Chapter Text
“‘Increase speed to two-thirds, come left ten degrees. Signal our course change to Purga, and hope she doesn’t turn the wrong way.’
The man reached for the small blinker light stowed under the bridge coaming. The submarine began to accelerate, and presently, the bow wave grew to three-meter standing arcs of water. Man-made combers rolled down the missile deck, splitting against the front of the sail.
Ramius looked aft at the bluffs of the Kola Fjord. They had been carved to this shape millennia before by the remorseless pressure of towering glaciers. How many times in his twenty years of service had he looked as the wide, flat U-shape?
This would be the last. One way or another, he’d never go back. Which way would it turn out? Ramius admitted to himself that he didn’t much care. Perhaps the stories his grandmother had taught him were true, about God and the reward for a good life. He hoped so—it would be good if they were. In any case, there was no turning back. He had left a letter in the last mailbag—“
“Simon?”
He raises his head from the page, looking over at where your voice emanated from the entryway of the store. You look rather frazzled yourself, covered head to toe in thick autumn clothes despite the coming summer. The look of your puffy sweater brings a smile to his face. And for the first time since he’d lost himself in the words on the page, he thinks to cautiously readjust the mask over his nose just to hide it.
When you see him reach up to push the surgical mask higher, you can’t help but bite your lip and stifle a grin of your own. After two months going on like this now, you knew good and well what that meant. Flushed, you reach down to tug at your own collar, no doubt cursing the May heat by now. You’d overfilled your suitcase, and had no choice but to don half your wardrobe just to get it all back to England without paying the baggage fee. As it turns out, Simon would have to divest a good bit of his closet space when the two of you returned to Manchester. Well, after he’d gotten everything fixed up, that is. He’d never started the renovations like they told him to. Maybe he should have listened.
You glance at the book in his hand, but this time, you don’t scoff.
“Somehow I knew I’d find you here.”
You point to the sign hanging above his head. Warfare and War History, it reads.
“What?” He fires back, closing the book to set it back on the shelf, “Still got a problem with war history, love?”
“No, it’s just…” you come closer to look at the cover, dragging your old suitcase behind you, “Figured you’d be tired of it now. Y’know, since you’ve finally seen it all for yourself…”
“Yeah, well…” he looks at the book again, long forgotten days in his old bedroom flashing behind his eyes, “M’not reading it to let them change my mind about anything. Just reading it because…well, I guess I’d forgotten about it until now.”
“Hm,” you acknowledge.
Idly, you tawddle over to him, lazily hooking your arm around his own bigger one. Deep in his mind, he stares down at that old familiar cover, the splotches of red that dye the title the same color as blood on the snow. Now that he was here, stuck in his old army boots, The Hunt for Red October didn’t feel as faraway and fantastic as it did all those years ago. If anything, it felt…sad. Like a lie he’d been told long ago, one that was half-true, but that made a mockery of what he knew to be real. He knew that now, but he didn’t know it then.
And yet, it didn’t bother him like perhaps it should have. Tom Clancy was an insurance agent, not a soldier. He didn’t fight on the front lines, nor should he ever have had to. And perhaps if Simon had stayed in his bedroom, reading about Ramius and his ill-fated crew, he never would have had to either. But as life would have it, that didn’t happen. Ramius didn’t make it to Maine. The U.S.S. Dallas never fired a single torpedo. And Jack Ryan never existed.
Though, by the sheer amount of books Tom Clancy wrote about him, you could almost convince yourself that he had.
However, he doesn’t dwell on it, and when had he ever? Instead, he looks down at his side, where you lean your pretty head up against his shoulder. In that moment, tired eyes aching, standing in the loud, crowded aisle of an airport corner store, he’s content. Finally, after all this time. When you notice him staring, you raise your head, looking at him through drooping lashes.
“Oh,” you suddenly remember, fumbling through your (myriad) of sweater pockets, “I finally got it. I was lucky to find it at the third store.”
“Thank god,” he sighs, stepping way from the shelf, “And how much did it cost you?”
“Here,” you offer him, tugging his arm towards you without an ounce of gentility, “An arm and a leg. I swear to god, Duty Free gets worse every year.”
