2009: In Memoriam

Evergreen Cemetary, Morristown, NJ
March 15, 2009


   Melissa Stone sat on a bench just inside the cemetary gate, and watched as the Mother, the Child and the Crone walked towards her. At least, so she identified the trio approaching her at first glance.

   As they drew closer, she realized that "Crone" was perhaps too harsh a word for the oldest of the women. With the trained eye of a beautician, Melissa saw that her wild mane of bone-white hair was neither dyed nor bleached, but also that her face lacked the lines which would have indicated a great age. Instead, her skin looked flawless, although her darkened glasses and black trenchcoat made it seem very pale.

   Her identification of the other two was much more certain. The girl in the blue gingham dress was practically a younger version in the jacket and skirt. Their mutual auburn hair and similar facial construction told that tale plainly. Only the child's pale grey eyes were different from the mother's green-blue orbs, and Patricia Delafontaine smiled while her daughter seemed sober and restrained.

   Melissa stood up to greet them, conscious of the mild ache in her knees as she did. At the age of ninety, she might have felt worse pains than that but for a handful of life-extending kavuru tablets consumed over the decades. Effectively, she had the body of a woman half her age, but there had been no tablets in ten years, and time had begun to creep up on her again. There was now more white than grey in her salt-and-pepper hair, and the aches came more frequently. It didn't matter; in her heart, she felt young, and the bright blue eyes that met her in the mirror agreed with that assessment.

   "Melissa," Patricia greeted her warmly, with a quick hug -- a bit too quick for her liking, since she hated to be treated like glass.

   "It's good to see you again," she replied, then knelt down to eye level with the child. "And you must be Patience. Your mother has told me a lot about you."

   "Hello, Ms. Stone," the little girl murmured shyly.

   She'd have to work on this one. For the moment, she looked up at the silent white-haired woman with a somewhat quizzical expression.

   "This is Jessica," Patricia explained. "She's --"

   "I'm their bodyguard," the woman interrupted, her voice cold as steel and without obvious accent.

   /That/ was a bit of a shock. Melissa looked at Patricia with lifted eyebrows.

   Patricia nodded sadly. "This part of the country isn't really safe for us, right now."

   "Nowhere is safe. Ever," Jessica opined tonelessly.

   "And I'm afraid that we only have a very little time before we have to leave," Patricia continued as if the taller woman hadn't spoken.

   Melissa sighed. "I understand." For she did. In the forty years she'd known Pat, she'd gotten used to brief meetings and conversations, with the spectre of violence always hanging overhead. It had hurt then, and it hurt even worse now, in the autumn of her life.

   But, she reflected as she walked with Patricia and Patience, the alternative was real loneliness. Sometimes she thought Pat had done her no favor in giving her share of the kavuru tablets to her. As a result, she'd outlived all her other, mundane friends, and the secrecy that longevity demanded kept her from making new ones. So every moment that the supernaturals let her glimpse into their world became precious to her.

   Soon, they came to the small, private plot. Two graves stood side by side, with another a little off to the side.

         PATRICIA                        KENNETH
           MAY                            SIMON
        MASEFIELD                       MASEFIELD
        1914-1981                       1912-1969

   For a moment, they stood in silence before the graves, with Jessica a little off to the side.

   "What was his step-father like?" Patricia asked. "Kent's memories weren't very clear about him."

   Melissa reflected a moment, then shook her head. "He was very kind to me, of course, but the impression that I always received was of a man who'd gotten all he wanted out of life. Enormously self-satisfied, to the point where he lacked any ambition. Pat was part of it. Even though she made it clear that it was a marriage of convenience -- she needed someone to be Kent's father figure, someone who could afford to keep the work going -- he'd wanted her long enough that he could stand having her as a trophy. I don't want to make him sound like a monster," she added quickly. "He was always very kind to all of us, and Heaven knows he put up with a lot ..." She trailed off as Patricia nodded her understanding.

   Then, taking a deep breath, Melissa led them over to the third grave.

   She hadn't expected to ever see this particular stone erected. In fact, she remembered, as clearly as though it had happened yesterday, her first odd thought on hearing the news. She'd hoped that he'd thought to ensure that his tombstone was Y2K compliant. He had, of course. He was always foresighted.

                            KENNETH
                             LESTER
                           MASEFIELD
                           1949-2000

   With a jolt, Melissa realized that Jessica had come up behind her, ghost-like in her silence, and produced a bouquet of daisies from somewhere within the folds of her trenchcoat. Her face held no expression as she held it out for Melissa to take.

   Hesitantly, she took it, wondering if she was supposed to hand it to Patricia. Turning to look at the younger woman, a stab of sympathetic grief hit her as she saw that Patricia had folded her hands over her face. A few tears trickled out from underneath her hands. Melissa also saw that Patience was looking up at her mother with a worried and apprehensive expression.

