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“Some things are too terrible to grasp at once. Other things - naked, sputtering, indelible in their horror - are too terrible to ever really grasp at all.”
- Donna Tartt
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Alex wasn’t sure what possessed her to stay in Maine another day.
It hadn’t been a particularly gruesome case, nor one that was particularly personal. In fact, it was rather simple; as simple as their cases could be, anyways.
Some would have argued it was entirely fate, the prickling intuition she had learned to trust blindly over her years in the field. Plato or Aristotle would have argued for her free will, perhaps even called it coincidence.
Alex would probably fall somewhere in the middle.
But she did stay, less than eager to leave the small coastal town. The seasalt air that coated her lungs with comfort and the best coffee she had had in weeks sold on every corner. There was something special in Maine.
It was not a place her work brought her often - neither federal nor educational - and her rare visits proved to her just what a shame that was.
There was a chill in the air that morning, though the sun was rising quickly. Despite the chill, the morning felt no different than any other. It was an amusing thing, how important days cloaked themselves in normality more often than not.
The coffee shop was small, nestled between a local candle company and a publishing house, smelling of cinnamon and honey.
She ordered her coffee black, a creature of habit despite all the appealing options the menu boasted, and settled herself in a seat by the window. A plush, velvet chair bordered with ivy plants and stained coffee tables.
Alex pulled out a well loved copy of Antigone , the corners of the cover bent and going soft as the pages gave way to familiar fingers.
But, was it not always better to love a book than to leave it untouched?
She fell into the storyline with ease, Sophocles having always been her favorite of the three ancient tragediens. One could not say how long the story kept her focus, how many strangers wandered in and out in the paces of pages where Alex stayed in another word.
There was nothing peculiar in the chime of the bells above the door, a repeated sound, yet this one happened to draw Alex’s eyes away from the pages. Fate, she would have pondered the thing had the entering stranger not distracted her from all other thoughts.
Her hair was tamed and fell in neat waves to her shoulders, though Alex remembered the days it had tumbled unruly down her back, bouncing curls inherited from her mother that she was constantly blowing out of the way.
Her eyes swept over the menu, the barest hint of crows' feet beginning to kiss where they rounded when she squinted. This detail was largely swallowed by the rest of her face which remained unchanged. Still freckled cheekbones and pouty lips, women and men alike peered up from their cups to steal second glances.
It was no different from watching her peers trying and failing to gain her admiration during lectures.
Elle.
Not a stranger after all, then.
She rested Antigone on the table, standing from her seat before she even truly processed what she was doing, slipping into line behind the now familiar brunette.
Alex noticed Elle’s nails were painted wine red (a color she had favored in college) as she reached to open her wallet, having just ordered a vanilla latte (a drink she had also favored, ordering it consistently when they’d meet up to pour over her papers. Or, eventually, just to chat.)
“I can get the young lady her coffee.” Alex spoke up. The barista, barely sixteen, cast a strange look between the two of them before shrugging and accepting the bill Alex held in her now outstretched hand.
Elle turned quickly, eyes wide. “Professor Bla-” She stopped herself, habit always coming more easily. “Alex.”
“Elle.” Alex greeted with a smile, surprised when the gesture was not mirrored. “What, you aren’t excited to see me?” She arched her brow, accepting the change the barista gave her and dropping it in the tip jar while Elle shook her head. She looked almost dazed.
“Of course I am!” Elle exclaimed, “I just wasn’t expecting you, here of all places.”
“You have plans, don’t you?” One could only begin to know what her day contained. Alex had a feeling her spontaneous nature hadn’t been much changed, though the bureau may have tried their best to rid her of it. “I don’t want to keep you.”
“Not until later.” Elle turned to grab her coffee from where it had been placed, using the motion to cover whatever tell Alex would inevitably be able to find. She didn’t have many plans nowadays.
Her eyes roamed the dim space, left empty in the odd stretch between morning and noon.
Elle nodded her head in the direction of the table with a book lying atop it. “I guess you’d like me to sit then?”
“Perceptive as ever.” Alex agreed, allowing Elle to lead the way, watching as she settled herself into the plush chair opposing the one she had sat in moments earlier.
Elle raised her coffee to her lips, and Alex could already tell she was trying to hide something.
Presently, Alex had no idea of knowing how wide the chasm between Elle’s selves had stretched. How she still was not entirely sure she recognized herself when she wasn’t focused on convincing herself she did.
If Alex were to look at her with anything less than recognition, it would be a point of breaking. And Elle did not need anything else to break.
