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."

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.

He should have gone to a fucking hospital.

Later he'll wonder why he didn't, and he'll come to the conclusion that it was a strange, instinctive kind of self-preservation. He wouldn't have been safe there. No way. So maybe he shouldn't have, then.

A wave of shivering weakness washes through him and he almost pulls the bike over. Then he doesn't. Home is barely a mile away now and he's going to make it.

He hadn't always been so sure.

He's not certain how long ago they had him. He never saw them coming, and it was so fucking stupid because he should have, he had somehow forgotten - at just the wrong moment - that one little mistake is all it takes to get you fucking killed and not realizing how many you're dealing with counts as more than a little mistake. They had his arms behind his back, at least five of them, though he managed to take the head off a sixth. He had looked into their glowing eyes and had been sure the bite was coming, and a lot worse than just one, but it hadn't. Not then.

He had been aware of darkness. The musty smell of underground. Sounds in the black. Distant laughter. He had heard a snarl, had dragged the knife out of his boot without thinking, and then it was on him fiery agony in his throat even as he stabbed and slashed blindly.

The rest of it was a blur. All of it was a blur. Fighting for his fucking life in a way he's not sure he's done since he came here, no finesse or skill but desperate animal viciousness, and the same from whatever was with him in the dark, hissing and screeching and trying to tear him apart. He had no idea how he managed to scramble away, hands and face slick with blood. He had rolled, shoved himself up to his feet, had run in the direction of cooler air, angry shouts behind him. Had run through the dark, the splashing sounds of his footfalls echoing into something roaring and threatening just at his back.

Until the air was fresh again, and he was stumbling out into a shallow pond in the park. As it turned out, less than half a mile from where the bike was parked.

He smells like blood and rotten things and storm drain. He supposes it could be worse.

Gravel under the wheels. He pulls to a stop and almost falls in the process of getting off, stabilizing himself with one hand on the seat while he sucks in air and wills the world to stop spinning. How much blood has he lost? He's definitely lost his machete. Fuck. He can get a new one, but fuck.

Inside.

There's a light on in the kitchen and one in the living room, though he supposes it's possible that Neil simply left them on for him. He almost falls again getting in the back door, smearing blood on the doorframe and again on the counter in the kitchen. He fumbles for a towel. Something to press against his neck.

"Neil?" 911 might still be an option, he thinks vaguely. Maybe a good one. Christ, he feels sick, and he shambles toward the living room. "Neil, you... God, you up?"

The throne room, predictably, is like something out of a movie, all stone and sconces and heavy wooden furniture. There aren't many courtiers, fourteen or fifteen people arranged at their leisure, mostly men dressed in fur trimming and brocade but also a few women in colorful gowns with richly braided hair, all of them with ornate gems at their fingers and throats. The man up there in the chair that dominates the hall - King Mortaigne, someone said at one point - isn't tall, but he's solidly built, with a cloak of thick fur and an equally thick beard, a delicately jeweled gold band looking out of place on his head.

As he surveys the five of them - all in disarray, more than one of them bleeding - he doesn't look especially impressed. He casts glances at the knights who stand on either side of him, and the looks they give him couldn't possibly fill anyone with an abundance of confidence about their future.

"So," he says, steepling his fingers. "A fascinating selection of strangers to our realm. Making a fascinating variety of trouble. What have you all to say for yourselves?

There's a silence as they all look at each other. No one in the room looks like an executioner, but that isn't exactly reassuring.

The return from the ash didn't gift him perfect self-knowledge. There are still times when he's not altogether sure what he's thinking, what he's feeling. He's still fragmented, tangled; there will always be knots he can't completely undo. The thing is that usually it doesn't bother him. Usually it's something he notes, accepts, and moves on from.

Not so much now.

He makes the connection he needs to make, watches the man go into the little room that, for a while, housed a cathedral he built to contain the pain of Dean Winchester, and turns away. The truth is that he's glad he left his gear with them. He couldn't do any more tonight.

Like he often does, Neil is drifting through the crowd, pausing and coming to rest where he will. Mike sees him leaning against the railing and climbs the stairs, settling a hand on his shoulder.

"I need to get outta here."