this war's not over
this war's not over
robert/vittoria (angels & demons); pg for language
~2,200 words
“Rome meant everything to me, Robert.” She breathes deeply and her fingers slowly release him, stepping back. “Meant. I can’t keep living on an empty promise. ... I don’t know what it is about you but I can’t do it if it’s just going to be a hopeless dream.” (post-the lost symbol)
notes: no beta so all mistakes are mine. forever a dan brown and robert/vittoria stan. must give a shout out to this fanvid as i watched it many a time while writing this.
“You’ve seen this before? Well, please, enlighten me.”
“It’s the sun cross!” A shout from the middle of the sea of students; Robert could hardly see their faces with the lights on him.
“And what does it represent?”
“It’s an astrological symbol.”
“But is that all it is?” He was met with silence and a familiar smirk came across his face, that comfortable feeling of besting his students. “Symbols travel through time. They don’t fade, but evolve. She’s right, the sun cross is an astrological symbol but that’s certainly not all it is. It represents the sun and four seasons in neo-Pagan religions and Norwegian Nazis used it as their official symbol.” He pauses, letting the information sink in, always the best part. “Ah, didn’t see that one coming? I’ll see you next week.”
The bustle is immediate and Robert begins to pack up his own belongings, shutting down his laptop, gathering his notes, sweating under his tweed jacket and under the heat of the lights. Finally, he’s met with silence except for the rustling of his own effects but he gets a feeling he’s not alone and when he turns, all he can make out is a figure in one of the back rows. “Hello?”
One could say with everything Robert had seen and gone though, fear would be a trivial emotion but he argued the opposite. His paranoia and sense of alertness had only heightened with the events in Italy, France, England, and DC. Those all seemed like a lifetime ago, so foreign they might not have been his life at all but a dream, a dream of someone else’s life.
Clutching his bag, he ascended the stairs towards the exit of the lecture hall and the figure, his chest tightening, heart beginning to race. Who he saw was not who he was expecting but the bio entanglement physicist certainly knocked the wind out of him, leaving him immediately tongue-tied and woozy.
“Sir?”
“Y-Yes? What? Oh! Yes, sorry.” Tearing his eyes away from Vittoria, he awkwardly hands the cashier the money for the tea and cappuccino and instantly his eyes go back to her. It had been hours since he had happened upon her in the lecture hall (Harvard doesn’t re-schedule meetings for women you thought you might have loved once and still think about more than you’d like to admit) and he was still convinced he was dreaming, shaky on his feet and fumbling over his words (something he wasn’t used to as a professor). Seeing her again brought back a torrent of emotions, regret coming to mind first, eating away at him, weighing on his shoulders. He saw her and wanted to turn back time, wanted to make good on the promise he’d given her, and he didn’t want to believe he couldn’t do that.
He walked to the table she was sitting at, legs crossed and beautiful Italian hair falling over her shoulders, and he suddenly had no idea what to say to her. In silence he handed her the cappuccino and her hands delicately enveloped the cup, taking a sip before looking at him and he felt the pressure to not look away from her. “What…” He falters, as if his heart had leapt into his throat. “What brings you to Boston?”
“A conference. On CERN’s dime, of course.” The confidence in her voice, the silky accent rolling off her tongue, made him unexpectedly feel inadequate. He started and stopped, just watching her, realizing he still knew those eyes so well, and he wondered if she had ever thought of him over the past years other than the postcards they rarely exchanged. Perhaps he had always been less than worthy of a great scientific revolutionary.
He saw it as a sign of accomplishment when his dreaming of her had virtually ceased, only appearing now as glimpses and months apart. But the fact that they were still happening at all, waking him in the night and leaving him restless, made him hate himself.
“Six months.”
“Six months.” The grin on her face was infectious and he impulsively leaned down to kiss her, loving the fact that he was able to do that, detesting the fact that he wouldn’t be able to do it for half a year. So he held onto this moment, dropping his bag on the airport floor, drawing her into him and never wanting to let go.
“Robert, you’ll miss your plane.”
“I’ll schedule a later one, more time for us.”
She laughed and he wanted to hear that laugh always. “Go, don’t be ridiculous.” As she gently pushed him, he conceded and grabbed his bag and began to head toward his gate, looking back on occasion. “Six months!” She called out and he glanced back one more time.
