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"So," Will says at last, all of them on their own sides now, the Drews and the Davieses and the Stantons, split apart halfway between each other and their impatiently waiting families, mist-tipped mountain backdrop, dusty white-grey gravel crunching under them in the too-bright sun and Will, hands in his pockets, bouncing a little on the balls of his feet like a kid half his age, a small smile just curving his lips, dry and adult and teasing and hopeful too. "Same time next year?"
⊗
It had snowed. Not proper snow. Will never got snow for his birthday, rarely before and never now. Still a grey sprinkle dusted the wild gardens, outlined the Barn, brightened the ruins of a rabbit hutch and clung with unexpected determination to the eves of the Old Vicarage. Will traced his gaze from window to window, some small part of himself expecting Mary to appear, fixing her hair; to see James come slumping out to feed the chickens, or to hear Paul playing, or to see Barbara dramatically sweeping the porch while Gwen laughed around hot chocolate; expected to see Max rushing out for a date or Robin and Stephen working on an old car in the yard; still somehow, after all these years, these decades upon decades, to see his mother working in the kitchen while his father read the paper at the table. It was a warm feeling, this history, warm and dreadful. From some great distance he heard himself release a soft huff of laughter.
"Crisp today," said the estate agent inanely, an uncertain smile on her ruddy apple face.
"Yes," Will said.
He let her lead the old familiar way up to the door, babbling on about how the grandchildren of the previous owners, the family had scattered you know, nobody local at all now, very sad, how the grandchildren would be by soon to take what they wanted from the house and the rest would be removed, or perhaps left for him if he wanted, the furniture at least, she was sure something could be arranged, the family were quite keen to sell, after all, just waiting on probate, wills, lawyers, you know how that goes, Mister, ah--?
Will agreed that he did, letting her unlock the doors, preceding her at her invitation into the hallway.
"The electricity should still be on," she said. "Let me just get the--" She blinked in the sudden light. "Oh! Well. Yes. Very intuitively placed switches. So! To your left now is--"
Not what Will wanted to see. He ran a hand distractedly through his hair, mulling his choices over, before breathing out a word and -- leaving something of himself behind, a shade to nod in the right places and ask house-buying sort of questions -- turned instead to the stairs. He climbed steadily, neither slow nor fast, a measured tread, in time with his breathing. There was nothing to fear here, nothing more than a past, perhaps, thicker and closer than he had become accustomed to over these last years. He climbed steadily to the very top of the house and opened the door to the slant roofed attic that had once, long ago been his.
⊗
"It was Stephen's room originally," Will explained, perched on the bed, his hands folder together between his thighs as Bran looked curiously about.
"That him on the bookcase?" Bran asked carelessly, already turning away to reach a hand up towards the hanging mobile, stopping with his fingers just short of one of the sailing boats. "Went off to sea, you said."
Will nodded. "He's in India right now. On the Indian Ocean, I mean."
Bran made a vague, interested noise. He touched a book on the shelf, pulled another half out and pushed it back before running his fingers down the carved dragon on the box Will kept Stephen's letters in. He swung back again, looking up at the skylight for a moment with interest and then at Will, sticking his hands in his pockets and almost smiling.
"I like your room," he said decisively.
Will ducked his head a little, feeling his cheeks warm and his smile stretch. "I'm glad."
"What's it like, then?" Bran asked, setting himself down on the bed, propped regally against the headboard.
"What's what like?" Will asked, shuffling backwards to sit against the foot-board, his feet between Bran's.
Bran shrugged minutely. "Family."
Will frowned, considering this. "Warm," he said eventually. "And noisy. Definite noisy."
⊗
The heat had been left on only enough to stop the pipes freezing. His stepped around the board that creaked at night and moved, almost silently, across the long worn carpet. The room was filled with boxes -- not unsurprisingly; the room in the other attic was the larger of the two, of course, and no one had been sleeping here for a long time. What better place for storage? He'd always been fond of history, after all.
