It is a cold Tuesday afternoon. Clouds crowd the horizon and the sharp promise of snow is vibrant in the air, damp and cold and faintly metallic. The highest peaks already have their snowcover for the winter, the fourteeners, some of which are visible from the gardens and greenhouse surrounding Kat's homestead, which in turn is some unidentifiable distance from Denver proper. Except for some cold-hardy vegetables like cabbage, broccoli, spinach, and kale growing in a few high-tunnels, the gardens are largely dormant. Here and there the bright brush of color from mums or panises, planted now to survive the winter and bloom again come spring, but mostly: sere, dry, autumn in the high plains. Tropicals - if she raises them - have been shifted into the greenhouses. Favored specimans, kept warm and damp in the humid interior, which will be a vibrant contrast when the ankle deep, knee deep, perhaps hip-deep snows promised by that back-of-the-throat tang finally fall.
Maybe he loses track of time. Without the daily rhythms of the parish to define his day. Without the seven a.m. mass and the eight a.m. stations of the cross and the League of Mary luncheons every Monday and on and on, the two a.m. phone calls and the funerals and the blessings of the dead and the newly born and the dying and the diseased and the criminals and the victims: all of them, children of his dying and resurrected God.
There is a different sort of rhythm to life out here. Dawn and dusk rule. The sun rises and it sets and they hardly notice the changing of the clocks because the clocks do not precisely matter when you are ruled by earth and sky.
Sera does not think to call ahead but Dan is rather more thoughtful than she. So there's warning, an hour or two or three, before the old Jeep crunches up the graveled drive, Dan driving, Sera leaning with her forehead against the glass of the passenger's window, her eyes half-closed, her senses open.
She can feel his presence all the way up the drive.
--
The car stops. They both slide out but listen: Dan's jogging around the front of the Jeep trying to get to Sera's side of the car before she quite has the door open, to catch her as she slips out. He doesn't make it. Her recovery is not complete but is nearly so. The bright, cold air makes her cough and there are still tiny, tidy little spots of blood in her spittle when she coughs, and she looks
so
frighteningly
thin,
but her hair is washed and curled and dried and even dyed again, bright golden creamy blonde down almost but not-quite to the dark roots. Already peeling polish on her short nails, and an oversized leather coat over a dark hoodie over an old concert t-shirt over black jeans and knee-high, low-heeled black boots, the layers concealing most of her frame.
The wind catches her hair, peels it away from her face. She breathes it in sharply and - shaking off Dan's assistance, his insistance - follows that feeling until she finds the priest, whereever he may be.
PanThe only task he's had these past two months is learning how to get by after his god almost called him home.
Convalescing is hard work and he has done so beyond the reach of anyone but the Verbena who drew him up out of oblivion. Were not for her Francisco Echeverría would have lain in that hospital bed this entire time and gone to gristle and lost the sharpness of his mind. He's already lived longer than the studies and the science say someone with his history ought to have lived. That he has not relapsed is testament to his strength but he thinks he gets his strength from God. It is God's work he does and it was his own Work that landed him in the hospital.
It was worth it. Lena and Sera walked away even if they walked away scarred.
What Work he does now is not that of judgment but of protection and recovery. Mingling in with the vibrancy of the Verbena's verdant magick is the powerful light of the Chorister's. That he has not pushed himself towards another Seeking has less to do with his power and more to do with his humility. All he wanted to do for so many years was better the lives of his flock. He saved so many and they pray for him daily and he knows that they do because Rosa calls once a week to check on him.
His hands shook for two months straight. He needed help to walk. He ate food from the earth and not from the abuelitas.
This month is better.
---
When she comes down the drive she finds the Verbena's truck is gone. She must have gone out. Maybe she wanted to leave the two of them alone. Grant them privacy out here in the middle of nowhere with the mountains in the distance and the trees grown all around. The air is sharp-cold and little sun makes its way through the clouds but sun does still shine.
