They'll Celebrate Our Deaths (With a National Parade), Erica/Olivia, PG13
Title: They'll Celebrate Our Deaths (With a National Parade)
Fandoms: V (2009)/Fringe (crossover)
Pairing: Erica Evans/Olivia Dunham.
Rating: PG13
Spoilers: Up to the end of V, and up to 4x07 of Fringe. Character deaths are referenced from canon.
Disclaimer: Not mine! These belong to their respective creators and I am but a mere fangirl playing with them. No profit is being made. Title comes from the Frank Turner song 'Love, Ire & Song'.
Prompt: Erica/Olivia, yellow diamonds in the light, and we're standing side by side
Dedication: To my lovely Lauren, who's at least 50% responsible for my Elizabeth Mitchell obsession, I wish you the loveliest possible Christmas and New Year ♥
Erica buries Tyler next to his father; it’s what they both would have wanted.
Anna offers excuses--blames the Fifth Column and maybe there’s more--but it all falls on deaf ears. Erica is drowning in her own grief, and she doesn’t care if anyone is going to try and pull her out.
*
Erica ignores the first few knocks on her front door; she’s expecting no one and isn’t feeling up to company. Her days consist of crying on the sofa, the television news playing on an endless, muted loop. Her phone battery died sometime yesterday, and she hasn’t had the energy to go upstairs and charge it yet.
The knocking keeps on, and on, until she can’t stand the noise anymore. The last thing Erica expects to see when she finally throws the heavy door open is an FBI badge so very similar to her own.
*
“Erica Evans?” The serious blonde with the scraped-back ponytail seems to know the answer anyway, but Erica summons the energy to nod. “I’m Special Agent Dunham, and this is Special Agent Lee.”
Something in Erica--simple good manners, maybe--leads her to step back and gesture for the agents to come in. The man doesn’t speak, watching her curiously from behind thick-rimmed glasses. They sit awkwardly on the sofa that isn't covered by a blanket and discarded Kleenex, and wait for Erica to take her place amongst the debris.
They talk, about some division Erica has never heard of, and ask for her help with something she doesn’t even try to understand.
“I’m sorry,” she says, standing to show them out. “I’ve already given my husband and my son. I don’t have anything else left to give you.”
They leave, with solemn faces and bowed heads. Erica doesn’t linger to watch them go.
*
A week passes, and Erica has forced herself into a kind of routine. The FBI don’t want her back, not like this. So she makes herself rise at a decent hour every day, and then shower and dress like there’s somewhere for her to be. Mostly she spends time in Tyler’s room, carefully touching all the things he’s left behind, until the memories turn painful and she’s banished back to staring at the television with yet another plate of untouched food in front of her.
*
The first attack is written off as an accident, but Erica can see the truth in the strained expressions of the compromised reporters. Anna is making herself available to anyone who’ll listen, explaining that the Tokyo ship wrongly sensed an incoming missile attack and responded automatically. After a year of parading their technological perfection, the Visitors are now hiding behind the equivalent of an unexpected blue screen. Tokyo smolders, in ruins, and the world wakes up uneasy again. It feels like those first days all over again, when the world knew nothing of Red Sky or Blue Energy.
*
The second attack takes Sydney and Berlin.
Erica cries at the footage, and waits for the call to come.
*
Kendrick calls, as Erica expected, but she lets it roll to voicemail; there’s another knock at the door.
This time the blonde woman stands alone, her hair loose and her face distraught. Erica recognizes grief like she’s looking at her own reflection.
“Your partner?” Erica asks, and there’s a chill in the air despite it being a late summer day. Dunham looks like she’s going to stonewall, and there’s a visible attempt to hide the emotion that threatens in the corner of her eyes. Erica doesn’t want to force her through that, in much the same way that she doesn’t want to think about how Tyler won’t be going off to college in a few weeks. “You’d better come in,” is what she offers, instead.
*
They sip awkwardly at coffee that’s been sitting in the pot for an hour, and when Dunham takes hers black, Erica does too. They sit in charged silence on opposite sides of the kitchen table, until Erica breaches the quiet from sheer impatience.
“Agent Dunham?” She begins, but Dunham interrupts.
“Call me Olivia,” she replies. “I’m uh... I’m not feeling a lot of comfort in my title today.”
“I know what you mean,” Erica agrees, and she drains the rest of the coffee from her mug. “So what is it that you need from me?”
