This is the final story in a series that started with "No Such Summer" and "A Season Lost." Both stories are available on the FK Fiction Web page, or on my own Web page (URL in my .sig). You won't know who the main character is if you don't read the first two stories, so it really does help to read them first. :)

All poetry is from Part I of Edna St. Vincent Millay's "Not So Far as the Forest."

This story is based on characters and concepts created by James Parriott and Barney Cohen, and wholly owned by Paragon and Sony-- but they don't own what the characters do in my head, or in my stories. This story is for entertainment purposes only, and no infringement is intended. Please do not reproduce in print or electronically without my permission.

Thanks to Kelly for beta-reading, and for listening.

Victoria, British Columbia, 2083

That chill is in the air
Which the wise know well, and even have learned to bear.
This joy, I know,
Will soon be under snow.

"Nana? You awake?"

The elderly woman turned her head and raised one eyebrow at the figure standing in the doorway of her room. "Of course I'm awake, Rick. It's only ten o'clock. I'm old, not dead."

"I know that, Nana." The young man didn't mention that when he'd looked in an hour ago, his grandmother had been sound asleep in her chair by the window. Nana was pretty sharp for someone approaching 90, but it didn't do any good to remind her of some of the inevitable failures.

He came in and crouched in front of her chair, and his grandmother ran one fragile hand over his dark curls. "Look at your hair," she said fondly. "Your great-grandfather would have called you mop-head."

"I get them honest." His grandmother's curls were pure silver now, but still beautiful; they gleamed in the light from the bedside lamp. Rick reached out and took her hand between his. "Nana, there's someone here to see you."

"At this hour?" She laughed softly. "I don't think I have any friends that would venture out this late at night. Who is it, sweetheart?"

Rick shrugged slightly, looking puzzled. "I've never seen him before-- neither has mom. But he says he's an old friend of yours. His name is Nicholas Carroll."

The elderly woman went absolutely still, her brown eyes widening. For a moment Rick panicked-- was she having a seizure? Was something wrong? When a slow smile crossed her face, he let out a breath he hadn't even known he was holding.

"Nick." She looked away from him briefly, glancing out the window as if expecting to see something there besides the darkness. "Yes. Show him in, please."

Rick stood, looking down at his grandmother. There was a tone in her voice he'd never heard before-- but her eyes were sparkling and she looked just fine. He touched her shoulder briefly. "Are you sure?"

"Positive."

The sun sets in a cloud
And is not seen.
Beauty, that spoke aloud,
Addresses now only the remembering ear.
The heart begins here
To feed on what has been.

The door shut behind Rick with a soft "swoosh" as he went back out into the foyer, and Anna Lambert Osborn Swanson used the few moments she had alone to get a little more comfortable in her chair. All the technology, all the drugs in the world couldn't stop a body from getting old eventually, she thought wryly.

Old age was welcome in many ways-- she'd had a long, full life. And somehow, age brought the past closer. Looking around sometimes, she could see shadows of the people she'd loved and lost, nearby, watching over her. Tom, sometimes young, sometimes faded and grey. Her father. Often, now, her mother was there.

He did come, Mom. He couldn't let me go without one last visit.

As she heard the door slide open again, she tucked a curl behind her ear but didn't turn her head to look at who walked into the room.

"Nana?" Rick's voice was questioning, hesitant.

"Thanks, sweetie. I'll let you know if I need anything." She heard the door close, heard barely perceptible footsteps approaching her. "Hello, Nick. I hoped I'd see you again someday."

He walked around to the front of her chair, studying her intently, surprise evident on his face. "Hello, Anna."

Night falls fast.
Today is in the past.

Despite herself, despite the wondering and imagining she'd done over the years, she was still shocked to see the exact same face that she had known... How long ago? About seventy years. The eyes were still that indefinable color; no new wrinkles marred his fair skin. He was still a thirty-something man-- what must it be like to be perpetually the same age?

But his eyes were startled. "You thought I'd be surprised to see you." Anna smiled.

"Yes," he confessed. "I wasn't sure..."

She cut him off with a shake of her head. "Over there." She indicated her bedside table with one hand. "In the top drawer-- a wooden box. Could you bring it to me, please? It would take me too long to get out of this stupid
chair."

He smiled, then did as she asked and retrieved a small box from the drawer. He appeared to be a bit off-balance with the entire situation-- with Anna's lack of surprise, with her calm acceptance of his presence.

"Thank you." She took the box from him, settling the box in her lap. "Why don't you have a seat, Nick. There's a chair over there."