And he feels her before she tromps around the side of the house to find him. He wears his cowboy boots and a pair of jeans and a thick sweater. A knit cap over his head so he won't freeze half to death out here in the fresh air and the portended snow. A blanket thrown over all of that and Sera hears him clear his throat before she hears the creaking of the slats of the chair, the stiffness in his bones.
They have both lost weight. He was probably close to 250 pounds when they loaded him into the ambulance and now he's on the other side of two hundred. Lower. He hasn't weighed this little since he was in prison. She can imagine what he would look like if he had started injecting heroin into his veins again. Not bone-thin yet she can read his cheekbones and his knuckles through the skin.
Pan hasn't shaved his face since he left the hospital. Kat is leaving that task for him to do himself.
"Serafíne," he says and walks towards her and his voice is warm despite the weather and the weathered look to him. "Ay, tan flaca estás, ¿qué pasó?"
SerafíneDan's hanging back, arms crossed. He's dressed in his usual hipster garb and has recently added a wallet chain to the standard ensemble of skinny black jeans and a button-down flannel. The sleeves are rolled up over his forearms, showing off acres of tattoos. It is cold enough out here that he can see his breath, but he does not seem to notice the cold except in his body posture. He is visible just at the edge of Pan's field of vision, stops walking in or as Sera's shadow as soon as Pan comes into view. And watches Sera, with a tight, thoughtful concern that flickers upward to slide over the priest, taking in the details of his appearance in the cold gray air.
Back to Sera then, who rounds the corner of the house, where it is embraced by an overgrowth of invasive English ivy that Kat has been battling since she purchased the property and sees him, the knit cap and the overgrowth of beard making him look more like a stick-up artist than a priest.
Oh, the first thing she does when she sees him is just: stop and look. Stop and stare, caught between the desire to run to him and the need to see him whole somehow. Or find the man she knew in the man he is, now.
It's not hard, even when he is so changed.
--
And here's Sera -
"Estás flaca también - " thrown right back to him, her voice fluctuant between the sort of sullen contrarianism that inspired her to ask a strange and powerful priest to, hey, make out with her in the confessional, and the sob gathered in the back of her raw throat.
Not much else gets out.
Her face is starting to crumble and she doesn't think that he's still injured, wounded, hurt. Healing. Does not know or understand the long, thankless hours he had to spend learning how to walk again, even if she knows all too well what it is like to be betrayed by both your body and you mind, all at once, all in.
So Sera just throws herself at him. Runs up to Pan and wraps her arms around his neck and hugs him and cries,
and cries
and cries.
PanThis isn't what he was expecting when Kat hung up her rotary phone in the kitchen and told him a visitor would be coming by later on but for as little time as they did know each other Pan had accepted that he could not expect anything when it came to Sera. Their first meeting set up a standard of conduct but she was not just some wayward young woman with no respect for authority or sanctity or any of that bullshit. She had plenty of respect for plenty of things. Freedom was chief among those things.
He never brought any harm to his people even when she slept off a night of drugs and drinking on a pew in the back of the sanctuary or scared his replacement to the point where he considered calling the police to deal with her. If Sera thinks Pan did not hear about that incident then she underestimates how often Rosa speaks to him or the depth with which she does so.
And he is not still grievously injured but his body is healing as quickly as it can. Kat risks bringing down a terrible fate upon herself every time she reaches out to take away the wounds that linger and though she is hastening the healing they have had long talks about this. It is better that he convalesce out here with her than in the city with a mundane health aide who can barely change a bandage let alone keep a 45-year-old ex-convict from overexerting himself.
This is the best place for him. But he's too far from the city and the people in the city to be of any use to them. And Sera comes to him withered and wasted and when she throws herself at him he catches her. Tall as he is she cannot see him flinch with the impact. His arms are smaller than they were and his midsection is not flat as it was when he was her age but Sera can fit much more of him in her embrace than she used to be able to.
