On the day that it was twenty years since Sorelli died (twenty years since Christine was born), Christine came with her violin. He gave her a hundred-year-old book of pressed flowers and poetry that he'd tracked down and bought for her, and there were tears in her eyes as she brushed her fingers over it. Then they lit candles, and drank cocoa that she made and added chartreuse to, and that was the evening that they sat down and watched the news coverage about Sorelli's death.

"They've digitized it as something culturally significant," she whispered, and though his throat was aching he smiled.

Culturally significant. She was that, and so much more.

They could never know the half of it.

Afterwards, they watched one of her films, from 1952. And he told Christine that though it was released that year, it had been filmed the year before.

"Mostly she was working on directing a play. She didn't have time to appear in a film." That was what he told Christine, and he left the bit out that it was Sorelli's choice to cancel her work that year, because she wanted to be close to him in Newcastle, in case he needed her. He wanted to tell her about it, about his tuberculosis, but the words wouldn't come and the answer he gave seemed good enough.

"You should write a book about her." Christine's voice was soft. "Those are things no one else would ever know."

He smiled, slightly, and squeezed her hand. "I'd have to leave out too much."

(She will write the book about Sorelli. And it will be full of his memories, things he wrote after Sorelli's death and never did anything with, and things that she will know from having gone into the past, and she will say that he was planning to write it, and had gathered all this research together, and it will be acclaimed for its accuracy. And he knows this, because she told him, her future self come back, and she used his typewriter to type notes for it, so that if anyone thought to check, then she could present them as a source.)

(He wrote out a good deal of stuff for her to include, for the sake of authenticity.)

(As a historian he should disapprove of such manufactured sources. But the information in them was all accurate. And when Christine was not supposed to exist in the past, they had to find some way to record the things she knew, so that the world might believe them.)

The hardest thing was the melancholy in her eyes every time Alex returned to his own time.

A blessing that she could still have her father in some way though he was dead. But every time he had to return, she came to him and lay on his couch by the fire, and didn't speak, just played her violin, softly, slowly. Sometimes she sketched, instead, but there was always that haunting sadness in her face, and how it pained him that he could not take it away, that he could do nothing except make her tea, and drape a blanket over her when she fell asleep, and have tissues ready, in case she needed to cry.

The time that it happened that he was in hospital when Alex came and went again, she slipped in to see him though it was past visiting hours. He was in a private room, and it was quiet (a chest infection this time, and he was on oxygen with it, but the antibiotics and the painkillers were making him tired). She came and sat beside him, and threaded their fingers together, and he was too tired to keep his eyes open, but her touch was gentle, brushing his hair back from his face.

Her head was heavy as she lay it on his shoulder, and he felt her tears a warm dampness against his neck.

"Every time he goes it's like losing him again," she murmured, her voice half-muffled, and he squeezed her fingers, and wished he could take her in his arms.

"I know," he whispered. "I know."

Darius came to him that night in his dreams, and they walked hand-in-hand along the beach at Brittas Bay. The water cast golden with the sunset, light warm on their skin, and Darius' hand cupped the back of his neck, Darius' lips soft pressed to his, and they lay down on the sand and held each other, just held each other.

He woke with the tears damp on his cheeks, and he was too tired to wipe them away.

The day he turned ninety, Anea insisted they celebrate it. Celebrating it meant a dinner that she made for the three of them, and a cake big enough to fit ninety small little birthday candles (where she found ninety little birthday candles he had no idea) and when he attempted to count them he got up to twenty-three before Christine swatted his hand away and told him she'd already counted them.

A frightening sight, ninety small birthday candles stuck into a cake. Surely it was some sort of a fire hazard.

(Was he really that old?)

Afterwards, she presented him with a leather-bound book of photographs. Of him, and of Philippe, and of Sorelli, and among them was the one Jack had taken of him in the sanatorium, by the window with his hair mussed, that first platinotype, but instead of all these photos being in black and white like they really were, like he knew they were because he'd looked at some of them only that morning, they were all in colour, Philippe's eyes bright blue just like they really had been, Sorelli's hair that deep dark brown so dark it was almost black, the trees outside the window he was framed against just as green as they really had been in Newcastle.

And he looked at them, and brushed his trembling fingers over them, but he couldn't understand, couldn't fathom how they were in colour, and he looked up at her through the tears in his eyes, and found her smiling softly.

"When you were in hospital," she whispered, "I borrowed them, and scanned them into the computer. And there's things you can get, software, that lets you find the colours things would have been, and make them that colour, as if the photo had always been that way."

He swallowed around the tightness in his throat, and set the book aside, and drew her to him, and hugged her.

"Thank you," he whispered in her ear, and it wasn't enough, not hardly enough to say for what she had done, but they were the only words he could find. "Thank you."

He treasures that book deeply, takes it out every now and then to look at it, handling it as gently as if it were a baby, always afraid he might damage it somehow, accidentally.

That she went to such trouble on his account—

It's more, even now, than he can try to put words around.