*
Erica refuses three times before she gives in. Olivia is persistent, and she remains unflappable even as she relays the suspicious circumstances of Agent Lee’s death. In the end, Erica feels that damn sense of duty rise up like nausea, and she’s itching to do something, anything but sit around and grieve.
“Basically we can’t risk an attack here in New York,” Olivia concludes.
“Or in Washington. Or Los Angeles, right? That's where the American ships are.” Erica loves her home city as much as the next person, but the emphasis seems strange to her.
“No, our priority is New York. Agent Evans, what I’m about to tell you is classified. And I mean classified.”
“I can keep a secret,” Erica points out, and the FBI can’t even begin to imagine how true that is.
“We’re aware of your involvement with the Fifth Column,” Olivia says calmly, like she hasn’t just dropped an atomic bomb into their conversation. “That’s why we need you to help us protect New York.”
“You, um...” Erica doesn’t know where to begin. “What’s this fixation on New York?”
“That’s the classified part,” Erica replies. “If you’ll come for a drive with me, I’ll show you.”
*
The bridge between universes reminds Erica of the inside of the Visitors’ ship. Her reaction is so sudden, so violent, that she almost blacks out there and then. Olivia is the one to catch her before she can fall.
*
They move into a kind of bunker, provided by a red-haired woman who smiles in a way that Erica doesn’t trust. Everyone scurries at her commands though, and so Erica recognizes that this woman has power over them all. The logos on the wall say Massive Dynamic, and Erica knows enough to be comforted and distrustful of that in roughly equal measure.
Erica answers question after question from every different source. At times she’s so exhausted that one of the women lurking outside the briefing room looks just like Olivia, only with vibrant red hair. She asks at every opportunity about this parallel universe, about what it means, if they’ll ever let her cross the bridge and see this world that everyone seems quietly terrified of.
It’s Olivia who warns her off, over lukewarm noodles in the break room one evening. They’re wearing clothes from a constantly replenished supply in their rooms--jeans and black t-shirts mostly, which makes it feel like basic training.
“Even if there is another version,” Olivia confides in a low voice. “Of your son, I mean. Even if he exists over there, he won’t be your son. He won’t know you, he won’t feel anything towards you.”
“Oh,” Erica replies, keeping her expression carefully blank. It takes an almost Herculean effort not to betray her gut-wrenching disappointment at the shooting down of a half-formed idea. “I figured. I mean, I wasn't really thinking about it that way.”
Olivia reaches across the table and squeezes Erica's hand.
*
The plan takes seven long days to formulate and finalize - military men arguing with scientists and Special Ops ignoring both of them. Erica is allowed into the briefings as a courtesy, since she’s told them everything she knows of the Visitors from both official and unofficial sources. It’s only when an argument breaks out about a way to breach Anna’s ship that she finally speaks up.
“It has to be me,” she says, and as one every head in the room turns towards her. “I have a relationship with Anna. I’ll tell her I need to visit the place where my son...well, I’ll tell her I need to see it.”
“Agent Evans, you’re not even on active duty,” the CIA liaison argues.
“Not to mention that we don’t know what’s changed in the past three weeks--you may not have the access you think you have,” a three-star General backs him up. Erica hasn’t bothered to learn their names.
“It has to be me,” she says again, firmly this time.
Nobody disagrees.
*
That is, until she tells Olivia that night, over dinner. It’s become a ritual of sorts; they’re deployed to different parts of the task force all day--in Olivia’s case this means frequent trips back to Boston--and they meet to share friendly conversation and avoid a complex full of strangers.
“You can’t!” Olivia almost shouts when Erica tells her the news.
“It’s happening,” Erica says, and she’s touched by the genuine emotion in Olivia’s eyes. “It’s not like I have a lot to stick around for, so if it all goes wrong...”
Twenty minutes later, dinner is forgotten and they’ve stumbled through the door of Olivia’s room.
“Stick around for this,” Olivia pleads, before kissing Erica like the world is about to end. (Which feels a bit less dramatic when they both know that it actually is.)
*
With two hours to go until Erica deploys, she’s wrapped up in Olivia’s arms, not caring how uncomfortable it is to have two of them squashed into a single cot. It’s been two intense days of briefings and warnings, but Erica’s spent every minute plotting how to steal another moment with Olivia. It’s reckless, and probably just some emotional acting out on both of their parts, but Erica can’t summon the will to feel guilty about that. Not when Olivia’s skin is so soft and she kisses so tenderly. Not when those strong, determined fingers make Erica feel temporary happiness that she’d assumed was all but lost to her.
