#prose*

It's not... entirely in Emmanuel's hands. Lem is still himself enough to know that the whole thing would just end up being a large pile of resentment and stale bread. But Emmanuel is a terrifyingly big part of it, because Emmanuel represents everything that Lem never even thought to dream of, before they met.

A home, for one. A home that's just his, and maybe one day just theirs. Sheets that he buys and cleans himself, the sun shining through white linen. A husband, maybe, his big hands marked with old callouses. Hours, days, without equations and variables and notes tumbling around in his head. Something to look forward to besides another chapter, another road. Warm tea and scones in the morning. A familiar smile.

There was something, once, that Lem thought he'd found with Fero. Not a home, but something almost like it, but now when Lem dreams, the broken pieces of their relationship seem like shadowy echoes. Like something he forces, when all he really wants to do is sit, and breathe, and let Emmanuel make him tea.

"Find a bakery," Lem repeats, his frustration turning the words into a snarl.

He's found his bakery, thank you. That's the whole problem.

Forget Lem's mission. Forget Hieron, forget the Gods, forget Hadrian's never-ending existential quandaries and the trouble it always gives them. Wipe the slate clean, and it is just Lem, and he still cannot just go home.

There's a bakery that needs to be saved.

The Heat and the Dark sits atop Rosemerrow, and every time Lem thinks of it, that sick purple against the sky, his stomach lurches. Sometimes, he cannot even wrap his mind around the concept of it, and he has to thing of it in small, sad pieces. The doorway where he saw Emmanuel again is Nothing. The blanket that smelled of tea is Nothing. The kitchen, where Emmanuel pushed him against the counter and kissed him until the tension melted from his shoulders, is Nothing. A thousand dreams, suddenly Impossible.

Lem was never a philosopher, but now he wonders if that means they never existed at all.

He doesn't suppose it matters, really. He's finally taking Fero's advice; Now is all that matters. And right now? His Future is Nothing. There are no bakeries for him, no great audiences, or Kings to swear fealty. Lem has exactly on thing left to his name: