The dawn came, the way it always did; the rising of the sun stopped for no man nor angel. The cosmos did not pause in its endless cycling just because Elliot's heart was shattered, just because Olivia had turned her back on him, just because Michael was hunting the child they protected. The stars took no notice of the fumbling creatures dancing beneath them. The dawn came.

And with it McKenna woke; Elliot had stayed right there on the floor where Olivia left him, his heavy bulk barring entry should Michael come calling, his eyes trained on the place where the angel child slept, at peace, and he saw it plainly when she began to stir. He had no sooner risen to his feet than her little arms were reaching, a sleepy voice calling Elly? Elly? She didn't speak much, not as much as he'd expect from a four year old, but she spoke enough, and he knew what she wanted, and went to her at once.

"I'm here," he said, reaching down and lifting her easily from the bed, settling her on his hip. She was trembling in his arms. "It's ok, sweetheart," he told her, using the same warm tone he'd used with his own daughters when they were small. He missed that, the days when he could hold his daughters like this, carry them around as if they weighed nothing at all. It had been a sweet time, a simpler time, and he mourned for it, though he was proud of the young women they had become. Proud of Dickie, too, of course he was, and proud of Eli, who was just barely younger than McKenna himself. He loved them desperately, his children, and already he could feel McKenna burrowing her way into his heart, and wondered what would become of him when this was over, wondered if he would ever see her again.

"Livia?" she asked him, her eyes still wide and fearful.

"She's here," he said. "Let's go find her."

McKenna wouldn't settle until she'd seen Olivia's face, and he knew it, and he knew, too, that there was no sense in delaying the inevitable. He and Liv were gonna have to work together, gonna have to find some way to move forward despite his disastrous fuck up earlier in the morning. Might as well be now, he figured.

The corridor was deserted and the house beyond was silent, but the cabin wasn't so very big. The doors to the bathroom and the second bedroom were open, and he could see as he walked by that Olivia wasn't there. She wasn't in the little living room, either, but when he turned to the right he found her, sitting at the kitchen table, staring blankly off into space. Whatever she was thinking it must have consumed her completely; she didn't even glance at him as he came into view.

"Hey," he said softly, and at the same time McKenna called out Livia, her little hands reaching, squirming in Elliot's grip, and that seemed to jerk Olivia back to herself. She gave her head a little shake, and offered a weak, sad little smile as she rose to her feet, walked across the kitchen to them and took McKenna from his arms.

"Good morning, sweet girl," she said to McKenna. "Did you sleep ok?"

McKenna nodded enthusiastically. That makes one of us, Elliot thought.

"There's coffee," Liv told him, and he tried not to think about it, how sweet she looked, standing there holding that dark-haired little girl. She'd rested her cheek against McKenna's temple, was swaying absently, reflexively, the way every woman he'd ever known did when she held a baby in her arms. She's a natural, he thought, and then remembered she'd told him she'd never be able to have kids, and he suddenly wanted to throw something, to scream in the face of such unfairness.

"There's granola bars and some cans of soup and spaghettios in the cabinet, too," Olivia continued, apparently oblivious to the maudlin thoughts that gripped him. "We may not have to leave here today."

That sounded good to him; granola bars and spaghettios couldn't sustain the three of them indefinitely, but they'd come to the cabin to keep McKenna safe, and couldn't risk taking her out in public, and he couldn't bear to leave the girls alone to fend for themselves for the time it would take him to find a grocery store. Maybe that made him an overprotective prick, since Liv was the one who could survive a bullet to the gut and he was the mortal liability, but still.

"I'll make the coffee," he said. "Why don't you sit down?"

She frowned at him, but carried McKenna back to the table anyway, and he went over to the counter, found the coffee maker with a filter already in it, the can of grounds open beside it, the carafe half full in the sink like Liv had tried to make a start on the coffee but got distracted before she could finish. That wasn't like her; something must have been weighing heavy on her mind, to get her all turned around like that. He had a pretty good idea what that something was.

But he decided as he made the coffee that he wasn't gonna ask her about it. Liv was a runner; always had been. She'd told him she didn't want him, said fuck you when he kissed her, and he wasn't gonna ask her in the broad light of day why she was determined to be unhappy. They had to get through the day; the reckoning could come when the dust settled, when Michael was no longer a threat. Elliot could only hope he'd be alive long enough to have one more chance to talk to her.

