Thank you all for the wonderful reviews! It's great to know that some of you are enjoying yourselves. I am, too. ;-)
The same day
1035 hours
After showering and changing, Catherine exits the cabin and decides to take a stroll outside. Steve is nowhere to be seen, again, but the sun is high up in the sky, so she figures it's relatively safe to explore the outdoors, armed with her gun, just in case. It's a habit she seldom breaks. The cabin she slept in is beautifully placed in the middle of a field, looking out onto a small lane, landscaped with white spruces. In the distance, she can see a large building, which she surmises to be a barn, where she imagines the horses Steve told her about are kept. Despite the cold, it's a beautiful sunny day and she can smell the fresh, clean air.
Catherine starts for the stables, curious about Steve's whereabouts, but also wanting to see the animals. She has always loved horses and horse riding, and after almost two weeks cooped up in a small one bedroom flat in the middle of a Russian town with a 21 Cyrillic-letter unpronounceable name, she loves the feel of the great outdoors, of the freedom it allows her, knowing she can let her guard down, and not have her mind constantly on the mission, on high alert. In her mind, she has weighed the caution she should be exerting right now against Steve's assurances, the night before, and, as usual, the trust she places in him is total. Entering the barn, she can see an American quarter horse already saddled, and hear Steve in another stall. Calling out to him, she comes near and realises he's saddling up another horse, a beautiful animal. She stays perfectly still, admiring both man and beast, until Steve breaks the silence, throwing her a quick glance.
"Joe's neighbor is away, a retired army guy," he offers, as a way of explanation. "I figure he won't mind lending us the horses for another day. My rental's been shot to pieces, so I need to go into town to sort that out."
Catherine slowly comes into the horse's field of vision and whispers a "hey, boy", showing him her hand, just below his nose, keeping her fingers together so that he doesn't mistake them for delicious carrots. The animal lowers his head, accepting her, and Catherine strokes his neck, moving up to scratch just behind the ear. While this exchange is taking place, Steve stops what he's doing and just contemplates the scene in front of him, warmed by Catherine's love of the animal and the way she knows exactly how to introduce herself to him.
"I don't feel comfortable leaving you alone, so I thought you could come with? I know you can hold your own on a horse, so…" he says, not finishing his thought, looking at her half expectantly, half embarrassed.
"I can also hold my own here," Catherine says, making her point, but not annoyed. She knows his concern comes from a good place and after what just happened, she understands him perfectly. "But I would really like to get on a horse again and get to know this place. From what I can see, it's beautiful. And I miss riding, it's been way too long."
"Good then, that's settled," he replies, smiling at her.
"Besides, we also need to do some shopping, remember? That breakfast was very sub-par…" Catherine says, smiling back at him, trying to lighten the mood.
"Yeah, I also need to buy some supplies to fix up the place. I patched up the living room and bedroom as best I could yesterday, but I need more wood. Joe would hate to know that I left it as is", he says, seemingly momentarily lost.
A few minutes later, they leave the confines of the stable and start riding towards a large expanse of land that stretches in front of them. Catherine can't help but be impressed by the beauty of the scenery, snowy peaks in the distance, green carpet covering the floor of both forest and meadow. She steals a glance at Steve, but he is understandably immune to the beauty and freedom the ride is affording her. He clicks his heels on the horse's belly and moves away from her, while Catherine remains in her slow pace, headed in his general direction. After a while, Steve slows his horse down to a trot, back still turned to her. She sighs deeply, unsure of what to do: give him his space, or go to him? Catherine decides to keep moving forward, slowly, hoping this will give him time to get a grip on his emotions. As she reaches his side, he throws her a very sad smile, as if saying sorry for leaving her behind and stops, turning to face the clearing.
"I feel so helpless… as if all Joe's death do was cruelly prove to me that all this, that we do, is an illusion. We don't protect and save, we are all just one step away from being put in a hole in the ground, ourselves. And then, what does all this matter? We're dead, no more feelings, no more sadness, or sorrow, no more revenge and reckoning. There's peace. That's all," he finishes, defeated.
"What about the ones we leave behind, Steve?" Catherine counters, trying to reason with him. "Aren't they worth finding a reason to live for?"
Hearing his name, he is suddenly brought back to the present, realising he wasn't thinking those thoughts, just now, but said them out loud.
"I've been left behind on so many occasions," he says, huffing bitterly, not turning to face her, making Catherine once again wonder. "You just try to move on as best you can. Those who disappear from our lives don't care about who they leave behind, you know?" he replies, shrugging his shoulders, turning to her, eyeing her with an angry, pointed look.