Those six months had turned into three years and a total of six postcards from each of them. Hardly what he had been expecting or wanting but things got busy, both at Harvard and over the world, chasing mysteries and secret societies and feeling more and more tired with each passing day.
“Oh.” It was all he could muster for a reply and he hurriedly sipped at his tea, trying to distract himself from the fact that he was failing miserably at interacting with her like a normal human being anymore. It had been so natural in Rome, the curve of her hip underneath his palm, the smell of her hair on the hotel terrace.
“You’ve been busy.” He raises his eyebrows and she coyly smiles and he feels the heat rise from his neck to his cheeks. “I do have time to read newspapers. I have a feeling you’ll never get on the Vatican’s good list.”
He can’t help but chuckle at that. “No. No, I don’t think so.” And for a moment it feels like no time has passed since Rome, as if they’ve been together all along but the realization that that’s not the scenario crashes reality down on him. “I can only assume how much CERN has you working.”
“Oh, it’s endless. Tiring and immensely rewarding, I wouldn’t give it up for anything.” And the way she says that makes him think he’s supposed to be the ‘anything’. He doesn’t want to be in competition with her job because he knows which one he’d want her to choose. He still remembers, acutely, the feeling that had consumed him when she’d been kidnapped by the Hassassin, a feeling of one-track desperation that he’d never experienced before, not caring about anything else that would happened that day as long as he found her alive. He knew that was a feeling you couldn’t have for just anyone and seeing her now, drumming her fingers along the edge of her cup, brought back so many feelings he thought he had locked away.
“So is there, ah…anyone? I just assumed…when the postcards stopped…” He has no idea where the question comes from as he clumsily gets out the words and finds he’s incredibly nervous for the answer, the rapidity of his heart pounding in his ears.
She glances down and he realizes he’s finally broken her composure and that only makes him more nervous. “His name is Diedrich; he’s an experimental particle physicist.”
The words weigh heavily in the air before he blurts out: “Just your type.” And he’s too busy staring down at his lukewarm cup of tea to notice the way her face falls when he says that.
When the door opens, he can tell by the look on her face that she wasn’t expecting to see him. “Robert.” It comes out as more of a breath than a solid word and before anything can happen, she moves aside to let him in.
She had mentioned where she was staying at coffee, as well as the fact that she would be leaving the next day, and Robert had tossed and turned, knowing he couldn’t just let her slip away again. Things could be different this time, they had to be. He could have just moved on, he could have realized knowing a woman for one crazy day wasn’t justification for the way he was feeling, he could have not made that promise to her. But he had and he didn’t regret it, not for a moment, and all he did regret was not keeping that promise.
“I don’t know what Rome meant to you or what our promise meant to you but all I know is that I’ve never been able to stop thinking about you and then you stopped writing and now you have some…physicist and I know I’m hardly competition but I was under the impression that there was something. And you show up here, un-phased like we’re just old colleagues…to what? To remind me that Rome was just us acting on the insanity of the day, that the promise we made was false hope? Well, points taken, Vittoria.”
He didn’t know where any of it had come from and that wasn’t how he had been intending to start this conversation but it had all come out before he could stop and think. He realized, however, seeing that stunned expression on her face, he was grateful he had acted on impulse. Until the look of stun evolved into anger, that is.
“I wasn’t the only one who stopped writing, Robert! When six months passed and a year passed, it was easier not to write, not to give myself some…bullshit optimism that I’d see you again because that promise did mean something to me. And for you to accuse me of not caring or thinking it all meant nothing to me is absurd.” She paused and let her words settle between them but before he had a chance to say anything in response, she was at it again. “How dare you come here and make me out to be the bad guy? I came to see you because Rome was real.”
Pressing his lips firmly together, all he can do is stand and stare for several moments, reveling in that fiery Italian temper, wondering how he had ever thought it was okay to let her go. “And Diedrich?”
“Excuse me?” She hisses at him, taking a step towards him. “You hardly gave me reason to believe I was spoken for. I had waited long enough for you already. I wasn’t going to wait anymore.”
