She hadn't expected him to show up. Especially not after his comment about disliking the rain, which she could understand. It was probably something to do with his stuffy, overbearing nature. For... well, for being what he was, he was certainly a tight-ass. And what an ass it was, a small part of her mind leered. She gave herself a mental kick. We work before we play, she thought, putting the words in what she would have imagined her fearless leader's tone to be.
Screw him, anyway. Screw him and the proverbial horse he rode in on. She didn't need him to have fun.
But that was the problem, wasn't it? The more time she spent out there in the park, out of the confining almost-uniform of black leather and black shades, the more she found that she enjoyed it. She had meant what she had said the previous day, every word of it, every syllable. She enjoyed his company, she found him handsome, and she wanted to spend more time with him. Despite knowing exactly who and what he was, she still wanted to spend so much more time with him. She wanted to show him all the joys life had to offer, all the simple little pleasures of stretching out and falling asleep in the sun, or dancing around like a mad thing in the rain. His stoicism didn't deter her, it encouraged her. His stubborn refusal to understand or comprehend only drove her on. She knew exactly how unhealthy he was for her... she probably had a better idea than he did. And she didn't want to stop.
"If you had an ounce of sense, Solace," she muttered to herself as she trudged through the rain, "You wouldn't be here right now."
"I told you that yesterday."
She yelped. Leaped a foot into the air, skidded, and came down straight into a puddle onto her bottom. Her mismatched eyes glared up at him, daring him to laugh. "Ha. Ha, bloody ha."
He extended a hand from underneath his umbrella. "You were the one who wanted to stand in the rain."
"Dance..." she corrected him, sighing. "And that wasn't what I was referring to."
"Oh?"
"It's nothing."
Pause. She waited, suddenly holding her breath, wondering if he would let it go.
"You're not dancing."
She could have cried with relief. Instead, she did a few exaggerated vaudeville dance maneuvers. "There. Happy?"
"I don't understand why you seem to feel that endangering your life by performing acrobatics in wet weather will make you happy."
It's not that, she wanted to tell him. It's watching your expression as I cavort through the raindrops. It's watching your lips tighten into an annoyingly kissable-looking thin line as I make a complete fool of myself in the mud. It's watching your aggravatingly blue eyes follow me as I walk around the park.
She didn't tell him. "It just does." But it didn't, anymore. Solace closed her eyes and attempted to recapture some of the happiness she used to feel, dancing around in the rain.
He was silent. It helped, a little.
"You took your coat off and stood in the rain..." she sang quietly, turning slow pirouettes on one foot. "You were always crazy like that."
No response.
"Mmm la la la..." she sang aimlessly, continuing to spin. It was getting easier to relax, to ignore the strangeness of having him watch her. Funny how it should have been nerve-wracking for an entirely different reason, and wasn't.
"Is this enjoyable?"
She slipped a little, missing a beat. Pirouettes turned to more sweeping dance moves, bending and bowing and whirling through the air. "Yes... very."
"Why?"
She shrugged, sweeping one delicately pointed toe around in an arc that reached the top of her head at the apex. "I don't know."
"You never thought about it?"
"Analyzing why a thing brings joy tends to take the joy out of the thing," she murmured, grabbing hold of a low-hanging tree branch and swinging on it.
"Why?"
She thought for a second. "I don't know. I think humans take more joy in things that are spontaneous, rather than planned. Too often the anticipation of a thing leads to disappointment when the thing actually manifests. I know those are linear ways to put it, but it works backwards as well as forwards, too. If that made any sense at all." Solace made a face and swung under the branch, skidding through the mud.
"But you said..." Pause. "I believe your exact words were that 'the excitement in the anticipation of speaking with me did not exceed the joy of actually doing so'..."
She blushed. "You would remember it that exactly..." Sighed. "Yes, that's true. But you're the exception to the rule."
"I am?"
"Yes. I suspect you are the exception to a great many rules."
