A coat as black as a dead tree against a gray sky almost white with cold. Percy straightened in his chair and blinked. Blinked at the coat, at the sight of Cyril out of bed so early and dressed as though to go out. There was something about the coat that stirred a memory, but Percy could not place it exactly. The coat had brought with it into the room a certain strange scent, and not merely the smell of the cedar chips it had been stored in. For some reason, staring at Cyril in the coat, Percy thought of small birds caught up in a harsh wind. He thought of rain. He thought of the shore seen from far out at sea, the sad farewell of it. "Where are you going?" the question was startled out of Percy by the confusion of images in his head.

Cyril looked at him. There was a decidedly gray cast to his green-blue ocean eyes today. He did not directly answer the question, but said, in a tone very unlike his everyday voice full of light and air, "It's January the Twenty-eighth."

Percy felt the words like a physical blow. Across the flesh of his face crept a sensation like the pricking of a thousand tiny needles. How had he failed to realize the date, to recognize the significance of the mourning coat on his lover's shoulders? Why did this day keep creeping up on him, drawing a little closer with every other day that passed, until it was upon him? He wished they would leave it out of the calendar for good. Percy lowered his eyes. "Yes, I see that it is." He knew further words would be superfluous, but he said them anyway. "Will you be all right?"

This was not the everyday Cyril, who would have replied with a lighthearted word or a jest. This Cyril was something of a stranger, who regarded him with flat grayed eyes and said, "You shouldn't ask me such things."

Percy didn't know if he liked this version of Cyril. He found himself with the irrational desire to scream at him that dates were irrelevant, just days chosen at random, that anniversaries had no real power. He wanted to take the gray out of those eyes, and with it the despondency, the hatred, and the self loathing he thought he could see there. No, perhaps Percy did not like this Cyril, but he loved him all the same, and he couldn't bear to witness his misery. He had learned, however, that angry words were useless on this day; they would be met with more of the same. So he said nothing more, but watched as Cyril turned on his heel and left.

Cyril walked through the city for hours. Had anyone been casually following him, they would have found neither rhyme nor reason in his route. He seemed to wander at random. Yet now and then he stopped and stared at something for quite some time, as though he had come to that place for the express purpose of looking at it. A house. A tavern. A tree. A plain stone wall. A statue. Sometimes he simply stopped in the street and stared-- seemingly at nothing, although it was clear from his manner that he had a reason, that there was form in that nothingness he stared at. It was clear that, through his meandering, he was in fact tracing a direct path through the city in search of something definite, known only to him. No one spoke to him as he walked; the street vendors did not even offer him their wares, deterred perhaps by the expression in his eyes or the coat of mourning on his shoulders.

What was apparent to Cyril, although no one else, except perhaps Percy, would have realized this, was that he was traveling in time. He was visiting these old places which had meant something to him once, where his memories lived. Where someone else lived too. In each of these places, he encountered this other person, for these were places where the two of them had once stood or walked or talked or laughed together. Cyril knew that he could not speak to him, this other man, but when he visited these places, which were to him landmarks of the past, he could at least see him again.

A gangling redheaded figure with luminous brown eyes, eyes of dark honey gold. A handsome enough young man, if slightly awkward in appearance, with a crooked smile and a narrow nose bent just ever so slightly in the middle, the mark of an old break. Freckled pale cheeks too quick to redden in a blush, clothes always slightly askew, as if he'd just been climbing trees or doing something he shouldn't. The kind of young man who made one think, Now there's a decent lad. There's a person you can count on in a pinch. There's someone you'd be proud to number among your friends.

So Cyril had been. Proud. He paused by Hyde Park to gaze at it wordlessly. Wherever he went, he could see this redhead in so many ages of life: as a toddler falling over and scraping his knees, as a bony, coltish, hyperactive boy of ten, as an uncertain twelve year old, as an endearing adolescent with a merry, braying laugh, and as a young man really just beginning to live, his gangly form finally filling out, his gaze steady, but his smile as open as always. Cyril did not, however, see him in any age past that one, did not see him as aged as Cyril himself was now, did not see him with silver shot through his hair, with a spray of lines about his warm eyes. What Cyril regretted more than anything as he walked through the city visiting the past was that he had not been able to see that young man grow old.