There was no particular order to the boxes that Will could see, beyond whatever fun someone had had building all the various sized containers up into the walls of a labyrinth. He paced slowly among them, trailing his fingers against cardboard and wood until one shifted minutely under his fingertips. For a long moment, he just stood there. Faintly he could hear himself say something about wallpaper to the realtor. The box had a lid, but the tape holding it down had long since lost any adhesive ability it might once have held, and it lifted away easily. Directly beneath it was a photo of himself and Will, startled, actually laughed out loud when he saw the car his younger self was proudly leaning against -- his first, a mottled green third-hand Morris Minor that had cost him an entire summer's savings and probably just as long fixing up but her served him valiantly for years after, despite what the others thought of it.
⊗
"I can't believe you drove all the way up here in this," Jane said, curled up in the passenger seat, sniffling a little and rubbing at her eyes. "Are the wheels held on by string?"
"Brown paper and sealing wax," Will said sagely and was rewarded with a weak smile.
"You must have been driving all day."
"It wasn't bad." He shrugged artlessly. "You sit on the M6, mostly."
"You didn't have to come in person, you know."
"Yes, I did."
"Risking your life for me."
"Driving?" Will scoffed.
"More that the back half could fall off at any moment."
Will patted the steering wheel comfortingly. "Don't you listen to her, old girl. She doesn't mean a word."
"Angus would die before he set foot in this thing." Jane sighed. "I should have taken that as a sign." She wiped angrily at her face. "First that mess with Bran, and then that friend of Simon's, and now this. I'm a terrible date."
"You shouldn't blame yourself."
"Three is a pattern," Jane said, a sob in her voice. Will cautiously reached out and she promptly half-crawled over the divide to hug him and mumble, "Bad things come in threes" into his sweater.
"Then you're done with them, and the good times will come next," Will said. "It's not your fault that Angus is a cheating rat-bastard--" Jane made a startled noise that was half laugh, half admonishment. "--and you and Bran, well... You were both very young and you lived quite different lives a long way apart. You were bound to argue, really; and you're both friends again now, aren't you?"
Jane shrugged a little against him, but made an affirmative noise, and Will took that as a win.
"Good things come in threes, too," he added. "Just you wait."
⊗
There was bubble-wrap under the photos, a great mass of it. Will took it out carefully, feeling the frame underneath, already knowing before he'd even started unwrapping it what it would be. Barney's signature was revealed first, then the twisting, art nouveau border, weaving amongst the trees and up around the sun. A crusader castle filled the backdrop and Will, remembering a particularly beloved salt cellar, chuckled to himself, fingers following the lines down from the stone walls, across the castle grounds to where three figures were sharing a picnic.
Here was himself, done up all Gandalf, long flowing beard, robes and staff, standing guard. There was Jane, sat demurely on the blanket in regal robes, festooned with jewels and lace and smiling down at her companion. There was Bran in his crown and armour, sword at his side, lying on the blanket and offering Jane a plum and a matching smile. Shades of Mucha and Aubrey Beardsley, Will thought and about how the trees had risen to tangle their branches and dapple everything in sunlight, and how the scents of summer had been heavy in the air.
⊗
"Come get your food, Barney," Jane called again with affectionate exasperation, and Bran and Will both turned to look.
"Just a second," Barney said, sketching furiously on his pad. Will started to sit down and Barney made a noise of protest, causing him to freeze. "Go back where you were; the light's all changed now."
Will did as commanded, and Bran took the opportunity to steal his cheese and pickled onion sandwich.
"Hey!" Will cried, without much heat, taking a step and then hastily returning when Barney let out an annoyed cry.
Bran grinned at him, munching on the sandwich happily.
"I brought enough for everyone," Jane said, idly kicking his leg.
Bran pushed her away, laughing. "Will doesn't mind sharing, do you?"
"No," Will said. "I do mind not having any at all, though. Really, Barney, what are you doing?"
"He's caught by your beauty," Bran said airily. "You're his muse."
