The Permanent Efficacy of Grace

11.

Since he can't seem to resist talking to her, Rook is expecting a call from John at any time as she cruises through the valley, sticking mostly to backroads and smaller paths, but the truck radio stays sullenly, curiously silent. She doesn't see increased patrols, either, no numbers out of the ordinary, just the usual Peggy trucks prowling the streets, easy enough to avoid.

Jacob hasn't told him I've left, she realizes, and although it's stupid—idiotic, even—she feels her heart jump just a bit. "Shut up," she mutters to herself, but it's hard not to see it as Jacob picking her over his family, mostly because that's what she wants it to be so badly. "Don't be an idiot," she tells herself out loud. "He just wants to bring you back himself."

If that's the case, comes a sneaky, treacherous thought, then why didn't he have you shot down before you even left the mountains?

She doesn't have a good answer for that. She chooses to focus on her driving. She loops south first, finding—after some trial and error—the cabin where she and Jacob had spent that night a month ago, and she's pleased to find the jars of moonshine there, still whole and undisturbed. She loads up the crates, then heads over to the Henbane region.

She hasn't been to Boshaw Manor in about three weeks, but any worries she might have about Sharky being smoked out of his home in the meantime are doused when she steps from the truck to hear the strains of KC and the Sunshine Band floating out of the open windows, along with the distinct smell of weed. She grins, hefts a case of moonshine to her shoulder, and hikes up the stairs to the trailer.

Her knock goes unanswered, so she lets herself in. She's able to unload the crate of moonshine onto his kitchen counter without him noticing her, and then she hops up to sit on the counter alongside it and watch him—he's dancing along to the music with his back to the door, a groovy little dad-shuffle, his fists down at his waist. She watches him for a few seconds, long enough to determine that he's almost definitely not going to notice her anytime soon, then pops both pointer fingers under her tongue and blasts out a bona fide Tex Avery wolf whistle.

It has the desired effect of making Sharky jump out of his skin, and he whirls, groping for the flamethrower on the table to his side, but he drops his hands almost immediately as he registers her grinning face. It's totally silent between them for a second, Sharky not even breathing, then he blurts out, "Holy shitballs, Dep."

"Looks like you've seen a ghost," she teases.

"I'm not so sure I haven't," he says, clomping towards her, and she opens her arms for a hug—only to receive a sharp jab, his fingers digging into her ribs.

"Ow! Fucker!" She punches his arm hard enough to make him groan "Ow" in return and cradle his shoulder like she's dead-armed him (she thinks he's humoring her, there's no way she's punching as hard now as she did just a short few weeks ago, but she appreciates it).

"Well, I'm sorry, it's just, you know how things go out here! I spot you, I touch you, you turn into a bear or a moose or a fuckin wolf—"

She grins and launches herself off the counter, and before she can bear hug him, he bear hugs her, his goatee scratching against her cheek and his voice louder than ever in her ear as he goes on—"th'other day I saw Faith and when I threw a rock at her she turned into a damn turkey. That thing tried to disembowel me, I swear. I think she did it on purpose. Oh, shit!" His arms go slack; he jerks back so abruptly that she thinks he must have just remembered why he hasn't seen her lately, but he just grips her upper arms and frowns down at her and asks, "Am I hurtin' you? Last time I hugged you, you jumped like you got tagged by the flamethrower."

"Oh, shit," she echoes, wrestling the hem of her thermal shirt up to show him the still healing wounds on either side of her stomach. "Look! I got stabbed!"

"Jesus Christ, Dep," he exclaims, and whistles low and horrified. "That why you jumped back the way you did last time?"

"No, no," she assures him. "That was this." She points to the scabbed-over bullet graze wound on the opposite side of her belly.

"Why didn't you tell me?"

"I kinda did."

"You said it was an old wound acting up!"

"It was! I didn't realize it was gonna get infected, I didn't want to worry you."

"So that's why you disappeared for three weeks straight, huh? So I wouldn't worry?" There's a distinct edge to his voice. Rook peers a little more closely at his face, and realizes with a little shock that he is mad at her. It's not that he doesn't deserve to be, it's just that she's never seen it before, and given the dawning discomfort in his expression, he's about as thrilled with this new state of things as she is. They let go of each other, a little too fast, and Rook takes a step back.

She hesitates, trying to find the right words to apologize, and Sharky beats her to it. "Jesus," he says, and lifts his hat so he can run a hand through his short, bristly hair. "Sorry, Dep. Been a little tense since you went MIA, that's all."

The shame hits her like a punch to the solar plexus, and her shoulders relax—she hadn't realized that she'd hitched them defensively. She doesn't need to defend herself against Sharky, especially when she's in the wrong. "You don't have anything to say sorry for," she says. "I, on the other hand, have a laundry list."

