Fringe Fic: Theme and Variations (Part 1/2)
Title: Theme and Variations
Fandom: Fringe
Rating: Teen
Characters: Ella, with Olivia, Rachel, Peter, Astrid, Walter, and a handful of others
Season/Timeline: Blueverse, up to and including 3x22 The Day We Died
Warnings: Character deaths
Summary: Five times Ella Dunham said goodbye.
A/N: Huge amounts of thanks to ziparumpazoo for cheerleading, beta reading, and brain sharing. Also for introducing me to Fringe in the first place!
1
When she was four years old, Ella's mom and her Aunt Liv took her to the beach in Florida. Ella splashed in the waves and built the best sandcastle ever and ran as fast as her little legs would carry her to see the pelicans fish and the dolphins swim and to chase the gulls away from Aunt Liv's outstretched hand.
"Today was the most fun ever," Ella declared as she flopped onto the hotel room bed at the end of the first day. Mom sat next to her and grinned, ruffling Ella's hair.
Aunt Liv collapsed onto a chair at the table by the balcony. "I can't keep up with you two," she said with a mock-groan, and Ella laughed.
It was supposed to be Dad, not Aunt Liv, sitting there with them and rehashing the day. But the night before they left, as Mom was packing the suitcases, Dad's phone rang. When he hung up, he muttered low words to her mother in the other room, kissed Ella on the top of the head with a "sorry, squirt," and walked down the stairs and out the door.
Mom bit her lip and rubbed her forehead and shook her head. Then she smiled and said, "I'll call your aunt," and Ella shrieked in glee.
*
The second day they played on the beach again, all day long, but by the afternoon of day three, Aunt Liv declared herself desperate for a break from the sun, so they headed to the aquarium instead. There were more dolphins to see, and some seahorses and a huge turtle and a manatee. And when Ella pronounced the manatee the cutest ugliest animal on the planet, Aunt Liv took her by the hand and led her to the gift shop and dumped a little stuffed manatee into her arms.
Ella clung to that fist-sized manatee all the way through the aquarium, back to the car, and into the restaurant where they stopped for dinner. Mom and Aunt Liv smiled and laughed, and Aunt Liv reached over to tickle Ella when she wouldn't giggle at Aunt Liv's knock-knock joke, and Ella decided this day was even better than the two that came before.
But when the food arrived at the table, Aunt Liv didn't eat right away. She turned her head and craned her neck to look out the window as though something had caught her eye.
"What is it?" asked Mom, and Aunt Liv turned back around and made a face, her lips pursed and eyebrows furrowed.
"We've eaten here before," she said, and Mom's smile faltered.
"Have we?" she asked, setting down her sandwich and twisting to look around the room. "I don't remember."
"It looked different then," Aunt Liv said, and she looked different too, somehow; tighter, maybe, and a little bit sad. "But the pier out there. I recognize that pier."
Ella didn't like seeing her Aunt Liv look sad. And she hated the hush that dropped over the table as Aunt Liv and her mom looked at each other as though they were seeing something totally different.
"Was I there?" Ella asked softly, breaking the silence, and when Aunt Liv turned to her and shook her head and smiled, everything was fine again.
"It was a long, long time ago, honey."
*
It wasn't until they were back at the hotel, with Ella tucked into bed, that Ella realized she'd left her new manatee at the restaurant. Mom got on the phone right away, but the toy was long gone, and Ella cried. Hard.
"I'm so sorry, sweetie," Mom said over and over as she rubbed Ella's back, murmuring, "She's tired. She's so tired," to Aunt Liv every now and then. Ella tried to stop crying, told herself to be brave like Aunt Liv would, but she couldn't. She just couldn't.
Not until Aunt Liv slid into the bed next to her and gathered Ella up in her arms and held her tight. "I miss your smile," she said.
"I'm so sorry, Aunt Liv," Ella choked out between her sobs.
Aunt Liv stroked her hair. "You're sorry?" she asked seriously. "What for?"
Ella took a deep breath, in and out, steadying herself before she spoke. "I'm so sorry that I lost your present, Aunt Liv," she said at last.
But Aunt Liv just held her tighter. "Oh, Ella."
*
Early in the morning, before Mom woke up, Aunt Liv pulled Ella to the table and sat down next to her.
"You're still not smiling, honey," she said.
Ella shook her head.
Aunt Liv propped her elbow on the table and rested her chin on her hand and looked at Ella thoughtfully. "Let's draw," she said finally, reaching under the table and pulling out the bag of paper and crayons Mom carried with her everywhere they went. "Let's draw some of our favorite things we've seen here."
So Ella drew the dolphins, and Aunt Liv drew the sea; Ella drew the beach towels and Aunt Liv drew herself asleep in the bed at night. And at the very end, Aunt Liv handed Ella a picture of a manatee and said, "Now you have one to keep, even if you had to say goodbye to the first one."
And Ella smiled.
2
She was nine when her parents' divorce became final. They'd been on again, off again for years before that day, but somehow they'd never managed to officially call it quits, always finding some way to reconcile before they both signed on their respective dotted lines. And all that time, they kept hiding it all from Ella, masking reality with trips to visit Aunt Liv and stories about long hours for work or renovations to be done at their house. But Ella heard the low-voiced, late-night conversations between her mom and her aunt, saw the hurt looks and the tension and knew what was happening long before they ever told her it was real.
A girl can learn a lot by sitting back and paying attention.
"Welcome to the club," her friend Carrie said at the bus stop that morning, swaying back and forth and swinging her purse in front of her. "From here on out, your schedule is not your own. What is it, mom on the weeknights and dad every other weekend?"
Ella didn't answer, her gaze following the pendulum motion of the purse, back and forth.
"Holidays?" Carrie tried again.
Back and forth, left to right, it was mesmerizing and oddly soothing.
