We got today.

Serafíne

The first night they came out there, they broke in.

"Broke" in. The one-lane blacktopped road up through the hills was unplowed, bisected only by a few sets of tiretracks. The graveled drive leading up to the one-bedroom cabin absolutely pristine, except for the impressions left behind by the minor avalanches of wet snow sloughed off the branches of the evergreens lining the drive and Dan's knuckles were white, piloting the reckless old Econoline up into the mountains over the icy roads, snow churning the beneath the tires.

He found the key tucked neatly in a fake rock hidden in the diminished woodpile. All the wood wet, covered in melting snow, the tarp - unweighted - blown up against the back deck during some recent storm. Unlocked the doors and then cut his way through the drifting snow, knee deep in some places, to lift Sera out of the van and carry her inside, because what the fuck did she do with her shoes?

The next morning, he went down in to town to find and pay the owners their rent for the next month. Enough that they were willing to displace the late May weekend reservations they had already taken in. Then further away, in to the city to pack a pair of bags and load up on supplies. She was sleeping when he left, and still sleeping - on the couch where he left her - when he returned.

--

A few days have passed, since. The snow has melted, except on the highest peaks visible in the distance. The creek behind the cabin is swollen with snowmelt, rushing fast and choked with debris and the sun has a watery immediacy where it filters through the pines.

Sera has a change of clothes, now. A few changes of clothes, see, and Dan managed to unearth her hiking boots from somewhere deep her in closet and they have been here long enough that the place is starting to feel lived-in. Fishnets draped over the shower rod in the bathroom, blankets piled on the couch in the living room where they sleep. There is a single bedroom, but they leave it alone.

Yesterday she had a feeling strong enough that Sera made Dan drive her all the way back to the chantry, but she wasn't gone long before she came hiking back through the grounds, nose bleeding, a spreading bruise on her temple from the solid blow the snap-back of reality gave her for her trouble.

Tonight, she is sitting on the steps leading up to the deck, wearing a short black denim skirt, fishnets, and hiking boots, a black lace halter beneath a cropped leather jacket, feet planted, one hand loose around the neck of a whiskey bottle between her lefts, resting on the step below. Smoking a cigarette.

The van is gone. Dan's running an errand in to town. He promised to get some dry firewood and maybe some starter - something that would let them build a fire in the firepit in the side yard.

Sera smokes slowly. Meditatively. The woods are quiet.

Sometimes, sometimes, she thinks about the stars.

Pan

This time last year maybe a little later it all starts to blend together after a while and they were all different people back then different bodies some of them even but this time last year whenever the red Tacoma came out from the city it was with hope of news or the bearing of it. One time the priest came to the campfire drenched in his own blood. Snap-back of his own.

That's not why he's here. He's here to check in on Sera. Because he was there and she needed him then. She doesn't need him now. Maybe he's told her this already. That he's proud of her.

Sera knows he's coming. This shouldn't come as a great shock. Hard to shock a Time Mage anyway.

Cowboy boots crunch in the gravel and when he comes upon her in the backyard his hands are in the pockets of his jeans. Jeans today. It's Saturday. They are not black. They're blue denim and if he gets blood on them oh well. That's why we have bleach.

"Hola linda," he says at the bottom of the steps. He pauses. "What're you doing out here all by yourself, huh?"

Serafíne

Sera is a little bit pale beneath her native tan today. The bruise lingers, a mottled assortment of ugly, healing yellows and deeper purple tones. She has chased away the halo of a headache with magic and self-medication and she knows he is coming. Perhaps she knew it in the back of her throat when she woke up this morning. Perhaps she knew it a year ago, more or less, when she launched herself out of the front door and threw herself at his back, refusing to let him leave.

That they would come back here.

That she would change.

That he would, too.

--

Sera smiles at him, the crest of the expression has a winsome and quite deceptive fragility. Doesn't she always seem like she's on the verge of breaking; doesn't she always let herself be shattered, and survive.

And now she's here, drinking. Smoking, alone yes -

The supple curl of her left shoulder as she takes another drag and stands up, and stomps down the steps until they are close, and offers him her cigarette without thought and expects him to take it, and stands on the bottom step so that they are nearly of a height (though she is in her hiking boots, which do not give her a boost) and he is taller even when she cheats like this, and she wraps her arms around his shoulders, smelling like clove-smoke and whiskey and pine tar and clear, fresh air, and just holds on, the way she does,

until she lets go,

the way she does,

and quirks a smile up at him.

"I'm not really by myself. Dan's went to town. The wood's all wet so we couldn't get a fire going. So he's picking up firewood.

"How'd you know I was here?"

