The House of the Arch

It's cool enough by the time the pigeon returns, hours into the morning, that Door wishes she'd not left her coat in her room. She's fallen asleep once, just a brief nod that had been jerked into wakefulness by the flutter of passing wings. She's wide awake now, though. In place of the scraggly bit of hair-ribbon around the pigeon's leg, there's a delicate silver message tube -- and a small scrap of paper wrapped round the outside of it.

The school was Plan B, if you chose not to be an idiot. Very sensible - but how did you know where to run? You should be safe there, but stay low and for God's sake get off that roof; I can see you from here. Your family and I are at quits -- unless you want eyes and ears in London Below. Then... well. You'll owe me, won't you. ~deC P.S. The case is from Hammersmith, and what's within; none of my doing.

She pauses long enough to scribble, Owe you, then. Didn't know, just ran. Where's the money from? Going. on the back of the message, and tie it back to the pigeon's leg, though how she's going to get the reply, Temple and Arch only know. Then she sends it flying, and retreats through the door and back to the school, the message tube in her hand.

In the stairwell, she sits -- hating that she feels safe again for the first time in hours, a continent away from home -- and opens the tiny clasp on the metal tube. A rolled-up piece of paper falls out; she uncurls it to reveal a blurry black and white photo. Herself and her family, taken at the Floating Market a year ago, overexposed by fingers that had never touched a camera before.

It's like a physical blow. She stares at it, holding it between her own fingers as if she could use it as a door to walk back into her house, the house without doors, and find them all there, as safe and sound as they were in the picture. It's not a door, though, not this picture. It's just a wrinkled piece of paper with Hammersmith's sooty thumbprints all over it, and it reaches into her chest as surely as she'd done to the man sent to kill her, and pulls out her heart.

For the first time since she found them, Door drops her face into her hands and quietly begins to cry.
__
[locked to someone specific, and NFB, though it's missed radio by ages anyway]