“Wish I could sympathize,” he clicks his tongue, watching as you yank his sleeve up, “This is why we shoulda flown home on cargo with the rest of the lads. Don’t gotta sell your soul to the Air Marshals every time you wanna buy a goddamned coffee.”
“Simon,” you giggle, lovingly smoothing the nicotine patch over the inside of his tattooed wrist, “You would have said the same exact thing if we had to sit next to Johnny for however long it took us to get back to Europe. Don’t tell me you wouldn’t have taped his mouth shut halfway through the flight,” you crumple up the plastic casing, “Besides, this is not that bad.”
“Tell that to my migraine.”
“Have you ever considered,” you hold up his wrist for him to look at, “That the migraine isn’t from TSA and that is actually from your nicotine addiction?”
“Love,” he pulls his arm out of your grip, “TSA’s more liable to kill me than the cigs are. Swear to god, they give ‘em a badge and fancy title, and each of those pricks manages to think that they’re the king of this stupid airport.”
“Well,” you huff, grabbing your suitcase, “You’re not wrong on that one.”
“Never have been,” he smirks, holding you around the waist.
Like that, the two of you walk away from the bookstore, lazily ambling down the walkway of gate 25B. Not for the first time, Simon checks his watch, lamenting the time. The two of you had been here since four in the morning, and only now was the clock finally creeping towards seven. Originally, you’d been running late. A long night in some D.C. bar with John and Kate had had the two of you drinking a bit more than you should have. Hell, Simon barely remembers a word he’d said between pints three and four. He only remembers that he’d been laughing long before Price had gotten to the punchline of whatever old story he’d been telling then. If it means anything, you’d laughed just as hard.
Needless to say, when it was time to get up at three in the morning, you’d practically had to drag him out of the hotel bed by the seat of his pajama pants. And after staring at your dead face over a cup of yogurt during the continental breakfast, he knew you were hardy better. It was the blind leading the blind at this point. But…as your tiny fingers creep over his palm, silently asking to hold his hand, Simon doesn’t regret it.
The morning light is cold and pale, peeking through the large windows that led out to the tarmac. It wasn’t often that Simon flew commercial. More often than not, they were packed into cargo planes like sardines, using their rucksacks as pillows while they waited to arrive at whatever backwater base they’d be stationed at next. And while TSA always irked him, this time, it was manageable.
These past few months in Washington, tying off the loose ends, he’d been trying. And it was…hard. It was really hard. But for you, it was something he knew he had to do.
The mask was tucked away in his luggage. It wasn’t in his pocket, nor was it on his face. He’d worn it at the bar last night, in a crowd full of strangers. Like that, he was used to the stares he got, to the whispers people made when he passed by. He knew what they said about him—what they said about the mask. But when he was wearing it, they couldn’t hurt him, and they couldn’t know the man underneath, who’d lived his entire life under a name that wasn’t his own.
But when it was just the two of you…
When you were watching black and white cartoons on a grainy hotel TV somewhere far away from home…
He didn’t need to hide himself from you. Or, perhaps, more accurately, there was nothing he needed to hide within himself any longer.
For the first few days, you could barely get him to leave his room. Hell, you could barely get him to look you in the eye when he was barefaced. No matter how many times you stood next to him in the bathroom mirror, brushing your teeth, he still didn’t dare to meet his own gaze, even when you told him each and every morning that he looked handsome in his uniform.
To him, he’d never be what he once was. To him, he couldn’t be handsome, and perhaps he never had been to begin with. Truthfully, he doesn’t remember what it was like to have a complete face when he looked in the mirror, or to be able to shave himself without nicking the corners of his mouth.
But that didn’t matter, and he didn’t much care.
As long as you thought he was handsome, then that was all he needed. Even if it was all one big lie you were telling him, he could live with that. Forever, he could live with that.
Though, even if he had gotten used to walking around without the mask more often, that still didn’t mean the stares didn’t bother him. And as one young mother walks by with her son, she’s not afraid to furrow her brows when she sees the scars peeking above his surgical mask. His skin prickles and he clumsily raises his hand, ducking his head lower while he fiddles with the straps behind his ears.
“Hey,” you suddenly say, dragging his attention back onto the moment, “Look, Starbucks. You wanna get something to eat?”
“Love,” he chuckles, mind drifting from the passing woman, “Didn’t we already eat breakfast?”
