She couldn't look directly at him. It was like staring into the sun, something beautiful, and powerful, and awe-inspiring, and dangerous. Something that hurt to look at for too long. That's what he was, what she felt seeing him walking up the gravel path to the cabin's front door with McKenna in his arms. Elliot, cradling a little girl with dark hair and blue eyes and delicate white wings, a Norman Rockwell picture postcard perfect glimpse into the life Olivia had always wanted, into the life she'd never be allowed to have. He was beautiful, holding that little girl, strong and steady and sweet, a man imperfect and temperamental and hard-headed as any other, but a man good, down to his bones, good, and kind, a protector of children, a defender of women, a light in the darkness of the world Olivia inhabited, a light to bright to be viewed straight on; she could only watch him out of the corner of her eye as she dug in the planter by the front door, located the key right where Buck said it would be and unlocked the door.

The interior of the cabin was dark and a little musty; she dropped their bags just inside the door and fumbled for the light. Elliot had his arms full, and McKenna was still sleeping, and Olivia was willing to do whatever it took to keep from waking her. McKenna deserved a chance to rest.

With the lights on she could get her bearings; the door opened up into a neat little sitting room. The cabin lived up to its name; the interior walls were all wood-paneling, the beams of the rafters exposed overhead. There was no TV to be found, and in the sitting room a conversational grouping of matching leather sofa and armchairs were all arranged facing a stone fireplace. There was a kitchen beyond it, and a little corridor off to the right, and so Olivia went right, with Elliot trailing along behind her. There wasn't much to see down the corridor; two bedrooms, like Buck had said, and one bathroom, all sparsely but comfortably appointed. Neither of the beds was made.

"Sheets are in the closet," Elliot whispered hoarsely. "I'll put her down, we can make up the beds together."

"I'll do it," Olivia whispered back. "You go sit down with her, let her sleep."

For a second she thought Elliot might tell her no; he had that look on his face, like he wanted to argue, but he was a father, and knew better than to wake a sleeping child unless he absolutely had to.

"All right," he said, and disappeared, and Olivia breathed a sigh of relief, and turned her attention to the closet in the hall, digging around in search of the bedsheets.

It was a remarkably ordinary thing to do, pull sheets down from a closet and make up beds. Ordinary, and comforting in its ordinariness; it wasn't something she had to think about, really, and she was so goddamn tired of thinking. Tired of planning, and worrying, and wondering, tired of turning their conundrum over and over in her mind, tired of being afraid. There was no end to this terror in sight, but for a few minutes at least she could go through the motions of an ordinary evening.

Or perhaps not so ordinary, because she'd never before made up a bed for Elliot to sleep. Handed him a blanket to keep him warm while he crashed on her couch, sure, but she'd never done this, never smoothed down a sheet where he was meant to lay his body down, never stuffed a pillow into a case for him to rest his head on it. It felt intimate, somehow, doing this thing for him, while he sat on the sofa in the main room with a dozing child in his arms. It felt homey, and Olivia had not shared a home with another person for a long, long time. At least it was only Elliot; his expectations wouldn't be too high, she knew.

It took a little while to get both beds ready for occupants. The front bedroom held one double bed, and the back bedroom boasted a king. One of them could sleep in the back with McKenna, and one alone in the front. But she'd told Elliot in the car that she didn't want them to be separated, and with each passing second she only felt more strongly about that. The cabin was remote, a good thirty minute drive from the closest town, no neighbors to speak of, cell reception spotty. They were on their own out here, entirely, and she didn't like the thought of Elliot in that front bedroom alone. If Michael came for them he'd find Elliot first, find Elliot alone, and Elliot's body wouldn't heal from a bullet wound or a knife the way Olivia's would. She wanted him close, so she could keep him safe. But it would make her feel safer, too, to not be alone with McKenna, to not feel wholly responsible for the girl. The bed in the back room, it was big enough for all three of them.

She was going to have to ask him. She was going to have to swallow her pride and her longing and ask him to share a bed with her - with a toddler to sleep in between them, but still. It was mortifying, but the idea of being without him was worse, somehow.

As soon as she finished with the second bed she went out into the living room, found Elliot sprawled comfortably on the couch, his feet up on the coffee table and his head laid back, his eyes closed, though she knew he wasn't sleeping. They'd spent too many nights together in the cribs; she could always tell when he was sleeping, and when he was only trying to.

"All done," she told him quietly. "I'll take the bags if you can carry her? The back bedroom is the biggest."

We'll see what the place looks like, he'd told her in the car, not entirely an agreement but not a no, either, so she didn't press; she'd let him see the room for himself, and maybe he'd decide all on his own and spare her the mortification of asking him to stay. He rose slowly, carefully to his feet, and she grabbed the bags, double checked that the door was locked and then followed him back to the bedroom, where he was standing looking speculatively at the bed. He blushed, just a little, when he caught her eye, but he did not look away.

"I think it's big enough for all three of us," he said.

Thank god, she thought.

"Yeah, I think it'll be all right."

They went through the motions together, coordinated as a pair of dancers; so many years working so closely together had taught them a language all their own, and they knew how to communicate with just a look, knew one another's strengths and how best to allocate them, knew how to look at a job and determine who ought to do what. Olivia pulled back the covers and Elliot laid McKenna down, and then Olivia handed him his duffel, the bag they'd packed quick as lightning before running from his apartment, and then she rummaged through her own bag, the one she kept in the backseat of the sedan for emergencies. They pulled out cell phone chargers and plugged them in, and Elliot went to the bathroom while Olivia changed in the bedroom, and then it was her turn to pee and brush her teeth, and then she was back in the bedroom, closing the door behind her, walking towards the bed where Elliot was already lying comfortably beneath the covers, waiting for her. Elliot, in bed, waiting for her, and under the circumstances it probably shouldn't have made her belly flip over with a sudden surge of longing but it did, just the same. He was wearing a tank top and his shoulders were so broad and his arms were so strong and she wanted those arms wrapped around her, wanted to sink into the comforting warmth of him and find solace there, but such grace was not hers to ask for, and so she only slid into the bed on the opposite side, and turned out the light.