With a jerk, Carrie pulled the pocketbook up by the straps and slung it over her shoulder. "Dad gave it to me," she said. "Twice as many birthday presents now, you know. Look at the bright side." Her voice sounded strange; cool and a little mocking, a stretched-out attempt to be less like her ten-year-old self and more like her older brother. To be confident. Independent. Different. Old enough to be free, and too old to be heading off to jump ropes, hula hoops, and a spelling test after lunch.
Ella felt like that too, today.
She turned away, not wanting to look at herself in her friend's eyes any longer, and watched the school bus pull around the corner and up towards their stop. And as it drew closer, she felt Carrie's hand slip into the crook of her arm and Carrie's chin rest on her shoulder.
"You'll be okay," Carrie said, and Ella nodded.
*
Dad's car was waiting in the line after school, one of the first ones there, and Ella climbed in, putting on a smile and leaning across to kiss his cheek.
"How're you doing, squirt? Good day?"
"Yeah," she responded automatically, with no real thought as to the truth of her answer.
"Good," he said, nodding. "Good." He pulled the car away from the curb.
They drove down the road in near-silence; Ella didn't quite know what she was supposed to say, and Dad wasn't helping, so she stared out the window at the cars and buildings as they slid by. The hush stretched out as they hunted for a parking place and continued as they made their way across a busy street and over to the ice cream shop they'd visited so many times before as a family. It went on so long that she was about to open up her mouth and blurt out, "Dad, just get over it already." But then he looked at her and asked -like he always did - if chocolate was still her favorite flavor, and she laughed and said, "Are there any others?" as though today were normal, and suddenly it was all okay again.
They talked for over an hour. Dad told her about his tennis club, and Ella told him about the hula hoops and the spelling test and her fourth grade teacher, Mrs. Parnicky.
But she didn't tell him about Carrie's purse or her split-up family.
It turned out Carrie was right, though, because when they'd cleaned up their little table and were about to walk out the door, Dad stopped and pulled something out of his pocket. "Here," he said, holding it out to her. "I saw these the other day and thought you might like them."
Ella held the plain white bag for several seconds, running her fingers back and forth along the folded top. "Go on," Dad said eventually, and she did, reaching in a hand to see what was inside. What she pulled out was hair ribbons, long and purple and edged with something sparkly.
She ran her fingers down the length of them and kept her eyes cast down so that her dad couldn’t see what she was thinking.
"You used to have some like that," he was saying. "I haven't seen them in a while, and I thought - well, if you'd lost them, you might like some more."
The ribbons, Ella knew, were probably still decorating a stuffed bear that she and Mom had given away during one of their closet cleanout days over the summer. And she thought to herself that she wasn't five anymore, and hadn't he noticed? But she didn't say that, either, any more than she'd told him about Carrie. Because maybe she didn't need hair ribbons, but still, they were something from him, today of all days.
And anyway, she really did love purple. So she looked up at him and gave him the most sincere smile she could muster. "Thanks, Dad," she said, and he ruffled her hair and grinned back.
The drove home in silence just like they'd come, but happier than before, more comfortable. At least, it started out that way. But then they drew closer to home - Ella's home, Mom's home, not his home - and she started to get that feeling again, like nothing was right, like she didn't know which way to go, stuck like a fly in honey.
She stared down into her lap and ran the ribbons through her fingers. She wasn't five anymore, and she didn't need fantasies about how this could all be better if only they'd try.
But that didn't stop her from wishing.
"All right, squirt," Dad said when he drew the car to a stop along the curb. "Have a good day tomorrow."
"You too, Dad."
He kissed her on the cheek, and she gave him a hug. Then she got out of the car, shoving his present into her pocket as she headed up the sidewalk.
She was only a few steps along when his voice made her pause.
"El," he called, and her heart skipped a beat or two.
She turned, took the two slow steps back to lean in through the open car window. "Yeah, Dad?"
"Call me," he said. "Anytime you want. Day or night."
She nodded, then drew herself up and away from him again. With a lift of her chin, she squared her shoulders as she'd seen Aunt Liv do so many times when she was unexpectedly called away to work; as she'd seen her mother do in the face of all the disappointments over the years.
"Bye, Dad," she called over her shoulder as she headed up the walk to the front door, forcing cheer into her tone.
"Bye, squirt," he called after her. She waved and shut the door.
*
"Hey, sweetie," Mom called to her from the kitchen over the sound of clinking plates and dinner sizzling in a pan. Ella headed straight in and took over setting the table, laying out forks and napkins and knives. Two instead of three; it wasn't that hard to remember, because dad had moved out months before, for the official separation.
"How was the ice cream?" Mom asked as they passed serving dishes back and forth between them. Ella muttered something noncommittal and shoved a bite of chicken into her mouth, and Mom sighed.
"Sweetie -"
"I'm fine, Mom," Ella said, her voice louder than she'd meant and her fork landing on her plate with clink that was far too forceful. She closed her eyes for a long moment before she tried again. "Really, Mom," she insisted, but softer this time. "I'm okay."
Mom nodded and looked down at her plate, running her finger along the edge. "Ella."
"Yeah?"
"I didn't want to say, with everything else, but …"
"What, Mom?"
"I've got an interview for a new job. Next week."
"Really?" Ella asked. Mom had only just started the job she was at now, sometime over the summer. Ella had thought she liked it.
Mom nodded. "This place, you see, it's near Providence. Just a company that - well, we'd be close to your Aunt Liv, and you could still fly back here to see your father, and he could come see you when he's in New York for work. And the work your Aunt Liv does, it's … it's important, and these people are …" She paused for breath. "Well, they're helping her."
Ella blinked, not really taking it all in. "Rhode Island?" she asked slowly.
Mom nodded. "Yeah." She paused and drew in a deep breath, and when she spoke again, her voice was stronger, like she'd made up her mind. "But if you don't want to go, Ella, we don't have to."
They'd been to Providence, during some of those times they stayed with Aunt Liv. Ella didn't hate it. And maybe if they moved, she'd have a chance to have friends who weren't either staring at her or sympathizing with her.