Barney's cheeks went red and he ducked over his pad, slashing lines and muttering "Shut up," in Bran's direction. Bran laughed, looking at Jane who rolled her eyes with a little smile, and then up at Will, who appeared to have missed the whole thing and was instead looking up into the trees in a distracted sort of way.
"He's gone again," Bran said to Jane, sitting up.
"Off with the fairies," Jane agreed, turning to look at Will. "Isn't that what people say?"
Barney made a disgusted noise and, finally lowering his pad, came and threw himself down on the blanket. "You're all terrible subjects. I bet you'll come out with huge noses and five eyes."
"All the better for seeing you with," Bran said in a low, creepy voice.
"Oh, don't!" Jane said, laughing and pushing at him. "Barney! Show us what you've got."
Barney shook his head. "Not yet. There's a start, I think, but it's still developing. I can't see the whole of it yet. You have to give these things time." He patted the blanket next to him. "Sit next to me, Will. You can have one of my sandwiches to make up for Bran."
⊗
That had been the start, hadn't it, Will mused. It hadn't seemed like a start at the time. More of a middle, or an ongoing meander, back when they'd all been young and felt immortal and the future had seemed some impossible distance away. From this side, it seemed only breaths. In the painting, they all looked young still. Will, of course, had always been Old. He set the painting aside, carefully, leaving it unwrapped, and turned back to the box, finding a series of graduation photographs as each of them passed through one kind of school or another to be captured by a brisk flash in a slim slice of time. Simon becoming a doctor. Himself at Oxford. Jane at teacher training. Bran at the conservatory. Barney, last but not least, leaving art school.
⊗
For some reason, Jane had expected a graduation ceremony at a school dedicated to creativity to be more, well, arty. Instead it was all just rows of robes and caps and her parents and brother squeezed into tiny seats in an even tinier auditorium. The ceremony was ponderous and solemn, and Jane could see Barney biting his lip not to laugh as he took his turn at the podium. Jane cheered loudly, ignoring the startled looks from the other parents and the sharp elbow from a grinning Simon. Her mother sighed loudly afterwards.
"It's so good to have all my darlings here for once." Ellen's smile was happy and sad, all at once. "It's so rare for you and your brothers to all be in the same place these days."
Jane opened her mouth to say that they weren't all here before remembering that, no, Bran and Will weren't really her brothers, were they? Not like Doctor Simon or freshly minted Master Barney. A different sort of family. Her phone was in her pocket, and she almost reached for it, but, no, not in the middle of a ceremony. There would be photos and things. She'd send them on. That would be enough. It would have to be enough.
The rows went alphabetically and it seemed like hours before Drew became White and Yaxley and Young and Zahir and finally, a few blessedly short speeches later, they were done. Half the crowd tried to leave at once, blocking the exits and Jane excused herself, claiming claustrophobia, and went the other way to find some space. She was once again contemplating her phone, had even got as far as the address book, when she heard her name being called and looked up to find, as if in a dream, Will Stanton himself wandering out of the crowds.
"Hello, Jane," he said pleasantly. She continued to stare at him. He just bobbed his head like this was expected. "I came in too late for seats. I've been stood at the back. Barnabas Drew, Master of the Fine Arts! And so reluctant as a boy to give in to it."
"You came," she said, stupidly.
Will nodded again. "I did."
"I was just thinking about you."
"Oh?" He smiled, pleased. "I was thinking about you, too. And here we both are."
"Yes." Jane suddenly flung herself across the space between them and hugged him hard. After a hesitant moment, his arms came up to wrap around her, and she felt his face turn into her hair, his breath warm against her neck. "I've missed you," she mumbled against his skin. "You keep going away."
"I know," he said, hugging her tighter for a moment before gently separating them. His smile was goofy Will, but his eyes were old. "There are things..."
"Things," she repeated breathlessly when he didn't continue of his own accord.
Will chuckled a little, nodding, and had opened his mouth to say something when his name was shouted across the room.