He pulled the chair closer as her hands worked at the clasp on the box. "Fine finger movement isn't what it used to be," she said with a grimace.

"Arthritis?" Nick asked, sitting down and shrugging his coat off his shoulders.

"Yes. Runs in the family. Aging's a bitch."

He laughed in surprise, raising his eyebrows at her choice of words. Why was it that everyone expected the elderly to be angelic, Anna wondered? She'd never been an angel, and she wasn't about to start now.

"I'd have recognized you anywhere, Anna, even though..."

"Even though I'm old and grey?" She reached up and touched her hair, acknowledging how things had changed. "Technology can't stop it-- and I wouldn't want it stopped. It's the way things are supposed to be." Her mouth
quirked in a half-smile, acknowledging the irony of what she'd just said. "For most of us, that is." She felt him flinch at her words, but she didn't look up. The clasp sprung open. "There."

One blue-veined hand reached in and pulled out a photograph. The edges were curled, and Anna passed it carefully to Nick. "Remember this?"

He looked at the picture, and for just a moment there was a look of such pain on his face that Anna had to stop herself from reaching forward and putting her arms around him, comforting him, as she would have done with one of her children or grandchildren if they had looked like that. The depth of the emotion took her aback. After all these years, to see pain so fresh...

The expression passed, and Nick glanced up from the picture. "Police department picnic. Toronto. Early 1990's."

Anna nodded slowly.

Nick leaned back in his chair. "Where did you find this?"

Anna patted the box gently. "I found this at my father's house after he died. There was a note in it from him-- he found these things at my mother's after her death, and held on to them." Her voice was reminiscing. "I remember when I first saw that picture-- and I knew, somehow."

"Knew what?" Nick asked, intensely.

"About you. Not the whys or the hows. But somehow it all made sense." She gestured at the picture. "I know that fathers and sons often look alike-- my Peter certainly looks like Tom did at his age. But it's rare that fathers and
sons look like identical twins."

Nick nodded, and in that slow movement acknowledged everything that Anna had
ever wondered about.

"It was you in Toronto, not your father."

"It was me." She could hear relief in his voice; it must not be something he could talk about often or easily. How did one tell a mere mortal that one was some kind of being that never aged? "I knew your mother."

"And when you saw me at Michigan..."

"It was like seeing her all over again." He ran a hand through his hair in a movement that Anna still remembered.

"You kept track of me, over the years." It wasn't a question.

"Yes."

Anna closed the box, remembering. "She told me stories, things about history that I never read in school-- I realize now they probably came from you." Her eyes traced his face again. "Incredible."

"But you don't seem to have any trouble believing in something that's unbelievable."

"I've seen the proof," Anna commented matter-of-factly. "There are articles in here, some cards and letters.... And there have been other things, too, over the years. I didn't start thinking about it until after I found this box. My children always seemed to stumble into scholarships, and grants... just like the fellowship you found for me when I went to graduate school. Now my grandson is somehow getting a full ride to medical school. Amazing how brilliant my family is, isn't it?"

Nick smiled sheepishly, and Anna got a quick glimpse of how he must have looked as a little boy. How long ago had that been? "It seemed right, somehow. You're Natalie's child, her family."

"Thank you," Anna said simply.

"It's the least I could do." He was suddenly very far away from her, from the room they were in. He was off in his past. "Natalie was very special."

Anna had to turn her head away for a moment. She'd comprehended some of this before, but it hit her now. Hard. "You loved her."

"Very much." Anna wasn't looking at Nick, but the tone of his voice told her everything she'd ever needed to know. "Very much."

Oh, Mom. So much made sense, now.

A kiss on her forehead one night, after a bedtime story.

"Mom? Does everyone get to live happily ever after?"

Warm blue-grey eyes momentarily sad, then loving again, one hand stroking back an unruly lock of hair from her daughter's sleepy face. "Not everyone does, Anna. But you do."

Anna turned back to look at Nick, pushing the memories and her aches and pains aside. She only had a little while to talk with Nick. "There's one last thing you can do for me, Nicholas Carroll Knight," said Anna, her eyes steady.

"Anything." He leaned forward and took her hands in his, his cool pale hands gentle on her paper-fine skin.

There were tears in her voice. "Tell me about my mother."

Nick bowed his head, not letting go of her hands, his forehead nearly touching them. He took a deep breath, and was silent for several minutes, with only the distant sounds from the rest of the house disturbing the peace that was there between them.

"I met Natalie Lambert late one night, when I was brought into her morgue as her latest case..."

Blown from the dark hill hither to my door
Three flakes, then four
Arrive, then many more.

The End

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