The sailboat was smaller than he remembered. That happens, when you return to something you did when you were younger. You can never go back. But maybe you can visit.


He wasn't sure when the idea first came. It blossomed like something small and unnoticed, slowly growing into an Idea that he'd eventually pitched. An idea that would take them away, together, where there was just We and not Sacramento. For everything that Sacramento was, it was still a long shadow. It was a place for Councilors and disapproving Guardians; a place of Bears, of confrontations laid to rest but still simmering below.


Just over three hours away was Carmel.


There, there was nothing but the ocean. And boats. Very, very small boats. Sunfish, to be exact. It was the rest of a Christmas present, or Hannukah present, or Just Because present. For her, for him. He missed the ocean. Rivers are great, but they're not oceans. And don't even start on the East Coast versus West Coast. Just call it We Coast. It was something to share -- something he enjoyed, and so it was part of who he was. But it was also, maybe, an experience for someone who'd had a whole lot of yesterdays full of experiences stolen.


The rental wet suits had long lost their neoprene sheen. Small tears here and there matched fraying seams, but they were still serviceable. Creases of folded neoprene chafed the underarms, but the thick rubber would keep them afloat (better than life jackets) and just as importantly, warm. Side note? He wasn't sure how self conscious she was about the scars. By now, it was obvious they didn't faze him at all. And maybe not her, either; but forearms sticking out from a hoodie is one thing, maybe a swimsuit is something else entirely. But, mostly, it was about buoyancy and warmth.


And Sunfish were a lot smaller than he remembered.


At the waters edge, feet quickly numbed and he could feel the water seep through the suit. It would take time for the water trapped between skin and suit to warm up. A wide, goofy smile was plastered to his face the same way his already soggy mop was plastered to his head.

"Hop in! Feet there," he waved at the footwell, and pointed at a cleat. "Hold that. Just hang on, it'll take us a bit to push out and catch a breeze. If we tip over, don't worry. You'll float, and these things'll get upright again no problem. Promise!"


Once she was set, he pushed them out until his feet left the muddy bottom. That layer of water? Still not warmed up. He pulled himself up out of the water and over the side, no small feat given he probably couldn't have managed it a year ago, and flopped onto the side with all the grace of a fish caught and reeled in. Hands grasped the dagger board as he positioned himself opposite of her, and he shoved it down into the slot with a hollow thump to create the keel of the small boat. Sliding back to rest he hip against the rudder, he loosed the ropes that held it and the sail captive, and began fishing for a breeze.


A curious look was shot over, complete with a single arched eyebrow. The smile was still there; almost child-like, with features slowly relaxing and opening up as they did for no one else.


"You ready?"


Gotta check. Just in case, before they were well and truly under way.


The curtain of dark hair swept aside as she turned and fen green pools met his gaze, but the presence of the woman he'd brought with him only alighted in those eyes as the next lapped a the boat, sweeping her consciousness back the present with the reel of the tide.


"Yeah," she replied with a simple nod, tugging a smile onto her lips. "Take us out, el capitain."


The words didn't sound forced, but her eyes slid to the peripheries of his body, to the water behind him, the cool plain of liquid rolling gently towards shore. She'd been like that for the last few days. Distant. Adrift on the solitude of an ocean only she could see. They'd planned the trip more than a week before. lining up work schedules, money, Consilium matters, those all took time, and it was a good thing that they'd planned ahead, because she might not have agreed to go if it had been a last minute jaunt. Well, not now. Ordinarily, she wouldn't be able to say no, but something had changed. Keen eyes and even keener mind couldn't miss it, for all she'd tried to hide it. An illusionist was always in the habit of looking for invisible strings and mirrors, and it was not leap to recognize them when they'd behind her eyes.


