What a bloody farce.

Matthew had come, at Lucien's request, collected Sergeant Hannam and driven him back to the station, rung his superior officer as protocol dictated he must, tried and failed to get any sort of an explanation out of the man. A soldier like Hannam would have been trained to withstand torture; a few questions from a country policeman didn't faze him, not in the least. He remained, to the very end, cool, calm, and utterly unhelpful. So, too, did Derek, Derek who sat in that chair next to Lucien and feigned regret over Sergeant Hannam's actions, even as he neatly pulled rank to take the man away from them. Hannam had almost certainly been acting on Derek's orders, and Derek would make sure that the man never had to be held account for the murder of Bert Prentiss, for the theft of the body from the morgue, for damn near killing Lucien himself. It had all been neatly done; too neatly, Lucien thought, and Derek was a bit too smug about the whole thing, and there wasn't a damn thing Lucien could do to stop it. He could not bring those men back to life, and he could not hope to win the battle before him. An appeal to Derek's conscience, on the basis of morality and common decency, would not sway him. Lucien's old friend had become a stranger to him.

A stranger he did not understand, but a stranger he could perhaps rattle, and so as Derek made to go Lucien and Nemea waylaid him by the door. Lilith was nowhere to be found, and that troubled Lucien, a very great deal.

"You know there's one thing I don't understand," Lucien told him in a soft voice.

"Just one?" Derek responded dryly. Perhaps he meant it only as a commentary on the bizarre twists and turns that had led them to this point, but it felt like mockery, to Lucien. As if there were a good many things Derek knew that Lucien didn't, and his old friend was lording that over him, somehow.

"We searched Hannam thoroughly, at my home and then again here at the station," Lucien said slowly, trying not to rise to the bait. "We found no sign of his daemon."

"We live in remarkable times, Lucien," Derek said. It was very late, and the station was empty save for Matthew and Athena, still seated at his desk. The stillness and the quiet all around them, the weight of the dark deeds they had uncovered, the heavy blanket of night all seemed to muffle any sound, and they were both of them hardly speaking above a whisper. "There are no limits to what's possible, now."

Dread skipped and skidded across Lucien's skin, a stone skimmed across a lake, disturbing the murky depths below.

"Do you mean to tell me-"

"I don't mean to tell you anything," Derek cut him off. "But if you found no daemon, perhaps that is because there was none to be found. Good night, Lucien. May our next meeting be under happier circumstances."

There was none to be found.

Good god.

Could it be? Lucien wondered as he watched Derek depart into shadows. Had they really found a way to separate man and daemon? And if they had, what did that mean? The fact that this discovery had not been made public, that it had apparently been made by the army and they were guarding the truth closely, alarmed him more than he could say. No good can come from this, he thought. Where would he be, without Nemea? She had quite literally saved his life, more than once. She had been his only comfort when there had been no comfort to be found. She counseled him, and he was better for having received her wisdom. If she were taken from him…

I might well go mad, he thought.

"Let's go home, Lucien," she said to him softly, as if she had heard his very thoughts, and he reached for her then, ran his hand gently over her head and tried to take comfort from the nearness of her.

There was nothing more to be done at the station that night, and so he bid Matthew good night, and followed Nemea out the door, into the darkness.


Lucien breathed a little easier, stepping through the door at home. The world beyond those walls was strange and terrible and changing by the minute, but his house was warm, and quiet, and there was a light on in the kitchen. He followed the siren song of that soft glow, and found Jean sitting at the table with a cup of tea in front of her, and Halcyon resting in her lap. She still wore her smart skirt and her starched white blouse, but she'd washed the makeup from her face and let the pins out of her hair and wrapped herself in a soft cardigan, and altogether she looked lovely. Exhausted, perhaps, weary and troubled as Lucien was himself, but lovely. She looked...she looked like home.

"Is there enough for two?" he asked her quietly, and as he spoke she lifted her chin, offered him a smile that was brief, but radiant.

"Of course," she answered him. "I'll just-"

"No, don't trouble yourself," he said, waving her off. "You look quite comfortable there."

And she did, and he did not wish to disturb her, or Halcyon, and so he fetched down a teacup from the cabinet, and poured a measure for himself from the little pot Jean had brought to the table with her. Funny, that. A month before he would have been reaching for the whiskey bottle, but tonight he wanted only this. Only tea, and Jean.

"You know," he said as he settled himself down in his usual chair at the head of the table, as Nemea dropped to her haunches beside him. "I owe you my life, Jean. Thank you."

