Gabrielle.

Hawke recalled the name with a jab of pain. Leaving aside the fact that Archangel had undoubtedly set up Hawke and Gabrielle with the intention that they fall in love, the girl had been something else. Yes, Hawke acknowledged, Gabrielle had been special - special in that she’d taught him that even though it might not be safe to love, he still had to take the risk. There’d been girls since - perhaps even Caitlin - for whom he felt almost as deeply as he had about Gabrielle: he’d loved them all, in his way. The problem lay in the fact that although his heart might have learned to love again, his soul was still dead - as dead as it had been for the fifteen years his brother Saint John had been missing.

Which brought him back to Michael Archangel. Hawke could never have said they were friends, although he knew that should it be necessary he’d put his life on the line for the man, and he had a feeling Archangel would stake just as much for him. Or maybe Archangel’s priority was Airwolf, and Hawke was just a convenient component in the scenario: the ship needed a pilot, and Hawke was the only man who could do the job. Well, that might have been true once, but now Dominic Santini knew how to fly Stringfellow Hawke’s ‘lady’ and even Caitlin might be capable of getting the ‘copter off the ground and motivating it in a forward direction: she was a well intentioned girl, but there was something about her Hawke found cloying. Maybe it was her ruthless apple-pie wholesomeness, he reflected. It was too much of a contrast with the pit of despair he knew lurked only a little beneath the surface of his own character. Peace and beauty, as solace, could only part-heal the wound: until he knew for sure what had happened to Saint John there could be no salve that would ease Hawke’s pain.

Introspection wasn’t Hawke’s long suit, but the weather conditions certainly lent themselves to such a pursuit. Five inches of snow had fallen since Archangel had retired to bed the night before, exhausted after his ordeal. It had been odd to receive Michael as a guest here - an Archangel who was not issuing commands and directives at every turn was a strange enough phenomenon, but an Archangel who begged off the social niceties and asked only for a quiet corner in which to sleep off his fatigue was a disquieting stranger. Not that Archangel had strayed so far from the proprieties as to show up rumpled, of course. Tired and strained he may well have been, but his white Panama suit had been spotless and uncreased when he stepped out of the Firm’s white chopper, his manners punctilious and exaggerated until the cabin door had closed behind him and the anonymous pilot had whisked the chopper back to its base. When the sound of the threshing rotor had died into silence, Archangel had applied a large white linen handkerchief to his brow in an unnecessary but eloquent gesture and released a huge sigh that could only be interpreted as one of relief.

"Take the ‘phone off the hook," had been his first words.

"There’s no phone." Hawke’s reply had been simple, conveying sympathy. Hawke knew what it was like to seek peace and not be able to find it.

"How often does the mailman call?"

"Christmas, usually. Rail station’s fifty miles that way," Hawke had pointed at random towards one of the cabin’s windows, "no bus service, and the lake isn’t on a navigable waterway. This is the end of the world, Michael."

Archangel had glanced at his wristwatch. "Hawke, I need about a year of sleep. We’ll talk tomorrow."

The sentiments had been familiar - spiritual first-aid was something of a speciality with Stringfellow Hawke. His remedy had been to usher Michael Archangel to the cabin’s airy loft - the only half-way comfortable sleeping accommodation - and make sure he had everything he needed for the night. The sun had not even set when Archangel had retired to bed: Hawke and Tet wandered out onto the dock a little later to watch it drown its glory in the waters of the lake. Later Tet had vanished, and a stealthy Hawke had found the hound-dog sprawled across the foot of Archangel’s bed. Both were lost in the depths of sleep.

Later still, Hawke and a thick quilt had made their home for the night beside the dying log-fire, and Hawke listened to the stillness that seemed to blanket the cabin: he had not needed to look outside to know that snow was falling, heavy snow. He didn’t like Michael Archangel - he kept reminding himself of that. But for Archangel he would be enjoying the warmth and comfort of his own bed.

What the hell, anyway. He was warm and comfortable, despite Archangel’s presence in the cabin. Maybe the secret was to ignore him in the hope that, by some miraculous process as yet unknown to man, the source of his annoyance might vanish and leave no trace of his presence.

