Archive of Our Own

Chapter Text

The wind was fucking cold down the back of Charles’s collar. Two coats and a vest on under his polo, and he was still shivering as he shoved the station door closed behind him to shut out the worst of the chill. It wasn’t all that much warmer inside, but at least he was out of the storm. He rubbed his hands together on his way over to an empty table, where he sat down and pulled his backpack onto his lap to root through.

He was still searching the depths for the baguette he’d thought he still had in there when a warm light bloomed across his dingy table. He looked up, startled and wary, and saw a boy dressed in an old-fashioned sort of suit and an apron looking down at him. He was holding up an old oil lamp that cast a golden light across both their faces. Charles could feel the heat coming off it as he set it down on the table in front of him.

“I thought a little light might assist you,” he said. His voice was light and gentle in a way Charles wasn’t sure he deserved.

“Thanks, mate,” Charles said. He put his shaking hands out towards the light, but it was the unexpected kindness that warmed him more than the little flame. “Appreciate it.”

The other boy continued to stare down at him, and Charles couldn’t help staring back. He wasn’t like anyone Charles had met before. There was something soft about him — not weak, not weak at all, but kind. He was looking at Charles like he understood how cold he was, how hard it had been to get here.

He suddenly, inexplicably wanted to ask the boy if he’d sit down and keep him company. Maybe even share that baguette, if he could ever find it. Which didn’t make any sense at all. He couldn’t spare even a crumb, not with the way the world was just now, and not when he was on the run. He needed to hoard every last scrap he could for himself, not go sharing it with a stranger just ‘cause he had a nice face and he’d shown him a shred of decency in bringing the lamp. Which, now Charles thought about it, was probably just his job — he was wearing an apron, after all. He must work at the station. He probably did this for everybody.

Charles tore his eyes away from the boy and looked around. The other tables with people huddled round didn’t have lamps on them.

“Do stop lollygagging and get on!” snapped a brisk voice as a woman with red hair and a severe expression stalked over, her grey suit sharp as a tack. She paused to snatch up a broom and pass it to the boy. “There is work to be done!”

“Of course,” the boy said. The words might have been in perfect agreement, but the mulish expression on his face said otherwise and Charles couldn’t help the little laugh that snagged in his throat.

“I beg your pardon?” the woman said, glaring down at him. She wasn’t very tall — in fact, she’d probably barely reach his chin if he stood up — but somehow he felt a bit intimidated. He got the impression that she was very important, or at least considered herself to be and wanted everyone else to think so, too.

“Nothing, miss,” he said, and turned back to his bag of tricks to start searching for his lost baguette again.

She hummed, dubiously, and said, “I hope that boy wasn’t bothering you.”

Charles found himself looking up, his eyes finding the boy who had come over with the lamp. The little bubble of heat cast by the lamplight had warmed him already, so he could feel his fingers again. He could almost imagine that he could feel his toes. That was nothing to the lovely feeling of being cared for that had unfurled in his chest at the gesture itself, and was still dangerously open and fragile. He couldn’t quite bring himself to shut it away, not yet.

“Oh,” the woman said. She sounded surprised. “Did you want to talk to him?”

He glanced at her. “Shouldn’t I? While he’s working, I mean.”

The woman’s expression had softened, just a fraction. She sniffed at him. “I’m sure it makes no difference to me.”

“Right, then,” Charles grinned, mind suddenly made up. It wouldn’t do any harm. It couldn’t, could it? The boy had seemed so kind a moment ago, and he had no reason for it to be an act. He was now sweeping the floor nearby, a thoughtful and distant look on his face, and startled when Charles called out to him. “Hey, mate? What’s your name?”

“Edwin. Why do you ask?”

“I’m Charles,” he replied. It struck him then that there was something so familiar about Edwin’s expression — or maybe about his face, like they’d met before with the glow of a lamp between them, Charles shivering from the cold and Edwin looking at him just like this, with concern and a sort of unasked-for compassion that made Charles’s insides ache and squirm. He cleared his throat. “You work here?”

