Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

A black Mercedes pulls up, as close to the shoulder of the road as possible. I’m not sure whether to stop and acknowledge the driver or run in the opposite direction. At home in Toronto, I would definitely run. But in this crazy, fucked-up place, I’m not sure of the protocol.

The driver’s window rolls down. A Commander, alone. Forties, kind face. Handsome, for an older guy. He beckons at me with long, tapered fingers. What did I do wrong? My face was turned down, I’m dressed modestly with my perfect little gray Pearl Girl uniform. I know I’m supposed to approach this Commander guy, but I’m frozen in place.

“Blessed morning,” the man says neutrally. A hint of a smile, but not a creepy one.

“Blessed morning,” I parrot back, still unmoving.

“I’m here to give you a lift.”

Fuck that. Before I can edit myself, I blurt out, “I’m not getting into a car with a stranger.”

He makes a sound, somewhere between a cough and a laugh. So glad I’m amusing to him…but I’m not getting into that Benz.

“I can explain,” he says. “Please, just get in.”

“Sorry, Commander, but no.” I should add something religious, I think, but I can’t think of any of the Gilead phrases I was supposed to have memorized. “By His hand,” I say, though I’m pretty sure that’s wrong here. I’m making matters worse and worse.

He looks at me, still smiling a little bit, and shakes his head in wonder. “You’re as stubborn as your mother.”

I manage not to yell what the fuck at him. “You…know my mother?” No way does he know that. Nobody here knows my real identity. I’m supposedly a runaway from Toronto, seduced into coming south of the border by a Pearl Girl. But curious despite myself, I walk a little closer to the car. “What’s her name, then?” I test him.

“June,” he answers right back.

Not Melanie. June. That’s my birth mother’s name. She was a handmaid here in Boston, raped by her Commander until she bore me. Then she escaped to Canada for a couple of years before disappearing. I assume she’s long dead.

How could this man possibly know about June Osborne? I just found this out a few days ago, from a file put in my dorm room anonymously.

He looks straight into my confused eyes. “Get in, Daisy, please, and I’ll tell you all about her.”

He called me Daisy. My real name. Holy shit.

I get in the car, and we drive off.

“You were told that Mayday would get in contact with you, to get you back to Canada?”

I say nothing to that.

“I’m your Mayday contact,” he says. “I’m Nick. Nick Blaine.” His eyes meet mine in the rearview mirror and hold my gaze. “Does that name mean anything to you?” he asks gently.

“No. Should it?”

He shrugs. “I knew your parents in Toronto. I thought they might’ve mentioned me.”

“You knew…June?” I’m confused.

“Well, yeah, her too, but I meant Neil and Melanie.” He drops my adopted parents’ names casually. No big deal. But this is huge: nobody in Gilead is supposed to know this stuff. He must be Mayday. “I’m so sorry for your loss,” he continues. “They always seemed like really terrific people.”

“They were.” So he also knows they were blown up, murdered in their shop on my sixteenth birthday. I swallow the sudden lump in my throat.

“Were they good parents to you?” He’s still looking at me through the rearview mirror.

“Yes.” I pause to consider him. “Why do you care?”

He shakes his head, looks at the road. After a moment, he says out of nowhere, “When you tilt your head like that, you look like June. Different coloring, but--”

“Who are you?” I blurt out.

“I told you. I’m Nick.”

“How do you know my birth mother?”

“Well, here’s what we’re gonna do. I’m gonna drive you to my house and we can discuss all that. It’s just a few minutes away. Suffice it to say, I know things about you that you don’t even know.”

“Oh yeah?”

“Yeah.”

“Like my real name.” Nobody in Gilead should know the name Daisy.

“I know all four of your names.”

I squint at him. I’ve actually had three names, not four. Daisy is the name I was raised with, Jade my new spy-in-Gilead alter ego. And just before leaving Toronto, I found out my birth name: Nichole. I am the famous Baby Nichole, smuggled out of Gilead by a handmaid when I was an infant. Otherwise, I would have grown up here in this hellhole.

“Three names,” I tell him.

“Four,” he shoots back. “I guess you think of yourself as Daisy?”

I nod. “But what was my name before that?”

“Are you testing me?”

“Look, I really don’t know who you are.”

“Fair enough. Your legal Gilead name was Nichole Joy Waterford. Serena Joy—Mrs. Waterford, in those days—she named you after her household’s driver. She wanted to remind her husband that the driver was the one who got their handmaid pregnant.”

“That’s not what happened,” I interrupt bitterly. “Commander Fred Waterford, that son of a bitch, he owned my mother. And he raped her over and over until she had me.”

“All that’s true, except for the last four words. He’s not your father, Daisy. You were conceived in love.” We arrive at a large, pretty house. The Commander parks, switches off the ignition, turns around to look at me. “June lived at the Waterfords’ for about a year and a half. She became friends with their driver, then lovers. Getting you out was one of the things we’re proudest of in life.” He notices my still-befuddled look, I guess, because he points to his chest and says slowly, “I’m Nick. Nicholas. As in, Nichole. Before I got promoted to Commander, I was assigned as the Waterfords’ driver.”

My jaw has fallen open. I can feel it sort-of hanging there. I don’t know what to say. I study this man: his dark eyebrows and eyelashes, his wavy hair, his prominent cheekbones. Features I have, so unlike the photo of June in the file. A picture I’ve been scrutinizing all week, trying to see similarities in our faces. I have her blue eyes, but the rest of my face…is his. Nick Blaine’s.

I stare mutely at my father.

We enter his house. In the hallway, there are framed portraits of Nick, a red-haired woman, and a boy of varying ages. Or maybe it’s several different boys.

“Who’re they?”

“That’s my…wife, Rose.” He swallows before saying the word wife. “And my son, Jeremy.”

“You’re married?!”

“It’s Gilead, Daisy. Everyone’s married.”

He shrugs like it’s no big deal. I mean, I know about arranged marriages, but… “So Jeremy is my half-brother?”

“No. I mean, yes. Legally. Kinda.” He shakes his head in bewilderment, and gestures to the couch in the living room. “Make yourself comfortable.”

“The biology’s not that difficult.” I flop into the couch, not caring if I’m wrinkling my gray Pearl Girl dress. “We’re half-siblings.”

“Rose was pregnant when she married me. I raised Jeremy and love him like a son, but he’s not mine, biologically. Whereas you are mine, biologically, even though I didn’t raise you.”

I grin. “Well, I guess however you define fatherhood, you’ve got at least one actual child.” I look around. “Where is your family?”

“Jeremy’s at school, Sarah—our Martha—is doing the shopping. Rose is gone. She had a long-term relationship with our driver, and his wife finally found out about it and turned them both in to the Eyes. They were executed for adultery last month.”

What the flipping fuck is wrong with this country? “You don’t sound very upset.”

“I’ve learned to keep my emotions in check, Daisy. You can’t survive here otherwise.”

“You don’t care that your wife was having an affair?”

He snorts. “That would’ve really made me a hypocrite. Peter—our driver—was a good guy. And me and Rose, we had an understanding. I was, still am, in love with your mom, and Rose could be in love with whoever she wanted. We were just friends and co-parents.” He shifts in his armchair, fiddles with his tie. “Jeremy is thirteen. He’s a nice kid; you’ll like him. He’ll be home pretty soon.”

I wonder what Nick has told his son about me. If anything. Then I realize he said he is ‘still’ in love with my mom, even though… “How did my mother die?” I ask quietly.

His eyebrows go up. “Who told you she was dead?”

“The internet. I googled myself when my parents’ friends told me I was really Baby Nichole. Google wasn’t sure if June survived, but AI concluded she must’ve been killed over a decade ago. 97% chance.”

He smiles that tiny smile. I wonder if he ever actually laughs. I guess if I’d lived here for the last twenty years, I wouldn’t laugh much. “Well, Google doesn’t know everything, I guess. We faked your mom’s death when you were just four, to stop Gilead agents from coming after her.”

“Wait, she’s still alive? Is she still in Boston?”

“No, of course not. June got out a year after you did. She lives in Sherbrooke, Quebec, near the Vermont border. She smuggles people out and…does other stuff for the resistance.”

I’m torn between feeling excited to meet my real mother, and pissed as fuck at her for abandoning me. The latter feeling rises to the surface. “If she’s in Canada, why the hell didn’t she raise me? Why did she give me up?”

Nick sits back on the couch. Takes off his tie and blazer. “You want something to drink?”

“Quit deflecting and answer my question.” I’m not usually this direct with adults I barely know, but my instincts say that I can trust this guy. My supposed father. I remind myself firmly that I’m in Gilead, and he’s a Commander wearing a pistol in a holster, easily visible now that he’s taken off the blazer. He could shoot me if he wanted to. Legally, probably.

Luckily, my cheeky attitude doesn’t seem to bother him. He leans towards me and speaks gently. “Daisy, she never wanted to leave you. She got to Toronto when you were fourteen months old—her husband Luke had been your caregiver til then—and June moved right in to be your mommy. But Gilead kept coming after her, and, well, your mom and me finally decided you’d be safer if we changed your name and gave you to a foster family until you got older. Keeping you safe was the most important thing.”

