intheruins | Recent Entries

▶ the basics
▶ appearance
▶ voice, accent, etc.
▶ scent
▶ touch
▶ demeanor
▶ information for psychics and other magic users
▶ magical abilities
▶ medical information
▶ god-modding
▶ other items of note

( of cloudless climes and starry skies )

I kept going until I couldn't hear them screaming anymore. I was the oldest. They were screaming for me.

Serena swears she awakens the the sound of those same screams she heard more than a decade ago, only then there's nothing but silence. Stillness. The family home is as cool as the winter outside, blankets covering Serena's lap and the backs of the horses in the barn nearby. For a moment, she starts to move from the couch she's made her bed – and then realizes.

She's not supposed to be here.

The last time she was here she was choking on smoke and running from noise like a spooked animal searching for sanctuary. Toward the horses and away from – well, away from what was supposed to count. The only thing that was supposed to count. Her family.

The little ones, boys and girls, and of course her parents. They'd been unrecognizable. Buried together like soldiers that had perished in a war instead of what was supposed to be the safety of their home. She could have saved them, she tells herself over and over, she could have run back in and dragged their bodies away from the heat.

But that was more than a decade ago – wasn't it? Just moments ago she was resting her eyes in her bed in Darrow, waiting for George's gurgling to give way to sleep. Just moments ago she was anywhere but here, having thought she'd put all of this behind her... only how could she?

The burn on her back means she could never forget. Every time she showers, every time she glances back at her naked body in the mirror. It doesn't hurt, not anymore, but it doesn't need to. All of the ache is inside her – those moments when she's certain she's heard them call her name again, "Serena, Serena, Serena!", only to be met with silence once more.

Like right now. Somehow, Serena finds the strength to move and look about. There's no sign of George – that terrifies her. She doesn't want to be anywhere he isn't. There's no sign of her siblings, either, not as she heads up the stairs and looks in their beds. She spots a doll that one of the littlest always carried about. It had a name, maybe, but she can't remember it.

She lifts it to her face and inhales. It smells like baby powder and dirt – her sister had carried it everywhere. A faint smile tugs at the corner of her lips at the thought and she glances around. It would be so easy to curl up on one of these tiny beds and close her eyes and give into the hurt. To let herself perish as they had in these same rooms – though there's no sign of ash nor embers here.

It would be so easy to give into the hurt, but then there's the sound of movement downstairs and Serena almost trips over her own feet in search of it.

Sara isn't dead but she might as well be. There doesn't seem to be any difference when it comes to the disappearances in Darrow, save for the fact that for a few there are graves for their loved ones to mourn.

Serena hasn't visited Edith's graveside often but it seems as good a day as any. The line she'd used to contact one of her only friends reaches nowhere and it doesn't take a visit to her home to know that she's gone. Serena just knows, that sinking, all-consuming feeling staying with her a she calls for George's sitter and makes her way to the cemetery, rugged up as she purchases flowers along the way.

They're so yellow they don't quite seem real but nothing has for a very long time, maybe even longer than since before her arrival. She tries not to look too downcast as she leaves them beside the gravestone, gently brushing away loose dirt with her hands.

The cold stings her fingers but it's worth it as she sits back and then stands after a moment, heading toward the roadway so she can find her way to a bus stop that will take her home.

At least that's her intention until she spots a family sight: that of Elvis' hearse. At least she thinks it's his. Around here, they all look the same, just like the mourners that surround them in black and grey.

The hearse is empty and the nearby burial seems to be over, so Serena decides it won't be untoward to head on over and see if he's around. The last time they'd spoken, there had been something refreshing about how easily they spoke about death when she'd spent so much of her life doing the opposite.

Serena hadn't ridden for some time after George was born, even longer than Darrow's doctor's recommended. Back home, she surely wouldn't have been so cautious, but back home, George likely wouldn't have survived his birth.

Because she'd been reckless, riding when she wasn't supposed to and risking everything. By some miracle, she'd wound up in Darrow and with Beth Greene's care and compassion, the two had been okay. Better than okay. They're thriving, now, George eight months old – a fact that Serena can hardly to believe. Each day he surprises her with something new, an expression or a movement or a sound. The thing that surprises her the most, though, is the way that her love grows. So much grief had weighed her down for so long that even with her marriage with Pemberton, she often wondered whether she knew how to love.

