"Not to bad, is it?" she remarks on view, helmet in hand as they stand over the cliff. It's hundreds of metres down to the pounding surf, and for someone who hasn't seen it before, like the young man at her side, it's extraordinary beautiful. Helen waves him over, setting down her helmet on Ashley's motorcycle.
"Come here so you can see it properly," she bids, waving him over to the fence by the edge.
Will follows her instructors, a trace of a smile hovering over his lips. He's been a good sport, patient and eager for the trip even though the only warning she gave him was a note on his morning coffee. iYou'll need leathers./i
Leaning out, holding on to the slender guard-rail with him at her side, she smiles down at the angry surf and the rocks below. The water crashes white on the grey stone, and the sound echoes up towards them. Out past the cliff below them, stony islands emerge from the sea and add flashes of green to the vista. It's a long motorcycle trip, but they had the day off.
"Ashley and I came up here," she explains, feeling his hand on her arm. "She'd mastered her bike by the time she was fourteen, and we'd take long trips together, just the two of us, race around corners and talk about the g-forces involved."
"Educational," he jokes, knocking a tiny stone loose to watch it fall. It makes no sound, nor splash, and just vanishes into the greater world. Like Ashley, there's no mark, no trace, except the eyes who watched it fall.
Her silence makes his hand linger on her arm, and as she drifts, losing track of time in her memories. She can almost hear Ashley, teasing her about how high the cliff is and how amazing of a free climb it would be. Ashley would have made them stop at the same little hole-in-the-wall diner she took Will to. Ashley would have had the cheeseburger, with bacon and avocado and stolen half of Helen's fries, even though she had her own. Helen's are better. Ashley even called them chips until she was six or so, before They would have raced the last curve and had gelato in Old City when they came home.
Helen's not sure how long they've been standing there, before his hand is on her shoulder. "Sun's setting," Will offers, drawing her back to the real world. "If we head back now, we can make it to the city before dark."
She nods, and even holds his gaze for a moment. "Can I talk you into gelato?"
Will tilts his head, kicking up the stand as he sits on his bike. He nods, settling his helmet in his lap. "Sure, but it's on you."
"Only if you beat me to the first light," she teases him, flying onto her bike, Ashley's bike, with a speed that startles him. She's forty metres down the road by the time he catches up. They race, and Helen's the one pulling ahead, making him chase her through the curving mountains and ancient pine trees. It's supposed to be the other way, Ashley's supposed to be making her push herself, but this is all right. The engine hums beneath her, and the bike is sturdy. The wind races past her helmet and unless she looks back, it could be Ashley gaining on her.
hr
Will gets two scoops, handing back her change before he hands hers across. "Is it any good?" he asks sceptically, eying the lavender concoction on top of the cone in her hand.
"It's an acquired taste," she promises him, licking it daintily. "You'll have to try it someday," she insists, watching him lick double chocolate peanut butter and smile. Ashley would have had mango, or the passion fruit. Both of them looked good today. They sit on the bench in the park, the sun's down now and the bikes wait patiently for them to finish. It's not very warm, but her gelato insists on melting anyway. Her drifting thoughts mean she eats it in quick bursts, more clumsily than she would have usually allowed.
Will hands her a napkin with a wicked smile and nudges his upper lip with his tongue. She takes the napkin, but her swipe must be ineffectual because his smile escapes and broadens.
"How old are you today?" he teases, with holding the last napkin studies her, chuckling. "Seven? Eight?"
"Perhaps a little more than that," she snips back, reaching for the napkin. Will dodges her hand and for a moment, an entirely undignified fight for the napkin breaks out. He's been getting better, faster in close quarters and her laughing, half-hearted effort fails.
"There's lavender here," he explains, lifting her chin and gently wiping it off. "Here, and here--" he jokes, looking her over once more before he's satisfied. "Now you're good," Will promises. He balls up the napkins and throws them towards the rubbish bin, but he misses the shot.
