Work Text:
One moment in time
Rachel's grey long mane fell over Chloe's shoulder, as she rested her head against it. The cool and salty foggy air by the cliff ran shivers down her neck. The familiar beam of light, coming from the lighthouse close to them, highlighted the last blue strands of cyan hair, most of it was silvery shining now.
Rachel Dawn Price, formerly Bowers, formerly Gearhardt, formerly Amber, looked at the woman in the wheelchair she had loved for nearly seventy years now and waited to be gently kissed by her, just the way she did, right here, oh so many years ago.
If I fall, can you pull me up?
Is it true, you’re watching out
And when I'm tired, do you lay down with me?
In my head so I can sleep without you?
I will feel eternity
Rachel used the tip of her boot to kick a small rock down the cliff, her hand pressed hard against her stomach, she was fighting the intense nausea, plaguing her this afternoon.
She considered resting her head on Chloe's shoulder but given Chloe's widely discussed escape, less than a year ago, she didn't want to initiate the first touch.
"Take a deep breath", advised Chloe and carefully rubbed Rachel's back, who looked over to the lighthouse.
Neil and Tyson, Chloe's older and younger sons and Archie, Rachel's oldest, were playing hide and seek, as if they had known each other forever.
Children.
They looked genuinely happy, overjoyed, un-burdened - maybe that is the word Rachel should have used.
Looking at Chloe, Rachel thought about the circumstances under which both these boys were born, in a bunker, hidden from the world, fathered by a young man Chloe once rejected. She refused to pity her, knowing, that it was the last thing Chloe would ever want, but that couldn't take her mind off the fact, that Chloe Elizabeth Price had gone missing for almost half a decade.
For five long years, she hadn't seen a doctor or a dentist or any specialist at all, she had birthed her babies on her own, taught them and raised them on her own and protected them from the angry and irrational attacks of her self-proclaimed "husband", putting herself in danger, risking her life.
Chloe was strong and courageous, like she had always been, but she was also mama bear and guardian angel. Who knows if she would have survived, if it wasn't for the unconditional love of her children and the hope that they would live a better life one day.
Rachel thought about her own husband and the irony of Chloe being the one, who once introduced them to each other, more than eight years ago, when they were younger, too young. How things can change in less than a decade, how life changes you. The way you see things, the way you used to think; what once was important, crumbles to ashes, right in front of you, until you remain an empty shell of what was once yourself.
A heartbeat away
From this day forward, until death do us part. Rachel Dawn Bowers. Sounds about wrong.
She vomited, back there, right on Frank's nice brown shoes, the pastor saw it, but ignored it, he kept on going, trying to get this farce of a union over with. The wedding ceremony had already begun too late, since they were waiting for guests who didn't show up. No one except mom and dad, who stayed for one hour. After all, they were the ones who insisted on marriage, after the family had already fallen from grace and was forced to move again. The last thing they needed was another scandal, but the damage was done. They vacated right back to Portland after the awkward "I do's".
Arcadia Bay was a small town, people talked, everyone knew the daughter of the ex-DA and scammer and criminal. Rachel Amber, now Bowers, was visibly pregnant by the known local drug dealer, and she had only just turned eighteen a few days ago.
More than I thought I could be
On the cliff, Rachel pressed her hand on her stomach even harder and tried not to gag, she felt the comforting, yet unexpected touch of Chloe, rubbing her back, but got sick anyways, her breasts hurt so much. On cue, in the stroller next to her, the side Chloe wasn't sitting on, her almost one-year old baby Fyodor started to cry.
Hey, hey
Without you there's holes in my soul
Hey, hey
Let the water in
After the successful escape, Chloe had learned her mother moved to Seattle, it didn't even surprise her. But what shook her to her core, was hearing that Rachel had also left Arcadia Bay, along with her mother and father. Her father being involved in several scandals, uncovered by none other than the late Eliot Hampden. Shortly after Chloe had gone “missing", Rachel had moved in with her biological mother Sera, due to a huge fallout with her family in Portland and changed her name to Gearheart.
When it was discovered then and there, the still seventeen year old Rachel was in the early stages of pregnancy, and after grilling her for hours to reveal who the father was, Sera dropped her and Rachel was forced back into her parents' lap, who wanted nothing to do with a child having a child, especially one conceived by a drug dealer and out of wedlock.
Chloe couldn't believe her eyes and ears. The new earned freedom was something she still had to get used to. The media wouldn't leave her alone, wanting her to give interviews, holding cameras in her face, bothering the people dedicated to help her and her children to find a way back into normal life whatever that meant. But the happiness she felt, when she was reunited with Joyce in Seattle and she could experience when her mother, still in her prime, held her grandchildren for the first time, was overshadowed by knowing Rachel was married. Really married. Legally. To Frank. Her Rachel.
Rachel, her secret girlfriend, before Chloe had been kidnapped, was the only reason in all those years Chloe managed to stay sane. Her and later her kids.
Sometimes, when Chloe did something she wasn't supposed to do and Eliot turned off the heater for days or switched off the lights to leave her in the darkness or when he took the kids with him to the house and left her in the shelter underneath the house, all by herself, all she could do was imagine Rachel, holding her in her sleep. Often, she would dream herself away, far away, to a beach near the Santa Monica Pier, walking barefoot in the sand with the girl of her dreams.
Why? How? Why was she still being punished and for what?
Where ever you've gone?