"Aw, come on, Dep, you don't need to do that," grumbles Sharky, ducking his head enough that the bill of his hat severs eye contact (which, of course, only makes it easier for Rook to say what she needs to say).

"Yeah, I do, and I know it's not like us to… talk about stuff head-on, or whatever, but like, I fucked up one thing specifically. We don't have to talk about the rest if you don't want, but—I'm sorry for shutting you out. After, you know. After everyone found out about me and Jacob. I thought that…"

He meets her eye again, just barely from beneath his hat, but it's enough to make Rook's courage falter. She pauses, releases a controlled breath through her lips like lamaze breathing, then admits, "I told myself I was worried that you'd feel like you had to hang out with me even if you didn't want to, but in retrospect I think I was just punishing myself. And I think I knew you probably wouldn't let me get away with it if you knew, so. Ghosting. I'm sorry."

He's been looking antsier and antsier, but at her conclusion, he perks right up. "Hey, Rook, no skin off my ass, right? I mean, you're back now. Just, you know, don't pull that shit again and all that, yeah? What've you got there?"

She's never been more grateful for how easily distracted he is. She glances back at the crate she brought, then again at him, giving him the most fiendish, let's-fuck-shit-up grin she can summon, a grin she knows he loves. "Moonshine."

"Whaaaaaaaaaaaat." He moves past her, hauling the jars out one at a time. "For drinkin, or fuel?"

"Porque no los dos?" she asks, hauling herself back up onto the counter beside the crate as he unpacks it. "Do me a favor, though? Could you call Hurk and get him down here? I'm avoiding the radio. For obvious reasons."

Sharky removes the last mason jar, swings the crate off the counter, and looks at her, his brow furrowed slightly. For half a second, she thinks he sees right through her. Then, his eyes narrow; a pleased little smile lights his face. "You lookin' to party?"

"Victor Charlemagne Boshaw the Third, it's been a rough couple of weeks, and I am desperate to party."

He lets out a high pitched and unbelievably loud little redneck "yew!" and turned to go fumble through the assortment of clutter crowding his couch, looking for his radio. Rook slides off the counter again and goes to offer an assist, ignoring her sinking heart.

Hurk doesn't require any convincing, as older-brother-aloof as he can sometimes be about his cousin. All Sharky has to do is mention the moonshine and he's on board—"Oh, hell yep broseidon, the booze is runnin' low up here! How long do you reckon this fight is gonna last? These stashes are gonna run out eventually."

"Uh, maybe we can talk about that when you're down here? Don't want to give away intel, you know what I'm saying."

"Oh—" Hurk says, then drops his voice to a stage whisper that, coming from anyone else, would sound intensely sarcastic—"oh, yeah, good idea, man."

"Tell him if he wants beer he's gonna have to bring it," Rook whispers.

"Oh, yeah—" Sharky thumbs the radio. "Hey, yeah, speaking of that, if you want beer, you're gonna have to bring it, Hurky. We're dried out down here."

"Hell yeah," says Hurk, immediately forgetting to be quiet and with his usual exuberance, a smile audible in his voice. "You provide the hard liquor, I provide the sippin stuff, and between the two of us, we gonna have a party, man."

"See you in a few, man," Sharky says, and they both sign off.

Which leaves Rook in Sharky in a state she discovers they've never shared before today: awkward silence.

They sit side by side on the cleaned-off couch, a full cushion's width between them, and neither of them appears to have anything to say. Rook can usually ease tension (or at least make someone mad enough to talk) with a few jokes, but she's under a little stress, and besides, she's a little worried about saying the wrong thing.

So is Sharky, apparently, because the silence stretches out for a full minute, neither of them knowing how to venture forward, but either he's braver than she is, more chivalrous, or just more uncomfortable with the weirdness between them, because he finally says, "Sooooooooo…"

She waits, but he trails off. Oh, for god's sake. "So what?" she prods, folding her arms over her middle, and when he looks sideways at her she gives him a dare you look in return.

His eyebrows shoot up—fine, then—and with just a touch of defiance, he asks, "Soooo, how are things with Jake n' Bake?"

She grabs the pillow beside her and buries her face in it.

"Hey, you asked me to ask!" He sounds infinitely more cheerful now, much less this is my walking-to-the-gallows voice.

"I know," she groans into the pillow. "I don't want to talk about him."

Sharky doesn't seem to have any trouble translating. "Yeah, I don't want to talk about him, either," he admits after a moment. "But I want to talk about you."

She lowers the pillow, just down under her eyes, so she can see the abnormally serious look on his face. (She's getting a lot of that today, and isn't sure she likes it.) "Who was it that stabbed you, Dep?"

