A Far Horizon - PicFic 7/2
Some people are immune to the seduction of ocean breezes tinged with the tang of salt air. A very few can resist the allure of a wave as it rolls in and consumes the sand beneath your feet; the feel of where you stand diminishing with the escaping tide.
Napoleon Solo was not one who could walk away from the waves. Instead, he stood barefooted on the wet sand and let the water buffet against his legs; the suit was already ruined, why not return to Headquarters with sand in his cuffs?
Illya was sitting up on the pier on one of the ancient benches normally occupied by fishermen and children. Napoleon could just see the top of his blond head, bowed to the sea in a sort of solemn worship.
Only it wasn’t worship. It was grief. Each man was attempting to assuage his own misery in whatever manner he could. Napoleon thought the sea might wash his away while the Russian, as usual, faced into the wind and dared it to tear any more of his heart away than had already been done by the day’s events.
Napoleon bent over and picked up a sand dollar; it wasn’t often you found one of those, he mused to himself. He wondered if it might be a sign of some sort. Perhaps luck might smile upon him once again, so he brushed off the little disc that had once held life and tucked it into his pocket. As he did so he looked up again to check on his partner.
Illya vacillated between hanging his head in dejection and wanting to face the sky and yell at whatever deity might reside there. In moments like these he repented of ever having had thoughts of a faith that belonged to the ancient ones, the babushkas and their priests. He derided himself at asking the same questions that had been presented by countless others.
“How could a loving God allow…? How? And what was love and who administered love and … chyort.”
Kuryakin and Solo had failed to achieve the desired results on this mission and someone had died. Someone else. Someone who should not have died. Illya hung his head once more, no longer interested in yelling at the wind. He felt a hand on his shoulder and knew it was Napoleon, understood that his friend was also burdened by the death of an innocent person.
“You okay, Illya?”
“As well as you, I suppose.”
Napoleon smiled that half amused, half forlorn smile that was uniquely his. People died around them more often than he wanted to admit, but when it happened to someone who wasn’t even part of the mission … People said Solo was lucky, but today he didn’t feel like luck was anywhere close by, unless it was bad luck.
“I know it wasn’t our fault, but I keep thinking that … I mean, if only we had been…” Illya stopped his partner’s speculation.
“Been what? Faster, smarter? We do the best job we can and then we try to do it even better. Lerner had no regard for life; that young man was doomed as soon as he stepped into that laboratory. The university allowed a madman to run that program, and it’s a miracle that no more than one person was victimized by him.”
Napoleon cocked his head to one side, causing Illya to stop and, with a raised eyebrow ask why.
“You said it was a miracle. Do you believe that?”
The blond turned his gaze back to the ocean, unsure of his answer or his ability to reason with the unknown.
“I do not know. Perhaps. I suppose it might help to believe… something.”
The two men sat and stared out to someplace beyond the waves, all the way to the horizon. Out there, all the way out there.
Napoleon sighed a long and weary sigh. Not resignation, but a sigh of great depth nonetheless.
“Something, eh? Yes, I suppose it would help.”
And so they sat there on the old bench and watched the sun set into that far horizon, wondering what they might believe.