"Will!" Barney called again, bouncing in his crowd of friends and waving, practically glowing. "You came! Oh my god! Brilliant!" He tried to come forward, but his friends grabbed at him, laughing, and he rolled his eyes, waving again as he was dragged away. "Wait, wait! I gotta do a thing! I'll be right back! Don't go anywhere!"
Will waved awkwardly back. "He seems happy."
Not brothers, Jane thought and said, around the lump in her throat, "He likes you."
"I'm glad," Will said vaguely.
"No, Will. He likes you." Will blinked at her owlishly. She wanted to laugh and to sob at once. Instead, she said, "I think you should go talk to him."
"I," he said and then stopped for some interminably moment before -- she wasn't sure how to explain it. Diminishing, perhaps? The right word wouldn't come. He nodded at her, then, this Will that was both like and unlike her Will, and smiled a little smile, and said, "All right, Jane. I'll talk to him."
Just like that he was gone. She could almost believe she'd dreamt the whole thing, that it was some half-forgotten memory of youth she'd somehow confused with the present. Almost. Her phone was still in her hand. She looked at the address book for a while and then scrolled away from the S's. A touch started the phone ringing, and ringing, and ringing, and then, just before she hung up, there was a click and a mumbled greeting.
"Hey," she said. "Hi. Bran. It's me. Jane. Yeah. I... Are you free to talk?"
⊗
Another year of teaching finally, finally over, Jane closed the classroom door behind the last of the little ones and collapsed bonelessly into her chair, sighing in relief. She loved them, she did, but they were effort on the best of days and exhausting with the holiday just about to begin. And lucky them! She had at least three weeks of administrative work still to complete. People talked about how lucky teachers were to have such long breaks but, hah! They'd clearly never had to do Ofsted reports and make up worksheets and lesson plans and her phone was ringing. She dug it out, fumbling to turn it on and accept the call before finally, a little breathlessly, answering, "Hello? Will?"
"They broke up," Bran said without preamble.
She didn't ask who. They'd all seen it coming. They'd hoped, but they'd seen it coming.
"Rude words," she said venomously, and Bran made a sound that might have been a laugh under different circumstances. "Did he call you or--?"
"Barney called Simon, and Simon called me. We spoke, Will and me, I mean, but only for a moment. He was rushing off somewhere foreign--"
"He always is," Jane sighed. "How was--" But she didn't want an answer to that, didn't want to be mad at steadfast, placid, accepting Will. "Did you talk to Barney?"
There was a negative noise. "Simon said Barney had friends round. Art people. Pink hair and paints and all that."
"Yeah."
"He didn't seem too broken up about it. Sad, but not. You know."
"Yeah," Jane said again.
They were both quiet.
Hesitantly, she asked, "If they hadn't gotten together, would you have--?"
There was a faint snort at the other end of the line. "Would you?" Bran asked. He didn't sound accusatory. More amused. Interested.
"I don't know," Jane admitted and then, after a deep breath in and a shaky exhale. "I've thought about it."
"Yeah." Bran was quiet for so long she almost thought he had hung up. "He's drifting away from us, Jenny-oh."
"I know."
"So. What do we do about it?"
⊗
Victoria was a lovely girl. The wedding was going to be beautiful, Jane knew. Pink hair and all. From the window, she could see the guests gathering. Her parents were already down there, she knew, and Simon and his wife, with their adorably fat baby. The others were mostly Barney's and Victoria's friends, artists and musicians and actors and one constantly startled looking chemist. Bran was here, of course; he'd driven her up, it being sensible to share the car, and she would drive him back, and if they'd stop on the way in both directions, well, that was no-one's business but hers. Especially not when her baby brother was somehow old enough to be getting married.
As she turned from the window, she caught sight of a mottled green Morris Minor and stopped, staring at it. How Will managed to keep it running after all these years, she didn't know.
Magic, probably.
There was a bang as the door to her room burst open and Barney came stumbling in, shoving it closed behind him.
"Jane! Can you help with my tie?" he asked desperately. "Don't tell Simon. He was fussing and I told him I could do it and sent him off to the chapel, except now it's all--"
He waved helplessly at the mess around his throat.