Okay. This, she can handle, because it's a hell of a story, even if she doesn't remember half of it. She places the pillow on her lap, smooths her hands over it, and says, "That was not Jacob, believe it or not. Ever heard of O'Hara's Haunted House?"

That's enough to break the ice and get them talking, and it seems like no time at all before she hears the rumble of an approaching ATV and somehow—impossibly—Hurk's high-pitched yell, rising above it, the words incomprehensible at his current distance, but his voice unmistakable.

She looks at Sharky and grins. His answering smile seems uncharacteristically reluctant, but he raises his hand and waves her away, go ahead.

Normally, she might stop, dig, get to the root of the problem, but her time is limited, and besides, she thinks she's already got a grasp on his concerns, and she thinks she can help him forget them, at least in the time they have.

But Hurk plays an integral role in those plans, so, with one more quick flash of a smile at Sharky, she bolts outside.

Hurk is pulling into the park circle as she lands outside. For whatever unholy reason, he's driving with one hand and steadying the 18-pack case of PBR he carries on his shoulder with the other. He spots her immediately, and she can see the shock hit his face, sees him mouthing a few choice words, before he abandons ship entirely, leaping off his 4-wheeler without bothering to slow it down much. Rook laughs in an equal mix of horror and delight as he manages to clear the machine, stumbles, tilts hard on his beer side, then, as the rogue four-wheeler hits an empty trailer with a tremendous crash, he miraculously regains his balance, still holding the case, and throws his free arm straight up into the air. "Dep!" he hails her with a crow.

"HURKIEEEEEEE," she yells back, and, seized by force of habit and entirely forgetting about her various and sundry healing wounds, she catapults herself at him. Fortunately, Hurk is soft for a person, and when she crashes into him, she's none the worse for wear other than an alarmed throb of pain from her stomach area, gone almost as soon as it comes.

Hurk bear-hugs her impressively hard, given that he's only got one arm to do it with, and his shouting nearly blows out her eardrums: "Ho my God you're alive! I told Sharky you were deader'n disco, and you know what he did? Took offense to my phrasing! Like I'm sorry I can't think of a more sensitive way to say it, you know? But I'm sittin' here all freaked out, worrying how we're supposed to even find your body to give you a funeral, and he's madder than disco being dead than he is about you!" Fortunately, the shouting trails off to a more indignant tone—Hurk Sr. would call it whining, but Rook never did have much time for Hurk Sr.'s opinion on anything—and he lets her go so he can look her over.

She steps obligingly back, and he looks at her from head to toe before releasing a whistle that turns into a "Shewwww-wee, look at you! Not even dismembered even a little bit. Well then what's going on that neither of us heard a peep out of you for going on three weeks now? That's not like you, Deputy. Wait a second—" his eyes narrow as he peers at her, but he doesn't move away—"are you brainwashed? Set to start killin' us any second now?"

Rook, grinning uncontrollably at this display of Hurkishness, shrugs her shoulders and says "Iunno" before wresting her shirt up again to show off her wounds. "I got stabbed!"

"Shut the front door."

"By a serial killer!"

"Holy God!"

"Who's dead now," Rook says, a touch of a frown crossing her face as she thinks about it—but she's not here to think about O'Hara, or Jacob, or anything from the past couple of weeks; she's here to hang out with her friends and ignore anything outside of their circle, just for the night.

Speaking of—Sharky jogs up, demands, "What the hell are you two doing out here? You want to call every Peggy within a five mile radius down on our heads?"

Rook and Hurk exchange a look, and she says, "Well it wouldn't be the worst thing in the world" at the same time he says, "Well, yeah, don't you? Sounds like a party to me."

Sharky seems to realize that he's inadvertently cast himself in the role of the responsible one, and holds up both hands as if to ward away the idea. "Whoa, now, if we're in a fighting mood, just let me grab my flamethrower. I just didn't get the impression that that was why the Dep was here, is all."

"Oh!" Rook says. "Right. Yeah, I'm just here to hang out. I found moonshine and Hurk's got the beer, and I was thinking we could do some Clutch Nixon runs before we start abusing alcohol, and set things on fire after. What do you say?"

Sharky has that look on his face again, that doubtful one that she's not used to, but before he can say anything—if he's even going to say anything—Hurk cuts across with a loud "Sounds good to me, amigo! Daddy's been real ornery lately. Wound up tighter than a bull's ass with them Peggies back at the FANG Center," he adds as he cuts between Sharky and Rook to head to the trailer.

Rook shoots Sharky a quick, searching look—he looks guilty—then hurries after Hurk. "Wait, what do you mean, the Peggies have the FANG Center?"