But with George, it seems as if her heart only makes more room for all of the little things and big that her son accomplishes, and it changes the way she views the world and in particular this strange place she's found herself living in.

Before George and before Pemberton, animals were Serena's main source of love. Horses in particular. So to cease riding them hadn't been easy and it's a habit she falls back into happily. Some days, she teaches and trains young riders but others she simply canters around the arena all on her own, feeling in the saddle as if she could be anywhere or anywhen – content.

Today she's riding Sashimi, a chestnut thoroughbred with a personality that matches her own. She loves to jump more than anything, and Serena loves to soar more than just about anything. They're a perfect match.

Though it's cold out, they work up a sweat and Serena's pushing the hair out of her eyes as she returns the horse to her stall. She'll have to return back home, soon, to the countryside where George is being cared for by a sitter, but for right now she's happy to simply stroke the filly's neck, murmuring words of gratitude for their successful ride.

The practice seems wasteful to Serena in two ways. The first being that she lives out in the country where next to nobody lives or will see the lights, the second being that where she's from, electricity was a luxury and anyone who used it for such frivolity would be considered absurd.

Of course, Darrow is known for its absurdity and it seems like Christmas lights are just par for the course during the modern Christmas. The lights themselves barely use up any electricity, anyway, and when Serena sees the way that George responds to the decorations on the trees and the twinkling of the gold, red and green, she can't help but take matters into her own hands.

It's a simple string of lights in traditional colors and she waits until George is down for his nap to get started, winding the bulbs around the supporting beams of their cabin. In the daylight it looks perfectly ordinary and she's sure from a distance the light wouldn't even be visible, so tonight she'll show her son what she's created. She hopes the formation of new traditions will help to take away the ache of the old.

Grief, as always, comes in waves. Not long after Edith's funeral, the newspapers stop talking about the Purge on the front page and slowly life seeps back into something like normality. At least, as close as anything can get to normality in a place like Darrow.

Serena settles back into her routine of working on bringing the house up to modern standards and teaching lessons at the stable, marvelling every day at the progress George is making. Before long, she's sure he'll be walking and talking, and all at once she fears the change and is desperate for it to happen. She doesn't know if she'll ever have a child again and lives with an awareness everything might be the first time for the last time, but she also wants to see everything the child she and Pemberton created is capable of.

Today, though, he's been with a sitter while Serena's been at the stables showing a young girl the basics of dressage. She picks him up afterward, still wearing her jodhpurs and a sweaty complexion despite the growing cold. Balancing a job and parenthood is more difficult than she ever imagined but also deeply gratifying, a reminder that she is more than one thing and always has been.

There aren't often visitors by the house nearby theirs so Serena's surprised to see a young man when she gets off the bus with George in her arms. Curiosity gets the better of her and she lifts her hand into a wordless wave.

Despite all of the nonsense Serena's experienced and witnessed since her arrival, she knows better than to expect that whatever she sends will wind up in the hands of its intended recipient. But she also prays every night to a god she's not sure exists and she can't see the difference here.

She finds out about the mailbox in passing and leaves it for weeks before she puts pen to paper, sitting on a hill by the stables as she watches a group of horses graze. It's the most she's felt in her element for the longest time and it makes her miss Pemberton more than she's allowed herself to for a while. It's easy to forget how sad she is when she has so much else to focus on: her son, her new house, the hope of a career.

She wouldn't have had most of that without the husband that she left behind unwillingly in the Smoky Mountains, ripped out of bed with him and thrust into this strange world instead. For the longest time she hadn't want to rely on anyone else, hadn't want to risk the ache again, but it didn't take long before she came to connect with Pemberton in a way she hadn't anyone else. They'd been inseparable.

Or so she'd thought until they were separated and she had no choice in the matter.

She can't imagine marrying anyone else, still wears her engagement and wedding rings on her finger like a hopeless Miss Havisham. Serena might not have been jilted at the alter herself, but she's been jilted in life instead. Maybe there's no fire to force repent but being forced apart from the world she knew and loved best, well, it's its own punishment, though of course with it had come bliss.

