chance of universe-backlash, but that day is not today. Today is not really today, but night, and when she gets that last text from Sera there is no one around to see the way her mouth curves into a smile. She throws back the covers and rises and gets ready to grab her shoes, but no wait. Sid sleeps in an old t-shirt and an old pair of boxers. One of these she will not be wearing at Sera's house.
So she changes, quickly, into a pair of comfortable pajama pants that are a bit too warm for summer nights, but ah, oh well. A book bag is grabbed from the closet, and into that bag she tosses a clean set of clothes, because maybe eight o'clock will roll around and she'll decide to go to work, after all. She trusts that Sera will have shampoo and such, but grabs a few of her own toiletries from her bathroom before she finally closes and locks her basement bedroom door and heads out into the night.
It's a mostly straight shot from Sid's home to Sera's. Fifteen minutes in traffic, but there is no traffic this time of night. Still, what with gathering things for the briefest of possible sleepovers, it's closer to two forty-five when Sid's truck rumbles along the street where Sera lives. Parking isn't easy in this neighborhood at this time of night on a school/work night, but Sid manages to find a place to park her old truck.
Sera just might be able to hear Sid's footsteps on the path leading up to the house, she's not trying hard to be quiet. She might be able to hear when they stop at the door, not because Sid isn't sure if it's locked or if she should just walk in. She's been here a few times (Sera gave her a skateboard last time, which is currently resting one end on the floor of her truck's cab with the board resting against the seat, that day was almost literally Christmas in July for Sid), she knows she doesn't need to ring the bell and risk waking everyone up, she knows that she's expected by at least one inhabitant. But once inside, then what? She's only been in the kitchen and the back garden. She doesn't know where Sera is.
Slowly, quietly, she lets herself in and peers around inside. Then she steps inside, and if for some reason Sera or Hawksley or whomever isn't right there to greet her at two-fifty-something in the morning, Sid closes her eyes. She takes a breath. And she reaches out, and she senses....them. Sera and Hawksley. She follows the invisible trail that only she and people like her can sense and trail, until she comes to a door.
She knocks first, even if that door is open, or even merely ajar, but particularly if it's closed. Softly, and with the knuckle of her right hand, twice.
============ niko @ 5:51PM [Sid: Percept+aware, probably paranoid at 2:50am] Roll: 7 d10 TN6 (2, 3, 5, 5, 5, 8, 8, 10) ( success x 3 ) Re-rolls: 1 VALID Kenna @ 5:52PM Witnessed!
Lena
If there's one thing you can say about Lena, it's that she cares. She may keep herself a bit...shall we say, distant at times. It's not for her protection as much as it is other people's.
(This is not to say that it's not for her protection too, because it is. She finds it hard to get close to people, because of two--no, three--important people in her past. But it's mostly for others; that's what she tells herself.)
Anyway, we're getting off-track here. The point is, while she doesn't get exceptionally close to people, she cares. She cares a lot more than she should sometimes. And that's why she will be staying at the hospital, and coming back when she's not working or sleeping (the latter something she doesn't do much), for several days until the good Father wakes up or until someone tells her she should or needs to go. And she doesn't even know Pan well, but that's not the point. Anyway, we're not there yet; we're still in the waiting room with Lena and Soshanna and some awkward attempts at conversation.
That conversation abruptly turns to Shoshanna asking for a phone. Lena smiles a little bit, warm and reassuring, and nods. "Of course. Anything you need."
She puts a hand up when the girl offers her money, and shakes her head. "Keep it. You're going to need it for something more. I've got you covered here." If she persists though, Lena will take the money. Either way, she comes back with a decent prepaid burner phone and a $25 card to last her a good long while.
Hawksley
While Sera talks, Hawksley listens. His breathing is steady and his heartbeat is steady and he closes his eyes and every word she says is infused with the scent of strawberries, which is unfamiliar but not unpleasant and super girly he thinks, but that is strange and surreal and oddly macabre set against the things she's telling him. Of moths and vengeance, blood and broken antiquity. This is the first time Sera has told him of a dream she's had like this -- he doesn't know about the one where he and Sid sit on a cliffside eating mushy peas, flinging them into the sea, and he would have laughed at that one but he doesn't laugh at this one.