"Oh, yeah," he says over his shoulder. "They got the Whitetails running scared. I don't know that there's a fort or outpost they haven't taken back in the last couple of weeks. Where you been, anyway? Resistance is putting up a fight, but it's not lookin' too good." Hurk sounds totally unconcerned by the prospect of a total loss, nudging the door to Sharky's trailer open with his space boot and tromping indoors.

Rook turns to Sharky, trailing behind. "Fall's End?" she asks, feeling suddenly breathless. Kim hadn't said anything, but Kim kind of had a lot on her plate, and Rook had chickened out of the idea of driving through Fall's End on the way, so it was possible that the town had fallen again. Outposts were one thing, but she wasn't sure what she'd do if she got the news that Jerome and Mary May had lost their homes again.

Sharky shakes his head hastily, sending relief coursing through her. "First time was a total surprise. Now I think those folks are better prepared to fight off the cult," he says. He reaches up to the brim of his hat, lifts it from his head, and runs his hand through his rumpled hair before replacing it. "Still…"

He doesn't have to say it. Rook can read the writing on the wall: with all the outposts in the mountains back under Peggy control, it's only a matter of time before the valley and the river fall as well.

This isn't about that, she reminds herself. Hurk's delighted cry of "Ho-lee shit!" gives her an excuse to leave Sharky's unspoken words unaddressed, and she turns and trips up the stairs to burst into the trailer, where Hurk is examining the jars of moonshine with delight. He glances over his shoulder at her when she comes in and asks, "You know who made this?"

"Uhh…" She goes to his side, plucks the jar out of his hand, and looks it over in case she missed something—but no, the jar looks just the way it did when she first found it, an unlabeled sixteen-ounce mason jar, sealed tightly with a slightly brassy-golden cap and ring. It looks like every other moonshine jar she's ever laid eyes on. "…no?"

"Look, cuz," Hurk says, tossing the jar towards Sharky, who's just walked in the door—Sharky fumbles the jar, but catches it before it shatters on the ground.

He shoots Hurk a dirty look, but obediently enough, he rolls the jar around in his hands for a second, then starts to chuckle. "No way."

"What is it?" Rook demands—they think it's funny to do their cousin-communication thing, taking advantage of having grown up in the same family and pulling from the same pool of knowledge, a pool that's entirely foreign to Rook. They also think it's funny when she acts like a brat about it, so she always plays it up, lets them have the satisfaction of knowing she's in the dark and doesn't like it.

"You didn't grow up around here, did you, Dep?" Sharky asks, handing the jar back to Hurk.

She glares at him. "You know I didn't."

"Pretty new to the area, even," Hurk says. "What, been here three, four months?"

"Like, six, if you count the time since I actually started the job," she says, playing up her sullenness about it.

"Oh, man," Sharky says, hauling himself backwards up onto his kitchen counter. "You don't know about the good stuff, then."

"What good stuff?"

Hurk holds a jar out to her, lid-first. She peers at it, and this time, because she's looking closely, she can see a little smudge of permanent marker, can make out the letters PS.

"Possum Savage," Hurk declares, grinning. Rook looks up at him.

"Sounds like the name of a post-punk band."

"Uh, try the name of the most infamous moonshiner in the county," Sharky says.

"County? Hell, the whole state!" Hurk says, turning to look indignantly at his cousin.

"Possum Savage?" Rook repeats, skeptical. They've pulled her leg with invented backwoods legends before, then berated her for being "prejudicial against hicks"—never mind that she herself had grown up in the middle of nowhere—so she's reluctant to go entirely along with it. "I don't believe y'all."

"Scout's honor," Sharky says, giving her the Vulcan salute—a giggle bursts out of her, startling her with how easily it comes, how light it makes her feel.

"No way," she argues anyway. "There's liquor everywhere up here—or, there was, till Peggies started their whole confiscation crusade. Why take the trouble to moonshine?"

"Uh, pride?" Sharky says. "There's an art to it."

"And ol Possum, he was an artiste, God rest his soul," Hurk says, unscrewing the cap and taking a reverent sip. "Whew! Keep that thing away from me, Sharky, 'less you want to light my breath on fire. This stuff's gotta be one-twenty proof, easy."

"Wait, Possum's dead?"

"Afraid so," Sharky says, whipping his hat off his head and pressing it to his chest briefly before returning it to its place. "You hit a gold mine. I thought all the Savage moonshine was gone."

"Uh-huh," says Rook, faintly distracted as Hurk goes for another sip—she snatches the jar out of his hand, splashing a little over the rim as she goes, and he makes an incoherent noise of protest. "Well, gold mine or not, it's gonna have to wait. Those stunt runs are hard enough sober; I don't want to have to scrape y'all's brains off the concrete because you got sloppy half a jar in."