The little line between Edwin’s brows notched deeper. “I suppose I do.”

“You don’t sound sure,” Charles said, and almost regretted it. People didn’t like prying questions, that was the kind of thing that had got him in trouble in the past. The kind of thing that meant he had to leave sharpish. Edwin, however, did not snap or shout or threaten to have him tossed out on his ear.

“No,” he said. “I do, but there is something else, too. Something more than this.”

“He writes songs,” said a new voice as a pretty girl dressed in grey with her curls pulled into two buns atop her head stepped down from the bar. She was followed by a second girl with straight white hair and a boy with dark hair that fell to his shoulders, both also dressed in grey. They stood to either side of the first girl, who stood with her arms folded and a smirk on her face as she looked between Edwin and Charles.

(“Are you fucking serious? Is that supposed to be us?”

“Shh, you’re gonna make it mad!”

“This isn’t even how it goes, that’s supposed to be Hermes, not the fucking Fates —”

“Shhhh! We don’t know what happens if we interrupt —”)

Charles blinked, and the distant echoes faded like they’d never been there at all. The girl nudged Edwin. “Tell him what you’re working on.”

“I’m working on a song. It isn’t finished yet, but when it is done and when I sing it, Spring will come again,” he said, and then blinked like he was coming out of a trance. “I —”

“Come again?” Charles interrupted, rising from his table the way hope had sprung up in his chest. He barely noticed the trio slinking back towards their seats at the bar.

“Spring will come,” Edwin repeated with a strange certainty, as if it was a promise.

“When?” Charles asked, unable to keep the eagerness out of his voice.

“I,” Edwin said, and then, “Cannot say. It is something I am working on. A song to fix what is wrong, take what is broken and make it whole. A song so beautiful it brings the whole world back into tune, back into time. And all the flowers will bloom —”

He cut himself off, swallowing whatever words were supposed to come after and clenching his jaw to keep in whatever he meant to say next. Charles wondered what it was, but he had a more pressing question.

“Can I hear it? Your song?”

“I have told you, it is not finished yet!” Edwin said, clutching at his broomstick, a cornered sort of look on his face.

“Well, can’t I get a preview?” Charles wheedled. He circled around the edge of the table, skirting the glow from the lantern, until he could take hold of the broom and tug it out of Edwin’s hands. “What’s that instrument you’ve got there?”

“A lyre,” Edwin said mechanically, reaching back and pulling to his front an instrument that Charles’s mind insisted was a guitar, no matter what anyone said. His eyes were very wide. “You cannot really want me to play?”

More than anything. Charles could feel his own heartbeat thumping at the base of his throat. If what Edwin claimed was really possible, then — it could change everything. It could mean no more running, no more hiding. He nodded. “Sing the song.”

Edwin took a breath. He put his hand to the strings..

(“Wait, can he sing? Does he know how to play guitar?”

“I don’t know.” A pause. “Maybe he can right now because he’s supposed to be able to?”

“Guess we’re about to find out …”)

The notes that Edwin sang reverberated through the station, layering over the strum of the guitar’s strings, filling the echoes with a tune that vibrated down into the earth beneath their feet. Charles felt the thing in his chest that Edwin had uncovered grow a little, aching as it cracked wider in response to the old, old melody.

Charles looked away.

Quiet followed Edwin’s short, surprisingly sweet performance. He had no memory of learning to play such an instrument as the one in his hands. He did not have the calluses he would expect to find upon his hands if he did. He had no knowledge of the tune that had come from his fingers. Yet he had played, and he had sung, and Charles had looked —

He had seemed utterly captivated, for a moment, as if Edwin had made flowers bloom in his hands, but then his face had shuttered and he had turned away. Why, he could not say.

“It is not finished,” he said, by way of an excuse. He did not like that the song had caused him pain, somehow.

“Well, you’ve got to finish it, mate,” Charles said in a rough voice before he looked up, eyes surprisingly bright. “You’ve got to. Think what it could do.”