Serena knows the unlikelihood George would have ever survived without Darrow's intervention, and it's what keeps her grounded at the worst of times. When she looks at him she sees the love of her love and it makes the loss of the first love of her life bearable. The one thing she'll never be able to make sense of in her own mind is that George will never meet his father.

She'd been raised without her parents and her siblings, and it had been torturous. There were children at the orphanage and kind strangers who took care of her there, but they weren't blood. And blood, she's come to learn, means everything. Her greatest wish in life was for her and Pemberton's blood to merge and create a son and that it came true makes all of this strange newness much easier to accept.

At least her son has his mother.

Though single parenthood isn't easy and if she were a better person, Serena might sympathize with Rachel Harmon as a result. She doesn't. Her son was born of love and in wedlock. The Harmon boy was a sin that never should have happened – a sin committed before her new life began.

All of this occurs to Serena, of course, but in the end the letter she puts in the mailbox for Pemberton is brief – a note with a photograph enclosed.

My love,

It's a boy, just as I promised. We wish you were here more than anything.

All our love,
Serena and George, your son.

Even after having moved her belongings from her apartment in the city out into the countryside, Serena's house remains barren and desperately in need of decoration once having realized she had no furniture to her name. She hadn't minded too much what their house looked like in North Carolina – though of course, it was beautiful – but her priorities had been different then and she'd barely spent any time inside at all. Here, she has her son to think of, and she wants the place George is raised in to be warm.

So she's made an arrangement to go shopping with Edith, one of the few people in all of Darrow who might understand her sense of style – and why modern decor has her so at a loss. They decide on Törgt which is a store that she's never heard of – a fact that doesn't surprise her in the least. It's relatively inexpensive, though, and that's a selling point now that she's hardly wealthy.

George is sleeping in his pram as they wait by the entrance of the store for Edith, Serena turning through the pages of a catalogue and trying her best not to judge until she sees anything in person. Still, she can't help but think about what a waste of wood to lacquer it in such outrageous colors. There are scattered options that look like they might match what she has in the house already, but none of it has any soul to it and she can't help but gently sigh.

Things are far from perfect but they're starting to come together. Serena's had help with the plumbing and the electricity and moving in some of the heavy furniture. She's done a lot on her own, too, grateful that she's healed from her delivery and learning what life is like when she always has a baby in her arms. She knows it will be harder to get help by way of nannies and babysitters out in the country but decides it's worth the trade. Here, they have a piece of home. Here, they can almost escape.

To the way things were and never will be again, a fact that sometimes catches Serena off guard as she remembers it. In those moments she forces herself to look at her son and remember that he's what she's always wanted, and she has him. If she'd arrived on her own entirely, who knows what she might have done. Most of her life has been spent without a family. That's not something she ever wants to return to.

So she accepts the reality that her life with Pemberton is over. She'll always him in George, something that can ache in both good ways and bad. She accepts this strange new future where women dress as they please and people use electricity like a birthright instead of a blessing. She wakes up each morning and decides to keep living, even if this isn't the life she planned.

George is fussing one morning when Serena's been trying to put up some cheap curtains she'd bought at a thrift store, so she decides to take him out for a walk. The terrain is too uneven for any kind of pram so she carries him instead, pointing out trees and clouds in the sky overhead. If she turns to the right direction she can almost believe that she's back in the mountains of North Carolina, tall trees stretching further than she could ever climb.

She wonders if the people who live here have any idea how much they'd be worth back on her camp, or how many workers would be put at risk to cut it down.

Wondering catches her off guard and she's surprised to see a dog ahead, no owner in sight. She hesitates for a moment in concern for her son. Back home, they'd had panthers to worry about but there had been rabies, too. She walks a little closer, lifting George so that her grasp is more secure. There's no foam at his mouth. And, as she looks to inspect, she sees he's wearing a collar. Chances are he's not a stray.

Soon, George will be a month old and Serena will have been in the city just as long. It's surreal. She hasn't done much since arriving and she's never been one for idling. She wants to head out to the country and find a place that feels more like home, but she can afford neither the expense nor the strength.

