Amanda closed her eyes as she pulled her glass away from her lips, savoring the warm feeling of scotch flowing through her body. It was the perfect end to a far from perfect week… until the sound of footsteps approaching her open office door yanked her back into the real world.
With her eyes held tightly shut, Amanda tried to will her unwanted guest to turn around and leave her alone, but the thumping of footsteps only grew louder. She sighed, snapping her eyes open as she set the glass on her desk, picked up a pen, and flipped open a random folder sitting in front of her just before someone entered her office.
"Whatever you need will have to wait until next week. I'm busy," she lied, not looking up from her desk.
But whoever was torturing her by entering her office unannounced at 4pm on a Friday didn't move or speak, so she focused all of her energy on the paper in front of her, hoping they would get the message. She also hoped they couldn't see from across the room that she was furiously scribbling nonsense in the margins of a document entitled 2049 Waste Management Procedures for the Town of Defiance.
Her unwanted visitor stood motionless for a moment, obviously expecting her to look up, but she refused to give them that satisfaction. Instead, she flipped the page to make a show out of ignoring them.
"Didn't you hear me?" she asked.
"I spent the entire walk up here trying to think of something witty to say to you, but I couldn't think of anything," the intruder said, and Amanda froze, the pen collapsing in her hand. "Kind of hoped you'd give me a little something more than this to work with. Eye contact might be a nice place to start."
Amanda's heart was racing. That voice. Nolan's voice. She would recognize it anywhere.
But as soon as the thought flashed across her mind, she tried to tell herself it couldn't be true, that she was hearing what she wanted to hear. Nolan was dead or if he was lucky, he was flying around in a spaceship somewhere, but he wasn't standing in front of her. She thought she had finally convinced herself of that, stopped indulging in daydreams of him walking back into her office with a barely-believable story about where he'd been.
Her eyes narrowed at the glass of scotch next to her. How much had she had? She didn't think she was that drunk, but that was the most logical explanation she could come up with for hearing his voice. She knew as soon as she'd look up, she'd see a new intern who sounded mildly like him, a kid with a vaguely similar cadence who was standing awkwardly in her office because he was too nervous to return to whoever he worked for without an answer to whatever he was sent up here to ask.
"I was thinking I might just start with 'hi,'" he said, and Amanda let out a breath.
She tore her eyes off of her desk, expecting disappointment, but it wasn't an intern who had wandered into her office. Joshua Nolan was standing in front of her desk in the same clothes he was wearing the day he left, the deep red, almost black stain of her blood still visible on his shirt.
As soon as their eyes met, that goofy smile she missed so much spread across his face, and her heart skipped a beat, but she felt like her body was cemented into her chair.
"I guess I should have tried harder to think of something. Maybe I'm losing that natural charm in my old age." Flashing her a wink and a tentative smile, he stepped forward. "I'll have to work on my wit to compensate."
Amanda wanted to kick her chair away and jump into his arms, but she couldn't even bring herself to speak. She could barely breathe, frozen in place with shock.
"Amanda?" he asked gently, the smile fading from his face as his eyes searched hers for a response.
"Is that my blood on your shirt?" she blurted out.
Glancing at his shirt, he let out a relieved laugh "Yeah, it is."
As Amanda stood and walked towards him, her eyes traveled along the length of his body, taking in every inch of him, struggling to believe her eyes. She had dreamed of this so many times, rehearsed what she'd say as she lay in bed at night, unable to sleep those first few weeks after he'd left. But now, as he stood in front of her, she was nearly speechless.
"Are you real?" she asked, and as soon as the words tumbled out of her mouth, she knew that she must sound ridiculous. This was going nothing like her sweeping romantic fantasies where she always had the perfect words, but that gave her some hope. If she was this inarticulate in front of him, maybe this was real.
"Last time I checked, yeah, I was still real," he said as he took her hand in his own, and she practically jumped at the shock of his touch. His hand felt warm. It felt real .
She turned to look at the bottle sitting on her desk, feeling like she was in one of her daydreams, like her movements were in slow motion. "That's just scotch. No adreno," she said as she lifted her hand to the base of her neck, but there was no EGO.
"Amanda," he said, raising his eyebrows and looking into her eyes. "There's no EGO in your neck, and this isn't some drug fueled hallucination. I promise."
Amanda shook her head, trying to clear her thoughts. "I'm being ridiculous, I know. It's just… you're supposed to be dead."
"No, not ridiculous. I understand. I've been there. Hallucinations can seem frighteningly real." He paused, a hint of a smile flickering across his face. "What does that say about our lives that we can commiserate over the horrors of hallucinating?"
"I think it says that our lives are a fucking mess."
His hint of a smile grew into a grin. "I can't imagine life any other way."
Amanda knew that on some level he was right, that she couldn't imagine an idle life much more than he could, and the corners of her mouth involuntarily twitched upwards, but she quickly grew serious. The price of that life was too steep for her. Paying it had come close to destroying her emotionally and physically more than once.