Your mom and I decided--not your mom and me, I think to myself. Still pouty, correcting his grammar in my head. “So why didn’t you come to Canada to raise me?”

“I’m the head of the Eyes in this district. I know a lot of secrets. If I’d defected, they would’ve hunted me down and killed us all.”

“You could’ve changed your name.”

“I would’ve spent every day looking over my shoulder, waiting for Gilead agents to show up. You deserved a safe childhood, Daisy.” He stands up suddenly, crosses the room and kicks a floorboard. It pops open, revealing a hiding place. Nick brings a box over to me. I open it—it’s filled with old-fashioned photographs on thick, glossy paper. “Look, Neil took plenty of pictures of you over the years,” he explains. “And Melanie wrote letters, keeping us updated on your progress. We never, ever forgot about you.”

“My father—I mean, Neil—he never took any pictures of me,” I protest. It used to drive me crazy, his total lack of interest in documenting my life, even though he collected old cameras as a hobby. But I start leafing through all these pics and realize they’re all of me. Smiling at the photographer as a little kid. As I get older, though, the pictures are of me asleep or oblivious to the camera. So that he didn’t have to answer my awkward questions, I guess.

The pictures go backwards chronologically, from this year’s science fair back to me as a baby. There are a few of me as a little kid—three, four?—with a younger, smiling version of Nick. It’s weird that he knew me then, and visited me. I don't remember where the pictures were taken. Then it occurs to me that this is proof he’s telling me the truth: that’s definitely me, sitting on his lap in my sky-blue pajamas. “You were cute, back in the day,” I comment.

“Thanks.”

Many the ones from toddlerhood are next to a blond woman. I seem very comfortable with her, and she’s looking at me with a warm smile, like a mom is supposed to. “Is this my mother?” I ask, fascinated despite myself.

“Yeah.” He sighs longingly, like a lovestruck teenager.

“She’s pretty.”

“Very.”

“She looks a whole hell of a lot happier here than the picture in her handmaid file.”

Nick raises one eyebrow at me. “You could say that,” he says drily.

I continue to flip back in time. My hair was so blond when I was little; I look more and more like my mother as I get younger. Then I see a picture of me as a baby with two people I recognize only from dreams, and gasp in shock.

Chapter Text

Today’s my tenth birthday. Saturday, the best day for it, since I don’t have to go to school. When I came down for breakfast, my mom sang me the same song she always does on special occasions. Daisy, Daisy, give me your answer true. I’m half crazy over the likes of you. I used to think she made that song up, just for me. But this year in music class, we had to sing it, and I was bummed to realize it was like a hundred years old, not written for me at all. So now I don’t like it as much.

My mom doesn’t go out of her way to do special things for me like write songs. Never has. But I guess as a little kid, I thought she was different than she seemed. Or at least I hoped she might be.

My birthday isn’t normally this hot, but today is an unusually warm May day here in Toronto. That’s funny, I just said ‘May Day.’ That’s what they call May first in Europe, my dad told me. It’s Europe’s Labour Day, though not in Canada. Still, it’s cool to have a birthday on a holiday, any holiday. Hundreds of years ago, May Day was a European holiday too, something about celebrating spring, dancing around maypoles. That sounds like a fun thing to do on your birthday. And my exact birthdate, 5-1-17, is special because 5 + 1 + 1 = 7. So for all those reasons, I love having May first as my birthday.

Since it’s so warm, I’m laying in the grass in my backyard and looking up at the sky. The grass is a little wet, dew from this morning. It’s going to stain my clothes, but I don’t really care. I’ve always liked to study the sky. Above me, there’s a cloud that looks like a flower with a long stem. Maybe it’s a daisy. Daisies bloom in May, my mom told me, and are the happiest flower. That’s why we named you Daisy, she said, because you bloomed in the spring and made everything happier. That’s not how it seems. I often feel like a nuisance. Or an afterthought. Well, sometimes. Maybe I’m not being fair to them. They’re good parents. They made me my favorite cake today—chocolate, with vanilla ice cream on the side—and they worry about me all the time.

There’s another cloud passing by that’s shaped very much like a Dachshund, a little oval sausage shape with a pointy nose and wispy tail. I wish I had a dog. I wish I had a best friend who could lay here next to me, looking at clouds. But I don’t have close friends. Schoolmates don’t count if they never come over or invite me to their homes. My parents keep me pretty sheltered; I’m not really allowed to have friends in my house or do sleepovers. I can’t be home alone, ever. And I can’t go to the mall or movies without at least one parent. They’re a bit overprotective. Hopefully when I’m a teenager, they’ll loosen the reins.

Instead of a best friend, I have two guardian angels who talk to me regularly. I don’t know if all kids have imaginary angels as friends, but mine have been with me as long as I can remember. One’s a man, one’s a woman. They don’t dress or look like angels from books or anything; I always picture them wearing ordinary clothes. No wings, no halos. They’re both Black, which is a little strange because I don’t actually know any Black people (except my second-grade teacher, who was definitely not an angel). The male angel—I call him Daddy in my head, even though I have a dad—he has a beard like my real father, but it’s better trimmed, as well as a full head of hair and round glasses. The other angel is called Momo, and she’s got super short hair and a beautiful smile. They’re both kind and sweet.

Before falling asleep, I imagine my angels sitting at my bedside while I whisper how my day went. I do this every night. They listen closely and give good advice. Sometimes they sing me to sleep—old Motown hits from the 60s and 70s. You’re just too good to be true, can’t take my eyes off of you. I’ve got sunshine on a cloudy day; when it’s cold outside, I’ve got the month of May. I, I’m so in love with you; whatever you want to do is all right with me. I heard that Al Green song on the radio once and almost fell over. I remember it from somewhere, way back, deep down. I know these songs, I just don’t know how I know. It’s so weird, because my mom only sings show tunes nowadays, never old pop music from before she was born. And my dad is completely tone deaf. Never sang a note to me at bedtime. So how do I remember this stuff?

Sometimes the Daddy angel lays in bed next to me and points out stars and constellations on my ceiling’s glow-in-the-dark stickers. I seem to have actual memories of this happening, even though my dad knows nothing about space and I’ve never had stickers on my ceiling. Obviously, I must’ve learned about space at school or read it in a book. Or maybe my parents really did do all this when I was little, and I’m just replacing their faces with my angels’ faces?

For the last few years, I’ve told myself that my guardian angels must be real—some kind of supernatural beings—because they tell me things I couldn’t possibly know otherwise, like the lyrics of old songs and the stars that comprise the Big Dipper. But now that I’m ten, I should stop believing this. The grown-up part of my brain knows there’s no such thing as angels.

I must have a very active imagination, because I also have images of a mother in my head. Not exactly a third guardian angel. I used to think of this one as my real mommy, who got taken away by evil goblins, which is why I have to live here in Toronto with fake parents instead. I picture her putting me to bed, talking to me in a gentle voice like the tinkling of bells. There are Christmas tree lights hung up above the bed, making her face glow softly.

This other mommy isn’t Black, though. She’s as pale as could be, with silky blond hair and blue eyes like mine. I’m not blond. My hair’s dark brown, and my eyelashes and eyebrows are dark, too.

I don’t look like my fairy tale mommy or my two angels. I don’t even look like my real parents. I’ve only recently begun to notice that. It’s like I sprang out of nowhere.

That blond woman in my dreams, though…she smiles at me like a proud, loving mother would. Like my own mom never does.

Chapter Text

She’s got a fine sense of humor when I'm feeling low down
When I come to her, when the sun goes down
Take away my trouble, take away my grief
Take away my heartache in the night like a thief

She gives me love, love, love, love, crazy love…

(Van Morrison, “Crazy Love”)

Serena had never realized just how brain-splittingly loud an infant could be, nor for how long. The nonstop wailing was just awful; she was close to bursting into tears herself. But the house was full of her staff. She would never, ever give them the satisfaction of seeing her crumble. Failure was not an option for Serena Joy Waterford.

Especially a failure at caring for the baby she’d longed for, fought for, even betrayed her motherland to get.

Serena therefore continued to walk in circles around the kitchen. Her sharp heels tapped rhythmically, an angry metronome on the tiled floor. She held the baby over her shoulder, bouncing little Nichole and telling her firmly to stop crying. She’d offered a bottle, the diaper was dry, the last nap had been sufficient in length, the two month-old couldn’t possibly be teething yet. There was no reason for Nichole to cry, damn it. Mothering was supposed to be instinctive, and a baby should respond well to proper parenting. Yet Nichole continued to scream her lungs out.

“Would somebody please shut her up?” Fred called from his first-floor study. “I can’t even hear myself think.”

Serena pressed her lips together instead of responding.

After a few moments, Nick Blaine entered the kitchen, sent by his boss. He wasn’t supposed to be in the same room as Nichole—Serena’s orders—and she considered reminding him of that. But he spoke first.

“Ma’am, Commander Waterford is, uh, wondering if you could maybe give the baby a nap. Upstairs.” He never called the child ‘Nichole,’ at least not to her. She wasn’t sure why that was.

“She doesn’t need a nap. Why don’t you go inform the Commander that I know best what my child needs.”