"You do."
"Yes."
"Such as?"
Pause. "Such as the rule about fraternizing with the enemy."
One hand twitched in the direction of his gun. He almost replaced the earpiece, reconnected... and then paused. "Explain."
She shifted from one foot to the other. "The natural enemies of hippies are law enforcement."
"Ah."
"The natural enemy of chaos is order. Hippies generally like to consider themselves chaotic, peaceful, and law enforcement as full of war-mongering anal-retentive..." Pause. "Um."
"Um?"
"Well, the words aren't polite, but you understand what I mean."
"I see."
"So you, as an Agent... of whatever acronym..."
There was a barely perceptible release of breath, of tension.
"... are the natural enemy of me, a child of hippies and peaceniks."
"...are my natural enemy," he corrected her absently, and she stuck her tongue out at him. He stared, frozen by the irreverent gesture.
"Whatever, grammar nazi."
"I... see."
"I'm glad." She grabbed his hand. "Now come out from under that umbrella."
"No." It came out stronger than he'd intended.
"Yes."
"Why?"
"So you can enjoy the rain with me, of course."
"But I don't enjoy the rain."
"Pshaw. You make it sound like such a bad thing. At least share it with me. You can hide under your umbrella in a bit, just give it a try."
"Why?"
"Why not?"
"I don't like getting wet."
She propped her fists on her hips. "Have you ever danced around in the rain?"
"I refuse to make a fool of myself."
"I'll take that as a no."
"Fine."
"So if you don't know what it's like, if you've never done it, how can you know you won't like it."
"I know."
"How?"
How indeed. He couldn't explain it to her without risking the exposure of the Matrix. "I just do."
"A-HA! An instinct! A feeling!" She capered around him like a mad thing. "And just when I was beginning to suspect you were an unfeeling robot."
He shifted from one foot to the other, uncomfortable with the comparison that was too close to the truth. "It's not an instinct. I know ..."
"You know nothing. Come on..." And, taking him completely by surprise, she jerked the umbrella out of his hand and tossed it into the tree, where it caught and stuck. He stared up at it, unable to retrieve it without doing something unnatural.
"Solace..." his voice was low, growling, dangerous again.
"Dance, you idiot," she said, grabbing him by the hands and whirling him around.
"I don't dance." He pulled away.
"You're scared."
"I am not!"
"Scaredy-cat, scaredy-cat, the Agent is a scaredy-cat!"
"I'm warning you..."
She skipped out of his reach. "Then dance, G-Man."
"I'm not..."
"Dance!"
She accentuated the word with a leap and a twirl. For a second the Agent thought she was going to slip and break her fool neck, but she didn't. Bending over almost entirely backwards, she swept down and back up again so gracefully even he had to stare. Human beings shouldn't be able to do that, especially not with the confines of the Matrix. But she was doing it.
"Dance Dance Dance Dance Dance..." she repeated, spinning around him like a dervish. He was getting dizzy. Agents didn't get dizzy.
"No..."
She stopped. "Please?"
"No..."
She took his hands. "Please? Dance with me, at least."
"No..."
He was soaked to the bone, although he wasn't exactly cold. His shell had an awareness of the temperature even if he wasn't paying enough attention to it to shiver like he probably should have, in order to maintain verismilitude. Fortunately, she didn't seem to be paying attention to whether or not he was reacting properly to the weather. One hand went to his waist, the other lightly clasped his and extended both their arms from their body. He recognized the position.
"Please?" She removed the hand on his waist long enough to place his own hand on her hip, where it briefly occured to him that she should have been uncomfortable with the position. Then again, she should have been uncomfortable when she'd nearly flashed him in the park four days ago. She seemed to have different triggers for embarrassment than most humans. And she was still wheedling... "Please? Just one dance..."
"There's no music..." It was a lame excuse, but it was the only thing he could come up with on such short notice and paying as little attention as he was to what he was saying.