To her surprise, it's funny, brilliantly so, and when she scampers after the napkins, beating him to the little paper ball on the ground, she's laughing. Will tries to take it and she slaps his hand away, back to the bench and sinks it, perfectly.
"Flares and napkins," he observes, acknowledging a more important shot she nailed in the recent past. "We should really try to get a team together. Between you and the Big Guy, we'd probably win something."
"He hates to dribble," she informs him, heading back to her bike. She's not quite ready to go home, and there's a little bar that makes it own pitchers of sangria. Will's following her eyes, holding his helmet in his hands. "Would you mind if I had someone pick these up?" she asks, extending her hand towards him. "I'd like to stay out a little longer."
hr
He stir the pitcher with a heavy wooden spoon and eyes her warily over the bowl of mussels in white wine between them. "And you?"
"We did," she answers, taking a sip of her sangria and feeling it rush to her head the moment it hits her stomach. "We had to, to do anything else would have been unconscionably rude."
"So you spent how many days there? Four, five?" Will asks, flushed from drink or the story so that he looks even younger than his sparse three decades. How long will it be until he passes her by? Ten years? Fifteen? At some point, she'll stop looking like the mentor, and he'll start to look like an older man. Some of her protégés were eventually mistaken for her parents.
Where will she bury him? Of course, she's assuming he even leaves a body; having mortal remains to put to rest is a luxury.
Will touches her hand, brash with the gesture, as if he's been emboldened by alcohol and old stories of her, when she was less burdened with fate and eternity. "Did you get sunburnt?" he asks practically. "Surely that part," he gestures across his own chest with a reasonably approximation of her breasts, "of your anatomy wasn't used to the tropical sun."
"Yes," she nods, pouring more sangria into both of their glasses. Digging out the fruit with the spoon, she passes him a soggy, alcohol soaked strawberry and toasts him with the one in her hand. "Even with sun protector, they were quite pink, and a tad sore. Ashley fared better than I did, of course, being only fifteen. She was always fond of topless beaches in Europe after that experience and she swore her tan had never been better."
Will's eyes are firmly fixed on her breasts, and clearing her throat draws an evil grin. "To non-western modes of dress," he offers, lifting his glass.
"To cultural reflexivity," she corrects, rolling her eyes at him. The glasses clink firmly together and the moment of silence when they drink is heavy with promise. "Tell me about the Agency," she asks, licking a drop from the rim of her glass. "Surely a profiler, such as yourself would get dragged out to all the treacherous and potentially embarrassing undercover assignments."
"Oh, I see how this goes," he protests, leaning back and watching her order another pitcher of sangria. "You tell me something you and Ashley may have done, and I naively tell you something I have actually done and you mock me for the rest of the century."
"Most likely only the decade," she corrects and then frowns. "Are you insinuating that you don't trust me?"
"Of course not," he retorts, eyes flashing with a challenge. "I think the only thing I've done that even remotely applies is letting vice dress me up as an escort for the evening."
"An escort?" she asks, waiting for the rest of the story. He's starting to get that look, the one where he'd really like her to drop the subject, but Will's a good sport.
"Took me nearly an hour to shave my legs," he admits,tearing a piece from the bread in the middle of the table. "And I cut myself, several times, the officers I was going out with had to show me how to cover the spot on my ankle with glue to get it to stop bleeding--"
He shakes his head and his focus is back on her breasts as he mimes a pair on his own chest. "They did a really good job on my breasts though," he says, grinning. "In the dress I was wearing, when I looked down, I could almost believe they were real. My lingerie was pretty nice too. Lacy."
"Lace is easy to overdo," she responds, lifting a hand and gesturing towards his chest. "I hope you were tasteful."
Will downs the last of his glass and eyes the new pitcher as if he's trying to guess the flavour by counting the fruit. "As much as I was allowed to be," he grumbles, then sighs. "Part of my cover required a certain lack of class."
