Days of Our Afterlives

For a prompt on tumblr. You know the one. If you're curious where exactly it fits on the timeline, check the master list on my page.

Sacramento

Then

Something dramatic happens, although it's hard to tell what. The world shifts.

Conrad bends over at the waist and nearly hacks up a lung. He doesn't know what happened to his stomach when the vampirism reconstructed his internal organs, but lately the wires for instinctual puking and plague victim coughing fit are getting more and more crossed. The ground is solid under his feet, at least, but it's tilting like a tiltawhirl and he throws out a hand to steady himself—his brain isn't registering any scenery so he has no idea what he's going to get a handful of—as the world swings wildly to the left.

The grasping hand lands on a white shirt, hanging from a frame that's way taller than anybody has the right to be, and Conrad has the urge to sigh in relief as he catches a blurry glimpse of blond hair and blue eyes. Unfortunately the best he can do is cough violently with relief.

"Jesus," Worth says, putting a hand on his shoulder. That helps. That helps a lot.

Conrad screws his eyes shut and tries to focus on getting his balance and his organs under control. He takes a deep steadying breath and smells exhaust in the air. What? He takes another one, and yes, that is definitely the smell of cars. Plural. He focuses as best as he can manage and manages to pick out the sounds of automobiles perhaps a hundred yards away, maybe more, he's having trouble locating the origin of the sound.

He groans, swallowing a couple more coughs, and says, "What the fuck is this, are we having an invasion?"

The hand on his shoulder flinches back, hovers, and then settles down stronger than before as Worth lets out a startled laugh.

"Damn man," he says, "yer fucked up pretty bad. What've you been drinking?"

Conrad screws up his face, tilting his head but not yet ready to open his eyes again. "What do you think I've been drinking you incompetent hack, and you call yourself a medical professional."

Another startled laugh, this one almost delighted, and then there's another hand on his other shoulder, and Worth is pulling him upright with firm but helpful motions.

"Wouldn't say that," Worth replies, "least not yet."

"What?" Conrad says, and at this point he decides he's out of the loop enough as it is and he'd better risk opening his eyes before he misses something important. "What are you—"

He opens his eyes, and he immediately realizes the important detail he's already missed. Blue eyes, Worth hasn't had blue eyes for a year now, and this is clearly Worth but now he's starting to notice a host of other peculiarities that nearly start the world to spinning all over again.

White business shirt. Clean shaven face. His forehead is barely lined at all, although his yellow eyebrows are quirked up in amused bewilderment right now, and he's wearing a tie.

"Oh god," Conrad moans, "am I having a dream sequence? I'm having a dream sequence aren't I, couldn't I at least dream about something pleasant?"

The man in front of him blinks, releases a shoulder carefully, and sticks out a hand. "Roit. Pleasure to meet you too. Name's Luce Worth," he says.

"Luce?" Conrad echoes, looking up again.

"You wanna make something of it?" Worth asks him, with a smile that's one part friendly and two parts frightening.

"…No," Conrad says. "I just expected… nnnnng something isn't right here."

"No shit," Worth—Luce—says, and his accent is slighter, come to think of it, it's more like an afterthought of laziness on the tongue than any specific dialect.

"Luce," someone behind the man interrupts, "look, are we going or not?"

Conrad peers around Luce's shoulder—you sure as hell can't look over it—and squints at the darker, nervous figure in his shadow.

"Lamont?" he breathes.

The easy smile on Worth's face seals down into hostility in half the second it takes for him to let go of Conrad entirely. "Who wants to know?" he demands, shifting so that he is directly between Conrad and Lamont.

Conrad just stares for a long moment, unable to formulate an answer. He hasn't seen Lamont since—unless you count his corpse, his moldering half burned corpse lying in the near darkness of an abandoned city, and Conrad knows that there was something funny going on that Halloween but they took care of him, he couldn't be a ghost still—

"Conrad," he manages, finally, "I'm Conrad, sorry, what?"

Lamont steps around Worth, looking nervous and harried but also as if he's trying not to make these things too obvious. "Do I know you?" he asks, and his hands are in his pockets but the pockets bulge in such a way that it's not very comforting. Conrad suspects that there are more than just hands in there.

"What? I mean," Conrad glances around, and suddenly he notices something else that should have been apparent minutes ago. He can see color. This isn't his night vision compensating for the usual shadows of the evening, this is real lighting. "I mean, maybe not."

The square is lit with the white brilliance of electric lights, as bright as daylight underneath a murky punchbowl red sky. Conrad feels his mouth go dry. Light pollution. At the edge of the square a high white complex of building stretches around, rows on rows of yellow lit windows rising up for some twenty stories in places, figures in clean white clothes trotting back and forth between the sliding glass doors below. He looks back to the two men in front of him, their bizarrely young faces and bizarrely clean clothes, and he knows that this is so much worse than a dream sequence.

In his clenched fist is the dribbling wet remains of half a tangerine. He had been fighting with Worth, only a minute ago. It was a stupid fight, like most of their fights—they had found a tree growing in the abandoned center of a major city out west, green and sprawling in the middle of what had once been a busy thoroughfare. Worth thought it looked suspicious as hell and he wasn't about to touch the thing, but Conrad had been thinking about the family they were staying with, and the multitude of children in the village carved out of a dead suburb, and he had grabbed one tangerine down from the branches—

And Worth had tried to snatch it out of his hands—

Conrad stares at the smushed mass in his fist with growing horror. Looks like Worth had been right. He should have known better, like there was really going to be free food just lying around?

"I know this is going to sound stupid," he says, faintly, "but what year is it?"

