Sid
Tuesday night - or Wednesday morning depending on how one perceives the hours between midnight and dawn - Sid made her way up to Sera's house, to curl up with the Cultist and the only Hermetic that she knows, offering and receiving comfort. Wednesday morning proper, Sid's phone's alarm went off around 8 in the morning, which may have stirred Hawksley but likely had zero effect on Sera. A few minutes later the redhead was gone, leaving behind only her scent on Sera's pillow and the memory of her warmth.
A few days pass. Sid leaves Sera alone for the most part, minus a few inquisitive texts that may be answered with a single note or turn into long rambling, abbreviated conversations about the heat or how does a thought taste or anything that might help distract Sera for even a few moments from her worry over her friend.
The weekend comes, and for once rather than climbing into her truck after work on Friday afternoon Sid pointed that vehicle to the west, toward Cap Hill, toward Sera, because somewhere query was made about dinner or dancing or something that's out, from one of them to the other one, a query that the other one replied Yes! or Lets do this! or K.
So, Sid makes her way to Sera's to pick Sera up to go somewhere.
Serafíne
Dinner or coffee or drinks or art-in-the-park or a pop-up guerilla craft fair with food trucks and swirling heat and jugglers, maybe, practicing their craft on the periphery. ArtWalk, maybe. Someplace with people and distractions where Sera does not have to be the distraction. Someplace: away from the house where she spends much of her time sleeping and away from the hospital she often cannot bring herself to approach, where she is barred from visiting the person she wants to see, because only-family.
And she's not family.
He's still in ICU.
Sera looks decidedly more human by Friday. Not whole, she still looks tired. Her arm is no longer bandaged and the bite on her left arm has scabbed over and she has started picking free some of the stitches from her skin because she's not going to a fucking doctor and Justin has left town so who else is there to cut them out of her skin?
--
Sera is - as she often is when someone comes to pick her up - waiting on the porch with Dan and they are sharing a cigarette and dark smoke curls upward from the two of them, back and forth. She does look more like herself, dressed in her usual denim cut-offs over tights: a sheer black tint with darker black polka dots, and a shiny midnight-blue patent-leather bustier beneath a dark menswear-style blazer with turned-up cuffs. Instead of a spiked leather wristlet: an oversized watch it looks like she stole from some 1960s-era Dad. The sort with a briefcase and a suit and a job that Involved Something Downtown.
She hands the cigarette back to Dan, exhales a last breath of smoke, and slips down the sidewalk through the overgrown garden. Knocks on the passenger's door then pulls herself up to the shotgun position, closing the door behind her. Gives Sid a sideglance, tracing out her profile against the late evening light.
"Hey," this lilting curve of a half-smile as Sera leans out to pull the door closed behind her.
Sid
Or maybe all of those things. As many as Sid can squeeze into an evening. And if they find a weekend craft fair and start there but wear themselves out and go straight home after that, well, that's alright, too. Sid is come to help her friend in the ways that she can, which aren't much. She can offer hugs, and she can offer distractions. The fact that she can't do any more than that doesn't cause her much stress.
She pulls up to the curb, or as close to the curb as she can get, puts the truck into park and stretches across to unlock the passenger side door. She notes, before Sera even rises from her place on the porch, that she seems a little more herself. A little less wan, a little less tense. Sid smiles at her when she climbs up into the shotgun position.
"Hey," she tosses back, puts the truck back into drive, and pulls away. For about half a second she considers just going, just driving away with Sera off to wherever. On a trip or on a Trip or going away for always. She's been in this city for a long time, our Sid has. Longer than she's been anywhere else for a while, and sometimes, only for a second, she feels a spark to move again.
It only lasts about half a second. "I thought we could go shopping in Lincoln and maybe get drinks at Williams and Graham." Her eyes are on the road ahead as she navigates her old truck through the city's streets. Her hair is down, a hand coming up to tuck it behind her ear as she makes a right. Her shirt is black with capped sleeves and covered with green and red and blue cats-eye glasses, her jeans are slim, her shoes are olive green Converse high-tops.
