Screw it, I'll fly. [Katie-Scarlett]

[Professor Cole A. Halliwell]

Oh screw it, I'll fly back. I always do.

And so he did. A magnificent hawk, circling the streets of London, calling out to the birds among the skies.

Every time Cole Halliwell decided to toy with his animagus form he caused uproar in the Muggle half of what had been the busiest of cities this year. During the Olympics, a swiftly covered-up news story had actual anti-aircraft missiles fired at him, the result of a fear that he might be preying on athletes in Stratford's Olympic Village in East London. Evading them, no less destroying them deftly in mid-air, was no mean feat, but it helped the man keep fit, and for that, at least, he couldn't complain. And it had been a while since UFO complaints had been called out in London, anyway, he felt that he was doing them all a service.

Years had passed. Since his mother had died, since his sister had been discovered. Since his father had been finally defeated, his life had taken a turn at Hogwarts, his name had flashed up in lights in the school. Since Hayley. Since Celeste. Since Kat.

This was not the first time that Cole had returned to London. He'd spent some time abroad, the usual bohemian types; Paris, Rome and Berlin had been his homes at one point or another. He'd spent time in Scotland, time in Wales, time fleeing the Dark Arts in America, and a second time evading Aurors after some dodgy dealings. He'd been back to London in between, dropping in, visiting, never sure where the next adventure would be. But Cole was 24, and every part the man he always had been: strong, rich, notorious.

Cole was 24, and his life so far had amounted to nothing.

It was the mid-20s crisis that everyone went through, and returning to London was really an excuse to attempt to find his way back to some semblance of being that didn't involve running halfway around the world - even as a hawk - to evade some wizarding mafioso. The time had come to sort himself out.

So he strolled into the Red Star Lounge. He ordered a firewhiskey. He loosened his tie, collapsed into a booth, fiddled with a hole in his jeans and lit a cigarette. The time had come to sort Cole Halliwell out. But he was the man he had always been.

[/justify][/font]

[Kat Samuels]

“I swear I don’t do this on purpose”

That was what she wanted him to believe anyway as she slid into the booth opposite him – their booth – but the truth of the matter was she probably did do it on purpose. She could have just stayed where she was by the bar, watching people come and go from her life but it was never quite as easy as that with Cole. Despite everything she was just drawn to him.

Offering up a soft smile, a cautious smile Kat settled back into the booth pushing her hair behind her ear before letting her fingers fall to the table top where they refused to stop fidgeting. She was nervous, but it was a different type of nervous this time. Before every time that they had danced this dance they had ended up either almost killing each other or almost committing adultery, sometimes toeing the line between both. That was just how it was with Cole, he was buried in her bones, she couldn’t shake him and she never quite knew how to handle that. No one could deny the passion between them, no matter how destructive it could be.

But Kat Samuels was tired. Kat Buckett was tired, and no, the two weren’t the same person. There was a certain inevitability in her stance now. She was married, she had children; that was her life now. There was no point chasing old fairy tails and wondering what if, there was today and there was tomorrow and both of them consisted of potty training and vomit and falling into bed too tired to even think. She was losing weight again, but the taunt and tease was gone from her eyes and she was okay with that. She was an adult now; she was a mother. This is what responsibility looked like. Wasn’t it?

“How’s everything been Cole? You look good, it’s nice to see your face around here again. Is it just a quick visit or are you staying this time round?”

That’s not what she wanted to say, not even close to it. She wanted to tell him she loved him, she missed him, that she wanted him to stay, but Katie Scarlett Samuels was an adult now. She was Kat Buckett, she was a mother and she was a wife and she couldn’t say things like that anymore, so she didn’t. She smiled at him and sipped from the water she had forgotten she had been carrying and pretended that this was what she wanted: friendship, easy uncomplicated friendship. It wasn’t what she wanted of course but it was easier and easy was all she could handle anymore. She was so tired.

[/font][/justify]

[Professor Cole A. Halliwell]

As he finished his Firewhiskey, Cole caught a familiar scent in the air (a remnant of his recent hawk transformation meant he was more sensitive to smell for a short while after turning back to his more normal form). He glimpsed up and around, trying to track where it came from, until his eyes settled on a blonde figure at the bar, turning and slowly walking over to him. He smiled, a short, toothless smile, and looked down, almost shy.

She spoke, and his eyes narrowed, focused on his empty glass, the fingerprint on the side of it, the cigarette stubbed out behind it. Smoke swirled in the air, rising and forming small clouds before completely disappearing into the atmosphere. Wisps and wisps of smoke, like memories, unfurling and looping around the room until they were gone. Until love was gone.