Something new. Something different.
"Okay."
*
Ella finished her homework at the dinner table after they'd washed up, then she headed off to shower. When she padded back down the hallway wearing her slippers and PJs, she found Mom curled on the couch, studying something in one of her old accounting textbooks as soft music played in the background. Ella crossed the room to sit on the floor in front of the couch, leaning her head against her mother's knee. Mom played with the ends of her hair and hummed along with the music.
"All right, sweetie?"
"Yeah," Ella said. She held up the hair ribbons she was clutching in her hand and turned to watch as her mother took them.
"Dad?" Mom asked, and Ella nodded.
Her mother's fingers moved over the satin, slowly, and Ella wondered if Mom was wishing herself back to another year, when Dad wasn't gone and Ella was still wearing pigtails and bows.
She looked up into her mother's eyes and said, "Please."
Mom nodded. "Okay."
Ella shifted again, leaning her back against the couch, and with one slow, careful twist after another, Mom pulled Ella's hair into two long braids. She'd never fix this, Ella knew; no one would. Her little world was broken into bits and shards that couldn't be put back the way they were before.
Mom patted the braids and tied the ribbons at the ends.
But this, at least, was something she could have from both of them. One last time.
3
New snow fell from a steel-grey sky, the flakes melting on the sidewalk but sticking in white dots across the disused plant bed to the old trees and beyond. Ella took two steps forward, then several more, past the quarantine sign and up the steps onto the plaza in front of the building. The wind blew stiffer there, above the level of the street, and Ella shivered. She lifted a hand to pull up her coat collar and tug her scarf tighter around her neck, but it wouldn't do any good, not really. The cold running from the top of her head to the base of her spine, the lead settling in the pit of her stomach, they had nothing to do with the rushing approach of a too-early winter and everything to do with the Amber that encased the little office park in front of her, as far as her eyes could see.
Snow looked very strange coating Amber.
There hadn't been snow the last time she'd been here. Clear, bright blue had stretched all the way across the sky, and warm sun had toasted the tips of Ella's ears as she sat, laughing, over sandwiches and lemonade at a little metal table in the courtyard before her now. Aunt Liv had liberated Ella from her summer babysitter and they'd driven down from Boston to meet Mom here for lunch. No reason, no special occasion. Just because.
That was a three years ago. Three years, and a few short months. Now, Ella thought she could still make out the corner of that table sticking out while the rest was submerged in the giant blob of Amber. But it was hard to see for sure through the snow and the haze of tears in her eyes.
Three years had passed since the day Ella's world changed.
The Day the World Changed was before that, of course. The cracks in reality had first been made well before Ella was born, back when even her mother was just a tiny girl sucking her thumb and carrying a stuffed toy here and there. And now she knew that Aunt Liv had spent most of Ella's life with her fingers plugging the holes that evolved from the cracks, holes that were still evolving even now. All that time, Aunt Liv had been trying to stem the flood of chaos and destruction as best she could. But Ella's world fractured after all that began.
She'd caught a story on the news last night, sandwiched in between the opening arguments of the Bishop trial and an update on the budget for Fringe defense, local, state, and federal. They'd shown the same old footage, the Fringe teams converging and the Amber deploying and the still, silent aftermath once everyone who wasn’t dead or trapped had gone home.
Her stomach lurched just thinking about it.
To almost everyone else, today was an anniversary. A day to mark an occurrence. One of the first large-scale Fringe events, perhaps the first that hadn't been averted at the last second, that couldn't be written off as climate change or atmospheric phenomena or terrible freak accident.
Which was ironic, considering that a freak accident was exactly how this event had started.
*
She'd seen it on TV before anyone told her, stood there in the junior high library and gaped at the breaking news report with the librarian and two other student aides. And she'd felt strange, curiously detached, like she ought to be screaming or crying or running for the door, but all she could do was watch. On the screen, that odd, curious mist spread over the too-familiar buildings, turning into a giant orangish gem while the reporter droned wah-wah-wah over the footage. Ella had stared at the unfolding scene in transfixed horror until the vice-principal had come and taken her arm.
"Come on, Ella," Mrs. Krebs had said gently. "There's someone waiting for you."
Ella couldn't remember if she'd felt some wild and crazy hope as they'd walked down the hallway, passing rows of lockers and closed classroom doors until they'd reached the front office. She couldn't remember if she'd felt anything at all, really. The only thing she did remember clearly was the moment when she walked through the door into Mrs. Krebs' office and saw Astrid standing there, her hands clutched together and her lips in a tight, thin line.
Right then, what she'd wanted was to turn and run far, far away. Because when she'd seen Astrid, she'd known it was all real.
But before she could move, before she could speak or cry or even breathe, really, Astrid had crossed the space between them and wrapped her arms around Ella's twelve-year-old self and held her hard. "Oh, Ella," she said. "I'm so sorry."
Ella shook in her arms, but she didn't cry.
They'd driven in silence to Aunt Liv's apartment. Once or twice along the way, Astrid had glanced over and taken a swift breath, as though she might say something; but then she'd clamped her lips down tight once again, trapping the words somewhere inside.
Astrid was good, and smart, and kind, and Ella had always loved her. And she'd known that if she asked, Astrid would tell her everything. But that hadn't seemed right, and Astrid had known it too, somehow.
Everyone else had gotten their briefings from newscasters, from press conferences, from a series of Presidential addresses that had gotten worse as they'd gone on and on. But Ella had hers from Agent Dunham, fresh in from the field and concealing her grief behind the facade Ella now knew her Aunt Liv wore every day.
The words Aunt Liv had used, soft spots and rifts and wormholes, made more sense than Ella would like now, but back then, they hadn't meant a lot. They'd sounded like the droning of the newscaster, just so many ways to say tragedy and disaster and something went really, really wrong.
"There was an experimental device," Aunt Liv had explained, "that the researchers were working on. It was supposed to help heal the soft spots, to shore them up so they wouldn't become more dangerous. But there was an accident, and -"
"It made it worse instead."
