When Arc apparated that night onto the bridge near Stuart Road, he had to quickly check if there had been any Muggle present in the area. Acton was a quiet area of London but it didn't rule out the odd evening walk even on a cold, drizzly night, and he wasn't in the mood to get caught by the Ministry - specifically, admonished by his father, who was the authority on such matters and would not have approved of this after having spent years blending in with the Muggles here. Thankfully the road was empty and only the clacking of a London train below his feet accompanied him as he walked off the bridge.

He had a parcel to give to his mother, from a friend of hers that had been too busy to drop by the Hollingburys' house. As he trudged along the pavement, he mused that he could have taken the floo. But it had been a while since he had trodden the path to and from Acton Cemetery. Too many things had been happening in his life for him to remember that his usual weekly visits; he only had had enough time or presence of mind to drop by the house for the regular Sunday breakfast with his family and then leave to return to his research.

The interior of the house smelled faintly of rosemary and thyme as he stepped through the door. Her experiments, or possibly the lingering aroma of dinner. He shut the door behind him.

"Mum?" he called out. It was so oddly quiet.

"Out for research, Arc." The healer jumped, and then sighed in relief at recognising the voice. He headed into the family room, where, illuminated by the light from a fire and two out of the three lamps lit, his father was sitting in his usual chair with an ankle on a knee and a copy of the Prophet in his hands. Mordecai looked up at him as entered the room.

"Gate charm let you know?" Arc asked. His father gave him a look as if to say "what else?", which even the healer had to concede was the truth.

Arc took off his coat and draped it on the back of the sofa. "What research is she doing? Is it varieties of moor plants that respond to the phases of the moon again?"

"Yes, it hasn't changed much." Mordecai folded the newspaper up. "Long and complicated research, by the looks of it. The British Association of Herbologists is very happy to take her on board, it seems that her research has been quite vital to their findings of late. Expect a book some time soon enough."

Arc chuckled. "I have something for her. Mrs Fenworth dropped by to give it to me, so I'll just be here for a short while. Sorry to disturb you, dad."

"Not a problem." Mordecai smiled.

The kitchen was dark, but Arc had no problem seeing the kitchen table and setting it there. He returned to the family room to pick up his coat when he caught sight of his father staring into the fire in silence. Normally Arc would smile and leave his father to it, but tonight, as the flames lit up his father's face, he could see tiredness that he himself felt.

"How are things lately, dad?" he asked softly, flopping down onto the sofa instead. "Your office is helping out with the investigations on the Leaky Cauldron, right? Is that going well?"

Mordecai sighed and looked down at the copy of the Prophet on his knee. "Yes. I wouldn't say going well per se. Witnesses are being interviewed, I've got my deputy and investigator working together to analyse the evidence we picked up from the scene[1], but as far as we've gathered, a certain ex-Azkaban criminal may be responsible. But I refuse to believe that that's it. He can't solely be responsible for all of it, surely."

"And no leads to those?" Arc asked. The shake of Mordecai's salt-and-pepper head was more than enough of an answer.

They sat there for a while in silence, and then Mordecai spoke. "How are you doing, Arc? Taking care of the patients in the hospital? I hope they're doing well, perhaps they can provide useful information for the MLE to dissect."

"They're getting better, but we're still struggling with the symptoms." Arc sank lower in the sofa a little. "Tough job all around, the patients are even tougher to deal with. Sometimes, you know, I wish someone would realise we're all just human."

Mordecai's chuckle was grim in tone. "So easy to forget, when we deeply want something. That the people around us are all just as tired and human as we are, all working together in this mess. And it's all very well to call people out on it, but to ensure that we don't fall for the same thing either..."

"I'm sure we won't." Arc looked at his father with a warm smile, and felt it fade in the realisation that his own father was pensively staring into the fire. Uncertainty clouded his feelings of assertion. "...will we?"

Mordecai leaned his head against the back of the chair. "I don't know. It's so easy to say, but when we're surrounded by difficult decisions to make it could be easy to fall into it without realising. When the night comes, who will we be and what will be do to survive?"

Arc said nothing. His father had a point, and it was a point he himself had considered for a long time when it was dark in his head, when he sometimes entertained the idea of being cornered and with no way out. No good choice indeed.

"It's so easy to sit behind a desk and judge. So easy to put a verdict down. But when we're on the other side, things right and wrong become things that just need to be done." Mordecai ran a hand through his hair. "Are we on this side or that? Are there even sides in the first place? Or are we to find out that everything we know is wrong? These cold days are going to be long and dark, and I don't know if they'll ever stop."