Before Edwin could even think what question to ask, the Night Nurse grabbed his arm and tugged him to one side, grey heels clicking. She hissed, “Where did you get that melody?”

“I do not know,” Edwin said. That was another thing, such as how he had got here and what he was supposed to be doing (since he was a detective, not a boy who swept up and wiped tables), that he could not explain. He let his mouth run, as he felt compelled to keep speaking words that he did not expect: “It came to me as if I had known it all along.”

“You have,” the Night Nurse said thoughtfully, her eyes very sharp as she looked at him. “It’s an old song.”

She was interrupted by a train whistle as the next locomotive pulled into the station. The Night Nurse released him and whisked towards the station’s entrance muttering, “Here she comes …”

The doors burst open to reveal the only passenger: a woman resplendent in a vibrant green sari with golden embroidery, jewellery glittering at her ears and throat, her smile so full it creased the corners of her eyes as she stepped inside with her suitcase.

(“Is that …?”

“Oh my God, I think it is.”)

Persephone. Edwin did not know how he knew her, but the recognition was instant, as was the warmth that poured in with her arrival: the heat of a baking summer afternoon blowing away the cold cobwebs of winter. He shivered as the chill lifted and glanced towards Charles, who had looked so cold before when he arrived. Surely he would appreciate the shift most of all.

Charles was staring towards Persephone with a yearning look on his face — and suddenly Edwin realised what else he had recognised when she walked in. Not just her place in the world, her title: Persephone. He had recognised that smile. He had been looking at it all night (every night, for the past thirty-odd years) on Charles’s face.

The Night Nurse was ushering Persephone inside, welcoming her, showing her to a table where she could open up her bag and lift out bottle after bottle of wine — but Edwin’s gaze was fixed on Charles as he sloped around the edges of the room, watching Persephone as she filled the cups with wine that poured the deep, dark purple of blood and had them passed around. He saw Charles steel himself, then dare to step forward, right under her gaze.

Everyone else was too busy drinking to notice the way Persephone froze like the winter, but Edwin saw her. He saw Charles almost flinch and start to turn away. He saw Persephone raise a hand, her lips form the word ‘wait’ too quietly to be heard beneath the frenzied playing of the band. He saw her draw Charles into an embrace, and watched as he curled into her arms and clung on.

Then he turned his face away, to give them what privacy they could find at the centre of a crowd.

It was later. The first flush of excitement that had accompanied Persephone’s arrival had passed, and the guests and workers at the station had drunk themselves into a stupor with her wine and the thrill of summertime. Some slept at the tables, others upon the floor, and Edwin weaved between them collecting empties and wiping spills.

He had thought that Charles was gone, but then as he turned back from a corner table, there he stood at the next one along, tipping one of the cups towards him. He smiled wryly. “None left for us.”

“For the best, perhaps,” Edwin murmured, smiling faintly. He wasn’t sure what sort of an effect Persephone’s wine would have on them (as ghosts), and he wasn’t certain he was ready to try, but he was surprised that Charles had not been offered any — not given his relationship with the woman who had brought it.

“Yeah, s’pose. But no more toasts,” Charles said, sounding a bit regretful. Still, he helped Edwin stack a table’s worth of cups onto his tray. “So. I reckon I’d better stick around until this song of yours is finished, yeah?”

“Oh. You wish to stay?” Edwin said haltingly. “With me?”

He had forgotten that they were not alone. The curly-haired Fate in grey hopped down from her bar stool with a thump of shoes on wooden floorboards and prowled down to where Edwin was standing, her entourage at either shoulder.

“He’s not great with other people, you know,” she said as she circled Edwin. The other two Fates looked more sympathetic but they did not contradict her, and Edwin felt a twist of his heart in his chest. He had thought — or perhaps hoped — that they at least thought more kindly about him. (He had thought she did, too.)

The boy wrinkled his nose and stepped out of sync with the others to stand at Charles’s shoulder, his dark sad eyes fixed on Edwin’s face. “He can be kind of … awkward. It’s unfortunate.”