So she does what she can. She doesn't have the room for a full nursery but she has a bassinet for George and a changing table, and even a rocking chair. That's where she seems to spend most of her time, feeding him with the milk that she makes from scoops of powder and warm water.

She reads, too. There are decades of books that she can't account for, though the local library does have some of her old favourites. She sits and rocks and feeds George, losing herself in fictional worlds and trying not to think about the loss of Pemberton and how much harder this all is without him.

Beth, strange as their friendship is, proves to be something of a touchstone for Serena. That she was the first person Serena met is something she believes comes down to more than coincidence. One afternoon, she manages to type out a message on the phone that many have tried to teach her to use.

W OULD YO U LI KE TO CO ME OV ER FOR TEA ?

It's a mess, but she figures Beth will know what she means.

Like everything else in Darrow, it seems that raising a baby is completely different to what it had been in North Carolina.

Sent home with few disposable diapers, bottles and something that they call formula, Serena isn't at all sure where she ought to start when it comes to setting up a nursery for George. There's only one bedroom in her apartment which means their space will be shared, but Serena still wants a corner of his own, a bassinet and a mobile and a changing table to begin with.

Just getting around with a newborn proves difficult, especially after surgery. A woman in a supply store mentions something about babywearing when Serena arrives simply holding George against her chest, swaddled against the cool. Then she goes on and on about the difference between strollers and prams and Serena finds herself longing for a time when things were much less complicated.

More than anything, she finds herself longing for the antique bassinet that Pemberton had imported to the camp and Pemberton with it.

It takes far longer than it should but eventually Serena decides on a bassinet to keep by her bed and changing table - both in white. She asks for them to be delivered but leaves with a dozen smaller things in a bag. She still hasn't settled on a pram, though, and the struggle to balance a baby in one arm and her purchases in the other means she drops her shopping bag, burp cloths and clothes and pacifiers falling onto the sidewalk.

The first couple of days, there's not much Serena can do. She's lost a lot of blood and there's a lot more to healing from a caesarean than there is a natural delivery, too.

It's almost maddening. She can't even nurse her son. Every so often they wheel her into a room with strange machines and let her hold him. He's doing well, she's told again and again, and she tells them that he's a survivor. That it's in his blood.

The nurses don't know what to do with her stoicism and it's only at night when they're off doing whatever it is they do when she's supposed to be sleeping that she lets herself cry, careful and silent. She doesn't know how to live without Pemberton. She doesn't know how to be a mother without a father.

If she were a better person, she'd think of Rachel with sympathy but instead, she just feels scorn.

At least she'd had the Widow Jenkins.

Serena and her child have no one.

After her blood levels lift back to normal, the doctors encourage her to move around. She's never been one to stay in bed all day and so she does, as much as it hurts. Since they took the IVs out, she hasn't been taking much for pain. They don't stick around to see if she swallows the pills and why should they?

She wanders about the maternity ward in a robe that's too big and slippers that are cheap and flimsy, watching as happy mothers are pushed around in wheelchairs, carrying their babies. They smile at her and she forces a smile back but the jealousy still bites. If she were back in North Carolina, if she had any control at all, no one would stand between her and her son.

Serena doesn't ask permission when she heads to another floor. There's the promise of a cafeteria and she hopes it has more to offer than the tasteless mush that is brought to her bedside. She's reading a map and turning to follow it when she suddenly feels weak, reaching out for a wall before she has a chance to fall.

[Dated May 11th.]

The child is a boy, just as Serena told George from the start, small but stubborn as his mother and determined to live.

She names him for his father – the father he's unlikely to ever meet – and gives him her maiden name as his middle. She figures it's the last chance she has for her family's name to live on, long after the rest of them were lost to her.

A week or so after she delivers him she's told she can leave the hospital but he's not ready, yet, and that's a reality she doesn't easily accept. If she were back in North Carolina instead of this strange, forward place, she might have more sway in bringing him back to the apartment that she's been assigned, but neither the doctors nor nurses will hear any of it.