When she cries he has the strength left in him to hold her though. His breath leaves his lungs in a compassionate sigh and he wraps the blanket around both of them when he puts his arms around her.
"Vale," he says quiet and slow as he rubs her back, broad hand able to read every rib in her torso, "ya está, ya está."
As much an assertion that she's alright as it is that he is but Pan doesn't know what the hell happened to her so he just holds her until she's vented enough of the tears stored up that she can make room for words.
SerafíneThe priest holds her like that for a very long time.
Sera cries and cries, taking in great shuddering breaths between the storms of weeping and shivering in his arms. There's love and worry and fear and heartbreak and a strange, shuddering relief to find him here again, which feels quite nearly surreal after the long, terrible trial of her captivity. She is so. Very. Glad. to see him and feel him and so wretched with god knows what that her ravaged body can hardly contain it and beneath it all this stark and singular sadness she cannot quite capture or define, let alone excise, which has lodged itself beneath her sternum like a fist sometimes clenched around her heart: she cries for that, too.
Her temple pressed against his chest, her arms tight around his torso, the blanket wrapped around her, his resonance blast-bright all around them, Sera holds on so tightly and does not let him go unless she feels him start to physically falter. His shirt is damp with her tears; her nose is streaming. Her arms go all the way around him now and she can hardly process the fact that they meet in the middle of his broad back, where the column of his spine is flanked by broad, flat slabs of muscle beneath a layer of fat that is slowly disappearing.
Finally her body has had enough. The hitching shoulders, the shuddering breaths she takes in between what have become voiceless, noiseless sobs bring about a coughing fit. Sera tries to hold it down, but cannot fight it and lets him go at least, turning around and reaching for the wad of tissues stuffed into the pocket of her coat. Her back to him, her head tucked forward, the coughing fit seems nearly as violent and enduring as her tears. It hurts, it all hurts. She has coughed so much that her entire torso is sore and sometimes it is hard for her to believe that all of this is nearly over, because she still feels sometimes like the bride of death.
"I'm sorry," Sera says at last, her voice tight and high from the tension in her poor raw throat, her eyes still shining and damp with tears. Her voice hitching. "I probably opened up your stitches or something again. I just - I missed you. Miss you.
"It's good to see you, you know? I'm glad you're getting better. It's nice out here."
PanNot until Sera releases him to curl up on herself and cough a cough that sounds terminal instead of transitional does Pan let go of her. Even then he does not let go fully. His hands stay on her shoulders in case she crumples. And she can hear the blanket that he'd held around the both of them start to slide off of his shoulders. It does not hit the ground. By the time she has stopped coughing and the ache has wormed its way down into her bones he has righted the thing.
An apology comes as he is draping the blanket over her body. Not like a cloak or a cape. He wraps her up in it and she can hear the cautious rumble of laughter low in his chest as the priest secures her against the cold. With his hands at the edges of her vision she can see how the skin has grown thinner for the loss of fat beneath it. Veins shout blue against the brown of his skin. Hands tremble still but do not shake outright and she tells him she misses him. Lays praise upon praise onto his health and the land.
He sees her for the light is not so wan as her health and his sight is not impacted as is his balance and his memory. Pieces of thing have gone away from him and he has trouble retaining anything new. Sometimes the ground pitches out from underneath him or he feels dizzy out of nowhere. No medication to mar his judgment but he will be back to work soon.
Call it serendipity that she's come out here when she has. No call so strong to a shepherd as the call of those who need him. Sera knows Rosa talks him out of coming back each time she does talk to him. Even if she and Rosa do not speak to each other she knows Rosa speaks to Father Echeverría.
He's not yet well enough to stand behind a pulpit for an hour at a time wearing heavy robes and preaching in a voice bold as one come down from the mountains with a message. Sure as hell ain't well enough to throw himself into Chantry business or go off hunting Nephandi. This is the longest he's stood in a long time though. Take it as a sign.