Catherine is now sure he's talking about Joe and John McGarrett, possibly his mother, but also her. However, she consciously refuses to be baited by an angry Steve, who also happens to be grieving a very recent death, so she just looks away from him, at the expanse of land in front of her, and clicks her heels on the horse's belly to get him to start moving. She can feel tears prickling at her eyes, and an overwhelming desire to break down and cry, but she also knows that that is the last thing she wants to have happen, right now. Clicking her heels again, the horse starts to trot, and she hopes the motion will distract her from the tears threatening to fall. Hadn't two plus years been enough to resolve this issue in his mind and move forward? Apparently not.
A few minutes later, Catherine reaches a clearing, the beauty of the new scenery now only half managing to console her. Suddenly hearing Steve's horse behind her, fast approaching, but still not ready to face him, she continues to move forward, wishing he'll just let her be by herself. However, no such luck. As she hears his voice calling out to her, Catherine brings her horse to a halt, rather suddenly, and dismounts, defeated by anger. She can feel a force propelling her forward, urging her to run away from any confrontation. Steve quickly reaches her side and slows down, walking in silence for a few minutes, agitated, trying to collect his thoughts, fully aware that he must give her time to calm down.
"I'm sorry. I shouldn't have lashed out at you. None of this is your fault," he says, hoping she'll stop walking.
"But that's just it, isn't it? On some level, I am part of the problem, aren't I?" Catherine answers, swerving back and eyeing him directly. "You can't help but group me with your Dad, your mom and Joe. We all 'abandoned' you," she says, making air quotes. "That's how you see it, isn't it? Difference is, two of them are now dead and the other missing, in parts unknown. I'm the only one here, facing you. The only one you can lash out at," she ends, immensely sad.
"Come on, Cath, that's not fair," he says, pulling her arm, as though to impress her with the veracity of his affirmation, and he looks so lost, so broken, it literally hurts her inside.
"Isn't it? I wonder, Steve… deep down, how angry are you, at me, still?" Catherine replies, unable to contain her tears, mentally kicking herself for having gone there, in the end.
Surprised by her incisive question, Steve suddenly realises that he is indeed still very angry at her for what went down between them. Of course, he's compounding all his losses into one – Joe - at this moment and she's mere collateral damage, but the fact of the matter is that she also contributed to the sense of loss he's feeling right now. Catherine walks a few steps in the direction of the clearing, defeated, and slowly sits down on a hollow tree trunk. She contemplates the scenery, but her full attention is on the man standing a few yards away. Suddenly, she can hear the rustling of meadow grass growing louder, and knows he's coming closer. Steve slowly sits down next to her and sighs, looking ahead as well.
"I'm sorry." He offers no more apologies or explanations. "I guess this is a conversation we should've had two years ago, on that plane. The way we handled it was… ridiculous. We never talked about it, we've let it fester and rot."
"There was no reason to, Steve, we had both moved on. I guess I had just hoped…" she says, letting the words die on her lips, not wanting to say something she may regret.
"What? Hoped what?" He prods, suddenly hoping he can get a glimpse into what made her act the way she did. This may be the best chance he'll ever get of getting to the bottom of this matter. At this point in his life, he got closure on something he didn't ask for, so now he may as well get to the end of his other open-ended issues.
"That given where you are, right now, in your life, you'd been able to let the past stay in the past, that's all," Catherine says, eyeing him seriously.
"And where exactly is that, Catherine?" he continues, unsure of what she means and unable to contain himself.
At the use of her full name, Catherine realises Steve is serious about going into THE conversation. And that's the last thing she wants, right now. Because this is not the place, now is not the time, and these are certainly NOT the circumstances to be doing this in. She actually doubts there will ever be an adequate time or place to go into what happened between them, but it can't possibly be now, with him grieving such a recent death. Their window has passed, the usefulness of rehashing their breakup had, until now, seemed futile to her, as they'd reached a new friendship normal. Apparently, she was wrong.
"Look, we are getting sidetracked, right? We're here for a reason, a couple, really, and I don't want to go into anything else. Can we agree to bypass that subject while I'm here?"
Her words say this much, but her eyes say so much more. Steve can tell she, too, is in pain, and he wonders what else is going on with Catherine. For a moment, the ache in his heart is a tiny bit magnified by her words, but he finds consolation in the knowledge that he'll have her to himself for days and maybe, just maybe, another opportunity may arise for them to speak openly about the huge elephant in the room. Steve leans into her, sighs deeply, smiles and gives in, "for you, anything." Sometime later, they both ride into town, in companionable silence, each mulling over the conversation. They both feel too much has been left unsaid and while one hopes to go back to it, the other one's hope is that it will never come to that.