Luce and Lamont exchange a dubious look. Luce seems to relax a little bit, he probably thinks Conrad is too dumb to be dangerous, but Lamont doesn't really look like he's relaxed in a long time.

"2004," Luce says, shoving his hands into his pockets. "You here with early onset dementia or something? Cause the psychiatric care is on the other side of the campus."

"Campus," Conrad mutters, looking around again. It doesn't look like a college, it looks like a hospital. "Are you a student here?"

"Forget him," Lamont says to Luce, shoulders hunched. "Come on, he can ask somebody at the front desk, let's get out of here."

The taller man rolls his eyes, shoves Lamont harder than strictly necessary. "Don't be such a buzzkill, nobody's lookin' for you here. Conrad," he goes on, turning his attention, "you know this asshole here?"

The vampire bites his lip, does a quick calculation. He's seen the movies. He knows what the rules are.

"No," he says, "I mean, maybe. Maybe we met in a bar. I do know his name, after all."

Lamont looks unconvinced, but it seems to be good enough for Luce. The taller man reeks of high spirits, boisterous negligence, careless energy. He's rail thin, maybe even thinner than he had been when Conrad met—will meet—him. Underneath his loosened collar, there's a deep blue bruise.

"See," he says to Lamont, "yer paranoid. This whole thing's gonna blow over in a week, just wait and see."

Conrad looks again at the half of a tangerine he's still clutching. Time travel. Time travel fruit. He didn't even know such a thing existed, he'd never heard of it. Hanna might know, but Hanna isn't here—

Or, isn't he?

Conrad looks up. "How far away is the library?" he asks. "Is it within walking distance?"

Luce's expression shifts to distaste. "'s Friday night, whaddaya wanna go to the library for?"

"They've got phonebooks, right? Maybe they've got one for my city. I've got to… call someone…"

"Family problems?" Luce inquires, not even pretending to be sympathetic. Mostly he looks like he's watching a mildly interesting soap opera.

"Yeah," Conrad replies distractedly, searching through his pockets for one of those loose coins that still popped up from time to time. Maybe he'd find enough quarters for a phone call. "My brother, I should call him. I'm not sure where he lives now."

"Well the library's closed this time of night," Luce says, "but it ain't close enough to walk to even if it was open."

Conrad lets out a hiss of irritated breath. This is 2004, the internet is limited to virtual pets and porn, and he doesn't know another way to find Hanna. Given enough time, he could look up Casimiro and Finas or look for the younger version of one of the wizards he knows vaguely from council business, but he doesn't have time, he doesn't know if there's a limit on how long he can stay here. What if he's stuck?

He glances at Luce again, at the blue eyes and the business casual clothes. If this is real—if it's not some fucked up lotus eater machine—then he's looking at maybe eight years of pre-apocalyptic time stretching out ahead of him, and then another four of the same horrific grind until he catches up with himself again. If he's stuck here—

If he's stuck here, he's not sure how he feels about it.

"Tell you what," Luce says, interrupting his small scale nervous breakdown. "Library opens at ten tomorrow morning. If you ain't got a ride, I reckon I could take you. Not sayin' I can take you at ten, but yanno, eventual like."

"Er," Conrad says. "Really?"

Luce shrugs like it's no big deal to offer a complete stranger a ride after five minutes of conversation. "Why not, I ain't got any plans."

Lamont makes an exasperated noise and grabs Luce by the collar, pulls him down and snarls something in his ear that Conrad probably wouldn't have understood if he hadn't been a vampire for five years now. As it stands, he hears something to the effect of, "we don't have time for this," and "you can't just do this every time".

A little uneasiness starts bubbling in the pit of Conrad's mutated stomach. Something about this is… weird. Worth is a med student. Why is he volunteering to ferry around suspicious vagrants? If Conrad didn't already know him, didn't trust him, he'd be worried about his motives.

There's some scuffling, and then Luce speaks up again now that Lamont is successfully tucked into a headlock. "You stayin' somewhere nearby? I can give you a lift if you want. We're leavin' campus anyhow."

Conrad shuffles his feet (his ancient loafers look monstrous beside Luce's neat dress shoes) and tries not to panic. "Um," he says. "No? I mean, I'm not—I'm not staying anywhere really."

"Hotel?"

Conrad grits his teeth. "I haven't got any money," he admits. "But don't—I mean, I'll be fine, I don't really… sleep much."

If he's lucky, it'll be cloudy tomorrow. He can feel the pressure dropping in the air, and it's just possible there might be a storm soon. If he can just stay awake, stay covered, he might have a shot at getting this done.

"Ehh," Luce says, throwing an arm around Conrad's shoulders out of the blue, "come stay with me. I don't sleep much neither, you'll get along fine."

Luce shoots him a conspiratory grin, crooked teeth flashing in the false lighting. Conrad freezes up, caught between the familiarity of the gesture and the strangeness of the man touching him, and he's very stressed out and he's so alone so suddenly, what he wouldn't give to have the real Worth beside him right now—god knows where the man is, if he's still back underneath that stupid tree or if he's been slung somewhere as well—

"Okay," Conrad says, before he can stop himself. This isn't his Worth, but it is a Worth, and that's the best he can get at the moment. "If it's not too much trouble."

Luce waves him off, turns on his heel and drags Lamont after him by the back of his shirt like a truculent cat. Lamont gives Conrad a nasty look, to which Conrad can only shrug.