"I could do without the hallucinations, stab wounds that take weeks to heal, and spending seven and a half months thinking you're dead."
The smile fell from Nolan's face. "I never wanted you to think I was dead." He took a deep breath. "I never thought you would."
Tears were starting to well up in Amanda's eyes, but she refused to let them fall. She felt like she needed to explain herself, to justify why she had lost hope, not only to him, but to the part of herself who had made optimism a part of her identity for so long, the part of herself she betrayed. "I wanted to believe you would be ok, but it was nearly impossible when I kept thinking about how many people died, and everyone in town was speculating about you, bringing up every reason you wouldn't make it, looking at me with pity in their eyes, telling me they were sorry for my loss. It hurt." Her voice cracked. "A lot."
"I'm sorry," he said, brushing the hair out of her face with his free hand. "I'm sorry I hurt you by leaving, but I'm back now, and I'm not going anywhere."
Amanda smiled through her slightly trembling lips, feeling like if she tried to say anything else, she would break down in tears.
Nolan lifted their intertwined hands, pressing them against his chest, and she noticed for the first time, that there was a new scar running across the back of his hand, disappearing into his sleeve. "I hope you know I didn't want to leave Defiance, but I had to," he said. "Irisa was right. We couldn't let all those people die because we were afraid of what we didn't understand, but when I didn't know if I'd ever come back, I prayed that you knew the last thing I wanted to do was leave you."
"I know," she said softly. "Everything else always comes before us. There's always a crisis that's more important."
"There doesn't have to be. Not anymore," he said as he reached down to kiss her, but before their lips touched, she let out a sob, or maybe it was a laugh. It felt like both, and with the tears she had been holding back finally falling from her eyes, she could do nothing but laugh as an overwhelming mixture of emotions came pouring out all at once.
"Hey," he whispered gently, wrapping his arms around her. "All the times I've walked into this office and this is the first time I've gotten this reaction."
Amanda pressed herself against his chest, letting the walls she had built up over the years fade away as he held her. There was no longer any point in trying to hide her feeling from him. He knew the darkest parts of her past. He had already seen her cry, breakdown, and go through a drug fueled downward spiral, and he still cared about her. He still came back to her even when it should have been impossible.
Time stood still as they held each other in silence while she relaxed into his familiar embrace, the steady rhythm of his breathing calming her racing mind. For the first time since he walked into this room, she felt like herself again, and for the first time in a very long time, she remembered what it felt like to believe that everything could be ok against all odds, like she wasn't fighting against a world determined to take everything from her.
"Are you ok?" he asked as she lifted her head off his chest.
Amanda laughed once again, as she brushed the last of the tears out of her eyes. "Shouldn't I be asking you that?" she asked as she placed her hands on each side of his face, caressing his cheeks with her thumbs. "You're the one who just came back from… God knows where."
"Space?" he asked as he scrunched his face. "That was nothing, really."
Amanda paused, considering her next words as she looked at him with a mixture of awe and confusion. She knew he didn't understand what it had been like for her, but she needed him to stop downplaying what happened, stop hiding behind humor. "You don't get scars from nothing," she said trailing her finger along the scar on his hand."
His smile cracked as he matched her tone. "No, you don't," he said and she saw in his eyes that whatever he had been through had been harder for him than he wanted to let on.
"I don't know what happened to you or how you got that scar, but when I just told you I thought you were dead, that was the short version. The whole story was dark, and it was painful. I mourned you like you were dead. I had lost the one person who kept me from falling apart last year. I drank a lot, and I cried a lot, but then I picked myself up and tried to go on with my life like there wasn't a giant hole in it because I had to. And Irisa, she tried to tell me you would be fine, that I shouldn't give up hope, but I couldn't tell her what she wanted to hear, and I still don't think she's forgiven me for… For giving up on you."
A mixture of pain and guilt flashed across Nolan's eyes as he slowly ran his hands up and down her back as if trying to erase the time they lost.
"Don't feel guilty for how I felt," Amanda said before he could respond. "You did the right thing. No matter how much it hurt, I always knew that."
"I'm still sorry, and I wish I could take that all away. I wish I could have let you know what happened. I wish I could have come back sooner."
"Me too."
"It wasn't the first time I should have died and I didn't," he said gently. "The other times, did you…"
"No. This time was different."
"Why?"
"Last time you disappeared, we didn't really know what happened to you. No one ever found your body. There was a chance, however small, that you weren't in the mines when they collapsed, or you could have found a way out." Amanda took a deep breath, studying his eyes. "But dead or alive, no one comes home seven and a half months after getting flung into space."
"You said it yourself - I always come back."
"I know, and I believed that when I said it, but it got more difficult as the weeks went by without you. I started to feel defeated, like saving this town was coming at too big of a sacrifice." Amanda looked down at his stained shirt. She couldn't meet his gaze as she shook her head, suddenly feeling disappointed in herself. "You lose enough people, and optimism starts to seem foolish. Kenya, Deirdre, Tommy, Rafe, Christie… I guess, you were my last straw."