He sighs and her words weigh heavily on him and he feels defeated. Running a hand over his face, he looks at her with a sudden regret and desperation in his eyes. “I know.” His voice is hoarse and the mood has shifted and her lips part, cheeks flushing. “And I should have. Vittoria, I wasn’t lying when I said I’ve never been able to stop thinking about you. It’s not fair to either of us but you’re incredible and I was a fool.”
“Robert…” She’s shaking her head, as if this is the last thing she wants to hear and he steps forward, slipping his hand to the back of her neck, smooth fingertips pressing gently into her skin and he’s kissing her with such emotion that she’s become his oxygen and he can’t let go.
He feels her stiffen and hesitate and he’s holding on because it’s all he can do. Then she moves, her hands finding themselves on his side, fingers grasping and clenching the fabric of his shirt desperately, kissing him with equal amounts of fervor. Their bodies come together as they did those years ago, melding perfectly together, and it’s the taste of salt that makes Robert pull away, out of breath and confused.
When he sees her tears, feels her pulling him back towards her, he knows then that he may have ruined it all and he’s terrified.
“Rome meant everything to me, Robert.” She breathes deeply and her fingers slowly release him, stepping back. “Meant. I can’t keep living on an empty promise. We’re worlds away. We didn’t even try and what does that say? When I thought you died, in the helicopter with the Camerlengo…I couldn’t breathe and it terrified me because I barely knew you. I don’t know what it is about you but I can’t do it if it’s just going to be a hopeless dream.”
“It doesn’t have to be a hopeless dream!” He’s eager and frantic, determined to change her mind, make her see that it doesn’t have to be that way. “I know I let it all down but…I’ll get on a plane, immediately, and I’ll go to Switzerland and this can work, don’t you see?”
“Until you do, I can’t live on anymore empty promises.” She nods to the door and he turns to find packed bags that he had completely missed when he first came in and when he looks back at her, she’s grabbing her purse and he’s left speechless. She pauses in front of him and leans forward, ghosting her lips across his and before he can understand what’s happened, she’s gone.
That night, he books a flight to Switzerland because he realizes she’s right: an empty promise is no way to live and he’s determined to fight.
robert/vittoria (angels & demons); pg for language
~2,200 words
“Rome meant everything to me, Robert.” She breathes deeply and her fingers slowly release him, stepping back. “Meant. I can’t keep living on an empty promise. ... I don’t know what it is about you but I can’t do it if it’s just going to be a hopeless dream.” (post-the lost symbol)
notes: no beta so all mistakes are mine. forever a dan brown and robert/vittoria stan. must give a shout out to this fanvid as i watched it many a time while writing this.
“You’ve seen this before? Well, please, enlighten me.”
“It’s the sun cross!” A shout from the middle of the sea of students; Robert could hardly see their faces with the lights on him.
“And what does it represent?”
“It’s an astrological symbol.”
“But is that all it is?” He was met with silence and a familiar smirk came across his face, that comfortable feeling of besting his students. “Symbols travel through time. They don’t fade, but evolve. She’s right, the sun cross is an astrological symbol but that’s certainly not all it is. It represents the sun and four seasons in neo-Pagan religions and Norwegian Nazis used it as their official symbol.” He pauses, letting the information sink in, always the best part. “Ah, didn’t see that one coming? I’ll see you next week.”
The bustle is immediate and Robert begins to pack up his own belongings, shutting down his laptop, gathering his notes, sweating under his tweed jacket and under the heat of the lights. Finally, he’s met with silence except for the rustling of his own effects but he gets a feeling he’s not alone and when he turns, all he can make out is a figure in one of the back rows. “Hello?”
One could say with everything Robert had seen and gone though, fear would be a trivial emotion but he argued the opposite. His paranoia and sense of alertness had only heightened with the events in Italy, France, England, and DC. Those all seemed like a lifetime ago, so foreign they might not have been his life at all but a dream, a dream of someone else’s life.
Clutching his bag, he ascended the stairs towards the exit of the lecture hall and the figure, his chest tightening, heart beginning to race. Who he saw was not who he was expecting but the bio entanglement physicist certainly knocked the wind out of him, leaving him immediately tongue-tied and woozy.
“Sir?”
