Winter always made Helen feel restless. Wrapped up deep in her overcoat she walked aimlessly around Old City and took in the sights. Over the last couple of weeks the temperature had dropped drastically, until the ground was frosty and people's breath misted in the air. It was early evening but there were only a handful of people along the usually crowded thoroughfares. It seemed not everyone had elected to brave the cold.

She walked down quiet streets on restless feet and thought of home. Oh, in the light of day she considered the North American Sanctuary her home these days and had done for many years. But in the winter, when the nights began to draw in and the temperature dropped she found her heart returning to London. When she turned a corner in the fog she almost expected to hear the muffled fall of horse hooves over cobbles. The ever present sound of hawkers calling softened by the fog and distance. If she paused in the street and closed her eyes she could almost hear them.

In her mind's eye she could see the narrow streets, the air thick with the pall of fog off the Thames. She could walk from Clerkenwell to Aldgate and back along the river to Victoria. Tall white town houses and wooden fronted shops. There would be cabbies huddled together sharing smokes on the corners, their collars turned up against the damp air. Newspaper vendors calling out the headlines to bring in the sales. And amongst it all the pick pockets and bobbies in their constant games of cat and mouse down the alleys.

Instead there was the distant wail of sirens in Old City to break her reverie. Feeling more restless than ever Helen began walking once again. Chin tucked down in her scarf and hands buried deep in her pockets. She would never admit it, not while she had people she loved in the States, but the winter always seemed to make Helen homesick. Of course, she simply called it nostalgia.

What Aslan says is I forgive you. Not those words, but that’s what he means, and Edmund doesn’t know why he can’t accept that. He’s gone from pure evil to pure good, and something about the whole thing just doesn’t feel right. Maybe it’s that his hands still feel cold. Maybe it’s that that cold will never leave him.

When he hugs Lucy she’s warm and soft against him and he can tell that she’s crying, even if she turns her face away and swipes hurriedly at her eyes with her sleeve. And when he hugs Susan he knows that she shivers. He can feel it as his hand grazes her shoulder blades and he knows it’s because of him. He’s cold, and that cold will never leave him, no matter who forgives him or what he does. There’s a part of himself that he’s lost, and it’s not coming back.

She isn't expecting him to show up at her door in the rain with an armful of purple-and-white flowers, bleeding from a cut on his cheek, but then Arthur Pendragon has never been precisely predictable.

"My lord," Gwen says, startled.

"So," he begins. "These are for you."

She blinks at him, propping her broom against the wall. "Oh," she says.

"See, it's like this," he says. "It's not like I was like, 'Oh, I'm going to go pick Gwen some flowers today, won't that be a lark,' not that you don't deserve it, that's not what I'm saying, it's just that I'm not the sort of person who goes mooning about picking flowers for people, that's Merlin's area and he's welcome to it. But we were scouting up in the mountains and we came across a little hollow in the woods with all these flowers and they reminded me of you in - you know - your dress, so I just thought I'd take some, I don't know why, stupid idea really, and just my luck, it turns out that hollow is guarded by a flock of - what are they called?"

"Stymphalian birds," Merlin calls from where he is lurking in a very obvious way behind a street stall.

"Oh," Gwen repeats.

He goes on in a rush. "So I took the flowers and the idiot things are apparently very protective of their flowers and they tried to kill me and then Merlin tried to help which I think we both know is just never a good idea and so I was fighting off the birds and Merlin and I'm bleeding and I'm fairly certain I've thrown my right knee but I got them for you anyway anyway and will you just take the stupid flowers?"

And he's still holding them all and he looks frankly completely ridiculous but earnest and his hair is wet and his eyes are extraordinarily blue and she told herself she wasn't going to hurt herself over him like this all over again but she cannot help it - something in her wrenches and gives way.

Gwen smiles. "Thank you, my lord," she says, reaching for the flowers. A blossom or two drifts to the ground as Arthur shifts the bundle into her arms, and he bends for one, twirling the little purple flower between his fingers.

"You like them?" he says.

"They're lovely," she says, and they are. But then she is seized by awkwardness, and she adds, "Would you like to--I don't know--come in?"

"No, no," he says instantly, "My father expects me for dinner. I have to get going, actually. I just, you know. Wanted you to have them."

"All right," she says, and smiles again.

But he doesn't go anywhere for a moment, and he is Arthur Pendragon standing before her with hope in his eyes and a flower in his hand, bleeding for her, and she wishes wretchedly that she'd never met him even while she wants to grab his hand and make sure he never walks away from her again.

There is nothing more Kaylee enjoys than going to a world that's in the middle of strawberry season. It's her favorite fruit and seriously, she's told Mal more than once that she'd work completely for the fruit.

So after completing the job and having Mal tell her that they have to leave world immediately, puts her in a sour mood. She says nothing on the way bad to Serenity, and stops up the ramp once they get there.

Shepperd is standing there waiting for them and he tilts his head.

"No strawberries." She hisses.

Shepperd smiles, motioning for her to come towards him. Kaylee walks over, still grumpy and crosses her arms.

"Go to the mess."

Her eyes narrow and she does as told as Mal walks on.

"You tell her?"

"You could be a little nicer." Shepperd scolds.

"She would have never come back from town." Mal says quickly.

What made Mamoru all the more fearsome was if anyone looked deep enough, they’d find a boy named Omi in his past. Said boy had been idealistic, and innocent – at least, as innocent as a group of killers got. Nagi himself had known Omi, or at least known him as best as an enemy could. He’d heard some of his nauseating speeches, seen his camaraderie. Nagi remembered seeing him smile and laugh while holding flowers in a stake out. Aya had enough brooding sorrow for ten men, but Omi had been mostly hopeful, and mostly spared.

Now to see him so coldly ordering Nagi to take care of someone, and to make it as discreet as possible, it was as if the boy had never existed. Takitori had swallowed him up until there was nothing but coldness in his eyes. Winter, that’s what Takitori was. A swallowing amorphous blob of winter that absorbed whoever came to it and spat out the empty remains.

This was the proof that there was no hope in the world, hadn’t Mamoru proved that? But as far as Nagi was concerned, it was an improvement. There was no room for hope or rosy idealistic notions in his their world.