She shivers, and his arms tighten a fraction, a response to the shiver though one might not strictly call it a squeeze. It's good to know she would have just left, that she's compassionate and she's not a shrinking violet but she's not a fucking moron and she doesn't have something to prove and she doesn't let a Sense of Duty interfere with the Instinct to Survive or any of that. It's just a shame she didn't get a chance to do the smart thing, the sane thing, and run.
Her description of what Papa Pan was doing is instantly recognizable in Hawksley's mind, and he has Thoughts that spin out from that awareness but he doesn't voice them, it's really neither here nor there right this second. He learned painfully, some time ago, that there is a time and place for his particular brand of innocent-ruthless, brutal pragmaticism and that time and place usually does not intersect with the times and places for other people's faith, other people's belief, other people's fucking magic or fucking emotions.
Like many lessons, he learned that one well, just too late.
--
So: Hawksley keeps his damn mouth shut and he listens and he focuses on what she's saying and not on his own thoughts that spin out into curious directions or on the fact that she is very small and very worn out and ack. He puts his face along the curve of her skull as she tells him what she did, brilliant really, when you think she doesn't know magics that directly wound she doesn't carry a .45 in her handbag she doesn't have a whole lot of physical power to thump something on the head and cave in its brain but oh, by god, you are still a weapon, shining and bright and clever and he wants to tell her that, too, but he might later. Just not right now, not when she keeps shivering like that and even her voice sounds hollowed out.
And: Hawksley kisses her scalp through her hair, eyes closed, breathing in her scent beneath the scent of strawberries now that the scent of fearful sweat and other people's blood and her own blood is all, all gone.
He slides his arm from where it holds her to her hand, palm to palm, fingers laid together. He can't think of any other touch between two people that feels quite so solid, quite so steady, as this one. So that is what he does.
--
Downstairs, Sid lets herself in and then lets her mind open, and she would know he's there even if she didn't see his Porsche parked outside. Upstairs and around the bend of the stairwell and in Sera's room, she feels as though the roof must have been torn off and the wind and birds and everything are flying, flying through the air up there, dipping and diving and lifting again. It is easy to breathe like that, feeling like one is not falling, is incapable of falling, and everything bloody and painful and carnal on this earth can be risen above and forgotten
or at least escaped.
He hears a soft knock, some time later. In that meantime, there is just Hawksley holding, Hawksley's hand with Sera's hand, and he is tired and it is the middle of the night and what exactly the fuck is he supposed to say that might be useful or helpful or comforting right now so he's not saying a damn thing. And in that mood, where Getting Up From Sera is not an option and speaking seems sacrilege, Hawksley just wants to lift his hand, snap a gesture into the air, and adjust the pressure of air on one side of the door to nudge it open.
Instead he sighs softly, exhaling into Sera's hair, and whispers to her -- as it is not his damn room to invite anyone into anyway -- "Sid."
Serafíne
What light there is in the room comes in from behind them. Through the windows, which have curtains perhaps, or blinds that are rarely drawn. The windows are old enough that they make the pale and uncertain ambient light all the more watery where it cuts into the room. But mostly: it is night, and it is dark, and the shadows are deep and quiet.
Sera's eyes are closed and her breathing is steady enough when the quiet knock comes on the door to her bedroom. They are holding hands and his arm is across her ribs and she's tucked against him, just so. Silence follows her telling-of-what-happened because what else there is to say he says quite wordlessly. With hand against her hand and his breath in her hair, its steady rhythm. With his face against the back of her skull and the way his hold on her tightens when she shivers.
Sera must have heard Sid on the stairs - several of which creak as one might expect in old houses - or even, felt her earlier, downstairs, on the porch, on the street, but it felt removed the way everything outside of the immediate bubble of her senses feels removed and she thought she should stir, slip down the stairs to greet her late-night-guest but could not quite summon the will to rise and forgot one and the other between the porch and the knock on the door.
