It's done. Mary doesn't know quite yet what it is, how deep its tentacles will reach, but it is done, all the same, and that is an end to it. Father, mother and childhood are things of the past, but she has her John in her arms and that is something. It will have to be enough.

When he stirs, it is sleepily, and without understanding -- "Mary?" A fine rain has picked up, misting over his face, catching in his hair in the darkness. All the better, Mary thinks, to hide the tears she can't fight back, despite her best efforts.

"Sssh, baby." She strokes her fingers through the soft mess of his hair, after the pattern of the raindrops, and ducks her face to kiss him, little, clinging kisses, one after the other. Tiny kisses settling on his damp mouth like butterflies. Beneath her, John breathes, coming back to life. Coming back to her.

"Sssh, baby," Mary says, and kisses him again -- bites his lower lip in a sudden rush of frenzy, and then licks over the hurt with her tongue at his surprised noise. "Ssh, it's okay. It'll be okay."

There's a dark, tight clench in her gut that says she's wrong, but she ignores it resolutely; cups John's face with her fingers, as if she could keep him from the rain.