"Come here," Jane laughed, waving him over. She began unpicking his failed knot. "I teach five and six year olds that manage to tie their own ties every day. How have you not learned yet?"
"My brain is filled with higher things," Barney said loftily, shifting a little with nerves. "Big art thoughts crowd out your mundane haberdashery type things." He frowned slightly. "Is haberdashery ties?"
"I think that's sewing," Jane said. "Stand still. You're going to be fine."
"Huh? Oh, yeah, I know." He nodded and then held still when Jane made a pointed noise.
She finished tying the knot and carefully straightened his collar before stepping back. "There," she said. "You look very handsome."
"Yeah?" Barney grinned, turning to check himself out in her mirror. "Yeah."
"Will's here," she said.
"I know?" Barney looked back, blinked at her. "I invited him and everything."
Jane nodded, then shook her head. "I know. I just meant... You know. With you and him and your -- history?" She pulled a face. "Oh, god, I sound terrible. Don't listen to me."
"I know what you meant," Barney said.
"You're still friends. Obviously you invited him."
"It wasn't me he was in love with," Barney said. Jane blinked at him. "It's okay, Jane. I knew that going in, and we had a good time, and it didn't work out, but that's okay, you know? Sometimes things don't. It's not the end of the world. And I wouldn't have met Vicky without Will. He'll always be our friend, no matter what. Right?"
"Right," she said, smiling. "Come on then, Mister Drew. Let's get you married."
⊗
There were more photos in the box. An entire file of them, haphazardly collected and so stuff that when he tried to put the car and the graduation photos back in with the rest, the sides of the thing burst, spilling pictures everywhere. Will and Barney in Oxford. Will and Bran in Wales, and in Buckinghamshire, and also in Oxford, and in Cardiff at some music thing, and Aberystwyth at another. Will and Jane at a teaching conference, and in her flat, and his, and here with Simon and Ellen and the babies at Christmas, and here, all of them, Bran and Jane and Will, Barney and Simon, wives and children, Stantons, Drews and Davies, all laughing together on the Old Vicarage's lawn.
⊗
"Remind me to never have children," Bran said, smiling fondly at the screaming mob of toddlers and preteens, charging around the garden and escaping the midsummer heat through the cool spray of the sprinklers. They were sat in the shadow of the house, the kitchen window behind them, Jane on the lounger and Bran on the garden bench and Will nestled between them in a plastic white seat that had seen better days.
"At least you don't get this teaching the older lot," Jane said to him.
Will quirked a smile. "You'd be surprised. Week before exams..."
"I think we're getting old," Bran sighed.
"Speak for yourself," Jane said primly.
Bran laughed, waving an expressive hand at the crowd. "Look! All our friends have rugrats now."
"Rugrats," Jane scoffed. "Don't think I didn't see you in the sprinklers yourself, not half an hour ago, Bran Davies."
"Old, I said. Not mature." She stuck her tongue out at him and he laughed, settling back on the bench, arms spread out across its back. Some lazy, companionable silence later, he added, "They're adorable rugruts, I'll give them that."
"Nicholas is almost seven now," Jane said. "He's the spitting image of Simon, don't you think, Will? Will?"
They both looked sideways. Will, blank-faced, slowly stirred under their regard, like something rising to the surface from great depths.
"Oh, ah." He blinked rapidly before smiling his goofy smile. "Well, yes, I suppose he does. Why, um. Why don't I fetch us some drinks?"
He was up on his feet and gone before they could reply. Jane and Bran shared a sad look.
"Ah, Will bach," Bran sighed. "What are we going to do with you?"
⊗
It was the first Christmas everyone had attended -- everyone, all the Stantons and their families included -- at the same time. Even Will had shown, which was hardly a guaranteed thing these days despite him being the one to issue the invitation. Bran half suspected Alice Stanton had instructed him to do so, but he didn't voice this suspicion because Jane had been so pleased to think Will was reaching out to them. Instead, he'd just spent the time watching Will -- not continuously because of Jane, of course, and Paul was always fun to talk to about music, and he'd met Stephen for the first time, and Mary made him join in all the games, but a lot of the time.