Hawksley whispers, Sid and does not stir. It rouses Sera, who is not asleep but is drifting and while Getting Up From Sera is not an option for Hawksley Sera - roused by the knock, brought back to the here-and-now by his whisper, lifts their joined hands and plants a kiss on the back of his knuckles and then crawls out from beneath his arm and out of the bed, slipping across the intervening on bare feet to answer the door.
Which swings open to show Sid Sera and a rather large, moonlit bedroom beyond. Sera, her face in shadow, wearing a white tee and dark boxers and feeling, yes - worn out but still. Sera opens her arms to Sid, hugs her with a quiet hey that is tired and quiet and maybe a bit wry and more than a bit sad and but - so very welcoming. And perhaps Sera starts crying again, just a bit, when she wraps her arms around Sid.
You would think, by now, that there were no tears left in her to be cried.
You would think that, and you would be wrong.
Beyond her then, a impression of the room. Wide windows overlooking the garden. The bed against the wall, beneath the windows, is large and was unmade before she crawled into it and is still unmade and is now inhabited. A chair-shaped-armchair that has not yet been retaken by the mound of clean clothes Hawksley dislodged from it, though is perhaps under siege. A dark closet, with an open door and shoes-and-things spilling out at its base like a lake of leather and stilettos and littered with strange little bits of gleam.
There is a vanity with a three-way mirror littered with Stuff and there may be a guitar or three and there is art on the walls here too but it is too dark for any of it to be more than a dark shadow against the wall and even the neon sculpture is turned off.
Sid
Though Sid tries to be quiet on the stairs, she's no ninja. Steps creak beneath her weight as she ascends, past art and photographs and a unicycle that no one claims yet is always someplace new.
The door swings open and all Sid sees is Sera at first. Sera cast in shadows that exaggerate her weariness, her hollowed-out-ness. Sera cast in silhouette by the dim light of outside spilling into the room behind her. And Sid is there, standing in the deeper shadows of the hallway. Hers is a soft darkness, soft dark hair, soft dark t-shirt, soft dark pants, her face a pale bespectacled shadow. She has her messenger bag, the last article of frayed and faded clothing she still owns, the bag with her belongings was left in her car, her feet are bare.
Without a word she wraps her arms around Sera's shoulders, pulling her in close as the Cultist says hey all quiet-like. Sera's arms go around her in turn, and Sid relaxes a little, giving and receiving comfort in perhaps unequal measure. There was a time when she was better at offering comfort, and while Sid is slowly working her way back into something that vaguely resembles that former self, that skin will never fit the way it did. She will always be a little different, because she is different. That's what time does to a person, it changes them. But she can hug, at least, even though she has no words. And she holds her there for a little while, because maybe Sera starts crying a little and Sid's embrace tightens a little, as if through a slight increase of pressure she could banish the reason for those tears.
When Sid releases her, hands sliding to cover Sera's shoulders, she still doesn't take much notice of the room beyond her friend. When she does look past Sera, her eyes are drawn to the figure in the bed, a figure that even in the darkness still gives the impression of glowing golden skin. Sid blinks her eyes and is surprised there is no gleaming purple-green-red afterimage from the sun's glaring light.
Obviously, Sera and Hawksley had been in bed together. Sid doesn't apologize or threaten to leave the pair of them in peace or become overcome with awkwardness for having interrupted something, though. If Sera had wanted her to stay away she wouldn't have answered Sid's text with Then come. Sid looks from the bed and Hawksley to Sera, and she says the first thing she's said out loud in hours.
"What do you need?"
Hawksley
There's no clinging, pulling-back, no as Sera gets up. Hawksley's hand slips from hers and he watches her go to the door, letting Sid in. Hugging Sid. Crying against Sid. Among all the other things that Sid sees in Sera's bedroom is a tall man with brass-and-wheat colored hair, lying in Sera's bed half-beneath its covers, and he's shirtless so it's entirely possible he's also naked under that sheet, though in truth he isn't. Not entirely.
He catches Sid's eye past Sera's shoulder for a moment. Especially at night, in the dark, with the weight of near-death hanging over all of them, Hawksley's strange golden brightness seems all the more noticable, all the harder to ignore by virtue of the contrast. And yes, Sera and Hawksley had been in bed together, though Sera is still covered top-and-bottom, and Sera did tell her to come, and
well. None of it is worth stressing over, really. Not easy to stress over social interactions when someone's in the hospital and someone else is crying over it.
