He could not hold any of that against her. She had played her part. Indeed, she may have suffered more than he. Now she reached for a life of her own. He wished her well.
Trevor eyed the view. How often had he gazed out that glass over the years? In the early days he had pulled the curtains shut at night to hide. He had stood on that balcony on one fateful morning and watched sunrise knowing his canine soldiers did his dirty work at New Winnabow. And he had returned from another Earth to the surprise of Evan Godfrey in that same room.
The old world might have been a dream. More than a decade past since he changed from Richard to Trevor yet—yet it felt like yesterday and like an eternity ago at the same time. A contradiction, but also a truth.
He heard the creak of a floorboard and turned his head expecting to see a courier bringing tidings from either the politicians in Montreal or the hunters on the frontier.
“Hello, Trevor.”
She stood there on the far side of the room in jeans and a casual black shirt, not the usual military uniform. Something else appeared amiss, but he could not tell exactly what.
Nonetheless, he hid his surprise and answered with his best, formal voice, “Oh, hello, it’s good to see you Captain—“
Trevor stopped as he realized what else seemed different about her. Instead of a ponytail, her hair lay to her shoulders.
He tried again, in a quieter voice.
“Hello, Nina.”
He watched her close; studied her blue eyes for signs of ice or warmth. Nina strolled slowly—drifted, nearly—around the desk and toward him with her eyes focused on the sights beyond the closed glass door.
Trevor’s skin erupted in goose bumps, a reaction to an energy that came into the room with her.
Nina stopped and eyed the sun sparkling off the lake waters.
“I remember. I remember standing here—watching the sun rise that last day. I remember being—feeling…” her lips pressed together tight to control the echo of an intense emotion. “I remember envying you because you would remember for the rest of your life and I would remember for only a few more hours. I remember the night before, we sat together and talked about a dream world all of our own with no obligations, no titles.”
Trevor stumbled for words: “How—that’s not possible…”
“You said once that memories make us who we are. Maybe the reverse is true, too. What happened last year was part of it. When I—when I helped you, images came across the bridge to me. Feelings. Emotions. The things you lost. The people.”
She turned and faced him. His lips parted, but he found no breath.
Nina said, “After that day—that last day—I woke up without a year of my life. In all the time since, I felt something missing. But I didn’t know what. I could never open up to anyone. I always pushed people away. My daughter was a help. With her I found a little part of what went missing, but I always knew there was more.”
Her brow crinkled. She squeezed her eyes shut for a second and then opened them wide again, fully focused on him.
“And there you were, my Emperor. My commander. Those times when you came to see me yourself, for a mission or whatever. I—I felt special. You respected me. I could feel the trust you had in me. When I looked at you I saw a man who had a purpose like I always had a purpose. I saw—I saw…”
“What did you see?”
“I saw a man imprisoned by that purpose,” she said in less sure words, as if worried he might take it as an insult. “I was always afraid that soldiering and killing and fighting were all there was to me. And there you were. I could see determination and strength—and loneliness.”
Her hand reached and tentatively touched his cheek as if the touch would serve to prove the image real.
Nina said softly, “I saw a reflection of me in your eyes. Then when I thought you had been assassinated—that missing part of me hurt. I felt robbed. Cheated. Something personal had been taken away.”
“You brought me back,” he pointed out. “Without you I would be dead or insane.”
“Yes,” she agreed, withdrawing her hand and speaking in a surer voice. “When all that confusion and fear came from you in to me, I realized how hard a life you led. And I realized that I could help you. Not anyone; you. When we came together I felt whole. What I’m saying is, for the first time in my life I felt like a complete person. That’s when I finally started to understand what that missing part of me was. It was you. It has always been you.”
She tilted her head and confessed, “Look, Trevor, do you understand? I fell in love with you a second time. They stole my memories. You sent me away farther and farther and I still fell in love with you all over again.”
Trevor trembled from head to toe. He swallowed hard.
Nina spoke in the mother’s voice she honed raising Denise, “I’ve waited nearly a year for you to come home and before that I spent months trying to understand what we once had and why it was taken from us. Now I know. But for you—oh, Trevor, you didn’t have the luxury of forgetting. I know how you felt about me. I can feel it,” she held a hand to her heart, “in here. I can only imagine how hard that must have been for you. All those years…”
He felt his breath grow shallow; a pain in his chest where his wounded heart raced.
“Nina, I would have done anything to keep you. If it hadn’t been for your memory loss, I think I would have abandoned the world to be with you.”
“But you couldn’t,” she knew. “Because you had a purpose, like me. You had a responsibility.”
“Responsibility?” He rolled the word around on his tongue and he felt a sting build behind his eyes. “The weight of the world—he told me the weight of the world was coming down on my shoulders. Until I lost you, I had no idea how heavy that weight could be.”
She held her hands out and offered, “You’ve carried it by yourself long enough. I helped you before. Now let me help take that weight from your shoulders.”
He gazed into her blue eyes and his legs wobbled. Trevor collapsed to his knees and buried his head into her body. She clutched him with arms so tight they would never let go. Not again.