"There's always music," she whispered.
"How?"
"Listen."
"To what?"
"Everything."
He did. He listened to the rain, to the faint sounds of thunder coming over the horizon, to the sound their feet made squelching in the mud. He noticed that she was humming. Something... a waltz.
"You're..."
"Shhh..."
She started to move to a rhythm he didn't hear and couldn't match. He stumbled, and she compensated for his clumsiness patiently. What in the name of logic was she dancing to? She'd stopped humming, so the music must have been in her head. Whatever else he might have been he wasn't a telepath.
"I can't hear..."
"Shhh... Yes you can. Just pay attention."
Pay attention. Easier said than done. He sighed, irritated at himself and his superiors, and danced with her as best as he could. The rhythm became slowly apparent but he still couldn't figure it out...
"Are you..."
"Yes."
"How..." No, there was a better question. "Why?"
"Why what?"
"Why..."
"Oh."
"Why?"
"Because it's the first rhythm we know. And it's always there, until the day we die. It's the one rhythm you can always dance to."
I can't, he thought about saying. He decided against it.
"I've never heard that," he finally said, after a long silence and several turns through the mud. It was starting to creep up the legs of his trousers, but strangely enough he wasn't noticing as much.
"People don't pay much attention to it, usually. But it's always there. And with that base rhythm, you can make a thousand different rhythms to dance to. It's one of the wonderful mysteries of life."
"Oh?"
"Yes."
Long pause.
"Why dance?"
"Excuse me?"
"Why dance? Why dance at all? If you enjoy the rain, why not simply enjoy it in silence and stillness?"
She stopped, lowered her arms, and he stepped away from her. "I suppose I could," she said finally. "But the truth is, I have too much energy to want to stay still for very long. Especially in the rain, because it seems so..."
He waited.
"... dynamic."
"Dynamic?"
"Yes... water is dynamic."
"How?"
"It's... it's always flowing. Always moving. Whether it's moving from the sky to the earth or from one point in the earth to another, it's always moving. Healthy water, anyway. They say you can never walk through the same river twice, because the water is always moving." She smiled. "I like that."
"What happens when it moves through your houses, or through your roads?"
Shrug. "We rebuild. Life is never a certain thing. But that's no reason to stop living it just because you built your house in the middle of where the river wanted to go."
He frowned at her, puzzled. "I don't think that would be a comfort to those who suffer the flash floods and overflowing rivers."
"Probably not."
"Then why...?"
"Will it do any good to get angry about it? Or depressed?"
"... no."
"Well, then. My time and energy would be better spent appreciating the strength of the river and putting some of that appreciation into what I build next."
"Meaning...?"
"Meaning that if you pay attention, you can fix the mistakes you made the first time."
He frowned. This conversation had taken a decidedly odd turn. "Like the river?"
She laughed. "Like building a home in the path of a raging river. Floods generally take the path of least resistance. I wouldn't build on a flood plain if I could help it."
Pause. "Oh."
Thunder rolled. The rain started to pour down even harder, and she ducked. "Yuck. Okay, the novelty of rain has worn off. I'm ready to be warm and dry now."
He smirked as he reached up, taking advantage of her rain-blindness to snag the device from the tree. "I thought you liked the rain."
"Jerk. I also said I liked coming in from the rain and being warm and dry."
"Ah."
"Besides, it's getting colder."
"Oh."
"Besides, Nanny O'Brian's should be open. I can change into dry clothes in there..." she looked him up and down. "And hopefully they'll have something for you."
"Nanny O'Brian's?"
"A pub."
"And you brought dry clothes?"
"Of course."
Pause. "You planned this."
"Of course." She gestured at the umbrella, teeth chattering in the cold. "Mind if I snag a piece of that?"
Pause. "Of course..." he extended it out after a second's consideration, expecting her to walk next to him. Instead, somehow, she ducked under his arm and huddled against his side. Her clothing, thin as it was, clung to her body and did very, very little to conceal the shape or sight of it. He thought briefly about asking if she was being seductive again. Not yet.
