((Takes place five days after the events of This Isn't Goodbye.))

Half Moon Bay, California, 1975. A town that had embraced the free love, peace, and all round easy-going nature of the decade that enveloped it; a place where many who embarked on the typical pilgrimages to California chose to put down their flexible roots. It was into this mix of old and new, more than a decade before her own birth, that Helena found herself thrown when she stepped through a newly created portal. She'd made a promise a week before to come and find Tommy, to bring him back to Rhy'Din with her, and after five days of driving her little sister up the wall switching between nerves, excitement, and uncertainty, she had taken the leap of faith. A little research with various mages and magic shops, and she'd worked out how to open a portal into the past, and here she was.

Dressed as close to the era as she could manage, with Tommy's wristband wrapped about her own wrist, she made her way through bustling streets toward the beach, toward a little shop emblazoned with the title Hang Ten. With butterflies multiplying in her stomach and a hesitant smile on her face, she pushed open the door, calling out hopefully. "Um ....hello?"

A little bell rang above the door to announce her arrival, but even so, no one came out to greet her. It was quiet inside the shop, too quiet. Tommy's psychedelically painted van was nowhere to be seen, and though the door to the shop was open, it seemed at first that no one was there. The shop itself was more of a workshop than a store. A small counter lined one wall upon which were scattered various magazines and catalogs, all having to do with surfing in one way or another. Posters and pictures cluttered the walls - all vintage to her - more evidence that the shop was dedicated to surf and sun. One prominent poster showed a group of young surfers on the beach, along with the lyrics from a Beach Boys tune, "Catch a wave, you'll be sitting on top of the world." There were a few empty cans of Coke on the counter, along with pencils and paper, and an ashtray half-full of crushed out cigarettes, evidence someone had been there fairly recently.

Stepping inside, Lena looked around curiously, her nose wrinkling a little at the sight of the ashtray. The little shop/workshop seemed deserted to her, no signs of life inside or outside. She hadn't seen Tommy's van outside either, but that wasn't something to worry about. He could be on a delivery, or down at the beach itself. Her fingers stroked against the posters on the wall as she walked further into the crowded space, raising her voice to call out again. "Hello' Excuse me?"

"How many times do I have to tell you people..." came the sound of a decidely masculine voice from what appeared to be a back room, beyond the counter and the clutter. "The shop is..." the voice broke off, as a man stepped into view - long auburn hair framed his face, aviator glasses resting on the rim of his nose, a goatee covering his chin. "Oh," he said, breaking off at the unexpected sight of a pretty girl. "I'm sorry. I thought you were someone else," he said, waving a hand as if to wave off his own remarks. "Can I help you with something?" he asked, figuring she was lost and looking for directions or something. He didn't recognize her as a local, so he assumed she was more than likely a tourist.

She blinked, startled to find someone other than Tommy there, and yes, startled by the slightly wild appearance of the man who came into view so aggressively, taking a step back from him even as he apologised. She shook her head, raising her polite smile from where it had rushed to hide in the face of that greeting. "It's okay," she assured him, glancing around once again. "I'm actually looking for someone. Tommy King" Said I should meet him here today?"

Recognition flashed across the man's features at the mention of that name, and he shuffled slightly nervously, his expression hinting at a frown. He adjusted the frames that rested on the rim of his nose and gave her a harder look. Tommy had never mentioned a girl before, not recently anyway. He hesitated a moment, considering his words carefully before continuing. "Are you a friend?" he asked, tentatively.

"Uh ..." She hesitated, not entirely sure that friend was the right way to classify her relationship with Tommy. "That's as good a word as any, I guess," she shrugged eventually, raising her hand to show him the leather band wrapped about her wrist. Tommy's bracelet. "Is he okay?" she asked, worry beginning to blossom in her expression. If he was here, surely this guy would just have yelled for him, right"

The man's gaze darted briefly to the strap of leather Tommy always wore upon his wrist. Well, that explained where that had gone. He'd given it to some girl, but who was she and why' There was no doubt in his mind that it belonged to Tommy. Only someone really close to Tommy would even know of it. He almost flinched at her question, realizing this girl - whoever she was - had been a close friend of Tommy's, maybe even a lover, and more importantly, she had no idea what had happened to him. "You better sit down," he told her, pushing open the door to the backroom and waiting for her to follow.

Helena's smile froze on her face. No conversation that began with you had better sit down ever went well. Feeling the numb chill of deep, stomach-clenching fear and concern beginning to spread through her limbs, she forced herself to follow the man into the back room. "What do you mean?" she asked, a little more aggressively than she had meant to. "What's happened to him' Where is he?"

She found herself in what looked like a workroom. A stool sat empty near a worktable, where Tommy often sat and worked at or contemplated his craft. This room was even more cluttered than the other, filled with tools of his trade, a radio, more empty Coke cans and ashtrays which were overflowing with burned out cigarettes, but whether they were his or not was unclear. "Please," the man said, waving her onward toward the stool. He didn't need some girl he didn't know passing out on him, but if she was a friend of Tommy's, she had a right to know what had happened to him. She'd only find out herself anyway, as soon as she poked around town or picked up a paper. "Look, there's no easy way to tell you this..."