How, how, how?
I just need to know
That you won't forget about me
Where ever you've gone?
How, how, how?
I just need to know
That you won't forget about me
After several months of intense care and therapy, for both Chloe and her sons, she decided it was time. She was finally ready, hoping she wasn't the only one and dialed a number she still knew by heart. It was still the same. Some things never change.
"The Thompson's sent me new pictures of Hayley, do you want to see them?", Rachel asked, holding the latest addition to her family in her arms. He was still fuzzing a little bit, but calming down slowly, as she rocked him back and forth.
Chloe nodded. She had done the math, even before contacting Rachel. She had to, for her own sake.
Hayley Rose was Frank and Rachel's first child and only daughter. If Chloe calculated correctly, Rachel must have gotten knocked up by this piece of garbage about two or three months after her own disappearance. Back then, Rachel had already lived in Portland and avoided contact with anyone who reminded her of Chloe, but at the same time couldn't just stop looking for her. She reached out to everyone who was ever somehow connected with Chloe. It was her who initiated the move Joyce later made, thinking Chloe might be in Seattle with Max.
Even when she lived in California, she always returned to Arcadia Bay, always to their places, the burned down old mill, the junkyard, the bench by the cliff. Just in case...
When her pain grew too strong, she knew just the right person to go to.
Part of the reason Rachel finally agreed to tie the knot with a man she didn't love, was that her parents promised the newlyweds a house. All on the condition that Frank would get a serious and legal job, and provide for Rachel, which he did, for some time at least. For Rachel it meant she would be safe, her child would be safe and she would have the opportunity to go to the lighthouse, her and Chloe’s meeting point. Just in case Chloe would show up, which she never did.
Chloe remained missing and Rachel's best friend became many friends, all of them kind of round shaped and filled into nice orange bottles. No one needs people staying away from your wedding and judging you, these babies do just fine and they always make you feel better, before they make you feel worse. Drinking with her husband every night, additionally to her pain killer and sleeping pill use, she very quickly reached a point, where she just slept for days and forgot her own existence as well as the entire fucking world around her.
Only four months after Hayley was taken from her parents and placed with a new family, which sent Rachel into an even deeper depression, the poor girl fell pregnant again.
Dylan James Bowers died after suffering from a stroke in utero and was stillborn, when Rachel was seven months along and to this day, she couldn't stop blaming herself, for having consumed and experimented with various drugs, which may or may not have led to the death of her second child.
Eventually, Rachel not only lost custody of her first child, but delivered a dead one, suffered two miscarriages and then was blessed with two sons back to back, followed by being pregnant again. She probably could have told her husband to stop jumping her bones at any given time, she could have gone back to using birth control. Maybe, she was just too tired, maybe she just didn't care anymore.
Lost through time and that's all I need
So much love, then one day buried
Hope you're safe, ‘cause I lay you leaves
Is there more than we can see?
Answers for me
"She is getting so big". Rachel's eyes filled with tears when she saw Chloe viewing the picture of a little girl who looked just like her mother.
"Rachel. You're clean now, right? Can't you get her back? Forget your dad, what about the rest of the Ambers? Like... everyone else in your family is in law enforcement."
Rachel shook her head, wiping a tear away with her shoulder, because she couldn't use her hands. "I can't take her away from her parents. It would confuse her, she deserves better. They can give her everything, I can't."
Chloe handed back the pictures by sticking them into Rachel's jacket pocket. Seeing her Rachel so broken hurt much. Though it's easy to give into pain, easy to lose yourself, hadn't they always been fighters?
"Where have I heard that before?"
Chloe thought of Sera. How she bailed on Rachel -again-. Are we destined to become our parents? What would dad say? Dad...
She thought about Hayley and looked at her boys. Tyson was basically a baby himself, could barely talk, but Neil, if she asked him, if he wanted a sister, even if it was an older one... no. No, no, no, no, no.
Rachel may be sitting here with her and Rachel's love life was maybe not one that included Prince Charming, but she was still a very committed and very married woman.
"I messed it up, everything", Rachel cried, she didn't even try anymore to hold the tears back.
"Rachel..."
"I'm so sorry. I should have waited for you."
"You did."
"Not long enough."
Rachel was sobbing and Chloe didn't know what to do. She put her arms around her, hugging the girl, woman she was in love with and her baby, babies.
"I love my children."
"I know."
"I don't regret having them."
"Neither do I."
"But... but I-I wish... ah, fuck."
"You... wish they were mine?"
Rachel smiled through her tears. What a thought. A big, messed up, patched together family.
"Maybe in a different lifetime", whispered Rachel.
Chloe rubbed her cold nose against Rachel's. It was freezing, they would have to head back soon. Back into their lives of... what exactly?
And hey, hey
Without you there's holes in my soles
Hey, hey
Let the water in
"Or maybe... in this one?"
With that, Chloe gently kissed baby Fyodor on the head, right before she looked up again and closed the gap between her and Rachel's lips.
Her mind said it was wrong, but when she felt Rachel kiss her back, when she looked at her and held her face in both hands, when she touched her belly, where another little one was growing, Chloe knew, it couldn't be wrong, they had been wronged, both of them, but now, it was time to make things right. This was her Rachel, and it was time for Chloe to claim both her life and her Rachel back.
All Chloe wanted to do, was to kiss Rachel back in time, for every single second, that had been stolen from them.