They were plunged into darkness, into a silence so acute Olivia could feel it settling heavily on her skin. The night was never this quiet in the city; there were always cars and sirens and sometimes voices on the other side of the wall, a television for company, the hum of a refrigerator. Here, though, there was only silence, a terrible, stifling quiet that threatened to suffocate her. Her mind began to race, her heart rate steadily increasing; what if Michael came for them? What if he had been hot on their heels, and the moment her eyes closed he burst through the door? Her gun was close to hand, and Elliot's, too, and she'd brought in a knife from the kitchen, but would it be enough? How were they supposed to stop him? It would be damn near impossible to hack his head off with a kitchen knife, and there were precious few other ways to kill an angel, and she didn't really want to, anyway, kill him, dangerous as he was. She didn't want the blood of an angel on her hands, not if there was any other way.

Beside her McKenna shifted, just a little, and she could feel Elliot tense even as she did, wondering if the girl would wake, but she didn't, only sighed and settled a little further back into the pillows. Her movement broke the spell that had fallen over them, though, and in a moment she heard Elliot's voice murmuring in the darkness.

"Been thinking," he said hoarsely. "Should we turn off our phones? Can he track them?"

It was a good question, a cop's question, and it felt good to have something that felt so much like work to discuss with him. She didn't know how to share a bed with him without breaking her heart in two, but she did know how to work with him.

"I don't think so," she said. "It's not something that any random guy on the street can do, it takes some technical knowledge, and I just don't think he has it."

"Why not?"

She couldn't fault him for asking; she had no evidence to back up her claims, only centuries worth of experience and a gut feeling.

"He's an angel," she said. "Phones and computers, all that technology, it doesn't mean anything to him. He doesn't need it. Angels don't have to call each other to communicate." Nephilim did, of course, but nephilim were not truly angels, and there were a good many things given to angels that had been denied to their children.

"I met an angel once, in Damascus," she told him. "A long time ago. He told me in heaven, there's no real separation among the angels. They're not…they're not like people. They don't have physical bodies; they're all sort of melded together. Whatever one is thinking, or feeling, they all feel it. They're cut off from it, down here. He told me it made coming down to earth lonesome."

The angel had told her how he missed it, communing with his brethren, feeling himself part of something greater, and she had understood; she'd never experienced what he was talking about, but she'd lived her whole life feeling as if some cord had been severed, as if she were somehow wounded, as if there was another part of her out there, somewhere, that she was longing to rejoin. The only time she didn't feel that way was when she was with Elliot.

"How…" Elliot's voice sounded faint, confused. "How could Michael come down here, then? Wouldn't the other angels know he was planning something?"

"Maybe he didn't plan it. Maybe he came here for a good reason, and got twisted somewhere along the way. The point is, I guess, we don't know how long he's been here, or what he's been able to find out, but angels don't really care about man's creations. All the things we've made, the roads and the cars and the planes and the telephone lines, all of it, if you think about it, is just a means to get humans closer to doing things angels can already do innately. He doesn't need a car when he can fly. He doesn't need a phone, probably doesn't even want a phone, because he has no one to talk to, and if he really needed to he wouldn't bother with human technology to do it."

"I gotta tell you, Liv, I think my head is spinning just a little," he said, deadpan, and in the darkness she smiled despite herself.

"Marcus says science is just man's attempt at discerning the mind of God. Trying to figure out how everything works, and why, and what man's purpose is on earth. Man tries to find ways to fly, to communicate with his brothers, to figure out all the secrets of the cosmos, and the angels know all that already. They don't need science."

"Marcus sounds like he'd give me a headache."

"He would," she said, smiling, still. Elliot had that power over her; even when she was afraid, he could always make her smile.

"So probably he can't track the phones," Elliot said after a moment's pause. "That's good. Buck says there's wifi in the cabin, and we brought the laptop. You can talk to your guys, and we can keep in touch with Fin. Maybe Michael will turn up somewhere."

"Maybe," she allowed, a little dubiously. What would Michael do next, she wondered; where would he go? He must have had somewhere to hide; after the first visitation, when he first went rogue, he'd have been unable to return to heaven. The others would have known at once what he'd done, and he'd have been held to account for it. Maybe he'd gone down there, changed teams, as it was, but Olivia didn't think so; no bargain struck with the devil was worth the price. If Michael had felt stifled in heaven, it was nothing to the enslavement of hell. He was like her, she thought, without a place; he'd have to have made one for himself. Angels, proper angels, didn't need to eat, or sleep, but he'd need somewhere to go, to make his plans, to keep from drawing too much attention to himself.

"I think we need to go back to the beginning," she mused, half to herself.

"Of time?"

"Of this," she said. "Michael's first visitation. That's probably when he decided not to go home. He may have some connection to that area, someone there may remember something."

"We'll do that in the morning, then," Elliot said. "Right now, you gotta try to sleep, Liv."

There was no way that was happening, she thought. The night stretched ahead of them, long and dark and full of shadows, but at least he was there, with her. She always felt a little better when he was with her.