Nick nodded politely but didn’t move. He leaned against the wall, eyeing her daughter—his daughter, biologically—and then Rita, before his gaze fell on the woman in red seated at the kitchen table.

Perhaps in response to Nick’s unspoken suggestion, the handmaid murmured, “Would you like me to take her for a few minutes, Mrs. Waterford?” She was ostensibly eating her lunch, but Serena could feel those judgmental blue eyes drilling into her back.

“No. You’re not needed here, Offred,” Serena snapped back. The last person on God’s green earth she would ask for help was that handmaid. If she were honest with herself—which she was not—she’d acknowledge that she was afraid of Offred. She was afraid the child might some day prefer her biological mother. Perhaps she was crying right now because there was some aspect of that woman that Nichole wanted, her milky scent or familiar voice, things that Serena couldn’t offer her daughter.

Too bad. Nichole was her daughter, not Offred’s. This was not up for debate. “Isn’t it time for your shopping?” she told the handmaid. It wasn’t a question, although it was phrased as such. Serena meant: get out of my house.

She got the message. “Yes, Mrs. Waterford.” Offred stood, pushed her chair in, glided towards the door. She glanced at the driver on her way out, her expression unreadable.

Slut, Serena thought uncharitably. At least the girl was fruitful. And obedient, sometimes. Occasionally.

As soon as she heard the back door bang shut, indicating the handmaid was gone, Serena thrust the baby into Rita’s arms. “Here, do something with her.”

A look of pity flashed across Rita’s face, quickly covered by a pious poker face. “Yes, ma’am,” she acknowledged.

Serena turned on a heel and retreated to her garden greenhouse. Fred had brought her some tomato and Swiss chard seeds yesterday, and she wanted to get them started in pots. She could transplant them next month, when spring finally made an appearance. Seeds, after all, had to be in the right soil to flourish.

Nichole continued to wail. Rita stopped bouncing her; it wasn’t working anyway, so why bother? She cradled the baby close, whispered in her ear. Every night, while Serena got her beauty rest, Rita was responsible for the infant. The Martha was averaging four hours of sleep now, interrupted by one nighttime feeding. But Nichole was a good baby, without many crying fits, and Rita had quickly grown to love her.

“She’s certainly got a lot to say,” Nick observed. As soon as Serena had exited, he’d stepped forward to get a closer look at the still-wailing child.

“Oh, yeah, she’s opinionated.” Rita grimaced. “Like Mrs. Waterford, I guess.”

Nick knitted his dark brows at that comment. “Like June,” he corrected. He had only recently shared the handmaid’s true name with Rita…by mistake. They rarely used it aloud with each other, just to be safe. But she appreciated the trust nonetheless.

“Can I hold her?” Nick asked softly, still looking at the baby.

“Of course.” Rita passed him the little bundle. “Support her head,” she reminded him.

“Yeah, I know,” he whispered. He wiped Nichole’s tear-stained face with the edge of her blanket. “Shh,” he consoled her. “It’s not that bad.” Rather than holding her upright on a shoulder, like Serena and Rita had done, Nick tried cradling her sideways. Nichole’s cries faded to whimpers as she looked up at his face, considering the man above her. His deep voice was familiar; she’d heard it many nights while in the womb. Her mother always felt at peace when he was around, so Nichole decided to calm down accordingly. Her crying stopped.

Rita smiled at his apparent skill. Or beginner’s luck. “Praise be.” She ran a finger over the baby’s cheek. “You like him, huh?” Then, remembering how irrationally jealous Serena could get, she glanced around. “Nick,” she fretted, “if Mrs. Waterford comes back inside, or the Commander….”

“Yeah,” Nick agreed softly. His eyes hadn’t left his daughter. “I’ll take her to her room.”

Nick felt ridiculous sitting in a pink rocking chair like an old lady, but it was the only chair in the nursery. Besides, the baby seemed to like the gentle rocking motion. He put his elbow on the armrest, propping her head up, and stared at her little face. He’d only had this privilege twice before. The first time was with June—she’d taught him how to hold an infant and they’d cooed at their daughter together. Then last week, unable to sleep, he had left his so-called wife Eden alone in the apartment above the garage and come to his daughter’s room, just to watch her sleep.

Right now, however, his baby was wide awake, studying him with the same focus he was giving her. Her eyes were blue and round, June’s eyes. No eyelashes, though. “Do babies not have eyelashes?” he wondered aloud. She looked at him, mystified. “I guess you haven’t given the matter much thought. You probably have bigger concerns.”

He inspected her tiny face. Her cheeks were flushed, understandable after the long crying session. Her hair—the little she had—was blond and super soft. She was dressed all in white, per Gilead rules. Everyone’s assigned a uniform here, Nick mused, even newborns. Babies wore white until their first birthday. “It’ll be a long time before you turn one,” he told her. “First, it’s gonna be spring, then summer. You’ll like that; you can play outside, go for walks. Go to the beach when you’re a little older.” He paused, thinking wistfully of Maui. “After that comes fall, when you can play in the leaves, then winter. Your birthday is January 6. It's lucky to be born on a holiday. January 6 is Epiphany, the twelfth day of Christmas. You were our Christmas present,” he added.  “The best possible present.”

She cooed in response.

He smiled down at her. “I agree. Mommy isn’t here right now; she had to go get dinner from Loaves and Fishes. But she’ll be back soon, don’t worry, and then she’ll, uh, make your lunch, so to speak. Your real mommy. Not that bitch Serena.” It seemed wrong to curse in front of his daughter, but it wasn’t like Holly was about to start repeating bad words. “That reminds me,” he informed her, “your name is Holly. Your fake parents call you Nichole, but that’s a fake name. Only your Mommy and I know your true name. And now you know it, too. But it’s a secret, so don’t tell anybody.” He frowned. “I guess that won’t be a problem for you, for a while. Now, Holly is a very beautiful, strong name. Mommy and me, we’re hoping you grow up to be strong. You’ve gotta be, in a place like Gilead. Hopefully you won’t grow up here, though. We want to get you out. Not because we don’t love you—we do, you know that?—but because we do love you.”

She started whimpering again. Too much talking, he guessed. “No, please, please don’t cry,” he begged her. “You want a song?” Nick racked his brains for a lullaby. Nothing. His parents never sang to him. He sang the first thing he could come up with: “She wears short skirts, I wear t-shirts; she’s cheer captain and I’m on the bleachers.” Holly’s eyes grew even rounder, her mouth a surprised O. Nick had to laugh. “You like Taylor Swift?” he said in a normal speaking voice. At that, her lip began quivering again. “Shit,” he muttered, trying to remember the rest of the song. “Okay, okay, here’s the chorus. If you could see that I’m the one who understands you, been here all along so why can’t you seeee you belong with meeee.”

Taylor Swift—though effective as a distraction for Holly—wasn’t exactly Nick’s taste in music, so he switched gears. There was a number of old LP records in his garage apartment, left over from its last pre-war tenant. Rock from the 1960s and 70s: not stuff he’d grown up with, but he’d developed a taste for it. He listened to the records in the evenings, volume low enough to evade the ears of the Guardians posted on the street, while he smoked contraband cigarettes or wrote Eye reports for Pryce or made love with June. She was partial to Van Morrison; they listened to Moondance until the vinyl was worn out. Hoping that Holly might have similar tastes to her mother, he sang her “Crazy Love” and “Into the Mystic.” The baby stared open-mouthed at him while he sang. Maybe she recognized the music from her days in utero, Nick thought. She probably heard those songs fifty times each.

Despite her studious attention to her father, Holly was fast asleep by the end of the second song. Nick placed her carefully in her crib. It looked enormous for such a tiny infant. He tried to picture her older, at least old enough to take up the length of the little bed, but couldn’t imagine her any larger than she presently was.

He snuck down the stairs, avoiding the Commander’s office, and went to the yard to wash the car. When June returned from shopping, Nick thought eagerly, he’d be able to talk to her outside, away from the prying Waterford eyes. He felt something bubbling inside of him as he worked, and finally identified the elusive emotion as happiness. He was actually happy, such a rarity in his Gilead life.

He couldn’t wait for June to come back, so he could tell her.

Chapter Text

The Canadian diplomatic aide led Nick Blaine through the opulent Ottawa hotel to his assigned room. Easy escape route, Nick thought: right next to the stairwell. No other Commanders on the trip were assigned to this particular hallway—another plus, since he really didn’t want to socialize with his supposed colleagues. The aide tapped the key against the door, and it clicked open. Nick watched, curious. New technology, invented somewhere abroad in the last seven years.

After handing him the room key, the Canadian led him inside and gestured to the right. “This is a two-room suite. The other bedroom is just through that door.”

“That’s very generous, thank you,” Nick murmured. The suite was larger than his master bedroom in Boston. The hotel was luxurious, almost decadent by his standards. By Gilead standards, he amended in his head.

She inclined her head in response. “Mr. Tuello wanted me to let you know that it’s too late for him to come by this evening, but he’ll be here at seven thirty tomorrow morning.”

Nick looked at her sharply. She knows American spies’ names? Maybe she’s not a Canadian after all. Impossible to tell, really. Their accents are too similar.