"Come on..." she said through still-chattering teeth. "It's just this way."
Screw him, anyway. Screw him and the proverbial horse he rode in on. She didn't need him to have fun.
But that was the problem, wasn't it? The more time she spent out there in the park, out of the confining almost-uniform of black leather and black shades, the more she found that she enjoyed it. She had meant what she had said the previous day, every word of it, every syllable. She enjoyed his company, she found him handsome, and she wanted to spend more time with him. Despite knowing exactly who and what he was, she still wanted to spend so much more time with him. She wanted to show him all the joys life had to offer, all the simple little pleasures of stretching out and falling asleep in the sun, or dancing around like a mad thing in the rain. His stoicism didn't deter her, it encouraged her. His stubborn refusal to understand or comprehend only drove her on. She knew exactly how unhealthy he was for her... she probably had a better idea than he did. And she didn't want to stop.
"If you had an ounce of sense, Solace," she muttered to herself as she trudged through the rain, "You wouldn't be here right now."
"I told you that yesterday."
She yelped. Leaped a foot into the air, skidded, and came down straight into a puddle onto her bottom. Her mismatched eyes glared up at him, daring him to laugh. "Ha. Ha, bloody ha."
He extended a hand from underneath his umbrella. "You were the one who wanted to stand in the rain."
"Dance..." she corrected him, sighing. "And that wasn't what I was referring to."
"Oh?"
"It's nothing."
Pause. She waited, suddenly holding her breath, wondering if he would let it go.
"You're not dancing."
She could have cried with relief. Instead, she did a few exaggerated vaudeville dance maneuvers. "There. Happy?"
"I don't understand why you seem to feel that endangering your life by performing acrobatics in wet weather will make you happy."
It's not that, she wanted to tell him. It's watching your expression as I cavort through the raindrops. It's watching your lips tighten into an annoyingly kissable-looking thin line as I make a complete fool of myself in the mud. It's watching your aggravatingly blue eyes follow me as I walk around the park.
She didn't tell him. "It just does." But it didn't, anymore. Solace closed her eyes and attempted to recapture some of the happiness she used to feel, dancing around in the rain.
He was silent. It helped, a little.
"You took your coat off and stood in the rain..." she sang quietly, turning slow pirouettes on one foot. "You were always crazy like that."
No response.
"Mmm la la la..." she sang aimlessly, continuing to spin. It was getting easier to relax, to ignore the strangeness of having him watch her. Funny how it should have been nerve-wracking for an entirely different reason, and wasn't.
"Is this enjoyable?"
She slipped a little, missing a beat. Pirouettes turned to more sweeping dance moves, bending and bowing and whirling through the air. "Yes... very."
"Why?"
She shrugged, sweeping one delicately pointed toe around in an arc that reached the top of her head at the apex. "I don't know."
"You never thought about it?"
"Analyzing why a thing brings joy tends to take the joy out of the thing," she murmured, grabbing hold of a low-hanging tree branch and swinging on it.
"Why?"
She thought for a second. "I don't know. I think humans take more joy in things that are spontaneous, rather than planned. Too often the anticipation of a thing leads to disappointment when the thing actually manifests. I know those are linear ways to put it, but it works backwards as well as forwards, too. If that made any sense at all." Solace made a face and swung under the branch, skidding through the mud.
"But you said..." Pause. "I believe your exact words were that 'the excitement in the anticipation of speaking with me did not exceed the joy of actually doing so'..."
She blushed. "You would remember it that exactly..." Sighed. "Yes, that's true. But you're the exception to the rule."
"I am?"
"Yes. I suspect you are the exception to a great many rules."
"You do."
"Yes."
"Such as?"
Pause. "Such as the rule about fraternizing with the enemy."
One hand twitched in the direction of his gun. He almost replaced the earpiece, reconnected... and then paused. "Explain."
