Beautiful Reflection
by Camilla Sandman
Author's note: For Kitty, as requested.
II
She sits in the light before dawn and waits for another day to be born in fire and sky, as it must. Yet, she wishes more than anything that she could hold out a hand and halt the sun's progress, pause time, freeze the hourglass. She is aging and she feels it, mind and skin. The grains of time fuse into her, creating lines and scars as it goes. She still clings to an illusion of beauty, but even that will fade, she knows. So much of her life has been formed by her looks and now she must learn to slowly reshape.
She rests her elbow on one knee and closes her eyes to the wind, an uneven breeze suddenly dying, suddenly lifting her hair, falling and rising in strength almost like the exhale and inhale of something living. Perhaps of the ancient Earth itself, wrinkled with deep valleys and carved passes. She can almost feel its soil in her blood, weathered and tired, waiting to sink down and be reshaped.
Skin to soil, blood to water, flesh to earth. Life to life-giving.
She shivers slightly in the wind, not bothering to wrap the blanket properly around her and the skin no shelter against the wind at all.
"You really do know how to wound a man's ego," a deep voice says behind her, the wind picking up with it. "Leaving him to sleep alone after you've had what you wanted from him."
She smiles as she feels his hands on her shoulders, warm on her wind-cooled skin.
"No reflection on your performance, I assure you."
"I'll try to take that as a compliment."
"I would give you nothing but," she replies and tilts her head back to look at him. His dark skin makes him almost fade into the shadows of twilight and he's wearing nothing but a pair of grey track pants. His chest rises and falls with his breaths and she remembers the feel of it under her hands, the feel of him. Warrick. It still feels strange to have him here, even so many weeks after she first kissed him under a cloud-spotted sky and started something that still hasn't ended. She knows why she kissed him.
She's not sure why he's still there.
"I'm sorry if I woke you."
"Don't be," he says simply, kissing her lips lazily, as if he has a lifetime to do it. "Why are we out here when we could be sleeping together inside?"
She hesitates, feeling her insecurities fight the trust she feels for him. "I'm waiting for dawn."
He considers this, still looking down at her, framing her face with his hands. "And why must you wait for it awake?"
"It comes slower when I am awake."
But the faint crust of pale blue on the horizon tells her it is coming nevertheless, asleep or awake. The sun will rise, its light coming to age her, fade her, mark her. Years and mistakes and regrets, the burden of another day dawning, the toll paid not to cross the bridge quite yet. To live.
"I remember, after Holly died, I stared at the sun and wished it to fall backwards, break the laws of time so I could redo and make right," he says in the silence, surprising her. The revelation is more intimate than his slow touch across naked skin just hours ago and she feels the words tie him to her.
"It wasn't your fault," she says quietly.
"I know. But it was my mistake."
There is pain and peace in his words both, as if he taken then guilt into himself, knowing he is stronger if he carries it willingly. She envies him, even as she wishes she could banish his pain, banish all of it, even if just for a night.
"I don't even remember all the mistakes I've made anymore," she admits, looking down at her hands. She feels him come around and kneel down beside her, placing his hand on her cold ankle and just listening. "All my life, I've tried not to look back, but what waits ahead seems short and shorter. Lindsey is growing up. I am growing old."
"You're not quite ready for the retirement home yet," he replies and she lets out something that is not quite a laugh for all the bitterness in it.
"Sometimes I feel centuries old, and feel I look it too."
"No." His flat-out denial makes her open her mouth to argue, but he places a finger on her lips to silence her. "Shall I tell you what you look like, Cath? I've had time to study it, trust me."
She gives him a mock glare and he ignores it, pushing a few stray hairs away from her face. "You are beautiful. You might've had fewer lines on your body or firmer skin when you were younger, but you've never been more beautiful than you are right now. Every trace of age marks another day you've been in my life and I would not be without them."
"I'm going to turn out a wrinkled old woman before long," she protests, but half-heartedly.
"And I'll be a wrinkled old man with a beer belly – and I will still find you beautiful."
"I'm afraid that I'll discover you're just another way I'm trying to feel young again," she says softly, stroking his hand, feeling the veins under his skin.
"No," he says again, leaning so close she can feel his breath stroke her weathered skin. "You could have picked any guy for that, any guy with fewer complications attached. You picked me."
"I did," she mutters, slinking her arms around his neck, knowing it to be truth. He doesn't make her feel young. He just makes her feel as her, and he knows her as she knows him. Not quite a mirror to her, but a glass, offering a faint reflection. "Would you like to grown old and wrinkled and ugly with me, Warrick Brown?"
"I'd be delighted to, Catherine Willows," he replies and kisses her, and she knows she's looked better, her hair ruffled by wind and sleep, no make-up to cover the signs of age, no clothes offering an attractive package. Yet she's never felt as desired as now, the reflection of beauty in his kiss.
Age will reshape her and leave the price of life across her body. But as she feels the sun dawn and light begin to crawl across her skin, she thinks maybe, maybe she'll always be beautiful even so.
FIN