“I haven’t heard from you in a while.” Alex crossed her legs, reaching for her own coffee. “I wanted to think it was a good thing. But now, I’m not so sure.”
Elle’s eyes flickered downwards towards the floor.
Back in college, Elle's initial step into Blake's curriculum had been an honest one; a Spanish literature course. It fulfilled her foreign language gen ed, undeniably an easy A.
A lonely girl from Brooklyn, with a mother who drank too much and a father six feet under, she was terrified the new (ironically smaller) city she found herself alone in would swallow her whole. Hindering her adjustment with difficult courses was not on her list until second semester.
Her first semester was instead hindered by the realization of just how far people, men, wolves really, would go to take all they wanted from her.
When her wolf left, he left her with more than bruises and a shaken temperament. He left her feeling like her ribcage had been ripped open and he held her still beating heart in his hands. Certainly, he had to, with how her heartbeat raced each time he crossed her mind.
Her heart was hammering so fast she feared it would burst when Blake found her gasping in the bathroom. First semester was reaching its end, and Blake had noticed the changes in Elle since the weather turned colder. She blamed it on a bit of seasonal depression, but it was clear that wasn’t the case.
Even more clear when Elle told her what had happened, too tired of buckling beneath the weight of carrying it on her own.
“Elle.” Alex pulled her from her thoughts. She had never forgotten the clouded look Elle took on when she was caught in memories. “It seems I’ve run into you on a bad day.”
“What day isn’t bad anymore?” Elle shrugged, a bit of pessimism nothing new for her. Nothing unrecognizable. “Sorry, I didn’t mean that.”
“I think you did.” Alex’s eyes moved to the tragedy on the table. To the girl - no, woman - in front of her. She couldn’t let her become a tragedy too. “We can go somewhere else to talk.”
“This is as good a place as any.” Elle leaned back, anchored by the chair at her back. She was bouncing between the coffee shop and the first floor bathroom, between the worried friend and the concerned professor.
After she told Blake what had happened, she had become the closest thing Elle had to a mother in a long time.
In fact, Elle spent her first winter break in Blake’s guest bedroom after the dorms closed down. Blake’s husband was gone most of the time, and Elle was not eager to go home to a mother so lost in the bottle she couldn’t care to answer her calls.
She sent her a Christmas card, and never got a reply.
“You always made the best hot chocolate.” Elle mumbled, stuck on that first winter break. On having someone to help her find her way again for the first time in a long time.
“I think you’re biased.” Alex replied, welcoming the lightness in the conversation.
“I’m not biased, I’m brilliant, remember?” Elle had remained one of Alex’s most promising students, tackling a double major in criminology and psychology, taking foreign language courses on top of it all to keep herself in Blake’s classroom.
“I did do wonders for your ego.” She grinned. “Tell me, what have you done with all that knowledge?”
Elle’s short period in the BAU was one she had neglected to tell Alex about. It was an odd change, as she had always been open to sharing all her accomplishments. She didn’t have a mother to congratulate her on top case rate, but she did have Alex.
Elle was simply overwhelmed in the adjustment of moving cross country, the files, the intensity of the cases that threatened to drown her when she spent a moment to think about them. Needless to say, she didn’t tell many people the details.
The scar beneath her shirt practically throbbed. By the time she would have told Alex about it she was shot, and then she was spiraling, down, down, down….
“Well, I did a few more years with the bureau. And then I ended up taking a break, and I haven’t gone back yet. I want to, one day. I’ve mainly been traveling the past few years, helping at women’s shelters.”
Alex nodded in understanding. She had recognized the tendency to take things more personally than she should in Elle, a fact that worried her with Elle’s degree shaping her into the perfect agent. Of course, Alex had seen it in herself in many cases.
It left her sitting across from her old student, heart heavy, all because of an extra day in Maine.
A job she was growing less and less sure she wanted to go back to.
“I guess, once I realized being in the field isn’t the only way to help, I’ve been less and less inclined to go back.” Elle took a long sip of her coffee as she pondered her words. “Not that I don’t miss it terribly. It’s hard to decide which side outweighs the other.”
“Tell me about it.” Alex agreed. “I got offered a position at Harvard.”
Elle’s eyes widened, excitement bringing out the dimples in her cheeks. “Alex, that’s amazing. Tell me you’ve said yes.”
“I haven’t, yet. I’m with the BAU now, and everything I do with them feels important. But it’s tiring work, and I mean, it’s Harvard. I could be helping train the next generation of profilers, lawyers, everything in between.”