Pan

First he takes the cigarette but the cigarette isn't what he came here for. When she comes in for an embrace he lets her puts her arms around his shoulders even though he's the bigger one and he's almost always the stronger one and when people embrace Father Echeverría they are looking for comfort from him.

After a heartbeat Pan puts both arms around her careful that the cigarette is aimed out and he lets her go when she's ready. Squeezes her elbow as they part and drags off of the cigarette and hands it back to her.

That spice kick of the kratek doesn't surprise him anymore. He knows what she smokes.

How he know she was here. He quirks a half-a-grin and turns so he can lean a hip against the railing at the bottom of the stairs and look out over the dormant fire pit with her.

"Magic," he says. Like some private joke. Didn't he find Leah by praying on his knees for hours and hours until clarity came to him like a shotgun blast. Speaking of magic: "Before I go, we'll dry the leña, huh? The firewood? Put it under a tarp or something so it don't get wet again. Supposed to rain tonight."

Serafíne

Sera smiles up at him and takes the cigarette back, and takes another drag and glances slant-wise, through the weathered wooden railing, over the muddy ground strewn with shed pine needles. Breathes in the scent of him and the light of him and he says that it is supposed to rain tonight, and she glances back up at him then, her head turned in half-profile, the sharper lines of it, the soft fuzz where her head is shaved and the wilder, wind-whipped curls, and she would like, very much, to kiss him,

and she holds that want inside her body, feels it full against her tongue, in the back of her throat, because - oh - she adores him, and not the way he adores her,

and that's fine, too.

The expression on her face is soft and yes, shadowed, and sweet and she has one arm wrapped around her waist, her bare skin, the suggestions of her tattoos mostly shadowed by the cropped leather jacket, and her mouth quirks wider when he says magic, and she turns around, climbs the steps to lead him inside, her gait unconsciously hip-swaying.

He'll dry the firewood before he goes.

"You wanna come in?" she asks as she heads back up the steps, pausing only to grab her whiskey bottle as she passes it. "We have some leftover empanadas if you're hungry."

Pan

"I am, yeah. Thank you."

In they go. He has brought nothing with him but his own presence and his presence is enough. Takes a humble person to admit that they are still important to the people around them. To relieve another suffering is a powerful gift and even when he does not Work he has that power in him. The priest is a persuasive and magnetic personality and he does what he does not to secure himself a place in the eternal good graces of his Lord but because he believes that this is why he was given a second chance.

So he's used it. He's going to Hell anyway but that don't mean he's gotta throw in everything he's got left and say fuck it and get up from the table. Did that once before. He stays where he is because he wants to. Because as much blood as's been spilled already it's the right thing to do.

They go inside. The place smells shut up but not the way something abandoned smells shut up. Pan goes into the kitchen and he tests the stove makes sure the pilot light still works and if Sera wants to make him a plate he's just going to get right on out of her way.

"How you holding up?" he asks. Because it's been a year. Because he never asked her this then.

Serafíne

Before they go inside, Sera takes one last drag and offers Pan one last drag, his solid body framing hers as she snuffs out the clove in a handy ashtray before she reaches for the front door; or maybe he opens it for her and either way they're inside.

The place is so fucking plain. Plain in its way as the rectory in which he lives. The spare kitchen with two photographs mounted on the fridge and three postcards, where he makes tea and sits with the ladies from the League of Mary when they have suffered reversals or loss. When their rosaries are not enough to spare them.

Plain pine, whitewashed walls. The built-in sofa and the old CRT television on a knotty pine stand. Galley kitchen that is too small for the pair of them, which does not stop Sera from crowding in behind Pan as he checks the pilot light and tests the stove and she shucks her leather jacket because it is warm in here, the blast of warm dry air, and beneath it she that cropped lace halter. The scrawl of her tattoos on her skin. SERENDIPITY up her left ribs, revealed and concealed and revealed again, as she does busy herself making him a plate. Empanadas from a foil takeout on piece of ovensafe pottery, covered again in foil and slipped into the oven he tested for her.

"I'm cool," she tells him, when he asks her how she's holding up, and she says it with this spare no-quarter kind of smile as she looks up at him, and it is true. She is cool. "What about you?"

Spins on the balls of her feet, leans back beside the warming oven, and crosses her arms beneath her small breasts.

"Thinking about going back to London, soon."

Pan

Once she sets about her bustling Pan gets himself right on out the way. Doesn't take phobic pains not to make contact with her. She's seen the picture of his son and seen the easy way he stands with his son and knows that even celibate as he is denying himself so many things Pan is not afraid of other people. Touch is something humans need. Without it they wither away. Even Christ needed comfort at the end of His life.