It was on such a convenient fantasy that Stringfellow Hawke had fallen asleep, and to the concomitant disappointment that he had awoken.

Hawke watched the swirl of the blizzard from the safety of his warm kitchen while he consumed, thoughtfully, the day’s second cup of coffee. He’d spoken to the local Air Traffic Control by radio and learned that the weather was locked in for about the next thirty hours, which did little to allay his suspicions about Michael Archangel’s motives. The man had obviously known he would be stranded here - indeed, that seemed to have been his intention - but was it only weakness that had prompted him or something far more sinister? Archangel usually managed to find a way to talk Stringfellow Hawke into doing things he didn’t especially want to do, and this paranoia about means of escape would seem to tie in with the advent of bad news of some variety or other. However it was perfectly true that Michael needed to rest - he’d slept fourteen hours already, longer than even Tet could usually manage. The dog had come trotting down from the loft shortly after 7 a.m. in search of breakfast and had seemed to register surprise when his companion of the night before hadn’t immediately joined him. Hawke had glanced in and seen Archangel still fast asleep and had decided to leave well alone, although he had later begun a subtle campaign to wake the man by playing a tape of classical music that pervaded every corner of the cabin.

"I approve." The voice from behind startled Hawke and he almost dropped his coffee. He hadn’t expected the semi-lame Archangel to be capable of such quiet movement. "I’ve always liked Carmina Burana, and it’s particularly pleasant to wake to a well-chosen piece of music."

Hawke turned. Michael Archangel was dressed and groomed as immaculately as ever, the whiteness of his knuckles and the sunken appearance of his one useable eye behind the spectacles the only signs of his recent ordeal.

"May I have a cup of coffee?" he guest asked with a smile.

"Sure." Hawke busied himself with coffee-pot and beaker to produce the strong, sweet milkless beverage he knew Archangel preferred. "What about food? Are you hungry?"

"I’ll pass for now, thank you." Archangel seated himself at the scrubbed-pine table and accepted the beaker of coffee Hawke handed him. He took a first, appreciative sip of the drink. "I see the weather’s closed in," he observed, mildly.

Hawke was watching him sharply. "I was wondering if that was a coincidence," he said, not troubling to be unduly polite about his suspicions. "You knew the forecast was bad, and yet you refused to leave. I get the impression you wanted to be trapped here."

The man in white acknowledged the thought with a slight nod of his head. "Far away from ringing telephones and people who want decisions made yesterday," he said, softly. "Not even a helicopter can get in for me. As you said, Hawke, this is the end of the world."

"Yeah, I said it," Hawke admitted, "but I can’t believe you’re so close to cracking that you need a place to crawl away and hide, Michael. You had an ulterior motive for coming here and for staying."

Wearily Archangel pushed away the half-empty coffee mug. He hadn’t really expected Hawke to allow the deception to continue much longer, but he did not yet feel quite strong enough for the inevitable battle. He had little choice, however: Hawke was obviously not prepared to let the matter go.

"In fact," he confessed, "two. I ask you to believe, Hawke, that what I am about to say is in your own best interests, although it may not feel like it at the time."

"Sounds pretty serious," Hawke interrupted.

"It is. I ... want us to talk about Saint John."

All Hawke’s instincts for self-preservation suddenly seemed to compete for his attention at once. The mere mention of the missing elder Hawke brother was enough to cause the temperature in the room to drop several degrees and a wall of hostility to form between the two protagonists. Had Archangel been capable of abandoning the conversation and choosing a less dangerous topic he might well have done so at this point, but he could as readily have ceased breathing. He did not wish to cause Hawke pain, but it was necessary: there would be no other time for what he had to say. He knew he would never have the courage again.

"What about Saint John?" Hawke asked coldly. "Have you found him?"

Archangel’s reply was a study in circumspection. "In a manner of speaking, yes," he admitted. "But don’t get too excited, Hawke. I know where your brother is - or, rather, I know what happened to him fifteen years ago - but I’m afraid you’ll never see him again."

