Mostly, when he remembers those weeks in hospital, he remembers the hollowness in his chest, how every night Darius came to haunt him in his dreams, and how he wondered, in the long periods when he was alone, what it was that had gone wrong between them, or if there was anything he could have done to change it.

Selfish, maybe, to want to keep Darius in his life when Darius so clearly did not want to be kept, but he loved him. He loved him. What was so terrible in having loved him?

And when he whispered that to Sorelli, on one of her visits, she stroked back her hair, and squeezed his fingers, and couldn't find an answer for him.

Though he was so often alone, in those weeks, he did not want for visitors. He had Sorelli, every day, and she made it known to him that when he was well again he would not be going home to his own house but coming to stay with her for a little while, so she could keep an eye on him.

He thought it best not to argue with her. And in truth, he did not really want to go back to his own house in Malahide. It was too full of Darius, too full of memories, too full of the fact that he had been happy, had been so very happy, and that was over now. So he agreed without protest, and it was only afterwards that he realised his lack of protest probably worried her.

(Christine, one night, sitting at his side, her face pale in the dim light, and he had to ask, or else it would keep twisting in his head. "You knew, didn't you, that he'd leave?" Not a question, not truly. Of course she had known. She always knew everything. And she swallowed, and brushed her thumb over his fingers, and her voice was very low. "I hoped, maybe, you would be happier not knowing.")

Noël came to see him, as often as he could, but he was busy with running in the Seanad elections, had secured enough nominations, and Raoul regretted that he didn't have the energy to campaign for him this time, and likely wouldn't for a while after he was released. He was just so tired, and the antibiotics were making him more so, and the thought of anything that required much in the way of thinking made him want to close his eyes and sleep until the world stopped looking for him.

Noël patted his hand, and told him just to worry about himself.

Several of his students came to visit, the ones he was helping with their PhDs, and he made arrangements for someone else to look after them, just until he had his head in order again.

They didn't know, of course, that Darius had broken his heart, but they told him they looked forward to him being well again.

(It was afterwards that he let himself cry.)

He read the Yeats book three times, those words this most gallant gentleman ones that he heard echoed in Jack's voice in his head every time he saw them, and Sorelli brought him Markievicz, and Eva Gore-Booth. Light things, that he wouldn't have to focus too much on.

"Any requests for when you're out?"

He thought of Jack, and that question of if Casement had been like them, and nodded.

"I could be wrong, so check the reference, but didn't Singleton-Gates publish Casement's black diaries?"

It just felt like time.

Time.

Time.

Darius' words, not his. It just felt like time.

Time to end it, everything they were and everything they had been.

Always him left to survive, always him left to carry on. What is it about time that it seems to dictate that it should always be him?

(Time that casts Christine back, and if it had not been for time and its vagaries then he would never have known her and his life would be so much the lesser for it, the lesser for not having her and her smile and her soft way of admonishing him and reminding him that there is more than this, more than how he feels and what's in his bones. And maybe it's selfish of him to have wanted Darius to stay, but if it was time that dictated that Darius had to leave, how could he ever have done anything about that?)

Sometimes, he has really cursed Philippe for having died. Not that he could have known, not that he could have prevented it. But if Philippe had not gone out on the water that day—

And as he lay in hospital, after Darius, he ached just to see his brother, just to ask him if he had been happy.

The thirty-fourth anniversary of the day that Philippe was murdered, when he was released from the hospital. And all he wanted was to get to Sorelli's house and sleep and not have to think, but he would not forgive himself if he did not visit Philippe.

A damp, drizzly day, and Sorelli looked like she was going to refuse to take him to Glasnevin, that firmness in her jaw, until she nodded, and swallowed.

"I'll stop first for flowers."

(They picked their way through the graveyard, and when they got to the stone carrying Philippe's name, his knees felt like they would buckle, the old grief hitting him, changed, new and old at once and Darius in his memory, and as he drew in a shaking breath, Sorelli wrapped her arm around him, and held him, and they stood there like that, silent, for a long time.)

Christine came, that night.

He was already settled into the bed that would be his for as long as he wanted it to be, and he heard her in the kitchen, the soft murmur of her voice with Sorelli's. Warmth spread through his chest, to think of them both out there, so happy with each other, so quiet, and he closed his eyes, and decided it would be a good time to try to sleep, while that warm feeling was still deep within him.

The door creaked open, and his eyelids fluttered, and opened, and he saw Christine slip in, carrying two mugs of tea.

She set one down for him, on the bedside locker, and settled on the edge of the bed. He shifted, slowly, carefully not to jar the still-healing wound from where they'd taken out his spleen, and managed to sit up, and she fixed a pillow behind his back, and pressed the tea into his hand.

She looked as if she might ask him something, but there was a question that had been rattling around in his head for weeks, and if he didn't ask it now, then he never might.

"Do you love someone in your own time?"

The words were low, his voice just a little gravelly, and he cleared his throat, and sipped his tea, and watched her. Something flickered across her face, something unreadable, but then she smiled and nodded.

"Does Sorelli know?"

Christine sipped her own tea, and nodded. "She does, and she's very happy for us."
"And does she—does this other person—"

"Erik." She smiled to say the name, and his throat tightened to see it, but he managed to smile back at her.

"Does Erik know about Sorelli?"

She nodded again, and her voice was softer than he had ever heard it. "He does, and he's happy. Happy that I'm not alone, when I come back here."

I'm happy too, Raoul thinks, that you're not alone when you go to your own time. But he didn't say that. He just leaned back against his pillow, and swallowed. "Tell me about him, will you?"

A smile spread across her face, and she nodded, and told him.