(“That’s not fair!”

“Yeah, this is character assassination. Of me, and him, and I guess also of Monty? I mean, I didn’t really know him, but —”

“He would never have talked about him like that.”

“At least you’re coming out of this shit-show okay.”

“I guess, for now …”)

Edwin blinked away the echoes and refocused on Charles. Perhaps they were alone after all: the Fates had drifted back into the shadows they had come from, if they had ever been there at all.

“Well, I’m aces with other people,” Charles said, grinning his mother’s smile, “And I want to stay.”

“Then you may,” Edwin said. His heart ached in his breast. He knew, despite all logic, that he loved Charles. (That he was in love with Charles.) Something deep inside him was reaching towards him, a yearning that he could not explain but equally could not deny. He wanted to hold him forever, and he had the strangest compulsion to tell him so, but he managed to bite it back and instead simply murmured, “Stay with me.”

The weeks passed by in a haze of summertime: long days, hot nights, plentiful food at the tables. Charles didn’t have to keep hoarding crusts in his backpack just to keep going.

And Persephone was here.

She lit up in the sunlight, like he’d never really seen her before — down below. He recognised her smile from his own face and from his earliest memories, before they were both worn down into greyed-out shades. It was a joy to see her cooking in the station’s kitchen, feeding everyone who came with curries and samosas and two dozen different kinds of sweets, crafting recipes full of spices he hadn’t tasted in years and sharing them out with everyone.

Charles especially liked sharing them with Edwin. (He’d been dreaming of feeding Edwin his mum’s cooking for nearly as long as he’d known him.) They sat at the tables in the station at every mealtime, sharing whatever food Persephone had cooked up and talking — about Edwin’s song, about Charles’s travels, but mostly about everything and nothing. Charles was able to shed two of his coats and lounge in his polo, arms bare and warm in the summer sunlight, and Edwin was convinced to take off his bowtie and unbutton his collar and even, sometimes, take off his jacket and roll his sleeves.

That did something to Charles. The delicate centre that had broken open when Edwin first sang fluttered and clenched at the sight of him dressed down and comfortable. He found himself wondering what it would be like if it was always like that, between the two of them. If he could lay his head across Edwin’s lap, or brush his fingers up the delicate tracery of veins on his inner arm and find out how soft was the skin at the inside of his elbow — what would happen then?

What if, what if? Anything seemed possible.

The summertime passed by in endless syrupy hours of bright, warm sunshine — until the distant shriek of a train whistle sent a blast of cold air blowing in from the tracks.

Charles’s heart froze over like a flower dying in the first frost.

He had been lying in the grass with Edwin, listening to him read, but the moment the whistle rang out he was on his feet and running for the kitchens at a dead sprint. He burst in to find Persephone grim-faced as she packed the last of her things into her suitcase on the long wooden table.

“That was not six months!” he protested, grabbing her by the arms and holding on.

“No, beta,” Persephone sighed as another whistle, closer this time, wailed down the tracks. She gently pried his hands off and squeezed them in hers. “But he is coming for me, and I have to go.”

“No,” Charles said thickly. “You don’t have to.”

“You know I do,” she said. She pulled one hand free and touched his cheek. “You stay safe for me.”

Charles couldn’t say the thing he most wanted to, the one plea he could never quite bring himself to voice. (Mum, please. Pick me over him. Just once. This time.) He could only follow her as she lifted her suitcase and walked out, head held high, to wait for the wintry train to blow in.

Edwin had caught up, and Charles hurried over to stand with him as the train screeched to a halt outside the station. He grabbed Edwin’s hand — too tight, probably, but he couldn’t bring himself to care as the fear clutched at his throat.

The train doors opened, and a figure who seemed larger than life stepped inside, wearing a suit (nicer than any he’d ever owned in real life) and a smirk as he strolled to Persephone’s side. She raised her chin in defiance (just the way Charles always wanted her to) and said, “You’re early.”

Hades’s voice was low and dangerous as he said, “I missed you.”