“Yeah, but…” you trail off, no doubt looking at the dreamy pastry display, “It’s the airport. We can have a second breakfast.”
And when you look at him with those eyes—those familiar, soft eyes—how could you ever expect him to say no?
Come in, they say, Stay a while.
It’ll all be fine. I promise.
“Second breakfast, huh?” He smiles, even as he lets you pull him towards the Starbucks anyway.
“Yeah,” you assert, “Second breakfast. You ever live a little, Simon?”
“Evidently not enough.”
And once again, the two of you find yourselves at the mercy of the airport pricing. A cup of coffee and a muffin might be worth as much as gold in these parts, but if it meant you’d have a full belly and a smile on your face, then Simon couldn’t care less. That, and the caffeine was sorely needed. Nicotine might be one addiction, but coffee was another entirely.
“Mm,” you hum, speaking with your mouth full, “Did you hear that Kate’s going back to Kosovo?”
“Can’t imagine she’d stay here long,” he shrugs, “That whole mess’ll keep her busy for the next five years at least. The loose ends can’t help themselves. Hell, that mission would have made her career if it hadn’t been made already.”
“Yeah,” you look down at your muffin, “No doubt.”
Over his coffee cup, he watches you pick at the chocolate chips, slowly making a pile of crumbs on the napkin in front of you. He furrows his brow, tapping his knuckles on the table.
“Love, you okay?”
“Yeah, it’s just…” you huff, finally raising your gaze to look him in the eye.
This time, your pupils are pensive and deep, swirling with something he can’t quite identify.
“Simon,” you wilt in your seat, shoulders slumping, “I don’t know. Maybe I could have done more. I mean, that mission was just one mistake after another, and…I felt like I was gambling our lives with every decision I made. I mean…I just made Senior Special Agent. Is it really okay for me to take some time off?”
Worry embeds itself into his heart, sharp as nails, a worry that was as familiar as an old friend. Although his throat tightens, he keeps his expression calm, reaching over the table to take your hand in his.
“Love,” he begins softly, “Do you want to stay in the states?”
You scrunch your face.
“No, Simon,” you scoff, “No, I don’t. I want to go back to England with you, it’s just…Maybe I’m still stuck on the past, I guess.”
He looks at the way you worry your lips, how your tiny fingers dance with nervousness within his own.
“Love,” he covers your small hands with his larger ones, “Do you think…that it’s bad if we take some time for ourselves? Do you think it’s wrong?”
Somehow, in this moment, looking at you as a grown woman with worry in her eyes, he’d brought back to when he was freshly twenty years old. Sitting in the snow, backpack full of alcohol bottles, with a silver bracelet on his wrist. Looking at the pictures of the apartment he’d wanted to rent with you…it’d made him feel just as bad. It made him feel just as horrible, that even if he was finally getting what he’d wanted all along, that he had to leave the memory of Indigo Parkway right where it belonged: on that glum street, forgotten in the midst of the very wilted grass you’d been sitting on.
And this seemed hardly different. Only this time, the memories couldn’t be left behind, nor would they ever be erased. The battlefield had a habit of sticking with you like that, of imprinting itself on your mind and skin, so that every time you looked in the mirror, you couldn’t forget that you’d let it walk alongside you for however many years it took you to escape it.
Simon knows the feeling. Hell, it was written all over his name, all over his blank files. And he knows the price of living freely, of ignoring your own duty—or, at least, what you imagined to be your duty. When he was in school, the teachers had told him that he’d work for the rest of his life—that his life itself would become his work. And while he can’t deny that they were right, a person’s duty went beyond their job and title. They had a duty to their name, to their being, to the things that made them themselves, not just another cog in the great warmachine.
Simon Riley knew the cost of running away. But even if he knew what it meant to play hooky, even he could shamelessly admit that at the very least, it was more fun than being stuck in some bland office cubicle all day.
“I don’t know,” you answer, “You think Kate will be mad when I come back?”
“If she is, then I’ll throttle her myself,” he chuckles, taking another sip of his coffee, “Hell, when her and her wife got married, the two of them practically fucked off to Timbuktu for their honeymoon. I swear, I didn’t see them for an entire year. And when they did come back, Kate was so tan she looked more like burnt toast than a woman.”
