Nick was improvising at the piano when Maura got home from work. No candles, just regular room light. Always a good sign, but especially now. He'd been in a melancholy "flashback" mode since the whole auction murder case began. Not that she'd never seen him like that before, but never quite this… deep. And she'd never seen him steal, not ever. She joined him on the piano bench; he turned to kiss her hello without missing a beat on the keyboard.
"Mmm, Bats-a-me mucho," she quipped. "You've gotten the harp back to that Welsh lady?" She'd been unspeakably relieved that he'd paid the auction house "officially" (if discreetly) before doing so. Nick caught her as she glanced quickly at the coffee table where it had been sitting for several days.
"It's on its way home with Johanna Shea as we speak."
"Good." She'd meant to offer it as something of a congratulations, glad you got it done right, but something else could be heard underneath. He'd positively been in another world entirely most of the time that thing was in the house, and she was glad to see it go.
Nick stopped playing and closed the keyboard cover. "There's more than 'good' in that 'good'." Her hesitant expression made it evident she understood what he meant.
"You're gonna think I'm nuts," she told him and relocated to the sofa. She really didn't want to get into it. Much. Nick followed, of course.
"I already know you're nuts, so you have nothing to lose."
"Okay, okay." She looked at him for a moment, trying to figure out a way to make it sound like it made sense.
"We could play twenty questions," he teased.
"All right, it's like this," Maura blurted out in a rush, "that first night I came home and you were sitting here with that harp, I swear you looked just as if you were holding a woman, one only you could see, and I could see you but you were in some other place, some other time."
Abandoning the notion that this could be explained or debated, Nick merely agreed, "I suppose I was. I told you why, why I stole it, why I needed to have it, why if I couldn't have it I needed it to be where it belonged after so long."
"I know you did. I know it was from 'before'." And she really did understand the how and especially the why. "Before LaCroix, almost before the king's wars and everything else, while you were still the person you stopped being not so long after, even before you were brought across. I really do know that," she took his hand and looked more closely in his eyes so he could see she meant it.
"You're not jealous of the past?" By the tone in his voice Maura could tell he didn't believe that at all, but he went on, "Sweet, I know you know that everybody who survives to adulthood has memories, and pasts, and every two people who ever lived are tempted to compare themselves to whoever might have come before them. It's natural." He smiled a little sheepishly. "I just came equipped with more past than the usual."
"Yeah, everybody has past loves, three, or four… hundred or so," she arched her eyebrows to let him know she was kidding, then continued, "No, Bats, that's not it. I got over the 'how do I stack up against' a cast of thousands a long time ago." She sat back and stared at the empty place on the table where the harp was no longer. "I'm not jealous of the past. Worse. Crazier. I'm jealous of the future." She caught herself. "No that's not right either. This whole thing, you, and that harp, and how you looked and seemed lately, it just got me wondering."
By now Maura was settled against Nick's shoulder in their typical sofa-slouch. He leaned his face closer to her ear. "You're gonna make me ask, aren't you?"
"I can't help but wonder," she arched her neck so she could look him in the face, "in a hundred years, or eight hundred, will there be something that takes you back in time, that puts me back in your head and that look back on your face that you've had for Gwyneth? And if there is, what would it be?" It was a rhetorical question, really. Almost.
Nick was smiling gently. "How about a statue of Ganesh," he suggested, knowing she was aware that he still kept the tiny bronze figure she'd had on display the night they first met, "the Lord of Beginnings. That would take me back, to our beginning." He kissed her softly, then winked. "Or maybe it'll be The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari." The smile he got in return was a little wan.
She honestly didn't want to go on asking questions he couldn't answer, but she couldn't help herself. "And when it does, whatever it is, and when you're living in one time but drawn into another, I wonder who'll be walking in the door to see it? Who'll be asking the same questions as me, when I'm long past, what will you manage to say that'll let you reassure her but still love me?"
He didn't have an answer, not to that question. In Nick's whole endless existence these past few years had been the first time he'd managed to achieve a settled, secure life with someone he loved this much though the others had mattered no less to him. She was right; his feelings for Gwyneth (or Alyssa, or Erica, or Janette…) were no less intense in memory than what he felt now with her. And there was no denying that what he felt now wouldn't someday be as distant, and powerful, as what the harp had evoked. In honesty, the transience of this aspect of his current incarnation simply hadn't occurred to him though he'd spoken endlessly of the transient nature of every other aspect with nearly everyone he knew, including Maura. Finally he hugged Maura a little closer, kissed her temple a bit distractedly as he struggled to come up with a better reply than the one he could offer honestly.
"I don't know, doucette."
She lifted her head a little and attempted a more genuine smile. "It's okay, Bats." Maura wondered for a moment what secret name she'd call him by, that distant shadow who would come in a hundred years, or eight hundred, and what he'd call her. And the ones that would come after that, or before. They would come, Maura knew, because Nick had learned too much about himself since they'd met not to be capable of this again. When she spoke again the hint of tears behind her voice surprised them both.
"I just wish it could be me. You know how they say who cares who came first, as long as you're last? I just wish I could be last."
His response was barely a whisper. "So do I."
Too much angst and melancholy, too much. Maura sat up and shook it off. "I could learn to hate antiques!" she grumbled.
Nick reached out and mussed her head playfully. "So where does that leave me?" he laughed.
She reached out in turn, but her fingers ran gently through his hair and came back to cradle the side of his face as she leaned close to whisper,
"Last."