Serafíne
"Sounds awesome," Sera returns, tucking her legs beneath (yes, beneath) her as she pulls her seatbelt across her body and fixes it into its latch. The truck rumbling beneath them with every rev of the engine. The street changes into another and the shadows are long but not yet full dark and the truth is Sera has been up for no more than a handful of hours at this point. She's still in that yawning-is-it-fucking-morning phase of existence which makes her seem subdued.
Or maybe its just the cares from which Sid intends to distract her that are dampening her energy tonight.
Either way, Sera chats easily while they drive, watching the city pass beyond the windows. Mentions that she finally worked up the courage to go to the hospital yesterday, but they wouldn't let her in to see Pan. Family only. Mentions, too, that Shoshannah was fucking camping out at the hospital and that Sera offered her a place to stay in town, if she wanted. Other than that fucking waiting room.
Pan has a son, did Sid know that? Name's Rafael. He should be in town soon.
After that Sera thinks to ask about Sid's job, and maybe that skateboard, and does-she-like-hummus. Talks a bit about her band's "World Tour," which was apparently accomplished in the few weeks between the ritual she and Jim performed to track down Byron and the attack this week. Took them to exotic locales like Utah and Tuba City, Arizona, and 'oh fuck I forgot your present' and a divertissement about this bowling alley they played in southern Utah. Full of sister wives in prairie dresses and weirdly bearded men -
Hey, by the way, Sera thanks Sid for coming over. You know? Mentions that she appreciated it. And as they are pulling into a parking place or leaving one store for another or something, asks - " - by the way, have you heard from Jim, lately?"
Serafíne @ 8:29PM
Perception + Awareness-as-empathy
Roll: 7 d10 TN5 (2, 5, 5, 8, 8, 9, 10) ( success x 6 ) VALID
Sid
Sera talks and mostly Sid listens, but she is engaged as she drives. They converse in the little shops around Lincoln, which are eclectic and eccentric to say the very least. Sid finds a couple little things, trinkets really, tiny figures to place on her desk to mark it as hers. Works well, she says, her bosses are all very nice. Classes for the fall semester start on Monday, and this Sid brings up a little warily, voice quiet and eyes averted as though these things will soften a blow that probably won't come.
That's great about the tour, Sera should let her know about their next show, maybe she could be a groupie and oh does that mean they've settled on a name? She notes about Shoshannah and reminds herself she really needs to check in with Lena. The skateboard is great and will be seeing even more use once classes begin, though the bulk of Sid's will be online. She does like hummus and she hasn't been bowling in ages do places still have midnight bowling with the lights and the music and the smoke machines?
They talk and drift and talk some more and Sid is active and engaged clear up until Sera asks after the Disciple. That's when she falls a little quiet as she tries to figure out what to say. And in that quiet Sera can practically feel the emotions that war in the other woman in unequal measure. Anger, hurt, sadness, betrayal, but mostly a heartbreak that's only barely begun to heal.
"Nope," she says shortly, deciding on the simplest answer. And though she's a little too breezy there's a hard line of And I don't want to beneath it.
Serafíne
Hell no, of course they haven't settled on a name. Honey Bunches of Chokes, one of Dee's roller derby teammates, suggested Bette Davis and the Raccoons, which went over very, very well at the flea market they played in Tuba City, Arizona. Ever been there? Sera thinks they have a dairy queen. She doesn't remember much because they also have peyote, which goes very, very well with peanut butter blizzards.
They shop. Sometimes it is just window shopping, their twin reflections in the reflective glass, another pair of young women amongst a living, moving, river of strangers. Sera drags Sid into every open gallery they pass, too, wandering through and studying the art. Not with an artist's eye, mind, or even a hipster's pseudo-intellectual (completely intellectual?) palette of understanding, no. Sera's wander-throughs are far less pointed but subject to suggest updrafts, when she espies something she loves, something that feels right, like a heart smashed on canvas, or smoke-against-the-sky in the evening.
Her second-favorite shops are the vintage thrifts. Around here they may not be so thrifty, but Sera links arms with Sid and ducks through the cluttered, curated displays at the entrances and leads her up and down the stairs, burrowing through the clothes with a sort of brazen efficiency. She does not buy anything though she seriously considers a vintage fedora with a velvet ribbon around the brim and spends some time over a display of long faux pearl necklaces from the 50s and 60s, the old patina yellowing with age. Tells Sid that you are supposed to be able to tell the difference between real pearls and fake pearls by running them across your teeth, but she's never had the knack.
"I like bowling with hallucinogens." Sera flashes back, about bowling. "In places that haven't changed in forty years. You know, wood paneling. Snack bars serving fried bologna and beer. Hadn't been to a bowling alley before we played that one in Utah since Raleigh, though back there we'd go maybe once a month, get fucked up. Knew a guy who worked the shoe counter there - "
And so on.
This tip of her head, aslant. To that Nope. An aspect of listening, and they still may have arms threaded and if so Sera swings her body closer. Bumps up against Sid. Tightens her goddamned grip.
"Tell me about it." Quiet. "C'mon, Sid. Don't keep that in."
Sid
They shop and Sid doesn't buy much, though she does pick up a vintage fedora with a velvet ribbon around the brim, because Sera looks at it and looks at it and when she finally sets it down Sid swoops in behind her to pick it up. "I don't need a bag," she tells the clerk, and she hands it over with a slight, crooked sort of grin. She has tales of her own to add, though the ones including mind-altering substances are few and far between. Sid's staunch refusal to reveal details of her past seems to have returned and settled into a quiet sense of privacy.
"We should find an alley tonight, I've seen them around," she suggests, because she hasn't been and now that it's mentioned she kind of wants to go. "Maybe Hawksley would want to go," she adds, because already she likes tag-teaming the process of Distracting Sera.
They're walking arm-in-arm, Sid comfortable with the closeness, relaxed and maybe even a bit steadied by it. It was hard to tell at first, what with the shying away and the running and the quiet refusal to accept contact, but Sid's need for physical affection was always there. It was locked with her behind that armor that she wore, but it was there. Usually around Jim. When she woke up clinging to him in that motel room one night, when she reached out to touch and then hold his hand one night at that cabin, which led to more hand holding and eventually hugs. No more than that, though, thank goodness.
Don't keep that in says Sera, bumping up against Sid's side, and Sid's eyes narrow on the path ahead. Then, her expression relaxing a little, she places one warm hand over Sera's arm and looks at her, her own expression sober. "No," she says again, quietly. "If I wanted to talk about it we would have already."
Serafíne
Sera gives Sid this wry look and a quiet laugh as she emerges from the thrift shop into the gloaming with that fedora. Laughs, but the laugh is low and beneath her breath and gleams but does not linger in her eyes. She accepts the gift though, palms it from Sid and sets it atop her head, tipped back more like a stetson than a fedora, but there it is. "Thanks."
The thought of Hawksley bowling has Sera breathing out another half-voiced laugh. It lingers mostly beneath the skin of her breath, but again just rises to touch her eyes. And only just. "Hard to imagine Hawksley bowling." Okay, she must be imagining it because the quickened curve of her mouth slides wider at the edges. Crests like a wave. "He has his fucking t-shirts tailored. Can't quite see him wearing someone else's shoes. We can ask him, though. I wonder if he's ever been."
--
Out on the street, strangers drifting by in twos and threes and there's that moment and there's Sid's so-warm hand on Sera's right arm. Her left still has stitches, the healing gashes from the bite wounds she suffered earlier in the week. Sid's comment brings Sera's gaze up, bright on Sid's profile. There are still hollows to Sera's face, shadows around her eyes and they are more prominent when she isn't smiling.
And she isn't now. Not really.
Dark eyes drop from Sid's profile to the sidewalk ahead. Strange how familiar things can seem so suddenly alien, can be drenched in a dissonance that changes the way one breathes and the shape of one's lungs.
"I called Jim that night. The night we were attacked. He didn't answer. His phone's disconnected and I'm worried about him."
Sera exhales. Distractions go just so far when the poles of the earth have been bent-if-not-broken, when the axis has shifted and the familiar satellites feel all undone.