He leans forward, close enough that you can smell the coffee on his lips, “Trust me, love. The last thing she’d be cross over is you taking some time for yourself. After the way you stepped up those last few months in Kosovo…well, I’d say you’ve done your part. Trust me, the mission will always be there. But time—the time we have now—won’t always be.””
At that, you manage a small smile, grasping his hand a bit firmer.
“Yeah,” you digress, “I guess you’re right.”
“Of course,” he whispers, lifting your hand to press a small kiss against your palm. The move elicits a small giggle from your lips, and you reach for his other hand. Despondently, you drag your fingers over his bare wrist, padding at the beginnings of his tattoo.
“We’ll have to get you another bracelet,” you tell him.
“Yeah, we will.”
When you’d moved off of the Kosovo base, he’d pulled the bracelet out of that old box. However, after so long of sitting in disrepair, it was rusted and dull. The clasp broke when he tried to put it on, and the engraving had so much old, desert dirt in it that it was barely legible. In the end, it had been left behind in the darkness far too long for the silver to keep its shine, and when he tried to wear it, it only managed to make his drab clothes seem even more sullen. It was a memory that he’d chosen to abandon for many, many years. And as it turns out, you can’t merely choose to pick up what you’d already lost somewhere along the line. You, however, wore yours once more…even if it felt wrong to see it next to his bare wrist.
He knows that it bugs you more than you want to tell him. He also knows that you think it’s silly, that you worry so much about a stupid bracelet he’d given you fifteen years ago. But it wasn’t silly. Not to him. Not to anyone.
“Simon,” you say suddenly, voice wrought and heavy.
“Yes, love?”
“Do you ever…” you fiddle with the bracelet on your wrist, looking at it thoughtfully, “Do you ever get worried?”
He furrows his brow.
“Worried about what?”
“Worried that maybe…” you huff, hanging your head, “We were just two sick kids back then? That—that it’s not how we remember it? That it wasn’t what we know it is?”
The words are heavy, but they don’t hurt. Your eyes are sad and embroiled in thought, a war within yourself—one that you had no doubt been fighting for fifteen long years. You’d never spoken it a loud, let alone to him of all people. And to some, perhaps it seemed that way. Perhaps that’s all teenage love was to them: a trial or a coincidence. Something you had to experience at some point or another, regardless of when it was or who it was with. Perhaps to some people, they couldn’t fathom that such little people could have such important thoughts, or that those thoughts ever could have occurred in a place as plain as Indigo Parkway or a Kosovan military base.
Perhaps to them, the past was just that: the things that had passed. The things that had gone. The things that had been forgotten. Rarely did you remember the things you had done, the words you had said, and the people you had met all the way back then. At the time, it had seemed infinite, the depth and the meaning of every little thing. It was shameful, really, how much time he spent thinking about flower petals and pumpkin bread…how much time he spent with his cheek pressed up against his bedroom window on a rainy day, just waiting to see you again.
That’s how it is, they lament, That’s how young love feels.
To them, it was like some long forgotten taste they’d never experience ever again, a memory so long consigned to oblivion that it was better to convince yourself that it came from happenstance instead of meaning, if only so that you wouldn’t miss it so much when you had to move on.
Yes, perhaps for some people, it was like that.
But not for him. Not for Simon Riley.
He doesn’t remember everything he did back then, and neither do you. Neither should you. By all means, the two of you had dwelled on it far too long, had let it weigh on your shoulders far too hard. When you’d joined the army, it was a badge you’d been proud to wear. But when you’d been given that name—when you’d poured your heart out only to have it thrown right back in your face—you knew it for what people told you it was: Childish. Ignorant. Idiotic.
Love went by many names. Young love especially.
And while he’d done many childish, ignorant, and idiotic things in his life, loving you wasn’t one of them. Even at eighteen years old, he could have told you that, with all the serious of the hardened soldier he didn’t know he would someday become.
Because how could it be meaningless when he feels just the same as he did back then? When he’s just as drunk on love, and just as stupid as he was when he was eighteen years old? Stumbling and tripping over his own two feet just to call you his own?
How could it be meaningless when he knows that he loves you more than he loves the sun, more than he loves the air, and more than he loves life itself?
To him, the answer is easy.
“Love,” he says, squeezing your hand, “Tell me. Every time you told me you loved me, did you mean it?”