"You didn't even get to be a classy escort?" Giggling takes her away from herself, Helen tries to stop, but his description of the electric blue dress he had to wear over the lacy lingerie gets into her head and she can't stop laughing. Watching her giggle makes him narrow his eyebrows, then he relents, relaxing enough to chuckle with her.
"Of course," he tries to get back into the story. "I end up in this club, full of pounding music and gyrating bodies and we have to sing karaoke."
"Okay," she nods, pouring more sangria and licking the stray drops of it off of her hands. Will's eyes are intent on her tongue but he keeps talking. "Karaoke."
"Show tunes," Will shakes his head. "Modern ones. Ever see a show called 'Rent'? My falsetto is terrible, but several very lovely drag queens told me it was more about how I danced than anything else."
"Ashley loved dancing," she says, too intoxicated to halt the story before it escapes from her memory. "Always. As a little girl she'd hound me to stop working and come dance with her."
Will swirls his glass, and then notices the mint leaves. "When did you switch us to mojitos? And did you give in?"
"Last pitcher," she answers the simple question before tackling the next. "I used to think I did far more than I should have," she says, reaching across the table and taking his hand. His skin is warm and his grip is solid. "I worried that I spoiled her, failed to set boundaries and make sure she knew that certain times were for different things and that no matter how much we wanted to, we couldn't drop everything and go dance to the song on the radio."
Staring moodily at her drink, she wishes more of it were alcohol. "Now I realise my own folly, and that no matter how noble my intentions, I didn't dance enough."
His hand tightens, and his grip becomes more poignant. His eyes seem so innocent as he looks at her. There's no guile, no century of guilt, no scheming, plotting ambition; Will's eyes are so human.
"Ashley loved dancing," he reminds her, "and you danced with her. She loved her motorcycle, the chase, and those tight leather jackets that are so becoming on you." He smirks, giving her a chance to break the agony of the moment. Her thumb rubs over the back of his hand, counting on him to stay real, to remain solid in her world of chaos.
"She loved her life. She loved you and she lived life to the fullest, every day. Her life was shorter than everyone would have liked," Will pauses and his free hand reaches for her cheek. "The life in her years, was exactly what anyone could hope for."
Leaning into his hand, she smiles gently. "Thank you."
Will takes his and back and lifts a mint leaf from his glass. "No mojitos in Reykjavik," he observes, before munching on the plant.
Helen stares at him, taking long enough that he looks sheepish.
"What? I can't eat the leaves?" he asks.
"I should never have made you stay," she realises as the tightness of sorrow washes over her.
"You asked," he allows more graciously than he should. "You have a terribly frustrating way of asking," Will adds, and that resistance makes her smile.
His rebuke chases the grief from her chest and her next breath is lighter. When she exhales, Helen aches from the emptiness but the breath that follows almost feels human.
"You did ask," he continues, stabbing mint with his fork and fishing it out. "These are good."
"Best in Old City," she promises him, looking up at the hissing propane heater and imagining the stars beyond. They'd talked about her birthday. Ashley wanted to go cliff diving in South America and she'd been trying to steer her to Africa instead. She'd wanted Ashley to see Angel Falls. "Right," she says cheerfully when she looks back down. "We have time for one more before our driver picks us up. Strawberry or Raspberry?"
"Raspberry," he answers, echoing her accent in that funny little way he does.. "There were strawberries in the sangria and I don't want the raspberries to feel like they're being excluded from our tour of alcohol bathed fruit."
She purses her lips. His accent is improving, and at some point she may have to stop rolling her eyes at its employment. "How egalitarian of you."
"I'm a fruit-suffragist," he retorts gravely, as if she's offended the honour of the berries floating in the pitcher in front of them.
