Unveiled
By Simply Shelby

"I want to show you what I see in magic."

Only it wasn't magic and he knew it. It was a trick, an illusion. Something that made you believe it was something else.

He didn't really understand how this was going to show him anything. After all, as she pointed out, they knew the machine better than anyone. Still, he humoured her. Perhaps it was the unadulterated smile that had quickly spread across her face or the determined look in her eyes, or simply the fact that he loved her too much to say no.

He honestly didn't understand why she seemed to love these simplistic tricks so much. His feelings about "magic" shows bordered on a festered disgust. Magicians had the gall to create illusions and call them magic. They lied to people and got away with it by saying it was magic. They tricked people for a living.

And Charlie hated being tricked.

He'd explained this much to Amita. She'd tried to convince him there was more to a magic trick than just the tricking part. "It's about believing, Charlie. That's what makes it magical." And how ironic it was for her to ask him to believe in something that was so untrustworthy. Unbidden, he thought of Colby and the entire spying mess. Trusting the seemingly untrustworthy. Then, he thought of himself. His TS/SCI security clearance had been re-instated despite the fact he'd commited what was labelled as treason.

Perhaps it wasn't as ironic as he'd thought.

She flew up, courtesy of the harness, one leg bending up and hands in the air as though she really was flying. Half a second later, she was joined by the deep coloured rose petals twirling, fluttering in a seemingly random pattern around her slender body. Dark curls brushed in all directions across her face and she was smiling so widely, her bubbling joy so tangible, that Charlie had to smile too.

And his breath had suddenly stopped in awe of what he saw.

Amita.

The young, magical woman who had progressed from being his student and his friend, to his friend and the love of his life. The woman who could understand the numbers pouring from his mind. The woman who could add her own numbers to his chalkboards. The woman who saw more than Dr. Eppes, the young genius, and knew the compassionate and vulnerable man that was Charlie Eppes. The woman who knew the need to change the world, to help the world was what drove his work. The woman who could extract him from his head like no one else in this world could. The woman who could endure his absence from this world and who could pull him back when she knew he needed to return.

The woman who could save him from himself.

"Can you see it?" Her voice rang with pure, childish glee.

And here she was once again, tugging him away from his straighforward theories, from his trusty numbers and showing him such tender beauty. Proving to him that magic did indeed exist no matter what his numbers proved or didn't prove.

He could see it.

He knew real magic when he saw it.