One:
"It's only California, Mom," Fred said. "Its not like I'm
going to
Europe, or the moon."
Her mother sniffed. "There are plenty of fine schools right here in
Texas."
"No
one there is doing the kind of research Professor Seidel is doing on
nondeterministic polynominal timelines..." She trailed off at the
incomprehension on her mother's face. "None of them is doing the kind
of work I can do at UCLA."
"I don't see how you'll be happy there, Fred. Do you know what kind of
people you'll meet?"
"I'm
pretty sure that graduate students in physics are the same everywhere,"
Fred said. "Mom, you know I won't be doing anything wild. I'll be
working too hard to get into any trouble."
Trish Burkle picked
up the envelope from UCLA as if to weigh it in her hands. If Fred shut
her eyes she could visualize the words: the acceptance, the details of
her grant, an offer of housing, all that money just to study and
research, no teaching for the first two years. And even better than
that, the letter from Professor Seidel, his interest in her proposal,
the way it dovetailed with his own work, and sure, she knew that meant
she'd end up doing unpaid labor in his lab and he'd try to use her
results without proper credit but she understood that. That was how it
worked in the world she wanted. She could handle that, so long as she
could get there.
"I don't know," her mother said. "It's so far away, and we don't know
anyone there."
"I'll
be OK there, Mom," Fred said. She'd said the same thing a hundred
times, ever since her parents saw Fred's face as she ripped the
envelope open and read. "I promise. If I'm not, I can always come home.
If ya'll will have me."
"Of course you can always come home! Oh,
I suppose you know best and I'm being silly. But you're still my little
girl, and I'll keep worrying about you."
"I know you will, Mom.
I love you too. This is just... something I need, like when you let me
go to community college in senior year. Remember?"
Her mother's
face softened. "I know, sweetheart. You know I don't understand half of
what you talk about, but I always knew it would take you away from
home."
Fred felt her own eyes tearing up. "This is always gonna
be home," she said. "I'm not gonna turn into someone else in LA, mom, I
promise." She meant it, and she wanted it to be true, but even then she
could see the highway stretching out before her, and at the end, a
whole new world.
Two:
Fred ran. In the back of her
head the phrase, "as if the demons of hell were chasing her" was
rattling around, along with everything else there, like terror and pain
and the need to keep an eye out for tree roots that might trip her up
and the wiring in the collar hanging uselessly around her neck.
She had been running forever.
She
missed a root and went flying forward, sprawling onto the ground. When
she was five she fell out of an oak tree and knocked the wind right out
of her. Her Daddy picked her up and brushed her off and she didn't cry
then and wouldn't cry now, but where was someone to pick her up?
Maybe it had happened to someone else.
She
could hear breathing and a heart beating. She raised herself to her
hands and knees, then to her feet, and started to run again.
Three:
The
lobby was cold and she tried not to look into the shadows skittering in
the corners. Anyway, Gunn and Wesley were standing by the reception
desk, and she knew they'd be upset if her attention wandered. More
upset: they were standing, both of them, arms folded on their chests,
stiff and frowning.
"You should have told one of us," Wesley said.
"I left a note."
"'I'll be back later. Sorry about taking the truck,'" Wesley quoted.
Fred avoided Gunn's eyes. "Where did you go?"
She
shrugged and kept her eyes on the floor. She'd forgotten how hard it
was to get away from the city; she had to keep driving long after the
suburbs and subdivisions should have yielded to farms and fields, and
then a little longer, down unfamiliar country roads in the early
morning hours.
"We were worried about you," Gunn said. "It's dangerous out there."
"I
slept in the daytime." She had, curled up in the front of the truck,
from dawn to the early afternoon. Then she'd got up, climbed a fence
and started walking. "I just needed to go somewhere. Was that bad?"
"You aren't a prisoner here," Wesley said. "We want you to be happy."
She
could tell what he wanted her to say: that she was happy, that she was
grateful to them for rescuing her, that she wanted to help. The words
crowded into her mouth and they weren't lies, but she didn't know what
they would be when they came out. She bit the side of her tongue. She
wasn't a prisoner.
"If you want to borrow my truck, just ask," Gunn said. She had to smile
at that, before she looked down again.
"We aren't angry," Wesley said. "We were worried, that's all."
"I
didn't mean to scare you," she said. "I just needed... I needed to go
somewhere without so many buildings." Dry grass had crackled around her
as she walked, seeds stuck to her jeans. Tiny lizards and snakes
scrambled and slithered away from her feet. In the late afternoon she'd
wandered up a dry creek-bed and through scrubby gray trees and found
what she didn't know she'd been looking for: big warm bodies, soft
eyes, the constant buzzing of flies and the smell of manure.
The
cows had eyed her without interest, flicking their tails at the flies
and shaking their heads. She'd crouched down under the last tree and
just watched them for a little while. "I am you," she had whispered,
and, "I am not you." When the shadows started to reach out from the
trees to the herd, she'd stood and hiked back down the creek-bed. Back
over the fence, she'd driven in the dark back to the hotel.
"No buildings," Gunn said. "OK. I guess that's no crazier than anything
else. You wanna go get pancakes?"
Four:
She'd
kissed Angel on the cheek and told him, "Call me if there's an
apocalypse." Some other time, she'd worry about how half-hearted his
smile was. Now LA was hours behind her and the late afternoon was
coming on. There were fields on her left full of strawberries and
artichokes, and on the right, wood houses with big windows and big
porches cluttered the hills. She found an old-fashioned motel past San
Simeon and boggled at the price for a room but took it anyway. There
was a view of the surf from the window and the light blue walls smelled
of new paint.
The cooler in her car was full of oranges and
homemade sandwiches -- Fred thought her mother would be proud -- but
she bet she could find a Mexican restaurant out here somewhere if she
wanted. She stretched her arms over her head and watched the waves
break and the sun go down.
Fred loved her lab at Wolfram &
Hart: all that equipment, everything shiny and new and the best that
money could by, and assistants at her beck and call. She loved the
freedom to work on whatever she wanted, except when they needed
research for cases but even that was fun most of the time, and she knew
damn well that without Wolfram and Hart there was no way she'd be
staying in a place like this. She just needed to clear her head, a
little. There were too many things that were almost off-balance enough
to be obvious, and she'd tried to fix them, endless equations down the
whiteboards in her office and the lab conference room, but the results
never matched. There was some piece missing, and she couldn't find out
what it was. She thought that it might be because her eyes were too
full of everything else, so here she was, just water and sky and clouds
shading orange to gray.
The sun had gone down behind the curve
of the earth, but the clouds reflected its colors back for her to see.
That was the first step, she thought, you couldn't see it but it
changed everything. But the sky got darker and cloud covered the stars
and the missing thing stayed just over the horizon, just out of sight.
end
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Small print: Joss, ME, WB own it. All mistakes are my own; I know nothing about physics. Many thanks to Jennyo for organizing the ficathon and to inlovewithnight for providing a neat prompt. I hope you like it.