Jack took the bottle back and took a far deeper swig than Helena, but like her, the booze did very little to numb his grief. Only time could do that, and though he'd had a few more days to absorb what had happened than had she, he was still clearly reeling from the loss. He tilted a glance at her as he took a lean against the kitchen cupboards. "He didn't tell you, did he?"

Hugging herself once again, she sank down onto a chair, trying as hard as she could to ignore the hope that somehow this was all just a cruel joke, that Tommy was going to come walking through the door at any moment. "H-he didn't really tell me much at all," she told Jack quietly, staring down at her feet. "He mostly got me to talk about me, you know" Like that was more important."

Jack smiled sadly, reminded fondly of his friend as the two of them talked. "That sounds like Tommy, all right. Truth is, he was bankrupt. The bank was getting ready to foreclose on the shop. It was only a matter of weeks. I think it broke his heart, to be honest. He loved this place. The beach, I mean. The shop was just a means to an end, really. We tried to scrape some money together to save the place, but it wasn't enough. World's changing, Helena. Nobody cares about shops like this anymore. It's becoming all about money and corporate greed. Mass manufacturing what was once done by hand. The meets aren't even the same any more. You can't schedule when the waves will be their best. It just....happens."

She couldn't help smiling, even through the numbing wilderness that was becoming her sense of self and soul the deeper it sank in. Ironic, that her family was based entirely in the world of corporation; sad, that Tommy had found a beach to love on Rhy'Din just two days before his death. She understood a little better now his enthusiasm for the place she'd shown him, untouched by greed and manufacture; completely wild. "I showed him a beach, near where I live," she said quietly. "I think he fell in love with it. We stayed out there for two nights, no plans, nothing set in stone. He even got me on that damned surfboard more than once." She was surprised to find herself laughing quietly, sad but fond as she looked back over the short time she had known Tommy King.

He laughed with her, having known Tommy well enough to imagine all that, especially the part about getting her onto a surfboard. "He loved surfing. Did he tell you he used to compete" I think he's got some trophies around here somewhere." He set the bottle of amber liquid on the counter and started toward the small living area to rummage around in one of several boxes that were piled around to search for said trophies. "They used to call him 'The King', but that was before Robby died," the man called Jack went on, unsure how much Helena knew about his friend's history.

All of this was news to her, but she latched onto it, anything to distract herself from the pain that was beginning to wrap itself around her heart. He's gone. I'm too late. "He didn't tell me anything, really," she admitted, forcing her sluggish limbs to move, to bear her after Jack as he rummaged through the boxes piled there. "He said he didn't compete, but he never said that he had competed. I didn't think to ask any further. Who was Robby?"

"Robby was his best friend. They were like brothers. They owned the shop together." He paused a moment as he stumbled on something he thought might interest her and pulled out a slightly tattered scrap book that looked like it had seen better days. He flipped the book open before handing it to Lena, tapping a finger to indicate a black and white photograph of two men, one blond and one dark-haired, barely out of their teens. "That's them." He handed her the book before turning back to the box, crouching down on the floor to rummage through it for any more treasures.

Taking the book, Lena sank down onto the edge of another chair as she looked down at the photograph, her smile faint and sad as her fingertip traced the young faces that grinned back at her from the sepia-stained picture. Both so young, and both gone, long before their time should have come. "Will you tell me about him?" she asked Jack softly. "About Tommy' I want to know, and ....I can't ask him anymore, can I?" Her voice trembled as she said it aloud, the final acknowledgement that Tommy King really was gone beyond her reach.

"Here it is!" he declared triumphantly as he pulled from one of the boxes a large brass trophy engraved with the silhouette of a surfer set atop a royal blue base. He frowned a little as he turned to face her, moving to take a seat on a couch that - like a lot of the other furniture in the flat - looked like it had seen better days. "What do you wanna know?" he asked, unsure where to start. He knew a little about Tommy King, probably more than most, but certainly not everything.

Her eyes strayed to the trophy in his hand as he sat down, wondering why Tommy hadn't told her that he had history competing, even if he had stopped doing so. "Anything," she said quietly. "I don't really know anything about him. I assumed we had time to ....I thought I had years to learn all about him." She paused, her breathing just a little shaky as she looked down at the scrap book in her lap. "When did he compete, why did he stop?"

Jack shrugged as she glanced over at the scrap book, which was full of various photographs and mementos someone - more than likely Tommy - had once thought important enough to save there. Most of them were of himself and Robby, some surfing, some just screwing around for the camera, like young people liked to do. Some of the photos included a pretty red-haired girl sandwiched between them. One of the photos of the three of them held a caption that declared them "The Three Musketeers". In the back, were a few photos that didn't seem to fit in with the rest of the album of a pretty blond-haired woman with a boy whose blond hair and fair features resembled her too much to be anything but related. "He and Robby competed for a few years, until Robby died in....'73, I think it was. Drowned. Surfing accident. Tommy stopped competing after that, but he didn't stop surfing."