"He’s dead? You’re telling me Saint John’s dead?" Stricken, Hawke turned away. All his years of hoping and waiting and praying suddenly turned into ashes in his sight: he knew Archangel was no liar. If Archangel said Saint John was dead, then Hawke had to accept it. "You can prove it?" he asked, harshly. "You can provide the body? You know I want him buried here."

"String," Archangel’s tone was soft and deep with compassion as he rose to rest a comforting hand on Stringfellow Hawke’s arm, "I can’t tell you where your brother’s body is resting. Only the man who buried him has that information, and he’s blocked it all out of his mind."

Hawke turned, confused. "How the hell could anybody forget a thing like that?" he demanded, raggedly.

"Like what?" Archangel’s expression was one of the profoundest grief, a reassuring mask of protective affection.

"Like killing my brother and burying his body!" roared Hawke, agonised. "How does any man forget a thing like that?"

"Sometimes the mind just has too much to cope with, Hawke. It brings down the shutters and hides away whole events and scenarios it can’t reconcile itself with. If ever I needed proof that yours did just that, you’ve given it to me."

"Mine?" The scream of an unbalanced rage split the quiet snow-filled air and reverberated from the mountains that shielded the lake. Hawke’s pain became an eagle that carved a path amid the falling flakes and flew blind, searching for a refuge that had suddenly seemed to vanish.

"Stringfellow, I can’t explain it to you. I only know that you buried Saint John - right after you killed him." Archangel’s head hung low, as though he was having trouble forcing the words out from some horrid reservoir of nightmares he carried with him.

Hawke was a good man: honourable, unwilling to take advantage of a weaker being than himself, locked into a code of chivalric conduct that did not quite fit the times in which he found himself living. However, at this point, he was a very long way from being sane. It was a measure of the hurt he was experiencing that he now hauled off and slammed into Archangel’s jaw a shattering punch that sent man, spectacles and cane flying in three separate directions, each to collide with varying results with objects heavier than themselves. Michael fell heavily onto his injured left leg, his head hitting against the leg of the kitchen table. For only a moment he was stunned, then shook his head much as a wet dog does and stared up at Hawke. The younger man was trembling and white-faced, his eyes bulging from their sockets. It would not have gone ill with his mood at that moment to have landed a savage kick on Michael’s defenceless body, but he did not. Instead he stood quite still, as though he had forgotten where he was and what he was doing, and boiling tears of frustration and disbelief escaped him as his fury turned once more to awful confusion.

"Get it out of your system, Hawke," Archangel advised, gently. "You can beat seven kinds of hell out of me and you could probably kill me, particularly as I have no intention of fighting back. Maybe killing me would make you feel better, but it won’t help you cope with the truth about Saint John. I’m the best friend you have. Right now I’m the only one you have. If you do what you’d like to do, you’ll have my death on your conscience, too. Do you think you could live with that?"

Hawke barely moved, but his fiercely-jutting jaw withdrew a little and the first tearing sob escaped his control. Archangel would have given the rest of his sight to be anywhere else but in this room at this time.

"Listen to me, String," he whispered, still not getting up from the floor where Hawke’s punch had dropped him. "Listen with your heart, not your head. Don’t just hear what I say - ask yourself whether it could be true. I’m not here to tell you about how Saint John died. I’m here so you can tell me."

Hawke’s eyes focused on Michael’s face for only the briefest of moments, and his expression was one of puzzlement: he did not recognise the man who lay on his kitchen floor speaking incomprehensibly of subjects Stringfellow Hawke could not begin to understand. He turned away then, abandoning Michael without conscious thought. The man, whoever he was, was of no concern to Hawke. He only knew that he wanted to be away from the white-clad harbinger of pain: that if they were apart there could be no more hurtful words. In the mist of grief that had closed over him a childlike simplicity of logic ruled: it was this man who had caused the pain. Being away from the man would end the pain.

Hawke made for the cabin’s exit as Michael scrambled uncomfortably to his feet.

"Hawke! String! For God’s sake!" In his sudden comprehension of what Hawke was planning Michael began to lose his grip on the situation, becoming almost incoherent with panic. He was too late to prevent String opening the door and stepping silently into the blanketing madness of the snow.