She shifted from one foot to the other. "The natural enemies of hippies are law enforcement."
"Ah."
"The natural enemy of chaos is order. Hippies generally like to consider themselves chaotic, peaceful, and law enforcement as full of war-mongering anal-retentive..." Pause. "Um."
"Um?"
"Well, the words aren't polite, but you understand what I mean."
"I see."
"So you, as an Agent... of whatever acronym..."
There was a barely perceptible release of breath, of tension.
"... are the natural enemy of me, a child of hippies and peaceniks."
"...are my natural enemy," he corrected her absently, and she stuck her tongue out at him. He stared, frozen by the irreverent gesture.
"Whatever, grammar nazi."
"I... see."
"I'm glad." She grabbed his hand. "Now come out from under that umbrella."
"No." It came out stronger than he'd intended.
"Yes."
"Why?"
"So you can enjoy the rain with me, of course."
"But I don't enjoy the rain."
"Pshaw. You make it sound like such a bad thing. At least share it with me. You can hide under your umbrella in a bit, just give it a try."
"Why?"
"Why not?"
"I don't like getting wet."
She propped her fists on her hips. "Have you ever danced around in the rain?"
"I refuse to make a fool of myself."
"I'll take that as a no."
"Fine."
"So if you don't know what it's like, if you've never done it, how can you know you won't like it."
"I know."
"How?"
How indeed. He couldn't explain it to her without risking the exposure of the Matrix. "I just do."
"A-HA! An instinct! A feeling!" She capered around him like a mad thing. "And just when I was beginning to suspect you were an unfeeling robot."
He shifted from one foot to the other, uncomfortable with the comparison that was too close to the truth. "It's not an instinct. I know ..."
"You know nothing. Come on..." And, taking him completely by surprise, she jerked the umbrella out of his hand and tossed it into the tree, where it caught and stuck. He stared up at it, unable to retrieve it without doing something unnatural.
"Solace..." his voice was low, growling, dangerous again.
"Dance, you idiot," she said, grabbing him by the hands and whirling him around.
"I don't dance." He pulled away.
"You're scared."
"I am not!"
"Scaredy-cat, scaredy-cat, the Agent is a scaredy-cat!"
"I'm warning you..."
She skipped out of his reach. "Then dance, G-Man."
"I'm not..."
"Dance!"
She accentuated the word with a leap and a twirl. For a second the Agent thought she was going to slip and break her fool neck, but she didn't. Bending over almost entirely backwards, she swept down and back up again so gracefully even he had to stare. Human beings shouldn't be able to do that, especially not with the confines of the Matrix. But she was doing it.
"Dance Dance Dance Dance Dance..." she repeated, spinning around him like a dervish. He was getting dizzy. Agents didn't get dizzy.
"No..."
She stopped. "Please?"
"No..."
She took his hands. "Please? Dance with me, at least."
"No..."
He was soaked to the bone, although he wasn't exactly cold. His shell had an awareness of the temperature even if he wasn't paying enough attention to it to shiver like he probably should have, in order to maintain verismilitude. Fortunately, she didn't seem to be paying attention to whether or not he was reacting properly to the weather. One hand went to his waist, the other lightly clasped his and extended both their arms from their body. He recognized the position.
"Please?" She removed the hand on his waist long enough to place his own hand on her hip, where it briefly occured to him that she should have been uncomfortable with the position. Then again, she should have been uncomfortable when she'd nearly flashed him in the park four days ago. She seemed to have different triggers for embarrassment than most humans. And she was still wheedling... "Please? Just one dance..."
"There's no music..." It was a lame excuse, but it was the only thing he could come up with on such short notice and paying as little attention as he was to what he was saying.
"There's always music," she whispered.
"How?"
"Listen."
"To what?"
"Everything."
He did. He listened to the rain, to the faint sounds of thunder coming over the horizon, to the sound their feet made squelching in the mud. He noticed that she was humming. Something... a waltz.