A gust of wind picked up, beggining to carry their boat, and Avis took in a full, measured breath of the ocean air, and her face tipped towards the touch of the sun. A placidity settled over her, but it was more real than the smile had been, warmer than her gaze, even though her eyes moved toward the horizon. It was easier, here, to focus on the present. To be present. To focus away from the terror which sat curled in her mind. Sun, wind, a mist of water, the taste of life, wonders which she'd never been able to dream of resurrected the shell back to what he was used to. It freed her mind from a constant gloom of worry and as she turned back towards him and met his eyes, she saw a shelter in what had once been their normalcy.


"You ever think about the first person who made a boat? Like, not the Greeks, or a civilization like that, but the first person that realized they could tie sticks together and travel on water?"


"Sometimes!"


He worked the rudder back and forth, turning the flat sheet of wood into a paddle to push them further out. The other hand swished the sail around. It really was like fishing, except for the right breeze. He turned back for a moment, studying their launch point, memorizing it as it receded. Getting back? Yeah, totally a thing. He'd dragged a sunfish down a coastline before. Zero fun. Metal clanged as wind caught the sail, snapping it taut and pulling at the rings that affixed it to the mast. Slowly, he let the rope out. The grin widened a little bit.

"But, maybe, more in the," hands fought with the rudder and rope, trying to gesture, "Hmmmm, sense of, being the first? Not like an explorer of the great unknown. But to look at something, and see a potential that no one else has? That's... it's own kind of magic."


It wasn't an intentional analogy. He was totally a Major Fan of people that could come up with ideas that no one else had. But his thoughts still took hold of the analogy, dove-tailing to a point in time when there had just been Potential. An introduction. Moxie. Firehouse. Six months ago? More? As the boat settled onto a course with the breeze and they cut through the water, he glanced over. Getting them moving had consumed most of his attention, but now it was free to wander.


He'd noticed. Were they doubts? He'd had doubts. But here they were. Should he say something? Had he done something? Something wrong? Was this a pity vacation? You know, that whole, this isn't working but we'll try this one last thing to rekindle the spark deal. Was there someone else? You can't obsess over it. There are always questions. Maybe even doubts. And there's nothing wrong with that, because it means you care. Right?

"But I like the idea of being the first into the unknown, too, I think?" Louder now, over the wind and soft crash of the hull on water. "Not just the idea, but, that there's this whole... world... existence... that most people don't see, because they're too busy standing in line for a triple whip decaf skim latte."

Hands shook, wiggling the rope and rudder, and eyebrows raised. "You want to have a go at being el capitan? Or later."


A leg splayed out of the foot well, and the foot eased itself over the side until toes struck water, sending up a liquid fan in their wake.




Her eyes tracked the spray and she slid down so she could slip her own leg over the other side of the boat to make a matching fan of water, a moment of symmetry. Hopefully it wouldn't matter for the actual sailing of the boat. She knew weight and balance were important for a craft like this, but she had no conception of just what actions could drastically upset that balance. Well, aside from the most obvious things, like trying to stand on the side of the boat, or something stupid like that, but she had the impression that it might take far less than that to tip them.


"Maybe later," she said, looking back at him. "I'd rather just, ya know, be here for a bit. Like, not in this exact spot on the water, but in this sort of moment. I've gotta make a memory of it."


The wind then stepped in to provide the implication, it's gust slowly dying away, even if just for a moment. Avis raised her head and peered along the shoreline, as though looking for the source of the wind, and then let her head drift back towards the horizon where sky and ocean met. Now there was a beautiful sight. An infinity of air joining water. A realm of the unknown, a curtain of light unable to reach her eyes and spell an image across them. It was just an illusion, of course. A trick born from the tyranny of spacial rigidity and optical incapability, and she began to wonder what the trick would be to fold space, or her perception, to peer past that curtain and into what lay beyond.


"The Unknown' is kinda a strange expression. Like, just because it's not known to those triple whippers, or whatever, or to you, doesn't mean it's actually something that hasn't been discovered. What about re-discovering something? Being the second person to go into what was once unknown? That kinda describes what Atlantis is like for us, I think."