Elle was glad she had learned of Alex being in the BAU from the occasional times she searched for articles to check in on them all. Had she not, the casual mention would have caught her like a riptide.
It stung, only a little, that Alex still didn’t know of her own involvement. That they spoke of her so little.
Did they even remember her at all?
Of course, she figured the cautionary tale of herself would lose popularity over the years. No one cared to remember the names of ghosts when they weren’t actively haunting halls. Still, she had hoped her own team would remember her every once in a while.
It was a silly thing to dream of.
“They’re both once in a lifetime chances, aren’t they?” Elle trailed her finger around the rim of her coffee cup. “It’s hard to pick between which life you want to live.”
“Of course.” Alex agreed, tilting her head in contemplation. “Though, if I did end up at Harvard, I know the perfect agent to fill my spot.”
Elle’s eyes went wide. Her heart sank to her stomach, crumbling to pieces the whole way down. Because here was Alex, still with so much blind faith in her.
“Oh, Alex.” Elle gave a sad smile, shaking her head. “I’ve already had my chance.”
“I know you’re not sure about going back. I just meant if you did-”
“I meant the BAU. Once in a lifetime, remember?”
Alex’s face was incredulous. “What are you talking about?”
“The year you hardly heard from me. I was busy moving to Quantico, wrapped up in cases that somehow got worse from everything I had already seen in Seattle.” There went Elle’s hopes of not ruining Alex’s image of her. “It was the best year of my career. And then everything went wrong. I left. There hasn’t been a day I haven’t looked back, but they…well, they’ve never looked my way again.”
Alex wanted to tell Elle it wasn’t true. She had told lies before. And she would be lying if she told Elle they still spoke of her. It was a lie she couldn’t bring herself to tell.
She had not given her false hope in college, and she wouldn’t do it now.
“What went wrong?” Alex forced herself to fully take in the traces of one haunted that lurked so obviously within Elle’s aurous eyes.
“Ne cherchez plus mon cœur,” Elle began, hooking a finger against the charcoal neckline of her shirt. She pulled downwards, revealing the scar that still flushed pink despite the years of healing. “ L es bêtes l'ont mangé.”
After all Blake had helped Elle through in her first semester, she had been anything but eager to leave her classroom. So she picked up French classes. Blake had blamed Elle’s favoritism for Baudelaire on her pessimism, but Elle disagreed.
There was something about his words that bristled her with an uncomfortable recognition. She saw herself in them, before she ever lived them.
“I don’t understand.” Blake began, too focused on the scar to commend Elle for remembering her poems. Of course she did, she carried Les Fleurs Du Mal as frequently as she did her pens.
Elle had loved her books, turning them into masterpieces; annotations of smeared pen and colored tabs.
She was passionate like that.
“I got shot.” She didn’t flinch at the memory. She met it with an icy indifference. “And after Randall Garner wrote on the walls in my blood, he left me to die. And he took everything with him.”
“Elle, why didn’t you tell me?” Guilt crept up Alex’s throat. How had she missed it in the news? “I would have been there.”
“I know.” Elle whispered. It was these words that had her eyes suddenly welling with tears. “I never doubted that.”
She thought of it now, the bullet and the blood and the bullet again. Randall Garner’s bullet had not been the one to rip her away from her team, after all.
Her own had.
“Then why didn’t you?” Alex’s face was open, and Elle caught every flitting emotion. It was a blessing and a curse, because Elle couldn’t lie to Alex either. She would tell her the truth.
She just didn’t want to be able to see it sink in.
“Because I messed up. And then the past year didn’t matter to them anymore.”
“People make mistakes in times of distress.” Alex mumbled, eyes moving to her copy of Antigone , “All writers teach us that.”
“I wasn’t ready to go back in the field, but I had to. I needed them all to stop blaming themselves for what happened to me, and the only way to do that was to prove I was okay.” She pressed her lips together. “But I wasn’t. And I panicked.”
“Elle, I’m sure you could give me a fairly long list of every hero who choked when they needed to remain strong. And I could give you an even longer one.”
“I know. But they couldn’t think like that. They could only tell me how it was all my fault, and I couldn’t let him hurt more women, Alex. I couldn’t let their irreparable damage be my fault.”
Alex remembered the girl sobbing in the bathroom. The faded bruises on her arms. The way she recoiled from outstretched hands like they were a razor's edge.
“I made sure he couldn’t ever hurt anyone again.” A tear slipped down Elle’s cheek, a far cry from the icy exposition she began her recount with.
