The Road Home [Attn: Hawksley, Sid]

[mnemosyne]

Sera was quiescent as Sid cleansed her palm and forearm; just minor, hissing intake of breath when she first felt the sting of the the alcohol and antibiotic wipes on the slashes she'd made in her skin; another layer of pain to push her - without, beyond, away, into the eternal space where there is notime except that which is Willed into being, by the collective dreams of the sleeping, by the active workings of the awakened, by the constrictive squeeze of their shared fucking reality.

Quiescent and quiet and breathing and fine but not really there. The far-away glaze of the oracle when the gods are riding her skin; when the dust of history or the gauzy haze of the future is filling her lungs. Twenty minutes or more, the slow rhythm of the rental car on the interstate, the dark landscape moving past them and Sera swaying in time with the car's movement, her forehead against the glass, her forearm and palm bound with gauze, her eyes open but unseeing.

She rouses to the Now in odd little stuttersteps, and it feels both like waking and falling asleep again, letting the shining threads of the past fall away from her fingertips. Her arm aches. Her head aches. Her first waking breath is deep and sudden and filling and the first thing she says to Hawksley and Sid is to Sid,

"Your hands are so warm." A deep, breathing sigh. "Like Justin's. You should hold hands. I wonder what would happen."

--

"She never intended it for anyone other than Willworkers." Pieces of the story Sera tells, they know already. They know from the mind of the maker, right into their own. Sera knows these details only in the most threadbare way: from Sid or Hawksley, by inference, as her mind was closed to the woman's Work. But now she knows them in a different way, entirely. In a dreaming and quickened way, twisted with emotion, wrapped in the immediacy of experience.

"Stavros," she has not moved from the window. Leans there, her eyes unfocused, watching her reflection swimming over the dark and moving night. There's a kind of wonder in her voice, a residual awe, inspiration, dreamt into being, pulled from the ether. "Stavros though, he got consumed by the idea that he could Awaken so many sleepers with her charms. Fucking PCP, Christ.

"Get them to let go. Open up. Dream." This fucking madcap idealism, right? Burned into his soul, as much by her resonance, by the sparking fuel of that drug as it ignited something answering in his soul. "They fought.

"She couldn't get through to him, not once he was high. And he was always high, on her work inside of them. It's like, that idea wrapped itself around his heart like a serpent, just sunk its teeth into the meat of that muscle and he couldn't feel anything except the pulse of the that promise with every goddamned contraction.

"Fuck.

"So, he left. Came back later and broke in and stole a fucking <i>hell</i> of a lot of her shit. Gave them to Byron to offload for him, to get out there in the world, to spread, fucking asshole. I couldn't tell you how much, but more than we've found or know about. More than the ones you Saw, Hawksley.

"When she figured out what was going on, Lydia tried to go back in time. To change that last - that last fight with Stavros, right? To find another way to navigate through it, something that would fix him or stop him or -

"But he sensed her Work. I mean, they knew each other so well, the tang of her resonance in the air - how could he miss it?

"They fought." Sniff. The sniff is audible, and Sera's throat is closing around the words. Her narrow shoulders twist backward, and if Sid turns around, if Hawksley looks in the rearview mirror, they might see her eyes shining, tracks of tears down her cheeks. "Lydia and Stavros. In the past or now - or recently, I can't peel it apart. Yesterday and a month ago. This morning, tomorrow.

"They were lovers. She didn't mean to kill him.

"But she did."

Another audible sniff. Sera's body language just - crumples - as she turns back to the window, the dark streets moving past the rental car. There's no denying the grief, echoed though it is, and her will is half-spent on the Work so it just courses through her.

She wants to tell them to turn around and go back.
Tell this stranger how sorry she is, share this pain.

--

"I don't believe her that nothing can be done for those who've taken it."

Sera says, when they've pulled up on the dark and treelined street where she lives with her housemates. Both Hawksley and Sid have been here, and know the walk and the steps, the overgrown, untended, once-loved garden. The quiet dignity of the façade, light behind the windows, the overarching canopy of the trees. The strange and lively chaos inside: layers and layers of lives, lived and living.

Tonight, someone's left the fucking unicycle on the front lawn. Not one of the housemates will admit to owning or using it, but it lives there, just the same as them.

Says it quietly, to one or both of them as she's getting out of the car. There's an intensity to her in that moment, though.

"Maybe we don't have the power but someone must. 'Cept Pan's in Mexico and Annie's in - wherever she's gone to. Or maybe you have to take it, right? Get down in there with her and show her how to get out. There's a way," a glance at Hawksley, with his fucking books. And Sid: her fucking Science. And Sera, her eyes still dark and full of tears, her nose red and running a little bit, her arresting features, the so-direct gaze, the quick and curling mouth drawn and hollowed a bit, from pain and hunger, deliberately chosen. From privation and memory and the clarity that attends to such things, all stripped down, all bare, entirely open. "There's got to be."

"Jim and I, we'll find Byron. We've got another half-hit or so."