It flowed out of him. The loss. The sorrow. The emptiness that had threatened to turn his heart black. It poured like a river from his body. The man who had been strong for humanity found the woman—the only soul—who could be strong for him.
“It has been so hard all these years—so alone…”
“Not anymore,” she growled as if warning the powers of the universe not to dare try to part them again. “I put my life on hold to be a soldier. It was all I knew. Until now.”
She slid to her knees and faced him. Trevor ran a hand through her blond hair.
Nina said, “I want the rest. I want it all.”
His answer came in a kiss. A soft press to her lips. He felt her quiver. He felt a tremor of energy himself. A brief, sweet kiss. Merely a taste of things to come.
But, as is often the case with two people who have loved each other for a long time, a strong hug felt even deeper. He wrapped his arms around her and pulled tight, feeling the rhythm of her heart and the warmth of her breath on his neck.
She slid her arms around his back and closed her eyes. She let herself be swept away in his grasp. Nina trusted Trevor with her heart; she could drop the shield and let him in with no fear of injury.
Her strength would always be there, it lived in the nature of her being. It would be there in her arms and her strong shoulders for those dark nights ahead when the memories of his personal nightmares came to haunt. As Nina had told him so many years ago, she would hide with him in the dark if needed. That, of course, is part of being in love.
Their embrace pulled back and they sat on their knees staring at one another.
“He came to see me,” Nina said and she did not need to clarify who.
“What—what did he want?”
“He told me he had something for you. Or maybe us. I’m not sure.”
They got off their knee
s and stood in front of the sliding glass door that led to the balcony. A shadow cast by the mountain behind the mansion grew across the grounds and reached for the water’s edge.
“He said something about a fourth gift.”
Trevor and Nina moved through the woods hand in hand. Odin—once Trevor’s pet now an old dog in Nina’s service—trotted along in front as if leading the way.
The darkness of the evening and the dampness beneath the canopy of green conspired to chill the air but the excitement of the moment kept any discomfort at bay.
A slight rise in the land gave way to a dry streambed. As Trevor expected, the Old Man sat there on a slab of red rock alongside a flickering campfire with his wise old eyes studying the flames and his mouth moving gently as if chewing a last pinch of snuff. His familiar—a brilliant white wolf—lay at his feet enjoying the warmth of the fire.
Trevor and Nina descended the bank and walked into the sphere of heat radiating from the flames. Odin sat near the wolf. The Old Man tilted his head and eyed the newcomers with what might by a grin tugging at the edges of his lips.
“Surprised there, Trevvy?” The Old Man greeted.
“No,” Trevor shook his head.
“Kinda all got started with me. Makes sense for me to be here and wrap it up, don’t you think?”
“You know,” Trevor wagged his finger at the Old Man, but not harshly. “I’ve been thinking a lot about you. About why you were so upset back when you first heard about Nina and me that first year.”
Nina stood off and watched. The Old Man had told her the answers once in the beginning when she learned that she could not be with Trevor. Those answers were lost with the rest of her memories but when the Old Man came to Annapolis last year he shared the secrets again.
Trevor pushed on, “You took it—you took it personally when you found out I loved her. You weren’t just afraid about the big picture—I think you were sad.”
“Now see that,” the Old timer chuckled nervously. “Trev here thinks he’s got it all figured out.”
“It’s never been that complicated. The war was about what happens when the mind surpasses the heart; when intelligence isn’t kept in check by compassion and love. It bred arrogance and pride; things that are easy for a devil to exploit.”
The Old Man did not appear offended. He blinked fast. Maybe to stave off something sad.
He told Trevor, “You did a fine job of that, yessir. Struck a chord with the whole bunch. Made us—made us remember what we’d forgotten. Made us remember who we really are. I ‘spose when you cut through a couple o’ million years of evolution—well, I guess we was just human after all. ‘Least in my case. But you get the point.”
“The only thing I did was bring you back together. The biggest mistake you made was cutting the mind loose from the heart. Once we patched that up…”
“Yessir, that was one hell of a left turn, wasn’t it?”
“No,” Trevor corrected and admitted as he controlled a wobble in his voice: “I felt sure it would come. I had faith in you. I just—I just had to be strong enough to let you go.”
A glint flickered in the Old Man’s eye.
“Now Trevy, what’s that you got hiding up your sleeve?”
“I’ve figured it out. I figured out exactly who you are.”
The fire crackled. Trevor took a step closer. His eyes blinked twice and he sniffled while trying to fight off tears.
“It’s good to see you again—my son.”
The Old Man stood and walked away from the fire. As he did, the façade faded away and Jorgie Benjamin Stone—the little boy born to Trevor and Ashley—walked to his dad.
Trevor knelt. JB hugged hard and Trevor hugged him back with the love of a father.
“I’m sorry,” Jorgie said. “I’m sorry for what I put you through.”
“You didn’t know,” Trevor spoke to the part of the entity that had been born his son. “You couldn’t have known while you were growing up with me. You were split in two. Two different beings made from what had once been one.”