Our accents are too similar, he corrected himself again. I’m still an American. Kind of.

With a professionally polite smile, the aide left him alone, gently closing the door behind her. Nick loosened the damn tie, folded his black jacket and placed it neatly on the bed…then froze. A quiet voice was coming from the other bedroom in the suite. A woman’s voice. He reached instinctively for the pistol in its holster—which of course wasn’t there, per Canadian law—then removed his shoes before stepping silently forward. He nudged the door open, peeked inside.

In the center of the big bed were June and Nichole, snuggled comfortably together, reading Green Eggs and Ham. Nick’s knees buckled. He had thought (hoped, prayed) that he might see June here in Ottawa, particularly since Mark Tuello was part of the American delegation. Nick hadn’t spoken with his ‘handler’ since this trade mission had come up, but he didn’t really need to. Mark knew what Nick would request. There were only two things in the world he’d ask for…and they were right in front of him.

Two sets of identical blue eyes looked up as the door squeaked open. “Daddy’s here!” Nichole said, sitting up. She had been told that her First Daddy—a shadowy figure in her memory who existed mostly through one grainy surveillance photo in a frame and occasional in-person visits, as well as through numerous bedtime stories by her mother—would be coming to see them today. He was late. She’d been trying to stay awake for several minutes, forcing her eyes to stay open. Now she roused herself, expectant. The last time they’d met, he had brought her a very nice teddy bear. Past gifts included some animal blocks and a doll. She hoped for something similar now. Perhaps another doll. Or Legos.

“Yeah, daddy’s here,” June agreed softly. She gave him a broad grin. “Welcome to Canada.”

Nick’s throat was too tight to answer. He managed to make his legs move forward, sitting on the king-sized bed next to his girls.

Nichole vaguely remembered that she hadn’t wanted her father to pick her up the first time they’d met, in that cold building in the snow. He was unknown to her then and she used to distrust strangers. The next time they’d met, she’d shyly let him hold her. But she was much more mature now: three years and four months old, a preschooler rather than a toddler. She decided to take the initiative and opened her arms for a hug. He obliged, embracing her very gently and stroking her back. She was wearing her favorite pajamas, sky-blue with clouds, super soft. She hoped he liked them.

“Hi, sweetheart,” he murmured.

“Hi,” Nichole answered cheerfully, settling close to him. She inspected his clothes, fingered his silk tie. She’d never touched a necktie before. Nobody she knew wore one. She turned back to her mother to comment, “Just like picture.”

“Uh-huh, he’s dressed just like in the picture we have.” Her mother was very good at interpreting what she meant. It was one of Nichole’s favorite things about her mommy: she understood her daughter well.

June put the Dr. Suess book down and scooted across the bed on her knees towards Nick. Her hands came up of their own volition to cradle his face. She kissed him gently on the lips, then leaned back slightly to scrutinize him just as their daughter had. “You look tired,” she observed.

His arms reached out for her, wrapping around her strong back. “Not anymore.” He drew her close enough to bury his nose in her hair. “June,” he whispered, her name his only talisman. Her warm touch made him feel revitalized. Renewed. Reborn.

After indulging himself for a drawn-out moment, he turned his attention back to their daughter. “What’re we reading, Nichole?”

“Gween Eggs and Ham.”

“Mm, sounds delicious.” He tilted his head at her. “Do you like eggs?”

She nodded with gusto. “Yellow eggs,” she specified. “But not,” she waved a finger back and forth, “not ham. Too mushy.”

Nick nodded seriously, filing the new information away. “Bacon, then?”

“Yes, I yike bacon.”

“Me too.” He grinned at her. Her cute little jammies matched the blue of her eyes, her mom’s eyes, although her hair wasn’t as blond anymore. “Every time I see you, you’ve learned so many new words. It’s crazy how fast you grow.” He sounded simultaneously proud, wistful, and sorrowful at that observation.

June picked up on his sudden sadness, and pulled him down to lay next to her, head on several fluffy pillows. She nuzzled his cheek to breathe in the familiar scent of his shaving cream. Nichole nestled on his chest. He curled one arm around her, the other around June. Then he closed his eyes to relish the perfection of the moment, so he could recall the memory when he was back on the emotional iceberg of Gilead.

“Daddy, you read.”

His eyes snapped open. “Sure.”

He had never read a single bedtime story until the birth of Jeremy. Nowadays, though, Nick spent a lot of time practicing that skill. Rose said infants like high-pitched voices, so he often tried to imitate a cartoon character while reading. She was right; the baby seemed to like it. Now three months old, he’d just begun smiling, which made him much more endearing than in his cranky newborn phase. Nick still had trouble feeling love for “his” baby, who was just one more child of that son of a bitch rapist Warren Putnam. Jeremy was half-brother to Janine’s daughter Angela and Esther’s son Ahab, but he was no more Nick’s child than Nichole was Fred Waterford’s. At least, not biologically.

The brutal circumstances of his conception weren’t Jeremy’s fault, of course, and Nick was determined to be a loving father to him. He just didn’t feel quite as connected to the baby—yet—as he did to the little girl snuggling beside him, who at present was giggling at the funny voice Nick was making for Sam-I-Am.

It only took one and a half readings of Green Eggs and Ham before June pronounced Nichole ‘fast asleep and dead to the world until tomorrow.’

She nudged him. “Let’s go to the other bedroom.” Nick didn’t miss her unspoken suggestion.

He stood and nodded in acknowledgment while tucking the blankets around Nichole. He had a sudden, unexpected memory of putting her down in her crib as a baby, wondering if she’d ever fill the space. Now, somehow, she’d become a walking, talking three-year-old with a love of books and a dislike of mushy ham. He gave her a goodnight kiss. Her forehead was soft and warm. “She has eyelashes now,” he whispered, mostly to himself.

“Yeah,” June agreed. “Yours, luckily, not mine. Nice and dark. She’ll never need mascara, will she?”

Nick turned to look at her steady blue eyes. “You don’t either.” As a callback to the banter of their early days, he added, “You don’t need to put on anything for me.”

She twisted her lip, amused. Taking his hand, she pulled him into the second room. Once the door had closed, she launched herself at him, embracing him with all four of her limbs and kissing him hard on the mouth. One hand was on the nape of his neck, keeping him close.

Out of breath, he finally broke the kiss. “How’s Luke?”

“Luke?” She frowned at the non-sequitur. “Fine, I guess. The charges were officially dropped last month, so he’s free to travel around Canada. He and Moira moved to Winnipeg with us, so we’re all sharing an apartment. It’s pretty cramped.” That was all she wanted to say about that topic. She moved to kiss Nick again.

He held her back, placing a gentle hand on her shoulder. “I meant, how’s your marriage.” He looked at her meaningfully. “You still married?”

“No. Not like that, no.”

“Because I don’t…we shouldn’t…I don’t want to get between you two.” He averted his eyes, trying to articulate his feelings without hurting hers. “Kissing me for old times’ sake is one thing, and God knows I still love you, but it’s not like it was before.”

“I was married ‘before,’ too. Never bothered you then.” June knew she sounded more annoyed than she should be. But watching Nick read to his daughter was such a sweet sight, and it had put her in a romantic—and erotic—mood. She didn’t want to talk. She wanted to fuck. “It’s not the same because you’re married now?”

He waved a hand dismissively. “No, no, I don’t give a damn about my marriage. But when you were in Gilead, Luke was a ghost. Now you share a house with him, share a life with him. Do you also share a bed with him?”

“Yes, but…not like that. We’re just tight on space right now. I slept alone in Toronto. Would you just forget him? I really don’t consider myself married.”

“Does Luke know you don’t consider yourself married, June? Have you had that talk with him?”

No, they still hadn’t had that talk. It was never the right moment. She certainly couldn’t end things just after he got out of jail, killing a man for her. “We’re not lovers,” she said instead. “We tried once, back in Toronto, but it didn’t feel right, not to me. So it’s not like I’m…”

She trailed off without saying ‘cheating on him.’ Moira’s voice from fourteen years ago sprang into her head: Luke’s cheating on his wife with you. If he’ll do it with you, he’ll do it to you. June had never thought that could happen. Nor that she would be the one to step out of the marriage. No, she told herself, Gilead had destroyed her marriage years ago—not her, not Luke, not Nick.

She changed tact, lowered her voice. “Look, I love you. You’re the only one I want. So could we just pretend the rest of the world doesn’t exist, just for tonight, pretend that we’re partners, committed and in love, raising our little girl?” June took a step towards him, took his hand in hers. She looked directly at him and spoke honestly. “Please. I need you. I need this.”

Nick had seen June a number of times since she escaped to Canada. Before each visit, he’d ordered himself to keep a tight rein on his emotions. He’d reminded himself that June had chosen to marry Luke, that he was merely a stand-in while she was away from her true love, that he had zero claim on her, that he really meant very little to her. And he knew damn well that if he allowed himself to kiss her or touch her, his self-restraint would crumble like sand. The first time—at the school, just after she’d defected—he’d completely lost that self-discipline. If Nichole hadn’t been there, they would certainly have made love right on that school floor. Since then, though, Nick had managed to control himself.

Until now. Sorry, Luke, he thought. You had your chance.

