~25~

Title: Forever Road
Rating: PG, with some slight leanings toward PG-13.
Warnings:angst, brief allusions to past sexual situations, mentions of a certain movie not belonging to me.
Characters/Pairings:other character, Luis, mentions of Hank, Sheridan.
Summary: prompt: search. The church doors closed heavily (with an unwelcome thud that sounded of finality) behind the two men, and the weight of a thousand and one regrets pressed down on Luis's tired shoulders as he turned back around, head downcast.

"May I help you?"

Freeman turned to address the young priest while Luis drifted down the carpeted aisle in a fog of disappointment (devastation). The exchange was as quiet as it was quick, but Luis caught enough of it to come to an awful realization. He bent to retrieve a crushed rose petal as Freeman's footfalls approached, rubbing the pink velvet between his fingers thoughtfully (it wasn't too hard to imagine Emma walking down this aisle before her mother, all honey curls and satin and lace, smiles and giggles and little hands full of petals) as he spoke aloud the terrible truth the agent hesitated to disclose. "We're too late. I'm too late."

"Father Jonas informed me the Bennett reception is underway at The Seascape as we speak and open to all. He just returned to the church to retrieve something for Father Lonagin. He offered us a ride." Freeman only allowed a second's pause before he continued. "I turned him down."

Luis settled heavily into the pew nearest him, resting his elbows on his knees and dropping his weary head into his hands. One dark brow climbed upward in consideration as he glanced over at the man by his side, looking just as rumpled and exhausted as he felt (but never as heart-sick, never that; he hadn't foolishly let the best thing that had ever happened to him, the key to his entire life's happiness, slip right through his fingers). "You should go. There'll be free food."

Freeman loosened the knot of his tie and pushed his sleeves up as he scanned his surroundings (flowers and ribbon, stained-glass windows and flickering candles), and he felt another pang of guilt assail him as his measured gaze lit back upon the man currently unable to disguise the extent of his defeat. Clearing his throat, he gruffly told Luis, "Don't forget the free booze."

"You should go," Luis repeated with a pained smile in response. "I need…I just need…" Words and his voice failed him in that moment, but the older man seemed to understand all the same, and offered him his hand.

"If you ever change your mind about joining the Bureau…" Freeman trailed off, his handshake firm with respect, his blue eyes soft with compassion.

"I'll give you a call," Luis promised, standing up to see Freeman off.

"It's been an honor, my friend."

"An honor," Luis echoed softly with a nod. He watched Freeman amble down the church aisle, catch back up with the young priest, and place a hand upon the thin, black-clad shoulder as he rescinded his earlier refusal of the young clergyman's offer. The church doors closed heavily (with an unwelcome thud that sounded of finality) behind the two men, and the weight of a thousand and one regrets pressed down on Luis's tired shoulders as he turned back around, head downcast. He didn't immediately realize he wasn't alone, until he lifted his (bruised and battered) face to the faint flicker of candlelight and heard a (her) sharp intake of breath.

Sheridan's hair glowed golden in the dancing flicker of flames. Her white gown glimmered and reflected light, and her blue eyes were moist with unspoken emotion as they met Luis's own.

She was unspeakably beautiful to Luis's wanting eyes, and he wondered briefly if she were merely a mirage of his own desperate making. But then she spoke, soft and with that familiar sweet edge of sarcasm that had started him on the slow slide to love all those years ago, and Luis wanted to laugh at himself for ever thinking he could accomplish such a miraculous feat.

"For such a stickler for punctuality, you're awfully late, Supercop."

Luis didn't respond right away, just drank in the welcome (soul-wrenching) sight of her as he drew closer to her (when he was no more than arm's length away, his feet refused to go any farther and his heart started to thump erratically in his chest). "That's just like you, Crane, throwing my words back in my face." Sheridan stepped closer to him, and Luis couldn't stand it, couldn't handle having her so close to him, so he shuffled backward, looked to his side in an attempt to avoid her liquid blue eyes. The question spilled out of his mouth before he could stop it, before he could snatch the words back, and Sheridan went completely still at the harsh edge to his voice. "Don't you have someplace else to be? It's bad form to be late for your own reception." He felt the whisper of the air around her as she moved past him, the rustle of her dress, and he found himself staring at the long, sleek line of her back, the pearls of her (too) straightened spine (he remembered how she'd shivered when he rest his hand there, as he'd held her close, as he'd buried himself so deeply inside her she'd felt more like an extension of himself, his body, his heart, his soul). Her voice was muffled as she answered him, one hand resting on the solid wood of the pew to her right, the other lifting to her face and swiftly dropping back down to her side (were those tears on her face?).

"You know Hank doesn't need me to get the party started."

Luis had nothing to say to that truth, and the silence yawned between them, stretched and grew more uncomfortable by the minute, until Sheridan bravely pushed back against it with a simple (complicated) question that made Luis's own heart go still beneath its bony armor (turnabout is fair play and all that).

"Why, Luis? Why did you come?" Sheridan asked the question without irony, without guile, without meeting Luis's intense stare (still, she felt his phantom touch in the gooseflesh that pebbled her skin).

"I had to." Luis kept his response (maddeningly) succinct though forthright.

It wasn't enough for Sheridan, and she asked the question again, a whisper torn from her lips as she stared straight ahead, not daring to turn her head, look at Luis, as she felt him (the heat of his body) come nearer. "Why?"

"It doesn't matter now," Luis sighed behind her, reaching out to touch her but stopping just short, his hand drawing up in a fist that he clutched close to his heart. "All that matters now is that you're happy, Hank's happy," he told her, turning again and walking back up the aisle, toward the beckoning flicker of illumination at its end (but not the kind he was seeking). He picked up an unlit candle, tested its weight in the palm of his hand, watched its wick disappear into the shimmering flames, and sent up a silent prayer (that it'd be true, that they'd be happy, that Emma'd be happy, yet she'd still keep him there, tuck the memory of him close in a far corner of her heart). "It doesn't matter why I came," he told her. "Not anymore."

"It does," Sheridan insisted. "It matters to me."

She joined him then; they stood side by side. Luis could feel the brush of her arm against him as she reached for her own candle (it was the most agonizing yet amazing feeling, feeling that alive, from a touch so small, so inconsequential), and his eyes fell shut as she rest her hand next to his, their little fingers barely touching, on the time-hewn wood. "It shouldn't. You're his wife now. I was…I am too late."

"Are you, Luis? Are you really too late?"

Sheridan's hand moved over his, her palm cradling the back of his hand, her fingers lacing through his own, and Luis's eyes opened, his heart renewed its pounding inside his chest (with hope?) at what he saw (or didn't see) when he stared at their clasped hands. His hand was large, made rough and callused from years of hard work, dark; her hand was smaller, finely-boned and elegant, light—and absent of Hank's binding ring. The discovery rocked Luis, stole the words from his tongue, and he could only stare at her in awe, drown in the mesmerizing blue of her eyes.

Slowly, disappointedly, Sheridan withdrew her hand, shook her head as tears spilled onto her cheeks, sparkles in the candlelight, when her question failed to spur him into speech, action. "You still can't say it, can you? Why is it so hard to tell me how you feel, Luis? You can write it on a piece of paper in fairy tale riddles (As you wish) but you just…can't…say…the…words. Hank was wrong. You're not deserving of a chance you won't take."

Clutching her skirt in her fists, Sheridan turned to go, to leave him one last time, and she almost made it, but somewhere between disbelieving euphoria and the crushing possibility that he was letting his love, his life, slip through his hands again, Luis rediscovered his voice. "You waited for me."

"I thought I had a reason to," Sheridan tossed back to him in a tear-rough voice. "I was wrong."

Luis's voice was just as rough with emotion when he answered her. "You weren't wrong, Crane. You were never wrong. Do you remember the night Theresa made us watch that silly movie? The princess was named after a flower."

"I remember," Sheridan murmured.

"Theresa teased us, teased me. She said I was like Westley, that every time I argued with you, every time I saved you, every time I called you Crane, I was just like him. That what I really meant, what I was showing you was…" Luis trailed off, waiting for Sheridan to make the connection, save him from further making a fool out of himself, and she did, in a soft, wavering whisper as she turned to face him, to watch his careful approach.

"That you loved me." With her back pressed against the heavy church doors and her hands knotted in front of her, Sheridan tried once more, "Why did you come, Luis?"

Luis covered her hands with his hands, shackled her wrists, slithered his palms up her smooth skin to capture and cradle her elbows. "I had to. You know that," he told her in a low, gravelly voice, letting go of one of her elbows to lift his hand to her face, tuck away an errant strand of gold.

"Tell me, Luis," Sheridan pleaded tearfully. "Say the words."

"I don't just want it all, Crane," Luis cupped her jaw in his warm palm. "I want more," he informed her, recalling another conversation, months ago, where their hearts had bled themselves raw, and he'd done it again, left without saying goodbye (he wouldn't do it again; his search for peace ended here, tonight). Smiling down into her blue, blue eyes, he laid it on the line for her, the best way he knew how. "I want forever. With you. With Emma. Even with Lucy."

His admission drew a sob from Sheridan's trembling lips, and she covered the hand that held her so tenderly with one of her own, smiling through her tears as Luis continued, his voice gaining confidence with each new declaration he made.

"I want to fill that monstrosity of a house of yours with Emma's."

"Just Emma's?" Sheridan gathered her composure enough to tease, her eyes shining. "What about Luke's?"

"Luke's too," Luis's smile stretched into a grin, and he lifted his other hand to cup the graceful curve of her neck. "I want to argue with you, dance with you, cook with you. I want to raise my family with you..."

Sheridan didn't disappoint Luis; she focused on one part of his statement, her blue eyes now twinkling with loving amusement. "Cook with me, Supercop?"

"Just making sure I had your full and undivided attention," Luis was quick to quip.

"You had me at forever," Sheridan assured him, soothing her fingers over the mottled bruises that covered his beloved face. Her fingertips came to rest over his full lips, his beautiful mouth, and she spoke wonderingly as she raised herself up on tiptoe, pressed herself close to him and the safety and breadth of his strong arms. "Why, with me?"

"You know why," Luis's warm breath bathed her lips as he tugged her chin toward him, searched deep in her blue eyes for her understanding as the fingers of his other hand fanned across the nape of her neck, stealing into her golden curls.

Sheridan's patience was rewarded with a kiss, sweet and full of passion and revelation, and when it was over, she could still feel the imprint of Luis's answer (because I love you) in the tingle of her lips, in the happiness singing through her veins. She leaned forward to kiss the corner of his mouth again as she tangled their fingers together and smiled.

"Take me home, Crane," Luis sighed, letting Sheridan lead him where she might, her answer unraveling the final knot of worry in his gut as he finally accepted it, the truth of his feelings for this woman who'd waited for him, even when he hadn't deserved her faith.

"As you wish."

So...I hope the big reveal was worth the wait. I'm not 100% satisfied with it, but then I never am. ; )

Thanks, Tom, for your encouraging words on the last chapter. You're not the only one glad I'm writing again, lol. I've missed it so much, but RL hasn't allowed me the free time I'd like to update my stories. :( I hope you enjoyed this latest chapter.

Feedback is love!

I can't wait to read your thoughts (you better post them while you can-only 5 more chapters left!).

Thanks so much for reading!