-a-

Luce Worth, circa spring 2004, is living in a fairly shitty house not too far from the medical college, which he shares with Lamont and another man who apparently hasn't left his room in two months, and might be dead. Lamont and Worth argue for five minutes over whether their roommate is actually dead or not, citing the lack of smell and the late but still complete rental payment from last month, which could have been paid by someone else but probably wasn't.

Conrad, meanwhile, tries not to spend too much time staring at the working appliances. He feels like an absolute creep and possibly a caveman, but that coffee machine—it's so alluring—

"What're you on?" Luce asks him, as he snags a beer from the (working) fridge. He's struggling with the pop top while Conrad just contemplates the inside of the refrigerator. They've got a minifridge in the RV for blood bags, but seeing one this size again, inside a house, brings back a strange kind of nostalgia. Even if it is depressingly empty.

"I'm sorry," he says, "am I on what?"

Luce looks up just long enough to roll his eyes. "Drugs," he clarifies, "whatever. Got a couple things around the house probably."

Okay now that is just disconcertingly generous. Conrad doesn't know whether to feel insulted or worried, so he settles for both at the same time. "I'm not on anything," he snaps, crossing his arms.

Worth looks up, looks over, gives him a pointed up and down glance, and then goes back to his beer. Conrad turns away, and as he's turning he catches sight of where his reflection would be in the sliding glass door. It stops him dead in his tracks. There's Worth and there's the empty place where his head should be, and he starts thinking about how he must look—he hasn't bathed in days, his clothes are wrinkled and worn thin in places, and he's still got—Jesus Christ, he's still got his pistol on him, he's lucky he didn't run into anyone less collected when he landed here, he could have had the cops called on him. He looks like a terrorist.

"You don't wanna tell me," Worth says with a shrug, "I ain't twistin' yer arm."

Conrad shifts so he's not in the reflection anymore, or more accurately he shifts so that he shouldn't be in the reflection anymore. He deeply dislikes being taken for a junkie, of all things, but he's also got this little niggling thought that that's sort of what he is. That's what all vampires are, when you get down to it.

"I'm sure you've got plenty of it around the house," he mutters darkly, settling into the chair at the kitchen table. It's missing a leg, but that doesn't seem to be a problem. What is it with Worth and amputated chairs? He had one in his clinic-is this the same one?

"Wot wassat?"

"Nothing. What the hell's up with this chair? It feels like it's going to tip me out at any minute."

"Oh, I'm sorry, my chair ain't good enough for you, highness?"

"I'm just saying you could have gotten a new one when this one broke, it wouldn't be that hard."

Worth grabs his can of beer and saunters over to the table, his tie hanging loose around his collar now. He's got that look on his face that says he's ready to pick a fight and he's not particular what it's about. He drops the can onto the table top with a dangerous little bounce.

"'Scuse me," he says, leaning down over Conrad with his slick little grin, "didn't realize I was hostin' royalty tonight. Shoulda dusted the place down for you, eh? Rolled out the carpet and all? Will yer majesty be slummin' out here with the commoners for the evenin' then?"

"Oh come off it," Conrad replies, settling his chin on one fist, "I was just observing."

"Observin', ha," he says, straightening up for a moment, "oi Lamont! Turns out we got the queen of fuckin' England here with us tonight!"

Lamont makes a muffled noise of displeasure.

Conrad purses his lips. "Is it the accent? Is that where you get it from?"

"That and the prissy attitude," Luce tells him, bending back down again. The ends of his tie swing just a little bit as he breathes, and the top of his collar is undone now. "Real princess and the pea stuff, you."

"I can't believe you even know that story," Conrad murmurs. "Not a very masculine addition to your repertoire is it?"

"It don't get much more masculine than this," Luce replies, with a wink, and Conrad is suddenly reminded for the second time that this Worth isn't his Worth, this Worth is maybe twenty-seven and still a student, the same age that Conrad was when he tumbled headlong into this bizarre underground of magic and idiodicy.

"Well you would say that," Conrad replies, "wouldn't you."

Luce grins. He lays a hand on the top of the table, leans in a little closer, and looks as if he's about to say something else when the phone starts ringing. It blasts out an obnoxious rapid beeping, making Conrad wince and draw back, and Luce steps away with a muttered oath of irritation. It's a relief when he yanks the thing off the hook and growls hello into the receiver. Conrad sits back and contemplates the spinning fan above him. It's only been a few years, but everything seems tinged with strangeness to him now.

"No Liv," Luce is scowling into the phone, "I ain't comin' back fer break, I don't care what mum—she ain't even sober, don't you put her—ya don' even like the bastards. I got things goin' on here—right—I'm kinda busy, 'Mont's—no I ain't tellin him you said hi, what am I yer goddamn postal service—stop—OI MONT LIV SAYS SOME SHIT—there—"

Conrad watches him go, chin still on fist. He's picturing the Olivia that he knows, and it's hard to put her in a house with her drunken mother on spring break, wearing dresses and entertaining company. At least she's still alive. Every time he looks at Lamont he feels like he's talking to a corpse, and not the one he's used to conversing with.

Eventually Luce extricates himself from the conversation, passing off the cordless phone to Lamont who wanders off into his bedroom, giggling vaguely into the receiver. Conrad makes some comment about the Worth family, Luce complains vigorously, and the minutes spin away. Luce offers him a drink and Conrad declines with some wistfulness—he could use a real drink for sure, but even if Worth had been pretty generous with him in the past, and even if Luce had been pretty generous with him in the present, there was no polite way to ask someone to slice himself open.