A moment’s hesitation only seized Michael. He knew Hawke’s chances of survival, even only a few metres from the cabin, were very slim in such conditions. The pilot hadn’t even been wearing a sweater, and a fully-dressed person would have had problems surviving the storm even if he had used all the tried and tested techniques. Half-crazed and clad only in indoor clothes, Hawke might, if he was unlucky, last an hour or two. If he was lucky, he would be dead inside twenty minutes.

On the wall close be the door hung cold-weather clothing, including a fur-lined parka and another jacket with a fur collar. Michael shrugged into the latter, not troubling to fasten it, and grabbed the parka under his arm. Tet whined at him as he opened the door, a warning that no dog would dream of going out on such a day.

"Stay here, boy," Michael told him. "Lie down. I’ll bring him back."

With as little ceremony as Hawke had employed, Michael opened the door and flung himself out into the maelstrom. No-one had ever suggested this was going to be easy, but he hadn’t been fully prepared for the terrors he was going to unleash. He’d been willing to die himself for Hawke’s peace of mind, but it had never occurred to him that String might prefer suicide to acknowledgement of the truth.

Struggling to raise his head against the buffeting of the wind, he saw a figure ahead of him. It was undoubtedly Hawke, although he could scarcely make out more than a blurred outline through the swirl of white. He appeared to have stopped on the dock, and to be standing with his head thrown back and his arms wrapped around himself in protection against his thoughts rather than the elements. Archangel made a path straight towards him through the deepening snow, clutching the parka tightly. There was no way Hawke could have heard his approach, for the wind that whipped across the lake’s troubled surface would have carried any slight sound in the opposite direction. Michael had to shout to make himself heard from a distance of not more than six feet.

"You didn’t run away in ‘Nam, Hawke," he said. "Don’t run away now." There was no reply, no reaction at all, so he was emboldened to step closer and wrap the parka around Hawke’s trembling shoulders. "Friends share their grief," he reminded the pilot. "Let me share yours."

Hawke’s head fell forward as he accepted the warmth that enwrapped him. For a few seconds it looked as if he was going to remain stubbornly separate, trying to deal alone with a weight of guilt that would have been lightened by sharing. Then he half-turned towards Michael and with a movement that hardly seemed to have been voluntary he buried himself in Michael’s arms and clung to him with desperation. Archangel had been half-expecting this, wholly hoping for it. He pulled Hawke as close as he could, crushing him even as the racking sobs commenced. Hawke had seen and recognised the truth, and been crucified on it. There was no other source from which he could expect comfort: comfort which Michael gave willingly, despite the misgivings about his own motives which gnawed insistently at his already troubled conscience.

"Hey, I’m here," Michael whispered. "I’m right here. I’ll always be here." He barely heard his own inanities, muffled as they were by the falling snow and the fur-lined hood and the dampened strands of Hawke’s hair close beneath his lips. "Just hang on to me, sweetheart, I won’t go away. Hold on, my friend, hold on. I’ll take care of you." It was a promise he could not have made had he been fully sane himself, but Hawke’s pain had unbalanced him, too. He had long believed that the secret of Saint John’s fate was available to any man brave enough to look for it in the deepest morasses of Stringfellow Hawke’s mind, but he also knew that the successful seeker had to be prepared to offer his own life and his future to free Hawke. Michael had made that commitment when he sent the chopper pilot away: there had never since been a point at which he could have turned back.

His arms tightened on Hawke. Archangel’s dilemma had two faces, either one of which stood to cost the pilot what remained of his sanity. It would take a friend of rare tenacity to release String from the prison his own mind had created for him: a friend who, over the years of their association, had come to feel for Hawke a respect and love that bordered on the guilty. Therein lay his second problem: successful negotiation on the matter of Saint John’s death would bring them to the brink of another precipice, and Archangel doubted now that the friendship could survive it. He knew that the time was approaching when he would have to confess his own feelings, his reasons for putting Hawke to the torture of reliving his brother’s terrible death. He knew that a man with Stringfellow Hawke’s integrity could not fail to despise him for what he would then say. He expected nothing but rejection from the man he loved. Therefore he was taking full advantage of the rare opportunity of holding Hawke close, storing up memories for the cold and empty years that lay ahead, trying to impart merely by his presence that he cared: that he would always care.