"Yeah."
Ella felt the bile creeping up the back of her throat. "Are they alive?" she asked. "In the … in the Amber?"
"Ella -" Aunt Liv paused, glanced down at the ground and shook her head before raising her eyes back to Ella's and continuing. "El, accounting is - was - right over the research labs. Just one floor up. She didn't -" She drew a deep breath. "They were gone, honey, before we initiated the Amber protocol."
"You mean she's not trapped in there." Ella couldn't believe how hard her own voice sounded. How angry.
Aunt Liv - Agent Dunham - flinched. Ella wasn't sure she'd ever seen that before. "No," she said at last. "No, she's not."
*
Ella waited on a retaining wall, the stones cold like ice beneath her. She hadn't had any illusions when she'd come here today, skipped out before school and hopped on a train and hitched the last few miles to the edge of the restricted zone. Even the news trucks had observed the quarantine, gathered up on the main road as they waited for official tours to take place later in the day, carefully monitored by Fringe agents the whole way. Ella, on the other hand, had ducked down the road and into the bushes and climbed a fence that for all she knew was wired with more sensors than the White House's front lawn.
She might be a fifteen-year-old girl playing hooky from school for the first time ever, but there were consequences for crossing that line, and she hadn't even tried to evade them. Hadn't wanted to, really. So she sat, still and silent, and waited for the team she knew would be on the way to apprehend her.
But when the cavalry arrived, it wasn't exactly what she'd expected.
Aunt Liv stopped at the bottom of the stairs, her feet apart and her hands clasped behind her back. Every inch the trained soldier, ready to fight her battles against the very forces of nature.
Ella hadn't expected it to be Agent Dunham here today, but still, she didn't really feel surprised.
"Come on, Ella," Aunt Liv said after a few minutes' stretched-out silence, and Ella stood, came down the steps, and walked at her aunt's side across the parking lot and down toward the road.
The news trucks were still there, of course, when they passed through the gate and exited the restricted area - the legal way, this time. Out of the corner of her eye, Ella spotted the cameras pointed their way, but she didn't have much time to think about it. Aunt Liv was grasping her arm, gently tugging until Ella followed her to the side and off the path.
"Did you see this?" Aunt Liv asked, and Ella shook her head.
Of course she hadn't seen it, sneaking in the back door as she had.
Aunt Liv swept the new snow off the surface, and Ella pulled off her glove, reaching out her hand until her fingertips barely brushed the ice-cold metal of the plaque. She ran her fingers across the raised letters of the first name she touched, then slid her hand down, following the alphabetized list until she came to the one that mattered to her. Rachel Dunham. Her mother's name immortalized in bronze along with all the others.
Ella was lucky, she supposed. Mostly, no one bothered making plaques with the names of the lost anymore. There were just too many.
*
When they got home, Ella made straight for the television and switched it on, hunting until she found one of the twenty-four hour news stations just starting a special report. Then she flopped down onto the couch and closed her eyes and listened.
Over the sound of the anchor's too-sober voice, Ella heard her aunt in the kitchen, running the sink and clicking the stove on and setting the kettle with a clank onto the burner. Normal sounds, but they didn't feel that way today.
The minutes passed; Ella wasn't listening to the newscast, not really, but she opened her eyes when the sound cut off.
"That's enough for today, El," Aunt Liv said, handing over a mug of hot chocolate as she sat down next to Ella.
"Thanks," Ella said.
Aunt Liv nodded. She took a sip from her own mug, watching Ella carefully over the rim. She set the cup down on the end table and leaned forward, elbows resting on her knees, her chin on her folded hands. "You know I'd have taken you there," she said. "Still will, if you ask. Anytime."
She looked tired, Ella thought, and she suddenly felt guilty for adding to her aunt's burden today, of all days. But even with the guilt, she'd have done it anyway. She'd wanted - needed - to go herself. No prying eyes. No one feeling sorry for her. Just Ella and the past she'd never been able to confront, that she couldn't quite leave behind.
She wondered if her aunt had ever done the same thing.
"Did you come for her today?" she asked. "Or me?"
"Does it matter?" Aunt Liv returned.
Her words were gentle - Aunt Liv never pushed her - but still, to Ella it felt like a challenge. She lifted her chin and held her aunt's gaze and raised one eyebrow in question, because she wasn't backing down.
Olivia relented. "You, mostly," she said. "Your tracker tripped the alert, and some greenie had the smarts to call my office when he saw your name."
Ella snorted a half-laugh. "Guess someone'll be getting a commendation."
"Nice note in his file, maybe," Aunt Liv said with a shrug. "Rotation through public affairs."
"That's a reward?" Ella asked, thinking of the reporters today, of their trucks and cameras sitting right outside the quarantine line.
"To some people. Maybe."
"Not to me."
"No, El. Not to me, either."
Ella sighed and took a drink from her cup. She didn't know what to say, and really, she never had. Aunt Liv never seemed to, either. So they sat in silence for a long time, sipping cocoa and listening to the hum and occasional ping-ping of the radiator, to the noise of traffic filtering up from the street below.
Outside in the hallway, another door banged open, then shut with a much gentler click. Feet - small feet - pattered across the floor, accompanied by little-girl giggles and an exasperated, "Terri. No!" from a much older voice. Ella recognized the voices, four-year-old Teresa and her mother from across the hall and two doors down. Every Friday afternoon, Ella babysat for them, the only time all week when both parents worked the same shift. She sang songs and she played games that her mother taught her, a million years ago when she was that small.
Ella's throat tightened up and her eyes began to fill.
"Mom loved that job, you know," she said, looking down into her nearly-empty mug.
Aunt Liv took the cup and set it aside, next to her own. "I know, sweetie."
Ella twisted her fingers in her lap. She closed her eyes again, and her tears spilled hot onto her hands. "I just - Aunt Liv, why'd it have to be her?"
"I don't know, Ella. I don't know."