Conrad is making a snide comment about the state of the house, about the empty beer cartons in the corners and the suspicious boxes in the hall, as Luce tosses his can in the trash and makes a follow me motion, a familiar half-ironic crook of the fingers. Conrad leaves the chair and trails after him, still making critical comments about the bachelor-chic décor. They stop in front of a room at the end of the hall, the only one with the door cracked, and Luce smiles a sharklike smile and pulls Conrad inside by the wrist.

On comes the light.

"Here's where you'll be stayin' tonight," Luce says, gesturing towards the fairly unobjectionable bed floating amid a sea of clothes and books. Some things really never do change, the man never did figure out what shelves were for. "Hope it ain't too modest for yer refined tastes."

"Um," Conrad says, "isn't this your room?"

Luce lifts his yellow eyebrows. "Got it in one."

"I thouummmmahh?"

It was going to be "I thought I was staying on the couch," but most of the sentence never has a chance to escape his mouth.

Luce dips down and presses his lips against Conrad's, warm and hungry and pushing for some kind of response, which he does get, actually, if only because Conrad's body has an autopilot for this kind of thing after one too many angry surprise snogs on battlefields in the past.

Luce twists one hand into Conrad's hair, tight enough that it's almost painful, like he's struggling to walk this fine line between what he wants to do and what he wants Conrad to think he wants to do. Like he's fighting his nature. The other hand slips over a hip and dips down to grasp at something lower, fingers tight against the curve of his ass, and meanwhile Conrad sort of has his hands up and hovering uncertainly, surprised, in between them.

Luce's tongue curls over teeth, hot and slick, and then there's still hotter blood swirling in their mouths and Luce is pulling back with a start, blinking and licking his lips.

"Fuck," he says, even though his eyes are lighting up dangerously.

"Sorry," Conrad murmurs, "sharp teeth."

But that's broken the spell for him, now. This isn't, as he keeps having to remind himself, his Worth. Is this cheating? Is it cheating if it's technically the same person? He has no idea.

"I," he starts, and swallows uncomfortably, with Luce's hand still buried in his hair, "uh, actually I have a… boyfriend?"

Luce makes a vague noise and doesn't seem to care, because he dives back in for a second kiss, tugging Conrad's lower lip with his teeth. The hand on his ass flexes and whoa slow down there.

Conrad hovers on the figurative fence. He likes the general concept of Worth, and he likes sex with Worth, well, yes, sex with Worth is definitely something he's for these days. On principal.

Delima. On the one hand, he doesn't think his Worth would probably mind this, um, theoretically. On the other hand, this isn't his Worth. But back on the first hand, he's kind of—oh, yes, there goes the anatomy, thanks a lot—into this? More than he should be, maybe? Is this a kink? Does he have a time travel kink? He's never going to live this down, no way he ever tells Worth about this—

"Come on," Luce says, turning his attentions to Conrad's ear, and that is so not fair. He licks the shell of it and Conrad goes absolutely weak in the knees, which makes the height difference a little more problematic.

Conrad pulls back again. "I don't even really know you," he says, which is true and also untrue.

Luce tugs on the earlobe, shifts his hand, and says, "c'mon, ya owe me."

And… there goes the boner. Conrad wedges an elbow between the two them and levers Luce off him. "Excuse me," he says, "what was that?"

Luce makes a frustrated noise and tries to dive back in, but Conrad is a lot stronger than him and he isn't in the mood to indulge his future partner anymore.

"The house," Luce says, distracted, "the lift, Jesus, come on."

Conrad stares at him for a minute and then lets out a heavy sigh. He peels Luce off him and takes a step back, readjusts his shirt.

"Oi, Princess—"

Conrad reaches into his holster and swings up his pistol. It's not loaded, and he's not aiming it or planning to fire it, but he does hold it up where the dim light from the hallway bulb can illuminate the full length of it.

"Keep in mind that I'm the most dangerous person in this room right now," Conrad tells him. "That's not a threat, it's only a tip."

He holsters the gun again, and contemplates the bewildered—still clearly aroused—young man in front of him. Luce is breathing hard, pupils expanding in the dim light.

"You've got a lot of growing up to do," Conrad observes, and then snags a beaten up backpack from a dusty pile in the corner of the room. They won't miss it, and he's feeling a little entitled.

"Thank you for having me over," he says, swinging the backpack up over his shoulders. "It's been quite an evening."

And then he pushes past the sofa, steps out the front door, and walks into the street. He walks until the road ahead of him forks, and he can see a bus station in the distance. He pauses there, on the curb, for a minute, and then he starts to laugh.

Later he finds twenty dollars in the stolen backpack.

-a-

Conrad walks for most of the evening, stopping in here and there as he spots stores on his way. He gets directions, which he ends up not needing very much of. The city isn't difficult to navigate, especially at night, and he's been to the city once before anyways. He gets a little mesmerized by the well-lit, sprawling Babylon of the corner convenience store, but he absolutely does not cry into the coffee rack because that would be inexcusable.

The library opens at ten, and the storm is rolling in slowly like a huge ungraceful beast, so Conrad naps in the darkness of the bus station for a few hours after sunrise—oh, if his younger self could see him now, sleeping in a public transport bay—and then manages to be the first person inside the library when it opens. The librarians take him for a homeless man trying to get out of the rain at first, so he has a bit of a time convincing them that he just needs a phone book, but eventually they bring him the listing he needs and leave him in peace by the payphone.

He calls three Cross residences. It's terribly awkward.

He gets it on the third try.

"Hello?" a thin voice says, reedy and uncertain. Young.

"Um, yes, hi," Conrad says, in the calmest voice he can manage while simultaneously yanking out his hair in self loathing and anxiety. Why didn't he rehearse this, he always hated calling people on the phone, how did he forget this about himself? "I'm calling for Hanna?"

