you have a lifetime before you, I'll adore you, come what may

[intheruins]

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.]

Comments

[bryanzilla]

In just about a month from now, Bryan and David will be leaving the hospital with their daughter and Sawyer's new baby sister with them. Unlike today, where Bryan has to leave alone while David heads back to work right after their surrogate's more recent prenatal appointment. The only thing he's carrying is a terrible cup of vending machine coffee that finds its way into the nearest garbage can once he's outside.

Sliding his sunglasses on, he reaches into his pocket for his car keys. Noticing the woman standing nearby, Bryan almost disregards her completely until he does a double take and realizes it's freaking Jennifer Lawrence. Or someone that looks like her, anyway, because he's been in Darrow long enough to know how that whole thing works.

"Hi," he says with a friendly smile after becoming painfully aware that he's maybe stared silently a bit too long to not say something. It's then that he notices the envelope. That, combined with the fact that she looks a bit in over her head, makes him think there's a good chance that she's new. "Sorry, are you... Do you need help finding something?"

[intheruins]

On the camp not many of the men spoke to Serena. If anything they did their best to avoid her. Once she'd proven herself as decent with an axe as any of them and capable of taming eagles in addition to that, it seemed they hadn't known what to do with her.

Which was fine by Serena. She'd never been fond of idle conversation and the only words that had meaning to her were her husband's.

Here, all she has is her son. And grateful as she is for his survival – and whatever magic brought her here so that he could survive – she's lonely. And lost. So when a stranger asks her a question, she betrays her instinct to brush him off. "I do," she says. "I need to find my way to Chelsea Cloisters, only I haven't the slightest clue how to use the phones they have here."

[bryanzilla]

When the first thing out of her mouth isn't something self-deprecating or obnoxiously relatable, there's a slight wave of disappointment that washes over Bryan. He doesn't let it show, though.

"Oh, that's actually not too far from here. Do you need a cab?" Not that anything is really all that far from anything else in Darrow when compared to the real world, but it's closer than some places. "Did you just arrive? ...here?"

[intheruins]

"A little over a week ago," Serena says. Had she any choice, she would have left the hospital days ago, but she doesn't have that kind of sway here. Certainly not enough to mean that she's not headed home alone, a situation she hasn't had to deal with since before she met Pemberton. "A cab and directions would be wonderful," she says. "I've just had a child, I'm not supposed to walk very far."