She's done several sketches for him, too, through the years, and he keeps each of them safe. Some of them she has not done yet, in this time, the work of her future self, but his favourite is one she gave him only three weeks ago, of the three of them in 1946, he and Sorelli sitting under a tree, their legs stretched before them, Sorelli wearing trousers because she'd decided it was her right, and he remembers that day because he'd wondered aloud if he should put on a skirt, and Sorelli had told him it would suit his legs to show them off more, and they were both laughing over it when Christine appeared. In the sketch, she is sprawled on the ground with a book to shade her face from the sun, and he remembers that the book was a collection of Shelley.

A beautiful rendering, of a perfect afternoon.

On the day that Sorelli would have been a hundred, Christine was off somewhere in the past. He hoped, as ever, that she was with her, and that they were happy.

For his own part, he spent it mostly in his armchair. RTÉ put on the documentary they'd made about her after she died, and he cringed to see himself from more than twenty-two years earlier talking about her, but he could think of no better way to pay tribute to her than to sit down and watch it.

Then they followed it with the old film where she'd played Countess Markievicz, and he grinned to see her there on the screen at her best, in the scenes of the Rising, at the Royal College of Surgeons with her hat and her pistols threatening to shoot any man who defied her.

She'd told him, after, that it was one of her favourite scenes she'd ever performed, and to see it again, and know how much she'd enjoyed it, made it all the better.

They couldn't have chosen a better film to honour her with.

He was proud of Christine when she graduated with top marks from her undergrad, and prouder still that she was on course to do the same from her Masters, and he told her as much on the day that she turned twenty-two.

The day after, she stayed in Maynooth late, and detoured out to Malahide to see him before she went home.

"I've got two pieces of good news," she said, her eyes bright and cheeks flushed as she set a bottle of champagne down on the table.

"Are you going to tell me or do I have to guess?" he asked as he searched in the drawer for a cloth to give her a better grip, and she grinned as he handed it over.

"You can guess if you want but I'll tell you as soon as I have this open."

"In that case I think I'll wait." He found two glasses and rinsed them and set them on the table, and with a pop the champagne opened. "Don't want to make a fool of myself." Her grin widened as she filled the glasses, and he settled into the chair to wait for her to be ready.

"A toast," she said, passing his glass to him and holding hers up. "To Trinity and my PhD!"

The warmth that spread through him made his heart swell and he grinned across the table at her. "Fantastic!" They drank to her PhD, and she filled their glasses again.

"And a second toast," and her blush deepened just enough to make him wonder if he knew what was coming. "A second toast to the Roost, and the boy I just met there playing the piano."

He raised an eyebrow at her, wondering if his suspicion was correct. "Do you think that he—"

She nodded so intensely she almost spilled her champagne. "I've already met him in the future."

The future? She hadn't told him that, and he thought, then, that he already knew the answer to his next question, but he asked it anyway. "What's his name?"

And her eyes sparkled. "Erik."

Erik.

She'd finally met Erik.

He'd hoped to live long enough to meet him. He hadn't thought it would come so quick.

"I'm delighted for you," he said, and kissed her cheek. "On both counts."

She hugged him tight. "I know you are."

"I can't wait to introduce you two," she said, two weeks later, and he smiled to himself behind his newspaper. "He plays the piano and the violin and he's a computer scientist as well. You'll love him."

He set his paper down and grinned at her. "I'm sure I will."

It was two days later that he heard the thud upstairs and knew she'd arrived back from sometime. He got up and put the kettle boiling, and was ready to ask her where she'd been, when she stumbled into the kitchen, and he knew something had happened, knew she'd been somewhere terrible, when he saw how pale she was, when he saw her face still splotchy from tears.

"When—" Before he could finish the question, there were fresh tears trickling from her eyes, and he pulled her into his arms to ease her trembling. "When were—"

"I was with Philippe when he died." Her voice breathless, a gasp. "I was there as they pulled him from the water and I tried to stop the bleeding but I couldn't, Raoul, I swear I tried but I couldn't and he died, and he died and I was holding him—" a rush of words and she choked on a sob and the tears were burning in his own eyes, she was there when Philippe died, she was there when he died, she was there she was there, she was there… And he gasped against the pain lancing through his chest, and held on tight.

(When he could breathe again, he swallowed and kissed her hair and whispered, "I wondered if you might have been," and she was still trembling as he reached into the cabinet and took out the bottle of whiskey. The mugs were already on the table from the tea he never made, and he poured a measure into each of them, and passed hers over to her.)

("A toast," he whispered, "to Philippe," and they each knocked back their shot. It burned as he swallowed, made his eyes water again, and he poured another. "A toast to Sorelli," and they clinked their glasses again, and he gasped this time as he swallowed it, and Christine's hands were still shaking but she had been there, she had been there, how—why did she have to be there? "And a toast to you," he whispered, "that there was someone he knew at his side." And fresh tears trickled from her eyes as he poured it.)

(Philippe had known her, he knows, has always known, to some extent. Did he know she was there that day? Was he aware of it in some way? And was it a comfort to him if he did, to be in the arms of someone he'd cared about?)

(Questions with no answers, questions begetting more questions, and he does his best not to think about them, his best not to wonder, but they come again anyway, and there is no not-wondering. There is only knowing what he knows, and trying to figure out the rest.)