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“Beautiful isn’t it, LT?”
“Hm,” Simon hums in acknowledgment, nodding just once. The sea stretches out endlessly before him from where he sits near the sheer face of the cliff. The wind is gentle as it blows through his thin jacket, bringing with it the smell of the ocean below.
“Knew you’d listen to me one day. Took you long enough to finally pay this place a visit.”
His brows furrow a bit. He buries his hands further in his pockets, fingers getting chilly from the bite of the air. “What makes you think I don’t listen to you?”
There is no immediate response.
“Where’s Price these days?”
Simon is drawn from the recesses of his mind at the question. “Still on base. Forced me to take this leave.”
“HA! Bet that took a lot of convincing.”
Simon smiles, despite himself. “Said it’d be good for me to make the trip out here.”
“The rejuvenating properties of fresh sea air.”
He huffs a small laugh, head tilting back to take in the vast blue of the sky. It’s a rare clear day today, the only clouds being miles off towards the horizon. The sun warms his face and shoulders in a gentle caress. “Something like that.”
“And Gaz?”
“Visiting family in London,” comes his reply. It feels good to be talking like this, just light small talk so unlike the bare-bones conversations he’s grown used to back at base.
“That’s good. Heard his sister’s having a baby soon.”
He nods, still smiling. He should call Gaz. Ask how things are going. Ask to see pictures.
“Why’d you come here, Simon?”
His smile falls stiffly from his face. He doesn’t have a response to that. Not right away. His fingers pick at a loose thread on the inner seam of his jacket pocket. “I missed you. Miss you.”
A pause.
“You have me.”
A breath.
“No I don’t,” Simon says, barely a whisper against the distant crash of waves on rocky shores below.
“You can have me whenever you want.”
“No I can’t,” he almost yells. A nearby tern calls out. Simon takes a breath and lets it out slowly. “You’re gone.”
A beat.
“Been gone,” Simon begins. “Been gone for… Fuckin’ hell.”
He scrubs a hand down his face, unimpeded by the mask he has stuffed in his back pocket. His other hand is clenched so tightly it shakes.
“But here I am anyway.”
The tern calls again. It sounds almost musical in concert with the wind and sea. A lone voice in the din.
Simon sighs, the sound lost in the symphony. “Here you are.”
The cold of the wind nips at his fingertips, and he can’t bring himself to do much about it.
“Why’d you really come here, Simon?”
He exhales. “To say goodbye.”
“So say it.”
He stays silent. He stares out into the open sea and remembers the push and pull of different waters, worlds away. An oil rig on the open water. Rain-flooded alleyways. Cabanas on a beach.
“LT?”
He scowls. “I can’t lose you again.”
He hates the way his voice nearly dares to waver.
“Oh, Simon.”
“Why’d you have to go, Johnny?” His fingernails bite into the palm of his hand. He asks the question as if there’s any possible answer that would fix things. He was supposed to be the strong one, the man who makes the tough choices. He doesn’t deserve this cruel gentleness.
“Nothing lasts forever.”
And isn’t that just the nail in the coffin.
“If I had just been quicker. If I had been there in time–“
“Simon, stop.”
And he does. He clenches his jaw to stop the trembling, hard enough to make his teeth creak.
“What’s done is done. You can’t keep blaming yourself forever.”
“Watch me.” It’s a childish retort, and Simon almost has the dignity to feel bad about it.
There comes no rebuttal.
“I just…” Simon tries. The words feel like glue in his mouth, cloying between the edges of his molars. “I just wish I had more time to know you.”
“Know me? You knew me better than anyone.”
He tries not to be offended by the scoff that preceded those words.
“I wish I had told you…” He grasps at straws haltingly. He gives up with a huff. “Wish I had told you everything.”
“So tell me now.”
And that’s certainly a thought.
“I love you.” Simon says it before his brain catches up with his mouth. More an exhale than a grand declaration, but the truth all the same. “Loved you.”
A lone gull circles a rock far below.
“Did you know that?” Simon tries to keep the desperation out of his voice.
“You’re a regular Sherlock, LT. Of course I knew.”
He feels his cheeks heat up against his will at the sound of the laughter at his expense. He finds himself smiling nonetheless.
“Think everyone knew but you.”
“Well I know it now,” he grumbles out petulantly, his smile turning into more of a grimace.
“Aye. Just in time to mourn what could’ve been.”
His scowl deepens. “Yeah.”
A thought suddenly occurs to him. “Did Price know?”
“Probably. Probably figured it wasn’t too much of a concern though, if he never talked to you about it.”
Simon just hums in agreement.
“So where to next?”
Simon is caught off-guard by the question, but recovers well enough to shrug in response. “Don’t know. I’ve never been up here on my own before.”
“You should pay the pub a visit. Hear they’ve a good bourbon selection.”
He feels a small smile tug at his lips. “That so, Johnny?”
“Aye. And who knows… Maybe you’ll find someone there to take your mind off things.”
The flirtatious smirk was practically audible.
“LT?”
Simon shakes himself of his brief stupor. “Hm. Maybe.”
A pause. The gull has since landed, padding around the rock like it owns the thing. Maybe it does. Simon doesn’t know enough about birds to get into a property dispute with one.
“Simon, you can’t hold on to me forever. You know that.”
He wants to disappear into himself. He wants to wrap his arms around himself and stay put until someone comes to get him. He wants… “I know. But I wish I could. I want to.”
“And you know that it’s not really me you’re holding on to.”
His fingers ache. “I know. You’re who I want to remember.”
“But I’m not him.”
The wind stills for a moment before picking back up again.
Simon breathes deeply and exhales. “No. You’re not.”
His hair brushes his forehead in soft caresses with the flow of the breeze.
“He’s been gone for…” Simon begins. “Christ, how long has it been?”
“Eight months.”
He sighs heavily. “That long?”
“Mhm. But you knew that.”
He did. He does. He knows the time down to the day. Down to the hour, if he thinks hard enough. He tries not to think very hard about it. “When will it stop hurting?”
“Oh, Simon. You of all people know that’s not how this works.
He nods, the motion stilted, as if he has to force every minute movement of his body.
“Grief is just love with nowhere to go.”
“Think I read that in a book somewhere,” he says, aiming for lighthearted. He’s betrayed by the slight quiver in his voice that renders his words hollow.
“The pain stops when you stop loving him.”
If only. Simon looks over the vastness before him. Sees the gull standing on its rock. Sees every wave crash on the craggy shoreline in a splatter of white foam.
He feels the hole gnawing away at the inside of his chest. The empty space where another once stood. He’ll take this. “I think I’m ready to leave now.”
And no words are voiced to stop him.
As he pushes himself to his feet, he stops to pull the mask out of his back pocket. His slightly numb fingers trace the faded skull pattern on the front. This was a mask only worn once, by someone else.
He places the balaclava gently on the ground before him, smoothing out the fabric atop the grass. He takes a step back and looks over the sea once more. “Goodbye, Johnny.”
The wind is the only reply. He’ll take this grief, in exchange for having known Johnny at all. “Rest in… Just rest.”