Then he offered her his arm, and there was nothing Charles could do but watch (just like there was never anything he could do, except put himself bodily in the way, and even that didn’t always work) as Persephone took it, a single tear sliding down her cheek, and allowed him to lead her back on board the train to Hadestown.

Edwin’s grip on his hand was just as tight as Charles’s in return. They clung to one another as the train started to chug back the way it had come, taking with it the last drifting tendrils of summer that remained. It was only then that Charles realised his whole body was shaking from a sickening combination of terror and fury.

“That was your father,” Edwin said.

They had spent all summer not talking about it. Not saying a word about who Persephone was to him. Not mentioning the place where Charles had run from in the first place. It wasn’t that he thought Edwin didn’t know, or couldn’t guess. Edwin was far too smart for that. He just wasn’t ready for it to be said so openly — or with the same anger that was thrashing around in his chest. He turned towards Edwin.

“Yeah.”

“What a cunt,” Edwin snapped, his cut-glass accent crisp around the filthy word, making it sharper than a knife-edge.

A laugh burst out of Charles, despite everything. He held Edwin’s hand a bit tighter. “Yeah. He really is.” He scrubbed a hand over his eyes, doing his best not to smudge his eyeliner. “It’s not supposed to be like this.”

“It is not. I will get your mother back,” Edwin said. He turned to Charles and took both his hands, lifting them and kissing the knuckles of each in turn. “I have to finish the song.”

Charles nodded, shuddering as a gust blew up around them and ruffled his curls, and pretending that it was the chill that had spread goosebumps up his arms, not the gentle press of Edwin’s lips to his skin. “Finish it quick. The wind is changing. There’s a storm coming on.”

Edwin waited long enough to bundle Charles into both of his coats, and to hand him the same lantern that he had brought the night they met, then headed back to his quarters in the attic while Charles went in search of food and firewood.

Winter’s night had already closed in around the station, the dark pressing in around Charles as he set out by lanternlight. The little flame guttered in its glass case, pushing back the blackness in a tiny pool that flickered and faded with each step. Snow began to fall. His breath misted the air. He found a few scraps of firewood that might be good enough to light once they had dried out, and stuffed them in his backpack, then kept walking.

A trio of figures, or perhaps just swirls of grey snowflakes, hovered on the edge of the lamplight.

“There is no food left to find,” said the curly-haired Fate.

“It’s hard enough to feed yourself,” said the boy Fate.

“Let alone somebody else!” cried the white-haired Fate.

Charles didn’t listen to them. Edwin was working on the song that would save them. He would write it, and sing it, and Persephone would be freed. The seasons would get back in time, and spring would herald summertime. Winter wouldn’t freeze them for so long. It would be all right.

The Fates drifted like the snow around him, closing in with their bleak whispers, cutting colder than the wind through his clothes and straight to that hollowed-out place that Edwin had carved into him — the place that was soft, and cared, and wasn’t used to being hurt like the rest of him. He curled in on himself, holding the lantern aloft.

A grey hand reached in and snuffed the flame out.

(A gasp, hastily stifled.)

“No,” Charles said, falling to his knees and scrabbling in his backpack for matches. He struck one, but the Fates or the wind blew it out. There was snow in his eyes. Even his bones were cold. He knelt shuddering in the snow, struggling to light another match. They scraped and sparked and refused to catch into a flame. The lantern stayed dark as the snow heaped higher.

Out of the darkness, a beam of electric light seared down onto Charles and he flinched. His numb fingers fumbled the whole box of matches and they spilled across the sparkling white snow, ruined. He looked up, shielding his eyes from the glare.

“Hello, son,” Hades said.

(“Oh, fuck. No, no no, this is so bad …”)

“What’re you doing here?” Charles asked. He had to clench his teeth to keep them from chattering. He wouldn’t have Hades thinking he was shaking out of fear, even if that was a little bit true. He tucked his hands under his own armpits and stayed where he was, the snow seeping in through his trousers and freezing his legs.

