We are not traitors

The girls are readjusting. There's hardly any readjusting to do, in truth. They've done exactly what it makes sense to do: slipped back into regular life after a relatively brief interruption. In another few weeks, he knows, it'll be like it never happened at all. Probably sooner.

But it did happen. And it's a fucking wake up call, regardless of how safe it ended up being.

It's his night to herd them into bed, which he never has a problem with, because they're still not usually inclined to put up too much of a fuss and he can read to them. Which he likes. Likes a lot. If he's honest, he spends some time wondering when they'll get tired of it, decide it's for babies, tell him to stop.

Because they're going to grow up. He has no control over that.

Coming back downstairs, he goes to the kitchen and pours himself the last of the bottle of wine from dinner the evening previous. He heads to the living room, sinks down onto the couch beside Neil, and contemplates the depths of the glass.

"We need to talk."

Gravitation
R

A fountain in the neighbor’s yard babbles to itself, and the night air
Lifts the sound indoors. It was another time, he says, picking up again.
We were pioneers. Will you fight to stay alive here, riding the earth

Toward God-knows-where? I think of Atlantis buried under ice, gone
One day from sight, the shore from which it rose now glacial and stark.
Our eyes adjust to the dark.

- Tracy K. Smith, "My God, It's Full of Stars"


( It's impossible, for the first few days. )

He's sure he's hallucinating again. Then he's not sure at all.

Later, he's not certain about which was worse.

He's seen a lot of things that weren't, strictly speaking, there, at least not in the traditional literal sense. But by now he knows the heft and weight and presence of those things, the space they make for themselves in the world. He isn't afraid of losing the ability to distinguish between what's real and what isn't. That was never his problem. But when, on the way back to the bike after work, he sees what he sees, he does feel a spike of fear. It's ambient and massive, not fear of one thing but of many things, all of them poorly defined.

He had almost forgotten what fear felt like.

Without thinking, he follows, leaving the bike and all thoughts of home behind. To follow that form and face is instinct of the deepest kind. It is, after all, what he spent a long time believing he was made to do. He no longer believes that, but the instinct remains. He would follow this man everywhere. Anywhere. He would happily follow this man into Hell.

Not that his relationship with certain definitions of Hell isn't a lot more complicated now.

Through the crowd, threading and weaving, somehow unable to break into a run or call out, always just a little too far behind and never getting a good enough look that he's sure, even as his heart is screaming at him that there's no one else it could possibly be.

He knows Tom Hobbes. Would know him anywhere.

You knew this could happen.

Toward one of the subway stations. Down. Rush hour crowd, and twice he's sure he's lost him. But there, on the platform - and Tom doesn't look unsettled, doesn't look confused or out of place.

Mike stands, penned in, unable to move forward or go back. His gaze is locked on that face and his heart is tearing itself open, and he knew it would hurt if it ever happened but he didn't know it would actually hurt this much.

What if he doesn't remember. What if he doesn't know us.

The train rattles into the station and the doors slide open. Everyone pushes forward, and he fights not to get caught in the tide, swept past and away. But Tom is boarding the train with the rest of them, and at the last moment he turns, and Mike knows his worry of seconds ago was moot.

Tom knows him. There's recognition in his eyes as keen as any blade.

Recognition. And disappointment.

The doors close and he's gone.

The crowd is thinned out. He could go if he wanted. But for a moment he just stands there and tries to remember how to breathe.

Then he turns and heads for the stairs. There's nothing left to do down here.

For the moment, there's nothing left to do at all.

It's not uncommon for him to come home covered in blood. But this is a lot of blood.

It's not as bad as it might have been. He's cleaned off what he can, washed his hands, and the rain has taken care of some of the rest. He could have gone to the asylum, where he keeps a change of clothing for exactly this reason, but now that the adrenaline has left him completely he's tired and a little drained.

In ways that have nothing to do with the wound on his throat.

Now that sanity has reasserted itself, he's sort of wondering how that's going to be taken.

