She's been going more often, since that night. Since she found Sorelli and made things up and they redefined their relationship into something more, something better than how it had been. He misses her more than he would have in the past, with his own time getting short, but he can't begrudge her her time out of time, can't begrudge her her time with Sorelli, or her time with him, the younger him of all those years ago for whom she was a marvel and an amazement.

(She still is a marvel, and he will always consider her so.)

So she goes into the past and he's happy for her, and happy when she comes back happy. And when she settles onto her favourite part of the couch, and passes him a mug of hot tea, and tells him all about where she's been and what she's seen, he decides that he doesn't miss her very much when she's gone, because the missing of her is nothing compared to the delight of her telling him of her adventures.

He wrote his last proper historical article in the summer of 2016. It was coming up to the centenary of Casement's execution, and it was a detailed analysis of the literature published on his diaries, dating back to the earliest of the forgery theories. He'd been working on it quietly for months, re-reading old books and notes and new pieces, and he'd kept the drafting of it secret from Christine but he hadn't wanted her to think he might wear himself out, never mind he could write about Casement in his sleep. But when it was all written up, she was the one he got to type it for him.

He can work these computers well enough, but it would take him an age to type it.

"I can't believe you wrote all this and didn't tell me," she muttered as she worked at it, and he snorted, crossing out another couple of sentences in the printed draft of her thesis.

"I didn't want you to try and talk me out of it. Now, I think if you re-word this section, and link it to this bit here…"

(It was a while later that he looked up and found her smiling at him, something distant in her eyes. "What is it?" he asked, wondering if she wanted him to tweak something in the article, but she shook her head, her voice soft. "Nothing, just nothing.")

In September he got Anea to drive him down to visit Sorelli.

He suspected it would be the last time he would be up to the journey, and he wanted to make it while he still could. She picked up the flowers for him before they left (tulips and irises, and some roses from his own garden), and he dozed in the car a while on the way, but she woke him ten minutes before they arrived at the graveyard, and when they stopped in the car park, she poured him tea out of a flask.

It was enough to revive him, and though he was just as stiff as he'd feared he would be when he got out of the car, he wasn't as tired.

He stood for a long few minutes leaning against the car door, and then with his cane in one hand, and Anea on the other, he decided it was time to find Sorelli's grave.

They made halting progress, his old bones not up to long car journeys anymore, though it could hardly be classed as that long of a journey, not much more than an hour. But Anea kept him steady as they walked, her voice gave him something to focus on that wasn't his old pains, and by the time they made it to the quiet corner where Sorelli was buried, he'd freed up enough to be able stand up straight, or as straight as he could manage any day.

"Long time no see," he said, softly, smiling to himself as he looked down at that familiar name and those dates. Anea set the flowers down, and stepped back for to give him privacy, but there was nothing, really, left for him to say, not after so many years.

(Twenty-four years, and almost half another one again.)

"Christine is wonderful but of course you know that," he murmured, "and her Erik is the best man anyone could wish for. He makes her happy, and she does the same for him, and that's all any of us could wish for."

("I'll be along now before too long, so don't cause too much trouble in my absence.")

He was so tired that evening, after the journey. So tired, and he was dozing in his armchair when Christine came to see him.

She shook him awake, and told him to go to bed, that it was ready for him, and she'd bring him tea in a few minutes. And normally he'd argue with her, that he was not all that tired, just resting his eyes, but he was too tired even for that, so he nodded, and she helped him to his feet, and sent him on his way.

He'd changed his clothes, and settled under the covers, the pillows at his back, when she arrived with the tray, a mug of tea for each of them.

There was something he'd been meaning to ask her, something he'd been wondering over for a while. (Wondering over for forty-three years, really, in truth.) And when she settled on the bed beside him, her back against the headboard and shoulder pressed to his, he decided the time had come to ask her.

"There's a song you sang for me once," he whispered, "your future self. It was—it was 1973, and it didn't exist yet, but you sang it anyway. I'd like to hear it if it—if it exists now."

She eased her phone out of her pocket, pressed her thumb to the button and the screen opened. "How does it go, do you remember?"

He summoned the words to him across all the years, and hummed. "I remember." And he sang it for her, what he remembered ("it's handsome I am, a red-blooded man, I stand for what's right oh as oft as I can...")

He'd dozed again, by the time she found it, but she tapped his hand, and he stirred awake. "I've found it, I think," she whispered, and he swallowed.

"Play it."

And that was it, the same song, all these years later, made real.

He closed his eyes, and let the music wash over him.

She played the song for him several times, after that.

He could never show Christine most of his old photo albums, because there were too many photos of her older self in them and he didn't want to spoil anything on her. So he only ever showed her a few, but Erik is different. With Erik he can share them, can let him glimpse Christine as she will become, as he is bound to meet her sometime, when she comes back.

Just because he, Raoul, will be gone, it does not mean she won't come back to these times, these earlier years of her life. He knows she will, knows she will meet this younger Erik again when she is that future self, so he doesn't mind showing Erik the albums.