She could not die, but shit, this was killing her. The secret Gabriel had told her was eating away at her insides, dissolving her like acid. Elliot was hers, the one who was meant to love her, his soul so closely bound to hers that he returned, again and again, searching for her. There was no way, she thought, that he had any memory of his previous lives; she figured if he'd known it wouldn't have taken this long for her to learn the truth. He didn't know, of that she was certain, but she did.

She knew the truth now, and wished with everything she had that she didn't.

It felt like hope, knowing that he loved her, that he loved her so much he was willing to sacrifice his own peace, his own eternal rest, just to see her again. But it felt like a curse, too; his soul has a purpose, and he will not rest until he fulfills it, that's what Gabriel had told her. Elliot kept coming back because she hadn't let him love her, but whatever he felt, whatever purpose he had, he was, still, a mortal. If she gave in, if she told him the truth, if she accepted his kisses and joined her heart to his, would he rest when this trip around the sun was through? What if she gave in, and lost him forever this time? What if she let him love her, and watched him die, and he never came back again, having finally done the one thing he was meant to do?

We've fucked this life up so much already, she thought, looking at him. He was past forty, now, with an ex wife he'd given all of his adult life to, with five children who needed their father. Who was she to take him from them? How much of a life would they have, really, when he was bound to die and she was doomed to live?

What if we tried again? She wondered, watching him working on the coffee, domestic and at peace in the kitchen, while she sat at the table with McKenna on her lap. The scene felt like nothing so much as a taste of the life they could have had, if only. Him, and her, and their child, at home together, happy and safe; it was her greatest dream. If she let him go this time, what if he came back again? What if they could get it right next time? Would she know him, the next time she saw him? Or would he be, as he had been every other time she'd met him, bound to another? Elam had been first, and he had loved her first, but she'd left him, and he'd found someone else, and married her, and had the family Olivia had always dreamed of with another woman, and after that time each she found him he had been spoken for already. Would it be the same, the next time around?

A selfish part of her wanted to find out. A selfish, lonesome, guilty part of her wanted the cycle to continue, if only so she could live in hope of seeing his face again after this version of him died.

But wouldn't that be cruel, she asked herself now; wouldn't it be cruel, to doom him to an eternity stuck on this endless wheel, all because she couldn't bear the thought of carrying on without him? Wouldn't it be cruel to make that decision herself, and not give him the chance to decide his own fate?

You know what he'd pick, she told herself. He loved her; he wanted her. He'd kissed her, told her we were meant to find each other. Accused her, just a few hours before, of trying to keep him on the job just so she could be near him, and damn it, he'd been right. She'd do anything, anything, to keep him near. Even if meant giving up the chance to love him, truly, the chance to hold him, the chance to make a family with him; if keeping him at arm's length meant he'd come back to her, she'd do it. She'd trade the chance to love him for the chance to know she did not have to face all the ages of the earth alone.

And oh, but that made her angry. Angry with herself, for even considering doing such a thing to him, for needing him so badly, but angry, mostly, with God. Oh, she was angry with Him; He was the one who'd set this whole thing in motion. The architect of the universe, the one who had known all this heartbreak was coming before it even began, and had done nothing to stop it. The making of the nephilim, the cursing of them, that was His doing. And what kind of God, she asked herself, would place this choice in front of her? The choice to love Elliot for a few decades and mourn him for all eternity, or to remain apart from him and meet anew each generation; it was an impossible decision.

I have to tell him, she thought. I don't think I can.

"Coffee's ready," he called out from across the kitchen, fetching down two chipped coffee mugs from the cabinet. His shoulders were tight; she could feel the tension in him, even from across the room. No doubt he thought her cruel already for having spurned his kisses; would he hate her, when he learned the full truth? When he learned that his soul kept returning, again and again, because she was too stubborn, too afraid, to give him all of herself?

No matter what choice she made, she would shatter everything they'd ever known. Everything had changed; no part of their lives would remain the same, after this. When she looked at him, watched him walking towards her with the mugs in his hands and a wariness in his gaze, she could almost see it. Could almost see every man he'd ever been, every name he'd ever had, every time she'd almost let him touch her, every time she'd broken his heart, and tears gathered in her eyes unbidden.

Elliot noticed; his brow furrowed as he set one of the mugs down in front of her. McKenna noticed, too; in her arms the girl shifted, and then reached up to brush at Olivia's tears with her little fingers.

"Livia sad," McKenna said.

"It's ok, sweet girl," Olivia lied. "Everything's going to be ok."