Feet in the water? Like foils. No, they weren't going to lift the craft like a cat, but it let him let out the sail more. Eyes watched the twin sprays behind them, and a laugh slipped out. It really is the little things. He took another moment to check the coast, picking out new landmarks, then turned back and slowly arced the Sunfish parallel to the coast.


"That's where the shelf ends," he called out, chin-jutting towards taller, choppier waves. In that? Tip over for sure. It wasn't a big deal, at all, but it could be disconcerting as heck for a first-timer.


For a few moments, there was nothing but the whistle of wind, whipping of sail, and thumping of waves against the hull as he turned to study her. It began as a mental snapshot; like her, capturing the memory. Like the memory of laughter piercing the wind and clatter of wheels on train tracks. A moment without thoughts, but, like every moment however long, it passed.


"I don't know! Sometimes, I think, everything has already been done. Every sight seen, every idea had, you know, by someone else. Like, we all go through the same motions? But someone's already done it. But at the, uh, other end of the spectrum? We're all different. So even if we see or do the same thing, it means something different. It affects us differently, since, you know, we're kind of just the sum of our experiences and how we, hmmmm, deal with them." Like scars. "And I don't even know if Atlantis is real? Like, that i can be 'discovered'? Maybe it's just an idea, like Eden. Or even if it's real, and we find it, that it'll mean something different. We won't do the same things, because we see it differently."


Could they make the same mistakes? Sure. Maybe not in the same way, but with the same intent. Which would be sad, because they knew better. Unless...

"Hey. Do, uh." Careful, yo. Whatever. They'd already talked about the Great Heresy. "Do the Arrows have any, like, uh... I dunno, legends? Prophecies? I totally am not supposed to talk about this, by the way." For once, his expression was Totally Serious. Sure, he could get in trouble -- but sometimes Guardians think things need to be Cleaned Up. Which meant her. "So, like, keep this between us? But, the Visus has... this prophecy? About a Great Mage." Occupied hands couldn't do Air Quotes. "So, maybe, that's part of what will be different, too. Someone to lead the way."


He shrugged.


"But, yeah, they take Baby Magus pretty seriously. Uh, I mean, the Hieromagus."


Everything that had been in her mind as he'd talked, thoughts about the Akashic records, the Atlantean myth, the Arrow and its beliefs, even her response to the secret he was sharing with her, all was washed away like sand in the tide as she heard that one, insidious word. Her eyes dropped away from his and her leg drew back into the boat, her arms curling against her stomach. Wind picked up, buffeting them, pushing their boat just that much faster through the water, sending up a fine mist of cool liquid to bead against them, but even as wind and water player over her skin and mussed her hair she felt like the world was closing in on her. The cage of bone around her lungs tightened down and she felt a little spasm pass through her stomach, a phantom of panic that so closely mimicked her fears that she felt suddenly chilled. She was like a creature trapped in the arctic, amid ocean spray, with a hatred of progeny ripe in her mind.


Her similarities to the Swiss doctor, ended there, however, for her lover still lived and her progeny was yet unborn, though that was the root of the fear which had been eating her, literally, from the inside out all this time. There was something growing inside her. Something hideous, but only because of how it would change her and her life, hideous because it reminded her of all the illusions that had once trapped her, and the insidious draw of happiness which they promised. But she couldn't go back to those days with her family, all bound in pretty illusions. She couldn't support innocence and wonder, couldn't provide what a new life would need, and the thing that hurt the most was that she wanted to be able to. She wanted, with a fierceness that shook her very world, to be able to, but she just couldn't. The world she lived in, a world of war, was no place for a child. Softness was needed for new life, and she had none to give. A child of hers would just become another corpse in the graveyard of her family; a victim of her blood. Except, it wasn't just her blood. It was from his blood, too.


Guided by that thought, her eyes lifted and searched for his again, two trails of salt water down her cheeks mixing with the spray of the ocean. Words fell out of her mouth, hollow.


"I'm pregnant."