Hawksley doesn't answer for Sera. Of course not.
Serafíne
What do you need?
"A hug." Sera - well, sniffles. Yes, sniffles, drawing a few of those renewed tears back into her body. She is mostly cried out and only a few spill out of her eyes, over her lashes and onto her cheeks, but something about the pressure of Sid's arms around her shoulders or just the Orphan's decision in the middle of the night that she wanted to come triggers that renewed emotion. And so triggered: Serafíne cries. Quietly this time, smiling into Sid's shoulder against the new onset. "Which you gave me. Maybe a week's worth of sleep."
Sera's voice is quiet as the house is quiet and quiet as her bare feet are quiet on the hardwood floor of the room. Much of which is muffled by a half-threadbare old Persian rug.
"I'm okay, though," Sera assures Sid, letting her go, stepping out of the doorway to allow her further into the room and turning to pull the door solidly shut behind Sid. It is objectively true: as worn out as Sera is, she is okay. Worried, sad, unbalanced, frightened, worn out: and okay above all. "Justin stitched me up, and Lena's giving me updates from the hospital. Thanks for coming, Sid. You must be exhausted."
Sera reaches out for one more hug, which smells like strawberries because she smells like strawberries because her shampoo smells like strawberries. The bottle looks like a strawberry, right down to the seeds. This second hug is a quick squeeze and by now her tears have mostly stopped and she reaches up to dash the last few from the corners of her eyes with her fists.
"Bathroom's through that door," a tip of her head toward the closed door close to the vanity. "I figured you'd sleep in here. But if that doesn't work let me know. I can make other arrangements." She waits just long enough to assess Sid's assent to her suggestion or displeasure with it, then turns to pad back across the room and crawl back into bed. At least if Sid assents.
Sid
Sera smells like strawberries, and Sid remembers the shopping trip to Goodwill and the bottle that looks like a strawberry. She remembers grinning at the choice of it and saying nothing to dissuade Sera from that particular purchase. She catches Hawksley's eye and lifts her chin over Sera's shoulder, acknowledgement and greeting both kept silent, though she can't quite help the way the corners of her mouth quirk upward. How does one stay sad, or worried, or unhappy, or anything negative when in the presence of such warm sunlight?
Sera says I'm okay, though, and whether or not Sid believes her, she doesn't question her as she steps a little further into the room. She lifts her bag up over her head and looks about for only a second before setting it down near the door. The rest is absorbed a little more slowly. Justin stitched her up, Lena's at the hospital with Pan, and when Sera comes in for another quick hug Sid's arm goes around her shoulder and tugs her in close until Sera relaxes.
"I will give you a hundred hugs," says Sid, her voice low and quiet. "However many you need, ever." Sera motions to the bathroom and Sid's head turns that way, making note. When she looks back she nods when Sera says she figured she'd sleep in here, and shakes her head slightly when she starts to say if that doesn't work. "Here's fine." When Sera starts back for the bed, Sid looks around again, this time for a surface on which to rest her glasses, somewhere safe but visible and most importantly memorable. She settles on the windowsill.
Then she follows, back and around to the big bed which already has a warm body waiting in it. She waits for Sera to climb in beneath the covers before following her in. This way, Sera is surrounded by warmth, by comfort, by friendship, Hawksley on one side, Sid on the other. Sid pulls the covers over her a little as she tucks in, she pushes her long hair back so that it spills over the pillows, and she lays so that she's facing toward the middle. If Sera lays facing Hawksley, Sid fits herself to the curve of her spine, face pressed near to the back of Sera's neck, one hand draped over her side. If Sera lays facing her, Sid scoots closer, close enough that their foreheads maybe touch, close enough that their knees might need to twine, or their ankles, or their legs, and she takes one of Sera's hands in hers and drapes her other arm over her side. And if Sera decides to lay on her stomach or her back, Sid presses her forehead to her shoulder. Whichever way they end up, she reaches out to Hawksley, as well, because she needs this, too. Not as much as Sera, her need for contact and for comfort and for closeness is not nearly as immediate as it was, but it's there.
