D'Agosta meets Pendergast and Constance at the airport, and knows immediately something is wrong.
He's chewing on the end of his cigar, enjoying the flavor as the passengers of the flight wheel their luggage past him, when they appear. It's not the soft swell to Constance's belly—unexpected, considering what he'd last heard about her decision—that surprises the hell out of him. It's not the exhaustion hindering their normally graceful movements, either. Pendergast has one hand on the luggage, the other pressed tightly to his side, wrapped around his middle protectively. For an absurd instant, D'Agosta thinks his old friend might be getting sympathy pains for the mother-to-be.
But then he meets Pendergast's eyes.
It's been a while. Shit's happened. Who knows what could change in the span of a few months? But D'Agosta feels his mouth run dry and knows, intimately in the marrow of his bones, that something awful has happened. Pendergast is here now, moving forward wearily, alive and undamaged and with the faint glint of longing in his ordinarily unreadable eyes that speaks, at least to D'Agosta, that this fat old cop has been missed more than he would've thought. (It touches D'Agosta, in that fierce, warm way that Pendergast plucks outta him, that it's not entirely one-sided. That it was normal, all those nights at the bar D'Agosta found himself wanting gentler, quieter company. A fancy drink and a cheerful mystery.) And yeah, Pendergast's on his own two feet. But there's a burrowing, malicious emptiness in that once-clever gaze that speaks of a wound that won't be healed. Pendergast is pale—overly so, if possible, like paper spread too thin and held to a blinding winter sun.
His friend is in near pieces.
"My dear Vincent," Pendergast murmurs faintly, taking his hand. Once, it would be over quickly, like a chore. Now the touch lingers almost desperately and D'Agosta is too shocked to react. "I must say, it's good to be back."
And okay, maybe it's the whole "been through this with the kid" thing, but D'Agosta's first reaction is to shuffle the poor guy home. Get some blankets around him. A nice stiff drink. A thousand weeks of sleep. Years, even. But he knows Pendergast won't take kindly to coddling, so he just claps the agent's shoulder numbly. "Yeah," and the words are sawdust in his gums, "it's great to see you, buddy."
Pendergast smiles slightly. Constance, who graces D'Agosta with a fond countenance, puts her dainty hand on her guardian's wrist.
D'Agosta swallows and tosses his cigar in the nearest bin. "C'mon," he says, and it's somehow much easier with Constance as a guide to wrap his large hands around those thin, uncharacteristically slouching shoulders. "Let's get you two outta here."
"That would be marvelous," Constance tells him. Pendergast only nods and closes his eyes briefly, as if unable to keep them open.
Yeah. This is gonna take time. Time D'Agosta will make, one way or another, until things are set right again. For now, all he can do is steer Pendergast to the exit and into the clamor of traffic where the limo is waiting, and tell the driver it's time to head home.
And for once, Pendergast does not protest the solid touch at his back—but rather, with a perceivable tremor, leans into it.