Minutes later their steps turned awkwardly and uncertainly towards the cabin again, and they expended much of their remaining energy on fending off Tet who was at great pains to point out that he had told them it was cold out there but they hadn’t taken any notice of him. In a few well-chosen barks he expressed his opinion that humans who were stupid enough to go out in storms deserved all they got. Hawke detached himself from Michael long enough to stoop and pacify his dog, and when he looked up he managed a very shaky version of a smile.

Michael stood watching him fondly, a part of his mind noting just how much he himself had altered during the past hour. He had given everything he had to Hawke, and he knew that as long as Hawke was willing to take, he would happily go on giving.

Stringfellow Hawke noted the change, too. He was not so wrapped up in his own emotional turmoil that he was unable to notice a difference in Michael. The man who stood before him now was not the cool administrator of the Firm, nor yet the fearless agent who accepted his disabilities as merely a minor irritation preventing him from field duty except in rare circumstances. This Michael was a warm, loving man who wanted, more than anything, to help.

Michael had never gotten round to fastening his jacket. The ivory silk shirt he wore was soaked through and stuck to his body, and the white suit pants were also drenched. His hair had been rumpled and flattened by the effects of the storm, too, and was now plastered against his forehead with snow crystals still melting from the strands. Hawke hadn’t particularly noticed the darkened eye-socket before, but now he realised that his punch that had sent Michael’s eye-glasses flying had revealed a puckered mass of scar tissue around an ugly cavity. Hawke had known that Michael had no sight in his left eye. He hadn’t been fully aware that the eye itself had gone completely. He didn’t know whether he could have coped with such a disfigurement as well as Michael had.

"I’m sorry," Michael said, sadly shaking his head. His hand lifted to his brow in a weary gesture at brushing away the dripping hair. "I’m no psychologist, String. I handled that all wrong."

"Come on upstairs," Hawke suggested, subduedly. "I’ll find you some dry clothes. Tet, leave Michael alone."

"He’s fine," Michael murmured absent-mindedly. Obediently he followed Hawke towards the stairs to the little loft, stripping off his sodden jacket as he went. He dropped it down on top of Hawke’s parka as the pilot opened the wardrobe and began to sort through his clothes.

When Hawke turned back, Michael was removing the shirt, with not a little difficulty, to add it to the pile of wet clothing. Hawke hadn’t been ready for the full extent of Michael’s wounds. Although the older man was trying to shield the left side from Hawke’s sight, the pilot could not help noticing the mass of puckered and whitened skin where the physical scars had not yet healed. In his gallant shielding of Marella during Moffet’s attack on the project base, Michael had taken the full force of the flying glass from the imploding windows before being burned in the ensuing fire.

"White isn’t a practical colour around here," Hawke said, unevenly. "The best I can manage is jeans and workshirt."

"Anything." Michael sounded resigned and did not turn towards Hawke.

"Don’t hide from me, Michael," Hawke advised. "Nobody fights the kind of battles you do without picking up a few trophies."

Archangel took the hint, swinging around so that he could look directly at Hawke. "I don’t always wear white," he said, the words catching in his throat.

"I hardly ever see you wear anything else," was the gentle reply.

"Well, I’m one of the good guys. I have a feeling it would suit you, too, String."

It was a thought that hadn’t quite occurred to Hawke before, but he digested it readily enough. "You could be right," he admitted. Holding out the plaid shirt ready for Michael to step into, he took a step closer. Michael shrugged into it, and was not really surprised when Hawke’s hands slipped around his body and held him tight, and Hawke’s chin rested on his shoulder.

"Hiding is second nature to me, Hawke," Michael breathed painfully. "I’ve been an agent for over twenty years: sometimes it’s not easy to remember who I am."

"It doesn’t matter who you are," Hawke managed to say.