It’s a remarkably simple thing to say. Something so simple it was almost stupid, hardly worth saying to begin with. And yet, he says it still. Because just like the love that burns in his chest, it was simple and plain, a truth you that was so obvious you didn’t think it needed to be told to you.
“Yes,” you profess, eyes bubbling with sincerity, “How could I not?”
“Then I won’t worry,” he answers, “And neither will you.”
Those words, however tiny and obvious they may be, feel infinitely deeper inside of your palm, right up against your pulse point.
“Besides,” he whispers, “Teenage angst doesn’t last for fifteen years, love.”
At that, you chuckle, leaning back in your seat to send him a knowing look.
“Tell that to your skull mask and eye paint then.”
He shakes his head with a laugh, taking another long sip. Once again, you manage a grin, looking down at your bracelet. Yours looked old and faded, ugly by all counts. But you wear it still…one half of a pair that had already been buried.
Seconds pass slowly, crawling by like minutes in and of themselves. He watches you there, watches the pendant clink against the table, watches your smile slowly fall. And just when he thinks another worried word will escape your lip, you steel yourself.
You reach towards your wrist, unclasping the bracelet.
Without a word, you tuck it in the front pocket of your suitcase—a pocket you had never opened before—and push it inside. Silently, you take his hand once more.
“There,” you state, “Now we match.”
In a split second, his heart swells gently, beating just that much harder. He smiles again, reaching for his mask to cover his face. And yet, before his hand can meet his neck to tug anxiously at the strings, you reach out and pull it away from his face.
“No,” you tell him, cradling his hand, “I want to see your face.”
Your words don’t erase the things that he feels, nor could they ever. Perhaps he’d always feel this way, stifling each smile because he couldn’t dare to let himself simply have them. But…but just maybe, he tires to imagine that he could. That every day he could smile, and that you’d like to look at him like that each and every moment, for now unto eternity.
“Okay,” he acquiesces, curling his palms around his coffee cup, “Okay.”
You smile, too, wide and unbridled, eyes shining and tired. When your fingers entwine with his, they’re cold against his steam-warmed hands, and you lazily curl them about his, seeking his heat. And like that, he watches as he finds you again, as he warms you up again.
The overhead speaker crackles.
“Good morning, passengers. Flight 1476 to London is now boarding. We invite passengers with small children, veterans, and any passengers requiring special assistance to board at this time. Please have your boarding pass and identification ready. Regular boarding will begin in ten minutes, at 7:15 AM.”
“Oh,” you startle, “That’s us.”
“Yep,” he grunts, draining his cup as he stands from his seat, “Better get a move on.”
You come to his side easily, fumbling with your bags. Before you can make another comment about the rickety handle on your case, he picks it up for you, sending you a look when you try to reach for it instead. You move ahead of him with a roll of your eyes, taking his hand easily. The boarding passes are stashed in his pocket and his military ID is front and center in his wallet.
The clothes are packed.
The coffee had been drank.
And he was finally going home.
“When we get back to England,” you muse, coming to a stop in the boarding line, “What do you wanna do first? Anywhere you want to go?”
He hums, biting his tongue.
He’s had a long time to think about it. Fifteen years to be exact. When he was twenty-one, the only place he wanted to be was in your old basement bedroom. He wished upon every star that someday he’d wake up there, amongst those old girly sheets and stuffed animals. He’d smell your perfume on the pillowcases, feel your skin against hist own, and you’d fawn over just how grown he looked in a set of Private’s fatigues.
When he was twenty-six, it was the same but different. He imagined knocking on the front door of that old house, your dad’s beat-up truck nowhere to be found. You’d open the door and you wouldn’t believe your eyes. You’d be a little bit taller, a little bit older, a little more tired. And he’d fall to his knees in front of you, hug you around the waist, and beg you to save him, to make all the horrible things he’d seen fall away.
And when he was thirty, it almost wasn’t there at all. He’d push the image of your face out of his mind for as long as he could, shove all of your belongings into a coffin underneath his old army bed. But when he fell asleep, when he was wholly unguarded, that was when you would come to him again. In a half-awake dream, you’d materialize in the boardroom, or in the cafeteria, looking over each and every face, searching just for him.