Erica’s cellphone buzzes from the floor, an unnecessary alarm because she’s been awake for hours. Anna has consented to meet her at the Visitor Center, and the rest is down to Erica--to get onboard. She’ll be unarmed, and it’s unspeakably dangerous, but she has the benefit of having done this at least once before. It feels like less of a suicide mission in the cold, gray light of morning. Whether that’s down to logic or just the shift in Erica’s own sadness is impossible to say.
Olivia’s still there when Erica gets out of the shower a little while later, and Olivia’s eyes are red-rimmed when she looks up from where she’s sitting on the bed. She’s dressed, but her hair is still a mess and she looks as conflicted as Erica feels. They kiss, quickly and desperately, before Erica wills herself to pull away.
“Are you sure?” Olivia asks, staring very hard at a fixed spot on the floor.
“You know I am,” Erica says, before reaching for the bag she brought with her from home. She hesitates, but it seems right considering the magnitude of the day.
“Here,” she says, tilting Olivia’s chin up with one gentle touch. With Olivia’s attention on her, Erica places a small piece of metal in Olivia’s hand. It sparkles, even under the dull yellow light of the overheads, and Olivia just stares at it in confusion.
“It might seem strange,” Erica explains. “It’s my engagement ring.”
“But why--” Olivia begins.
“If I die today,” Erica interrupts. “And there’s a chance that I will; I want someone to still have a trace of me. I don’t have any family left, and most of my friends are already dead. If this mission succeeds in the end--if the world continues and the Visitors are defeated, I want someone to have some little part of me to carry into that new world, do you understand?”
“You want me to keep this?” Olivia asks, closing her fist around the ring.
“Please,” Erica asks.
“On one condition,” Olivia says, standing to go. “You do everything in your power to come back and get it yourself, okay?”
“Deal,” Erica says, and the smile takes her by surprise. It feels so good to do that and mean it, to feel the smile reaching all the way to her eyes.
“Goodbye, then,” Olivia says, with her hand on the doorknob.
“For now,” Erica amends, and it gives her the strength to carry on with getting dressed.
*
Erica comes face-to-face with Anna for the first time in a month, and it takes no more than a glance to see the changes. Anna seems harder, colder than ever. Erica swallows hard, and it doesn’t take much to channel her fear into the vulnerability of a mother grieving.
“Anna, I have to ask you for something,” Erica begins, and with that there’s absolutely no turning back.
Fandoms: V (2009)/Fringe (crossover)
Pairing: Erica Evans/Olivia Dunham.
Rating: PG13
Spoilers: Up to the end of V, and up to 4x07 of Fringe. Character deaths are referenced from canon.
Disclaimer: Not mine! These belong to their respective creators and I am but a mere fangirl playing with them. No profit is being made. Title comes from the Frank Turner song 'Love, Ire & Song'.
Prompt: Erica/Olivia, yellow diamonds in the light, and we're standing side by side
Dedication: To my lovely Lauren, who's at least 50% responsible for my Elizabeth Mitchell obsession, I wish you the loveliest possible Christmas and New Year ♥
Erica buries Tyler next to his father; it’s what they both would have wanted.
Anna offers excuses--blames the Fifth Column and maybe there’s more--but it all falls on deaf ears. Erica is drowning in her own grief, and she doesn’t care if anyone is going to try and pull her out.
*
Erica ignores the first few knocks on her front door; she’s expecting no one and isn’t feeling up to company. Her days consist of crying on the sofa, the television news playing on an endless, muted loop. Her phone battery died sometime yesterday, and she hasn’t had the energy to go upstairs and charge it yet.
The knocking keeps on, and on, until she can’t stand the noise anymore. The last thing Erica expects to see when she finally throws the heavy door open is an FBI badge so very similar to her own.
*
“Erica Evans?” The serious blonde with the scraped-back ponytail seems to know the answer anyway, but Erica summons the energy to nod. “I’m Special Agent Dunham, and this is Special Agent Lee.”
Something in Erica--simple good manners, maybe--leads her to step back and gesture for the agents to come in. The man doesn’t speak, watching her curiously from behind thick-rimmed glasses. They sit awkwardly on the sofa that isn't covered by a blanket and discarded Kleenex, and wait for Erica to take her place amongst the debris.
They talk, about some division Erica has never heard of, and ask for her help with something she doesn’t even try to understand.
“I’m sorry,” she says, standing to show them out. “I’ve already given my husband and my son. I don’t have anything else left to give you.”
They leave, with solemn faces and bowed heads. Erica doesn’t linger to watch them go.