It mattered to Michael. He turned around and pulled Hawke into an embrace almost as tight as the previous one, only this time there were fewer layers of clothing between them and consequently the contact brought them closer than before. Hawke was more relaxed now, expecting the closeness and wanting it. He did not quite understand, but he gave himself up to it with grace.

"My friend," Michael said sagely, making the words a euphemism for something far deeper that he would have liked to be able to say, "we’re a pair of emotional cripples, leaning on each other. I can’t help you because I don’t trust myself to be close to you. I’ll be honest, Hawke - holding you is doing things to my mind I’d rather not have to describe."

"I know," Hawke responded, tenderly. "I’m not so far gone I can’t tell when you call me ‘sweetheart’, Michael. I wanted to be held. I still do. Will you?"

"Be certain you know what you’re saying," Archangel advised. "Make sure you don’t just humour me out of pity."

Hawke winced. He remembered experiencing the same sinking sensation of dread himself in other relationships. "Archangel," he said, "I might hate you and I might even love you, but I wouldn’t know where to start pitying you."

"Who mentioned love?" Michael was quick to defend himself from the very idea.

Hawke understood only that the subject was taboo. He was held fiercely in Michael’s arms for all the world as though they were lovers, but knowing that this was very definitely a relationship only of trust and dependence. He was grateful for that: his mind was still changing gear after the shock of Michael’s revelation.

"Want to tell me what happened?" Michael asked, sensing that Hawke’s mind was no longer on the here-and-now.

"You seem to know all I could tell you," Hawke shrugged. "Why don’t you tell me?" He slipped from Michael’s embrace and sat down on the edge of the bed. After a moment’s hesitation Michael sat beside him, not touching him. "And tell me how you knew."

"I didn’t know, String. I just worked it out for myself. I care about you: you know that. I just wanted to get to the truth."

"Which is?"

Michael grimaced. "Very well - but most of it’s conjecture. You and Saint John were flying a mission together: it should never have been allowed, but maybe you’d had a lot of casualties lately and your officer decided to take a risk. I don’t know. You were carrying ... let’s see ... defoliant? Chemical weapons?"

"Agent Orange." Hawke’s words were almost inaudible, dragged up from some deep well of memory over which he had very little control.

"Agent Orange. Revolting stuff." Michael let out a moment’s musing overtake him, before continuing. "You were brought down - enemy fire, pilot error, whatever - and you were both thrown clear of the wreck before the fire started. You were on opposite sides of the chopper, only Saint John was a lot nearer to it that you were. You heard him screaming, crying - at first you were glad he was still alive. You ran around to his side, and ..."

"He couldn’t see me," Hawke burst in jaggedly. "His eyes ... burned away ... just not there at all. I wouldn’t have recognised him. Didn’t. He couldn’t speak, just ... scream ..." Hawke swallowed convulsively, scarcely even realising that he was speaking about this for the first time, telling memories his conscious mind had refused to accept for fifteen years. "In hospital, in L.A., he might have lived. In the middle of the fuckin’ jungle ..."

The expletive was a scream of pain. Michael’s arm snaked around Hawke’s shoulders and he comforted the man silently.

"He couldn’t have made it five yards," String went on. "The enemy would have made him suffer more. He was my brother. What would you have done?"

"Precisely what you did," Michael told him gravely, completing the embrace. "I’d have shot him."

"I shot him," Hawke said dully, not hearing the other man. "He was my brother, and I shot him. It was the only way I could ... help..."

"You had no choice." Michael loathed the platitude even as he spoke it.

"I buried him ... I think I did ... and I went into the jungle. I didn’t expect to live. I must have been out there fifteen days, maybe twenty. I didn’t know I’d killed him. I didn’t understand it. I didn’t, Michael, I didn’t."

"You loved your brother," Archangel told him, fighting back his own grief. "The only way you could show that love was the way you did. Your love released him from his suffering. I envy any man who deserves such love."

"No ..." Hawke cried out like a startled child, burying his face in the collar of Michael’s shirt. "I couldn’t do it again. I couldn’t, Michael. Don’t make me do it again."