“Y-Yes? What? Oh! Yes, sorry.” Tearing his eyes away from Vittoria, he awkwardly hands the cashier the money for the tea and cappuccino and instantly his eyes go back to her. It had been hours since he had happened upon her in the lecture hall (Harvard doesn’t re-schedule meetings for women you thought you might have loved once and still think about more than you’d like to admit) and he was still convinced he was dreaming, shaky on his feet and fumbling over his words (something he wasn’t used to as a professor). Seeing her again brought back a torrent of emotions, regret coming to mind first, eating away at him, weighing on his shoulders. He saw her and wanted to turn back time, wanted to make good on the promise he’d given her, and he didn’t want to believe he couldn’t do that.
He walked to the table she was sitting at, legs crossed and beautiful Italian hair falling over her shoulders, and he suddenly had no idea what to say to her. In silence he handed her the cappuccino and her hands delicately enveloped the cup, taking a sip before looking at him and he felt the pressure to not look away from her. “What…” He falters, as if his heart had leapt into his throat. “What brings you to Boston?”
“A conference. On CERN’s dime, of course.” The confidence in her voice, the silky accent rolling off her tongue, made him unexpectedly feel inadequate. He started and stopped, just watching her, realizing he still knew those eyes so well, and he wondered if she had ever thought of him over the past years other than the postcards they rarely exchanged. Perhaps he had always been less than worthy of a great scientific revolutionary.
He saw it as a sign of accomplishment when his dreaming of her had virtually ceased, only appearing now as glimpses and months apart. But the fact that they were still happening at all, waking him in the night and leaving him restless, made him hate himself.
“Six months.”
“Six months.” The grin on her face was infectious and he impulsively leaned down to kiss her, loving the fact that he was able to do that, detesting the fact that he wouldn’t be able to do it for half a year. So he held onto this moment, dropping his bag on the airport floor, drawing her into him and never wanting to let go.
“Robert, you’ll miss your plane.”
“I’ll schedule a later one, more time for us.”
She laughed and he wanted to hear that laugh always. “Go, don’t be ridiculous.” As she gently pushed him, he conceded and grabbed his bag and began to head toward his gate, looking back on occasion. “Six months!” She called out and he glanced back one more time.
Those six months had turned into three years and a total of six postcards from each of them. Hardly what he had been expecting or wanting but things got busy, both at Harvard and over the world, chasing mysteries and secret societies and feeling more and more tired with each passing day.
“Oh.” It was all he could muster for a reply and he hurriedly sipped at his tea, trying to distract himself from the fact that he was failing miserably at interacting with her like a normal human being anymore. It had been so natural in Rome, the curve of her hip underneath his palm, the smell of her hair on the hotel terrace.
“You’ve been busy.” He raises his eyebrows and she coyly smiles and he feels the heat rise from his neck to his cheeks. “I do have time to read newspapers. I have a feeling you’ll never get on the Vatican’s good list.”
He can’t help but chuckle at that. “No. No, I don’t think so.” And for a moment it feels like no time has passed since Rome, as if they’ve been together all along but the realization that that’s not the scenario crashes reality down on him. “I can only assume how much CERN has you working.”
“Oh, it’s endless. Tiring and immensely rewarding, I wouldn’t give it up for anything.” And the way she says that makes him think he’s supposed to be the ‘anything’. He doesn’t want to be in competition with her job because he knows which one he’d want her to choose. He still remembers, acutely, the feeling that had consumed him when she’d been kidnapped by the Hassassin, a feeling of one-track desperation that he’d never experienced before, not caring about anything else that would happened that day as long as he found her alive. He knew that was a feeling you couldn’t have for just anyone and seeing her now, drumming her fingers along the edge of her cup, brought back so many feelings he thought he had locked away.
“So is there, ah…anyone? I just assumed…when the postcards stopped…” He has no idea where the question comes from as he clumsily gets out the words and finds he’s incredibly nervous for the answer, the rapidity of his heart pounding in his ears.
She glances down and he realizes he’s finally broken her composure and that only makes him more nervous. “His name is Diedrich; he’s an experimental particle physicist.”
The words weigh heavily in the air before he blurts out: “Just your type.” And he’s too busy staring down at his lukewarm cup of tea to notice the way her face falls when he says that.