So he lays a hand on her arm like to secure their orbital paths and makes his way around her. Moseys on out the galley and wanders around the scant living room. Hands tucked into his pockets not touching nothing. No wonder she wants to sit outside even though it's cold out.

What about him.

"I'm cool," he says and the smile is mostly in his voice. He doesn't feel like smiling when she's so quiet.

She's thinking about going back to London.

"For how long?"

Serafíne

There are blankets and the like twisted and mounded up on that built-in couch and the door to the bedroom is still closed and absolutely undisturbed and the cheap knotty-pine coffee table has last night's drinks and this morning's coffee and yesterday's or maybe tomorrow's skimpy black lingerie on top of a November 2013 issue of Field and Stream and there's a black cocktail dress tossed over the left arm of the sofa and a twee hard-sided suitcase open on the floor, all rumpled, and an unopened bag of 'Smores flavored Goldfish Grahams and when he touches her, that pivot in the kitchen, Sera smiles but does not in that moment lean into the touch. Nothing to be done once she slips the plate into the oven on warm, so Sera grabs Pan a bottle of water from the otherwise mostly-empty fridge and follows him into the living room and gives it to him as she passes him on her way to the couch, where she curls up in the L, because of course she would, with her whiskey in her hands and her dark blue eyes on him.

"Not long. Maybe just - long enough to remember it, you know? Been thinking about it for a while, now."

The slightest curve of her mouth as she looks up at him.

"When's your birthday?"

Pan

This seems to him a reasonable explanation for traveling to London. Shining light on a dark space. Once he'd advised her that she may want to do this one day if she felt as if something was behind her and she couldn't put a shape to it but that was before he got himself tore up by dogs standing between her and them and nearly dropped dead when a blood vessel burst inside his head.

So he nods. Doesn't tell her one way or another what he thinks she ought to do but Sera can remember can't she. That Pan doesn't believe in not remembering if a body's got a choice in the matter.

When's his birthday.

"Ah..." Think. Like his kid didn't send him a card. Takes a swallow of water and sets it on the nearest free flat surface. "The second of April."

Serafíne

"I missed it," she says quietly, this kind of regret lacing her voice. Then, the edge of a neat little shrug, the delicate curl of her bare shoulder.

The smallest of smiles as her eyes search his face. "Missed mine, too."

God, how she adores him. The truth of it is so absolutely naked on her face.

Pan

"Está bien," he says.

This to both. Who cares about birthdays. One's own birthdays is never important.

"Eh? We got today. I'm grateful for that."

Serafíne

"Me too."

The room is starting to fill with the scent of warming empanadas, though. Even Sera, fucking Sera - and doesn't she seem almost sober tonight? Knows that that is all she needs to get them reheated. So she's slithering from her nest on the couch and striding across the small living room to the smaller-still kitchen and opening the oven and pulling out the warmed-up plate, hand wrapped around the edge with a dishtowel and carries that over to the couch and coffee table.

The room has not changed much since they were here, a year ago or nearly so. The room has not changed much since then but it has been inhabited by stranger after stranger, and clear as the shut-in air seems and simple and simply-ugly as the furnishings are Sera is aware both of the time that has passed and the people who have passed with it, and equally as aware of the sharp and lingering edge of the memories beneath her skin. They are still mostly-packed away, neatly folded together inside her body, but sometimes it feels as if her blood is pooling around them, or inside them, and since she came out here, some days feel strange and some days feel stranger and some days feel absolutely ordinary.

Sera slides an arm through Pan's as he eats. Leans her head against his shoulder.

Tells him about the night she came out here. How briefly and wholly wrapped up she was in the resonance of memory, the dream of the dead, and how Grace didn't or couldn't understand, assumed - necessarily perhaps and wholly as one must - that Sera's pensive comment was an invitation to ordinary conversation, how many of them there are now, who do not or cannot or will not understand.

Tells him other stories, ordinary ones. Some hole in the wall barbecue in Rio during Carnivale and this friend of Dee's who plays the theremin and how sometimes she feels a stitch in the joint of her thumb. Asks him if he likes the empanadas and smiles quiet when he says that he does, because they are delicious, because Dee made them and she is a genius. Wonders what Leah is doing, and how she is doing, now.

She's tired, Sera. Not physically tired; it is merely the ebb of her Will, and she tells him that story too. The spiders and the tome and the talking fox and he could be forgiven for believing that all of that was a hallucination because Sera thought it was a fucking hallucination until Lena decided, oh I don't know, to summon the giant killer spiders in their direction and on, and on.

Dan returns, eventually.

They build a fire in the firepit outside. Pan dries the firewood and he and Dan pull the tarp over the woodpile and Sera drinks, as she does, and stays so very close to him until it is time for him to go. Then she wraps her arms around his neck and holds on to him for a very, very long time.