But there's nothing to do about it. He pulls the bike into the garage and heads in through the kitchen, shrugging off his jacket. The wet clothes are something else he wants to shed.

He's still not sure what tonight even means. He supposes he'll figure it out eventually.

[This.]

( There's no other outcome. )

He waits a day. Not because he's particularly worried or hesitant, but because he needs the time to gather himself, to meditate on what this means, To the extent that he was thinking about it, he wasn't thinking about it as a real, imminent possibility, and now he needs to shift his thinking in that direction.

This is not just tossing some genetic material in someone's general direction. It was never going to be anything like that. This is the closest thing, since Florence, that he's had to a sister. Which makes this more than a little weird, not that it wasn't weird anyway.

So on the evening after the evening after, he feels ready. He's not sure of the outcome of this - there's all the difference in the world between vague, idle speculation and actually proposing a thing - but he's also feeling calm.

Family means different things all the time. Even as there's a core that never changes.

He leans across the center island in the kitchen, a pot of pasta sauce simmering on the stove behind him, to where Neil is seated doing something or other on the laptop. "So we gotta talk. If you have a second."

It's still cold, the wind still shouldering its way through bare trees, and the ground still hard. All the grass is still brown and dead, and muddy in patches from so many days of snow and freezing and thaw. It's been a long winter, longer than any others he remembers since the Realm. Long and cold and dark.

But right now he's in the yard at the side of the house, in the sun, and it's warm on his back.

It's late morning, the girls in school and Neil at work, and he knows he could go back to work as well, but he's taking the time. Everything is back to the way it was, except it's not. Everything is different. He's different.

Born again. He laughs silently and rocks back on his heels, bending over a small notebook in which he's jotting down things to buy. Rocks for borders. Seeds and bulbs. Maybe a sapling or two, some fruit trees. Fertilizer. Stakes and some lattices for frames. Tools. He wants flowering things, things that will attract butterflies and hummingbirds. He might even get a feeder. He's always sort of wanted one.

And dawnflowers. He definitely needs some of those.

He has a lot of work to do.

As it turns out, he still likes doing the dishes.

They have a dishwasher, of course. And of course it works just fine. But there's something about doing them by hand, standing there in the kitchen with his hands in the warm water, looking out at the night. Something quiet on the radio. He remembers doing this as a kid, doing them as a favor to a mother who was always tired after her drunk husband finally up and left her, doing them and finding a little peace at the end of a day.

Strange that he remembers things like that now.

Neil's late, but he has a little time before he actually starts getting worried. No call or text, it might just be traffic. He sets the last dish in the drainer, pulls the plug, dries his hands. A small glass of blood on the counter fresher than a lot of what he's been drinking. Better vintage.

He leans back against the counter, lifts it to his lips, inhales before he sips.

He's lost the ability to do a lot. But appreciating Neil in this whole new way... That's something he's not sorry he has now. Not sorry at all.

He had been mildly relieved to discover that sleep was still sleep. He had spent most of the day in bed, finding himself suddenly and massively weary as soon as Andrea had left, and it had felt the same. He dreamed, though he couldn't remember much. And when he had woken up, he had felt better.

Though once again ravenously hungry.

They're going to need more blood. Soon.

The girls are fed, bathed, read to, tucked in. They still seem mostly fine with what had happened, though Mack had spent a few minutes examining his teeth and eyes more closely than she had at first, and complained about how cold his hands were. But she had settled down all right, and so had Flo, and now he's curled on the couch in the living room, a book open in front of him and the TV on at low volume and not a tremendous amount of attention paid to either.

He has a list in his head of everything that's changed as a result of this. It keeps getting longer. He's still with Neil, there's that... But what does that even mean anymore?

And he wants to hunt. He can feel it in him, coiling violence. Stronger and more intense than it used to be. He still believes that the girls at least are completely safe with him. But anyone else...

He just isn't sure.

And more and more, he's also not sure that he hates the way this feels.