By request of brightknightie, in response to this meme post.

Commentary for "Five Times Coreen Fennel Didn't Kiss Henry Fitzroy (And One Time She Did)" (6/6)

This is the last chapter of a fic with a rather convoluted genesis. (The full story is archived on my site here.) Vicki will always remain the center of this universe (book or TV), but as the series progressed I was finding myself identifying most with Coreen, and the flurry of fic ideas striking me were almost all for her. And mostly interacting with Henry, which led first to the big plotty fic I was writing all last summer (which has yet to be posted, because it needs a major rewrite to not be rendered obsolete by canon, and I'm currently occupied with other things), and then -- while that was still in progress -- to "Ambient Light." That elicited some very nice feedback, some of it (puzzlingly if not exactly surprisingly) reading the piece as shippy, which was very much not my intent. By this time, the "little sister" paradigm had become the standard reading of their relationship in meta discussions. Which was fine as far as it went, but it was mostly used as a shorthand that left me thinking a lot about what we actually meant by it -- what was really going on, particularly in Henry's head, behind their necessarily limited canon interaction.

"Ambient Light" was part of my answer to that, but I quickly found it wasn't all of it. I thought the first part of "Five Times" -- a cute, very lightweight "what if" with a pre-series Coreen at one of Henry's signings -- was going to be a one-shot. But then I found myself with a whole collection of mental images, several of which I really wanted to do something with, but none of which necessarily warranted developing a full plot around. Then it occurred to me that they might lend themselves well to a Five Things structure, which is common in several of my fandoms, but which I'd never tried before. I ended up doing it a bit differently -- the typical Five Things being a collection of alternate possibilities, where mine evolved into a chronological series of snapshots -- but the way the parts ended up informing each other, and my view of Coreen and Henry's friendship as it continued to develop on the margins of canon, worked out better than I could ever have imagined.

This final part was also going to be a standalone at one point, my "therapeutic" response to the relationship-rocking events of "Wrapped." It's still that, but then it struck me that it would place the right emotional capper on the "Five Times," and also give me three parts from each pov.

~~

6: Eye of the Storm

The only chapter title that isn't really a time. Still bugs me. I toyed with a couple other possibilities (including "Before the Dawn," which unfortunately has no similarly shorthand converse), but this was the only thing I came up with that conveyed the sense I needed, of a moment of respite between the upheaval of "Wrapped" and the consequences to come.

Coreen had been standing at Henry's door for at least five minutes, trying to muster her courage, when it swung open. "It's generally considered more efficient to knock." His tone was completely neutral, giving nothing away.

She couldn't meet his eyes, her focus bouncing between his shoulder and his bare feet as he stepped back from the threshold for her to enter. She walked several paces past him, turning around when she heard the door click shut. Taking a deep breath, she addressed a tumble of words to his shins. "Henry, I know you probably don't want to hear it, and it's not going to fix anything, but I still have to tell you I am really, really sorry. I know you hate me, and I don't blame you, I'd hate me too, but -- "

This is, of course, the completely wrong conclusion for her to jump to, but I don't think any other explanation would occur to her right away.

"Coreen, stop. I don't hate you."

"You wouldn't even look at me!" This was all coming out way more pathetic and melodramatic than she had hoped, but she couldn't help it.

There was so much packed into that line when she said it to Vicki in the ep. (I'm forever grateful that TPTB recognized the treasure they had in Gina and took advantage of it by building more for Coreen than the original design of the show necessarily called for.) I really think she had mostly outgrown her crush on Henry (or, perhaps more accurately, separated him from what he represented) by this time, but his opinion of her always held enormous weight -- if not as much as Vicki's, very nearly so -- and the fear of losing his respect ran underneath all her efforts to get Vicki to reconsider what they were doing. (Hmmm. This is going to end up being almost as much meta on "Wrapped" as on the fic, I think. Not that I didn't already do a hefty chunk of that, but ah, well.)