"Aw, hell, you all know I'm a better driver drunk than I am sober," grumbles Hurk, but he leaves the moonshine anyway, hauling his case of beer towards the fridge. "These are warm anyway. I'm'unna put 'em on ice then we can head out. Where are you thinkin' of going?"

Rook glances from one man to the other and suggests, "South?"

"What, Prosperity?" asks Sharky, furrowing his brow.

"Why not? It's the closest."

He shrugs. "Fine by me. We'll just have to dodge Tweak."

"Dodge, nothin!" Hurk says loudly over the clatter of beer cans going into the fridge. "I been meaning to resupply for weeks now. I'm clean out of—" He stops dead. His eyes slide over to Rook, and she can practically hear the cogs turning in his brain. "…allergy medication," he says deliberately, making her laugh out loud.

"Dude, let it go! That train left the station months ago. Busting you isn't my job anymore." She's uncomfortably aware that she's echoing Jacob's words—parroting a Seed is never a great choice, but he'd been right then, and he's still right now.

"Can't imagine why you wanted it to be your job to begin with," Sharky interjects gruffly. She glances quickly at him—he's still sitting on the counter, arms folded over his chest, and he's staring her down. He's needling her, she realizes, on purpose, which means he's suspicious, knows she's up to something and is trying to nudge her off-balance.

Which she isn't about to let him do. He can't make her acknowledge that something's off, so she just smiles ever-more-brightly at him and says, "Doesn't matter much now, does it? Hurry up, Hurk, we're wasting daylight. Last one down to Prosperity is a rotten egg!"

She bolts out of the screen door without waiting for an answer, heading for her truck as Hurk cries out "Hey no fair!" behind her. The fresh October air and clear sunlight is a tonic after so much time cooped up indoors as late, giving her spirits a much-needed lift and easing the unsettled feeling that's been growing in her gut since she got here. Mostly, she's thriving on being able to move without pain, focused on sprinting to her truck and getting the door open and keys in the ignition before Hurk can do much more than tumble out of the trailer door, but there's still a little part of her that's calculating, reassuring: it's just the Jacob stuff; Sharky's sharp enough not to let his guard down. He's not thinking about anything else. One afternoon together and it'll go right back to normal.


Rook turns out to be more or less right, if only because an afternoon spent with any members of the Boshaw-Drubman clan always turns out to be so eventful that there's little room left for thinking about anything else. She doesn't end up having to clean up any brains, but somewhere along his third run through the ATV course, Hurk takes a nasty spill and cuts his arm to shreds. (She suspects it has something to do with the three cans of PBR he's crushed when he thinks she's not looking, but beer at least isn't moonshine, and then after his crash it seems like poor sport to point it out.) Naturally, he makes a ruckus about it, caterwauling "I'm dying! I'm dying!" even as Rook and Sharky rush to clean the wound and stop the bleeding and shush him, which in turn draws a Peggy patrol's attention.

When Hurk and Sharky look to her for orders, Rook feels an almost dizzying rush of disconcertion. It's only been a little while since this was standard, the three of them suiting up in easy unity to blast and kill and burn, anything to advance the Resistance, and the surge of reluctance she feels to resume the role now after just a few short weeks away comes as a cold shock to her.

Acting on instinct, she tells them to hide, and fortunately, with Hurk bleeding like a stuck pig and her recent injuries, they seem to think that's a sensible idea. As they're huddled flat along the steep riverbank, Rook between Hurk and Sharky so she can bind up Hurk's cut arm while Sharky watches for trucks prowling past, Hurk says "Heh. What does this remind you of?"

"Almost getting caught by Ann-Marie and Kaylynn's dad and havin' to hole up in that little crevasse beside their house till he put the shotgun away and went back inside," Sharky whispers back, almost before Hurk can finish asking. "I was thinking the same thing."

"Oh man. There were so many bats in that cave. I was pickin' guano outta my crack for weeks."

"You're telling me. I got bit like twice by the little fuckers."

Rook shifts her gaze from the finishing touches on Hurk's arm bandage over to Sharky, nudging him with her elbow. "You got rabies shots after that, right?"

Sharky looks worried for half a second, then pulls on a mostly-convincing nonchalance and says "Nahh. This was in, like, twenty-twelve, though, it's fine."

Before Rook can comment that six years ago was not far enough in the past for them to be getting in trouble with girls' dads, Hurk leans forward, catching their attention, whispering his usual stage whisper. "You know I heard that it can take up for ten years for the rabies virus to show up?"

The worry creasing Sharky's face is more acute this time. Still, he valiantly says "Nahh" again in an attempt to dismiss the idea.