He stepped forward to close the gap between them.

Nick lay quietly, trying to get his breathing back to normal. “This is a ridiculous amount of pillows,” he commented. He couldn’t sleep with more than one anymore. “Capitalist decadence.”

“I like two.”

He reached back, moved a couple of pillows off to the side of the bed. “Okay, we’ll make a wall with the others. In case of intruders.”

June reached out to caress his face. “We’re perfectly safe here, you know.”

He couldn’t fully relax, hadn’t relaxed in seven years, and she knew it. But laying alongside her was the closest he could get to real peace. He rolled on his side to regard her. Her cheeks were flushed, skin glossy with sweat. Her eyes had that heavy-lidded, satisfied look he loved. “Turn over, I’ll give you a back rub.” With an eager grin, she flipped right over. Nick smiled at the rare show of compliance. He moved to straddle her, then began kneading the small of her back with his palms. Her lower back muscles were always tight. She moaned, just like he knew she would. “See,” he murmured, “sometimes it’s nice to let me be on top.”

“Sometimes,” she allowed. “Occasionally.”

He didn’t speak for a while, concentrating instead on giving a good massage. Once he’d worked his way up from her hips to her shoulders, though, he couldn’t resist lowering himself towards her, brushing her ear with his lips. He repeated something he’d told her three years ago. “Our baby is so beautiful.”

She evidently remembered the conversation. “This time you get to hold her all you want.”

“Mm-hmm,” he agreed. “You’re doing an amazing job raising her. You’re such a good mommy.” He paused to nuzzle her ear again. “I didn’t realize how much more I’d love her every time I see her. She’s so smart and happy and….” Nick’s simple background didn’t supply him with the proper words to describe his daughter’s glowing, gleeful character, nor the way his heart clenched in fear when he thought of Gilead coming after her. “You’ve got to keep her safe, okay? If she or you got killed, I’d lose my mind. I’d strap a bomb to myself at the next Council meeting or launch an airstrike at our own base. Or something.”

“You could do that anyway. The airstrike, I mean, not the suicide bombing.” She turned over onto her back. “Don’t you hate them, Nick? Don’t you ever feel the need to kill?”

Not like you do, sweetheart, he thought. Instead he said, “I get that chance these days, a lot more often than I used to.”

“Not execute orders. I mean, go after the bad guys. Like Waterford.”

“Yeah, that was fun,” he admitted. “But that was personal. I’d rather keep a low profile, keep Mayday members safe, assassinate if they need me to, and go on feeding the Americans intel ‘til they invade.” He brushed a stray hair out of her face. “Patience,” he reminded her. “Long game.”

“It’s been seven years, most of your twenties. You must be tired of being quiet all the time. The obedient driver, the pious Commander…don’t you ever wanna scream?”

He raised his eyebrows. “I do scream sometimes. In the car, on the highway.”

“That’s a start.” Her mouth curved into a small smile. “You used to get pretty loud with me at the Boston Globe. Once you realized there was nobody in earshot.”

“Yeah, well, we always had to be so quiet at the Waterfords, so I guess that kinda became a habit.”

She looked him over, speculatively. “These walls are soundproof, and there’s no one in the next suite anyway. It’s for Tuello, tomorrow morning.”

“Oh yeah?”

“Yeah.” She ran her hands down his arms and onto his thighs. “Let’s try breaking some old habits. I want to hear you.”

She lay on top of him, her knees pressed into the soft white sheets, embracing him with her legs. They moved together in a familiar rhythm until without warning, Nick took hold of her hips, long fingers wrapping around her backside, and stilled her.

“Don’t move.”

She squirmed above him, her desperate hips hitching towards him. “I want to move.”

“Don’t. Move.” He commanded her with a whisper. Nick stared into her eyes, unblinking, for five ragged breaths, ignoring her pleading moans. Then with a smile, he let go of her hips. “Now.”

The morning sun was shining through the crack between the hotel room’s curtains. Nick shut his eyes tighter, against the sun, against reality. He stroked June’s hair, thought about last night. Holy cow, he felt good. There was just no way that God didn’t bless their union; it was too pure, too easy. Too right. He really didn’t care whether she was living with Luke or not, fucking him or not. The sin of adultery didn’t bother him either; he’d thrown away morality years ago. When she was with him, she was one hundred percent with him, that’s what mattered. And she was the only person in Nick’s whole life who had ever loved him. Maybe she didn’t love him as completely, as passionately or hopelessly, as he loved her, but he’d accepted that too. He’d take whatever she gave him.

So that every part of their bodies was touching, he wrapped a leg around hers and buried his face on her neck. His lips quivered against her strong, steady pulse. After a serene minute of breathing her in, practical matters encroached on his thoughts, so he checked his watch: just after seven. Tuello would be arriving soon. He sighed deeply.

“Stay with me,” June whispered.

She’d talked in her sleep pretty often in Gilead. Nick was used to it. “I’m right here, baby,” he assured her.

She wasn’t asleep, though…and that wasn’t what she meant. Changing her request slightly, she said, “Stay here, in Canada, with us.” June emphasized the last word, hoping he wouldn’t be able to say no to his daughter.

“No. I can’t. My place is in Gilead.”

“Your place is with us, Nick. You and I are the best versions of ourselves when we’re together.”

That, he thought, was an absolute truth. “I know that.”

“So tell Tuello you’re staying. If they gave Waterford a plea deal, they’d damn well better give you one too.”

He considered briefly, then shook his head. “My whole household would be put in prison. Or hanged. And Jeremy would be given away.”

“That’s on Gilead, not you.”

“No, that would be on me. I can’t be that selfish.” June had made some questionable moral choices in the past—doing what she wanted, even when it put others in mortal danger. Nick had nearly never challenged her on those decisions, but he knew he would never sacrifice his whole household for his happiness. The guilt would eat away at him.

“I can’t,” he whispered again. Then he sat up in bed. “Do you know how many Eye plans to kidnap Nichole were scrapped because of me? I can’t keep her safe from Canada. I’ve gotta be on the inside.”

“Gilead knew where we were in Toronto. Luke didn’t exactly keep his address a secret. But nobody knows where I live now. Come to Winnipeg. We’ll be safe.”

“We will never be safe, and they will keep looking for you. And for me, if I defected. I know way too much for them to just let me go. I’d be putting you and Nichole in more danger, June. I can’t. I love you two, I want to be with you, but I can’t justify this.”

“I hear you, I do, but Canada’s a huge country. We can hide, we can disappear. And you know, Nichole would be safer with you around to protect her.”

“What about Hannah? Don’t you want me in Boston to protect her? She’s got nobody else.”

June paused. When she began speaking again, her voice had less certainty than before. “She’s training to be an Aunt. She’s safe enough.”

“She’s a girl in Gilead, June. Not safe.”

“I know that, I fucking know that. But unless you can get her out of Ardua Hall, there’s nothing you can do for her.” There was no good solution here, and she knew it. She couldn’t choose which of her daughters merited more protection. Nor would she ever stop blaming herself if she convinced Nick to leave and anything happened to Hannah. She sat up in bed too, throwing her arms around his shoulders to nestle close to him. She spoke softly. “Am I being selfish to want Holly to grow up with her daddy? And for you to live in freedom?”

“No, you’re not being selfish,” he murmured. “I want that too. There’s nothing I want more in life. But I need to stay in Gilead and finish this. I need to blow the fucking country up from inside. And as soon as that’s done, you know I’ll come find you. You’re my home, you’re my family.” He kissed the top of her head, then moved a finger to her chin. He tilted her face up so that he could kiss her mouth. “You’re my home. I’ll always come back to the two of you.”

Chapter Text

Now wearing a brown prison tunic, June Osborne sat in the cell, head in her hands. A shaft of light shone in through a thin window near the ceiling. It formed a beam across the little room, exposing dust floating through the air. Most dust, June thought morbidly, is comprised of dead skin cells, insect parts, and bits of plant life. She wondered how much of the dust she was viewing was created by the skin of people who had died in this cell.

Presently, the door opened. That was a surprise. The Guardian who had tossed her in here had left strict orders to the man on duty: no one in or out until her execution tomorrow, not even food. He’d grinned maliciously at her as he’d said that. But now, just a few hours later, a Guardian stood in her doorway. Apparently the execution was coming earlier than expected.

She rubbed the back of her neck while she still had one. “Blessed day,” she murmured. Might as well be polite.

“Hi, June.” The man entered quickly, shut the door behind him without locking it. She contemplated making a run for it. She’d have to knock him out first, or maybe stab him in the eyes. Before she could decide on a plan, he spoke again. “I’m taking you to a truck to get you out of here. You have, well, friends in high places. Please come with me, and don’t try to escape.” He smiled sheepishly. “I was told you might to try to.”

“Who told you that?”

“My boss. The Commander.”

That’s not very specific, June thought. Nick? But this prison was apparently somewhere in New York State, nowhere near his home base of Boston. So probably not Nick. Maybe an ally of his. She nodded in acquiescence and stood.

“I’m going to keep your handcuffs on until we’re out.”

“How do you know my name?” It occurred to her, belatedly, that he’d called her June.

“My boss told me to use it.”