"Or if they ever ended in the first place," Arc added quietly. Mordecai looked at him, and for a moment father and son shared a mutual look that held everything they'd known for the past thirteen years. Things they'd never really spoken about, such as the last goodbye never spoken.

"It's things like this that make me want to have a fag[2]." Arc pulled his coat from the back of the sofa and rummaged around in the pockets to check for the packet.

"Monday cigarette? Bit too early in the week for that, isn't it?"

"Never too early for a smoke, dad." The flimsy cardboard met his fingertips in the depths of his coat pocket. "But not now. Mum will throw me out of the house if she catches me smoking in here, even if there's a fire."

"Not throw you out, but she has worse things she could do to you." Mordecai picked up the paper in his lap and put it aside.

"Oh, I know." The healer folded his coat over his arms and leaned back. "Do you think we're a bunch of sillies for hoping against hope? For that world out there? Some place we called home, but never really a true home where we can all feel safe?"

Mordecai's long silence made Arc feel concerned, but as he finally decided to ask his father replied. "Is it silly that we're tuned to live? To hope, even if time is running out for us? That those with frozen hearts will thaw for those who hope with warmth and fire? Or do we give up and believe that we are all alone?" While the acoustics of the house would not let echoes rise from mere soft speech, there was something in his words that reverberated quietly and strongly with Arc.

"But at the same time, we're surrounded by treacherous ice, and shadows in smoke and mirrors." Arc's voice was a touch sad. He saw his father nod almost imperceptibly. "There's nothing about it that we can do, except to know that we're still alive inside. Maybe it's enough to keep going, but on some days--"

"Oh, you two." The two of them jumped and turned around. Lydia was leaning against the doorway into the family room, still wearing her coat and scarf.

"How long have you been there, Lydia?!" Mordecai asked ludicrously. "I didn't hear the gate charm go off. Did you, Arc?"

Arc shook his head. "Oh mum, I left--"

"I know. Mrs Fenworth was there at the Association. She told me." Lydia stepped into the room. "On some days, you two make me worry, you know that?"

"Sorry mum," Arc mumbled. Mordecai diverted his gaze from her. His wife smiled, though there was a hint of pain in that smile, and went over to her son. He looked up at her, and then blinked as his mother gave him a firm, warm hug.

"You too, Mord." Her husband didn't even have time to open his mouth, even if he looked like he was about to protest. "No. Shh. We keep going. We always have. We will. You two are having a hard time now, just hang in there. Things will get better, and if they aren't then we'll make them better. Take care of yourselves, please - I can't be there for you all the time." She pulled back from hugging her husband, and brushed his fringe away from his face. "You look so tired. Have you been resting enough? And you, Arc?"

"I don't think it's so much resting as having to think about things every day now," said Arc, watching her take his father's hands and tug on them to get him up. "It's a lot of things to worry about."

"I know, I know. You and your father." Mordecai had risen to his feet; Lydia quietly nudged him towards the staircase. "You should be going, Arc. Go get some sleep. I'm sure you need to rest for tomorrow, and stop thinking just for a while. No arguing. It's been hard these past few days for you two."

Arc turned his eyes back to the fire as his mother shooed his father out of the room and upstairs. He could hear their voices dwindling in the distance, the wood creaking a little under their weight, before only the sound of the fire was the only noise in the room. He sighed quietly and pulled himself up from the sofa.

The healer was putting his shoes on when his mother came down the stairs. "Off now?" When he nodded, she smiled and gave him a kiss on the cheek, standing on tiptoe to do so. He wrapped an arm around his mother, grateful for the simple but sweet gesture.

"Thank you for carrying the parcel here," she said softly. Arc smiled and looked up towards the staircase. Lydia turned around to look at where he was looking.

"I wish I could do something more for you two than just words and hugs," she said, turning back to look at him. "I swear you're looking older than thirty every time I see you, Arc, and your father looks like he's seventy, not sixty. But there's little I can do to take the burden of the world off your shoulders. All I can do is just make the world a better place for you for a short while." She sighed. "War may be over, but inside we've all got our own version of it continuing to fight. It's hard, this war of mine..."

"This war of ours," Arc corrected her gently. "Even if dad doesn't voice what he feels."

She looked up at him, and he could see the tears shimmering in her eyes even as she smiled back. He leaned down and kissed them away.

"We keep going," he said softly.[3]

1.	Picking Apart the Pieces, Nov 6th
2.	Britishism for cigarette, not whatever else you're thinking.
3.	This entire snapshot was written with references to the soundtrack of the game This War of Mine, with all track names incorporated into the text, and with the track We Keep Going playing.