911 [Attn: All y'all.]

[errin]

Though Sid tries to be quiet on the stairs, she's no ninja. Steps creak beneath her weight as she ascends, past art and photographs and a unicycle that no one claims yet is always someplace new.

The door swings open and all Sid sees is Sera at first. Sera cast in shadows that exaggerate her weariness, her hollowed-out-ness. Sera cast in silhouette by the dim light of outside spilling into the room behind her. And Sid is there, standing in the deeper shadows of the hallway. Hers is a soft darkness, soft dark hair, soft dark t-shirt, soft dark pants, her face a pale bespectacled shadow. She has her messenger bag, the last article of frayed and faded clothing she still owns, the bag with her belongings was left in her car, her feet are bare.

Without a word she wraps her arms around Sera's shoulders, pulling her in close as the Cultist says hey all quiet-like. Sera's arms go around her in turn, and Sid relaxes a little, giving and receiving comfort in perhaps unequal measure. There was a time when she was better at offering comfort, and while Sid is slowly working her way back into something that vaguely resembles that former self, that skin will never fit the way it did. She will always be a little different, because she is different. That's what time does to a person, it changes them. But she can hug, at least, even though she has no words. And she holds her there for a little while, because maybe Sera starts crying a little and Sid's embrace tightens a little, as if through a slight increase of pressure she could banish the reason for those tears.

When Sid releases her, hands sliding to cover Sera's shoulders, she still doesn't take much notice of the room beyond her friend. When she does look past Sera, her eyes are drawn to the figure in the bed, a figure that even in the darkness still gives the impression of glowing golden skin. Sid blinks her eyes and is surprised there is no gleaming purple-green-red afterimage from the sun's glaring light.

Obviously, Sera and Hawksley had been in bed together. Sid doesn't apologize or threaten to leave the pair of them in peace or become overcome with awkwardness for having interrupted something, though. If Sera had wanted her to stay away she wouldn't have answered Sid's text with Then come. Sid looks from the bed and Hawksley to Sera, and she says the first thing she's said out loud in hours.

"What do you need?"

[kai]

There's no clinging, pulling-back, no as Sera gets up. Hawksley's hand slips from hers and he watches her go to the door, letting Sid in. Hugging Sid. Crying against Sid. Among all the other things that Sid sees in Sera's bedroom is a tall man with brass-and-wheat colored hair, lying in Sera's bed half-beneath its covers, and he's shirtless so it's entirely possible he's also naked under that sheet, though in truth he isn't. Not entirely.

He catches Sid's eye past Sera's shoulder for a moment. Especially at night, in the dark, with the weight of near-death hanging over all of them, Hawksley's strange golden brightness seems all the more noticable, all the harder to ignore by virtue of the contrast. And yes, Sera and Hawksley had been in bed together, though Sera is still covered top-and-bottom, and Sera did tell her to come, and

well. None of it is worth stressing over, really. Not easy to stress over social interactions when someone's in the hospital and someone else is crying over it.

Hawksley doesn't answer for Sera. Of course not.

[mnemosyne]

What do you need?

"A hug." Sera - well, sniffles. Yes, sniffles, drawing a few of those renewed tears back into her body. She is mostly cried out and only a few spill out of her eyes, over her lashes and onto her cheeks, but something about the pressure of Sid's arms around her shoulders or just the Orphan's decision in the middle of the night that she wanted to come triggers that renewed emotion. And so triggered: Serafíne cries. Quietly this time, smiling into Sid's shoulder against the new onset. "Which you gave me. Maybe a week's worth of sleep."

Sera's voice is quiet as the house is quiet and quiet as her bare feet are quiet on the hardwood floor of the room. Much of which is muffled by a half-threadbare old Persian rug.

"I'm okay, though," Sera assures Sid, letting her go, stepping out of the doorway to allow her further into the room and turning to pull the door solidly shut behind Sid. It is objectively true: as worn out as Sera is, she is okay. Worried, sad, unbalanced, frightened, worn out: and okay above all. "Justin stitched me up, and Lena's giving me updates from the hospital. Thanks for coming, Sid. You must be exhausted."

Sera reaches out for one more hug, which smells like strawberries because she smells like strawberries because her shampoo smells like strawberries. The bottle looks like a strawberry, right down to the seeds. This second hug is a quick squeeze and by now her tears have mostly stopped and she reaches up to dash the last few from the corners of her eyes with her fists.

"Bathroom's through that door," a tip of her head toward the closed door close to the vanity. "I figured you'd sleep in here. But if that doesn't work let me know. I can make other arrangements." She waits just long enough to assess Sid's assent to her suggestion or displeasure with it, then turns to pad back across the room and crawl back into bed. At least if Sid assents.

[errin]

Sera smells like strawberries, and Sid remembers the shopping trip to Goodwill and the bottle that looks like a strawberry. She remembers grinning at the choice of it and saying nothing to dissuade Sera from that particular purchase. She catches Hawksley's eye and lifts her chin over Sera's shoulder, acknowledgement and greeting both kept silent, though she can't quite help the way the corners of her mouth quirk upward. How does one stay sad, or worried, or unhappy, or anything negative when in the presence of such warm sunlight?

Sera says I'm okay, though, and whether or not Sid believes her, she doesn't question her as she steps a little further into the room. She lifts her bag up over her head and looks about for only a second before setting it down near the door. The rest is absorbed a little more slowly. Justin stitched her up, Lena's at the hospital with Pan, and when Sera comes in for another quick hug Sid's arm goes around her shoulder and tugs her in close until Sera relaxes.