“I came for you, Charles,” Hades said. It was far too reasonable for the man Charles knew. (His dad would’ve laughed if he saw him shivering to death — if he’d seen him in the attic.) Hades’s steps crunched across the layer of snow. He crouched, and the brightness of his torch stopped shining right in Charles’s eyes. Hades clicked his tongue as he looked him over. “Such a pity, when you’ve come so far, to end up like this. But don’t you think it’s time you came home?”

“That’s where I’m going,” Charles rasped. “Home. To Edwin.”

A bark of laughter burst out of Hades. “That’s not home and you know it, son. How long’s that going to even last? Before you fuck up like you always do, and he doesn’t want you around any more. Because that’s what’ll happen. What’s a smart lad like Edwin doing with you, anyway?”

“He,” Charles started, and then faltered. That was the question, wasn’t it? What was Edwin doing with him? (Edwin loved him. Edwin was in love with him. He was, apparently, the best person Edwin knew. But —) Charles wasn’t anything special. He did always fuck things up. (He’d learned that over his dad’s knee.) It was only a matter of time before Edwin saw what everybody else did (and got tired of waiting for Charles to be brave enough to love him back) and decided he wasn’t worth bothering with.

“He what?” Hades asked, his voice gentle. It hadn’t sounded that way for a long time. “He’s kind to you? He likes you?”

“He’s waiting for me,” Charles said, thinking of Edwin hunched over his guitar, ink stains on his fingers as he scribbled notes and lyrics into the little book he carried everywhere. He’d probably be cold by now.

“Is he? Or is he just waiting for the fire you’re going to make him, hm? Or the dinner you’re supposed to be putting on the table? Where is that, by the way? Did you even find anything?” He snatched the backpack up off the ground and rooted around in it, scoffing as he tossed Charles’s meagre scraps of firewood into the wind. “Of course not. What a disappointment. He’ll see that in the end, you know. He’ll see exactly what you are — a worthless, feckless —”

(“This is bullshit! It can’t put him through this, it’s not fair!”

A sniffle. “I don’t think it cares very much about being fair.”)

“— useless idiot. If he hasn’t seen it already, and maybe he has.” Hades paused, cocked his head and gestured at the snowstorm that surrounded them. “After all, he’s tucked up somewhere warm, and he sent you out in all of this. Doesn’t sound like he cares that much to me. Whereas I,” Hades rose to his feet, the stark white beam of the torch falling into Charles’s upturned face again, “I came out here to look for you, my boy. I came to bring you home, where you belong. You can come back, sit in the warm, see your mother. Wouldn’t that be better than struggling like this?”

Charles lifted his head. He was tired, and cold, and stomach-clenchingly hungry now. But at least here he wasn’t being beaten. Some of the defiance must have shown on his face, because Hades narrowed his dangerous eyes.

“Now, son, you don’t have to always think the worst of me. Maybe I won’t have to be so hard on you, hm? How’s that?” he wheedled. “Things’ll be better this time, I’m sure of it. And now you’ve seen a bit more of the world, you’ll see why I have to keep the standards so high for all of us. And maybe you’ve finally had some of the cockiness knocked out of you, eh? So, let’s get in out of the cold, shall we?”

He held out his broad hand, not as a threat but as an offer. Charles squinted at Hades’s palm. He didn’t trust it, even now. He couldn’t. But was it really better to freeze out here, waiting for Edwin to finish his song?

(It was better. He wasn’t going to go with his arsehole dad. He was going back to Edwin. He wasn’t putting them through this. This wasn’t how it was supposed to go, he wasn’t supposed to give up on Edwin — Edwin was supposed to be the one dragged down to Hell, and Charles was supposed to go after him — this was all wrong, this was a trap, he’d been tricked —)

Hades’s hand shot out and grabbed him by the collar, dragged him to his feet. “Come on, son. Time we were getting on.”