"I would hate to be the thing that destroys a lifetime of optimism."
Amanda tilted her head upwards to look him in the eyes. "But you did the impossible." A grin broke out across her face. "You came back, and I think you actually might be the thing that restores my optimism."
Nolan smiled at her with a hint of sadness remaining in his eyes, a sadness Amanda didn't want to spend any more time on, so she stood on her toes, and pulled his face down to meet her own. His hand cupped the back of her head as their lips met with an urgency she had never known. For months, she thought she would never feel his touch again, and now that he was in her arms, she wasn't going to waste a single moment. She lost herself in the kiss, the uncertainty and pain that haunted her over the last seven and a half months ceasing to exist.
As Amanda began to feel lightheaded, and she reluctantly pulled their lips apart. Breathlessly, she whispered, "Where the hell did you go in that spaceship?"
Nolan's face lit up like a child who had just survived his first match with hellbug and lived to tell the story. "On the best adventure of my life. I admit that sometimes I thought I would die, and Doc has terrible taste in music, but I saw the universe in a way I never thought I would."
"And you left the best adventure of your life for… Defiance?"
"Yes, I did." He nodded, his eyes focused on her own, letting her know he had complete confidence in his choice. "Like you said…" He paused, running his finger along her jawline. "You don't get scars from nothing. And I promise to tell you that story, but not right now… Right now, I just want to be here, in this moment because travelling through space is indescribable, and I wish you could have seen it, but it's not a life. I missed that arch, I missed my daughter, and I missed you."
"I missed you too."
"And," Nolan said, breaking himself away from her. "They don't have scotch on Omec ships."
Amanda laughed, feeling like she was radiating happiness as she watched Nolan walk to her drink cart.
"And here I was going to be jealous of you for seeing the universe, but if there's no scotch…" Amanda said, getting her own glass and the bottle of scotch off her desk.
Nolan held his glass in front of her impatiently as she popped the top off the bottle.
"So, now for the truly important question," Amanda said, filling both of their glasses. "Have you been flying around space in a shirt stained with my blood for seven and a half months?"
Nolan took a drink, and narrowed his eyes at her. "Actually..." He winced. "I wore Omec clothing, but there was no way in hell I was going to walk across town in that. I wanted to sweep you off your feet, not get laughed at. I can't pull that look off nearly as well as T'evgin. Purple's not really my color." He looked down at the stain. "But don't worry, I washed it. It's just that Omec washing machines weren't really up to the task. All that tech on the ship and they skimped on stain removing laundry detergent. Apparently, that was not a priority when they fled for their lives."
"You wore Omec clothing? Metal collars? Purple robes?"
"Yes…" he trailed off, as he buried the embarrassed grimace on his face by taking another drink.
"I need to see this."
"No," he huffed, shaking his head.
"Please?" Amanda asked, trying to give him her best puppy dog eyes, a skill she admittedly never quite conquered, and Nolan just kept shaking his head at her.
"Look, there is a club you can go to if you're into that shit."
Amanda dropped her poor attempt at playing innocent and rolled her eyes. "Fine, but you need to take that shirt off," she said through a grimace. "I can't look at that anymore."
Nolan's eyes lit up. "Madam mayor, did you just ask me to take my shirt off in your office?"
"Yeah, I did." The corners of Amanda's mouth curved into a devious smile as she took the scotch glass out of his hand, and pushed him backwards until he was sitting on her desk.
Nolan wrapped his arm around Amanda's back and, in one swift motion, pulled her against against him.
With her body pressed against his, and with the way he was silently staring into her eyes clouding her thoughts, Amanda took deep, slow breaths, trying to maintain her composure. "Bailey's going to be coming up here soon to collect the paperwork I signed for her," she said as she was already unbuttoning the top button of his shirt.
"No, she's not," Nolan said. "I saw her downstairs. Told her not to let anyone in."
"That's pretty confident for a man who's been away for seven and a half months."
"Bailey kindly let me know you would be fully receptive to my return. I didn't even have to ask."
"Of course she did…" Amanda raised her eyebrows. "I'm never telling her anything personal again."
"Don't be too harsh. Because of her, we're all alone, and…" He grinned. "I may have had a few fantasies of this day ending with sex on this desk that you are already doing an amazing job of making come true."
"You had fantasies about this?"
"Oh, don't hurt my feelings and tell me you've never had even one," he said, placing his hand against his chest in an exaggerated display of a broken heart.
Amanda turned away from him, unable to hide her smile.
"Amanda..."
She focused her eyes on his chest, and resumed unbuttoning his shirt. "The sofa."
"What?"
"Mine usually end on the sofa."
"Well, since I'm not going anywhere, we have all night to make that happen too."
"Windowsill?"
"Anywhere you want."