She followed him through the prison hallway, acting unhappy and broken. The act wasn’t difficult. Then he led her down an out-of-use staircase to the parking garage and opened the back of a black Eyes van. She balked; nothing good ever happened in a vehicle like this. “I’m not getting in here unless you tell me where we’re going.”

“The alternative is your public hanging.”

“Who’s your ‘boss’? What’s the plan?”

“We really don’t have time for this, ma’am. Please,” he added. His eyes darted around, expecting trouble.

She heard quick footsteps approaching from behind. A Commander, she knew: the dress shoes echoed differently than boots in the cement parking garage. The new arrival placed a hand on the small of her back. “Is she being stubborn?”

“Yes, sir.”

June smiled and stepped up into the van without further protest. She recognized the voice and the warmth of the hand without needing to turn around. Nick Blaine jumped in behind her, slammed the door shut, and they were off.

He didn’t bother saying hello to her, even though they hadn’t seen each other in months. Nick and June never wasted time with pleasantries; they just picked up where they’d left off.

The van had two metal benches, not upholstered, facing each other. She sat on one as he knelt at her feet. He removed her handcuffs, right then left, inspecting each sore wrist and kissing the angry red welts left by the metal. “You bruise so easily,” he observed, not for the first time. Her pale skin was delicate enough, he mused, that Serena’s fingers had often left marks. As did Fred’s. Nick quickly shut those images off from his mind. He hadn’t thought about the Waterfords pawing at June in a long time, and he didn’t wish to remember now.

Neither did she, apparently. She curled her hand around his. “Where’s Nichole?” she whispered desperately. She assumed—correctly—that they would not have left the prison if their daughter had still been there.

Nick held her gaze. “I was gonna ask you the same question.”

“You didn’t capture her?”

It bothered him that she used the pronoun you to refer to Gilead agents, as if he personally had something to do with her abduction. But no matter. “No. The Eyes broke into your house, got you, got Luke. Moira wasn’t home, and neither was Nichole, according to the report. I hoped she was at preschool or out with a friend somewhere.”

June thought furiously. “No, she was there, home, with us. Moira was at work. Luke was making dinner in the kitchen. I was…I was playing hide and seek with Nichole. I was counting to twenty.” She shook her bruised head. She’d been knocked unconscious, and her mind still felt fuzzy. “They must’ve gotten her, Nick. She was right there with me.” She clutched his hands in hers. “They must have her.”

He stopped kneeling and moved to sit next to her instead. “She was playing hide and seek,” he suggested quietly, hoping his tone would keep her calm. “So maybe she stayed hidden when the Eyes broke in? You’ve always taught her to hide in case this happens.”

“Yeah, maybe. She only has, like, three hiding places. The kitchen pantry, behind the living room curtains, or in the coat closet. So, maybe…but then that means she’s all alone in the house. Oh my God, she must be so scared.”

Nick kept his voice soft and gentle, in contrast to her panicky babbling. “Better that she’s home alone in Winnipeg than in a Gilead prison cell, though, right? What time does Moira usually get home from work?”

“Seven-ish.”

“Okay, so she’s got her.” He smoothed June’s disheveled hair and spoke encouragingly, trying to convince himself as much as her. “Baby, it’s okay. She was only alone for a couple of hours. Moira’s got her. Probably drove her to the US consulate or the police station. They’re safe. They must be safe.”

“And Luke? Nick, if he’s in that prison, we’ve gotta go back for him.” He shook his head no. Her voice rose in pitch and volume. Her piercing blue eyes were beseeching. “No, we have got to get him. He freaks out easily, even in a crowd of people. He’ll be going out of his mind in a Gilead jail. I know he’s not your favorite person but--”

“He’s not here.”

“Well, let’s go find him.”

“No, I mean, he’s not…in Gilead.” He averted his gaze.

“You said they ‘got’ him.”

“Yeah, I meant that in a different way.” Nick looked at her with an effort, took a breath. “They shot him when they came into your house. Two bullets to the neck. Real quick, he didn’t feel a thing.”

She paused briefly, trying to make her brain work. “Luke is dead?”

He nodded. “I’m so sorry, June.”

“But he wasn’t, he wasn’t doing anything. To them. He was just making dinner. We were having chicken. He was just making chicken.” She didn’t notice that she’d begun crying, but Nick lifted his hands to her face, cupping her cheeks and wiping her tears with his thumbs.

“I love you,” he whispered. “Nichole’s okay, Moira’s okay. You’re gonna be okay.”

June collapsed against him, buried her face in his neck. Her arms wrapped around his shoulders. The black van sped north on I-87.

They got through the first few checkpoints without incident. Jonah, the Eye who had sprung June out of the cell, had all the proper documents. The story was believable, too: they were transporting a Mayday member from Albany to the maximum-security prison in Malone.

Eventually, their luck ran out, and the two men assigned to the next control booth did a more thorough job searching the van. Even before the engine turned off, Nick had put the handcuffs back on June and was now sitting on the bench across from her with a rifle aimed vaguely in her direction. When the back of the van opened, Nick greeted the two black-clad Guardians with an authoritative “Under His eye,” which sounded meaner than ‘blessed day.’

“Under His eye, Commander. Papers, please.”

Nick slung the weapon over his shoulder to exit the van, then presented his ID. “And this is the paperwork for the prison transfer.”

“This says you’re moving her to Malone,” the older Guardian said. “You passed the turn off; it’s thirteen miles south-west of here.”

“What?” Nick yelped. “Jonah, get out here!” He hadn’t formulated an exact plan yet. He hoped Jonah had one.

He didn’t get the chance to find out, though, because the younger of the two checkpoint guards took the initiative and shot his colleague through the base of the head with his service pistol. As Nick’s rifle came up in response, the man—a boy, really, with still-narrow shoulders and a fresh face—dropped his gun onto the ground and raised his hands. “Mayday, sir, mayday. I’m on your side.”

Nick kept his weapon trained on the boy. “You don’t know what side I’m on.”

“Well, um, I know your paperwork is faked, and every prisoner transfer should have at least three Eyes in the van, not a Commander. So I assume you’re trying to escape to the Canadian border. I…I’d like to come with you, please. If I could. Please take me with you.”

“Why should I?”

“Well, uh, I just killed my superior officer for you. And I know where the next checkpoint is; I can tell you. And I want to be free. I want, y’know, choices. I’m only nineteen.”

Nick glanced questioningly at June, who shrugged and nodded. Like Dorothy in Oz, she thought with a small smile, she was collecting travelling companions.

The Guardian followed Nick’s gaze, noticing the woman in the van for the first time. “Hey, aren’t you June Osborne?” He sounded sweetly starstruck. “Wow, a real resistance fighter! It’s nice to meet you.”

Before she could respond to that, she flinched at what sounded like a loud cough. The young Guardian shot forward towards the van, slamming his head hard on the open door before collapsing lifeless onto the ground. Behind him, June could see Nick, rifle raised.

“What the fuck did you do that for?!” she admonished her lover.

“He knew your name,” Nick said simply, shouldering the weapon in order to drag the two dead Guardians away from the road.

Jonah helped him hide the bodies in the bushes. “That silencer was totally worth the price,” he noted casually.

“Yeah, wasn’t it?”

June felt sick to her stomach. “He was just a kid,” she called out as a reminder.

Nick wiped his bloody hands on the ground, then addressed Jonah. “Let’s roll.” He hopped into the back of the van, slammed the door.

June wasn’t used to being ignored by him and wasn’t about to accept it now. “Nick,” she told him sternly.

“I know he was just a kid,” he said as a way of acknowledging her previous comment. He sat across from her and tried to take her hand. She pulled away, which he accepted without argument. “He knew who you were, June,” Nick explained. “He knew your name. If we got stopped at another checkpoint, and things went wrong, he could’ve turned you in.”

“He wouldn’t have, though. He just wanted to get to Canada.”

“So he said. But I’m not betting your life on that.” He waited for her to respond to that. Instead, she stared stone-faced at him. He sighed. “Could we please drop the subject?”

She wasn’t ready to concede or move on. “That boy had a family,” she said softly.

“So what?” Nick was beginning to lose his temper. “So fucking what? Every person you’ve killed, or who died because of you, also had a family. Didn’t stop you from doing what needed to be done.”

They were silent for a few minutes before he spoke again, back to his usual mellow baritone. “Look, there’s only one family I’d die for or kill for, and that’s ours. So could we please talk about that?”

She gave him one last icy blue glare. Finally, however, she nodded in acquiescence. “Okay,” she whispered.

“That Guardian knew your face because you’re wanted,” Nick reminded her. “You’re like, Gilead’s most wanted right now. Every one of those men has probably been promised a promotion to bring you in, dead or alive. They are trying to kill you and drag our baby back to hell. Which is why I think you need to disappear for a while. Change your hair, change your name, and disappear. Both of you.”

“I’ll move out of Winnipeg. They obviously knew where I lived.”

“That’s not hard, June, when you’re using your real name. They probably just googled you.”

She nodded glumly. “But Moira told me my name gave me power. Respect.”