   While she thought it more than a bit odd that the child wasn't mourning for her father as well, right at the moment wasn't the time to be concerned about that, nor about commemoration of the dead. The living took precedence. She set the bouquet down in front of Kent's grave, then embraced Patricia in a tight hug. She held her, feeling the gentle sobs pass through both their bodies, and their shared pain began to diminish.

   After a few minutes, Melissa gently led Patricia away from the graves towards a nearby stone bench, where they sat down. Her tears had eased, and the hands rested in her lap.

   "It's not just for him," Patricia said at last. "If it were, I don't think it'd hurt as much."

   Melissa didn't believe that for a second, but she didn't object.

   "We lost so much, nine years ago today. Losing Kent was hard enough, but ... Joel. Lyta. Dick. Hector. Jean. Hank. Tony. Nick. Even that monster, Vlad. A whole generation of our leaders and heroes, gone in only a few days."

   She almost smiled at the irony of Patricia including her in the fraternity of the supernatural with words like "we" and "our". Except for Kent and Joel, most of the names cited by the younger woman were just names to her.

   A sudden curiousity took hold of her. "That reminds me," Melissa began slowly. "I've often wondered who the United Nations put in charge of your Agency, after Kent ... passed away."

   Patricia let out a weary chuckle. "No one." She saw Melissa's startled look and shook her head. "UNSTA still exists, but Kent chose his own successor without referring to the Security Council. A woman we met during the crisis. She's a little clumsy and a bit of a crybaby, but the Security Council didn't have another candidate in mind, and I suppose that she's doing all right, since we're all still here."

   "What do you mean, `since we're all still here'? " Melissa asked uneasily.

   "Judgement Day almost happened on January 20, 2001," Patricia explained calmly. "There was a nuke in the basement of the Russian Embassy in Washington D.C., set to go off just before the new president took the oath of office. Meanwhile, one of the more radical generals of the U.S. Army was getting ready to launch a counter-attack to an attack that hadn't happened yet." She held up her thumb and forefinger about a centimetre apart. "If it weren't for sudden intelligence from some secret society in Ireland, we'd never have known what hit us."

   "Good lord," the older woman said weakly. It didn't begin to describe the shock she felt at the news, but she had no idea what else to say.

   "After that, the Silver Lady -- we call her that in private -- was called in on the carpet by Security Council. She'd had to order a lot of things done that she wasn't supposed to order without their permission. She could have just pointed out that it had been an emergency situation, and that it wouldn't happen again. But I guess she's not used to working like that.

   "And so she did something that Kent would never have had the chutzpah to do. She enlightenened them to the fact that they need UNSTA far more than it needs them. She pointedly told them that she did not feel obligated to share all our sources of intelligence with the Council or --" Patricia paused, her mouth twisted in a grimace. "-- with the people who pay their bills."

   "Good grief. And they didn't fire her on the spot?" Melissa was torn between admiration of the mystery woman's "chutzpah" and her growing realization that there seemed to be very few checks on the power Kent had handed her.

   "I think the fact that all the Senior Directors of the Agency were backing her to the hilt may have dissuaded them from that course. The prospect of losing the entire command staff of their covert paranormal operations unit probably caused a few nightmares. In any event, what ended up happening is that they acknowledged that she doesn't have to take orders from them; they can /suggest/ missions, but she has the ultimate responsibility."

   Patricia saw the somewhat worried expression on Melissa's face, and smiled reassuringly. "I don't have to be a telepath to read your thoughts right now, Nana," she said, using Kent's old name for his nanny. "If it were anyone else, I'd probably be worried that she was setting things up so that she could take over the world. But you haven't met her. She's the most moral person I've ever met. Power over others just doesn't interest her.

   "You know that Kent picked up a saying from that old radio show -- `I know what evil lurks in the hearts of men'? When he looked inside her heart, he didn't see any evil. Not even any self-justification."

   "Patricia, surely you know by now that nobody ever sees themselves as being wrong in --"

   "Wrong," came the quiet voice of Jessica from directly behind her, making Melissa's heart skip a beat. "Lots of people realize that they're doing the wrong thing. Most of them justify it to themselves, but if they know the difference between right and wrong, they know what they're doing. I certainly did."

   With that final comment, Jessica seemingly lost interest in Melissa and wandered off to examine one of the nearby trees.

   Melissa turned to look at Patricia incredulously. "Who /is/ she?"

   "You've met her before, I think," the younger woman answered uncomfortably. "In 1980."

   She tried to remember 1980. The most important thing that came to mind was that, while visiting with Pat, they'd both been kidnapped by --

   Her jaw dropped open. "You mean she's --"

   "Retired," Jessica pronounced without looking in their direction, tossing a small pile of twigs into the air with one hand. They hovered in a three dimensional pattern out of the /I Ching/ for nearly a minute before collapsing into her hand.

   "But ... but ..."

   "It's okay, Melissa," Patricia whispered soothingly. "I didn't want to trust her either, but she's proven her loyalty over the last few years. I don't know if I fully credit her motives, but she claims that when you've hated someone for most of your life, and that person is suddenly gone through no action of yours, something else has to take the place of that hatred. Most often it's hatred for someone else, but in her case, it seems to be a desire to look after the people Kent left behind."