"This is him," the voice says. It sounds wary, hunted almost.

Conrad slams his head into the side of the payphone. What the hell, of course Hanna was going to be a teenager. He might not even know anything yet.

"Uh," Hanna's voice says, "hello?"

Conrad stops the self flagellation with some reluctance. "Yes, sorry," he says, "still here."

He bites his lip, chewing the dry skin anxiously. Hanna may have changed over the years, but he's still Hanna at the end of the day, and Conrad figures he'll take a gamble on it anyhow. It's not as if he's got much to lose.

"What do you know about magic?" he says.

There's a sharp intake of breath.

"Who is this?" Hanna asks, harsh as he is intense.

Conrad winces. "You don't know me," he says. Well he's going for honesty, isn't he? "I'm just… someone who could use a friend."

Silence holds the call for a moment, and then Hanna says, "Alright."

Conrad lets out a sigh of relief, because instincts are hard to kill. "Alright?"

"Alright," Hanna repeats, and this time there's a hint of a smile in the word. "I dunno if I'm much good for you, though, I've really just been… researching…"

"Research is exactly what I need."

"Well I guess I'm your guy." There's the sound of shuffling, maybe paper moving. "What do you need to know? My research has been kind of… specific… but I might know where to look if you point me the right way."

"Okay, so, this is going to sound incredibly stupid," Conrad starts, "of course when are things ever not, but I digress, basically what I need to know about is suspicious trees."

"Suspicious trees," Hanna echoes, dubious.

Conrad rubs at the bridge of his nose. "I know, I know. I'm talking about something really strange, though, um. Big green trees growing in a wasteland, cursed fruit, citrus probably."

Hanna laughs, like this whole thing is bizarre (which it is) and wonderful (which it is not), and his laugh has the startled edge to it that comes from disuse.

"Right right," Conrad mumbles, "laugh it up. Can you see what you can dig up for me? Especially anything to do with… er… time travel, I guess?"

If Conrad closes his eyes he can actually see Hanna perking up. "Time travel?" the teen says.

"Look it's a long story and I don't actually have that much time." Or he has much too much time, but he doesn't like contemplating that option.

"You'll have to tell me later!" Hanna says, the kind of smile in his voice that sounds like teeth and faint happy wrinkles. For a moment Conrad's chest aches. If he's stranded here, he won't see Hanna again for years. He's not like Luce, who could probably contrive to run into him again if the opportunity arose—Hanna is a kid, still, and living in a completely different city.

Conrad avoids saying anything about it one way or another, and instead busies himself giving Hanna the number for the payphone here.

Hanna's just finished taking down the number and has started to exhort him for details again, when the line breaks into sudden static and Hanna's voice cuts off suddenly and completely. Sharp breath.

"Hanna?" Conrad says, forehead wrinkling. "Hanna, are you there?"

"Shit," says the now distant voice of Hanna, and then the line goes dead altogether.

Conrad stands there for a long moment, holding the receiver out in front of him like a poisonous snake. What the hell was that?

He waits beside the pay phone for maybe half an hour before it becomes clear that Hanna isn't calling him back any time soon. He tries not to freak the fuck out because knows, intellectually, that Hanna is and has always been exactly the sort of person to trip in his own room and break his phone by accident. The kid is only, what, seventeen? Eighteen? How weird could his life possibly be.

This rhetorical question does absolutely zilch to make Conrad feel better.

In the end, he wanders back into the library and goes looking for books to read. It turns out that focusing on a plot line when your friend, who doesn't even currently know who you are, might be having a crisis, so instead Conrad busies himself looking up survival tactics on the (slow) internet, because he might as well do something productive while he's got the resources.

Using a computer feels creepily dejavu-ish.

He's halfway through printing an article about edible mushrooms in the northwest region when a woman peeks her head through the doorway and says, "Sir, were you expecting a call?"

The speed at which Conrad rips that page off the printer could probably start a fire.

When he gets back to the payphone, he fumbles the receiver for a few agonizing seconds. "Hello?" he says, "Hanna?"

"Oh," says the weak voice on the other end, "good, they found you."

"Hanna," Conrad says, again, this time relieved. "Are you okay? It sounded—"

"I'm fine," Hanna interrupts him. His voice is a little hoarse, like he's been screaming. "Just the parents, you know, so nosey. Anyhow!" he goes on in a rush, "I found something for you, I think. Lucky for you, it was in a book of counter curses. Not particularly useful ones, but still."

Conrad shifts the phone to the other ear. "And you just happen to have that on hand?"

"The tree you're looking for," Hanna carries on, pointedly, "usually grows in deserts, or old battlefields, I dunno, the legends conflict. Paradox tree. Or, yanno, that's the modern term, the older stuff is pretty hard to pronounce."

Conrad digs into his pocket and feels for the napkin he's wrapped his half of the orange up in. It's totally gross, but somehow he feels like throwing it away would be an even worse idea than just breaking it apart.

"The story goes that there were these two lovers," Hanna tells him, over the sound of turning pages. "Soul mates, right? Only they're born like hundreds of years apart from each other, so they can't actually meet? Like ever? They visit an oracle, yadda yadda, they pray to a god, bada bing the god sends one of them this stranger who gives her this tree. Well okay, he gives her a seed, and she plants it, and the other one in the future goes and finds the tree where it's been growing for a couple centuries and eats the fruit, and get this, the stranger who gave her the seed was her soul mate guy because he just popped right back in time like a total badass!"

"Okay you've completely lost me."

