It is two years later, a calm Tuesday in September. It has been a good day by their standards.
Rock has taken off of work and Revy doesn't have any students for the day, so she can take them out on her boat out to some place other than Rottnest Island and go diving without worrying about whatever her customers were doing. After two years, the beginner divers don't bother her much, but he can tell it is still a relief to get away from them.
"How's work been?" He asks.
She lowers her sunglasses to look at him. "Same shit, different day." Then she gets a teasing smile. "Beats an office job, though. I don't know how you make it all eight hours with your ass in a seat."
"If my mind stays busy my butt doesn't have a say."
His work has become more interesting, even if would not be glad to admit it. In the last quarter of the year 2000, Eda has re-assigned him to focus on terrorism in the Pacific. The work had some of the intensity of his prior life in Roanapur, but he was still doing it from the same old office building. Rock frowns at the thought.
"Buck up," Revy says. "We're almost there."
Diving is something they like to do together. Even in the silence underwater, they communicate freely, floating above the coastal shelf as they move through sunlit expanses of colorful life. Grasses and fish and the sky above and the deep below.
When their time is up, she climbs onto the boat first and pulls him up afterward. The sun is beginning to set, and the wind is picking up. Even if everything is different now, the resemblance to the past is there.
She sweeps her hair back and pulls at the neoprene of her dripping wetsuit. "Days like this..."
He waits for her next words.
She smirks. "Days like this make me wish I was still smoking."
"Me too."
They could both feel something missing. The heat and danger of smoke rising. But that it what they have both chosen: another life. Whether it was better or worse was always up for debate, but it was peaceful, and they had each other.
"It's not too different," he says, once they've picked up some speed in the water. "I mean, there's still the boat…"
She thinks he's joking at first. "C'mon, its totally fucking different." Her finger points to the stern. "The boat's only 27 feet, and I don't know if you've noticed, but there isn't a single fucking torpedo launcher."
The idea was stupid to begin with. Things really were entirely different. The sea was a different color, even the sun had been unfamiliar at first. Pretending that was anything held in common was just his way of making peace with himself.
Rock laughs. "You have a point. Maybe the best part is that it's different."
Her boat goes back in the marina, and he still knows the knots she taught him so long ago. He secures the boat and she loads empty tanks go in the van- she has to fill them up next morning for her classes with the weekend crowd.
They stop by their local pub on the way back home and Revy is more eager than usual to drink.
"First time we came here, it was a real surprise," she says. "I thought they all drank Fosters down under."
Rock sips at his own mug. "In a nostalgic mood?"
"I might be." She rests her chin on her hand. "Maybe I'm just thinking."
"About what?"
"I dunno. About changing, maybe."
"How so?"
Revy takes a deep swig. "It's fucking hard to get anywhere."
She does not mean a literal place. It's a figurative state of being. She lives as a noncombatant now, no gun, but plenty of old problems. Her sleep tends to be restless, and she has to watch her anger, but the ghosts of her past have not debilitated her. She is more than tough, she is resilient. He admires that. Revy did not transform her problems overnight- she works at it day by day.
"I dunno what else I can expect," she says. "Shit still doesn't seem right to me. Like maybe I'm not done."
They were both in their early 30s now, and Rock had definitely felt a similar sense of wariness.
"Like maybe something big is just around the corner," he suggests. "Something we should have seen coming."
A flash of recognition is in her eyes, but before she can respond, Rock's phone goes off. Eda calling.
Then there is the sound of glass shattering as the bartender drops a mug. With those twin disturbances, the moment is gone and the rest of their life continues.