Her own personal tragedy, one even Sophocles would be impressed by.
Elle wiped at her cheek with a sigh. "So there it is, hinc illae lacrimae."
"You remember your Terence." Blake commended, her face locked in a sad expression, “At least there’s that.”
To Elle’s surprise, Blake was not looking at her with disgust. She was simply looking at her as she always had.
“I believe you did what you thought you had to do. You always have.”
“But I chose wrong.” Elle mumbled, though she wasn’t entirely sure she believed the words as she said them.
“Maybe you did.” Blake agreed. “But maybe you didn’t. Do you remember what I taught you about extreme resolutions?”
“That the weight they carry is great, because no one, the character nor the reader, can see a glimpse of what would have happened had it been resolved another way. Without an alternative, we aren’t left with much to speculate.”
Alex nodded. “You’ll never know if it was the right choice, but you’ll also never know the harm you prevented. I think both count for something.”
“God, I should have talked to you about all of this sooner.” Elle laughed numbly, wiping at her cheeks once more. “I just didn’t know what I’d do if you turned away like the rest of them.”
“You know me, I can never turn away from unfinished business. Not when it would mean neglecting someone with so much potential.”
“Even if you can no longer recognize the potential?” Elle met her reflection in the coffee mug, eyes tired, her own and yet not. “I don’t think I even recognize myself most of the time.”
“Come now,” Alex gave her a saddened smile. “I’ve watched you find yourself before, and anything that can be done once can be done again.”
Elle sighed. She too remembered the girl Blake had found in the bathroom.
Though, now, she felt closer to her than ever before.
“Maybe there are some things that can only be done once.” Elle glanced out the window, watching a dog tug against its leash, determined to eat a cluster of lilies in front of the coffee shop. “And maybe that’s something I need to learn to be okay with.”
“You doubt yourself too much.”
The dog's nose buried in the dirt in front of the lilies.
“Nihil novi sub sole.” Elle mumbled, finishing off her coffee. “I always have.”
“I did try awfully hard to break that habit.” Alex lowered her cup, also empty, to the table. “I see we still have some work to do.”
“We?” Elle raised a brow.
The dog's owner finally managed to pull it from the lilies, only for it to be instantly drawn to a cluster of clovers.
“Yes, we. I’m in Maine all day. Maybe a little longer.” Alex grabbed her book from the table, Elle’s eyes following it as she placed it in her bag. “We might as well make something of it.”
“Did you forget about the plans I have?”
“Oh, right. The plans you looked away from me as you mentioned, because you were hoping I wouldn’t notice a tell. Unfortunate, considering your tell is avoiding eye contact.”
Elle sighed.
“Okay, so maybe I don’t have much planned. But what does one good day have to do with helping me?”
“One day? Elle, I’ve never been one for moderation.” Blake stood up, pulling Elle along with her.
“Besides, Last time I checked you have a phone. And there’s trains, planes, cars, plenty of ways for you to get to Quantico if you need a visit.”
“You think I need a change of scenery?”
“I think you need a support system.”
The same thing she needed her freshman year, that Alex had provided without a second thought.
Alex Blake was a genius. She was a genius, a linguist, and a classicist. But she was not a miracle worker. A cup of coffee could not heal recent years. A day with no obligations could not help Elle forget everything, even for a moment.
Hell, Ambrosia wine could not make her drunk enough to forget.
But Alex Blake was also a firm believer that isolated instances largely did not exist. Anything could be replicated. Including putting Elle Greenaway back together.
Circumstances had changed, but they were ever changing.
“Where are we going?” Elle questioned as Alex pushed open the door, bells jingling overhead as the wind caught in her hair.
“You tell me.” She moved to stand next to the chalkboard sign outside the coffee shop. Leaving Elle with the decision, the parallel street decorated with cars rushing past, the steps forward, the steps backward.
She took a step toward the crosswalk, on her best behavior with Blake there. She was never good about properly crossing the street.
Her favorite restaurant lied just beyond the blinking sign.
“I’m starving.” Elle glanced at the sign, waiting for the red palm to change to a white figure.
“We always did think alike.” Alex spoke up from behind her, having followed her wordlessly.
The dog from the lilies looked up, dirt smeared around the base of its nose, only noticeable because its fur was white. Tail wagging, it looked to be the picture of happiness.
It leaned forward, nuzzling against Elle’s hand.
-
"What is a friend? A single soul dwelling in two bodies."
- Aristotle