Part 2
Also on AO3.
Fandom: Fringe
Rating: Teen
Characters: Ella, with Olivia, Rachel, Peter, Astrid, Walter, and a handful of others
Season/Timeline: Blueverse, up to and including 3x22 The Day We Died
Warnings: Character deaths
Summary: Five times Ella Dunham said goodbye.
A/N: Huge amounts of thanks to ziparumpazoo for cheerleading, beta reading, and brain sharing. Also for introducing me to Fringe in the first place!
1
When she was four years old, Ella's mom and her Aunt Liv took her to the beach in Florida. Ella splashed in the waves and built the best sandcastle ever and ran as fast as her little legs would carry her to see the pelicans fish and the dolphins swim and to chase the gulls away from Aunt Liv's outstretched hand.
"Today was the most fun ever," Ella declared as she flopped onto the hotel room bed at the end of the first day. Mom sat next to her and grinned, ruffling Ella's hair.
Aunt Liv collapsed onto a chair at the table by the balcony. "I can't keep up with you two," she said with a mock-groan, and Ella laughed.
It was supposed to be Dad, not Aunt Liv, sitting there with them and rehashing the day. But the night before they left, as Mom was packing the suitcases, Dad's phone rang. When he hung up, he muttered low words to her mother in the other room, kissed Ella on the top of the head with a "sorry, squirt," and walked down the stairs and out the door.
Mom bit her lip and rubbed her forehead and shook her head. Then she smiled and said, "I'll call your aunt," and Ella shrieked in glee.
*
The second day they played on the beach again, all day long, but by the afternoon of day three, Aunt Liv declared herself desperate for a break from the sun, so they headed to the aquarium instead. There were more dolphins to see, and some seahorses and a huge turtle and a manatee. And when Ella pronounced the manatee the cutest ugliest animal on the planet, Aunt Liv took her by the hand and led her to the gift shop and dumped a little stuffed manatee into her arms.
Ella clung to that fist-sized manatee all the way through the aquarium, back to the car, and into the restaurant where they stopped for dinner. Mom and Aunt Liv smiled and laughed, and Aunt Liv reached over to tickle Ella when she wouldn't giggle at Aunt Liv's knock-knock joke, and Ella decided this day was even better than the two that came before.
But when the food arrived at the table, Aunt Liv didn't eat right away. She turned her head and craned her neck to look out the window as though something had caught her eye.
"What is it?" asked Mom, and Aunt Liv turned back around and made a face, her lips pursed and eyebrows furrowed.
"We've eaten here before," she said, and Mom's smile faltered.
"Have we?" she asked, setting down her sandwich and twisting to look around the room. "I don't remember."
"It looked different then," Aunt Liv said, and she looked different too, somehow; tighter, maybe, and a little bit sad. "But the pier out there. I recognize that pier."
Ella didn't like seeing her Aunt Liv look sad. And she hated the hush that dropped over the table as Aunt Liv and her mom looked at each other as though they were seeing something totally different.
"Was I there?" Ella asked softly, breaking the silence, and when Aunt Liv turned to her and shook her head and smiled, everything was fine again.
"It was a long, long time ago, honey."
*
It wasn't until they were back at the hotel, with Ella tucked into bed, that Ella realized she'd left her new manatee at the restaurant. Mom got on the phone right away, but the toy was long gone, and Ella cried. Hard.
"I'm so sorry, sweetie," Mom said over and over as she rubbed Ella's back, murmuring, "She's tired. She's so tired," to Aunt Liv every now and then. Ella tried to stop crying, told herself to be brave like Aunt Liv would, but she couldn't. She just couldn't.
Not until Aunt Liv slid into the bed next to her and gathered Ella up in her arms and held her tight. "I miss your smile," she said.
"I'm so sorry, Aunt Liv," Ella choked out between her sobs.
Aunt Liv stroked her hair. "You're sorry?" she asked seriously. "What for?"
Ella took a deep breath, in and out, steadying herself before she spoke. "I'm so sorry that I lost your present, Aunt Liv," she said at last.
But Aunt Liv just held her tighter. "Oh, Ella."
*
Early in the morning, before Mom woke up, Aunt Liv pulled Ella to the table and sat down next to her.
"You're still not smiling, honey," she said.
Ella shook her head.
Aunt Liv propped her elbow on the table and rested her chin on her hand and looked at Ella thoughtfully. "Let's draw," she said finally, reaching under the table and pulling out the bag of paper and crayons Mom carried with her everywhere they went. "Let's draw some of our favorite things we've seen here."
So Ella drew the dolphins, and Aunt Liv drew the sea; Ella drew the beach towels and Aunt Liv drew herself asleep in the bed at night. And at the very end, Aunt Liv handed Ella a picture of a manatee and said, "Now you have one to keep, even if you had to say goodbye to the first one."
And Ella smiled.
2
She was nine when her parents' divorce became final. They'd been on again, off again for years before that day, but somehow they'd never managed to officially call it quits, always finding some way to reconcile before they both signed on their respective dotted lines. And all that time, they kept hiding it all from Ella, masking reality with trips to visit Aunt Liv and stories about long hours for work or renovations to be done at their house. But Ella heard the low-voiced, late-night conversations between her mom and her aunt, saw the hurt looks and the tension and knew what was happening long before they ever told her it was real.
A girl can learn a lot by sitting back and paying attention.
"Welcome to the club," her friend Carrie said at the bus stop that morning, swaying back and forth and swinging her purse in front of her. "From here on out, your schedule is not your own. What is it, mom on the weeknights and dad every other weekend?"
Ella didn't answer, her gaze following the pendulum motion of the purse, back and forth.
"Holidays?" Carrie tried again.
Back and forth, left to right, it was mesmerizing and oddly soothing.