They had spent years and years chasing each other. Round in circles, up and down and back up again. Cole had been in countless fistfights with her husband, he had almost abducted their children, he had fought with her and with everyone around her. He had fled the city they shared, the school they both attended, the life they had both led. That was why Cole had gone. That was always the real reason - she was always the real reason. The connection they had was like no other, and the understanding they shared broke all boundaries. They were like two kittens, fresh out of the womb. Understanding, sharing, moving in synchronised dance.

Except they hadn't been like that for years. Kat had got married, Cole had been stood up at the altar. Since those days nothing had been the same. They had made their individual choices, and only one of them had backfired. Only one of them had destroyed everything, and begged the past to come back quickly. Both of them changed Cole's life forever.

He glanced at the girl more confidently, moving his elbows to the table as he lit another cigarette. He took a long drag on it, taking the nicotine into his lungs before expelling smoke everywhere, like something out of an old film noir movie. He stared at Katie Scarlett Samuels - for that was who she was always going to be to him - and rested his gaze slowly into her eyes, boring holes into her skull, begging her to let him see into her thoughts.

This was the second time this had happened in twelve months. A year ago, almost to the day, Cole had been sat here. And so had Kat. And they had fought, and drank, and caught themselves in a mess of a place. It ended when they could drink no more, when they could tease the other no more, when they couldn't flirt any longer. It had been the same as it had been for a couple of years - fluff. Nothingness. Stupid promises, thinly veiled threats thinly veiling emptiness. They pretended to hate each other, they pretended to be friends. All that was beneath that surface was love, at least that was how he saw it. All that was beneath that surface was what they had once been. Because Cole may not have changed, but the people around him had. The life he lived had. The clothes may be the same that he always wore, his hair may be as dishevelled as ever, but the rest of the world kept turning.

His eyes flicked down briefly, taking in her figure, beautiful as ever, before he clicked back into her gaze. He stared for one whole minute, slowly tugging on his cigarette until it had all gone, until there was no more smoke, until there were no more memories curling their shapes around the room. His eyebrow popped - a momentary lapse - and then he stared straight at her again.

Eventually.

"Let's shag."

The offer hung in the air for a moment, like the smoke from a cigarette, before disappearing as quickly as it had begun. Cole didn't break his gaze for a moment, but his hand curled around his empty glass, wishing for more alcohol. He was too sober for this, too in touch with his emotions and, more importantly, with his brain.

"Let's just do it. Get it over and done with. You're not happy. He doesn't make you happy. And hell if I'm having the time of my life."

Another pause. He let go of the glass, and removed a long, thin cigarette from behind his ear, flicking it into his mouth and snapping his fingers. A flame briefly rose through the air while he lit his cigarette, the briefest of wandless magic and most of what he was capable of. He puffed on it, blowing the smoke into Kat's face. He read her eyes, and answered her thoughts - or at least, what he assumed her thoughts to be.

"No. None of your crap. Don't talk. Don't make pleasantries. Don't give me your rubbish to clear up. Don't make me watch you destroy your life with the man that you stuck by because it was comfortable, because it was convenient, because it was safe. Don't give me any of that bull. I've not come back to listen to that drivel any more, Kat, you hear me? I've not come back to hear how happy he makes you, to hear how wonderful everyone's little life is.

"That's not how it is at all. We're in our mid-20s. We're ancient already, Samuels, and I will not watch you destroy the years you have left. Remember the girl you were. Remember the boy I was. Give yourself a moment of dignity, treat yourself like a decent human being for once. You are tearing apart everything you had for comfort, for convenience, for routine. You were never the girl who did that. Never."

Finally, a tear, welling up in one eye, drifting down Cole's face. He fought to prevent his voice from wavering, to stop the emotion show on the rest of his face. Anyone else wouldn't have noticed, but he knew she would see it all, his heart on a platter in his eyes, in his mouth, in his sounds. He sucked on the cigarette - a distraction - and then continued.

"Just... don't. Don't, Kat. You owe yourself more than him. More than that. More than this."

[Kat Samuels]

The silence was new. It built up around them, swirling between them like the smoke that filled the air between them. She was breathing it in, the smoke, the silence, the walls disappeared and they were in their own private world like they always were. No matter how many brick walls she put up his smoke would always find its way through to her and she would drink it up because that’s the only thing she really knew how to do with Cole.

But the silence was new.

Normally they would be shouting at each other threats masked in desire masked in love; firing off anything and everything to deny the fact that what still lay between them was a lifetime - a lifetime that they had never gotten the chance to share. Anger masked that knowledge better than anything she had ever known, and after all is said and done that was all that should be left. Should be.