"Will you look at me?" She dragged her eyes up to his face; it held none of the disappointment or condemnation she had expected, only sadness and worry. "I was betrayed and hurt and, yes, angry." He spoke slowly and clearly, as if he wanted to make sure she absorbed every word. "I was and am afraid, for Vicki and for you. I could not hate you. All right?"

I'm crediting him with a lot of insight to her mental state here, but I think it's warranted. There's no way he's not aware of the value she places on his opinion of her. And he articulates in an earlier part of the story that he knows better than she does how much she needs him to be a "safe harbor." When he singled her out for concern and courtesy no less than twice in the next ep, making a point of separating her from his anger and frustration with Vicki, I was sure I was on the right note with this effort to make sure she understands he's still on her side.

Not trusting her voice to make it past the lump in her throat, she nodded.

"All right, then." He took a closer look at her. "Have you slept at all?"

She must look worse than she thought. But then, there was no fooling his senses, was there? "Sort of. Some." She shrugged, thankful that any sound came out. "I just keep trying to figure out what I could have done, what I could have said different to make her listen."

Until writing this dialogue, I hadn't given much conscious thought to how prone Coreen is to shouldering more blame than she's actually responsible for. Most notably in "Heart of Fire," when she starts freaking about how it'll be her fault if Henry dies, simply because she told Mike where to find them. The pressure she puts on herself to live up to the much more mature and experienced people she works with doesn't get acknowledged much.

Now he looked as close to crying as she felt; she wondered if he could. Before she could think about what she was doing and how crazy it was, she darted forward and kissed him, one hand raking her hair back from her neck.

This must have gone in and out of the story a dozen times. If it wasn't there, I was going to have to change the title and/or pull it back out as a standalone, because this was the only way that "One Time" was going to happen, and even then I wasn't sure about it. Whatever fantasies she might entertain at any given time, I couldn't see her crossing a line that would lose his respect. It had to be completely desperate and irrational -- and, like the offer of her blood in the ep itself, completely not about the curiosity and romantic notions that underlay her flirting with him for most of the season. I leave it to the reader to decide if I was successful; I'm still not entirely sure.

For a second, just one dizzy tingling second, she could have sworn he kissed back.

Okay, I threw a teensy bone to the shippers. There aren't very many of them, but they're nice people and some of them like me. ;-) It's also a callback to part 1, in which she was a perfectly appealing potential neck-of-the-week as a complete stranger. She's still too immature to interest him on any serious level (and, as we saw with Maya, he's likely to continue seeing her that way long after she really grows up), but the notion that she's excluded from the casual menu because she became something more important than that is more interesting -- and rings more true -- to me than a simple Do Not Want.

Then he took hold of her shoulders and pushed her to arm's length, using precisely as much force as the task required. Determinedly blinking back tears, she couldn't quite tell if that disappointment was there in his face now.

Still measuring his strength to the fraction, he turned her and steered her to the couch, shifting his hands to keep them on her shoulders from behind. "Sit."

The lightbulb moment when I realized how specifically he avoids touching her -- which remained consistent throughout the season -- had a huge impact on how I think about their interaction. I don't make exceptions lightly in my own fic, and they invariably jump out at me in others'. It's unlikely to work for me unless it's in line with one of the rare exceptions we saw in canon -- yanking her behind him out of Emmanuel's reach in "Love Hurts" (i.e. protecting her) or pushing her hand away from his dog tags in "D.O.A." (i.e. enforcing the boundary itself). This falls into the second category, obviously. (If anyone's wondering, the only other instances of physical contact in all 22 eps were her whacking him on the arm in "Post Partum" and his knocking her out in "Deep Dark.")

Coreen obediently plopped down, staring at the floor until he knelt in front of her, in her line of sight. He didn't look angry, at least. "Can we pretend I didn't just do that?"