"I will give you a hundred hugs," says Sid, her voice low and quiet. "However many you need, ever." Sera motions to the bathroom and Sid's head turns that way, making note. When she looks back she nods when Sera says she figured she'd sleep in here, and shakes her head slightly when she starts to say if that doesn't work. "Here's fine." When Sera starts back for the bed, Sid looks around again, this time for a surface on which to rest her glasses, somewhere safe but visible and most importantly memorable. She settles on the windowsill.

Then she follows, back and around to the big bed which already has a warm body waiting in it. She waits for Sera to climb in beneath the covers before following her in. This way, Sera is surrounded by warmth, by comfort, by friendship, Hawksley on one side, Sid on the other. Sid pulls the covers over her a little as she tucks in, she pushes her long hair back so that it spills over the pillows, and she lays so that she's facing toward the middle. If Sera lays facing Hawksley, Sid fits herself to the curve of her spine, face pressed near to the back of Sera's neck, one hand draped over her side. If Sera lays facing her, Sid scoots closer, close enough that their foreheads maybe touch, close enough that their knees might need to twine, or their ankles, or their legs, and she takes one of Sera's hands in hers and drapes her other arm over her side. And if Sera decides to lay on her stomach or her back, Sid presses her forehead to her shoulder. Whichever way they end up, she reaches out to Hawksley, as well, because she needs this, too. Not as much as Sera, her need for contact and for comfort and for closeness is not nearly as immediate as it was, but it's there.

And once she has this, Sid realizes that she is exhausted. She's tired because it's the middle of the night and she's supposed to be awake in about five hours. And also, she's worn out from the things she's been trying not to think about and trying not to let herself feel. Comforting and comforted, head filled with the scent of strawberries and Sera's bed and Sera and Hawksley, almost as soon as her head hits the pillow Sid begins to drift.

[kai]

In the dark, or the half-dark, Hawksley's mouth twitches to the side at Sera's answer, which is hugs. He is propped up on his elbows on the far side of the bed, and though the decision has not yet been made that the three of them are going to pile together in bed, he seems to be waiting for it.

Ah: there it is. And even though Sera has a king-sized bed, Hawksley goes ahead and scoots a bit, makes sure there's room for both women, and lifts up the sheet as Sera is climbing back in. Of course she'll go in the middle; that, too, seems to go without saying. And while he pulls the covers back, Sid is the one to tug them back up, making that wry tilt to Hawksley's mouth return. He waits for them both to settle before he does. He puts his arm around Sera whichever way she lies.

Sid reaches for him, or toward him, and she can feel the startlement in his arm or side when she touches him, if not a flinch. His eyes have not closed, but they catch Sid's and are -- perhaps due to the darkness or the fact that she doesn't know him too well yet -- difficult to read. No matter; he looks neither shocked nor appalled, but it's clear he wasn't expecting that. He doesn't move away: there is that, too.

The Orphan is asleep mere moments after she lies down. Sera likely follows soon after, dropping like a stone into the comfort she's surrounded by. Hawksley stays awake for a little while, not out of some sense of protective duty or guardianship or anything like that, but because he's thinking.

And thinking.

And thinking.

Until he isn't thinking at all anymore, and his dreaming mind is chasing down Sera and Sid's, calling wait, wait, I'm coming too.

[mnemosyne]

So they sleep.

Serafíne, see, she crawls back into the warm hollow she vacated moments ago to greet Sid, to collect that hug, to open the door, and then close it again. The house, we have mentioned, is quiet. So is the night. The sheet-and-duvet are arranged with rather more precision than they ever would be were Sera sleeping along. She tends to burrow. She leaves the thing in a mound slightly off center from the middle of the bed so that in daylight it is piled up like half-hidden nest of some small mammal, or lumped like there may still be a human body hidden somewhere beneath the folds.

Sometimes there is.

It is: still Tuesday night-Wednesday morning. The sun's someone on the other side of the horizon. Dawn will come soon enough but even the earliest of the morning birds are not up yet to herald its arrival.

Lena is in that hospital waiting room and is now either mostly forgotten by the staff or worse: deemed unimportant. Not-a-relative, and therefore outside-the-scope of things like need-to-know. Shoshannah may have joined her by now, for the long, tense vigil which will be fruitless. No surgeon will come to see them; they are marooned in the null space of the waiting area.

Sera settles on her right side. Back to the windows and the moonlight and the barely-touched bottle of Scotch and the lowball glance, a finger or so of water from the melted ice cube. Spine against Hawksley's chest, his arm over her torso, Sid's forehead against her own, their breath mingling. Close. Closer really than Sera would have guessed or imagined but Sera in these hours is guessing not at all and imagining little beyond what might be happening a few miles away, in a very different room where Francisco Echeverría is in surgery: bright lights, gloved hands, and cold, sterile instruments. Masked strangers casting their shadows against the walls of the dedicated rooms or perhaps his not-precisely-sleeping, not-really-awake mind.

Nothing like that here.

Exhausted, Sid falls asleep first.

Sera makes a quiet, back-of-the-throat noise, an unvoiced exhalation, which is shaped in her throat like an abbrievated laugh and sounds like letting go. "Out like a light," she murmurs, to Hawksley. Echo and memory of something the priest promised her once: a full night's sleep, uninterrupted by shadow and shade.

She is so, so tired.

And soon she follows. Slips into the drowning deep sleep of hers from which she can hardly be roused, and sleeps and sleeps and sleeps and sleeps and sleeps. First star on the right, and straight on 'til morning, and well after.

[OOC: wanted to leave it at kai's last post but then figured I should post again. Thank you all for a great scene/scene-ish arc of scenes!]

[errin]

[excellent wrap post, Liz! thanks, guys, for an awesome scene!]