Archangel’s own stalwart defences crumbled as he understood the promise Hawke was demanding of him. He knew what it was like to send friends to their deaths: Angela, Gabrielle, others almost without number. He’d prayed, though, to his highly customised selection of household gods; begged that he should never have to send Stringfellow Hawke to his death. He would have refused to do so; given his own life sooner.

"String ... listen to me, sweetheart ... Gabrielle was the last. I’ll never do that to you again. I promise. You’ll never lose anyone you love, ever again."

Hawke looked at him from red-rimmed eyes. Crying for Saint John had made of him a clinging infant in search of Michael’s protection, but the intelligence was still that of an adult: an adult with terrors he could not express.

"I don’t want to lose you," he said, emphatically.

Michael did not remind him that they had never mentioned love. The impulse burst on his mind like an exploding starshell as the floor swayed wildly up towards him and the Universe convoluted through sinister spirals before his fascinated gaze.

"I promise," he repeated, tilting Hawke’s face towards him in a gesture that he scarcely understood himself before he found that he had taken Hawke’s mouth in a gentle kiss. It had not been premeditated: it had been born of the moment. Far from shrinking away in protest, however, Hawke seemed to give in to it willingly and almost ... and then certainly ... to respond.

"Don’t go away!" Hawke demanded as the kiss ended.

"I won’t."

The bargain sealed, Hawke was content for the moment. He had suppressed the truth about his brother for fifteen years, and the final releasing of it had been traumatic. Linked to it, though, had been another truth he scarcely dared to acknowledge: that he had always secretly wondered how it would be to have Michael Archangel as a lover.

"Gabrielle wasn’t your fault," he offered. "Moffet killed her. Moffet was responsible for this." His fingers tracked cautiously across Michael’s cheek towards the ruined eye-socket. The older man kept perfectly still, allowing Hawke this most intimate of explorations. "I guess," Hawke said, sounding almost his normal self again, "you see more without that eye that you ever did with it."

"Undoubtedly," Michael assented brightly. "A little suffering is good for the soul, my friend."

"Only ‘friend’?"

"No," was the mild reply. "Not only."

Hawke laughed softly, such an unfamiliar sound that for a moment Archangel had trouble identifying it. "You were quite prepared to die for my pride," he reminded Michael. "That’s a pretty unique kind of friendship."

"You might say that," Archangel agreed, taking advantage of the moment to repeat the experiment.

Hawke was used to flying, but as a general rule he took a helicopter with him. This was the first time he had flown under his own power, Michael’s kiss lifting him from terra firma and sending him soaring through benevolent clouds that flickered and danced in a thousand un-nameable colours. He was glad to have someone solid to cling to when vertigo threatened to topple him into the chasm that opened up at his feet, sweeping him from the safe path of familiarity into a vortex of new emotions and experiences.

He sighed and relaxed out of the kiss, allowing his fingers to trace a line of exploration along Michael’s jaw and across his lips.

"You had two reasons for trapping me here," he accused, mildly. "One - to get me to admit what happened in ‘Nam ... and two ..." His lips replaced his fingers as he dropped a light kiss on Michael’s cheek.

"I hadn’t planned it this way," confessed Archangel. But now that you know ... I can’t let you go."

Stringfellow Hawke smiled at his approbation. "That could well be the most romantic thing anybody ever said to me," he informed the other man. "Only, why the hell didn’t you tell me about this years ago? We could have been happy all this time."

"There’s nothing to preclude that." Michael’s reply was a mild rebuke.

"You really think it can work?"

"If you care for me anything like as much as I care for you, Hawke, it’ll work. I’m not promising it’ll be easy, but I never yet knew you to take the easy road. And I won’t die on you."

Hawke nodded. "You do, Michael, and I’ll never forgive you."

Now Michael Archangel laughed, tightening his hold on Hawke the while. "And in the meantime, my friend, just where do we go from here?"

Hawke shot him a look of pure devilry accompanied by an unholy smile. His right hand swung down to pat the mattress beneath them with significant emphasis.

"We’re already there," he said.