"I sincerely hope so." He didn't sound angry either. Maybe a little frustrated. "Now. It's obvious you're not thinking clearly, but you're thinking something. What is it?"

I think this is when I realized how he had been spending his evening.

"Look, I'm really sorry -- "

"Yes, I got that part."

"It's just... I couldn't stop Vicki from taking your blood and -- " She gulped, unable to finish the sentence. "Giving you mine was all I could think of to fix anything. And you wouldn't take it, even though I don't even know how you made it out the door." She shook her head. "It's still all I have, Henry. I don't know what else to do."

Coreen's core belief in unlimited possibility took a beating in this mess. She still believes every problem has a solution, and not in Vicki's sometimes grim "whatever it takes" way. She takes very seriously that it's her job to come up with those solutions so Vicki can implement them. This time she failed. She couldn't come up with an alternative to the unacceptable solution, and Vicki went ahead with it anyway. The only thing not completely beyond her ability to mend in the aftermath was the physical injury to Henry, and he rejected her help. With no other solutions available to her, it made a cockeyed sort of sense for her to try pressing the offer again, in lieu of doing nothing.

Incidentally, if I could magically conjure one "missing scene" of everything that happened offscreen in the entire season, what happened after Vicki left the condo would be it.

She had no idea what he had expected her to say, but apparently that wasn't it, because he just stared at her. Not surprised, exactly, just... processing.

Finally he stood up and spun on his heel, taking a couple steps away from her before stopping. "Of course you don't understand. How could you?"

"Understand what?"

He sighed. "Part of me knew only that I was in pain, and saw you as part of the cause. And saw you, effectively, offering me your life." Turning back to face her, he finished, "I couldn't afford the risk that I might take it."

It took me ages to distill this down into a simple statement. I have no doubt there's a lot more to it -- I'm a firm believer that nobody ever does anything for only one reason -- but I do believe it mostly boils down to not being sure enough in that moment that he wouldn't hurt her.

"Oh." She couldn't think of anything else to say. She certainly didn't dare ask about the risk to whomever he had fed on instead.

"As for what you have to give... Don't undervalue your trust. I don't." He sat down next to her, continuing, "I'm fasting tonight. [Unplanned breadcrumb droppage. I didn't realize I was giving her pieces until she put them together a little way down.] I haven't been out, and hadn't seen anyone until you arrived. So, will it satisfy your need to help if I tell you it means more to abstain when the temptation is right here?"

It wasn't really funny, but the laugh bubbled up on its own anyway. Everything was just so absurd all of a sudden. After a few seconds, she realized it wasn't laughter anymore.

I have no idea whether this works. If you've experienced that kind of exhausted hysteria, it should be all you need, but I don't know if it conveys it if you haven't.

"This is ridiculous!" she protested through hitching sobs, two days of unshed tears escaping through her relief when misery had held them at bay. "God, I'm sorry, you must think I'm crazy!"

"Occasionally. But not at the moment."

She was too busy trying to catch a decent breath to be suitably surprised when he put his arm around her shoulders and gathered her close, inside the boundary he had so carefully maintained as long as she had known him. He didn't shush her or tell her it would be okay, just let her bury her face in his shoulder and hang on for dear life.

This exception doesn't exactly fit either of the categories mentioned above, but there was no way to do without it. The meltdown is the logical conclusion of showing how frazzled she is. Which she usually doesn't if she can help it -- this is the girl who was bouncing around Vicki's office, buzzing on proof of the reality of the supernatural and wheedling her way into a job Vicki clearly doubted she was qualified for, within a few days of her boyfriend being slaughtered by a demon while she was on the phone with him. She certainly wouldn't come this unglued in front of Vicki if she could help it, and she's not exactly happy to be doing it in front of Henry either. But since she is, I couldn't see Henry just sitting back and offering her nothing. In canon, it's always Vicki who looks out for her post-trauma, but Vicki isn't here. The solution was to acknowledge that it is an exception, and a temporary one.