"It is," he says. Hand laid against the space between her birdlike shoulder blades. "Come inside. I'll make you some tea. You can tell me what happened."
SerafíneSera follows Pan inside; or is guided by him. Shepherded by him, without really being conscious enough to note how he holds on to her lest she crumple, how he wraps her up in the blanket to keep the winter's-coming chill in the mountain air at bay. Ducks beneath his arm as he holds the door open for her, and does this sort-of shuffling walk inside. The illness is already passing. As close to death as she was, she will not understand the physical work that Pan's physical recovery has cost him, though other wounds will linger long after she is no longer drowning in her own blood.
The house is a good place: old, and rambling. It smells of woodsmoke and drying herbs and the last of the late fall flours. It smells of bread, which is rising, and stew, which is simmering on the cookstove, and the bright, clear scent of the white vinegar Kat uses to clean. While Pan puts the kettle on (the tick-tick-tick whoosh of the gas stove) and reaches for the teapot and handmade mugs with familiarity of long residence, Sera sits in one of the shaker chairs at the handsome wooden table, which is scarred from long use.
The blanket is still draped over her. She's fairly drowning in it.
It is easier for her to talk while he's engaged in the ordinary ritual of tea-making. Easier to begin. This is not a story she's told yet, and it is still livid inside her, in oh so very many ways. But she came here to see him, and she had to know he'd ask.
There were these people, Sera begins, while water rattles tinnily into the kettle from the faucet, Technocrats or something, former Technocrats, not Awake, though, right? Just rank and file, who defected, split themselves off. Made common cause with each other for reasons Sera does not know, entirely. There was a brother and sister whose nephew/son died in some fire started by a mage. A technocrat, Sera thinks, though she doesn't know.
As wretched as she is right now, as terrible as the damage, mental and physical, inflicted on her, Sera is a little sad for them. Their losses and their deaths and their deeds too.
"They wanted to rid the world of us," Sera is telling Pan as he comes to sit at the table, heavily in one of those chairs, to wait for the kettle to boil. Her eyes touch his, then fall back to her hands on the table. She can't quite bring herself to look at him for long. Not now, not yet. He knows what she means, though: us. " - so they made a virus that somehow only attacked us. Went looking for people on whom to try it.
"Found Grace and Sid. Lena and me."
--
Sera tells him, quite sparely, how she tried to heal herself. How it worked. How it stopped working. She does not tell him how bad things went, then: the wrenching hallucinations, the nausea, the constant vomiting, the way it felt to drown in her own blood.
"It got pretty bad," is what she says instead, with a spare and lilting looking. This grimace of a smile, as she does put some effort into staving off tears. "I was at home, Sid said we were infectious, so I locked everyone out. I guess I passed out.
"When I woke up, I was in this - this hospital room. This guy came in, told me he was trying to help me. I would've died if he hadn't brought me in to be cared for. Said he wanted to find a cure, I had to trust him, wouldn't I help them."
Sera shrugs. Watches Pan as he rises from the table to answer the shrill call of the tea kettle and makes the tea: not with bags but with a teaball and loose leaves from one of several canisters on the counter.
"I couldn't read his mind," Sera is saying, with a flick of her eyes to meet his. This spare and skeletal shadow of her usual smile. "but I knew he was a fucking liar. So I tried to escape. He used some drug to knock me out.
"They didn't strap me down, but they locked me in and only came in when I was unconscious. I kept getting sicker and sicker, too. Hallucinating my own death over and over."
And, lovely, ordinary, he pours tea. Steeped and fragrant into the handmade mugs. Sera's hands wrap around the stoneware seeking warmth reflexively. "They took Lena, too. Grace and Sid sort of escaped them. Sid found a cure or something, and one of those folks found a conscience, or something. Realized we were human, not monsters, reversed course.
"She got in touch with Sid and Grace and they came and broke us out.
