Squinting into the late afternoon sun, Alex gave the man beside her a tentative glance. Impassively, he continued to stare straight ahead, piloting the helicopter as if it were merely an extension of his own body. Occasionally, he would drop his gaze to glancingly check over the flight instruments spread out before him in the cockpit. Either he hadn't noticed her surreptitious glance towards him, or he was ignoring it. Unfortunately, she really couldn't tell which.
Outside, the scenery flew by as the helicopter skimmed low over the surface of the river below; the force of the rotor blades creating a wake beneath them on the water. Underneath them, the miles fell away as if they'd never been, as silent as the whisper of eagle's wings on the wind.
Gradually, the evening sun died away in the sky to leave behind only the inky blackness of night. In its place, a quiet chill filled the cockpit of the helicopter as they left the peace of Alex's home far behind. Expertly, Michael guided the helicopter through the darkness while Alex sat beside him in anxious, silent unease feeling more alone than she had ever felt in her entire twenty-eight years.
"How far?" she asked at last, unable to bear the silence a minute more.
In surprise, he started, almost as if he'd forgotten her very existence beside him entirely. "Sorry," he replied visibly dragging his thoughts back to the present. "What was the question, Alex?" he asked with an apologetic look.
"How far?" she repeated, trying to stifle the annoyance that crept through her.
"Another couple hours at least," he replied with a weary sigh, as he glanced at the metal-banded watch on his left wrist.
Unable to think of anything else to say, she subsided back into uncomfortable quiet for a few minutes, until her tattered nerves could take the silence no more. Unthinkingly, she blurted out the first thing that came to mind. "Do you still miss her, Michael?"
"Miss who?" he queried in momentary confusion.
"Giselé."
For a long moment he didn't answer and she wondered if she'd pushed their uneasy truce too far. Then he gave an uncomfortable laugh. "Yeah, I still miss her, Alex. Does the missing ever really end?"
"I don't know," she sighed, critically inspecting her nails, as if suddenly they were the most important thing in the world. Nervously, she flexed her fingers in her lap. "Sometimes I wake up, and it's all like a dream, something that has happened to somebody else. I'll try to picture his face or something he said, and I just can't. And other times, no matter how hard I try, I can't forget. I don't know which scares me more - the possibility of forgetting him, or the thought I might never be able to."
He frowned, his own guilt weighing heavily on him. Mostly he just tried to forget. The losses working for the Firm just seemed to keep mounting up. There was no going back now; he wondered if there had ever really been.
Her next words yanked him back to the present.
"Are you angry? At her I mean?"
"Angry?" he laughed, a little bitterly. "Would it do me any good?" Grimacing, he shifted with a sigh. "No," he said, blue eyes glancing at her briefly. "At least, not at her. Fate, yes sometimes. The twisted politics over there, that got her killed - every waking minute. If anything," he said cynically, "I have myself to blame to a large extent for sending her over there where I knew her life would be in danger. But, angry at her, no. She didn't choose to die. If anything, she would've chosen the opposite."
"She knew it was always a possibility, Michael. She chose to be there."
"True," he sighed. "But it was her job and one she took very seriously whether I always liked it or not. I couldn't have not sent her and kept her love. She would've resented me telling her what she could and could not do with her life. The only problem is, I sometimes wonder if my selfish want of her love, cost her her life."
"Wanting her safe wasn't selfish, Michael. That's what love is all about, but you're right. Giselé would've resented you telling her what orders she could take and she wouldn't have expected you to play favorites either. That would've destroyed her just as surely as any insurrectionist's bullet."
"She'd have been alive though," he whispered, no longer looking at her.
The helicopter shuddered beneath his hands and he turned his attention back to it momentarily.
Unwillingly, her emerald green eyes followed him watching. "You don't know that," she replied.
Expertly, he settled the helicopter's flight path even as he shrugged. "Neither do you."
Her lungs tight, she sucked in an aching breath. She wasn't sure what she believed these days.
"You blame yourself, don't you, for Gavin's death?" he asked abruptly, realizing all the sudden where the question had originated.
Abruptly finding herself on the defensive, she retorted, "Well, if I hadn't fallen down on the job, then he wouldn't have been there in the first place trying to get me out."
"Grief, Alex!" he bit out impatiently. "You were lying in an alley way bleeding to death. I hardly think you intended it that way. It was just luck we didn't lose both of you."
Even as she tried to rebut his argument, the ripping screech of metal slamming into metal drowned out her words. Reeling under the impact, she slammed into the instrument panel as the helicopter began pitching and yawing wildly in the air.
"Ungh-hh," she cried out in pain as her shoulder thudded against a steel support rib of the helicopter and she gasped for breath.
Desperately, Michael fought to regain some control back over the helicopter. Wrestling with the stick, he struggled to keep the nose up and the helicopter in the air. And cursing, he realized it wasn't going to happen. "We're going down, Alex!" he muttered grimly. "We're going down."
Shuddering, the helicopter lurched first one way, then another as he fought to land it. Terrified, Alex watched as the ground came rushing up to greet them, heavy limbs raking the helicopter's fuselage and she braced herself, fear clawing at her heart as Michael lost the inevitable battle.