Goodbye ... Until We Meet Again

[huffpuffblonde]

GOODBYE MY FRIEND.

Goodbyes are inevitable. Maybe someone is moving away, maybe it's that final battle, maybe you can't stand to see this person any longer. They're leaving and this is your final chance to see them, final opportunity to say all those words you've been hiding away.

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You're a darling. <33

[fischer]

The first came unexpected, an overture that caught him unguarded. The second, he eased into it, not like two strange comets on a collision course, but in a soft burst of sunlight. His lips found their way to hers and it was the most natural thing in the world. In that instant, he would have given her his everything. With that, she was gone and he watched her slip away, unspoken words hanging in the air and looking very, very beautiful. And he was left alone, lost in a sky filled with stars shining darkly, and no-one may ever come to rescue him again as she had. All that would remain were the memories that would sustain him until the day that he died.

How simple it would have been to call out to her! He could expose everything that yearned to leave his chest. It did not have to be good-bye if they didn't want it to be. She might come back to him, if only he could get her to look back. If only he could let her know how much she meant to him before she boarded that plane that would take her out of Germany and out of his life. But he did not bear the love for the Agency that he did for her; and while he was not in agreement always with those seated in Kremlin, one could not expect the luxury of picking and choosing the best aspects of one's country while turning one's back on the rest. That was the worst kind of patriotism there was, being a patriot only when it was easy and convenient. Some believed that reformation was only possible on the rubbles of the old, but he believed, in simplest terms, in the Socratic principles of provoking changes from within than without. Nor was he blinded by ideology, for everywhere had been home and it was only by virtue of his mother's strength of ties that made the country his by blood.

That was a part of what he liked about what they shared-that life didn't always have to be about politics, about the ethics of their work which often required one to behave very badly in defence of a greater good, that choices could be rendered in terms of simple human conscience without thinking and that life and all its beauties could be enjoyed instead of being incidental to some larger picture. They didn't have to belong to any Service but each other. But was that too sentimental? Did she deserve better than what he could give her, under the circumstances? The die was cast; there was a line between retirement and betrayal, and he was not willing to turn traitor. How could he hope to love and to receive love, by sacrificing his integrity, his honour, everything that he held sacred as an individual? He could ask her to run away with him. Leave this all behind. Had he been more selfishly inclined, he would have. But not everyone was so unlucky as to maintain expendable social ties, capable of expunging their old life and never looking back.

So he said nothing. He had known a surfeit of people who had many talks but no action and these were the most dangerous kind of people, who carried the pestilence of misguided inspiration at virtually no cost to themselves. But silence also could be much more powerful and far more costly. When the distance between them was too great for her to overhear, he muttered softly to her receding figure, "Good-bye, Annie."