She found him one night in his office with a bottle of wine and the brightness on all his monitors turned up. He was basking in computer light, a near hysterical smile waxing and waning on his face.
The window was open slightly, letting in summer heat to fight the air conditioning. She pulled it up and turned off her shield, the worry in her eyes apparent. "Are you drunk?" she cried, though she knew the answer before she asked the question. A second, empty bottle in the bin next to him only further supported her suspicion.
He shook his head furiously, sloshing wine from his glass in the process. "No, no, I'm not – I've been drinking, yes, but not drunk, no, hardly, Holly, what do you take me for?"
She could have gotten angry, then. She could have ranted for hours about how he was letting himself go to waste, taken away the repulsive alcohol that was stinking up the room, put him straight to bed, punished him with the silent treatment. He wasn't even legal. But instead the scene before her just made her very, very sad – not disappointed, even, just sad, and she flew over and sat to face him on his desk so that her feet brushed against his knees.
He looked up at her for a moment, and she could have sworn he was crying, but then his dark blue gaze unfocused and he was left staring at the door on the far side of the room. Whatever tears he might have had were blinked away.
"Artemis," she said, very softly.
"Fairy girl come through my window," he replied, still not caring to look her in the eye. But he placed his hands on her waist and she shivered. "Where've you been, elf? I've missed you, and Mother's missed you, and the twins have missed you, and I just – I feel – like I spend all my days missing you. All my years wasted away."
She cupped her face with her hands and bit her lip, not knowing what to say to him. He finally met her mismatched gaze.
"I have three eyes," he said. "Two in me and one in you. Brilliant."
She tried to laugh but it came out more like a sob, and she pressed her forehead to his and closed her eyes and willed him to come back to her. "I'm sorry," she said.
"I'm sorrier," he replied. He wrapped his arms farther around her and tilted his head back to kiss her chin. "Look at us, two sorry souls, drunk in love and drunk in wine."
"In love?"
"In wine."
"I can't even drink."
"We all find our own ways to get drunk, Captain."
She let her lips linger on his forehead, and he closed his eyes. "What am I doing, Holly?" he whispered.
She ventured a guess. "What all lovesick fools do on Friday nights?"
"Is that all I am, then? A lovesick fool? Am I sick?"
"Oh, no," she said, some part of her melting, sobs threatening to tear her pretty face apart. She instantly regretted her every word and every action since she flew in through the window. "No, Arty, you've healed, remember? You're all right now."
He was crying now, quite openly. "You're right," he wept, "I'm drunk. I'm a mess. With or without you, I'm a mess."
"You're not—"
"No, I'm tired of lying to myself. Why do we have to play these games, Holly? Why do we have to skirt around rules like star-crossed lovers, like characters in some Shakespearean tragedy that ends in death and contrition and... grief, Holly, unending grief that there's no going back from... I'm drunk. God, I'm so drunk."
He cried and she let him, because she loved him, and she held him tight and said nothing because no words she could have spoken in that moment could have brought him back or made him better. He had crossed a point of no return.