And now, at almost thirty-five, he still didn’t know the answer. Even though it was sitting in the palm of his hand, it was almost unbelieable to think that he’d finally gotten what he’d wanted all along. That in the end, it was all okay. That you were together, just like how he’d promised you all those years ago.
He doesn’t know what he wants to do or where he wants to go.
But…perhaps that’s how it’s meant to be.
The corner of his mouth quirks, and he squeezes your hand as he steps towards the gate.
“Dunno, love,” he answers simply, “I guess…we’ll just have to see.”
He pulls the boarding passes out of his coat, tugging you towards the waiting flight attendant. As she takes your IDs, you stand together, with your head on his shoulder. He’s almost barefaced, and older than he used to be. But you still smile at him when he hooks his arm around your waist, pulling you closer to his well-worn body.
Carefully, he watches her shuffle through the myriad of credentials, until she releases a sigh, and holds them back out for him to take. And when she spares you a final glance, the woman doesn’t see you for the hopeless kids you’d been back then, nor does she see you for the hardened soldiers you were in your ID pictures.
She sees you simply for what is. For what had become.
Man and woman. Together, at last.
“Sir,” she nods in his direction, “Ma’am. Thank you for your service and welcome aboard.”
“Thank you,” you tell her, stepping onto the gateway.
With a breath of heady, summer air, you walk towards the entrance of the plane, lazy and unhurried. After all, there wasn’t any more to do than sit there and look out the windows of the airplane, hold his hand, and marvel at all the miles of ocean that had separated you before.
In the end, Simon Riley still didn’t like to dwell on the past. And to this day, he still mulls over the things that he lost, like they could still reach him now, flipping through the years of his life like pages in a book
The past was like that, he’d learned. A shadow of yourself and the ones that you’d lost along the way. He used to be scared of it, used to cower in the darkness of his old Manchester apartment, and try to drown it in bottles of alcohol.
But even so, there’s one thing he’s finally learnt after all these years.
There’s nothing to life if you don’t let the past walk with you, if you don’t let it lead you by the hand and hold you when the days get dark. For once, he let the past peek behind the carefully curated mask he’d worn since twenty-six, let it pull him apart by the seams, and consume him within its muddled black, blue, and Indigo. As it would happen, he’d learned that the past was all he’d ever had to begin with—was all he’d ever need.
Because for so long, the two of you had drifted in swimming pools of each others’ emotions, drank from its cup until the stream ran dry. And even when the topography of the land itself looked different, its meaning still remained, imprinted in the desolate creek bed that it left behind.
Since the day he donned the camouflage, he’d only been living within his reflection, within the refraction of his past mistakes.
The truth is that you’ll never truly understand what happened to him.
And he’d never truly understand what happened to you, either.
You’ll never know how many dreams he dreamt about you, or how colorless they all seemed when he woke up to an empty pillow at his side.
And he’d never know how hard it was to leave Indigo Parkway all those years ago, or how sometimes, you wanted nothing more than to forget him altogether.
No. There were some memories that were beyond reclamation.
But that was okay. Because the past wasn’t his home any longer. And neither would it be yours. The future was endless and daunting, a threshold he’d never crossed before. And as he sits beside you in another cramped airplane seat, the sun burning his eyes, he feels wholly and utterly helpless. At the mercy of the world itself.
But he’s not scared of it any longer.
There was no running away. There was no turning the other cheek or hiding behind the ghost of his own person any longer.
He wanted no escape, wanted no savior.
He wanted for nothing—nothing more than to sit at your side, drinking stale coffee in a stuffy airplane seat, your fingers playing with the nicotine patch on his wrist.
Sitting here now, he finds that the conclusion is just as plain as the start, just as ordinary, perfect, and unremarkable as it was when you first appeared all those months ago. The end of another beginning. The beginning of what, he’s not sure. It was a discovery the two of you would find back in England perhaps, on the same city streets that had brought you up to begin with.
And as he sits here, contemplating what color he should paint the old walls in Tommy’s house, it never strikes him to worry about what the future might hold. He’d lived within this equilibrium for long enough. Being wrenched out of it—as terrifying as it was—was a mercy so long as he could call you his own.
And like that, he finds himself unafraid.
Unafraid to take off the mask.
To show you his face.
To give you his name.
To finally look in the mirror and see himself there, with you forever standing by his side.