Title: Beneath the Window
By: Bree (virtualjag@yahoo.com)
Disclaimer: I'll put up no argument this time...wait a minute there are no character names in this piece. So if you think it's Harm and Mac then that's your prerogative. My lawyers advise me to keep silent.
Notes: Apparently the spirit of Hemingway grabbed me and I wrote in choppy little pieces. Apologies to those who, like me, don't care for Hemingway's style.
The window is the space window in the National Cathedral. I found a pic at http://www.cathedral.org/cathedral/visit/virtual-tour/images/space-window-huge.p.jpg

She stood beneath the window. Its patterns were soothing. That chunk that was not of this earth embedded in the glass. She came here because the tourists couldn't bother her. They would think she was one of them simply overtaken by the grandeur of the building. The sunlight that normally made the glass shimmer was missing today. Everything was dark and rainy. Even her eyes.

She never should have let him go without her. He had sworn that he would be okay and she had trusted him. Now he was missing and no one could tell her where he had gone. He had claimed it was nothing. A simple investigation, he said. He lied. Simple investigations let you come home.

She leaned against the wall and let the peace of the window wash over her. The tourists didn't see the woman in the corner even as they took their pictures. She painted a picture of despondency. A woman who felt she had lost too much in life. It was time she should win. She just wanted one victory. Was that too much to ask? She wasn't asking for the world. Just him.

She could see him dancing behind her eyes. He mocked her sorrow. He moved toward her and then disappeared. He comforted her. He did what her mind told him to. He was a marionette. Her puppet. She reached for him. Tried to stop the torture. It was futile.

Tears didn't come. She had no tears left. Only the sense of loss that haunted her day and night. She should have been used to the feeling. Loss had been the only thing she had been able to call her own since she was a child. He had had the ability to take the sense of loss. Now he was contributing to it.

From behind her closed eyes she didn't notice the sun fighting to get out. The despair receded. She felt his approach. Heard him drop to his knees. Reveled in the feeling of his arms around her legs and his face buried in her waist. Her hands pulled him up. Her arms wound around his waist. She never wanted to let him go. Her lips found his. She wanted to exist like this forever.

A simple investigation, he had said.

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