“Father—I…”
Trevor held Jorgie by his shoulders and gazed into his eyes. As great a being as those eyes belonged to, they still were of his blood. One part comprised of the energy and intellect of a greatly evolved entity; another part the body sent to be reborn as both a marker and an observer; a collector of data.
A surrogate for a god.
In the end, it had been the body of the child—his love for his mother—his innocence—his understanding of what it meant to be human—the very chain on which Trevor had been a link—that won the day.
Trevor told his boy, “I have been proud of you since the day you were born. And I don’t blame you. No son could be blamed for loving his mother; for wanting his father and mother to be together. If I had to do it all over again, I would. For you.”
Jorgie smiled and backed away, giving Nina a glance before the child gave way to the Old Man again. But of course he was not an old man; and neither was he a child. He was something much more but in the end he had been human.
The Old Man sat on his slab of red rock and held his hands out to either side and up; waiting for them to take hold.
“Now don’t just be standing there gawking,” he berated. “You two know the drill.”
Trevor and Nina shared an unsure glance.
“Oh, now, I told you that I had a fourth gift for Trev. It’s also for you, missy. Think of it as payment on a debt I owe you.”
Trevor and Nina cautiously walked around the fire and sat next to him. Trevor took his hand, Nina grabbed the other.
“Now, Trev has been through something like this before. Funny how I always use to say that it was irrelevant. Now I’m starting to think it might just be the most precious thing in the whole universe. Guess that joke was on me, right? But, Trev, last time you went for this type of ride it wasn’t so much fun. This time, well, I think you’ll see it in a different light.”
Nina said, “What was irrelevant? I don’t understand. What is it you’re giving us?”
“The one thing I took from you,” he answered. “Time.”
Trevor and Nina took the Old Man’s hands much like they had taken his hands in that cottage in the wilderness when Nina went searching for her Emperor and found the lost hole in her heart.
“Now, listen up. Trev, you know how this trick works. What do you think, an hour or two before you got to get back to business around here? Vacations are nice and all, but…”
“An hour or two should do,” Trevor smiled at Nina seemed both puzzled and amused.
“Now close your eyes and relax. Just—relax…”
A horn honked and startled Nina’s eyes wide open. A bright sun replaced the dark forest. A blend of smells assaulted her nose; she could taste smoky exhaust fumes from traffic on a wide city street and the aroma of sizzling steak floating from a nearby stand.
Trevor squeezed her hand as he surveyed the surroundings. They stood in the shadow of tall buildings with throngs of pedestrians who wore the clothes of a busy work day walking around them in either direction. The sounds of cars driving, feet drumming, a distant siren, and a melody crooning from a nearby radio bombarded their ears.
“W-what is this?” Nina gasped as her head snapped side to side.
Trevor understood.
“You tell me. Where are we?”
Nina licked her lips, steadied herself as if on the verge of falling over from confusion, and searched the area a little more methodically. She saw landmarks immediately; landmarks she had not seen in years but they remained familiar.
“Broad Street,” she mumbled. Then louder: “We’re on Broad Street. In Philadelphia.”
Trevor smiled and repeated what she had said to him one sad night, the last night before her memories were taken. “You said this would be the best place to live. Lots to do around here, I guess.”
She did not hear him. She stared at the bronze statue of William Penn atop City Hall.
“But Trevor, that statue fell when City Hall burned back on the first day of the invasion. We never rebuilt it.”
“Nina—I think—I think this is going to take some explaining.”
She stepped closer to him and he gazed into those beautiful blue eyes.
“How did we—why is this—I’m just saying, this isn’t right.”
“It’s exactly right,” Trevor assured. “Just the two of us. No responsibilities except to each other. We can stay here for a while and catch up on lost time. Stolen time.”
“So this…” she gazed around at the traffic, the crowds, a passenger jet flying overhead far above the downtown skyscrapers. “…this isn’t real?”
Trevor pointed to the image of a blue sky and told her, “Out there an hour or two will pass. In here? Maybe a week or so. Think of it as a vacation. Besides, time is really all in our heads anyway. I went through this once before—not as pleasant, of course. Trust me—our memories will make it real.”
Something distracted Trevor. He turned around and yelled to the cheese steak vender while pointing toward the radio just inside the service window.
“Hey, buddy, you mind turning that up?”
Like everything else in the dream, the man accommodated.
The melody drifted above the commotion of gridlocked cars and shuffling people.
“I go out walkin’ after midnight, Out in the moonlight, Just like we used to do, I’m always walkin’ after midnight searchin’ for you…”
Nina recognized the voice of Patsy Cline. The music Trevor had played for her that first night at her apartment; that first night of being in love. So many more nights lay ahead.
Trevor extended a hand to her in invitation.
“May I have this dance, miss?”
She accepted.
Trevor glanced around at the crowd of phantasms. He recalled her fear that first time and warned lightheartedly, “I’m afraid a lot of people are watching.”
Beyond Armageddon V: Fusion Page 53