With a jerk, Carrie pulled the pocketbook up by the straps and slung it over her shoulder. "Dad gave it to me," she said. "Twice as many birthday presents now, you know. Look at the bright side." Her voice sounded strange; cool and a little mocking, a stretched-out attempt to be less like her ten-year-old self and more like her older brother. To be confident. Independent. Different. Old enough to be free, and too old to be heading off to jump ropes, hula hoops, and a spelling test after lunch.
Ella felt like that too, today.
She turned away, not wanting to look at herself in her friend's eyes any longer, and watched the school bus pull around the corner and up towards their stop. And as it drew closer, she felt Carrie's hand slip into the crook of her arm and Carrie's chin rest on her shoulder.
"You'll be okay," Carrie said, and Ella nodded.
*
Dad's car was waiting in the line after school, one of the first ones there, and Ella climbed in, putting on a smile and leaning across to kiss his cheek.
"How're you doing, squirt? Good day?"
"Yeah," she responded automatically, with no real thought as to the truth of her answer.
"Good," he said, nodding. "Good." He pulled the car away from the curb.
They drove down the road in near-silence; Ella didn't quite know what she was supposed to say, and Dad wasn't helping, so she stared out the window at the cars and buildings as they slid by. The hush stretched out as they hunted for a parking place and continued as they made their way across a busy street and over to the ice cream shop they'd visited so many times before as a family. It went on so long that she was about to open up her mouth and blurt out, "Dad, just get over it already." But then he looked at her and asked -like he always did - if chocolate was still her favorite flavor, and she laughed and said, "Are there any others?" as though today were normal, and suddenly it was all okay again.
They talked for over an hour. Dad told her about his tennis club, and Ella told him about the hula hoops and the spelling test and her fourth grade teacher, Mrs. Parnicky.
But she didn't tell him about Carrie's purse or her split-up family.
It turned out Carrie was right, though, because when they'd cleaned up their little table and were about to walk out the door, Dad stopped and pulled something out of his pocket. "Here," he said, holding it out to her. "I saw these the other day and thought you might like them."
Ella held the plain white bag for several seconds, running her fingers back and forth along the folded top. "Go on," Dad said eventually, and she did, reaching in a hand to see what was inside. What she pulled out was hair ribbons, long and purple and edged with something sparkly.
She ran her fingers down the length of them and kept her eyes cast down so that her dad couldn’t see what she was thinking.
"You used to have some like that," he was saying. "I haven't seen them in a while, and I thought - well, if you'd lost them, you might like some more."
The ribbons, Ella knew, were probably still decorating a stuffed bear that she and Mom had given away during one of their closet cleanout days over the summer. And she thought to herself that she wasn't five anymore, and hadn't he noticed? But she didn't say that, either, any more than she'd told him about Carrie. Because maybe she didn't need hair ribbons, but still, they were something from him, today of all days.
And anyway, she really did love purple. So she looked up at him and gave him the most sincere smile she could muster. "Thanks, Dad," she said, and he ruffled her hair and grinned back.
The drove home in silence just like they'd come, but happier than before, more comfortable. At least, it started out that way. But then they drew closer to home - Ella's home, Mom's home, not his home - and she started to get that feeling again, like nothing was right, like she didn't know which way to go, stuck like a fly in honey.
She stared down into her lap and ran the ribbons through her fingers. She wasn't five anymore, and she didn't need fantasies about how this could all be better if only they'd try.
But that didn't stop her from wishing.
"All right, squirt," Dad said when he drew the car to a stop along the curb. "Have a good day tomorrow."
"You too, Dad."
He kissed her on the cheek, and she gave him a hug. Then she got out of the car, shoving his present into her pocket as she headed up the sidewalk.
She was only a few steps along when his voice made her pause.
"El," he called, and her heart skipped a beat or two.
She turned, took the two slow steps back to lean in through the open car window. "Yeah, Dad?"
"Call me," he said. "Anytime you want. Day or night."
She nodded, then drew herself up and away from him again. With a lift of her chin, she squared her shoulders as she'd seen Aunt Liv do so many times when she was unexpectedly called away to work; as she'd seen her mother do in the face of all the disappointments over the years.
"Bye, Dad," she called over her shoulder as she headed up the walk to the front door, forcing cheer into her tone.
"Bye, squirt," he called after her. She waved and shut the door.
*
"Hey, sweetie," Mom called to her from the kitchen over the sound of clinking plates and dinner sizzling in a pan. Ella headed straight in and took over setting the table, laying out forks and napkins and knives. Two instead of three; it wasn't that hard to remember, because dad had moved out months before, for the official separation.
"How was the ice cream?" Mom asked as they passed serving dishes back and forth between them. Ella muttered something noncommittal and shoved a bite of chicken into her mouth, and Mom sighed.
"Sweetie -"
"I'm fine, Mom," Ella said, her voice louder than she'd meant and her fork landing on her plate with clink that was far too forceful. She closed her eyes for a long moment before she tried again. "Really, Mom," she insisted, but softer this time. "I'm okay."
Mom nodded and looked down at her plate, running her finger along the edge. "Ella."
"Yeah?"
"I didn't want to say, with everything else, but …"
"What, Mom?"
"I've got an interview for a new job. Next week."
"Really?" Ella asked. Mom had only just started the job she was at now, sometime over the summer. Ella had thought she liked it.
Mom nodded. "This place, you see, it's near Providence. Just a company that - well, we'd be close to your Aunt Liv, and you could still fly back here to see your father, and he could come see you when he's in New York for work. And the work your Aunt Liv does, it's … it's important, and these people are …" She paused for breath. "Well, they're helping her."
Ella blinked, not really taking it all in. "Rhode Island?" she asked slowly.
Mom nodded. "Yeah." She paused and drew in a deep breath, and when she spoke again, her voice was stronger, like she'd made up her mind. "But if you don't want to go, Ella, we don't have to."
They'd been to Providence, during some of those times they stayed with Aunt Liv. Ella didn't hate it. And maybe if they moved, she'd have a chance to have friends who weren't either staring at her or sympathizing with her.
Something new. Something different.
"Okay."
