Feeling Ancient... 2038

Horatio entered the study, limping slightly due to his fall down the steps earlier that day. He had not seen one of Sevie's bouncy balls and had taken quite a tumble. Sitting down at his desk, he looked across the room at his wife, who was lost in a pile of notes and papers. He leaned back, trying to soothe the pain racing up his leg. It had been the same one he had broken five years earlier, falling while racing his son, Ewan...

Maybe he was just old, he mused, taking off his glasses and wiping them clean with a cloth on the desk. The muggle computer blinked at him as he flicked it on and he sighed deeply. He was old... it wasn't that he had just realized that. It was more so the fact that he had just begun to realize how out of place his life was.

How many other 190 year old men sat in their studies recovering from tripping over their 2 year old's forgotten toy? Not many. How many other men counted up the years in difference from their ages and their wives and came up with more than a century? Not many. At least she was older than fifty, although it didn't help that she looked half her age while he didn't.

"Eglantine?" he murmured, eyes moving to her side of the study.
"Yes, dearest?" she returned, looking up over her own glasses. The grey in her hair was more pronounced than it had been in years past. And he noticed a few more wrinkles around her fathomless eyes... but besides that there was little difference in the woman before him from the one he had married 19 years earlier.
"Just looking, love." he sighed. She lifted a pale eyebrow.
"At what?" she chuckled, stretching in a very feline fashion as she rose from her chair.
"You."
"Flattery will not get you out of speaking to Ewan about the broken lamp." Eglantine admonished firmly. Horatio in truth had forgotten all about it...yet another sign, he groaned internally.

Seeing him close his eyes and lean back further in his chair, Eglantine approached him.
"Are you well?" she asked, a warm hand going to rest against his wrinkled forehead. He took it in both of his. It felt small and smooth within his bear-like paws. Seeing himself as old as the Emperor in the old Star Wars movies, he sighed.

"I'm old, Eglantine." He waited for her laugh and scold him for thinking at way, to his surprise and horror, instead she said nothing. Levitating her chair to sit beside Horatio, she patted his knee.
"Yes, darling. I know."
Horatio's head spun. Well, they said the truth hurt... but goodness, why did he feel as if she had stabbed with with the bitterest thorn possible.
"You know..." he repeated. Then why had she married him? Given him five children and all?
"Yes, darling." Now he felt as old as she said she knew he was. Patience and a patronizing one at that. Eglantine was young enough to be his several greats daughter... despite her age. Even if she were a hundred... he'd still be too old.
"You're not helping." he muttered.

"Horatio, you're acting like Sevie." Eglantine chuckled, patting his pouting cheek. "Your age doesn't matter, lieb. No one cares how old you are, least of all me."
He grunted.
"Why the sudden depression?" she asked.
"I was simply thinking, love..." he murmured. "Age has usually tickled me, as I found it funny. But now I feel as though it has attacked me, robbing my heart of every youthful thought..."
"Oh darling..." Eglantine sighed, leaving her chair, to sit on his lap. Gently she stroked his cheek and forehead. "Every thought?"
He nodded.
"Even our first kiss?" she whispered, resting her head against his chest. Horatio wrapped his arms around her, smiling softly as he remembered the moment.
"Even our walks in the dark hallways?" he chuckled as he remembered her soft giggles as he had tickled her and laughed at her reactions.
"Even..." she trailed off on her third point as he kissed her.

It was not a passionate kiss with youth but it was a kiss and a loving one. Lost in his love for his wife, Horatio threw his age to the wind and lifted her up into the air as he rose. Startled, she shrieked, grabbing onto his neck as he carried her out into the living room.
"What are you doing?" she asked, chuckling.
"Remembering." he stated, eyes twinkling at her, their familiar joy reflected from his smile.
"I thought you had had every youthful thought robbed from your very heart." Eglantine reminded, coyly.
"Yes, but then you reminded me of every youthful thought. Age cannot rob me of anything, you own my heart after all."
"True..." Eglantine whispered, giggling as Horatio nearly tripped over yet another toy on the stairs.
"Honestly, Sevie needs to put his toys away." Horatio muttered, kicking the toy truck a good five meters.
"Indeed..." Eglantine agreed.