The Last Avengers Story Chapter 8

Avengers Forever aka Die Hardest

Chapter Eight: Der Tag. Later that same Morning - Memories

Present Day - a Roadside cafe quite near Tibet-By-The-Sea

Emma Knight looked at herself in the mirror in the ladies lav. The pads she had stuffed into her cheeks swelled them out like a chipmunk, and the wig she had pulled over her own auburn hair was gray and piled in a high pompadour. Her bosom was tremendous under her nurses' outfit...Mt. Everest and K2 had nothing on them. The Annapurna of her rear end was quite a triumph, also. Emma smiled. Steed would never recognize her.

She folded up her real clothes neatly and stuffed them into her brocaded carpet bag, took a deep breath, and walked out of the lav into the cafe. No one paid her any mind. She exited the cafe, climbed into the van, and started the remaining five miles to Mulberry Luxury Retirement Center.

It had been an enjoyable drive up to Tibet-By-The-Sea, Emma thought. There had been plenty of people she could have called and talked to on her cellphone while she drove, but of course she didn't. Not because it was illegal to talk on a cellphone while driving in England (although it was, as was drinking a beverage or eating anything, even a candy bar!) but because Emma was nothing if not a good driver and she preferred to have both her hands on the wheel and her attention on the road in front of her.

But she'd been immersed in pleasant memories for all that. She'd turned on the radio and listened to a cricket match in progress. Steed was a devoted cricketer and he'd continued to play into his seventies - indeed he and his old friends had had quite a cricket match for...his seventieth birthday, that had been, Emma remembered. She'd accounted herself well with the bat, too.

Hmmm...yes, that had been the game where she'd brought along a couple of her Little Sisters. Emma had never wanted nor had children, but after her retirement from Department S and return to domestic life with Peter Peel - and managing Knight Industries, she'd joined Big Sisters-Little Sisters and acted as mentor for quite a few teenagers whom she'd turned from the path of boyfriend-pregnancy-council house into the path of university degree-job in a scientific field-nice house-boyfriend. Much the best way to feel a success in one's life.

Which isn't to say she'd never wondered what it would be like to have been married to Steed. Probably divorced in two weeks, Emma thought with a smile. Steed was simply not a one-woman man, and even for her - and she knew she held a special place in his heart - he would not have been able to settle down for more than a year or two. And much as she loved him - and understood him - she would not have put up with any roaming. And he'd have seen that as challenge! She grinned...it might have been fun at that. - keeping track of him, matching wits with him as he tried to deceive her by this or that strategem...breaking in at the crucial moment...

Emma laughed, and shook her head. Their friendship had lasted more than 40 years because they hadn't got married to each other. They'd remained extremely good friends, even rekindled the romantic part of their relationship after the death of Peter Peel - (only a few years after his return, from injuries suffered in his plane crash in the Amazon), but they had remained as two ships crossing continually in the night - if they'd ever married it would have been to collide...and sink.

''The best of both worlds,'' Emma thought to herself. ''That's what we've had. That's what we'll always have.''

She paused outside the gates of Mulberry Luxury Retirement Center, took a deep breath, and drove through the gates. No turning back now.