There was no telling how long she kept on crying, so violently that it seemed like Henry's steady arms were all that kept her from shaking apart. Finally, though, it passed, and she took a deep breath and pulled reluctantly back to her side of the couch. Back outside the boundary.

This would be the day I really, really wished actually explaining the phrase "Spanish Princess Moment" would have fit the scene. :: blows kisses to horsechicks :: Because it's a textbook one.

"Thank you." It sounded surreally inadequate.

"You're welcome," he answered simply. "Feel better?"

"Yeah," she managed around residual sniffles. In spite of aching stomach muscles and hyperventilation lightheadedness, it was true.

I'm prouder of this line than it probably warrants. Paying attention to senses other than vision and hearing should be baseline, not bonus. But hey, crying like that is work!

"Good. Here." He stood and reached into his pocket. "For all the archaic affectations of the culture, I have yet to meet a goth who carries a handkerchief."

This was what a real laugh felt like. She had all but forgotten.

"I'm going to go change my shirt -- no, you've apologized enough for one night," he headed her off as she registered the huge smear of saltwater and eyeshadow on white linen. "If you would hold this for me?"

Coreen held out the hand that wasn't busy making a similar mess of his handkerchief, and he handed her the plain black rosary he customarily wore wrapped around his wrist.

It's since come up in a discussion that Maria's rosary seems to have disappeared after "Heart of Fire;" the person posting the observation said it was broken in the course of Mendoza taunting Henry with it. I had made a mental note to check the detail while I was writing this, but never actually remembered to do it. For the purposes of this fic, I choose to assume it was still around and just not in evidence, because it was such a potent symbol. During a get-together marathoning the first part of the season, iingaartist asked semi-facetiously while he was with Sinéad, "So, does he always have a rosary around his wrist when he has sex?" I limited myself to answering "He pretty much always wears it," and bit my tongue to let her see for herself a few eps down the road that actually, yes, it's probably a deliberate tangible reminder that when his control falters, someone else pays. Given the painful circumstances there, I have tremendous respect for his keeping it it in view.

In using it here, I wasn't drawing a conscious connection between Maria -- the innocent who trusted him -- and Coreen. But if the scene were from his pov, it would probably cross his mind.

She hadn't seen him take it off; had he been holding it loose the whole time? That, and what he'd said about fasting, and the calm patience he had shown from the moment he opened the door... "Did I interrupt something?"

And now she picks up the breadcrumbs I didn't realize I was leaving her.

"Nothing I can't easily resume. I'll be right back."

Alone in the room, she tried to just sit quietly and wait, but she had never been very good at it. She looked around at the paintings on the walls, the sketches tacked up around his workspace, the city lights outside the windows. From the portrait of his father, her eye tracked down to the sword on its display stand below, spotless and shining. Leaving the handkerchief on the coffee table, she walked over toward it, trying to wrap her mind around the realization that Henry must have had to wipe his own blood off the blade.

That last bit was also my own "holy crap" moment -- something that hadn't occurred to me until I was writing this paragraph. I mean, yikes! P.S. Henry? LOCK THE DAMN THING AWAY plzkthx. Dork.

"It looks clean, doesn't it?" he asked at her shoulder. "You would never know."

Conscious choice here not to have Coreen startled by his sneaking up on her. Partly because I think she's too used to his comings and goings in Vicki's office, and partly as another indicator that she's really, really wiped and not so much with the reflexes just now.

"But you would."

"Yes. I can still smell the blood, feel the taint. On the sword. On the floor beneath our feet."

She hadn't paid attention to exactly where she was standing, and shivered with a sudden chill, though she was still wearing her coat. "On me?"

He hesitated just a beat before answering. "Yes."

"Oh."

"Not as strongly as the other night." That was reassuring, until he added, "It's less obvious as it becomes more a part of you."

