It's times like these when I wish I'd chosen a different career for myself.
Don't get me wrong—I love my job. Besides my daughter, it's the best thing that's ever happened to me. And I thank whoever's looking out for me up there that I am where I am in my life right now. I have a great career, a beautiful daughter, a house to call my own, and a group of the greatest friends I could have ever asked for. I am blessed in so many ways.
However, I get the feeling those same people looking out for me up there took a vacation today.
Because it is nine o'clock on a Saturday night.
And I am stuck in the middle of the Toronto airport.
I sigh. After having spent the last week attending one of the Crime Lab's mandatory Continuing Education programs—AKA spending my entire week bored out of my mind with a bunch of enthusiastic new investigators or painfully boring old hats—I just want to get home to my daughter and my bed.
But, I guess fate really, really doesn't like me today, because I now find myself irreversibly stuck in Toronto. We were re-routed due to storms on the east coast, or something like that. It would have been so easy to ditch out on the conference to spend a wonderful week in New York, walking through Central Park or taking in a show on Broadway. But no, my professional responsibilities kept me indoors or at the bar (the latter less of a responsibility and more of a necessity).
God dammit, I bet they intentionally make terminal seats uncomfortable.
I gaze around to take my mind off of the eight hour wait in front of me. The gate I'm sitting at is located with a few others in a large cove in the most remote part of the airport—it took me a good ten minutes to find it after arriving in Terminal 2 about an hour ago. There's a coffee bar to my left, completely deserted at this time of day—night?—and looking more than a little inviting. Coffee would be good to keep me awake. Not so good for keeping me calm and cool—not to mention keeping my bladder from filling every five minutes. I decide, like that idiot that I am, to at least wander over and check out the set-up.
I leave my carry-on underneath my seat—it's no where near crowded in the secluded section of the airport I'm stuck in—and wander over to the bar. There's little tables surrounding the counter bearing various coffee mixes and roasts, or flavorful tea bags in neatly done up baskets. I finger the bow of one the baskets absentmindedly.
It's an impulse. I buy a cup of coffee.
Stupid, my brain chides at me as I make my way back across the room to my gate, stupid.
Ah, well. Better than soda, anyway.
You just keep telling yourself that.
There are four gates, with eight rows of eight seats for a total of two hundred and fifty-six plastic, hard-back hunks of discomfort to sit on. I know this because I have counted every single one of these seats twice. Who says I don't know how to have fun?
I buy a book at the tiny little magazine stand. One can count airplane terminal chairs so many times.
What the hell is up with this book? Did I even read the back cover when I bought it? As if I need yet another reminder of the 'strong, sinewy muscle' that is missing from my bed! Sheesh.
Oh, my God, it's only been an hour and a half. Kill me now.
Okay, that's it. Time to people watch.
I dig around in my purse for the pair of sunglasses I always carry with me and slip them on. It's funny, but no matter how many times I've repeated this same movement, a brief flash of Horatio Caine always invades my memory. I feel a thrill of unmistakable cool-ness rush through my body.
My sunglasses allow my to watch the people around me without them ever knowing I'm shamelessly spying on them. I do a quick scan around the concord to check and see if there's a better spot to watch from. My seat at my gate gives me a perfect view of each open, airy area around me. The surrounding gates are no where near full—in fact, only a handful of people remain at this hour of the night.
The sky outside is pitch black, set off by the harsh, hushed glow of the lights illuminating the outer building and walkways. Inside, the typical blue-and-white lighting bounces off of the gleaming floor and allows reflections to dance in the windows.
That's how I first see them. Their images reflected back at me through the panes of glass across the terminal.
She has light auburn hair, bobbed just above the area of her neck where it meets her shoulders. Her skin is pale—not sickly, but a creamy, smooth shade that sets off her vibrant hair and electric blue yes.
Soulful eyes.
There's not question—she's beautiful. In a slightly dark, weary sort of way. Her clothes look finely tailored, and (from what I can see) her nails impeccably kept in a no-nonsense, feminine kind of way. Her shoes seem to be an indulgence, with their high backs and pointed toes in the deepest shade of black. A professional woman's weakness.
Suddenly, I feel like I want to know this mysterious woman.
Instead of making a fool of myself, I focus my attention on her companion. His dark, chocolate-brown hair is swept lazily and loosely back, tendrils falling in the most alluring way onto his forehead. He has deep, green-brown eyes and a slightly pouted lower lip. He is handsome beyond all measure.
His clothes, like the woman's, are finely tailored. He wears a dark suit and deep red tie, with a long black overcoat he would no doubt shed if she got cold. His shoes are a polished black.
I shift. His raw, stifled sexuality is apparent even from here.
As I watch, the man sits himself down on the ground against the heater that lines the wall underneath the tall windows. With his back snugly against the warmth, he spreads his legs to allow the woman to crawl between them and rest her petite body against his strong one. She rummages around in the bag next to them to produce a newspaper.
They don't, as I expected they would, take separate sections of the paper and disappear into their respective readings. No, as I watch, the man bends his knees to rest one arm on while his companion uses the other to prop her won arm on, each clutching a side of the newspaper.
I blink. This simple act of intimacy almost brings tears to my eyes. I haven't been with a man where that level of comfort allows my to just relax and read the newspaper with him. It's an incredible sight that I feel privileged to witness.