"I didn't wanna scare you, that's why I didn't say anything you know? Right away. But there was so much under the surface, Sid, when I asked you about him. If you can tell me something, I'd appreciate it."
Sid
Sera's not really smiling, and Sid isn't, either. If they haven't stopped walking they do so now. Sid stops. She pulls her arm away from Sera, and maybe shifts the world a little more in doing so.
"Sera," she says, voice quiet bit intense, her eyes dark and hollow with ache and a rising irritation. "I said no. If you're worried go check on him, but that has nothing to do with me."
Serafíne
So they stop, in the middle of the street and become an island, an obstacle rather than part of the living current of people around them. Sid pulls her arm away from from Sera and Sera, oh, she feels that withdrawal like a physical blow. Breathes in this deep, sharp breath like a stitch in her solar plexus. Holds in her body. Holds, for that matter, her now empty arm against her body, not-quite-tight but there's something wounded-animal about it that Sera cannot, can never conceal entirely when her emotions spike and rises to the surface.
Sera's dark brows draw together over her narrow-set eyes and she looks distinctly and purposefully away for a rather long moment, her mouth closed, her lips seamed together, just breathing, struggling to master her own pain so that it is not a blade in her eyes, a sink, a wound when she darts a glance back at Sid.
Then she does: dart a glance back and oh, is snagged by that hollowed out ache in Sid's eyes. Sera breathes that in too, and she's so close to tears these days, so spent from trying to (and sometimes failing) brave her deep-seated fear of the hospital to go and sit at Pan's side, that they spark in her eyes again.
"Oh, Sid." There is such stripped-bare compassion in the invocation of Sid's single-syllable name in that moment. Heart strings: they used to believe in them literally, too-often abraded tendons and nerve bundles affixing and jangling that organ squeezed like a fist beneath sternum. Fuck it, Sera believes in them still. "I'm sorry."
Sid
And so they are an island, or two separate islands, part of a chain and drifting apart from the powerful currents of life and emotion and fragile things. Sid sees Sera's glance and she winces away from it, brows coming together as her head jerks away to the side, to look down the street instead of at her friend. Is this the price she has to pay for getting close to people? Can she do nothing without hurting them ever again?
She takes a step back, because she doesn't know what to do with that Oh, Sid. If she thought Sera were that kind of person, she would think she was trying to manipulate her emotions, that she was still trying to wring the gritty details out of Sid, who has always had a hard time talking about the things that hurt. She may have stripped herself of her armor, but doors are definitely closing. Not with a slam, not followed by the turning of a dozen locks, but closing all the same.
"I'm sorry," she says, forcing her gaze to meet that pain, those daggers that cut right into her heart, and she means it. Not that she's keeping secrets, but that she was supposed to be taking Sera's mind off painful things and she's failing at it utterly. She hasn't been very good at offering comfort since her Awakening. Probably she never will be again. "I should take you home."
=====
Sam @ 8:31PM
Private Message to Alexis Theron Lambros
[Sid: percept+aware-as-empathy, paranoia is in effect]
Roll: 7 d10 TN6 (2, 2, 3, 6, 7, 8, 9) ( success x 4 ) VALID
Serafíne
Empathy reading:
There is naturally that background, constant strain of Pan-in-the-hospital. This is worse and more distressing to Sera than she seems willing to acknowledge and is an injury that she reopens every time she goes (or tries to go) visit him. This has her in a constant state of emotional flux that makes her feel jangled and raw.
The worry about Jim is genuine too; is now leavened by a clutch of reflexive sadness over the turmoil she picked up from Sid and - more than that - that sense of finality. Of doors closing. Sera is the sort to leave them open-open-open until they tear her apart, then stitch herself back together and have another go.
The pain in her eyes is also: reflexive and sharp and immediate in response to that pulling-away, that loss-of-contact, that irritation in Sid's voice and is both. Bright and hot and sharp, like a friction burn. Heightened by her instability, the way she feels all at-sea with Pan literally unresponsive and Jim gone. But it is also passing. Like, any wound is forgiven as soon as it is sustained. It is not something she will or really could hold on to.