"That's a preposterous use of the word," Helen accuses him and as he chuckles, he nearly spills the new pitcher. She continues to berate him, but all he seems capable of doing is laughing, as if everything she says just builds upon the joke.
hr
Shes still laughing in the car. When they pull into the Sanctuary, the stars are out, full force and she stares up at them in wonder. That position has her hands precariously balanced over Will's lap. An oversight he brings to mind when he tips her, pulling her down so she's staring up at the window and a million stars with her head balanced in the centre of his lap.
"Can you see the Pleiades?" she asks, pointing up past his nose at the stellar cluster.
"The seven sisters, daughters of Atlas and Pleione," Will answers as he looks up, following her hand with his eyes. "Either from plein, to sail, making them the sailing ones or pleos, full or many, making them a flock of doves." He has to crane his neck and she wants to trail her finger down the front of his throat. It would be inappropriate, reminds part of her mind.
The other part, oddly enough the more dominant, keeps thinking about his neck. There's a tiny amount of stubble on the underside of his chin, grown from that morning, she assumes. Helen remembers John shaving, and the sound of the straight razor against his beard. Will's must be electric, faster and safer, but she bets it doesn't have the same visceral sound. Everything about John was visceral, and even buried in a hundred years of memory, thoughts of him still come back to her with a special clarity.
While her mind was wandering, Will's chin had dropped several centimetres closer. He tilts his head, changing the angle with which he looks down at her. His face lowers slightly and experience suggests his intention is to kiss her. She could make it easy for him and close the distance but she wants him to be the one who does it. Helen could simply be inebriated, or an emotionally exhausted sesquicentennarian who wants, just for a moment, to be young and careless again.
Instead of watching him, Helen shuts her eyes. This, she's willing to chance. It's not that she lacks companionship, or intimate relationships; both are easy enough for her to come by. Something about him, her protégé, daring to kiss her is sweet and unexpected. He'd ask permission, wouldn't he? Time expands and she can hear the leather of his jacket creak as he moves. Perhaps he's getting out of the car and ending the moment.
She starts to speak, but her lips are covered with his. They're soft, warmer than she expected and there's just a hint of stubble when she brushes his upper lip with hers. Will seems content to leave it chaste, but she takes it from him, kissing him back eagerly. That surprises him, but he reaches for the back of her head, responding with an ardor that makes her inhale in shock.
Sitting up, she covers his lips with a finger before he can apologise. "Thank for you tonight," she says gently.
"Always," Will responds, folding his hands in his lap. "I'll see you in the morning. Goodnight Helen." He nods to her, and gets out of the car. He shuts the door behind him and she sits there, lying back against the leather. Her lips are still damp and she can still feel his against hers. He used her given name. Has he ever done that before?
Not tonight. Not on Ashley's birthday, she chastises herself. Helen shakes her head and gets out of the car. Looking up the stars she can see through the lights of Old City, she wonders what Ashley would say. Cradle robber? He's a century to young for you? You're my mother, how dare you even think about sex?
Helen wraps her arms around her chest, letting the pain of Ashley's absence run through her. The hole is always there, spinning inside of her, waiting to pull her in, but Ashley would want her to be happy. She closes her eyes against the stinging tears and takes one long look up.
"Happy Birthday Ashley," she murmurs, then mounts the steps to the door. Tomorrow's only Wednesday and she has a lot of work to do. Ashley would understand about that. She'd probably give her a hard time for the kiss but that almost makes it sweeter. Can't have Ashley approving of everything now, can she? It's good to have a little rebellion. She misses those arguments and the looks where Ashley would roll her eyes. She misses more than she can categorise or explain but life keeps moving around her.
Maybe she's being foolish, or she's still intoxicated, but something about Will makes her feel alive. There's a small distinction between not having died and feeling life course through her, even tingle a little. She can almost hear Ashley's voice in the back of her mind as she rides the elevator up to her room.
"Doesn't matter if you live forever, it's still just once mom." And she's right. Helen might take a few weeks, even a month to admit it, but Ashley's entirely right.