Rapidly he approached the station house, not caring that he was getting soaked clean through. Murdoch was on a mission and something as inconsequential as torrential rainfall would not slow him down. Before he entered the building however, Julia herself appeared in the doorway. She took one look at him and kept walking, huddling up under her yellow umbrella as best she could against the tempestuous weather. Murdoch chased after her, calling her name, heedless of the curious homeless man watching him from a quickly deteriorating soggy cardboard enclosure. Energetically he caught up to her, grabbed her arm and spun her around. Her umbrella arm slumped uselessly and the metal bent backwards, almost collapsing in on itself.
"Julia, please don't leave me!" he yelled over the roaring winds. "We can still make amends! I'm sure of it!"
She looked up at him with a watery face, tears mingling with the rain so that it was impossible to tell where one began and the other ended.
"Do you really mean that, William?" she asked hopefully. "Do you really think we still have a chance at happiness?"
"Yes, I do!" he said, nodding emphatically. "We can overcome any odds as long as we are together!"
"Oh William!" she gasped, throwing her arms around his neck. Her yellow umbrella quickly disappeared on the almost gale force winds.
They embraced for a long time, getting increasingly wet and buffeted by the wind, and then he pulled back and kissed her more passionately than he had ever kissed his Julia. She moaned against his mouth and his grip tightened on her waist as she clutched at his buttocks once more. Murdoch pushed her up against a wall, right beside the homeless man, (whose enclosure had completely been destroyed by the weather) and they continued to make out while the balding man goggled at them unabashedly. Julia ripped open his drenched shirt and he didn't seem to mind the impropriety, especially not when she ran her angelic hands along his chest and abdomen...and then lower and-
"Mr. Murdoch?"
With a start he blinked up into the dark eyes of his flight attendant.
"Yes?" he replied weakly as all the warmth of the previous moment was quickly sucked back into the black void of his despair.
"We've landed, sir."
He looked out the window to find that she was correct, and that the storm they had passed through had not made it all the way to Toronto. It was overcast here and a little windy but that was all; hardly the tempest of his fantasy.
Gathering his wits he descended the seven stairs and got into a familiar black limo. Just like the last time, George was waiting for him, but this time his friend still looked worse for wear.
"Nice trip?" George grunted.
"Shouldn't you be convalescing?"
"Like I got time to rest! Besides, I couldn't take that disgusting smell any longer." George tapped on the glass and they began to move towards the edge of the runway. "Anyway, I had to make sure to collect you as soon as you landed so that you didn't squirm away again. You've gotta give the press something, Will. I can only do so much." Murdoch gave him a blank look. "That bag of gas, Brooks, kept true to his word and is trying to vilify you all over again, like Pendrick did, with ridiculous bogus claims about you beating your employees."
Startled, "Pardon me?"
"Shit, Will, look at me." George's face was various shades of purple. "I could only avoid the limelight so much." George glanced out the tinted window. "And since I refused to fill out a police report...well, he's kinda getting away with this bullshit." His friend caught his eye and gave him an oddly shy smile, one much more accustomed to being seen on George of the past. "So you gotta clear the air for me. Saying nothing just makes it look ten times worse."
"All right, George, I will do my best...to clear the air."
A strange look crossed George's face and he sniffed the air and then sniffed him again, just like that first limo ride.
"What the hell, Will?" he cried, clutching at his nose convulsively, as if he had been burned. "You smell worse than the hospital! Have you been rolling around in pig shit?!"
Murdoch didn't notice anything out of the ordinary but then again he didn't have George's remarkable sense of smell; the one he was so keen to talk about at great length in 1898. According to that George, only his hearing could rival the skill of his nose. His eyesight ranked third.
"When's the last time you showered?!"
He hadn't since he got here, less than three days ago. But if he included the last time he bathed in 1898, it would be more like five or six days ago. Normally he only bathed once every week, or two, depending on the time of year. As far as he was concerned, he still had a couple days to spare before soap had to touch his skin once more.
"A few days ago," he murmured, unaccountably embarrassed.
George looked at him like he was insane. "Shit, Will, if you're gonna go that long without cleaning your junk, you should at least use cologne! Fuuuck," he sighed, cracking open a window, letting in all the delightful downtown smells instead, "that's better." After a few moments of this he cocked his head in Murdoch's direction. "There really is something fishy about you, and I don't just mean your rancid stank! Once this is all over, I intend to get down to the bottom of it! But first things first, you're going home and cleaning up!"
Once Murdoch was sanitized to George's demanding requirements, he dressed in a flattering white suit and was led to a brightly lit studio fifteen minutes away. Murdoch needed to give a statement but George was afraid of him doing so publicly after the talk show fiasco, so instead Murdoch was simply sitting behind a desk that was identical to the one in his office, attempting to read off of large pieces of paper.