Hanna sighs, and there's the faint noise of what was probably his finger jabbing at the book. "The tree planted itself. Paradox tree. You plant the tree, it takes you and your lover back to the future for a happily ever after—I mean, uh, the hypothetical you, not the you you I mean do you even have a girlfriend?"

"What? No! That's irrelevant, let's try to stay on focus."

"Sure," Hanna says, "whatever man. Anyhow, best I can tell you is, find the place where it was planted before and plant it there now, you know?"

Conrad looks heavenward, helpless. "You're lucky I've read so much speculative fiction," he says, "or that explanation would make absolutely no sense to me."

"Haha yeah, I've been told my presentation skills could use some, like, fine tuning?"

Conrad smiles a little bit, despite himself; then the smile fades, replaced with contemplative confusion. "You found this awfully quickly," he notes. "It's only been a few hours."

"Yeah well," Hanna says, hoarse and derisive, "I can't really leave, so it was this or play jenga with myself."

"What do you mean you can't leave?"

"Ummmm so you should come visit me when this all blows over! I could use somebody to talk to about magic stuff, it's kind of not something I can tell anyone here about? I mean I gotta hide these books in the craziest places, you wouldn't even believe."

There's a note of urgency in Hanna's voice, a little too earnest, like the sound that Conrad caught once years ago standing at the door in the late evening—the first year, when the days were long and bloody and distant to Conrad—when he had heard Hanna begging Horatio not to go. Where, Conrad has never been sure. The desperate sibilants echo in his memory and he winces, tightens his hold on the phone.

"Sure," he says. "I'll come find you."

"Promise?" Hanna pushes, sounding very young.

"…Promise," Conrad says, with his lips leaking thick droplets of blood. Seven years is a long time to wait for a promise, but at least he knows it's something he's bound to keep.

Hanna doesn't say anything for a long while—Conrad likes to think maybe he's smiling, sometimes he just does that, but there's no way to know for sure.

"Oh," Hanna says, suddenly, "duh. You never told me your name?"

Now that is a tricky subject. Conrad is debating whether to continue being as evasive as possible (turnabout is fair play after all), or just cop to his first name. It's not a terribly unusual one. He's barely opened up his mouth to respond when he hears the same static as before creeping into the connection, that uneasy sound that makes the hair on the back of his neck bristle.

"Hanna," he says, "Hanna, what is that?"

"My parents," Hanna hisses, distracted. "Shit, twice in one day—?"

"Hanna what is happening?" Conrad demands. "Do you need help?"

Hanna laughs a humorless, almost-hysterical laugh. It grates Conrad's bones. "Make sure you come find me," is all he says, and then the call ends.

For a long time, Conrad doesn't move. The phone starts making irritated noises at him, but it barely registers.

Part of him, a very big part, wants to drop this whole stupid time travel plot and find Hanna, hitchhike if necessary—he's dangerous, now, he can do things that he couldn't do once upon a time, he can fucking fly there if necessary. Whatever the hell is happening at the Cross residence in 2004, it sounds exactly like the kind of thing that Conrad has grown resignedly accustomed to, the kind of thing that he's spent the last five years learning how to deal with the hard way.

But.

Hanna didn't recognize him the night they first met, and Hanna's not very good at keeping a poker face. Conrad can't have been involved, and he doesn't know what kind of time travel he's dealing with but if this stupid tree is any indicator, it's running on a pretty strict causality loop.

Conrad bites his lip again, and this time the skin tears right down the middle. He knows what Hanna would do if their positions were reversed, Hanna would say fuck the consequences and he would go. But Conrad isn't Hanna, and Conrad is a pessimist—maybe a little more idealistic than Worth, but still, essentially, a pragmatist.

He sighs and hangs up the phone. One thing he does know, whatever the hell is happening to Hanna won't kill the kid. That's causality. Everything about this argument he's having with himself is predicated on the assumption that Hanna's paradox tree is really what they're dealing with, though, and if it's not…

Conrad sets his shoulders. If it's not, he decides, then there's nothing stopping him from hopping on a greyhound and busting down Hanna Falk Cross's door, and he'll take his chances with it if and when the time comes.

For now, he needs to figure out where that damn tree is supposed to be planted.

-a-

It's late in the afternoon, Conrad is tired as hell and going pink across the bridge of his nose, and the rain is coming down in torrents. He's managed to find a map and get oriented, and he's traced his steps back through the city which looks so different when it's full of people and lights and cars. He's pretty sure the intersection is on this block or the next block, and he's trying not to think too hard about how the hell he's going to plant a seed in the middle of the road. He'll probably have to wait till midnight, or set up a ludicrous distraction, or both. God he wishes his Worth were here.

A flash of something around the corner catches his eye, over the top of the partition separating the parking garage from the sidewalk. A splash of wet blond hair, a head above the rest of the crowd, it could be nobody or it could be the same mistake twice, but Conrad's adrenaline starts flowing anyhow.

"Worth!" Conrad shouts, nearly tripping over himself as he jumps the partition between the garage and the street. The world is so full and so loud and so busy that his voice disappears behind a roaring SUV, and the figure disappears behind the door of a bar.

Conrad lands uneasily, ignores a couple bewildered looks from pedestrians around him, and stops just short of racing across the road. Jaywalking. That was a thing. Right. He sighs in irritation and stalks up to the crosswalk and punches the button. The light remains stubbornly orange while he taps his foot.

Beside him, a girl in a floor length skirt is talking on her cellphone. He can hear the tinny buzz of her mother on the other end of the line as she argues about what they should have for dinner. He's so busy staring at the stupid light that he nearly jumps when the girl taps him on the shoulder.