Tonight they had the silence. She watched him watching her and wished desperately for something to better occupy her hands with. Tilting her glass to her lips again Kat let her eyes rest on the space between them, memorizing the grain of the wooden table and wishing simultaneously that it was four times as long and short all in the same breath.

The air was almost buzzing between them as her eyes left the table and were drawn upwards towards his blue ones. Blue eyes, they would always be her downfall. Their eyes would meet and dart away with intensity, as if neither of them was sure what would happen if they stared for too long, but too scared to find out what would happen if they didn’t but when finally he started to speak her eyes couldn’t leave his for trying.

‘Let’s shag’

Two words. Two words from him were all it took to shake her to the core. Her eyes bulged and her lips opened in surprise but no sound came from them. He threw her off guard. I am happy, she thought to herself. We are happy. They were happy. She was tired but she was happy. Wasn’t that enough? She formed her reply on her lips but he cut her off before the sounds left her tongue.

And he was right, of course. Half right at least. Right about the girl she used to be, the one that came out whenever he was around. The part of her that was always Katie Scarlett, never Mrs. Buckett; that girl was screaming. Half of her had married for love, the other half for comfort. She was torn, split in two to the very core of her being. Half of her agreed with him. The other half was in love with someone else.

He was right though. She was never the person who settled for comfort or routine, but then again neither was he. Yet here they were in their yearly routine of him pleading and her denying, him chasing and her stuck somewhere between yes and no with a diaper bag chained to her hip. No matter how she looked at it, it was routine. It wasn’t just her that was stuck; he was stuck in the familiarity of her, the memory of them. He found comfort in her chaos.

As the tear slid almost unnoticed from his eye Kat sighed and lowered her gaze, back to the table, the grain of wood, to the distance between them that still wasn’t quite big or small enough. He owed himself too, she thought, more than her, more than this, but Kat had had a lifetime of owing, and at the end of the day, taking was more her style. She lived her life with a fire blazing behind her, or at least, half her life. The other half was spent putting it out.

After a long sip of her drink Kat settled the glass down in front of her with a sense of finality, meeting his gaze with half a smile and a spark of life in her eyes. Her mind was made up; it was one bed she was willing to lie in. She’d clean up the mess tomorrow.

Okay, she thought, let’s shag. If she was being selfish (as she often was) Cole was one part of her bedtime history she had every desire in repeating, he had been the first she’d had, and she missed that thing he did with his tongue. She didn’t say that though, couldn’t give him the satisfaction. Instead she leaned back against the booth, casually pushing her long hair behind her ear again and raising an eyebrow in question.

“Aren’t you at least going to buy me a drink first?”

[/justify][/font]

[Professor Cole A. Halliwell]

Oh, right. Foreplay. Talk. Playing sexy. All that stuff. I forgot about that.

Cole smiled, a tired, deeply personal smile. Was this a victory? Was this a first moment of finally winning her over after years of batting back and forth around the world, chasing the girl that had changed him more profoundly than anyone else? He wasn't so sure, he wasn't so definitely sure, but he smiled. It was a small grin, a tiny reflection of his appreciation for her words, a tiny admission that he was hiding under this surface of alcohol and nicotine.

His speech had taken it out of him, it had sapped all the emotional energy he had left. He was so drained that he wasn't entirely sure what Kat was saying, what her eyes meant and what the movement of her hair, tucked behind her ear, could possibly mean. He wasn't for mind-reading right now, he wasn't for intensity. That moment had passed faster than he'd expected, slipping through his fingers with the ease of water from a stream. Gone and unretrievable, even by magic.

And so he smiled, the grin not quite passing, growing slightly to the point where he looked to one side to hide his grimace. Well, it's not sexy, he thought to himself, and while I can, yes, just about reduce this woman to a kitten with one soft brush of my tongue, I can at least make the moments building to that somewhat exciting.

But it was for no avail, and he chuckled, also leaning back from the table, his slim-fitting shirt sleeve slipping below his elbow as he lit up a far more triumphant cigarette than the last. He met Kat's gaze, not even caring what was through her mind any more. He let the humour pass and then winked. Well, here we begin. Her heart should've just sped up... let's see what comes next.

Cole leant over, puffing on the cigarette with his right hand and slipping his left around Kat's back. It wasn't forceful, but she also had no option to say no as he rested the inside of his forearm on her left shoulder for a moment, before slipping it down to her hip, his hand resting on her thigh, moving inward and closer, closer -

Closer to her midriff. Cole was sexy, he knew that much, but he was no sleaze. He caught her gaze again, deciding not to bother reading it, and slipped his head towards hers, leading with his nose and pulling her hair out his way with it. His lips barely brushed her ear as he murmured, with all the huskiness and glamour of a smoker from 60s' Swinging London, mumbling into her ear.