The compassion is genuine, too. Is brighter, yearning and constricted and Sid has the sense that a fair portion of the ache in Sera's eyes is the mute gleam of her own hollowed out ache and heartbreak, absorbed, digested, reflected back to her, a deep and responsive empathy. It is: bright and polished and quickened and alive. Sera might have reached out to hug Sid fiercely in that moment when she said Oh, Sid - except for her sudden and sharpened awareness of all-Sid's-doors and all-their-locks and all-her-apparent-wounds.
The apology, also genuine, is laced with a layered sorrow that Sid cannot quite see through.
--
Serafíne sniffles. Reaches up with the back of her right hand wipes her nose and reaches up with her left to shift the angle of that vintage fedora on her head. Sid watches her, closely - the angle of her profile when some passing stranger in the crowd snags her attention, the sharp profile and the elegant curve of her neck, the taut line of tendons standing out against her skin.
The light is changing. Twilight it changes minute to minute. Summer's failing but the heat lingers.
Sera looks up, aslant. Her mouth curves, wry and she swallows hard. Sid says, I should take you home. and wonders if she can find a way to have friends who never hurt, or never hurt her friends. Sera tips her head back. Her long hair swings down her spine in curving, curling waves. The way light moves.
"I thought we were getting drinks."
They don't have to walk arm-in-arm.
That doesn't mean they can't still walk together.
Sid
Soon enough Sid will find her bearings again. The doors which are not locked will creak slowly open because deep down she was never meant to be a secretive creature. She was never meant to be a mystery.
She's been through worse things than having her heart broken and her trust betrayed. On another day she will acknowledge and accept that she will hurt her friends and they will hurt her and that they'll talk it out when that happens.
But now, today. With the sun dipping below the ridge of the Rockies and her invisible wounds still fresh and barely scabbed over she can't. She can't she can't she can't she can't. She meant what she said. She would have talked to Sera if she'd wanted to talk about it at all and she does not want to talk about it. And it hurts her to know she's made her friend cry when she was supposed to be helping her take her mind off her own worries.
Sera mentions the drinks they were meant to have and part of Sid wants to break down and cry, herself. Instead she clamps her mouth against that feeling, looks away down the street, closes her eyes and takes a deep breath. Lets it out slowly. When she opens her eyes again they are shadowed, but she doesn't withdraw into a hastily erected shell. Those days are done and they have to stay done.
"Okay," she says, and she even manages an almost kinda smile, a slight twisting upward of the corners of her mouth which is more ghost than corporeal.
Serafíne
So it's not arm-in-arm. Instead, they are mostly side by side, a bit further apart than they were when they started. Sera has a pack of cigarettes in her left pocket. These are not her usual cloves, but Turkish cigarettes. Sweet, mild tobacco hand-rolled in an oblong shape, filterless, in a small box the shape and size of a cardboard jewelry box, with gold leaf and foil and rustling endpapers that have a dry book, tobacco-store scent to them. She removes one and holds the open box out to Sid as they walk, offering her a smoke if she wishes it. If not, the box of cigarettes is returned easily to the pocket of her vintage blazer.
Sera lights up. Her eye makeup is a bit smeared and she looks a mess and also: luminous, radiant. Somehow A goes with B.
The smoke smells sweet and not-much-ashen and it drifts in the gathering twilight, from her fingers, from her nostrils. They walk and they walk and maybe they don't go to the first place they planned because walking helps. They might glance at store windows but do not go in. Sera's pretty quiet, all things considered.
Her phone buzzes out little notices of texts with a certain steady regularity and she checks them sometimes but does not reply to many of them. Here and there they stop to greet people-Sera-knows.
Sera corrects her smeared make-up by rubbing a hand beneath her eyes and looks a bit like a raccoon afterwards but somehow she always wears whatever she is and whatever she is doing as if she Meant It in a way that feels deliberate and brazen and that no one can question, too. So tonight maybe she Meant It when she went out with this liminal tension bright beneath her skin and shining eyes and smeared eyeliner in a fedora and vintage menswear blazer and too-big watch and patent-leather bra and fishnets.