That first evening they sat down with them, Christine off somewhere in time, he watched Erik looking at these old photos of Sorelli, how he brushed them with his fingertips, and knew that he was thinking that this was the woman Christine loves, knew he was aching to be able to meet her. It was in that tremor in his hands, and if Raoul could make it so they could meet, he would, without hesitation.

Sorelli would like Erik. Like that he's fiery in his own way and cares about Christine and makes wonderful music and can do these things with computers that they never would have dreamt of. These computers were still new, when Sorelli was alive. They would never have imagined them becoming so ubiquitous.

But Sorelli would have liked Erik, and his kindness, and his cleverness, and that they could never meet is a tragedy of time.

The photographs will have to do.

He watched Erik brush that old photo of Sorelli and Philippe, 31 May 1938, and knew, then, that he would take out the albums with Christine too.

(The tears shone in Erik's eyes looking at her in these photos, and Raoul squeezed his hand, and decided to make tea.)

(He has not told Erik, but the albums will be his, soon enough.)

There is a whole collection of graves he would visit again if he could, for one last time. Jack in Clare, Harry and Sheila in Belfast, Noël and Phyllis in Connemara. The dune where they threw Darius' ashes from in Brittas. All these places he would make one last trip to, if he could. A tour of the people he misses most.

Not to be, now. But he lit a candle for each of them on the eve of All Souls' Day, and it will have to be enough, that they have been in his heart and in his mind all along, and he has never once forgotten them.

Candles for them on the eve of All Souls' Day, and candles for them now again, one week before he is due to die.

Just one week.

It was All Souls' Day when Erik asked him about Sorelli. He was tired, and reflective, but there was a resolve in Erik's face and Raoul knew he was building himself up to something, but he wasn't sure what.

He just hoped it wasn't anything serious.

When Erik sipped his tea, and set it down, and met his gaze, he knew the time had come.

"Tell me what Sorelli was like."

Sorelli.

If ever there was a time to speak of Sorelli, it was then.

Maybe he should have told Erik of Sorelli, truly told him, long before then. But maybe it was that he had to wait until Erik made the first move, and he has not regretted waiting, not regretted Erik finding out on his own terms.

So he told him of her, and how she was the best and dearest person in the world, how she was beautiful and clever and fierce, and gentle too, and how she had loved Philippe and grieved him, and how she had loved Christine so very much.

So many stories he could tell him, of Sorelli helping him sort Philippe's letters, of Sorelli going to London to look at the Casement stuff for him, of how she always kept a pencil behind her ear when she was studying a new script and how there was always a red pen in her pocket, how she would climb trees to pick the juiciest plums, and how she liked to sit out at night to watch the stars.

So many things he could tell Erik, and did, but there would never be time to tell him it all.

It was then that he knew he would have to tell them of Jack. Tell them of Jack, even if he could tell them of no one else.

He had to know they understood at least some of how it had been.

And Jack had had no one to immortalize his name, except what he and Harry had tried to do. Jack had no one else to remember him, except him, everyone else dead, and gone. And he could not have Jack forgotten, after his day, could not let all that beauty be lost to the world.

He told Christine, first, told her, and his voice cracked with the things he had left unspoken for sixty-four years, cracked with the things he had never been able to find words for, cracked with the weight of all that had happened, and the tears came, though he tried to keep them at bay, and she held his hands as he told her, her own eyes damp.

"Oh, Raoul," she whispered, "oh, Raoul."

("I was always afraid I would forget him." "But you never have and that's what matters." "I'm the last one left who knew him, and I don't want—I don't want him forgotten. He was—he was so much. So much life, so much—and that he died—it's never seemed right, that he should die and I should live." "We have no control over these things, you know that." "I know, I do, but still." "And I'll meet him, won't I? Some day?" "You will, several times. And you'll come to see me after—After." "Well then. I'll make sure he's never forgotten. I promise." Her lips soft brushing his forehead. "I promise.")

The tears came again as he told Erik, and Erik hugged him, and didn't say a word, and that was enough, that was as much as a hundred words.

He has written his very last piece. It is to be published a month after he dies, on the twenty-fifth anniversary of Sorelli's death. He has it finished, and edited, and has left instructions for the publishing of it, and that is all he can do.

And it is of Sorelli, and it is of Philippe, and Noël, and how the three of them were linked by that TB ward in Dr Steevens' Hospital in 1938. Mostly it is of Sorelli, and her kindness, and how that TB ward was the turning point, and the girl she went into it as changed into the woman she left it as, grew into the Sorelli who was his dearest friend for more than fifty years.

A quiet, last tribute to them all. All that they were, and all that they might have been.

He dreams that night of a dance he was never at, a scene he never saw. Dreams of Sorelli in Philippe's arms, the music winding gentle and low. Dreams of them in the glow of the candlelight, both of them young, both of them whole, Philippe's smile soft and slow, his eyes shining, Sorelli laughing and her hair so dark, her hand pale cupping Philippe's shoulder, stark against his black jacket. A lock of golden hair falling into Philippe's eyes as he looks up from her and meets his gaze, and grins.

The swelling ache in his chest, the music fading. And when he opens his eyes to the grey morning light, he knows it won't be long, now.

Won't be long.

And behind his eyes, he sees them still dancing.