The canon dialogue does a lot of tapdancing around what the ritual actually did to Vicki, without coming out and clearly defining it. I did a fair amount of pondering to define it in my own head, but purposely kept the dialogue in the same vein as what we heard on screen. There's a bit of a Lovecraft flavor to it that I didn't want to dispel -- that the three of them, having read it in the grimoire and been present when the power was invoked, were changed by the experience and understand it in a way that maybe can't be clearly and/or safely articulated.

She nodded, wondering why she wasn't terrified by that. His calm seemed to be contagious, or maybe she was just too wrung out by the crying jag. "What about Vicki?"

"That's more complicated." Neither his voice nor his expression gave anything away as he moved in front of her and gave her a glass of water. "Why do you ask?"

"She said you came by, but she wouldn't tell me what you said. She's..." She swallowed. "She's acting like everything's the same. But it's not. Not anything she's doing, exactly, but every time she comes in the room, it's like..." The penny dropped. "Like standing here."

He didn't say anything, just looked sad while she took a sip of water.

"I'm not just imagining that, am I?"

"It could be cause for concern," he answered cautiously.

I experimented a lot with this section before I got it to a satisfactory level of ambiguity. I didn't want to make it too definite that she had gained some sort of sensitivity she didn't have before, because I didn't expect anything like that to come up in canon. But I also wanted his specifically chiding Vicki for putting Coreen "on their radar" to have some significance other than as a red blinky foreshadowing for "Deep Dark." The line makes it clear he believes she didn't dodge the bullet by not following through with her part in the ritual, and he's waiting for the other shoe to drop on her as well as on Vicki. As alert as he is for something to be wrong with either or both of them, he could just as easily be reading too much into things. But she did crack open a door -- which Astaroth will soon take advantage of -- and it's not inconceivable for it to have some effect on her perceptions.

Coreen didn't feel concerned. She didn't feel much of anything, except that strange faint buzzing of nerves and a sneaking suspicion that she wasn't standing quite straight. "I should probably sit back down now, huh?"

"That would be a good idea."

The buzzing faded as she walked back to the couch, acutely aware of Henry close behind her. Was he worried she wouldn't make it? She wasn't that loopy, was she? [I had a good giggle the day Gina used the word "loopy" on her blog. *g*] Tired, sure. Everything just a little bit farther away than it should be. But she wasn't going to keel over on him. See, here was the couch.

"Why don't you give me your coat?"

"I just need to sit for a minute. I should go home."

"I'm not going to send you out to fall asleep on the streetcar." He watched her consider the logistics of removing her coat with a glass of water in one hand and a rosary in the other. "Or possibly in the elevator. Let me."

This is, I admit, something of a personal cliché. Some people get characters drunk when they want them to say things they typically wouldn't, and/or give an independent character license to accept a little coddling. I tend to get them sleep-deprived. Mostly because it lets me draw much more effectively on personal experience. *g*

And despite her apparently nigh-limitless energy, Coreen does run down. Whoever came up with the idea of her conked out on her desk while they waited for the incubus trap to spring deserves a box of chocolates, because it was cute beyond belief.

He took the glass and set it on the coffee table -- she would have thought of that if he'd given her a second -- and helped her off with her coat. "I'll drive you home later," he said, laying it neatly across one of the chairs. "You need a little more than a minute."

There was an "I think" at the beginning of that last sentence for a while, but I realized there were too many of those floating around. More importantly, he's sort of shifted gears into taking care of a kid, so that the sentence should be more of a definite observation than a suggestion. Vicki -- appropriately, as her employer -- deals with her as an adult, but Henry never quite has. He's never hesitated to declare what she should or shouldn't do, in a way Vicki almost never lets him get away with.

"But you were..." She held up the rosary. "Won't it... I don't know, interfere?"

"For one of the people I'm praying for [Because she's not the only one looking for a way to repair what got damaged.] to be present?" he asked, taking it back. "Why do you think it would?"

