The Shadows Call…

So the question is, where can’t you return?

The question caught him off guard, and he froze entirely, his hand holding the edge of the counter-top so firmly that it was creaking under his crushing grasp. He swallowed, and tried to just breathe through the sudden pain that the innocent question caused, somewhere in his very core, somewhere where his heart once was, that felt so much like it was b r e a k i n g. He tried to deflect, managing to wave an idle hand. “Ye know where. Eighteenth Century. Home. The Sea.” But there was more to it than that. There always had been, really. Hidden under the surface, like the heart of an iceberg, only the tip of it visible and only then when he let it out, when he let it glimpse the sunlight for mere seconds before being slammed back down again and held imprisoned behind hard, cold walls. “Immortality’s jus’ gettin’ me down. The passin’ o’ the years, the changin’ o’ the world, the loss o’ freedom. It’s nothin’.”

To a place…or to a time?

To a form by his side, warm and restful, in a too-big bed. To a lie lived willingly, for the safety at first and then just for the comfort, the serenity of another soul to walk the world with, a contentment he had never thought he’d feel again. To being believed in and trusted in and loved beyond anything he could have ever predicted or hoped for…

To growing old, or otherwise, beside another, when he had never thought that had still been possible for him to w a n t.

But AJ was honest and AJ wouldn’t tell his secrets, and she wouldn’t laugh at him, or think him an Old Fool, or Weak, or any of the other descriptors he’d used to describe himself s i n c e.

Since.

Yet somehow, when he gives his answer, the true answer, she realizes that she hadn’t expected it. Because he spoke of his crew at times. He often spoke of his ship. Of his tales and his adventures. Of the sea and of the freedom it granted.

But he had never spoken of a woman. Of someone who––by all appearances to the contrary of what his words would have her to believe––he loved. Deeply. Perhaps even hopelessly. 

So at his words, she falls silent for a long moment, simply watching him, seeing the play of emotions, and her own heart breaks a little.

It is late, or rather early, and it is only them in the bar. No other prying eyes or listening ears. Not even Mick had remained tonight.

And so, though at war with herself over whether the question would help or hurt more, she asks it anyway, her expression soft, her voice quiet.

Ekaterina Krysanova after Bolshoi’s Swan Lake