"I don't think I've ever been so scared in all my life," Jean confessed in a small voice. He supposed that was probably true, because he could recall all too clearly the way Jean's hands had trembled, pointing that pistol at Hannam. But she had done it, just the same; she had been afraid, but she had also been so brilliantly, wonderfully brave, and he was bursting with pride on her behalf, and his own, if he were being honest, for this remarkable woman had chosen not only to stay by his side, but to risk her own life for his. He wasn't certain he deserved her care, but he was grateful for it, remained in awe of it, and likely always would.

"Will he go to prison?" she asked him then, and some of the peace Lucien had found just looking at her face slipped away from him, then, as his thoughts returned to the terrible events of the day.

"I doubt it," Lucien told her darkly. "The army has taken custody of him. Perhaps they'll make an example of him, but more likely he was acting on orders, and he'll just get a slap on the wrist. We'll not see him again."

"I certainly hope not."

As they spoke Nemea shifted closer to the table until she could rest her great head upon it; if Lucien didn't know better he would have sworn that Nemea was eyeing the plate of biscuits near Jean's elbow, but Nemea had no need to eat. A lioness needed her supper; a daemon was another matter. Lucien cocked his head to the side, and tried to follow the line of her eyes, and found that she must have been looking, not at the biscuits, but at Halcyon. Halcyon who noticed her attention, and straightened himself up, flapped his little wings and took to the air, half hopping, half flying until he was settled on the table just in front of her.

The kitchen was as still and quiet as the station had been, and Lucien clearly heard Jean's little gasp. He glanced up at her, quickly, and found her gaze locked on the kingfisher and the lioness, her expression troubled, and so he looked at them, too, just in time to see Halcyon bow his little head and nuzzle at Nemea's cheek before settling down beside her, tucking his legs up underneath him and wrapping his wings round himself, his feather's gently brushing Nemea's fur.

"They get on quite well, don't they?" Lucien asked her quietly, and Jean's bright eyes flashed up to his face. It was difficult to tell, but for a moment he fancied he could see her blush.

"He's always been...enthusiastic," Jean told him slowly. "But he's never been quite like this. He's never touched another daemon, not since...not since Calliope."

"Christopher's daemon?" Lucien prodded her gently.

The ghost of Christopher Beazley had been hovering in the back of Lucien's mind all night. It was his pistol Jean had used to rescue Lucien, his name she had used to cow Sergeant Hannam, his sacrifice that had shamed the man into relenting. His medals, on the jacket in Jean's bedroom upstairs, his ring still on her finger. A soldier, as Lucien had been a soldier. Dead, now, like so many of Lucien's friends. Like Mei Lin, perhaps.

"She was a herding dog," Jean told him softly. "Like my father's."

There were as many stereotypes and cliches and old wives' tales about daemons as there were daemons in the world, but dogs were almost universally regarded as a fine sort of daemon. A dog meant loyalty, and kindness, and family, that was what people told themselves. A dog was honest, earnest. Had her Christopher been such a man? Had he been good? Did Jean miss Calliope, as she missed her husband? Had Halcyon been grieving, even as Jean had, all these years, for the loss of his own companion? And what was Lucien to make of this strange affection between Halcyon and Nemea?

"Nemea never got on well with my wife's daemon," he confessed. "He was a macaque, a sort of a monkey. His name was Yuan. He was...prickly. But Hou Yi, my daughter's daemon...Nemea loved him. I used to find them just like this," he said, gesturing towards their daemons, "resting together. Of course, Li was very small, the last time I saw her. I don't know what Hou Yi turned out to be, in the end. I don't know if he ever got the chance…"

A lump formed in the back of Lucien's throat. He hadn't meant to turn maudlin on her; their evening had been trying enough as it was, first with their chat in her bedroom, and then breaking into the Royal Cross, and then the confrontation with Hannam, and then bloody Derek. Surely they had been through enough for one night, but his sorrow was a terrible, choking weed that could not be held at bay for long, and it came for him, now, wound its way through his chest and up his windpipe, choking the life from him. He closed his eyes against it, but opened them again almost at once, for as he tried to hold back the sudden rush of his grief Jean reached for him, and placed her hand gently on top of his.

"I'm sure he did, Lucien," she said softly. "And I am sure that you would be proud of them, no matter what they have become."

It was foolish, really; Jean knew no more about his family's fate than Lucien did himself, could not say with any certainty what had become of his wife, his child, of Yuan and Hou Yi, but still her quiet words reassured him. There was such faith in her, so steady and so unwavering, and it called to something small and tender inside him. It had been such a very long time since Lucien had faith in anything at all. But Jean, Jean had faith enough for two, and he would gladly put his trust in her.

"Thank you, Jean," he said, and meant it truly.