"I don't know. I never really -- I mean, I'm not, um..." She frowned at his soft chuckle. "What's funny?"

"You've grown up in what is probably the most inclusive society in human history, and you're uncomfortable saying you don't share my religion?"

"It's not that, exactly. You said I'm..." The word he had used dangled out of reach, and she waved vaguely toward the sword and the creepy spot on the floor.

Henry's face fell. "Tainted." [I'm pleased with this misstep on his part, as I am any time I successfully overcome the tendency to have characters always say the right thing and accurately anticipate what's going on with others. It's a little one, because a truly hurtful screwup would be contrary to the purpose of the scene, but there needs to be a little bit of "nobody's perfect."] Crouching and leaning on the arm of the couch beside her, he went on, "Maybe I shouldn't have. You're in no frame of mind to understand."

Shrugging, she reminded him, "I asked."

"Yes, you did. We can always count on that." He gave her that patient, sad smile again. "I didn't turn you away tonight. Surely you don't expect less of God."

A lot of the key thoughts took a lot of trial and error for the words to be right. This one -- probably the most central -- was right there, first try. I keep talking about that big thinky meta I still want to write sometime about Henry's faith, but in a way it's all here.

She didn't quite get that, but nodded anyway.

"Good." He stood and handed her the glass of water again.

After taking a few swallows, she asked, "You're keeping a vigil, right? Like knights did?"

"And your idiosyncratic self-education comes through again." Settling on his knees near the other end of the coffee table, he explained, "I expect your literary image is more than a little romanticized, but essentially the right idea. Now get some rest. I don't mind your being here, but I will ask you to be quiet."

I tried to find a way to fit in the idea that instead of the traditional strength for battle, he's seeking strength to forgive, but it ended up being outside the scope of what I thought he would discuss with Coreen. Especially since she's already told him Vicki wouldn't tell her what he said, which includes the "I wish I could forgive you." So I have a weird sort of sense that he's respecting Vicki's wishes by not going there. Also just the sense that the talking needs to wind down and be simplified at this point. The whole notion was just too thorny to get into, and Coreen's barely following the conversation as it is.

Coreen nodded, taking a last sip of water and setting it on the table. The idea of just curling up for a nap was more appealing by the second, and even seemed possible now that her mind had given up running around in anxious circles. But it didn't seem appropriate, even though it seemed to be what he expected. Instead, she sat back, folding her hands in her lap, watching him curiously while trying not to stare.

Too many seems, but I didn't realize it until it was already posted/archived and marked as complete. After that, if it's not an actual typo or spelling/grammar error, it stays.

It didn't seem to matter if she did. Henry bowed his head over the beads in his hands, eyes closed, heedless of the stray curls falling into his face. Definitely not appropriate to think about how beautiful he was.

I did mention thinking she's mostly outgrown the crush, yes? ;-)

At first she tried to pay attention to the words; the Latin was fairly basic, and not difficult to link to her nodding familiarity with the prayers as she had encountered them in movies and books.

Coreen's religious literacy or lack thereof was another element that I had to define in the back of my head, but kept pretty vague in the story. Had they kept her decidedly Irish surname from the books, I'd have assumed her to be more knowledgeable about Catholic tradition than I eventually settled on. As it is, for all her seemingly superficial "That's so cool!" approach, she's always read to me as having a genuine need for truth -- a seeker, in neopagan parlance. Which means either the tradition she was raised in no longer answers the need for her, or she wasn't raised in one, at least not consistently. I'd like to say I have definable reasons to have chosen the latter, but all I can say is it seems to fit her better. Vicki was understandably skeptical when Lexia theatrically labeled her "the most spiritual of the nightbreed," but I see no reason not to believe it.