Of course she Meant It.
She means everything.
--
The bar is an impulse decision. As mentioned, it wasn't where they planned to go. But there's a sandwich board with a mesmeric spiraling circle that makes Sera laugh and demands that they eat tacos and the promise of Denver's largest tequila selection! in the dark windows framing the place and Sera wants to go in so in they go.
The place smells great. Has a big menu board with seventeen million taco choices, from meat-lovers to kosher to vegan-vegan-vegan and a flip-book of all their tequila offerings and a guy comes to take their order and Sera orders... several different tequila shots and no-food and the bartender gives her a Look and brings her a glass of water to go along with them and Sera puts the first two back in such quick succession it has her eyes watering though pleasantly this time and her throat burning and this deep, clenching rush in her veins for the pleasure of the burn.
They haven't talked much but after her two shots Sera inhales all sharp and savoring. And says, "Sid, can I tell you a story?"
Sid
For a while Sid walks with her arms around herself, like she's chilled though it's clearly still warm. Her hands grip her upper arms but not too night - there are no paler than pale marks when she lets go, no indentations, she just holds herself. She's not the Sid that Sera met in that bar so many months ago, but neither is she the Sid she was yesterday, or a few minutes ago. She'll be a different Sid tomorrow. It might be a surprise when she accepts the offered Turkish cigarette, though she has to borrow Sera's lighter or take one of her matches to light up. If Sera offers to light it for her, she hesitates only a second before leaning closer, breaching the short distance that's been created between them.
Taking it means she has to let go of her arms, which she does. She holds the burning cigarette in the hand that's away from Sera, keeps it low and is careful not to accidentally burn passersby who drift close. The first drag is long and deep. Her dark eyes flutter closed a moment as she takes in the sensation, the feeling of smoke in her lungs instead of fresh clean air, the taste of it, the feel. She savors it like she's done this before (true) but hasn't done it in a very long time (also true). It is like and also not quite like that night in Sera's garden when Sid tried to use Sera's hashish to try and relax.
They walk, and talking is sparse, but they walk and they walk and it helps. Putting a physical distance between where they are and where they stood helps. Like that moment of tension and pain was a place more than a feeling, a thing that could be left behind. Sort of. Sid comments on the things she sees in windows or on the sidewalk.
The cigarette is finished long before they reach their new destination for drinks. Not a speakeasy with a false bookshelf for a door into a darkened back room, but a place with tequila and tacos. Sera wants to go in, and so in they go. And for a moment Sid is overwhelmed by the options. There are taco combinations she has never heard of before, and a few she has, but she's more interested in the ones she hasn't. She orders about five of them, never mind that they likely won't fit into her stomach; Sid will eat them all or die in the trying. This maybe causes an easing in that Look from the bartender, because maybe Sera and Sid are going to share the shots and share the food, but no. Sid does not imbibe alcohol tonight.
She brings them Sera's shots and a Coke with a lime for Sid while she waits for her food. The redhead is leaned against the table or counter or bar, wherever they've ended up. She smells like outside and sweet smoke and whatever products she uses when she gets ready for work in the morning. When Sera asks her if she can tell her a story, Sid angles her head to look at her. Her eyes slide away a moment, to another table or a bottle of Tobasco sauce. When they return, she nods a little.
Serafíne
Sera has those shots in quick succession. She must have a pretty spectacular alcohol tolerance given the way she drinks but she's also pretty fucking tiny and eats only when she thinks about it. When someone puts breakfast in front of her or nachos or cocktail peanuts or when Dee brings home pain chocolate or whatever. The point is: Sera downs those shots she ordered like whoa and they go so pleasantly to her head that her arms feel rather liquid and her skin feels bright and the world seems loosened and cushioned and just a bit more lovely than it did moments ago and she's going to tell Sid a story.
It's a story someone told her.
Truth is it is a story that Jim told her but Sera doesn't tell Sid that. So it isn't her story and the details get rather convoluted in the telling. There was this guy, right? Who had this huge garden with all kinds of fruits and vegetables and he had water from this awesome like, irrigation system he built to bring this stream into his hard and he was always glad to have the water, right, because he got so much out of the garden and he would like, take the extra to share with everyone in town, the kids and beggars and everyone.