Will answered when people spoke to him directly. He smiled now and again when people talked. He didn't start conversations. He didn't sit with his siblings. He sat in corners of rooms, perched on edges of chairs, stood in half shadows. He had had the same drink in his hand the entire evening. He smiled now and again but it didn't reach his eyes and, as the evening wore on, he spoke less and less when people talked around him. When people started leaving as evening became quite surely night, the others gathered in groups to say goodbye.
Will stood alone.
"He's getting worse," Bran said to Jane. "I don't think any of them noticed it, especially not with the crowd, but."
"I saw," Jane said. Of course she had. She'd been watching Will just like Bran.
Max and his family left. Barbara and her girlfriend. Stephen went up to bed. Soon it was only Robin and James and them, clearing up the place, Robin yawning up a storm, James talking about this and that as things came to mind with no real pattern to it that Bran could discern. Mostly, he ignored it, putting cushions back and picking up the remains of Christmas crackers, until James turned to Will.
"Are you sleeping in with me, then?" he asked. "I've still got your old bed in my room. I think mum and dad have forgotten it isn't really a couch. Its got new cushions on it and everything. You can tell me all about Oxford and everything; I've barely had a chance to say a word to you all night. You got yourself a new bird yet? Maybe a strict librarian. Woof!"
"Are you drunk?" Robin asked. James casually flipped him off. "Yeah, I'm going to bed. 'night all."
"I'm heading back tonight," Will said to James, ignoring the rest and busying himself taking the last of the glasses out into the kitchen to wash them out.
James blinked blearily at the doorway and Bran realised that he was, actually, a bit drunk. He stomped after Will and Bran quickly followed, making Jane look up quizzically from where she was folding up the waste wrapping paper for the recycling.
"Whaddya mean you're heading back?" James demanded. "It's, it's Christmas, man! Boxing day! Carols! Good King Wenslass!"
"Wenceslas," Will corrected, almost automatically, not looking away from the sink.
"Y'know," James said dangerously, "you were always a bit standoffish as a kid, but I never thought you would grow up to be such a dick."
There was a sharp breath behind him, and Bran realised Jane had followed him to the doorway. He could see Will's hands clutch tight to the edge of the sink, and stepped forward, resting a heavy hand on James's shoulder.
"All right," he said, calmly. James blinked at him owlishly. "Why don't you go off to bed, James? It's late, and we're all tired."
"...yeah," James said eventually, slumping in on himself.
"We'll see about Will staying," Jane said unexpectedly and all three men looked at her.
James smiled suddenly and, only slightly stumbling, crossed the room to give Jane a quick hug. "You're better than my ungrateful little snot of a brother. You can stay in my room anytime."
"Er." Jane patted his shoulder awkwardly. "Thank you. I'm not sure my boyfriend would approve, though."
Bran snorted and James slow-blinked at him again before laughing a little, waving to all of them before stumbling away. They listened to him clambering heavily up the stairs.
"Oh, Will," Jane said softly.
He looked up at them and smiled a little, softly, almost nostalgically. "It's all right. I'm used to James."
"That wasn't what she meant," Bran said.
"We want you to stay," Jane said.
"I know," Will said.
"Do you?" Bran asked. "Because it seems like--"
"It's not you," Will interrupted sharply. "It's not-- It's me. It's-- You all have... Lives. Together. Growing old and having babies and moving on to new things and." He floundered. "And all of that living you do."
"You're a part of that," Jane insisted.
"Now and then," Will agreed. "Not forever, Jane. I'm the one who has to watch everyone leave."
"No," Bran denied. Just: no.
Will laughed softly, sadly. "You don't understand. You can't. There's no way you could."
"There's one way," Jane said.
"You could explain it," Bran agreed.