"Now I'm cured." There are tears shining in Sera's eyes, but she is not actively crying, not now. Just - shining, and that last bit so remarkably wry, sweet, and bitter, and spare, and hollow. Her left shoulder hooks upward, and she finds Pan's gaze then, her own steady, steady.
"So they tell me. All better in a couple more days."
PanAnd he does listen. Even as his attention is tugged by the task he has set out for them Sera has the priest's eyes and the weight of them and the lightness of knowing she does not have to delve deeper than she wants to delve.
That he understands it got pretty bad means what she says. Means worse than what she says. Already broken down as she has she goes on and he lets her. His chest rises and falls in a show of his continued life. Ignore the overgrowth of beard concealing his sunken cheeks. The bruises where he's knocked his hands into the counter or the doorway as he's been walking. They shake under the table but not so bad as they did months ago. Things would leap out of his grasp then.
They didn't strap her down.
He brings one mug over to the table first. He moves so much slower than he's used to. Than she's used to seeing him move. In health he was a big man who was slow to speak and slow to rouse to anger or action. He thought before he did everything. Everything but comforting and consoling those who needed it. That was wired into his bones.
His mug rests on the countertop. Sera's eyes glisten with unshed tears and he considers her. The quiet brittleness of her bravery. And he could give her back words true and yet inadequate.
With a heavy breath in and out Pan reaches out a hand to touch her forehead. It does not still shriek with fever but he finds it warm still. She finds his hand thin now like the rest of him. Bony with its calluses gone. It's still his hand. If she does not flinch away from him he smooths hair back from her brow and guides it along towards the back of her head.
If he were Working now he'd try and smooth away the scar and the pain pulsing up from it but he is not Working. He's just comforting her.
His hand ends its journey at the back of her neck.
"Mija," he says, like a sigh. Like that can make up for all the things he can't say to make her be better now. "Cúanto lo siento."
SerafíneEverything feels so dissolved and dissolving and Pan's presence is as surreal as the rest of it. The hallucinations have passed and the white room is a fading memory and she is in the warmth of a stranger's kitchen which exudes the terrible exactitude of cyclic life, and Serafíne is not quite sure whether she is dying or being born.
His hand on her brow, in her hair, the dark roots showing. Skimming down to the back of her neck. Her mouth compresses as she struggles to suppress a sob, or something, and her flat brows are all constricted over her dark eyes, this line bisecting her forehead, because he's still here, and so changed but immediate, that brilliant resonance a sunstorm around him.
Pan tells her, quite simply, that he's sorry.
That he is so sorry.
--
And Sera dissolves. Cannot remember where her skin begins; cannot remember that it was meant to contain her, constrain her within its boundaries. She leans against him, into him, holding on as if she were drowning, because she is drowning, just holding on.
--
The second time, it does not take her quite as long to cry herself out. Somewhere in the middle of all that he sways or she remembers or there is the sound of footsteps on the porch. Dan, maybe, taking up the outside perch that Pan abandoned in favor of tea in the kitchen with Sera. The tears slow, and stop, and Sera takes great shuddering breaths, and gives Pan this smile full of such adoration, such tight gratitude, such swimming feeling that another man, any other man, might find the gleam of her gaze utterly dizzying.
Then down and away, and "Your tea's getting cold," and he retrieves it and returns to the table, and they sit together as afternoon slips into evening.
There's no more discussion about Hydra or the white room, about antivirals or infectiousness, or blood, or strokes, or paradox. They are quiet, some, or they talk about smaller things, bits of gossip. Sera mentions that Justin went back to Wisconsin, that Jim and Sid are still around, and she is pretty sure they are involved. Involved. And so on.
They talk about the weather, and about winter, the bright wash of the sky, the snow on the mountains.
She does not ask him when she'll see him again, but from the way she takes her leave of him, later, after dark has fallen, it is clear that, seer that she is, Sera knows: she will see him soon.
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