"Do you need some change, mister?" she asks him, interested, with her hand over the bottom of her cell.

Conrad stares at her, and as they make eye contact she shrinks back, surprised. Oh. The eyes? He forgot about those. Most people don't notice.

"No thanks," he tells her, edging away. "I, uh, I'm not actually homeless—well I am, but I'm not—oh fuck it."

He spins around and races across the road, light or no. What are they gonna do, arrest him?

The bar is a little place with one glass window along the front and a neon sign proclaiming it to be the property of somebody named Jerry. It looks a familiar, sort of, but then all these kinds of bars tend to look alike.

He pushes open the door, and he shoves in past the burly drunken form of someone with a Midwestern accent. He scans the crowd for dirty blond hair, which is harder to do when Worth is sitting down and he must be right now because Conrad can't spot a thing. There's an empty spot at the bar, though, and Conrad makes his way towards that for lack of anything better to do. It's near the end of the room, where the booths get darker and quieter, and he's about to spin around on the seat and do a second reconnaissance when he catches sight of something that makes him nearly crack his forehead on the table in his haste to get out of the line of sight.

Conrad, some eleven years younger, is carrying a pitcher of beer gingerly through the crowd. He's wearing shoes that are too big for him, and his balance is suffering. Conrad, circa now, winces and flips his collar up around his chin, which makes him look like an absolute tool no doubt but it's better than trying to navigate a paradox.

He narrows his eyes. What is he doing here, in Sacramento? He's only ever been in this city once before, and that was for spring break—

Roughly eleven years ago.

Oh, god, seriously? Seriously? No wonder the damn bar looked familiar. What a lousy trip that had been, he barely remembers anything except his friends completely flaking on him, and picking up a hobo or something. It was a long time ago.

The younger Conrad mumbles some apologies as he dances around larger patrons. He's not even legal, Conrad remembers that now, but he'd been with someone who got him in—

"Oi," says someone at the booth in the shadowed corner, "don't drop the damn thing."

Conrad blinks silently, horrified. His nose is pressing into the sticky surface of the bar and can't even get up the energy to be grossed out by it. Surely not.

Behind him, he hears himself settling into the booth.

"I wasn't going to," this Conrad says, a little reproachful.

Worth—it's definitely Worth, he'd know that particular sound anywhere—grunts in reply.

"I can't believe they didn't card me," Conrad says, very quietly, as if he's afraid just mentioning it could jinx him.

"Eh," says Worth. "Used ta come here when I was in med school. They don' give a shit."

"You were in med school?"

"Y'know I'm startin' to wonder why that's s'damn difficult ter buy, really, I am."

Conrad laughs, and it comes out as a half-snort like it always did when he was trying too hard to muffle himself. There's a moment of silence that follows, and then a meek "sorry".

In his seat at the bar, the older Conrad risks a glance over his shoulder. The two of them, his Worth and the other him, are sitting across from each other in the dim corner of the room. The human reeks of nerves—adrenaline, sweat—but also endorphins. The vampire has his arm slung around the back of the booth, glass of beer in hand. What? He can't drink that!

The younger Conrad folds his hands into his lap and says, "Are you sure those are fake?"

Worth scowls dangerously and bares his fangs, and suddenly his casual slouch looks predatory. "A'course they're fake, numbskull," he says, "wot, ya think vampires're real or summat?"

The younger Conrad bites his lip and shakes his head. He's lying of course.

Doc Worth relaxes. "Got 'em off a bloke in San Fran," he tells the kid. "Damn great city. Crazy as a fuckin' mercury mine, I'll give ya."

He pauses, swirls the undrunk glass of beer, and then says, "Tell ya what, next spring break ya ditch those losers you call mates and hit up San Fran. Get crazy. Do somethin' artsy, whatever. Ya might have fun fer once."

The human looks away, but it's obvious that he's imagining a scenario and he finds it intriguing—Conrad suddenly remembers that he did spend a break in San Francisco once. On the advice of a friend, he had thought.

This is absolutely too strange and Conrad is way too tired to be dealing with it now. He scowls, purses his lips, and whistles. It's a high pitched, clear whistle, and a few people at the bar turn their heads, but at a pitch that high it's pretty difficult to figure out where the sound is coming from. He learned that in catholic school.

There's a pause—in his pereripheral vision, Conrad sees Worth sit up straight—and then the clinking of a glass onto the tabletop.

"Scuse me," Worth says to the younger man, "it would appear that I got an unexpected gentleman caller."

"Um?"

Doc Worth grins, stretches, and steps back from the table. "Be seein' you," he yawns, cracking his neck. "No doubt."

"What about the beer?"

Worth shrugs, grabs a satchel from underneath the table. "Have fun."

The vampire stalks away from the booth, and as he passes by the bar he grabs Conrad by the wrist and drags him off to the opposite wing of the building. This is the second time in two days a Worth has pulled this move.

"There ya are ya useless fucker," Worth growls, with Conrad in frantic tow behind him. "Where ya been the last day I'd like ter know, bloody hell, traipse off with yer fairy companions fer a magical spa day did ya?

Conrad skips to avoid a mug rolling across the floor. "Having known actual fairies for half a decade now, I'm less insulted than I could be."

Worth yanks his arm in lieu of reply.

"What were you doing with me?" Conrad asks, "I mean, him? Him-slash-me."

They come to a stop in a decently dim corner of the bar, underneath a large, dangerously heavy TV mounted on a shelf that does not look well supported enough to carry it. The screen fizzles with static between vague glimpses of a baseball game, and Conrad isn't surprised that they're the only people lurking in the area.