“It does, with people like Tuello. But for the rest of the world, I suggest you go completely silent. Play dead. ‘Cause I’ve been thinking all day how they managed to complete this operation without me hearing anything about it beforehand, and the only thing I can think of is that Mackenzie must be onto me. There have been other plans to kidnap you, mostly hatched by him or by the fathers of those eighty kids you flew to Toronto. But Lawrence and I always managed to cancel them. Mackenzie must’ve gone around me for this op. He must know I’m protecting you. He’s suspected it for a while.”

“What does that mean for you?”

“That means Kyle Mackenzie has to get arrested and salvaged. Bribery, corruption, gender treachery, I’ll think of something.”

June considered. Kyle Mackenzie was a thorn she’d very much like to get out of her side, but… “Wouldn’t that lower Hannah’s social standing? If her ‘father’ is discredited?”

Nick frowned. “Yeah, it would. Okay, he’ll die in a car accident. We’ll get him drunk, knock him out, send his car into a brick wall.”

“Sounds good.” They both fell silent for a time, each with their own morbid thoughts. Then June asked, “I know why Mackenzie wants me dead: he’s worried I’ll take Hannah, and he doesn’t want competition for the role of her parent. But why kill Luke? And why try to get Nichole?”

“Well, I guess they heard how Luke wrecked that guy they sent to run you over, so they probably had orders to kill him on sight. That was just for their self-preservation. And Nichole…what I’ve heard is that Gilead’s leadership is trying to use her return as some positive propaganda. You heard about that Guardian who shot up the Council in New York City last month? Plus the mass shooting in Kansas City earlier this year and the repeated bombings in New Bethlehem. Gilead’s been in the international news a lot lately, and not in a good way. The reprisals after the New Bethlehem stuff—all those salvagings—have led to new sanctions against us. Against Gilead, I mean. So they figure Baby Nichole’s triumphant return would give everyone a little moral boost.”

June commented succinctly, “Well, fuck that shit.”

“By His hand.”

Half an hour later, they had agreed that drastic steps needed to be taken to protect their daughter. Firstly, her name. Legally, she was Nichole Holly Osborne. All three of those names had to be scrapped. Her birthdate had to change, too, so that Gilead couldn’t trace her that way. June was the one to choose May 1 as the new birthday. May Day. Of course.

Now that Luke was gone, and June was going underground—which meant never seeing Moira or Rita or any of her current support system in Canada again—she would have to be a truly single mother. For security’s sake, she shouldn’t even rely on a babysitter or preschool. June would have to work from home, a recluse. And homeschooling her daughter would be safer than school. But what kind of a childhood would that be for Nichole? She deserved a full life: friends, school field trips, birthday parties, holiday celebrations with a big extended family.

Besides, if Gilead did manage to track June down, killed her or took her prisoner again, who would be there for Nichole this time? She’d be thrown into the Canadian foster system, which might just decide it’d be simplest to return her to Gilead. At best, the Americans would find Moira to take custody, but Nichole’s cover would be blown and her life (along with Moira’s) would be in danger all over again.

Nick and June had therefore made the most agonizing decision of all: to surrender their baby to a foster family, assuming the resistance could connect June with a suitable couple in Canada. Gilead was going to keep pursuing her and Nichole, probably with renewed passion after the humiliation of today’s escape. Their chances of survival would be doubled if they split up.

These were all logical arguments. Nichole’s safety was the absolute highest priority—higher than Nick and June’s desire to love, parent, and protect their daughter. The safest thing for her would be to live in a random part of Canada with random parents under a fictitious name.

But that decision was going to shred her parents’ hearts.

“Do you remember the first gift I ever gave you?” Nick asked June. For many minutes, he had been embracing her in comfortable silence. Hiding Nichole’s identity was the best way to ensure she’d have a healthy and happy childhood—they knew that—but they needed to be silent for a while, to mull over the decision to give up their little girl, their holly berry, at least until Gilead lost interest in June or collapsed as a government. Would Nichole even remember them by then?

“No, I don’t think so,” she answered hoarsely.

“We met at that first safe house you had, after that train to the west coast failed and you came back to Ontario. Remember the little cabin in No Man’s Land? Your birthday. Nichole was two.” He smiled. “You baked me a Detroit-style, square pizza you got in Toronto.”

“Oh, yeah, that day. You danced around with Nichole to ‘80s prom songs.” Journey, Wham, Simply Red. She had memories of Nick slow dancing to all of them, with the smell of oregano and pizza crust in the air.

“Do you remember what I brought you?”

“You picked me some daisies.” An unpretentious and resilient flower. She had always kept that little bouquet from Nick; it was so rare that he gave her anything romantic.

“Right. You’d told me it was your favorite flower, and I was really happy to be able to give you something. Shopping options are always limited in Gilead, as you know. I mean, flowers are nothing compared the first present you ever gave me, our baby. She was…an unbelievable gift.”

“Our gift to each other, really.” June looked into his eyes.

“Yeah, well, you did a lot more work than I did.” He paused to kiss her softly, then said, “So, I was thinking, if we’re gonna change Nichole’s name, how about that?”

“Huh?”

“Let’s call her Daisy.”

“Daisy? Daisy. Sounds right,” she murmured, repeating what he’d told her when she’d chosen the name Holly. Another strong, beautiful plant, June thought, one that can bloom in the toughest of circumstances.

A small door between the front seats and the back slid open. “Sir,” Jonah said triumphantly to Nick, “I’m now positive we’re in Canada.”

“Good work. You can slow down and relax, Jonah. Stop at the first store you see without security cameras. We’ll let June off and then go back south.”

“Yes, sir.”

Nick turned back towards June. “Told you I’d get you out.” He tried not to sound smug.

“You’re coming with me this time.”

“No, I’m not. We’ve had this discussion already.” Several times, in fact. Almost every time they had a rendezvous.

Usually, she gave up pretty quickly, knowing his mind was made up. But today, she was more desperate. “I can’t do this without you. I can’t tell Nichole about Luke, I can’t say goodbye to her and give her away…not without you. I can’t do this alone. I’m gonna fall apart, Nick.”

“No, you’re not. You can do this.”

“I can’t.”

“You can. It’s not for forever, you know. In a few years, when things have calmed down and they’ve forgotten about you and their damned worship of ‘Baby Nichole,’ we can go back for her. And in the meantime, you’ll choose a family that’ll keep us informed of how she’s doing.” He kissed her again and stroked her hair—reassuringly, he hoped. “You can do this.”

“I can’t even…how am I going to choose a foster family?”

“You’re going to talk to someone you absolutely trust from Mayday in Toronto or Winnipeg or wherever, and figure it out together. It just can’t be someone Moira knows; Gilead knows Moira too well. I’m still scared they’re gonna get her.”

“Ada, maybe. She knows every resistance member in Toronto.”

“You mean Ada the deer hunter, the butch with the motorcycle who always dresses in black?”

She smiled at the slanted description. “Yeah, her.”

He eyed her doubtfully. “I’m not quite sure she’d be such a great mom.”

June actually laughed at that. “Yeah, I’m with you on that. I meant, she must know someone.”

“Oh. Right.”

“Can’t you just…come with me.” She ended in a broken whisper, knowing it was a futile request.

He cradled her face in his hands, kissed her lips, eyelids, forehead. “The only way we’re all gonna be truly safe is if Gilead ends, and I can do more from inside. You know that.”

“I know that,” she muttered, eyes closed.

“I love you.”

“I love you,” she echoed. “I know that, too.”

“You’re going to find a good family for our little daisy. I trust you to choose the right one. Just…kiss her goodbye for me, okay? Tell her how much I love her.”

Chapter Text

I’m flipping through my father’s secret box of pictures and gasp in shock when I come to a photo of me as a toddler. That’s little blond me, standing next to my two childhood guardian angels, suddenly come alive and in full color. They’re each holding one of my hands so that I don’t fall over. I look like I just learned to walk, a little wobbly on my feet, and they’ve got excited expressions on their faces, like they’re proud of me for not falling on my diapered butt.

Nick leans forward on the couch to see what I’m looking at. I shake the picture excitedly at him. “I know them! I remember them.”

“Really?” He sounds a little surprised.

“They’re…” I don’t want to admit to my brand-new father that I believed in angels when I was little. “They were important to me. In my memory, they’re named Daddy and Momo.”

“Yeah, that’s exactly right. That’s what you called them until you were four. That’s Luke Bankole, your mom’s husband, and Moira Strand. June got across the border a few months after that picture was taken, so you called her mommy, while Moira was Momo. She was your mom’s best friend. They met in college.”

I caress the photograph. “They took really good care of me,” I whisper, near tears. I wasn’t expecting to be so moved. But then again, I wasn’t expecting them to be real people. “What happened to them?”

“Gilead agents tried to kidnap you and June from your house. They killed Luke, shot him. They knocked your mom out and took her back to Gilead. She broke out of prison and got north. But they didn’t get you. You hid in a closet when the Guardians came in, heard the shots, stayed in that closet for hours ‘til Moira finally came and found you. Do you remember that? You were just four.”

I shake my head. “Not at all. But…my daddy died because of me.”

“No, no, no, that was not your fault, Daisy. That’s on them. They killed him. Luke loved you like crazy, and he would gladly have died to protect you.”

