Havana, August 2009

Boris gazed at the dark-haired beauty in his bed, wondering if any man had ever been as happy as he was at that moment. Mere days ago he'd been on death's door, and yet now here he stood, feeling more alive than he had when was twenty-five. Marisa's clinical trial hadn't been a medical success, but coming to Cuba had given him more reason to fight than ever. The love of Boris' life rolled over and blinked sleepily at him.

"Buenos días." Boris smiled and corrected her.

"Buenos tardes." Marisa frowned and turned to the bedside table to find her watch.

"We slept past noon?" He didn't blame Marisa for her surprise. Both of them tended to be early risers. On the other hand they had spent most of the night and the early morning exerting themselves rather vigorously.

"Technically, you slept past noon. I've been up for sixty minutes." Not that he'd spend them terribly productively. A good share of that time he'd been admiring Marisa's beauty and reveling in his own good fortune.

"And you're not dressed yet?" Technically he had put on a robe at one point, so as not to startle the staff when he'd descended into the kitchen. As soon as that task had been completed, he'd immediately retreated to his bedchamber.

"The next item on my schedule doesn't call for apparel."

Marisa smiled seductively and reached out to him, only for her stomach to growl. She ignored the noise and began to kiss him deeply. With regret he pulled back. "I meant breakfast in bed."

He wouldn't neglect the needs of Marisa's body just to satisfy the desires of his own. There would be plenty of time for that later.

"You are a tease." Marisa's lips pouted until she saw the tray covered with pastelitos de guayabas, tontones, fruit, and strong cuban coffee. "But I forgive you."

Boris bowed in mock solemnity.

"I'm deeply grateful." Marisa pulled on a shirt, temporarily covering some of her magnificent body. Boris gave an involuntary sigh, like a little boy denied his favorite treat. Marisa looked over at him frowning, her food forgotten.

"Are you alright?" The concern in her voice reminded him she too had recently received the scare of a lifetime. He deliberately made his tone light.

"Perfect. Hank said I bounce back remarkably quickly, but considering my incentive, how could I not?" Marisa wasn't appeased by his answer. If anything she seemed to grow more somber.

"I could have killed you." Boris felt like a fool. Of course Marisa was upset. It wasn't just that he'd nearly died. He nearly died during her clinical trial, pursuing a course of treatment she'd encouraged.

"That was not your fault. I knew the risks I was taking. Even if I'd waited, it's no guarantee anything would have changed." Hank had advised holding off until he'd spoken to the two former participants, but Boris knew himself. Even if they'd both experienced side effects, he would have tried anyway. Being proactive was his nature. He'd always choose action over inaction. It was one of the reason he'd always held the character of Hamlet in such contempt.

"Except perhaps that Hank that would have been there the entire time and intervened before you crashed." Boris reached out and took Marisa's hand in his.

"Everything turned out fine. Hank WAS there." And thank God for that. Marisa had shared the unconventional treatment that had revived him. Something no one else would have thought of, at least not in time. Hank was truly one of a kind.

"No thanks to me. I dismissed him. I encouraged him to go." Boris had suspected as much. Marisa always believed she knew best and so did Hank. Hardly surprising they'd butted heads.

"I did notice some initial tension between the two of you." Truth be told it had been a bit endearing, knowing they clashed over their shared desire of protecting him.

"I'd thought you'd brought him because you no longer trusted me. I resented the implication that I no longer had your confidence." This issue he hadn't foreseen, largely because doubting Marisa never occurred to him. It shocked him she would ever think he could hold her in less than the highest of esteems.

"It was never about that." Marisa smiled ruefully at him.

"I know that now. You brought him because you knew you were making a risky choice and Hank is an exceptional safety net." Boris grinned, pleased that Marisa had corrected her misconception and that she had referred to Hank by his first name twice in as many minutes.

"He is at that. I'm glad the two of you parted on good terms." As amusing as the clashes had been, he wanted them to like each other. Hank was universally friendly, but Marisa, as he knew too well, was harder to win over.

"I could never be anything but grateful to the man who saved your life, even he is a bit of an idealist." Boris nodded. He'd been waiting for Hank's foolishly heroic exploits to come up.

"You're referring to the dissident?" Boris passed Marisa her coffee, and watched as she took a slow swallow. When she finished Marisa's bit in her lip in an expression of puzzlement he rarely saw on her face.

"Why did you send him to your house?" Boris reached for his own cup and sipped it in what he hoped was a nonchalant manner.

"I wasn't going to allow Hank to endanger the clinic." When the good doctor had come to him with tales of a subversive, Boris had been put in a difficult position. Certainly he hadn't wanted to risk his own banishment from Cuba, but he'd had no choice. Marisa's work was everything to her and helping people was everything to Hank.

"I know, and I thank you. But why didn't you tell him 'no?' That it was neither his concern, nor yours." Boris' eyebrows raised in amusement at Marisa's query. He could understand her confusion. Generally speaking those he employed did exactly as he asked, exactly when he asked it. His relationship with Hank did not follow this rule. Hank had made that perfectly clear when he'd discovered the shark in Boris' home. Hank had said he would terminate their arrangement if he felt it was in conflict with his personal ethics. Guileless as the physician was, Boris had known that he'd meant it.

"Tell Hank to abandon a patient in need? I'd have better luck reversing the course of an avalanche." Marisa still looked skeptical at the idea Hank wouldn't have jumped to do Boris' bidding.

"Surely if he understood the risks he was taking-" Boris waved his hand, cutting her off.