"Yer magic fuckin' fruit," Worth says, jerking half a shriveled tangerine out of his satchel, "dropped me next ter my own damn alma mater just as Marty McfuckingFly was walkin' past. This is why we don't damn well mess with suspicious food, Conrad."

Conrad scowls. Something equally irritated is on the tip of his tongue when a thought occurs to him.

"Your alma mater?"

Worth shrugs angrily. It's a skill of his. "Learnin' hospital, spent a year there 'fore I hadda up an' make tracks."

"Because I landed at the same hospital," Conrad says, picking up the train of thought again, "and I ran into you."

Worth squints. "Nah," he says, "can't be. Yer doppelganger over there is on spring break, 'n me 'n Lamont skipped town before spring break started. Thought I'd be back by the time semester picked up," he adds, as an afterthought. "Never did make it back."

Conrad rolls his eyes. "Well I think I'd know the identity of the guy who's grabbing my ass, don't you?"

A string of emotions flash over Worth's face, one of which is possessive resentment quickly followed by confusion. He looks like he has no idea what to think.

"You have never not been an absolute asshole, have you?" Conrad asks, crossing his arms. "Somehow I thought you might have started out alright, but it looks like I had it backwards."

"…'sat a compliment there, Connie?"

Conrad rolls his eyes a second time. Why did he want to find this bastard again? "Anyhow," he says, "not all schools have spring break at the same times. Fancy you forgetting a thing like that."

But Worth has his face screwed up in concentration, sharp red eyes focused on Conrad's abysmal state of appearance. "Wait a second," he says, "tha' was you?"

Conrad flicks his eyes somewhere else, suddenly a bit sheepish. Shit, he fucked up.

"You!" Worth says, practically leaking smoke from his ears. "Hadda jerk off fer a fuckin' hour after ya left the house you crazy fuckin' bastard! Point a gun at me will ya, waltz off inter the goddamn sunset? Never heard the damn end of it from Monty!"

Conrad claps a hand over his own mouth to keep from breaking into a set of deeply unattractive snorts. "I'm not sorry," he says, between forced breaths, "you were terrible."

Worth throws his hands up in a rage but doesn't actually contest it.

When Conrad gets himself under control again, he brings them back around to the real matter at hand. Time travel, you know. The story about the paradox tree goes over about as well as expected—buncha sentmental bollocks—but Worth eventually agrees it's the best thing they've got to work with. Actually, he adds after a moment of contemplation, it does explain why the two of them landed back here at this moment in particular. This spring break was the closest the two of them had ever been, prior to Hanna's meddling in their lives. At the point of touch down, there had only been a wall between them.

The perfect intersection for all four parties.

Conrad bites his lip and tries not to think about how Worth is just casually rolling with this whole soul mates thing. It doesn't have to mean anything. It's just fairy tales.

He still has to fight down a smile, though.

As they're gathering up to go, Doc Worth shoots a last glance towards Conrad's younger half, who is downing his beer like it's going out of style. Conrad thinks he remembers having an obnoxious hangover the next morning, drymouth like crazy. Get used to it, he thinks, with a scowl. You're headed for an eternity of it.

"How'd you get him to take you?" Conrad asks.

"Eh, yer an easy book ter read Achenleck. Easy ter scare too, Christ, you were a nervous kid."

Conrad looks from the man beside him to the smaller Conrad in his oversized argyle sweater at the bar. A hand slips up, almost of its own accord, and presses into the flat pane of his own face.

They look different. This Conrad is a little chubby, a college student who hadn't been meticulously caring for himself—his eyes are an uninteresting brown, his hair is nervously slicked back with too much gel, he's got seven years fewer lines on his face, but more importantly he carries himself like an injured creature, with a sort of metaphysical limp. Conrad thinks back to the way Luce was looking at him last night. He's aware again of his shaggy hair and his dirty skin, which had felt rather admirably clean two days ago, and his own sharp movements. Both of them, Conrad now and Conrad then, are wary things, but these days he's been walking with the distant but present knowledge that he can rip a man's head from his neck in two seconds flat.

The difference a little thing like that makes.

Conrad runs a hand through his ruined hair and turns his attention back to Worth. This is too much for him, he's ready to get out of here before the memories start hitting any harder.

"Any errands you need to run?" he asks, only half sarcastic. The backpack he's currently wearing is stuffed with so much toilet paper he had to pull the rollers out of the middles and squash them down flat.

Worth grins and holds up his own bag, a cheap promotional satchel stuffed with jerky and chocolate. "We're gonna make a damn killin' off this trip."

Conrad sniffs but doesn't contradict him. No one's going to miss a couple pounds of dried meat and fruit, who knows how much of it would have even been bought—the amount of food they used to throw away is just astounding to Conrad now. Maybe if they can do this again—

He looks down at the shriveled half-orange in his hand. No, better not to risk it. Bad enough putting a vampire's body through a magical tempest once, a second time might rip them apart. Or strand them.

"How did you even afford that," he says instead, lifting an eyebrow.

"Five finger discount," Worth replies.

"On half a bag full of chocolate."

"An' coffee, some coffee in there at the bottom."

"Even after all these years you remain a terror and an enigma."

Worth winks and swings the bag over his shoulder like it barely weighs and ounce. The bar is smoky and so much brighter than it should be, and the system is playing something by Britney Spears over the sound of people shouting and laughing, and Conrad takes a deep unnecessary breath. Outside the bar a car honks impatiently.

"Let's go plant us a goddamn tree," Worth says.