And, hey. They have a Serafíne, too. And she knew him,

once.

[errin]

"I've held Justin's hand," is the quiet, mild reply as Sid, sitting in the backseat with Sera while Hawksley drives, sets a gauzy bandage over Sera's cuts and sticks it in place with medical tape. "Nothing happens, it's just holding hands."

She's silent for the telling of the Seeing, sitting on the opposite side of the backseat, body angled so that it's her shoulder against door. Some few things she already knew. The Charm was made for other willworkers, to help people. Lydia saw it help people, so she was happy to make more.

They were lovers, Sera says of Stavros and Lydia. They were lovers and she didn't mean to kill him. When Sera's body crumples Sid leans over, reaches for her hand, brushes the back of it with her fingers. And if Sera doesn't jerk her hand away, if she doesn't make it known that she would prefer not to be touched right now, thanks, leave me to my grieving, Sid unbuckles her seatbelt. She slides across the back seat toward her and she leans against the Ecstatic. Puts her arms around her and quietly holds her while she grieves.

After a few moments she looks over, at Hawksley's profile or his face in the rearview. She doesn't immediately jerk her head away from the possibility of him looking at her with that look that could be like predator-to-prey, or could be affable. Instead she asks, "If he's dead, why would she tell us to find him?" Her words are quiet, but not so quiet as they were around him before.

====

Outside of Sera's house, Sid stands with one hand in her pocket, the other resting on her bag. She tilts her head, considering the options Sera offers.

"She said the Charms were supposed to help people." This is her agreement to the possibility of taking the stuff in order to help Kelsey. "Maybe it only fucks up Sleepers. I know someone who wants to help," she says, and looks at Sera. "Lena. She was going to take my sample and get more information, herself."


==================
[Lookit me trying to loop everyone back into the SL! I propose that Sera and Jim go off and have their adventures, and maybe Sid/Hawksley/Lena can around that time be trying to help out Kelsey? Maybe?]

[kai]

Of everything that Sera tells them as Hawksley drives, the names burn the brightest. Stavros is dead, but Lydia. He breathes that name in as Sera speaks it, the first time he's heard the name. Coming secondhand, it means a bit less, it was not freely given by the woman herself, but that margin is thin as knife's edge to someone like him. Associations spin out from his thoughts, but he holds his tongue as those free associations take him all the way to predatory sea snails and ancient Phoenicians. He listens. He wonders who Justin is, but only for a moment.

She didn't mean to kill him. But she did.

Hawksley's brow contracts. He's not looking in the rearview, but he knows the sound of tears. Were Sera to tell him to turn back he probably wouldn't, so it's for the best that she doesn't even ask. He doesn't think Lydia wants to share it, or anything. She's turned her guilt and grief into a knife and turned it inward, but the knife can easily turn. She certainly seemed willing to turn it on them for trying to reach her, help her, share the burden of making this right. Talk about no good deed going unpunished.

"I think she meant Byron," he says quietly, to Sid's question. "Or maybe she wants us to talk to Stavros's ghost." This is, after all, a possibility. Just not one he's keen on, personally.

They turn into a pretty street in Capitol Hill. Hawksley turns in his seat when he pulls alongside the curb, looking back at Sera and Sid. His eyes are as serious as either of them have ever seen him, because he is young and entitled and ever so friendly. Sera knows how intent he can be, how deep his thoughts, at least to some degree; apparently now Sid gets to see that, too. To some degree.

If he thinks she's wrong, that they're all lost, he doesn't say that. Truth be told, they'd both see right through him if that was the case. There's no panic in his eyes, no shock or nonono when she mentions taking the fucking PCP. He just gives Sera a small nod. "Do what you gotta do," he says quietly, and watches her as she gets out of the car.

--

Hawksley doesn't offer to walk Sera up to the door, though it's the gentlemanly thing to do, though perhaps Sid does. If so, he misses any further conversation that goes on at Sera's doorstep. But no: he doesn't walk her in. There's a reason he does so much of his work alone -- in fact, a reason he thinks most of them do so much work alone in the end. Maybe the walk from car to house will give her a chance to come back to this time, this reality, something that feels like the thoughtlessness and mindlessness she seems to chase so constantly. But he watches her, waiting until she's inside and until he sees Dee or Dan or even Rick taking her back.

Then it's just him and Sid, eventually. He turns to look at her. He doesn't pull away from the curb, and he doesn't say anything for about three seconds. Then: "You were awesome."

He gives her a nod. Turns around. And takes her back to her truck, which may be outside the Four Seasons, which may be down the street. He takes her somewhere, wherever she wants. But when he is alone again, driving back towards his hotel, he begins tying those earlier associations together. He weaves the woman's resonance and magic with her name, gathering everything he knows about her -- her face, her grief, her dead lover, her will -- beneath her name like the seal of an archangel placed upon a plane of existence. That goes into an internal, mindful chest of names and personas, souls and stories, that he keeps

just in case.


--

[Tried to post this earlier and internet junked itself! Stupid internet!]