"He would have done it anyway. Believe me." Hank had proven time and again his integrity came well before his sense of self preservation. He wasn't ignorant of the realities of the Cuban government. Hank's warnings to his brother had demonstrated that. It was simply that his own life would always matter less to him than the lives of those he could help. This characteristic roused both admiration and frustration in Boris. It was challenging to protect someone who routinely put himself last.

"You like him." Boris's attention returned to Marisa, who was smiling coyly at him.

"Hank has proven himself extremely useful." He couldn't understand why she suddenly looked like the cat that ate the cream.

"No, it's more than that. You don't just trust his medical skills. You like him as a man. He's your friend." Boris frowned. 'Friend' was an overstatement.

"He's my doctor." Yes, Boris possessed admiration and liking for the man. He trusted him and was grateful to him. He even felt protective of Hank, but that didn't constitute friendship.

"The two don't have to be mutually exclusive." Boris wasn't so sure. He distinctly recalled an irate Hank chastising him, and telling Boris to stay out of his life. He was familiar enough with the concept of transference to know that the doctor's anger had not been truly directed at Boris, but at Hank's ne'er-do-well father. Still, it had stung more than Boris would care to admit.

"I'm not sure Doctor Lawson feels that way. The morning after he saw us dancing, he told me I shouldn't have a doctor with whom I'm emotionally involved."

Hank's silent disapproval had been too much for Boris to simply ignore. He'd prodded to bring the issue to the surface, and then regretted that he had. It wasn't just that Hank was judging his relationship with Marisa. Hank had also implied, albeit indirectly, that his own relationship with Boris was a strictly professional one. Apparently the dinner they'd shared as well as Boris' bringing Hank to Cristobal Square meant nothing. Revealing to Hank where the imported medicine had gone was of no matter. Boris sharing his fondness for Cuba was irrevelent. Just a patient and his doctor. Nothing more.

The whole conversation had left Boris feeling extremely put out. Marisa on the other hand apparently found the story so amusing she felt the need to laugh.

"What's so funny?"

"It's ironic, because his tirade proves how emotionally involved HE is with you. If he didn't care about you, he wouldn't risk being fired for scolding you." The thought momentarily cheered Boris, before he shook his head.

"It's not a novel occurrence. He's been doing that since the night we met." Hank was simply an extremely honest man. Boris liked that about him, but it did mean that Hank admonishments had no deeper significance.

"You're joking." Marisa's face was incredulous at the idea that someone apart from her would be so bold as to yell at him.

"No. At one point he accused me of being a Bond villain." Marisa actually giggled at Hank's words. She was right, it really was quite funny. He was almost sorry he'd returned the shark to its former home. He could think of a few people he wouldn't mind dangling over the tank.

"And here I thought his abilities as a doctor were the most impressive things about him."

Boris remembered the way Hank had smiled when he'd realized Boris intended to rekindle his relationship with Marisa. He'd seemed happy for him. Were most doctors that invested in their patient's love lives? That seemed to be more of the purview of a friend. Then again, Hank wasn't most doctors.

Boris shook himself. How Hank regarded him was a mystery for another day. His relationship with Marisa however, could be addressed immediately.

"Hank told me he thought we should figure out what we want from each other." Marisa reached up and placed a hand on his chest, a habit she'd developed in the five months together. He'd asked her about it once. Marisa had told him she found his heartbeat beneath her hand reassuring.

"I don't need to figure it out, Boris, I've known for over five years. The question is: What do you want?"

"You. Always you." His answer was immediate and required no thought. Even if he'd been a man fated to last a century, he couldn't imagine wanting to spend a second of it without her.

"Then why did you leave?" Boris gazed down at the woman he loved. He had put her through so much. Five years ago he'd thought disappearing without an explanation might help her move on.

"I left because I knew I couldn't give you everything you wanted. I thought if I vanished you would find someone who could." She could have written him off as the deceitful rich foreigner her sister had accused him of being. Any other woman in the world would have. Instead Marisa had shown a faith in him that he would spend every day of his life trying to deserve.

"Boris, I've never been with you due to lack of options. I choose you. I love you. I would take a day with you over a lifetime with someone else."

What karma Boris performed to have earned this fruit, he couldn't imagine, but it must have been very, very good. He hated to spoil the moment by reopening old wounds, but Boris couldn't make the same mistakes twice.

"¿Qué pasa con los niños? I know you said we could adopt, but that only fixes half of the problem. I would still be raising a child knowing I was sentencing it to watch my messy demise. I hate that you will need to endure that, but I'm willing to accept it is your choice. Children don't have choices."

He prayed she could understand what it had been like for Boris, watching his seemingly superhuman father wither away before his eyes. Becoming a stranger to the man who'd been his world. How he couldn't do scar some innocent life in that way.

"Boris, no one grows up with the guarantee that tragedy will spare them until adulthood. I wasn't anymore than you were. All we can do is promise to love them for them as best and as long as we can."

Boris cupped Marisa's cheek in his hand. She had been raised by her father. Her mother had died in an car accident when she was only two. The differences between their losses explained why they didn't see eye to eye on this issue. Hector had stepped up admirably and Marisa had mostly happy memories of her childhood. She couldn't understand what he'd been through, anymore than he could know what it meant to have no memories of a mother.

"Querida, I know you're not wrong, but there is a difference between the possibility and a guarantee." Marisa gently touched her forehead to his.

"You listen to me, Boris Kuester von Jurgens-Ratenicz. I will scour this Earth until I have found every scientist conducting genetic research. I will read every paper, comb through every study. I will use my findings to make you a cure that works. Once I've done that, you will give me as many babies as I want. Am I understood?"

Boris smiled at Marisa steel laced vow. Whether she succeeded or failed he could think of no greater gift.

"Entiendo, mi amor."