Operation Arrakis: Never Forget

by Durandir

She's said barely two words to me since I found her in the Old City; and now, when I want to talk to her, to finally, by Grace, begin to straighten out this matter, she's gone.

I ask around aboard the Gaia, has anyone seen her? Sci, looking relieved at the interruption to his interrogation of Dohrnaira and Etidorhpa Neris, demonstrates again his uncanny knowledge of his people's doings: he gave her permission, not ten minutes ago, to walk a little ways away from the busyness of Gaia and Red Home, to think and to recuperate from her night's ordeal. He doesn't know where she was going--but he knows the comlink code she'll respond to.

"Three here," her quiet voice answers my call, and my heart clenches: that's two words more for the night's total, at least.

"It's Thayer," I say.

"Oh!" She sounds . . . what? pleased? I warn myself of false hopes: she sounds anxious. "Hi."

"Where are you?"

I follow her directions to the Mount of Olives and find her at last, seated on a low wall not far from the tiny Dominus Flevit chapel. She faces the city, watching it with an intensity as if scrutinizing the distant rooftops for whatever repercussions may come from the battle we fought in those streets through the night. She glances up as I sit next to her, facing the opposite way, back toward the Mount and the chapel and the olive trees. The breeze bears the scent of these olive branches; at that scent I recall the day, over a year ago, that I opened a package at my desk in the Palace to find a bundle of such branches--shipped from Greece and not Israel, but much the same sort as these on the Mount--from which to choose one to present to the woman I would ask to be my Queen. For the Queen's gift is peace and olive is her symbol--but now it is I, not as Dictator nor King but merely as one who has loved her, who must make the gesture of peace, for the quarrel I wish to mend was so much of my own making.

Wondering if peace is her wish as well, I am considering my words, realizing only now that it comes to it that I'm not actually quite sure exactly what it is I wish to say, when she speaks, saving me for the moment from deciding. "You came with Sci." It is more statement than question, but the question is implied: she wonders why.

"You needed backup," I affirm. "It was impractical to send others, so I came myself."

"That's not all, though," she guesses discerningly.

"No," I confess. "I also . . . well, I wanted to talk to you."

She nods. "Yeah. Me too. I . . . I wanted to explain. . . ."

"I remember," I say carefully, "when we . . . last spoke . . . you wished to explain, then. And I wouldn't let you--I regret that I wouldn't let you."

"I got called away just then, too," she shrugs. "Rotten timing."

"I'm not sure I would have heard your explanation then even if you weren't called away," I admit. "However . . . I'll listen now. If you still want to tell me."

She nods, keeping her eyes on the city. "You should know." And thus she begins:

"I wanted to tell you, then, to explain about what you saw, in Paris. That it wasn't what you must've thought. That we . . . it just . . ." She winces and looks away and launches into the explanation, how it was all a matter of a cover, a disguise; the man Josh had seen and recognized and feared lest he be recognized in turn; how the kiss I saw was the only there ever was and meant nothing like what I had thought it meant.

I am sitting in wonderment, beginning to see the sense that this story makes, realizing that, however unlike my assumptions when I saw her kissing him, yet it explains things just as well, if not better than what I had feared; I am sitting there and thinking this, when she speaks again: "And that's all true, actually, Thayer. But . . . since then I've had time to think about it more and now I know: it's true, but it's not the whole truth. And you deserve to know the whole truth."

And so I hear for the first time the whole matter and the heart of the matter--she has, I soon realize, thought deeply about this and faced a number of painful conclusions. Quiet and resolute, she makes offering of these conclusions to me.

"It happened like I said, the kiss," she says. "But I guess it wasn't all as innocent as the circumstances could make it sound. I . . . well . . . he kissed me first, yeah, and because of seeing Wells, yes; but I kissed him back, and without knowing anything about Wells. And I don't think he would have kissed me at all, except that through the whole mission up to that point--well, we'd been friends before this mission, but not remarkably so, and in Paris we ended up working together more, and more closely, than we'd ever had to before, and I'd been missing you for months, and didn't know what to think about that whole situation, and I guess . . ." She pauses, forces it out, "I'm sure I encouraged him. I mean, I encouraged our friendship to start with, but eventually, I think I was willing enough myself for it to be more than friendship, and he . . ." She shakes her head with a weary motion. "It's weird, Thayer. I like Josh. Even now. And, if I'm honest, I--when he kissed me, I liked that too--but I feel so awful about that, because I shouldn't have, I knew it was wrong to be kissing him but I let it happen anyway, and even afterwards I couldn't quite repent of it."

She looks up at last, her eyes pleading: though I see this only out of the corner of my eyes, finding it difficult to meet hers at this moment. "At least not then," she whispers. "Because I was still, I think, in doubt about you. Not hearing from you . . . maybe I was starting to think I should just move on, and there was Josh offering a convenient way to do that. Not," she chuckles ruefully, "a very smart way, I realize now. But I was being pretty stupid at that point. Now . . . well, now I repent. Too late, I think. I've been avoiding Josh--he's still feeling something for me, I'm afraid; but I can't--well, he just isn't you. And I'm realizing, now that it's probably too late, how much I really did--really do love you--I'd forgotten, I guess, when we stopped talking, and then, while I was forgetting, I . . . Oh, Thayer, I'm so sorry! Not that it'll do much good now, after I've hurt you so much, worse than I ever realized, but I truly am. For everything. I'm not surprised if you want nothing more to do with me after all that's happened, if you even hate me now--they say it's such a simple thing for love to change to hate--but, well, I wanted you to know."