"I'm serious, man," Hurk says. "That rabies is horrible. They say you can't get hard anymore, and that's just the start of it."

"I don't have rabies, okay?" Sharky hisses. "Shut up."

"We oughta get back to the trailer park anyway," interjects Rook. "I haven't seen a truck in like ten minutes." As the men nod and start gathering their stuff up to go, she shoots Sharky a significant look and says, "You should go to the clinic and get a rabies shot, though. Like, soon."

"Yes, mom," grumbles Sharky before hauling himself up the angle of the bank and out of the conversation, leaving Rook snickering behind.

True to Rook's inclination, by the time they get back to the park at nightfall, Sharky seems to have forgotten whatever concerns and suspicions he had about her, back to goofing off with her and Hurk and "accidentally" setting roadside scrubs on fire—"Victor Boshaw," she scolds him after the fourth time she has to hurry to douse a flame that looks like it's going to spread, "it is fire season and a raging forest fire can kill our people as soon as theirs!"

Once they return, Sharky sets about building a fire in the center of the ring of trailers while she and Hurk get the booze and drag stray lawn furniture over. In the short time it takes them to do this, Sharky has stoked a ten-foot blaze and shed his hoodie and undershirt, and he bends his knees and arches his back, swooping his arms upwards as though to encourage the flame to grow. "Yes… yesssss… I have made fire!"

"Okay, pack it up, Castaway," Rook says as she drops her end of the wicker couch she and Hurk are carrying. "You wanna bring every Angel in the region running?"

Sharky doesn't bother to put a shirt on, but he does straighten up from the ridiculous crouch as Hurk flops onto the couch and cracks a cold one. "Uh, what angels? There are barely any left."

Rook frowns, then realizes that on her drive in and the whole afternoon she's spent with the guys, she hasn't seen a single Angel. Given that just a month ago the region was riddled with them "What do you mean? Where are they?"

Hurk chuckles and slurps a noisy swig from his can. Sharky says, "Time is the great equalizer, man. Most of the angels are dead by now. What the hell, Hurk, you didn't bring the cooler out?"

"I brought the furniture! And the moonshine!"

"Yeah, and I built the fire!"

"You would do that irregardless," Hurk declares. He's right, but Rook's a little too distracted to back him up.

"What do you mean the angels are dead?" she asks, frowning, perching her hands on her hips as she looks from one man to the other.

"I mean they've passed away," Sharky says, temporarily abandoning his spat with his cousin. "Gone to the great big Bliss field in the sky. Kaput, gonezo, you know. Dead."

Rook, after doing a quick inventory to remember if she's killed any angels lately (she hasn't), asks "How?"

"Well, what, you think the Peggies are feedin' them well?"

"Fuck no!" Hurk sings out.

"They were lookin' pretty rangy a month ago. By now they're either too weak to do much of anything or fully dead already. Guess that's the cost of zombifying people until they don't think about their basic bodily needs." Sharky, apparently giving up on starting out with beer, leans over and picks up a jar of moonshine, takes a mouthful, and spits it into the fire, sparking a gout of flame as the alcohol burns up in a quick flash.

It gives Rook enough time to wrestle down the revulsion she's always felt over the fate of the Angels, double-strong now that apparently their long, oblivious torment has ended just as horribly as the last few months of their lives. Once she manages to find her voice again, she asks, "And they're just… not making any new ones?"

"Hell, from who?" Hurk asks. "Might not seem that way with everyone and their mama out fighting, but Hope County was never too populous to begin with, and they ain't letting anyone in. If they want angels they're gonna have to start dipping into the people they'd rather keep."

"Yeah, and by this point all the easy targets are gone," Sharky says, grimacing past a swig of moonshine. "I wouldn't be surprised if we saw more activity from them over the next couple of weeks. I reckon at this point ol' Joseph's gonna want to hurry and finish things up."

"You think they have a shot?" Rook asks, unable to help herself.

"Sheeit, not now that you're back with us!" Hurk declares. "Now get over here and get you a jar. We've got some drinking to do!"

Rook's glad to have something to do, glad to have an excuse to avoid looking at Sharky, and she readily goes and picks up a jar. At that point, Sharky and Hurk have resumed their argument about who should go and haul out the beer cooler, and the fraught topic is abandoned, to everyone's relief, she thinks.