"Well, that, dear Miss Samuels, is a task I will most fondly undertake with all the gratitude in the world."

And so he slipped away, as quickly as his arms had wrapped around her, and tugged on his cigarette, approaching the bar with elation teasing its way across his face. He couldn't even help a little skip along the way.

[/font]

[Kat Samuels]

When he smiled, Kat wanted to cry. She didn’t though; she cast her eyes down toward the table once more because she knew if she looked at that smile again she wouldn’t be able to stop herself. His smile showed just how tired he was too, just how far they had come from the people they once were and how damn exhausting it was to pretend otherwise. Cole had, and probably would always be her equal, her mirror almost, they shared so many things and in so many different ways that she wasn’t entirely sure why this time it surprised her so much.

That was a lie. She did know, she just didn’t want to admit she was wrong.

Kat had always believed that free from her, Cole would be happy. He would find someone to love, he would grow old and he would forget her. That was all she had ever wanted for him. But he was so tired, so drained and so lost – he looked as though she had been following his every footstep, haunting his every dream since she first left him all those years ago. She had never wanted that, to possess someone’s heart so fully that they were not whole without her. Kat would never be whole, she had been split in two years ago, and she knew that, no matter how much she tried to deny it. She had never wanted that for them though.

It was not the time for that now though, not the time at all. There was shagging to be had. If they were going to be tired they were damn well going to have fun doing it. His chuckle brought her attention back up to his eyes, and she offered him up a smile in return. He winked, and she laughed softly, knowing that once again they were on the same page. Once again they were equals.

She’d missed the way he winked. The way he looked at her. Hell, she’d missed the way he looked. There was no one in the world like Cole Halliwell, and the world was lucky for that. No one place could survive two of such a man; she barely survived with just the one of him, (and she didn’t survive at all without him). Especially when he was sliding his hand so easily over her body, teasingly ghosting his fingers over her skin. Instinct would have her freeze up under his touch, but her body relaxed in his arms, shivering almost as his warm breath – his lips – brushed against her ear.

It wasn’t until he was gone from her side that’s she let out her breath, her hands resuming their nervous dance; her fingers twirling around each other in an intricate pattern of worry. Miss Samuels. He’d called her Miss Samuels, but she hadn’t been that person for the longest time. She was Mrs. Buckett now. She was married and she had three children - three beautiful, beautiful children. Was she ready to do this to them? Could she?

No, she couldn’t.

They were all so very young; they needed structure – the stable care of a mother and father. They needed routine. She couldn’t just sleep with Cole and expect Straw to forgive her this time. She wouldn’t just be betraying him anymore. She couldn’t do it to them.

Sighing, Kat looked over at Cole, ready to make a quick escape. He had his back to her, he wouldn’t notice her leaving; she had left him many times before. She picked up her bag from beside her but something made her stop in her tracks. Cole had skipped – there had been an actual skip in his step. Her fingers loosened on her bag and she covered her mouth, stifling a laugh that was building in her throat. Cole Halliwell had actually had a skip in his step at the thought of sleeping with her. It was beautiful.

But she couldn’t remember the last time she had laughed and that stopped her more than anything. She was twenty-four years old, and she didn’t know the last time she had laughed before this night. This was the most alive she had been in months, years even. She had been going through the motions of routine, bathing, feeding, loving her children, but not living. It was as though she had been living one step removed from her body, watching as she went through the motions of family life, but never being close enough to appreciate it.

Her children didn’t need structure; they needed a mother alive enough to care about them – to love them. Kat had spent her childhood with a mother too broken to love her and a father too hateful to care. She didn’t want that for her children. They needed a mother and a father, and at the moment they had a father who gave them the world and a mother who slept through their childhood.

So she would do it. She wouldn’t do it to them; she would do it for them. They needed her to be alive, and this was the closest she had come since they had been born. Cole had been right, she owed them more than that - she owed everyone more than that. She wasn’t the girl they had both fallen in love with anymore, she wasn’t even the ghost of that girl, but somehow that was all Straw could see. Kat wasn’t really sure if her husband knew how changed she was, how unhappy she had been. She loved him so much but she wasn’t one for marriage, she knew that now. She wish she had known before she had made that promise to him, she wished she could save him the pain but he deserves more than the girl he’s holding onto, because she doesn’t exist anymore.

But from where she was sitting, looking over at the back of the only other boy she’s loved, Kat starts to think that maybe, maybe that girl isn’t so lost after all. She could find her again, if only she gave herself the chance to try.