And once she has this, Sid realizes that she is exhausted. She's tired because it's the middle of the night and she's supposed to be awake in about five hours. And also, she's worn out from the things she's been trying not to think about and trying not to let herself feel. Comforting and comforted, head filled with the scent of strawberries and Sera's bed and Sera and Hawksley, almost as soon as her head hits the pillow Sid begins to drift.
Hawksley
In the dark, or the half-dark, Hawksley's mouth twitches to the side at Sera's answer, which is hugs. He is propped up on his elbows on the far side of the bed, and though the decision has not yet been made that the three of them are going to pile together in bed, he seems to be waiting for it.
Ah: there it is. And even though Sera has a king-sized bed, Hawksley goes ahead and scoots a bit, makes sure there's room for both women, and lifts up the sheet as Sera is climbing back in. Of course she'll go in the middle; that, too, seems to go without saying. And while he pulls the covers back, Sid is the one to tug them back up, making that wry tilt to Hawksley's mouth return. He waits for them both to settle before he does. He puts his arm around Sera whichever way she lies.
Sid reaches for him, or toward him, and she can feel the startlement in his arm or side when she touches him, if not a flinch. His eyes have not closed, but they catch Sid's and are -- perhaps due to the darkness or the fact that she doesn't know him too well yet -- difficult to read. No matter; he looks neither shocked nor appalled, but it's clear he wasn't expecting that. He doesn't move away: there is that, too.
The Orphan is asleep mere moments after she lies down. Sera likely follows soon after, dropping like a stone into the comfort she's surrounded by. Hawksley stays awake for a little while, not out of some sense of protective duty or guardianship or anything like that, but because he's thinking.
And thinking.
And thinking.
Until he isn't thinking at all anymore, and his dreaming mind is chasing down Sera and Sid's, calling wait, wait, I'm coming too.
Serafíne
So they sleep.
Serafíne, see, she crawls back into the warm hollow she vacated moments ago to greet Sid, to collect that hug, to open the door, and then close it again. The house, we have mentioned, is quiet. So is the night. The sheet-and-duvet are arranged with rather more precision than they ever would be were Sera sleeping along. She tends to burrow. She leaves the thing in a mound slightly off center from the middle of the bed so that in daylight it is piled up like half-hidden nest of some small mammal, or lumped like there may still be a human body hidden somewhere beneath the folds.
Sometimes there is.
It is: still Tuesday night-Wednesday morning. The sun's someone on the other side of the horizon. Dawn will come soon enough but even the earliest of the morning birds are not up yet to herald its arrival.
Lena is in that hospital waiting room and is now either mostly forgotten by the staff or worse: deemed unimportant. Not-a-relative, and therefore outside-the-scope of things like need-to-know. Shoshannah may have joined her by now, for the long, tense vigil which will be fruitless. No surgeon will come to see them; they are marooned in the null space of the waiting area.
Sera settles on her right side. Back to the windows and the moonlight and the barely-touched bottle of Scotch and the lowball glance, a finger or so of water from the melted ice cube. Spine against Hawksley's chest, his arm over her torso, Sid's forehead against her own, their breath mingling. Close. Closer really than Sera would have guessed or imagined but Sera in these hours is guessing not at all and imagining little beyond what might be happening a few miles away, in a very different room where Francisco Echeverría is in surgery: bright lights, gloved hands, and cold, sterile instruments. Masked strangers casting their shadows against the walls of the dedicated rooms or perhaps his not-precisely-sleeping, not-really-awake mind.
Nothing like that here.
Exhausted, Sid falls asleep first.
Sera makes a quiet, back-of-the-throat noise, an unvoiced exhalation, which is shaped in her throat like an abbrievated laugh and sounds like letting go. "Out like a light," she murmurs, to Hawksley. Echo and memory of something the priest promised her once: a full night's sleep, uninterrupted by shadow and shade.
She is so, so tired.
And soon she follows. Slips into the drowning deep sleep of hers from which she can hardly be roused, and sleeps and sleeps and sleeps and sleeps and sleeps. First star on the right, and straight on 'til morning, and well after.
No comments:
Post a Comment