I think I'll pretend to read my book for a while.
The clock strikes midnight. I life my head from where I lay across a row of seats at my gate to gaze around at the other travelers with me. There's practically no one left in the terminal, save for myself, an old man waiting for his flight out to Miami, four University students asleep all over their seats and each other, and (my heart inexplicably leaps into my throat) the couple I had been watching from before. They hadn't moved from their place against the heaters, but, I noted, the newspaper had been discarded and the woman was curled against her companion, one arm wrapped snugly around his waist. He'd obviously taken off his overcoat, because it was draped across the woman's shoulders and spread over her small form. The coat blocked it, but I could see the shape of his arms wrapped around her body. Her head is pillowed under his chin, both of their chests rising and falling in sleep.
I smile. The aches in my back and side as I lye back down and stare at the ceiling. Something has been nagging me all night, tugging at the little part of my memory that I just can't bring to the surface long enough to examine before it disappears again. I can't fathom what on Earth my brain is trying to recall.
I knew I never should have had that coffee!
With a sigh, I haul myself off of my makeshift bed and start toward the bathrooms. I remove my sunglasses and stuck them on top of my strawberry blonde head—good God it's bright in here!—as I enter the tiled bathroom.
Apparently, the Toronto airport has no hot water. I jump slightly as the cold water hits my dry hands. The soap, at least, smells good, and the bathroom is clean.
I scrub at my hands absent mindedly, not noticing another female presence enter the room even as I switch off the taps and turn to the hand blow dryer I know won't dry my hands.
I stop.
She's standing in front of me.
"Sorry," she smiles with red stained lips and moves around my frozen body. I shake myself mentally. How stupid I must look, standing stock still with dripping wet hands, staring at the spot where she'd been a moment before.
"Excuse me?"
She has the most beautiful, throaty voice. I turn around.
"Yes?" Ooh, congratulations are in order for me keeping my voice steady.
"I'm sorry," she laughs a little, "but you just look so familiar to me."
Oh, my God.
I remember.
"The conference," I say, more to myself than to the woman across from me. I wipe my hands on my jeans.
"Sorry?" She's staring at my, eyebrows raised in question. I draw in a breath.
"You, uh, presented at that Forensics conference, right?" I ask.
But I already know, because I was front-row at that lecture on a case she had worked on involving a serial murder who worked at a year-round Christmas farm. It was the only presentation I'd truly found interesting in any way, shape, or form, not to mention disturbing.
"Yes, I did," she says. "I believe you presented as well, didn't you?"
"Yeah," I say, less shaken now, "yes, I did. On one of my old cases."
She smiles again.
"I remember. Plushies, right?"
I smile despite myself. God, I'll never forget that week.
"Yes. Yeah, that was interesting." I adjust the glasses on top of my pony tailed head. "I remember your lecture—it was fascinating. I couldn't get it out of my head for a few days afterward.
She smiles a haunted smile. I feel a twinge of guilt—if her lecture had followed me around for those few days, how long had it haunted her? How long would it haunt her?
"I'm Dana." She holds a hand out and I take it. Her skin is soft, smooth, her grip professionally strong. I smile.
"Catherine."
We stare at one another for a moment, and I can feel a wave of something akin to familiarity wash over me—over us. She gives me the smallest of smiles that lets me know she's felt it, too.
Eventually, our hands release, the spell broken. I smile a half-smile. She returns it.
"I better get back to Mulder," she finally says, though her blue eyes never leave my own.
"Mm." I nod. I don't have anything else to say.
"It was good to meet you, Catherine."
Her eyes tell me she means it.
"You, too, Dana."
It's one thirty a.m. on a Sunday morning. They sky is pitch black, the concord still lit in a blue-and-white glow. The little coffee bar is closed. The University students waiting for their flight to Texas are long since gone and I lay, content, across the bank of seats I'd chosen for myself hours before.
I remembered about an hour ago that the woman I'd been watching all night, the same woman I'd seen so much of myself in, the woman who was curled protectively around the handsome man with her, is an FBI agent. That the man with her is her FBI partner, and that they specialized in the slightly bazaar and strange.
She'd fallen in love with her partner.
God, there was so much I'd seen tonight that I'd yearned for myself. He truly does love her—you could tell by the way he looks at her, by the way his arms encompass her in the most protective, intimate way.
I didn't know that, later this year, he would be taken away from her just as she finds out she's pregnant with his child. I didn't know that he would die and somehow, miraculously, return in time from beyond in time for the birth of their son. I didn't know that he'd disappear to keep them safe, and I didn't know that she would have to make the hardest decision of any mother's life. I didn't know that they would be reunited under the worst conditions and forced into becoming outlaws in order to be together.
What I did know was that, at that moment, it was early on a Sunday morning. The sky was dark, the terminal silent, the ticking of a far off clock the only sign of life. The redheaded woman and her handsome partner slept soundly in one another's arms.
The clock struck two.
"Catherine Willows?"
I jump at my own name and turn to see one of the airline workers standing next to me.
"Yes?"
The woman hands me a plain white envelope.
"I was asked to give this to you."
I take the envelope, shooting a questioning look at the retreating attendant before sliding a nail under the crease.
I smile.
Inside is details of a hotel reservation for the night and a ticket back to New York. A typed note reads:
Next time it's the Pyramids.
It's times like this when I love the career I chose for myself.