Charles was powerless to resist as he stumbled along beside Hades, whose hand stayed fisted in his coat as he dragged him away, still blinking the burned after-image of the torch from his eyes. There was only one thing he could do, as the wind howled and the snow tripped up his feet: he looked over his shoulder and tried to cry out — “Edwin!” — but the wind whipped his voice from his mouth.

Edwin blinked and lifted his head. The song was done. He was not sure quite how he had composed it, but there it was: words and notes scribbled in his notebook, the tune running on repeat through his head. He stretched, slung his guitar onto his back and was surprised, when he left his quarters and descended into the station, to find a blanket of snow covering everything outside.

It should not have been a shock. The long, sweet summer he had spent with Charles had disappeared in an instant. He had heard the howl of the wind in the night. Yet somehow, he had not expected the chill to have settled so deeply across the world, or so fast.

He looked about for Charles. The Fates were seated in their usual place at the bar, and seemed both greyer and darker than before, so he avoided them and slipped out the front to the platform. There were no footprints to follow, either coming or going, and the tracks were deep in a shroud of snow. He went back in.

“There you are,” the Night Nurse said on her way past. “Have you finished that song yet?”

“Have you seen Charles?” he asked, trailing after her. She stopped at the door to her office and looked back at him, her expression strangely sad before she pasted on a barest shred of a smile.

“I’m sure you’ll find another muse somewhere,” she said and started to turn away.

Edwin caught her arm. There was something wrong. (There was something terribly, terribly wrong and he had tried to warn Charles before all this began —) “Where is he?”

The Night Nurse sighed. “What does it matter?”

“Wherever he is, is where I will go,” Edwin said, the words breaking from him like a melody and a promise both at once.

“And what if I said he’s down below?” the Night Nurse said grimly. “Six-feet-under-the-ground below.”

She pointed out of the station window, into the snow. Edwin turned, his heart already beating a frantic rhythm against his throat though there was no way he could understand what had happened yet. (He knew, he knew, he had known this was coming from the moment he saw Charles in the station.)

The snow glittered in the biting winter sun — and there, peeking from the top of a drift, was something else. A metal-and-glass glimmer. Edwin ran.

He burst out of the rear doors of the station and churned through the snow and fell to his knees, digging his hands into the freezing snow without heed for the way it burned cold down to his finger bones. He unearthed the lantern — their lantern — and cradled it in his red hands. The flame had gone out. Charles had been so close to home, only a few steps away. Yet he had fallen in the storm, and Edwin had written on, oblivious.

“No,” he said. (This was wrong. It was supposed to be him taken away, and Charles left behind in the light. It was not supposed to be like this.)

“So,” the Night Nurse murmured. He had not heard her footsteps behind him, but there she was, hands clasped before her as she stood in the snow peering down at him. “Just how far would you go for him?”

“To the end of time,” Edwin said. (Charles would do the same for him.) “To the end of the Earth.”

(Further. He would go anywhere, if it meant he could have Charles back.) He got slowly to his feet, clutching the lantern in his aching hands, to his aching heart.

“Do you have a ticket?” the Night Nurse asked. She still somehow managed to look down her nose at him, even though he was taller. When he didn’t answer, she sniffed and tried not to look sorry. “I didn’t think so. Of course, there is another way — though I am not supposed to say.”

“Another way?” Edwin asked.

“Around the back,” she said, and eyed him for a moment longer before she broke. “Come along, I’ll show you.”

She led Edwin around the side of the station, to where the tracks shuttled away into the distance, all covered in stark and gleaming frigid white. All the while, she told him how hard the way would be, how impossible. She warned him of the guards and the patrols, the razor-wire and cinderblock, the thousand difficulties that stood in his path. As they stood together, looking down the raised humps in the snow that indicated the tracks beneath, she grabbed his arm.

“Are you sure you want to go?”

“With all my heart,” he said. He didn’t even need to think, nor fight the words that wanted to come out of his mouth.

The Night Nurse looked a little teary-eyed as she let go and patted his arm. “Well. That’s a start.”

With a crunch as his step crushed the snow, Edwin started the long walk down to Charles.