Her Birthday
Disclaimer: I wish, but no, I don't own the characters/show.
Author's Note: Had this idea of Will visiting his mother after Season 1's Kush and it snowballed (horrible pun alert!) from there. Enjoy!
Every year he visits her on her birthday.
To remember her life, not her death, or at least that's what he's always told himself.
This time, however, it's as much a goodbye as a hello.
The epiphany itself was extremely anti-climatic, considering the circumstances that had finally allowed him to truly put those ghosts of loss to rest, but he will never forget or regret all that he had gone through to get to this point. Somehow, he thinks she'd understand, as only she'd been able.
It was a small cemetery, just outside the hustle and bustle of the city, not prone to many visitors, which was why it was much to his surprise to find a single deep pink rose already resting against the modest headstone as he approached with his own carefully picked bouquet.
Tied to its stem was an open note written in familiarly immaculate penmanship: To an extremely brave woman.
"Thought I would pay my respects," an equally familiar and cultured voice speaks up behind him, and he has to smile despite the somber scenery.
Kneeling down to place his own bright flowers against the cold stone, he goes through the routine of tracing each craved letter with his fingers and removing any overgrown grass or dirt before standing up and replying.
"It's nice of you to come, though usually when you give an employee a day off that means you don't see them again until the next day. If I didn't know any better I'd say you were stalking me."
He hears her laugh as she comes up to stand beside him.
"Now what would give you an idea like that?"
"Well, between knowing everything about me and putting tracking devices in my car, a guy's gotta wonder. But I figure I could do a lot worse as far as stalkers go."
"Should I take that as a compliment?"
"Why not?"
When she doesn't answer he still can't see her, but he just knows she's smiling that little enigmatic smile of hers and shaking her head at him. He finds himself smiling a little himself at the image. The conversation falls into mirthful silence, however, and he finds himself considering the two women before him.
"She would have liked you," he finally concludes with a nod, finally looking at her as she moves to stand by his side.
She looks surprised at first, probably by the sudden shift in conversation, but recovers quickly, as she always does.
"Thank you."
"I don't blame you for not saving her either, if you ever thought I did. Maybe a little, in the beginning, when it all came out, but not now. I may have lost her that night, but I would never have met you if I hadn't. Crazy as it sounds, I think she would understand why I'm grateful for that."
He doesn't realize he's trembling until he feels a solid slender hand on his shoulder, feeling it squeeze reassuringly.
In the moment he takes to collect himself, however, she speaks.
"I never knew her, my mother. She died shortly after bringing me into this world. Her constitution had always been frail, having survived scarlet fever as a child, and the stress of childbirth proved to be too much. Conventional medicine and science of the era had failed my father, left him a young, grieving widower with a newborn daughter. He never said so directly, but I suspected some years after he'd introduced me to the Abnormal world that he had started his research in such uncharted waters because of her. That in his mind perhaps if he had had some alternative treatment or knowledge, he would have been able to save her."
"I'm sorry."
"Don't be. It is as you said, I would not be where I am today if not for her, however directly or indirectly."
Her tone is firm, but her blue eyes waver with unshed tears, unshed sorrow at never knowing the woman who had given her life at the cost of her own.
It's a moment too, which he wouldn't give up for the world.
Because for a split second the walls were gone, those barriers that she had built around herself against the loss that was the price of her longevity had vanished. She was more human than he'd ever seen her allow herself to be until that moment. The true cost of carrying such a weight and the trust she gave him by showing even a glimpse of those feelings took his breath away.
Smiling, even as he watches those walls once again establish themselves in her eyes, he moves his own hand to cover hers on his shoulder as he again faces his mother's grave.
And as he feels her fingers tighten around his, he would swear he could hear her voice on the breeze that rustles the flowers against the headstone.
"That's my boy."