“Didn’t want either of us back in the end though, did he?” Ed asks, the scrape of his cane ugly in the gravel, the break in his thigh still aching, every step a jolt like the train car coming off the tracks, even now, months on.

Beside him, Susan walks slowly, though he knows it’s only in deference to him; she’s still sure-footed as a faun, even in gravel, even in heels, even in this world, in this place where it had all gone so horribly sideways.

“Traitors, darling,” he thinks he hears her murmur under her breath, the voice of a vanished queen in a dream just out of hearing; but then, the thought’s gone as soon as it came, and her hand grasps his tight, her voice her own again, bright and only a bit brittle as she says, “But look, the flowers are blooming - you can hardly even see where it happened any longer,” and she’s right - the gouge riven in the earth is filled now, spilling over with white and gold and red, blurring to one before his eyes.