Will shook his head. "No. I can't." He turned from them then and picked up one of the washed glasses, filling it with water, pouring it out and filling it again, lifting it to his mouth with a shaking hand. "It doesn't matter. Forget it."
Bran and Jane exchanged glances. Bran nodded slightly, agreeing with the sentiment he saw in her eyes. Jane closed the distance to Will, Bran at her heels.
"Come to bed with us."
Will coughed on his drink. "What?"
"Come to bed with us," Jane said again, taking the glass from him and setting it aside. "Even if it can't be forever, this moment matters. We matter, and you matter, and now matters. We want you here. We want you with us. We want you to stay, Will."
Will looked desperately at Bran, who simply nodded, and then back at Jane, who met his gaze implacably. They both held out their hands.
After a long moment, Will placed his trembling hands in theirs and, together, linked, they went up.
⊗
Another sixty years at least, he'd thought at the time, rationalising it, like sixty years was somehow long or at least long enough. And the harder he had tried to let them go, the harder they'd held on, and for that he had hated them and he loved them in equal parts. Until, as he had always known would happen, they couldn't hold on any longer.
⊗
He's almost eighty, the doctors had said. We can make him comfortable, they'd said. Bran's a fighter, they'd said and hadn't said that eventually you got a battle you couldn't win, though Will had read that in their faces. They hadn't mentioned the awkward quiet of the room or the smell or how small Bran would look, how washed out, all but a ghost already.
"Hello, Bran," he said quietly.
Tawny eyes struggled open, slipping once before blinking wide, meeting his.
"Will," Bran said. "And--" His head lolled a little as he turned to look, and Jane quickly leaned out of her chair.
"I'm here," she said. "I haven't left."
Bran smiled at her softly, before turning back to Will, reaching a trembling hand out. Will came swiftly to his side, kneeling beside the bed and taking the hand in his.
"I'm sorry," Bran said roughly, clutching tight at Will's hand. "I'm so sorry--"
"Hush," Will commanded, gently. "You have nothing to be sorry for."
"I was only a child," Bran insisted over him. "I didn't know what I was giving up, not really. And I wouldn't regret it, not one minute of it, if it didn't mean leaving you."
"You're not," Jane tried, choking on the words.
Bran smiled tiredly at her before looking back at Will, eyes sharp and serious. "Do you forgive me, Will bach? For forsaking one father for another, for..." He struggled for words. "Destiny. Mortality."
"Hush," Will repeated.
"Do you?" Bran pleaded.
"Always," Will said. "Always and completely, Bran."
Bran sighed, settling back. A great peace seemed to come over him.
"Look after Jenny for me," Bran said and then, turning, reached for Jane's hand too. "And you look after Will. That's important. Looking after each other. Loving each other."
"We will," Jane said, crying.
"I promise," Will said.
Holding their hands together in his own, against his heart, Bran closed his eyes. He did not open them again.
⊗
Will squeezed his eyes closed, like if he did it tight enough he wouldn't see, wouldn't remember, but they were too intertwined, running one into another, one bed dizzyingly spinning into the next.
⊗
There is a cycle, Will tried to think. It didn't help. The room was bright and warm, decorated with fresh yellow flowers, and that didn't help either. Jane shifted against her pillows and he reached out automatically, smoothing her hair back.
"Will, the watchman," she said without opening her eyes. "Watching over me."
It wasn't a question, but he answered any way. "Yes. For as long as I can."
"For as long as you've known me, I think. I was eleven when we met." Jane smiled at the idea. "Eleven! Imagine that! It all seems unlikely now, that I was ever that young."
"You were tall," Will said for something to say.
"I've known you for eight decades and change, Will Stanton. And look at you. I'm old."
"You're beautiful," he said with guileless honesty.
Jane coughed a laugh. "I'm beautiful and I'm old. I've worn this body out. That's the way of Men, love. That's our cycle. Stepping off the stage so that others may play in our place. Make our roles their own."
"I know." He tried to smile. "Knowing doesn't help."
"You know the kids love their Great Uncle Will. Don't leave them behind."