Hope springs eternal.

She shrugs and looks away again, seeming to sag under the weight of the confession she's just made, which by all rights one would expect should've lightened her burden, getting it out into the open like this--but, no. I think, instead, the weight she's shouldering isn't her own guilt now: it's my judgment.

And now at last I know what it is I need to say. Finally I know why I came to Jerusalem for her.

"I've tried to hate you," I admit, speaking quietly and more slowly than is my custom. She looks up briefly, puzzlement lining her brow.

"I tried to resent you, and your delays, and even your very foreignness--everything that made those around me hold you against me. I heard so much of their resentment: eventually I started looking for reason in their arguments.

"I managed, if nothing else, to be very angry with you, at least for a time. After Paris.

"When all else failed, I tried to forget you.

"That, I never can do."

Her eyes, wide in wonder, are on me now, and I turn to meet them. "I've finally come to understand: I cannot hate you, or forget you, or even stay angry long at you. Because I love you. All I can do is love you. Love, and forgive, and stand with you. . . . Nothing else works, you see?" I smile (though I have my suspicions that a mirror would show it more of a silly grin than anything) as this realization fills me. "I can speak only for myself, but if you--"

She interrupts in a whisper. "You love me? Even now?"

"Yes--"

"Even after I hurt you so badly?"

"Even so!" I take her hand in mine and squeeze a reassurance, savoring the beloved shape of it, familiar even now after all our months apart. "That's past--and it doesn't change anything, though I thought--I guess we both thought--it would; but it hasn't, you see, here I am still loving you, so I suppose it can only mean that the past is forgiven."

She giggles and squeezes my hand in return. "That's . . . well, kind of an unorthodox way to come about forgiveness, I'd say. Not that I'm complaining! I never thought you'd still love me."

"I don't think," I say, reaching gently to stroke her cheek, her hair, as if to reassure myself of her presence with me, "I could not love you, and still be myself. You are part of who I am, now."

"I think I understand," she nods. "Because suddenly I feel like myself again, like I haven't since before we lost touch."

My heart is flying: both at this discovery that I still do love her, and even more at finding that she still loves me. But then her hand shivers as I hold it, and my hand on her cheek finds it wet, and I realize she's crying. "It's nothing," she reassures me with a bitter laugh when I ask what's wrong; and her voice strains to keep its light tone, though she shivers again with the tears. "I'm tired. I'm stressed. Everything's perfect. I have no sensible reason to cry--" she sniffles and brushes at her eyes with her free hand-- "but I'm exhausted and I love you but I have no strength left to stop it."

So I pull her close and hold her to me and kiss away the tears and whisper to her, until gradually the quiet shaking subsides, and she sighs and settles against my chest, and we sit there in peace.

She stirs in my arms some time later, calm once more, content. Quiet surrounds us now, in the still of the morning before the Mount resumes its daily business. We leave the wall to walk amongst the olive trees. What we talk of then, I could not begin to tell you; yet this is by no fault of memory, for every word, every look, every touch that passes between us on this day graves itself perpetual in my remembrance, treasures of a value above all the jewels in the Palace coffers. Only do not think ill of me if I will hoard these treasures: for they will ever be precious to me where to any man else they must seem but commonplaces, everyday matters. What is love, then, if not that which alone of all powers in the world can give life to the commonplace and the everyday? Life and love attend us in the olive grove: we talk of everything, and of nothing: we hear all that is said, and more; and we hear none of it, hearing only our own accord. So I remember every word, and yet think of no word alone: only of the sunlight on her hair and the scent of olive, the chant of the birds and the rise and fall of her laughter. Any words would do, yet as we speak we know that these alone will do.

And I can never forget; yet I have forgotten all that I feared. I have forgotten every pain I suffered for her love, yet even now I ache--and delight in the aching. Love is paradox. Should she wrong me a thousand times beyond what I have forgiven today, I would again forgive; yet I cannot fathom such a wrong, nor even the slightest of quarrels, so whole a trust do I place in her now. Even in the first days of our love I did not trust her as I now do, after this cycle of loss and restoration. Love is paradox.

Midst strife in ancient streets of the City of Peace, we are reunited from our strivings with each other to a peace all our own: love is paradox. Though in peace we stand 'neath the trees in this moment, beyond this garden danger awaits us, for my lady's company this night has roused an enemy it had not known before; and I, caught up in Terra Group's fight, stand in danger as much as any of them, yet I care not for my own safety, if only by my strength I may preserve her safety.

She's thinking the same thing of me now. Love is paradox.

But let me return now to my tale. Everyday matters cease for a time as we pause beneath a tree of the garden, and I reach into my pocket.

"The last time I saw you," I explain, "you left in rather a hurry." So much have things changed that she laughs now at this--for what matter is it how we parted, now that the parting's undone? "And you left this behind," I say, "so I've come to deliver it back to you." The Queen's ring gleams in my hand before her; she covers her mouth in surprise. "If," I see fit to wink, "you want it back."

"Thayer!" she scolds, laughing.

"By custom, though, I have to put the question again if I'm to give it again, you know." She waits smiling as I take her hand in mine. "Will you," I ask, "marry me," her smile is contagious and her eyes are merry, "and be my Queen?"

"I will," she says without hesitation. "And someone kindly slap me back to sanity if I ever change my mind on that again."

And then--