Thirty-six hours later the star-spangled Santini Air chopper came down to land on the dock outside the lakefront cabin. Dominic Santini had been worried about Stringfellow Hawke since he heard that Archangel was planning on spending time at the cabin to recuperate after his recent bad experience. He didn’t trust Archangel overmuch, and he had a suspicion that even in the best of conditions the two men couldn’t last long before they started tearing each other’s throats out: these had not been the best of conditions.

Not even Tet came out to meet him as he trudged through the melting snow to the cabin door. As he let himself in he yelled out at the top of his voice, his shout pervading the whole valley.

"Hey, String!"

The living room was empty. He gave it only the briefest of glances, then made for the kitchen. The place was its usual bright, warm, cluttered self, but there was an air of something unfamiliar that slightly disturbed its peace. Stepping into the kitchen Dominic realised what it was.

"Morning, Dom," Hawke said, cheerfully. He was busy turning two steaks on the griddle. "Beer or coffee?"

"Coffee. No, beer. Say String, what’s that music?"

"Charley Parker." He placed a cold can from the refrigerator on the table beside a set place, and indicated for Dom to sit.

The older pilot did as he was bidden, but could not resist a question. "Where’s Archangel?"

"Getting ready to leave. His pilot’ll be here in half an hour."

"You two get on alright?"

Hawke shrugged enigmatically. "Both still alive," he informed his friend.

"The steak’s for Archangel, right?"

"Wrong. One’s for you, the other’s Tet’s breakfast. Michael isn’t hungry."

"Neither are you," Santini remarked, accepting the steak with fries and salad that Hawke set before him.

"Hey, Michael!" Hawke had left the kitchen and was calling up towards the loft. "Dom’s arrived."

Santini didn’t quite catch the answering shout, but within a minute Michael Archangel had appeared in the doorway. Hawke didn’t ask if he wanted coffee, merely poured a cup and set it on the table.

Archangel had resumed his cool, unapproachable persona and greeted both men with a sort of distant politeness. He noticed that Santini was staring at him and for a moment experienced a tremor of doubt: had he missed something? Was there a part of the disguise that was not perfect and that had enabled Dominic Santini to read the book of the last two days with a single look?

"Archangel, what happened to your eyeglasses?"

In helpless relief Michael remembered that he had abandoned the cracked spectacles in favour of the white eye-patch he occasionally assumed. He was so used to looking at the world with one eye obscured that he had forgotten the alteration himself, but he knew it must seem conspicuous to Santini. In fact, this was the first time since Hawke had hit him that he had worn anything at all across the blinded eye: as Hawke had said, he no longer needed to hide.

"They were broken," he said. "Accidentally."

The addendum sounded rather superfluous to him, and a glance at Hawke told him that it might well have been a mistake.

Santini was nodding. He could have put his last cent on something happening when Hawke and Archangel were left alone in the middle of a blizzard. He thought he detected the strained aftermath of a battle of some kind, either verbal or - as Michael’s damaged eyeglasses would seem to testify - physical. He could question Hawke later and try to get the full story out of him, but for now he concentrated on his steak.

Hawke smiled to himself. He knew he’d be fending off enquiries from the ever-curious Dom all afternoon, but for the moment he was just going to concentrate on making the most of Michael’s presence. Within minutes the Firm’s chopper would swoop down to steal his lover away again, possibly for several weeks. It would always be like this, he knew: brief assignations and occasional weekends would be their only time together. He didn’t care. He knew he had Michael.

They were each free, although their relationship bound them together in a way Santini would never have understood. String was determined his old friend should never know that he and Archangel had become so close - so interdependent.

Michael had to leave. This was the Michael who had arrived, the man in white. String could not help but admire the cool with which Michael played out the scene he had been dreading. He himself could scarcely keep from thinking of the Michael who only two short hours earlier had been a very different, very much more relaxed person. That Michael - the lover, the protector - had wrought a change in Stringfellow Hawke’s life the like of which would never occur again. He had freed Hawke from a fifteen year prison of his own construction, letting him loose to soar the sky on silver wings of liberty, bringing him home again to rest against a heart that had always, had he know it, been his for the asking.

Hawke caught Michael’s gaze across the kitchen and, in a moment of almost telepathic contact, they both smiled.

*****

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