So she leaves the hospital without her son – a day after Mother's Day, of all days – watching him through glass before she heads on. She'll be back in the evening, she tells them, although once she's outside she's not sure where she'll find the strength. She has two scars, now. The one burned in her back and one on her belly, each telling a story of survival against all odds.

Nothing to her name except a few clothes the nurses had given her and an envelope that has cash, a key and the strangest phone she's ever seen, she lingers outside the hospital for a few minutes before asking for help hailing a cab. Someone tells her it's 2017 (a fact she's still struggling to believe) and to use something called an app.

For the first time since she was a young girl, covered in ash, Serena feels totally at a loss.

[Dated Monday, May 15. Find Serena either outside the hospital or arriving at Chelsea Cloisters.]

It all happens so fast.

Even as the sound of the axe against skin turns Serena’s stomach in the same way the smell smoke had come to after the fire, from somewhere within her instincts kick in and she’s quick to move, quicker than she should be in her state, down the hill and toward Galloway.

The other men run over but it’s her voice that calls for a belt, the leather wrapped tight around Galloway’s severed arm as he gasps from the pressure and the pain. Serena’s done this enough times that she knows the belt won’t be enough, taking her own scarf – a gift from Pemberton – and securing it around the wound. It will be covered in blood in mere moments but that doesn’t cross Serena’s mind as she pulls him to his feet and yells for Campbell and Cheney to get him on the cart.

The pulling sends a shooting pain to her abdomen but Serena disobeys her gut, climbing on the nearest horse and galloping back to camp. If she gets there before the cart, maybe they’ll start up the truck and get him to town with enough time to save his life.

Nothing feels right and Serena yelps with pain as she dismounts, watching as the chaos of men carry Galloway’s squirming figure into the car. He captures her gaze for a moment, so intense she thinks he might be possessed. “I’ll live! It’s done been prophesized!”

The truck roars to life and disappears with a cloud of dust.

“Damn fine job whoever tied that tourniquet, he’d have bled out otherwise.” With that quick compliment, the doctor moves on and then Pemberton’s at Serena’s shaky side, looking her over with a mixture of disapproval and worry. The first isn’t one she’s used to from him and she might start to object if he wasn’t the one to speak first.

“Did you do that?”

“Yes.”

He takes her hand. “Were you riding a horse?”

Serena doesn’t answer but she doesn’t need to, leaning into Pemberton as they start the short walk back to the cabin. Galloway’s last words stay with her each step. It’s done been prophesized.

She doesn’t even know him all that well but finds herself hoping he’s right. From day one, she’d known he wasn’t like the other workers. That he didn’t disregard her opinion simply because she was a woman. Maybe it’s because of his own mother and the powers they claim she holds. Maybe it’s affection or maybe it’s respect.

She just hopes she gets a chance to see him again. To know that he’s all right.

Right now, though, it’s her own pain that takes over all of her thinking as Pemberton helps her onto the bed, bringing her water and brushing back her hair. Soon the doctor is called back and he listens to her belly, promising everything will be fine. That there’s no labor, that it’s just a stomachache. Somehow, Serena just knows otherwise, but if it’s not enough to keep her agreeing to the trip to Asheville. Not yet. She’s too stubborn to give in yet.

It’s done been prophesized.

A few peppermints and prayers later, she eventually manages to succumb to exhaustion, Pemberton stroking the soft curve of her abdomen.

It could be minutes or hours later when she’s awoken by an excruciating pain like nothing she’s ever felt before – in a place she’s never been before. She’s in no bed, be it at home or hospital, and with nothing but the only gown that’s fit her for a month for modesty.

Serena wonders for a moment if this is some kind of witchcraft – it’s done been prophesized – but then she’s struggling to her feet, starting towards the first noise she hears and yelling weakly for somebody. Anybody.

As she stumbles she can’t help but be brought back to a lifetime ago when the fire had been extinguished, all of her family’s memories reduced to ash. She’d wandered through the ruins, calling their names to no avail. She hadn’t expected to be heard. She’d known they were long dead.

But she’d been alive then and she’s alive now, hands grabbing at the bump of her belly as if will alone might convince her son to stay.