*
Ella finished her homework at the dinner table after they'd washed up, then she headed off to shower. When she padded back down the hallway wearing her slippers and PJs, she found Mom curled on the couch, studying something in one of her old accounting textbooks as soft music played in the background. Ella crossed the room to sit on the floor in front of the couch, leaning her head against her mother's knee. Mom played with the ends of her hair and hummed along with the music.
"All right, sweetie?"
"Yeah," Ella said. She held up the hair ribbons she was clutching in her hand and turned to watch as her mother took them.
"Dad?" Mom asked, and Ella nodded.
Her mother's fingers moved over the satin, slowly, and Ella wondered if Mom was wishing herself back to another year, when Dad wasn't gone and Ella was still wearing pigtails and bows.
She looked up into her mother's eyes and said, "Please."
Mom nodded. "Okay."
Ella shifted again, leaning her back against the couch, and with one slow, careful twist after another, Mom pulled Ella's hair into two long braids. She'd never fix this, Ella knew; no one would. Her little world was broken into bits and shards that couldn't be put back the way they were before.
Mom patted the braids and tied the ribbons at the ends.
But this, at least, was something she could have from both of them. One last time.
3
New snow fell from a steel-grey sky, the flakes melting on the sidewalk but sticking in white dots across the disused plant bed to the old trees and beyond. Ella took two steps forward, then several more, past the quarantine sign and up the steps onto the plaza in front of the building. The wind blew stiffer there, above the level of the street, and Ella shivered. She lifted a hand to pull up her coat collar and tug her scarf tighter around her neck, but it wouldn't do any good, not really. The cold running from the top of her head to the base of her spine, the lead settling in the pit of her stomach, they had nothing to do with the rushing approach of a too-early winter and everything to do with the Amber that encased the little office park in front of her, as far as her eyes could see.
Snow looked very strange coating Amber.
There hadn't been snow the last time she'd been here. Clear, bright blue had stretched all the way across the sky, and warm sun had toasted the tips of Ella's ears as she sat, laughing, over sandwiches and lemonade at a little metal table in the courtyard before her now. Aunt Liv had liberated Ella from her summer babysitter and they'd driven down from Boston to meet Mom here for lunch. No reason, no special occasion. Just because.
That was a three years ago. Three years, and a few short months. Now, Ella thought she could still make out the corner of that table sticking out while the rest was submerged in the giant blob of Amber. But it was hard to see for sure through the snow and the haze of tears in her eyes.
Three years had passed since the day Ella's world changed.
The Day the World Changed was before that, of course. The cracks in reality had first been made well before Ella was born, back when even her mother was just a tiny girl sucking her thumb and carrying a stuffed toy here and there. And now she knew that Aunt Liv had spent most of Ella's life with her fingers plugging the holes that evolved from the cracks, holes that were still evolving even now. All that time, Aunt Liv had been trying to stem the flood of chaos and destruction as best she could. But Ella's world fractured after all that began.
She'd caught a story on the news last night, sandwiched in between the opening arguments of the Bishop trial and an update on the budget for Fringe defense, local, state, and federal. They'd shown the same old footage, the Fringe teams converging and the Amber deploying and the still, silent aftermath once everyone who wasn’t dead or trapped had gone home.
Her stomach lurched just thinking about it.
To almost everyone else, today was an anniversary. A day to mark an occurrence. One of the first large-scale Fringe events, perhaps the first that hadn't been averted at the last second, that couldn't be written off as climate change or atmospheric phenomena or terrible freak accident.
Which was ironic, considering that a freak accident was exactly how this event had started.
*
She'd seen it on TV before anyone told her, stood there in the junior high library and gaped at the breaking news report with the librarian and two other student aides. And she'd felt strange, curiously detached, like she ought to be screaming or crying or running for the door, but all she could do was watch. On the screen, that odd, curious mist spread over the too-familiar buildings, turning into a giant orangish gem while the reporter droned wah-wah-wah over the footage. Ella had stared at the unfolding scene in transfixed horror until the vice-principal had come and taken her arm.
"Come on, Ella," Mrs. Krebs had said gently. "There's someone waiting for you."
Ella couldn't remember if she'd felt some wild and crazy hope as they'd walked down the hallway, passing rows of lockers and closed classroom doors until they'd reached the front office. She couldn't remember if she'd felt anything at all, really. The only thing she did remember clearly was the moment when she walked through the door into Mrs. Krebs' office and saw Astrid standing there, her hands clutched together and her lips in a tight, thin line.
Right then, what she'd wanted was to turn and run far, far away. Because when she'd seen Astrid, she'd known it was all real.
But before she could move, before she could speak or cry or even breathe, really, Astrid had crossed the space between them and wrapped her arms around Ella's twelve-year-old self and held her hard. "Oh, Ella," she said. "I'm so sorry."
Ella shook in her arms, but she didn't cry.
They'd driven in silence to Aunt Liv's apartment. Once or twice along the way, Astrid had glanced over and taken a swift breath, as though she might say something; but then she'd clamped her lips down tight once again, trapping the words somewhere inside.
Astrid was good, and smart, and kind, and Ella had always loved her. And she'd known that if she asked, Astrid would tell her everything. But that hadn't seemed right, and Astrid had known it too, somehow.
Everyone else had gotten their briefings from newscasters, from press conferences, from a series of Presidential addresses that had gotten worse as they'd gone on and on. But Ella had hers from Agent Dunham, fresh in from the field and concealing her grief behind the facade Ella now knew her Aunt Liv wore every day.
The words Aunt Liv had used, soft spots and rifts and wormholes, made more sense than Ella would like now, but back then, they hadn't meant a lot. They'd sounded like the droning of the newscaster, just so many ways to say tragedy and disaster and something went really, really wrong.
"There was an experimental device," Aunt Liv had explained, "that the researchers were working on. It was supposed to help heal the soft spots, to shore them up so they wouldn't become more dangerous. But there was an accident, and -"
"It made it worse instead."
