OutlawQueen Oneshots

Hilltop Rendezvous

A/N: Just a little oneshot I whacked out tonight. I'd been wanting to write something similar to this sort of setting for a few days, but the third person narrative wasn't planned. Barely proofread, not beta'd in the slightest so I apologies for any mistakes. Hope you enjoy!

"Music expresses that which cannot be said, and on which it is impossible to be silent." ~ Victor Hugo

A quiet hilltop. A gentle breeze rustling through the trees of the valley, whipping a lone rider's hair into endless tangles. A flock of moorhens escaping en masse from the danger of the horse's hooves is the only other sign of life on the moor.

The rider slows to a stop, dismounts, and any onlooker with good binoculars can see that she's been crying, for her Latina face is marked with tears and her bottom lip is still trembling. Her ungloved hands run gentle caresses up and down the horse's chestnut face, tracing the star on its forehead, fondling the nostrils before burying her face in its neck and crying again. A case is strapped securely across the bare sweating flank, and eventually the - girl? Woman? She's young, but it's hard to tell from here whether she's eighteen or twenty, or maybe perhaps a little older - unstraps it and takes something out. It's a violin, the bird-watcher catches, his initial reason for lying on the moor on a blazing sunny day forgotten in this new and unusual interest. She tunes it quietly. The wind's in the wrong direction to hear anything. The horse lies down, rolls for a bit, then nuzzles its mistress' stomach as she holds the instrument up to her chin and positions the bow.

The wind changes at that exact moment, and the strains of music are so haunting, so beautiful, that the bird-watcher is suddenly overwhelmed and very aware that he's intruding on a private moment between this woman and herself, but he can't get up and walk away because surely she'd notice him. So he stays, he lowers his binoculars to give her some privacy, he rubs more sun lotion on the back of his neck, and he listens to the music this woman is producing possibly from memory, possibly on the spot, and even in his long experience of waking up to birdsong he's not sure he's heard anything so eerily beautiful.

It's a good while before his ears pick up on it, because it's coming from behind him, but eventually he hears another tune drifting up the hilltop. A woodwind, he thinks. A wooden pipe, he amends as the player gets closer to him, closer to the woman, now standing not six feet from the birdwatcher hiding in the heather, playing a tune that perfectly complements the violin and yet contrasts it too. They're so in tune with each other, though she doesn't seem to be paying attention to anything outside of her own bubble and the wind grows and dies, so it can't be easy for the second player to hear her.

A cautious head up. The second instrument is indeed a wooden pipe, and he recognises the man instantly as one of the resident forest conservationists down in the valley so he wouldn't be surprised if it's handmade. He lives in a tent so, he says, he can move around and reduce his impact, and also so he can get to the whole area he works with more ease. A good man. A good father to his little boy of four. A widower, is the general knowledge, and incredibly young for one, but what happened everyone guesses, and no one knows.

The pipe player gets closer still to the woman, and eventually she does look up, does see him, and the birdwatcher almost misses the radiant smile that lights up her face when she sets eyes on him and her ears pick up on his music. She rises from the heather and they walk steadily towards each other, no mean feat considering both their hands are occupied and the moor's full of rabbit burrows and other trip hazards, until their song ends at precisely the moment they lower their instruments and cling to the other like their lives depended on it. It's not an abrupt ending, well it is, but if the birdwatcher had closed his eyes, if he had resisted the urge to watch the meeting out of sheer curiosity, he would have thought that it was the natural end of the piece. Her face is buried in his shoulder, he's rocking her gently, even the horse has gotten up and turned its back to give them space. But the birdwatcher's transfixed.

They pull back, exchange earnest conversation. The woman starts crying again, and the man kisses each tear away, ending with a peck on her nose that makes her giggle and look up at the forest worker with such adoration that the birdwatcher suddenly realises what he should've known before - this is their system, a private relationship, possibly forbidden, and he's seriously impeaching on their privacy by continuing to watch their rendezvous.

The instruments are gone now, probably lying in the violin case, and the two are kissing, tender caresses full of love that he can't watch any more. Confident now that neither of the two will see him, he packs his books up as quietly as he can and meanders down the hill the way he came, back to his wife. On opening the door he immediately takes her in his arms and kisses her for longer together than all of their kisses in what must be a year. She pulls back, flushed with surprise, and he simply thanks her for the nearly twenty years of happiness, and promises to cherish her more than he has been.

"I'll hold you to that," she quips, pecking his mouth again.