   Melissa shuddered involuntarily. "Things certainly have changed."

   "Change is the only constant. One of the Silver Lady's favorite sayings."

   That was less than reassuring. "Has she published a little silver book of them yet?"

   "What bothers you so much about all of this?" Patricia asked, sounding genuinely perplexed.

   Melissa took a long moment to consider her answer. "It just seems so blatant," she said at last. "From the stories Pat, Kent and you have told me over the years, I've gotten used to the idea of super-people. But you've never been so close to the surface as this. Telling off the entire U.N. Security Council? Telling the de facto representatives of the rest of humanity that you don't need us, but we do need you? Where's it going to end? Are you going to be on the front page of the newspaper tomorrow? Are you going public?"

   "In a way, I think we are." Patricia sighed shortly. "I understand where you're coming from, I think. The problem is that things are changing. The strategies that served us in the past --  stay in the cave, the fortress, the skycraper or the satellite until something happens outside, then come out and deal with it, leaving before anyone says anything -- aren't working so well now. For one thing, it promotes the very attitude I think you're afraid of, that we're the secret rulers of the world. And for another, there aren't as many places to hide. The world isn't just getting stranger, it's getting smaller, too.

   "But even more than that, living in hiding like that isn't any sort of life. Many of us don't have any choice but to be the way that we are. It's one thing to say that we ought to just deal with threats and let humanity decide its own fate without our interference, but isn't that saying that we aren't human? That this isn't our world, too? Does having superhuman abilities mean accepting less-than-human legal rights?" Patricia looked sadly at Melissa. "Because that's really all we want -- equal rights, not special ones. I would have thought you would understand that."

   Melissa blinked. Her? Why --

   "Oh," she said as she realized.

   As shame and confusion filled her mind, her nanny's instincts took over and she reflexively turned to keep an eye on Patience -- who was sitting on her father's grave, busily knitting a floral crown out of the bouquet left there.

   "Patience!" The name came out in a gasp, much more sharply than Melissa intended.

   "Yes Ms. Stone?" the little girl asked, turning toward her with wide eyes.

   She moderated her tone a bit, trying to sound less shrill. "You shouldn't play with something put on someone's grave, dear. It's disrespectful and --"

   Patience frowned. "But he's not here."

   That was true. It had been an empty casket burial, since none of Kent's body had come back from his final journey. Just like his father, in some ways.

   "And neither are they," Patience continued, pointing at the graves of Pat and Mr. Masefield. "I'd know if they were. Mommy, is it okay?"

   Melissa slowly turned to look at Patricia, who only nodded in reply to her daughter. "Yes," she quietly answered Melissa's unspoken question. "She sees things that other people -- even I myself -- don't. So there's another reason: our children. Can you imagine telling a child her age that she's not `normal'? That she has to keep a secret like that? That something that makes her special is something to be ashamed of?"

   "You've ... you've given me a lot to think about," Melissa admitted. "I'm still not sure --"

   "Time to go," Jessica interrupted, this time standing in front of the two of them.

   "Already?" Patricia asked, startled.

   "Web," the pale woman replied sharply. "Closing on this position. Control's already worked out an escape route to the gateway. We have to go now."

   Patience had stood up, her nearly-completed crown clutched in her hands. "But I'm not done my present for --"

   "Now."

   "Yes'm." Patience dashed over to the bench, put the daisy chain in Melissa's lap, and stood with her mother.

   "Well, I suppose that this is goodbye for a while, then," Patricia said sadly.

   "You'll call me? To let me know that you got out all right?" Melissa asked, feeling a bone-deep fear settle into her stomach.

   Patricia blinked, obviously sensing the fear. "Of course! And I promise that we'll come visit you again, sometime soon." Her smile flickered. "I don't know when soon will be, but --"

   "Now," Jessica interrupted, taking a step towards her.

   "In a minute!" Patricia snapped, fixing her bodyguard in her tracks with a hostile glare.

   "Yes'm." The woman almost sounded meek.

   She turned back to Melissa with a gentle smile. "I promise that we'll stay in touch, Nana."

   "Goodbye, Patricia," she replied, feeling her heart break a little as she said it.

   And as she sat on the bench, watching the Mother, the Child and the Crone walk away, Melissa suddenly had an apprehension that there wouldn't be a next time, that she had had her last glimpse into a world of wonder and terror. And she thought that she should stand up and ask or beg them to let her come with them.

   But she didn't.


                             The End.


   This one's for Warren Ellis, whether the cheeky pommy bastard likes it or not.


Chris Davies, Advocate for Darkness, Part Time Champion of Light
Fanfics: http://www.fortunecity.com/tattooine/banks/277/
Fanfic Revolution: http://come.to/hauthor
"I love you too. Why the hell else do you think I keep doing
this?" -- Warren Ellis.

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