*
A week passes, and Erica has forced herself into a kind of routine. The FBI don’t want her back, not like this. So she makes herself rise at a decent hour every day, and then shower and dress like there’s somewhere for her to be. Mostly she spends time in Tyler’s room, carefully touching all the things he’s left behind, until the memories turn painful and she’s banished back to staring at the television with yet another plate of untouched food in front of her.
*
The first attack is written off as an accident, but Erica can see the truth in the strained expressions of the compromised reporters. Anna is making herself available to anyone who’ll listen, explaining that the Tokyo ship wrongly sensed an incoming missile attack and responded automatically. After a year of parading their technological perfection, the Visitors are now hiding behind the equivalent of an unexpected blue screen. Tokyo smolders, in ruins, and the world wakes up uneasy again. It feels like those first days all over again, when the world knew nothing of Red Sky or Blue Energy.
*
The second attack takes Sydney and Berlin.
Erica cries at the footage, and waits for the call to come.
*
Kendrick calls, as Erica expected, but she lets it roll to voicemail; there’s another knock at the door.
This time the blonde woman stands alone, her hair loose and her face distraught. Erica recognizes grief like she’s looking at her own reflection.
“Your partner?” Erica asks, and there’s a chill in the air despite it being a late summer day. Dunham looks like she’s going to stonewall, and there’s a visible attempt to hide the emotion that threatens in the corner of her eyes. Erica doesn’t want to force her through that, in much the same way that she doesn’t want to think about how Tyler won’t be going off to college in a few weeks. “You’d better come in,” is what she offers, instead.
*
They sip awkwardly at coffee that’s been sitting in the pot for an hour, and when Dunham takes hers black, Erica does too. They sit in charged silence on opposite sides of the kitchen table, until Erica breaches the quiet from sheer impatience.
“Agent Dunham?” She begins, but Dunham interrupts.
“Call me Olivia,” she replies. “I’m uh... I’m not feeling a lot of comfort in my title today.”
“I know what you mean,” Erica agrees, and she drains the rest of the coffee from her mug. “So what is it that you need from me?”
*
Erica refuses three times before she gives in. Olivia is persistent, and she remains unflappable even as she relays the suspicious circumstances of Agent Lee’s death. In the end, Erica feels that damn sense of duty rise up like nausea, and she’s itching to do something, anything but sit around and grieve.
“Basically we can’t risk an attack here in New York,” Olivia concludes.
“Or in Washington. Or Los Angeles, right? That's where the American ships are.” Erica loves her home city as much as the next person, but the emphasis seems strange to her.
“No, our priority is New York. Agent Evans, what I’m about to tell you is classified. And I mean classified.”
“I can keep a secret,” Erica points out, and the FBI can’t even begin to imagine how true that is.
“We’re aware of your involvement with the Fifth Column,” Olivia says calmly, like she hasn’t just dropped an atomic bomb into their conversation. “That’s why we need you to help us protect New York.”
“You, um...” Erica doesn’t know where to begin. “What’s this fixation on New York?”
“That’s the classified part,” Erica replies. “If you’ll come for a drive with me, I’ll show you.”
*
The bridge between universes reminds Erica of the inside of the Visitors’ ship. Her reaction is so sudden, so violent, that she almost blacks out there and then. Olivia is the one to catch her before she can fall.
*
They move into a kind of bunker, provided by a red-haired woman who smiles in a way that Erica doesn’t trust. Everyone scurries at her commands though, and so Erica recognizes that this woman has power over them all. The logos on the wall say Massive Dynamic, and Erica knows enough to be comforted and distrustful of that in roughly equal measure.
Erica answers question after question from every different source. At times she’s so exhausted that one of the women lurking outside the briefing room looks just like Olivia, only with vibrant red hair. She asks at every opportunity about this parallel universe, about what it means, if they’ll ever let her cross the bridge and see this world that everyone seems quietly terrified of.
It’s Olivia who warns her off, over lukewarm noodles in the break room one evening. They’re wearing clothes from a constantly replenished supply in their rooms--jeans and black t-shirts mostly, which makes it feel like basic training.
“Even if there is another version,” Olivia confides in a low voice. “Of your son, I mean. Even if he exists over there, he won’t be your son. He won’t know you, he won’t feel anything towards you.”
“Oh,” Erica replies, keeping her expression carefully blank. It takes an almost Herculean effort not to betray her gut-wrenching disappointment at the shooting down of a half-formed idea. “I figured. I mean, I wasn't really thinking about it that way.”
