The Road Home [Attn: Hawksley, Sid]

[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!]