"It hurts," Will said. "It's worth it, I think -- but it hurts so much."
Jane sighed, tugging him close, and he stretched out on the bed beside her, head against her shoulder, letting her fingers card through his hair, slower and slower until they stilled. Will curled closer and tried not to count down each slow, rattling breath.
⊗
Tears escaped, running down his cheeks, dripping from his chin to darken photographs, the carpet. He leant his head against the side of a pile of boxes and made himself breathe through it. It was okay. Rather, it wasn't okay, but he would survive this. He had his duty. He had the Light which was, perhaps, as cold as John Rowlands had accused it of being, but which was also strong and true and right and so much a part of him that he could no more deny it than deny his own existence -- and that he would never do. Bran, wherever he was now, would never forgive him. Jane would never forgive him. It was--
No. Best not to linger.
The house was silent. The realtor was gone. His shade was gone, back into shadow and memory. It was time he was gone from this place, too. There was nothing for him here. He looked at the painting again, Barney's, of the three of them, and then shook his head. One by one, he placed the photos back in the file, and the file back in the box. Carefully, he wrapped the painting up and replaced it on top and stared at the bubble wrap for a long moment, touching the places over Bran's and Jane's faces, before putting the lid back.
Time to go.
He left the attic then, slowly, wearily, turning the light out behind him, not bothering to close the door. Beyond the landing window, a grey swirl of snow danced limply, not falling but brushed off the roof by careless wind. He took another step, looking back, and that old floorboard creaked under his foot and, for a moment, he had no idea when he was, eleven and a hundred and more all at once. There seemed, somehow, to be a light in the attic room, a glow he could barely see and yet see clearly too, see, and somehow hear, as if from a great distance.
A haunting bell-like phrase.
⊗
"I want you to have this," Barney said, holding the framed print out, practically pushing it on Will, in fact. "Because it's you, and us, and I want you to have something of me even when you don't have me, and because. Well. The thing of it is, is that it doesn't really matter if Arthur is sleeping or not. Not really. Because the idea of Arthur is still there, you know? And that idea, that hope and courage and, and love, that's forever. That's always in reach, no matter where people go or what they do. So. This is for you, okay? An idea, for forever."
⊗
Will shoved the door wide, plunging back into the attic. It should have been too dark to see, too murky with only the skylight for illumination, but it wasn't. Everything was clear. Everything. He yanked the lid from the box, tore the bubble wrap away, lifted the painting reverently from the box. The frame warmed in his hands like sun-drenched trees. The paper shimmered before him. He touched his fingers to the surface, finding details he had somehow missed before. Here, first, at the zenith, an artfully worked moon decorated the top border. Then here, dusting the horizon, stars and, there, a bright slash of a comet. And here, where before he had seen only blossom, was stardust settled bright on the trees. After them all, the sun, warm under his fingers, blazing so that he had to lower his eyes, to find that now the trees swayed. He could feel the rough bark. He could feel cool leaves. He could feel the breeze play in his hair, and smell the flowers and the sweet juice of the plums, and the soft perfume and he stepped forward and--
"Hello, Will," said Jane and Bran said, "Will, bach."
"Oh," said Will softly, looking down at the grass beneath this feet and then up at them, and he said it again, full of hesitant joy and scared wonder. "Oh."
"Took your time, didn't you?" Bran scoffed, and laughed when Jane elbowed him. "It's okay."
Will yearned to move forward, was held in suspension. He breathed out, "How?"
"Don't you remember?" Jane asked. "Merriman said it. Loving bonds are the strongest thing on Earth."
"Outside the Light, the Dark, the High and the Wild," Bran agreed. "The last, true, deepest of magic."
"Really, Will," Jane said gently. "Did you think we would leave you alone?"
They reached for him and pulled him down with them, to rest in the orchards of Avalon.
⊗
Will bounces on the balls of his feet, smiling, just a little, teasing and hopeful and waiting.
"Same time next year," Jane echoes.
"Same time every year," Bran agrees. "We'll be seeing you, boyo."
They do.