January the Twenty-eighth. That was the date today. On this date, many years ago now, his friend Terrence Willoughby-- Terry-- had had his neck snapped on the gallows. Cyril had even gone to watch the execution. Oh yes, he had. To witness the death and to mark all those who were involved in it, so that he might hate them forever. So that he might, if there was justice in the world, have the pleasure of taking their own lives someday, or at least of making them suffer terribly. Of course, there was no justice, so Cyril did not actually expect to have his revenge. But he would have his hatred, and that suited him very well indeed. He would have also forever in his mind the image of Terry-- who had done no one any ill in his life-- quietly, his pale face gone paler, his freckles standing out starkly, walking up to the gallows with his eyes open wide. Cyril remembered how Terry had, by some miracle, managed to find him in the crowd. He remembered their gazes had locked. Cyril had wanted to transmit somehow, through his expression, the depth of what he was feeling, of his love for his friend and his rage at what was happening, but he had only stood there, mute and helpless, staring at Terry in horror.

Terry had smiled at him. A weak, frightened sort of smile, but a smile. And then-- Cyril did not want to see what happened next, so he pushed the vision from his brain. He did not want to feel again what it was like to stand back and watch, unable to stop it--

But he did not regret having watched, for all that, did not regret having kept his eyes open for every last instant of it. No, he was glad he had seen. He and Terry had been together from the beginning, and it was only right for Cyril to have been there for the end. What Cyril regretted was that he had gone on living afterwards. For surely, if he had cared enough, if he had loved enough, he would have stood alongside Terry and died with him. He would have confessed to the same crime-- a true confession-- and taken the same penalty. If only as a matter of principle, as a matter of martyrdom. Only Percy had managed to hold him back, only Percy, grabbing his arm and sobbing, Please, don't. Terry wouldn't want you to die too. Please.

Yes, it was true. Terry wouldn't have wanted him to die. Simple, good-hearted Terry. Always thinking of other people first. Foolish Terry, who had had the ill luck to be just another disposable youngest son in just another family of sterling character, whose morals were too spotless for them to stoop and save their perverted son. Their immoral, unnatural son. Foolish Terry, who had fallen in love with a footman-- a footman, of all people!-- and who by so doing had doomed them both to the noose. "Foolish," murmured Cyril, the first word he had spoken aloud since he had spoken to Percy in the parlor that morning, hours and hours ago. He felt the sting of tears in his eyes, but he wiped at them quickly with a gloved hand, so they would not fall here in public, where anyone might see.

Cyril walked past Hyde Park quickly, not going in. He had no desire to meet anyone he knew or had known, who might call his name or seek to speak to him. Once he had been very different; he had wanted nothing more than to know people and to be known. That had been before he'd realized what people were. They would turn their back on you while you were sent to the gallows. They would pretend not to know you, lest they be associated with you in people's minds, lest the stigma of your crime stain their sublime milk-white hands. So perhaps society had turned on him, for not distancing himself from Terry's crime. Or perhaps it was he who had turned on society for its betrayal, for the way it had let such a fine man die. Whatever the case, January the Twenty-eighth was one of the few days of the year he might be seen about town. These days, he seldom went anywhere save to Percy's house, entertained few people other than Percy and his family.

If it was solely because of Terry's death that these things were true, did that make them any less true? Could a man not mourn his best friend? Cyril saw no reason to let go of his grief, because the grief was something definite. He could hold onto it; he could say: This is what it is. Grief. If he lost it, he would have nothing remaining but the vast and nameless knot within him, always falling in upon itself, an ugly snarl, a tangle which could not be pulled apart and made smooth again. With things as they were now, he had something, at least. Grief. This winter day.

Cyril heard a loud, sharp sound nearby, and he started. When he turned, he saw it was only a flag, snapping in the wind, which had picked up. He gazed up into the sky and saw that it was already beginning to grow dark. He should, he knew, be getting home soon. He did not turn towards home yet, however. Once he was home, he would eat his evening meal and have a drink. Then he would find some way to pass the time until he was tired enough to sleep, and then he would crawl into bed and January the Twenty-eighth would be over for yet another year. He did not want it to be over. He stopped walking suddenly, stood frozen in the cold, as though he might stop time by standing still. It was no good, time kept passing. Passersby stepped around him, moving forward, on towards the night, towards tomorrow. It was only his fancy, he knew, when he caught sight of a familiar redheaded figure among them, loping away from him and into the distance.

Still, Cyril did not head towards home yet. He waited as the minutes passed, tasting them. They tasted bitter, like a too-strong tea. He watched the sun sink in the west, and his heart sank a little with it, for though he despised this day, he wished it might never have to end.