She doesn't drink. She splashes dollops from her jar here so that the level of moonshine lowers gradually over the hours, but she's not sure she really needs to—Hurk and Sharky are merry and easy, and she slides back into their old dynamic easily enough that she doubts they'd notice her sobriety either way. They tell her what they've been up to (Hurk is trying to manufacture his own moonshine and has poisoned himself twice so far); she recounts the O'Hara ordeal for Hurk's benefit, acting more enthused about the horror movie elements than she is to keep them from sniffing out the fact that she's still pretty chilled by the thought of the whole thing. They all carefully sidestep any mention of Jacob, even Hurk, which tells Rook that the rumors must be pretty bad by now, maybe even accurate.

She doesn't want to ask directly, reluctant to come across as double agent-y, so she's relieved when they start catching her up on all her old friends without being asked. Grace has moved in with Mary May, and between the two of them and Jerome, Fall's End is holding strong. Rook obviously already paid a visit to Kim Rye, but Hurk drops the interesting tidbit that two post-Carmina raids on the Rye property ended with stacks of Peggy bodies left forebodingly on the road by the signposts. Apparently, parenthood has activated some killer instincts, and Rook is pleased to hear that it's been some time since the last raid, so perhaps John has gotten the point.

Sharky says that Boomer is still fine and still with Mary May. Peaches, he reports, is back with Miss Mable, but Adelaide (and Xander) lost the marina and have had to move into the jail (which is also holding strong, despite supply issues). Rook winces when she hears the news. "How's that going?"

"Well… pretty bad," Hurk admits. "She and Sheriff Whitehorse butt heads. And about all she cares about right now is getting that marina back. She does lots of yellin' these days."

Sharky, who at that point is in a chair by Rook's, nudges her with his elbow. "Ten bucks says Aunt Addy goes Jack Torrance inside of a week, just starts axe-chopping everyone inside that jail."

"I am not taking that action," declares Rook loudly. "I know Adelaide."

Jess Black hasn't been seen in weeks, but both men think that's because she's hooked up with the similarly-elusive Whitetails. Her uncle Dutch, Hurk reports, recently radioed to call him a moron for accidentally blowing up a water tower that Hurk says was close to the wolf beacon he was actually aiming at, so they think he's doing just fine, too. Cheeseburger, however, has vanished—they're pretty sure he's not at the reclaimed FANG Center, Sharky says, but nobody's seen him for a while. Rook hopes he's managed to hole up with a friendly, because she knows from experience he's pretty useless on his own.

Hudson, Pratt, and Burke are still in captivity.

The moon rises high over their heads, the fire burns down to a cozier, more manageable level (through Rook's efforts—she has to stay on Sharky to keep him from feeding it more and more till it's a full-on blaze, instead persuading him to be content with just keeping it going at a reasonable rate), keeping them warm despite the plummeting temperatures. It's a beautiful night, a good night.

And it has to end.

Sometime after midnight, Sharky goes inside to rock a piss. Hurk has blazed through almost a whole jar of moonshine on his own and is lolling sideways on his wicker couch, singing an off-key rendition of Born to Run that's also missing half its lines. Rook carefully sets her own untouched jar on the ground and stands up, and when her suspicion is proved correct and Hurk's eyes stay shut and his singing continues, she backtracks quietly, moving till she's outside of the ring of firelight. Once clear, she turns and moves fast into the woods.

They'd lost her truck down in Prosperity while fleeing from Peggies, but on her way in this afternoon she'd spotted a little two-door sedan not far from the entrance to the park, and it doesn't take her long to reach it. The door's unlocked; she swings into the driver's side, checks the ignition, sees no keys, reaches up and flips down the sunshade, feels the key plop into her lap. She's just managed to find it again when a familiar voice cuts through the dark: "Where ya headed, Rook?"

The smart thing to do would be to ignore it, just put the key in the ignition, turn it, and drive away. It's been a good day, a good night. Anything more that happens now is bound to tarnish that.

But it's Sharky. He deserves better.

She sighs, long and slow, once again feeling that hit-by-a-truck sensation and realizing abruptly that she's very tired and likely did too much today, given that it's her first full day out and about since she got stabbed. She hauls herself upright anyway, out of the car, and turns around, propping her elbow on the rooftop and facing her friend.

"I gotta go," she says. It's the only thing she can think of.

The gravel road crunches under the soles of his shoes as he takes a few steps closer, carefully, like he's expecting to spook her, but she doesn't want to run from him. She doesn't even want to leave, not really, but she can't ignore reality for any longer.

"Back to him?"

His tone is about as innocuous as it gets, she can tell he's not being bitchy on purpose, but there's no way to ask that question without it coming across as loaded. Rook sighs again and dodges it, just says, "To fix as much as I can, with whatever I've got left."

"The fuck does that mean?"

"I don't know yet," she says, her tone rising in irritability to match his, "but I have to do something."

"Yeah, like: get back out there? With me, with Hurk?" he suggests, sounding a little sarcastic, a little angry, but mostly earnest. "C'mon, Dep, the three of us have done huge things here before. We can do it again."

"Sharky, we're hemorrhaging!" she says, sweeping her arm out to indicate the entirety of the county. "We've lost like all our outposts, supplies are running low all over the county, the Resistance is worn out—"

"You were out of the game for weeks!" he exclaims. "You're our number one weapon, Rook—no wonder shit went bad without you. That's why we need you back. You're better now, you can open up a can of whup-ass just like you used to. You know they're tired too, right?"

"Nobody trusts me anymore!" she says, sounding angry and hating that she sounds angry, because really, what the fuck does she have to be angry about? "Eden's Gate got to plan this for years and the only reason we held out like we did was because we all worked together. Now I fucked up and nobody trusts me, and they're right not to trust me, but I can't go anywhere without getting shot at, and that means I can't do what I used to do."

"I trust you.""

It's quiet, almost a rebuke, and it works—Rook feels that declaration stab at her, feels the hurt of it in her chest. She stares at him, shakes her head, and, almost whispering so that her voice doesn't break on the words, she tells him the truth: "It's not enough."

He turns away from her. He pulls his hat off, rubs his head, and she can see his shoulders rise and fall a few times as he takes a couple of deep breaths. Then he turns again and demands, "Why'd you come back here then? What was the point of this?"

He's angry too now, and Rook understands the move, yelling so you don't cry. Even so, it hurts more than she would have believed, Sharky being mad at her. She's more or less accepted it from everyone else, but even before the whole O'Hara situation, when she was intentionally avoiding him, she never really believed he was angry. It's different now, cuts deeper.

She owes him answers, even though she's changed her mind now, wants nothing more than to just turn and run, so she tells him: "I wanted to say goodbye."

They're away from any semblance of a town and artificial light, but the moon is high and bright enough that she can see the anger draining from his expression, can see the confusion and fear flooding in to take its place. He takes a step towards her, then another. "What are you gonna do, Rook?" he asks, and she can hear the fear there, too, in his voice.

She knows she shouldn't, but she feels something in that ball of pain in her chest just snap and she leaves the car, rushing towards him. Anyone else, knowing what everyone now knows about Rook, would move to defend themselves, but not Sharky—Sharky just opens his arms and catches her when she collides with him.

You are not going to cry, she tells herself as she wraps her arms around his neck and feels his arms crossing over her back, holding her tightly to him, but it's hard as she breathes in the bonfire smell of him and feels the strength of his grip, like he thinks if he hugs her tight enough she won't go anywhere. She hasn't made a habit of crying throughout this whole ordeal and she isn't about to start now, so she gives herself a moment to get under control, then leans back to look at him face-to-face.

They're the exact same height, so she's looking him right in the eye, but it's funny—this close, she can't read him at all. He's staring hard at her, there's a grim set to his jaw, but she has no idea what he's thinking. It doesn't matter anyway; it won't change anything. She says, "I love you, Sharky, okay? I could have—if I wasn't so—"

She can't think of what to say, a way to put her feelings into words in a way that will feel right, or that he'll understand. She huffs out an anguished, angry little breath and she feels her eyes start to burn, and she knows she needs to stop this now, before she loses control of everything.

She tears herself out of his arms so abruptly that he can't keep his grip (not that she thinks he would try once he knew she was ready to go; Sharky's good that way). She turns hastily, head down, and crosses the road fast to the car. It takes him a second to find his voice, and when he does, she's already opening the driver's side door again.

"Dep," he says, sounding choked and raw, and although she pauses at the sound, still unwilling to just ignore him and run away, she can't make herself look at him. She doesn't want to see what he thinks, how he feels. "Don't go."

Just try, something in her urges. How could it possibly do more harm to stay with him and try to fix things? Everything's all fucked up as it is. Can only go up from here, right?

Except every time she's told herself it can't get worse, it has, and with Sharky, she doesn't see anything changing—just more dying, more ebbing and flowing and scrapping over the same territories, the same outposts constantly switching hands until one of them has a very, very unlucky day. With Jacob, she has the glimmer of a plan, something that will at least change the way of things, for better or worse. She can't risk deviating from it any further.

"Sorry, Sharky," she whispers to her feet, then looks up—forward, to the road ahead, not back at him, and she projects her voice so he'll hear her. "I'm already gone."

She ducks into the car and slams the door shut. If he has anything more to say, she doesn't hear it over the engine coming alive and gravel spraying from under the tires as she takes off, accelerating as fast as she can to get out, get away from what she's leaving behind.

She makes it maybe three miles before the blur in her vision forces her to pull over, and she braces her wrists on the steering wheel and puts her head down, and cries like she's never cried before in her life.