911 [Attn: All y'all.]

[mnemosyne]

It is so fucking hard to be human. To say things. To reach out. To get them right. To figure out when it hurts and when it heals and who else is out there with you, in the dark. When to lay yourself open, all wounds, because what else are we sometimes, except scar tissue and hope and want and desire and fear and love. Some of us, and walls, and doors, and strange little windows, with half-drawn shutters and one-way blinds. Dark stairways, secrets, basements full of half-remembered monsters. Perfectly imperfect, to a one.

So: thank you goes out to Justin and thank you goes out to Lena and Sid says I can come over - it pops up on the screen in a little green box. With a tail leading to the cloud like a piece of dialogue.

And see, what will happen next is rejection or rather not rejection but something else - thanks that's not necessary, probably no longer falling apart, get some sleep. What will happen next is you don't have 2 which Sera is already typing. Because it is two twenty-nine a.m. and Sera does not have a job but she knows that Sid does even if she's never, not once, asked Sid about it. But: paychecks and I don't have the money until Friday and thrift shopping and that beaten up truck and those days in the motel, oh, Sera knows.

Then three more words: I want to.

Sera erases the half-written text and instead, responds to Sid with just two words. Listen, Then come.

--

"Sid's coming over." A moment later, to Hawksley, her raw voice quiet, as she's sliding the phone back to sleep. Then waking it one more time, hoping for another update. Then sliding it back again, closed. If Sera gives a half-smile then, it is small and a bit worn and a bit sad but also finer than she might ever think she is. And it is dark so he can't see it, but - it infects her voice, inflects her voice, just so. "She wants to."