The water started drying up though so sometimes he only had enough to feed himself but even then he kept taking out all this food and pretending like he had a surplus because he wanted to take care of everyone. And the drough went on and the stream went dry and he didn't have anything to eat anymore, he was starving but he kept picking whatever was left from his garden to share with the people around him so that they could eat. And one day he knew it was the last day he could pick anything because it was all drying up and he was so hungry and parched he didn't even have the energy left to make tears -
- and Sera is telling this story, mind, while she is tossing back another shot and Sid's melange of strange tacos has arrived in a stainless steel taco holder and parchment paper and smells delicious but the story is a metaphor, is actually a koan though Sera does not remember the word and knows what it's meant to say but isn't quite sure how to make it mean that again but -
- while he was picking the last of his vegetables, this storm rolled in.
And it started to rain.
And the rain soaked him and it soaked the land and it fed the stream and all'a that so the garden was green again.
--
Sera is, by now, a little-bit-drunk. Smiling through it, too. The smile is maybe-sad but also maybe-sweet and maybe-savoring and it is also lashed and warm. She doesn't ever really finish the story, doesn't tell it the way it was told to her, doesn't know exactly why she's telling it to Sid now. Except that it is a story that Jim told her, and she wants to share something of him with Sid, without making her feel: sad, or worse, or heartbroken, or guilty. Without ever mentioning his name.
At some point Sera takes a selfie showing off her new hat-from-Sid and texts it to Hawksley. They'd talked about bowling, Sid and Sera, earlier, but Sera doesn't bring it up again. Sera drinks and Sid eats and then Sera decides she wants naaa-chos and orders some. They might not talk much but they do talk. Sera picks at her stitches a bit and mentions that Justin had some emergency in Madison - did Sid know that's where he was from? - and left town. Someone's going to have to take them out of her arm and she's not going to the hospital. But it is probably still a few days before they need to come out.
--
After they eat-and-drink Sera does want to go home, but also: Dan can come pick her up. They can go bowling another night, she forgot that she has something-to-do.
Sid
Sid doesn't understand the story. She doesn't know its meaning, or that it was told to Sera by Jim, or that Sera is trying to share something with Sid without dredging up those feelings in the Orphan again. Like whatever has happened between them has driven out the good memories, of which she has many. Memories of holding hands. Memories of hugging close. Truth is, it's good that Sera doesn't tell Sid the story's connection, because it's the good memories that hurt the most these days.
She listens to the story, though, abbreviated as it is, and she watches Sera toss back those drinks one after the other after the other. And she says nothing to this. Doesn't say she might want to slow down, or get food in her, or remind her to drink her water. Sid eats her tacos as she listens, and some of them she likes. One of them she sets down after a bite. A couple get boxed up to take home to her roommate.
And when it's over, she smiles a little when Sera takes a picture of herself in her new hat. She doesn't bring up bowling, doesn't say that maybe they can go some other night, but doesn't disagree when Sera says it even later. They talk about Justin and yes, she knew about Madison and yes, she knew about the emergency. She knows about cows, too, but she doesn't bring it up. If Sera allows it, she takes a careful, light and gentle hold of her arm to look at those stitches. She is not a doctor in the medical sense - Sid Rhodes is not even truly a doctor in any sense - but she knows the body. And after making a small diagram on the inside of her left forearm in black Bic ink (the emblem of a leukocyte), Sera feels the tide of Sid's twining resonance rise.
Seems okay, she tells her, though they're a little irritated. Sid advises her to clean it well and maybe wrap it for the night, and if she likes in a few days Sid can take them out for her. She won't have to go to the hospital.
After they eat, Sera wants to go home and Sid understands - except she doesn't, she assumes. She lets Sera know that anyone can remove the stitches so long as they're careful, they just need to be cut and pulled and then the skin cleaned.
Then Sid takes her extra tacos and she leaves Sera to wait for Dan, and she herself wanders aimlessly for a while.
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