"Yeah."
Ella felt the bile creeping up the back of her throat. "Are they alive?" she asked. "In the … in the Amber?"
"Ella -" Aunt Liv paused, glanced down at the ground and shook her head before raising her eyes back to Ella's and continuing. "El, accounting is - was - right over the research labs. Just one floor up. She didn't -" She drew a deep breath. "They were gone, honey, before we initiated the Amber protocol."
"You mean she's not trapped in there." Ella couldn't believe how hard her own voice sounded. How angry.
Aunt Liv - Agent Dunham - flinched. Ella wasn't sure she'd ever seen that before. "No," she said at last. "No, she's not."
*
Ella waited on a retaining wall, the stones cold like ice beneath her. She hadn't had any illusions when she'd come here today, skipped out before school and hopped on a train and hitched the last few miles to the edge of the restricted zone. Even the news trucks had observed the quarantine, gathered up on the main road as they waited for official tours to take place later in the day, carefully monitored by Fringe agents the whole way. Ella, on the other hand, had ducked down the road and into the bushes and climbed a fence that for all she knew was wired with more sensors than the White House's front lawn.
She might be a fifteen-year-old girl playing hooky from school for the first time ever, but there were consequences for crossing that line, and she hadn't even tried to evade them. Hadn't wanted to, really. So she sat, still and silent, and waited for the team she knew would be on the way to apprehend her.
But when the cavalry arrived, it wasn't exactly what she'd expected.
Aunt Liv stopped at the bottom of the stairs, her feet apart and her hands clasped behind her back. Every inch the trained soldier, ready to fight her battles against the very forces of nature.
Ella hadn't expected it to be Agent Dunham here today, but still, she didn't really feel surprised.
"Come on, Ella," Aunt Liv said after a few minutes' stretched-out silence, and Ella stood, came down the steps, and walked at her aunt's side across the parking lot and down toward the road.
The news trucks were still there, of course, when they passed through the gate and exited the restricted area - the legal way, this time. Out of the corner of her eye, Ella spotted the cameras pointed their way, but she didn't have much time to think about it. Aunt Liv was grasping her arm, gently tugging until Ella followed her to the side and off the path.
"Did you see this?" Aunt Liv asked, and Ella shook her head.
Of course she hadn't seen it, sneaking in the back door as she had.
Aunt Liv swept the new snow off the surface, and Ella pulled off her glove, reaching out her hand until her fingertips barely brushed the ice-cold metal of the plaque. She ran her fingers across the raised letters of the first name she touched, then slid her hand down, following the alphabetized list until she came to the one that mattered to her. Rachel Dunham. Her mother's name immortalized in bronze along with all the others.
Ella was lucky, she supposed. Mostly, no one bothered making plaques with the names of the lost anymore. There were just too many.
*
When they got home, Ella made straight for the television and switched it on, hunting until she found one of the twenty-four hour news stations just starting a special report. Then she flopped down onto the couch and closed her eyes and listened.
Over the sound of the anchor's too-sober voice, Ella heard her aunt in the kitchen, running the sink and clicking the stove on and setting the kettle with a clank onto the burner. Normal sounds, but they didn't feel that way today.
The minutes passed; Ella wasn't listening to the newscast, not really, but she opened her eyes when the sound cut off.
"That's enough for today, El," Aunt Liv said, handing over a mug of hot chocolate as she sat down next to Ella.
"Thanks," Ella said.
Aunt Liv nodded. She took a sip from her own mug, watching Ella carefully over the rim. She set the cup down on the end table and leaned forward, elbows resting on her knees, her chin on her folded hands. "You know I'd have taken you there," she said. "Still will, if you ask. Anytime."
She looked tired, Ella thought, and she suddenly felt guilty for adding to her aunt's burden today, of all days. But even with the guilt, she'd have done it anyway. She'd wanted - needed - to go herself. No prying eyes. No one feeling sorry for her. Just Ella and the past she'd never been able to confront, that she couldn't quite leave behind.
She wondered if her aunt had ever done the same thing.
"Did you come for her today?" she asked. "Or me?"
"Does it matter?" Aunt Liv returned.
Her words were gentle - Aunt Liv never pushed her - but still, to Ella it felt like a challenge. She lifted her chin and held her aunt's gaze and raised one eyebrow in question, because she wasn't backing down.
Olivia relented. "You, mostly," she said. "Your tracker tripped the alert, and some greenie had the smarts to call my office when he saw your name."
Ella snorted a half-laugh. "Guess someone'll be getting a commendation."
"Nice note in his file, maybe," Aunt Liv said with a shrug. "Rotation through public affairs."
"That's a reward?" Ella asked, thinking of the reporters today, of their trucks and cameras sitting right outside the quarantine line.
"To some people. Maybe."
"Not to me."
"No, El. Not to me, either."
Ella sighed and took a drink from her cup. She didn't know what to say, and really, she never had. Aunt Liv never seemed to, either. So they sat in silence for a long time, sipping cocoa and listening to the hum and occasional ping-ping of the radiator, to the noise of traffic filtering up from the street below.
Outside in the hallway, another door banged open, then shut with a much gentler click. Feet - small feet - pattered across the floor, accompanied by little-girl giggles and an exasperated, "Terri. No!" from a much older voice. Ella recognized the voices, four-year-old Teresa and her mother from across the hall and two doors down. Every Friday afternoon, Ella babysat for them, the only time all week when both parents worked the same shift. She sang songs and she played games that her mother taught her, a million years ago when she was that small.
Ella's throat tightened up and her eyes began to fill.
"Mom loved that job, you know," she said, looking down into her nearly-empty mug.
Aunt Liv took the cup and set it aside, next to her own. "I know, sweetie."
Ella twisted her fingers in her lap. She closed her eyes again, and her tears spilled hot onto her hands. "I just - Aunt Liv, why'd it have to be her?"
"I don't know, Ella. I don't know."
Part 2
Also on AO3.