That her worldview is all questions and few answers is a good thing at this stage of her life, even if Henry does worry (rightfully) about her pursuing the questions into dangerous territory. He doesn't hesitate to say "don't go there" when it's really called for (all the way back to the second ep and "Why do people always say that?" -- "Because some of them have paid. And some of them are still paying.") but he doesn't want to squash her sense of wonder either. After all, he's managed to hold onto his own (e.g. those "recruiting" speeches to Vicki). Which is where I start wondering how much of a mirror she might be of the kid he was when he fell for Christina. Which in turn underpins a lot of where I have him coming from in dealing with her.

In an early form of this idea, I mentally rehearsed her catching him on his way out and his actually taking her to a church. But the simpler structure -- and input into her learning process that's more digestible to her exhausted brain -- won out, and also allowed for reclaiming his home as a sanctuary.

But sustained focus eluded her, and she found herself instead drawn into the repetitive cadence.

Maybe that made more sense. These prayers had been second nature to him for nearly five hundred years; not even he could possibly concentrate on the words the third or fourth or tenth time through, could he? There was something more in it for him, unlocked by the language but not really about it. Even as she thought that, she wasn't quite sure what she meant. But it was comforting to be near it anyway, to wrap herself in the steady murmur and just be still.

I'm always struck by the reaction of non-Catholics to the Rosary. People don't know it serves as a meditation, and most people in our culture don't really get what meditation is anyway. But I've seen them get very caught up in it. One very emotional and personal instance was very much in my mind while I wrote this.

Coreen, with her mythology background (you know she's devoured Campbell!), might have a clearer sense of what he's including her in than most people, and should probably have considered it in more sophisticated terms than this. But I prefer the childlike clarity of the observation as it stands. She's at the very beginning of the process by which Henry built his mature faith. It affords him a shelter she doesn't have, but he can share it to some extent.

"...Sancta Maria mater Dei, ora pro nobis peccatoribus, nunc, et in hora mortis nostrae. Amen. Coreen, lie down before you fall."

"Mm?" She wasn't sure when she had closed her eyes, but they didn't want to open, and she was pitching forward and couldn't tell where upright was. Before she could register any alarm at that, though, the forward motion stopped. Cool hands supported her shoulders, guiding her to lean sideways instead. "Whuzzuh?"

"Shh, never mind. Go back to sleep." Henry's soft voice was far away, though he had to be right there to be setting her head down. She didn't know whether she pulled her feet up or he did it for her.

Another necessary exception, and again dealing with her as a kid. Which she still needs to be sometimes. Given that this is the second time I've had her fall asleep on his woefully insufficient couch, that's my excuse and I'm stickin' to it. *g*

"Lord, grant Your daughter strength." Something warm and soft settled over her, satin-smooth on her arm, velvet-fuzzy under her chin. With a last sliver of conscious logic, she identified it as her coat. "Guide her steps on the perilous road we walk."

And the most spontaneous utterances get rewritten the most times. I doubt I could ever be wholly satisfied with it, but this will do. Several versions included Vicki, but it's a given that she's going to be uppermost in his mind in general. This needed to be just for Coreen.

His words were just sound now, beyond the heavy curtain of overdue sleep, resuming the rhythm of the age-old formula. And for a little while, two wounded souls knew peace.

The final line bears the responsibility for implying what I opted against exploring in so many words, that they have a common bond as unwilling participants in the ritual. Even when she apologized, Vicki never did get that she was missing the point -- what he couldn't get past wasn't her stabbing him, or even that she worked magic he finds abhorrent, but that she forced him to be part of the harm she inflicted on herself. And while he doesn't know the specifics of the emotional blackmail she employed when Coreen balked, he has more than enough clues -- including the babble at the top of this scene -- to figure out she wasn't exactly on board with the whole thing either.

~~

So there it is. The feedback on this one has definitely been quality vs. quantity! I've actually been surprised as many people have responded to it as have, since I'm fully aware that it's of "niche" appeal, and not even a shippy niche. What did surprise me is how heartfelt some of the feedback has been. I didn't really expect people to find it as moving as they have, and continue to be really blown away by what they've been kind enough to say.