When the door opens, he can tell by the look on her face that she wasn’t expecting to see him. “Robert.” It comes out as more of a breath than a solid word and before anything can happen, she moves aside to let him in.
She had mentioned where she was staying at coffee, as well as the fact that she would be leaving the next day, and Robert had tossed and turned, knowing he couldn’t just let her slip away again. Things could be different this time, they had to be. He could have just moved on, he could have realized knowing a woman for one crazy day wasn’t justification for the way he was feeling, he could have not made that promise to her. But he had and he didn’t regret it, not for a moment, and all he did regret was not keeping that promise.
“I don’t know what Rome meant to you or what our promise meant to you but all I know is that I’ve never been able to stop thinking about you and then you stopped writing and now you have some…physicist and I know I’m hardly competition but I was under the impression that there was something. And you show up here, un-phased like we’re just old colleagues…to what? To remind me that Rome was just us acting on the insanity of the day, that the promise we made was false hope? Well, points taken, Vittoria.”
He didn’t know where any of it had come from and that wasn’t how he had been intending to start this conversation but it had all come out before he could stop and think. He realized, however, seeing that stunned expression on her face, he was grateful he had acted on impulse. Until the look of stun evolved into anger, that is.
“I wasn’t the only one who stopped writing, Robert! When six months passed and a year passed, it was easier not to write, not to give myself some…bullshit optimism that I’d see you again because that promise did mean something to me. And for you to accuse me of not caring or thinking it all meant nothing to me is absurd.” She paused and let her words settle between them but before he had a chance to say anything in response, she was at it again. “How dare you come here and make me out to be the bad guy? I came to see you because Rome was real.”
Pressing his lips firmly together, all he can do is stand and stare for several moments, reveling in that fiery Italian temper, wondering how he had ever thought it was okay to let her go. “And Diedrich?”
“Excuse me?” She hisses at him, taking a step towards him. “You hardly gave me reason to believe I was spoken for. I had waited long enough for you already. I wasn’t going to wait anymore.”
He sighs and her words weigh heavily on him and he feels defeated. Running a hand over his face, he looks at her with a sudden regret and desperation in his eyes. “I know.” His voice is hoarse and the mood has shifted and her lips part, cheeks flushing. “And I should have. Vittoria, I wasn’t lying when I said I’ve never been able to stop thinking about you. It’s not fair to either of us but you’re incredible and I was a fool.”
“Robert…” She’s shaking her head, as if this is the last thing she wants to hear and he steps forward, slipping his hand to the back of her neck, smooth fingertips pressing gently into her skin and he’s kissing her with such emotion that she’s become his oxygen and he can’t let go.
He feels her stiffen and hesitate and he’s holding on because it’s all he can do. Then she moves, her hands finding themselves on his side, fingers grasping and clenching the fabric of his shirt desperately, kissing him with equal amounts of fervor. Their bodies come together as they did those years ago, melding perfectly together, and it’s the taste of salt that makes Robert pull away, out of breath and confused.
When he sees her tears, feels her pulling him back towards her, he knows then that he may have ruined it all and he’s terrified.
“Rome meant everything to me, Robert.” She breathes deeply and her fingers slowly release him, stepping back. “Meant. I can’t keep living on an empty promise. We’re worlds away. We didn’t even try and what does that say? When I thought you died, in the helicopter with the Camerlengo…I couldn’t breathe and it terrified me because I barely knew you. I don’t know what it is about you but I can’t do it if it’s just going to be a hopeless dream.”
“It doesn’t have to be a hopeless dream!” He’s eager and frantic, determined to change her mind, make her see that it doesn’t have to be that way. “I know I let it all down but…I’ll get on a plane, immediately, and I’ll go to Switzerland and this can work, don’t you see?”
“Until you do, I can’t live on anymore empty promises.” She nods to the door and he turns to find packed bags that he had completely missed when he first came in and when he looks back at her, she’s grabbing her purse and he’s left speechless. She pauses in front of him and leans forward, ghosting her lips across his and before he can understand what’s happened, she’s gone.
That night, he books a flight to Switzerland because he realizes she’s right: an empty promise is no way to live and he’s determined to fight.