Olivia reaches across the table and squeezes Erica's hand.
*
The plan takes seven long days to formulate and finalize - military men arguing with scientists and Special Ops ignoring both of them. Erica is allowed into the briefings as a courtesy, since she’s told them everything she knows of the Visitors from both official and unofficial sources. It’s only when an argument breaks out about a way to breach Anna’s ship that she finally speaks up.
“It has to be me,” she says, and as one every head in the room turns towards her. “I have a relationship with Anna. I’ll tell her I need to visit the place where my son...well, I’ll tell her I need to see it.”
“Agent Evans, you’re not even on active duty,” the CIA liaison argues.
“Not to mention that we don’t know what’s changed in the past three weeks--you may not have the access you think you have,” a three-star General backs him up. Erica hasn’t bothered to learn their names.
“It has to be me,” she says again, firmly this time.
Nobody disagrees.
*
That is, until she tells Olivia that night, over dinner. It’s become a ritual of sorts; they’re deployed to different parts of the task force all day--in Olivia’s case this means frequent trips back to Boston--and they meet to share friendly conversation and avoid a complex full of strangers.
“You can’t!” Olivia almost shouts when Erica tells her the news.
“It’s happening,” Erica says, and she’s touched by the genuine emotion in Olivia’s eyes. “It’s not like I have a lot to stick around for, so if it all goes wrong...”
Twenty minutes later, dinner is forgotten and they’ve stumbled through the door of Olivia’s room.
“Stick around for this,” Olivia pleads, before kissing Erica like the world is about to end. (Which feels a bit less dramatic when they both know that it actually is.)
*
With two hours to go until Erica deploys, she’s wrapped up in Olivia’s arms, not caring how uncomfortable it is to have two of them squashed into a single cot. It’s been two intense days of briefings and warnings, but Erica’s spent every minute plotting how to steal another moment with Olivia. It’s reckless, and probably just some emotional acting out on both of their parts, but Erica can’t summon the will to feel guilty about that. Not when Olivia’s skin is so soft and she kisses so tenderly. Not when those strong, determined fingers make Erica feel temporary happiness that she’d assumed was all but lost to her.
Erica’s cellphone buzzes from the floor, an unnecessary alarm because she’s been awake for hours. Anna has consented to meet her at the Visitor Center, and the rest is down to Erica--to get onboard. She’ll be unarmed, and it’s unspeakably dangerous, but she has the benefit of having done this at least once before. It feels like less of a suicide mission in the cold, gray light of morning. Whether that’s down to logic or just the shift in Erica’s own sadness is impossible to say.
Olivia’s still there when Erica gets out of the shower a little while later, and Olivia’s eyes are red-rimmed when she looks up from where she’s sitting on the bed. She’s dressed, but her hair is still a mess and she looks as conflicted as Erica feels. They kiss, quickly and desperately, before Erica wills herself to pull away.
“Are you sure?” Olivia asks, staring very hard at a fixed spot on the floor.
“You know I am,” Erica says, before reaching for the bag she brought with her from home. She hesitates, but it seems right considering the magnitude of the day.
“Here,” she says, tilting Olivia’s chin up with one gentle touch. With Olivia’s attention on her, Erica places a small piece of metal in Olivia’s hand. It sparkles, even under the dull yellow light of the overheads, and Olivia just stares at it in confusion.
“It might seem strange,” Erica explains. “It’s my engagement ring.”
“But why--” Olivia begins.
“If I die today,” Erica interrupts. “And there’s a chance that I will; I want someone to still have a trace of me. I don’t have any family left, and most of my friends are already dead. If this mission succeeds in the end--if the world continues and the Visitors are defeated, I want someone to have some little part of me to carry into that new world, do you understand?”
“You want me to keep this?” Olivia asks, closing her fist around the ring.
“Please,” Erica asks.
“On one condition,” Olivia says, standing to go. “You do everything in your power to come back and get it yourself, okay?”
“Deal,” Erica says, and the smile takes her by surprise. It feels so good to do that and mean it, to feel the smile reaching all the way to her eyes.
“Goodbye, then,” Olivia says, with her hand on the doorknob.
“For now,” Erica amends, and it gives her the strength to carry on with getting dressed.
*
Erica comes face-to-face with Anna for the first time in a month, and it takes no more than a glance to see the changes. Anna seems harder, colder than ever. Erica swallows hard, and it doesn’t take much to channel her fear into the vulnerability of a mother grieving.
“Anna, I have to ask you for something,” Erica begins, and with that there’s absolutely no turning back.