"You're..."
"Shhh..."
She started to move to a rhythm he didn't hear and couldn't match. He stumbled, and she compensated for his clumsiness patiently. What in the name of logic was she dancing to? She'd stopped humming, so the music must have been in her head. Whatever else he might have been he wasn't a telepath.
"I can't hear..."
"Shhh... Yes you can. Just pay attention."
Pay attention. Easier said than done. He sighed, irritated at himself and his superiors, and danced with her as best as he could. The rhythm became slowly apparent but he still couldn't figure it out...
"Are you..."
"Yes."
"How..." No, there was a better question. "Why?"
"Why what?"
"Why..."
"Oh."
"Why?"
"Because it's the first rhythm we know. And it's always there, until the day we die. It's the one rhythm you can always dance to."
I can't, he thought about saying. He decided against it.
"I've never heard that," he finally said, after a long silence and several turns through the mud. It was starting to creep up the legs of his trousers, but strangely enough he wasn't noticing as much.
"People don't pay much attention to it, usually. But it's always there. And with that base rhythm, you can make a thousand different rhythms to dance to. It's one of the wonderful mysteries of life."
"Oh?"
"Yes."
Long pause.
"Why dance?"
"Excuse me?"
"Why dance? Why dance at all? If you enjoy the rain, why not simply enjoy it in silence and stillness?"
She stopped, lowered her arms, and he stepped away from her. "I suppose I could," she said finally. "But the truth is, I have too much energy to want to stay still for very long. Especially in the rain, because it seems so..."
He waited.
"... dynamic."
"Dynamic?"
"Yes... water is dynamic."
"How?"
"It's... it's always flowing. Always moving. Whether it's moving from the sky to the earth or from one point in the earth to another, it's always moving. Healthy water, anyway. They say you can never walk through the same river twice, because the water is always moving." She smiled. "I like that."
"What happens when it moves through your houses, or through your roads?"
Shrug. "We rebuild. Life is never a certain thing. But that's no reason to stop living it just because you built your house in the middle of where the river wanted to go."
He frowned at her, puzzled. "I don't think that would be a comfort to those who suffer the flash floods and overflowing rivers."
"Probably not."
"Then why...?"
"Will it do any good to get angry about it? Or depressed?"
"... no."
"Well, then. My time and energy would be better spent appreciating the strength of the river and putting some of that appreciation into what I build next."
"Meaning...?"
"Meaning that if you pay attention, you can fix the mistakes you made the first time."
He frowned. This conversation had taken a decidedly odd turn. "Like the river?"
She laughed. "Like building a home in the path of a raging river. Floods generally take the path of least resistance. I wouldn't build on a flood plain if I could help it."
Pause. "Oh."
Thunder rolled. The rain started to pour down even harder, and she ducked. "Yuck. Okay, the novelty of rain has worn off. I'm ready to be warm and dry now."
He smirked as he reached up, taking advantage of her rain-blindness to snag the device from the tree. "I thought you liked the rain."
"Jerk. I also said I liked coming in from the rain and being warm and dry."
"Ah."
"Besides, it's getting colder."
"Oh."
"Besides, Nanny O'Brian's should be open. I can change into dry clothes in there..." she looked him up and down. "And hopefully they'll have something for you."
"Nanny O'Brian's?"
"A pub."
"And you brought dry clothes?"
"Of course."
Pause. "You planned this."
"Of course." She gestured at the umbrella, teeth chattering in the cold. "Mind if I snag a piece of that?"
Pause. "Of course..." he extended it out after a second's consideration, expecting her to walk next to him. Instead, somehow, she ducked under his arm and huddled against his side. Her clothing, thin as it was, clung to her body and did very, very little to conceal the shape or sight of it. He thought briefly about asking if she was being seductive again. Not yet.
"Come on..." she said through still-chattering teeth. "It's just this way."