Apparently he wasn't doing this in a very convincing manner because George kept yelling cut and making him start over again. The 'crew' seemed to be losing their patience with him too.
"You're not a robot, Will! Read with some normal human feeling!"
After Murdoch tried to follow this advice George told him he was over doing it.
"This isn't a goddamn soap opera! Just speak like you usually do! Is that really so much to ask?!"
Finally, thirty takes later they had finished this headache inducing task. George offered to buy him a beer but Murdoch declined and said he had something else he must attend to.
Julia was in the middle of pouring herself some coffee when he spoke her name from behind.
She sighed, turning around to face him.
"What do you want?"
"You. Just you."
Without another word, he took the coffee out of her hands and leaned in. She turned her head before his lips landed on hers. He viewed her dejectedly, and she imagined he was batting his ridiculous eyelashes at her in some pathetic attempt to win her over.
"I already told you, Will, we're done. Your puppy dog eyes don't cut it anymore."
"I refuse to believe that, Julia," he replied, pulling her towards him.
She struggled against his embrace, debating whether or not to use some of her self defence moves on him or not, but when he kissed her deeply, she melted into it, hating herself intensely. She was supposed to be stronger than this, supposed to have put him out of her mind forever, but she just couldn't seem to, no matter how hard she tried.
Julia thrust her hands into his silky smooth hair and made out with him like she was trying to devour his face. It had been two and a half weeks since they last made love and she had been steadily going out of her mind all the while with an aching need. That ache was now spreading rapidly through her loins and she broke apart long enough to moan, "Here, Will, take me right here."
He picked her up and deposited her on one of the wobbly coffee room tables, all the while showering her with affection.
Shortly thereafter he entered her, giving her unspeakable pleasure. She had been with her share of hot guys but none of them ever held a candle to Will. There was just something about him that she found irresistible and unbelievably sexy.
"I love you," he muttered afterwards.
"I love you too, hotstuff," she whispered into his chest, hugging him tightly.
Back in Black roused her from her slumber at her desk. Groggy eyed, she wiped the slobber away and stared at her phone in an unfocused, almost drunken manner.
In a happier time she might have answered it, 'I was just dreaming about you,' but as it was she once again debated even picking up (this was the fifth time he had tried to reach her). However, the warm and fuzzy feeling had yet to leave and that compelled her finger to accept the call this time, if only to get him to stop pestering her.
Julia waited for him to make the first move.
"Hello? Julia, are you there?"
"What do you want?"
"To talk to you. In person. Would you be agreeable to having dinner with me tonight?"
"What for?" she snapped. "There's nothing you can say that will change my mind."
A crushing silence. "Surely there is something I can do to mend our relationship."
Briefly, she thought about her dream and then bit her lip, half contemplating caving into his 'earthly delights.' But she wasn't about to play second fiddle to anyone, especially not a dead person, so unless Sally was suddenly wiped from his brain, there was no real future for them, and pretending that there was only made it more unbearable and impossible to walk away.
"No, there isn't. It's over, Will. Don't call me again."
"Julia..."
She ended the call and willed herself not to cry in front of her colleagues for the second time that day, then grabbed her green leather jacket and made her way to Emily's apartment. Thankfully Emily hadn't minded about her crashing there for a few days (whether Brackenreid was happy about it was another story, but even though Emily dwarfed her boyfriend considerably, she wasn't exactly a pushover). Julia didn't think she was strong enough to face Will in person until she mastered her emotions better and therefore going back to their place was not a good idea.
The girlfriends evening consisted of a lot of rum shots and crying, on Julia's part. Often Emily was not the warmest of people, but when it counted, she was a good friend and tried her best to be sympathetic. Not that long ago, Emily had almost cried over her breakup with George, which is the closest Julia had ever seen to such 'feminine' displays from her friend. She didn't get the attraction, never had, but then again, she was just biased because she didn't like Crabbytree that much. If anything, it was much more bizarre for Emily to be interested in Brackenreid, he was a much older giant of a man after all, yet somehow Julia approved. In the end, they were good together and good for each other. Isn't that all that mattered?
A depressed Murdoch sat in their darkened home, playing with an unopened bottle of gin, debating whether or not to open it. He kept wondering how he could possibly mend their relationship. Surely he wasn't here to destroy this William's life as completely as his own? Surely there had to be a higher purpose? He had to believe that. With renewed determination, he decided he would find out just what that reason was. He had spent so much time thinking about how to fix his relationship with this Julia, that he had completely overlooked this William's relationship with her. At first glance it had seemed wonderful, but all of his missteps had quickly shown him that it was not. This William was doing much as Jasper had thought, holding onto a memory and not truly living in the moment. Murdoch knew he was guilty of this from time to time with Liza, but never to the extent that this William had become entangled with his lost love.
Suddenly he had an epiphany. There were similarities between the people of this time and the people he knew, some more than others. Perhaps there was more to explore there? Perhaps that was the key to everything?