Work Text:
Green hills roll from below a high ridge, which is tall and craggy and ancient. The ridge cuts along the landscape, gently sloping down to endless green and yellow plains. Somewhere in the distance, a cow lows, the echo sounding through the valley. Lochs and ponds dot the grass here and there, the pale blue water placid and still. Purple heather and lavender shiver and wave in the cool breeze that blows through, making the long grasses cascade like the sea.
Upon the ridge, the small dainty white flowers of mouse-ear cluster like silver coins in the clover and grass. Redshank grows, its flowers resembling pinkish raspberries, near the tall sage. The flowers blossom, releasing their sweet scent into the air, filling the cloudy sky with smells so strong they could be colors.
The clouds move slowly across the sky, shading areas of grass and moors at their leisure. They are huge, puffy, and gray. The sun, nearing the horizon now, pokes through a bit of stray, low-lying clouds to shine upon a house on the ridge.
The house is set apart from the little village below it, its entirety visible from the front door. An unpaved road leads to it from the back of the house, which is a small red brick cottage with a gray roof. A garden lies next to it, tidy rows of brightly colored flowers looking up at the sun.
The flowers have been chosen primarily for their symbolism. Some represent people the residents of the cottage knew, once upon a time: forget-me-nots for remembrance and hope; poppies for remembrance and sacrifice; petunias for anger, resentment, and hope; snapdragons for benevolence and indifference; masterwort for protection and courage; and foxglove for protection and their toxicity. And some are for themselves: squills for loyalty and constancy; and winter aconite for hope and new beginnings.
In front of the cottage, overlooking the moors below them, are two men in wooden chairs. One man is small and frail-looking. He has many fading scars and a cane lies beside him. His silvery hair falls freely around his face and shoulders, and he’s wearing an oversized, olive-green knitted jumper with a cow on it. The jumper matches his eyes. (Was there ever a time when it didn’t?)
The other man is larger, with messy red hair and blue eyes. He looks much younger than the other man, and with less scars. He’s wearing a pale blue sweater vest that’s a bit too small for him, along with blue jeans. There is a streak of white through his auburn hair, standing out like the white tip of a fox’s tail. (Was there ever a time when it didn’t?)
The smaller man looks over at the larger one and smiles fondly. All the beauty of the rolling grass upon the plain and the placid lochs like glittering diamonds is contained in the loving gaze.
The larger man looks back with an equally fond gaze, all the beauty of the bright flowers and the drifting clouds within. They hold hands, or perhaps it is more accurate to say that their hands find each other. As if they were always meant to.
The larger man sighs happily. He sits back in his chair, relaxed as a leaf falling from a tree, finally at rest. “We’re safe, Jon,” he says. There is so much in those three words. First we. We are together. They are together, holding hands on a ridge in the Scottish Highlands. And Jon. A name said so many times before, in anger and misery and fear and confusion and hope and betrayal and now…with only love.
Safe. What a small word, yet so powerful. It means so much to be safe. They cannot be disturbed any longer. At one point, Martin was convinced the only way that was ever going to happen was in death. We’re safe, Jon seemed like a phrase that he could never say, even if it came true. But it was true, and they were still alive.
“Yes,” replies Jon. “We are.” The sun sets, bathing Martin in a golden light. Jon thinks he looks lovely. The white streak in his hair has been dipped in the golden rays of the sun. He is glad to see Martin happy. If he had had only one wish, it would be this. And he has been granted it. It seems unbelievable. Sometimes he can’t believe it. But those times are less and less. This is true. This life is real. “I love you, Martin,” he says, the words falling from his lips almost without conscious thought. The love inside him has spilled over in a rush of honey-sweet words, shining golden even without the sunlight. Martin smiles.
“I love you too,” he says. The sun sets, like a drop of water hanging for so long from a branch and falling, there and then gone. The stars are beginning to shine. It is getting cold. They will go in soon, and Jon will grade his students’ papers he’s been procrastinating on, and Martin will read the book he got from the library. Life goes on, and it is so, so gloriously normal. So blessedly uninteresting.
But for now, there they sit, silhouetted in the darkening sky. They are safe. They are happy. They have achieved that impossible dream—somewhere else. Paradise, Elysium, Valinor. A place to rest and love and live.
Happy anniversary, Jonathan Sims and Martin Blackwood. On this day, Jon rescued Martin from the Lonely and they escaped to Scotland together.