As she listened, Helena flipped slowly through the scrapbook, soaking in the pictorial progression of Tommy's life as he had seen it. There was a lot of laughter, a lot of freedom in these pages, but she could see, too, a little of the constraint he'd been trying to convince her to relax out of herself during the short time they'd been together. It wasn't a great leap to identify his mother in the few photos that were saved there, a sad half-smile touching her face as she looked at the woman who had given life to the man who had touched her own heart. "How did his mom die?" she asked suddenly, lifting her eyes to Jack. It was a guess, nothing more, but she had a feeling that if his mother had still been with him, Tommy would never have jumped so eagerly at the chance to leave this place behind.

Jack shrugged again. "I don't know. Go somewhere else maybe. There are too many memories here." He paused a moment again as he looked back at her with the book held tightly in her arms - her only remaining link to Tommy. "I'm getting this place ready for foreclosure. I can't save the property, but I can save Tommy's stuff. If there's anything you want, take it. There's no one left but me and you," Jack said sadly. Sure, Tommy had some other friends - maybe even a father left alive somewhere - but Jack was the one who was here taking the time to preserve his friend's most prized possessions and to share what he knew of him to a girl who seemed to have loved him almost as much as he did. "Tommy celebrated life every day he lived. We should be happy that we knew him."

The offer startled her a little - by her own admission, she'd barely known Tommy, but apparently the closeness she'd felt with him was palpable, even to his friend still struggling with his own grief. "Are you sure?" she asked uncertainly. "I-I don't really have any right to take anything." She bit her lip, feeling her voice beginning to tremble again as the longing for someone familiar welled up again. There was nothing here for her. "I should go. I interrupted you, I'm sorry."

"You aren't interrupting anything," he countered, with a faint smile. "I should be thanking you for letting me talk about him a little. And yeah, I'm sure." He seemed to sense her grief, hearing the tremble in her voice and thought she might like to be alone for a while with this place, with whatever was left of Tommy's memory and soul here. "Take your time and take whatever you want." Tommy would want it that way. "I, uh....I'll be downstairs if you need anything." He got to his feet, debating whether to take the bottle with him or leave it with her.

"Thank you." Helena, too, stood up, still hugging the scrapbook that was all the story of Tommy King's life she was ever going to get. Her eyes strayed to the bottle in Jack's hand, a half-smile flickering into life on her face before dying once again. "You can take that," she told him quietly. "I, uh, I'm driving."

"Okay," he agreed with a strained smile as he raised the bottle in toast of his friend - their friend. "To Tommy. He's probably teaching the angels how to surf." He smiled at the thought of that before taking a long drag from the bottle in honor of his friend.

Her laugh was short and soft, but it was there. She could imagine that only too well, and she'd met a few angels in her time. Tommy would no doubt be making waves in whatever afterlife he'd chosen for himself. "Thank you, Jack," she said quietly. "I won't be long, and then I'll be out of your hair." It never occurred to her to ask where Tommy was buried. She didn't want to see a gravestone.

It was just as well as there was no gravestone. Tommy had been cremated, his ashes scattered along the beach and in the sea he so loved. There was nothing really left of him but a few photographs, mementos, and memories. "Is that a hair joke?" he asked, with a smirk, letting her see that his grief hadn't completely robbed him of his sense of humor. Life went on, after all. And with that said, he made his way back down the stairs, leaving her alone to reconcile herself as she would.

She stood still for a long time in that quiet, empty apartment, surrounded by all that was left of a life lived to the fullest. A life that had touched hers so briefly, stolen her heart, and taught her to look at everything just a little differently. A life that was gone, cut short. And it was, at least in part, her fault. She drifted between the packed boxes, the precious scrapbook held in her arms, picking at the contents without paying much attention to what she was seeing or doing. Nothing here could possibly sum up the man who had touched her so deeply, and yet she couldn't bring herself to leave without taking something with her. The scrapbook, filled with his memories; the key chain she had last seen dangling from his fingers as he climbed into his van; a shirt that still smelt of him ....that was all she took.

She could have taken everything, and still it wouldn't have been enough. Two days had not been enough. A lifetime without him was going to be too much. But Tommy wouldn't have wanted anyone to just give up because he was gone. Drawing in a slow, deep breath, Helena looked around the little apartment one last time, and let herself admit aloud what she hadn't wanted to admit even in the depths of her heart. "I could have loved you," she told the silence around her. "I think I fell, and you're not here to catch me. I'm so sorry, Tommy. I should have come with you."

Tears dripped down her cheeks for a long moment, brushed away with one harsh sweep of her hand as she pulled herself ruthlessly together one last time. Tears wouldn't bring him back; they wouldn't erase the mistake she'd made in letting him come back here alone. "I won't forget, I promise." But there really was nothing she could say, nothing she could do, to ease the icy heaviness that settled over her heart. He was gone, and once again, she was alone, without much hope of ever meeting anyone again who might understand her the way he had done. A lifetime might have been enough, if she could have spent it with him.

Hugging the scrapbook, shirt, and chain to herself, she picked her way back to the stairs, turning her back on all that was left of Tommy King. It was too late for regrets. It was too late for anything ....except goodbye.

((She just can't catch a break, can she? Many thanks to Tommy's player for bringing Jack to life!))