“Why didn’t Momo, sorry, Moira, raise me, then?”

“Gilead got to her, too. A few weeks later, she got stabbed to death coming out of work. It was made to look like a robbery, but I’m almost positive it was a hit.”

I swallow noisily. A sixteen year-old isn’t supposed to lose this many people. So far, I’ve been taken away from my birth parents, my Gilead parents, my angel parents Luke and Moira, and my adopted parents. My ‘real’ father is right in front of me, but I’d better not get attached to him since he lives in a hermetic shitshow of a country which I’m leaving as soon as possible.

Still, Nick claims to know all about me. I return to the question I asked him in the car: “So what’s my fourth name?” With care, I put the picture of Luke and Moira back in its proper place in the box and look up expectantly at Nick.

“Your…?”

“You said I’ve had four names in my life, not three.”

“Oh, right. Well, when you were born, your mom and I knew we couldn’t raise you—she was a handmaid, I was a driver, and the Waterfords had all the rights to you—but we chose a name for you anyway. We never used it, except with each other, sort-of our secret code name for you.” He shrugs. “What we would have called you, if we’d all gotten out together. Holly.”

“Holly.” I try the word out on my tongue. It’s an unusual name, old-fashioned. Nobody’s called that nowadays. I kind of like it, though.

“It’s your grandmother’s name. Holly Maddox, she was an obstetrician and abortion provider. A real firecracker, political, outspoken. An activist. She raised June on her own and died in the Colonies.”

“She was sent to the Colonies because she was a doctor?”

“Yeah.”

“So she was a hero. A martyr.”

“Yeah, you could say that. Holly also has some religious symbolism, y’know. It blooms around Christmastime. When all the other plants shrivel up and die, it’s evergreen and eternal, like Christ’s love.”

“Are you religious?” Gilead is hard-core christofascist, of course, but I didn’t realize anybody actually believes that stuff. Like I don’t think anyone in Iran or Afghanistan really believes in their brand of Islamism. The women don’t, anyway.

“I was religious until…well, until Gilead, I guess.” He stares at his hands, like no one has ever asked him that question before.

Before I can respond, the front door bangs open. A boy in a powder-blue outfit trudges in, dropping his school bag and throwing his ridiculous-looking cap onto the floor as he comes in. Jeremy, I assume. He looks like he just had A Day.

“Blessed day, Jer,” Nick calls. “Come on in, we’ve got company.”

I sit up on the couch as we check each other out. He looks like the woman in the picture frames. Rose. He’s got the same reddish-brown hair and lanky build, with innocent blue eyes that match his outfit. “Under His eye,” he says politely to me.

“Hi.” Wrong answer, I think as soon as the word is out of my mouth.

He raises an eyebrow at his dad. Our dad, I mean. “Why’s a Pearl Girl here?” Valid question. We’re not supposed to be anywhere but Ardua Hall.

“How was your day?” Nick says, side-stepping the question.

“Terrible.”

“Wanna talk about it?”

“No, Dad.” He throws me an embarrassed look. “Not in front of visitors,” he mutters. I feel for him. I wouldn’t open up with strangers around, either. “What’s your name?”

I stick my hand out; he shakes it politely. “I’m Daisy. Nice to meet you.”

“Jeremy Blaine.”

“This is Daisy,” Nick repeats uselessly. He’s stalling, trying to think of some way to explain all this. “She’s, um, from Canada, but she’s homesick, so we’re going to take her back.”

“Back to Canada?” He looks at his dad like ‘are you fucking insane?’ I almost laugh. His reaction is totally on brand for a thirteen year-old, no matter what country he’s from.

“Yeah,” he says breezily, as if it’s no big deal to take a little road trip. He stands up, heads to the kitchen. “I’m gonna get you guys some juice. Why don’t you two talk a little.” I throw Nick a look: you really want me to handle this?

Jeremy notices the box of photographs on the coffee table. “What’s that?”

I decide to dive right in. “Well, uh, to be honest, they’re photographs of me.” I take out a couple of more recent shots to show him, then a few older ones. “Your dad has kept pictures of me since I was a little kid, because, uh, yeah. The reason is complicated. I was born here in Boston, actually, and….” Oh, fuck it, Nick was gonna tell him anyway. “I grew up in Canada, but my birth mother was a Gilead handmaid who was in love with the household’s driver, who was your dad. Who is also my dad. Um, he had a long relationship with my mom and they had a baby together.”

Jeremy’s jaw is hanging open. I know exactly how he feels. “What,” he breathes.

“Yeah, I just found out today, too. It’s…a lot to handle.”

“You’re my sister?”

Nick returns with two glasses of apple juice. He winces as he sets the glasses on colorful homemade coasters.

“I have a sister?” Jeremy says again, louder, at his dad. “With a handmaid as a mother?” Poor kid, he’s really having a bad day now. He gulps the juice like an alcoholic would pound back vodka. I pass my glass over to him, so he can drink that one too.

“Yes,” Nick tells him, sitting on the couch. He puts an arm around his son. “Years before I met your mom. I was going to tell you when you got a little older, but Daisy is here now, so…I know you can handle adult stuff.”

“She was a handmaid, but she wasn’t your handmaid.”

“Right.”

Jeremy doesn’t state the obvious: that’s a capital crime. Instead, he inspects my face. “You look like Dad. Me, everyone tells me I look just like my mom.”

I smile. “Yeah, you really do.” Clearly, Nick hasn’t told him about his horrible biological father; he’s a little young for that story. It’d put me in therapy for sure. I mean, a few weeks ago, I got the news that my bio dad was an asshole Commander who impregnated my poor abused mother, and I’ve been reeling from that until today. Every child hopes they were created in love, not violence.

“You knew my mom?” the kid asks me.

“No, no, I just saw all the pictures of her in the hall.” I gesture vaguely. “She’s really pretty. And she looks like a nice person.”

His eyes get even rounder, if that’s possible. “Her name was Rose,” he squeaks, tearing up. “Her name was a flower, just like yours.”

“That’s a sweet coincidence,” I say gently.

He leans into his father. “She was a great mother. I don’t care what anyone else says.”

Reading between the lines, Nick asks again, “How was school?”

This time, he answers. I guess he’s not embarrassed around me anymore. That was quick. “Everyone’s teasing me, even Azriel, who’s supposed to be my best friend. They’re calling Mom a crippled slut, an unwoman who fornicated with a driver. Everyone’s talking about her.”

I want to say what the fuck, but I edit myself and just exclaim “What!” He looks at me with his big sad saucer eyes, so I add, “That’s really mean of them, Jeremy. How hard that must be for you. I wouldn’t be able to concentrate on schoolwork at all, if I heard that.” I know he’s not my brother, not by blood, but I’m already feeling protective of him. I’ve always wanted a little brother. So yeah, I’m ready to beat up some punk eighth graders.

“You know the truth,” Nick tells him. “You know what your mom was like and you know how much she loved you. Forget about what they think; you’re never going back to that school, anyway. Today was your last day. I need you to focus on the future right now, Jer, okay? Go to your room, empty your schoolbag onto your desk, and then pack it with everything that’s truly important to you.”

He looks at me, then back at his father. “We’re really going to Canada? All of us?”

“Yes.”

“When?”

“Soon. Today. As soon as…well, I have to take care of one thing, then we’re going.”

“With Daisy?”

“Definitely with Daisy.”

He thinks about this. “How long have you been here in Boston?” he asks me.

“Two weeks. I came back because…well, it’s a long story. I’ll tell you all about it on the car ride, if you’d like.”

He nods with some enthusiasm, then asks his father, I mean our father, “Can I go to Azriel’s house to say good bye?”

“No way.” Nick’s using his no-bullshit Commander voice suddenly. “Nobody knows we’re leaving, and nobody can know. Go pack now.”

Without another word, Jeremy stands right up, grabs his bag, heads upstairs. These Gilead kids, they sure do what they’re told.

“Fuck Azriel,” I murmur.

Nick laughs shortly. “Yeah, he’s a real dick. Never liked that kid.” He gestures towards his study. “I’ve gotta call Aunt Lydia and a friend. Be right back. Oh, if you’re hungry, help yourself to anything in the kitchen. Even if you’re not hungry, you should probably eat before we go.” He takes a few steps, then turns back to me. “Hey, thanks a lot for being so nice to Jeremy.”

“No problem. He’s a sweet kid.”

“Yeah. You both are,” he says under his breath on his way out.

Half an hour later, just when I’m about to ask Nick what the plan is, a Commander I’ve never seen shows up to the house with Aunt Victoria. I mean Agnes. My half-sister, though no relation to Jeremy. This family tree is getting really complicated. I smile and sort-of wave at Agnes, who’s wearing her brown Aunt dress. It’s not her color. She smiles back hesitantly; she doesn’t know what’s going on. That makes two of us. Does Nick want to take her with us? He hadn’t mentioned that before, but it makes sense.

“So,” the visiting Commander says, looking me over with his eyebrows raised, “this must be the famous Baby Nichole. Huh.” He turns to Nick. “No doubt whose kid she is, is there? You know, if she’d stayed in Gilead, my old friend, you’d have been hanged years ago. No way would anyone believe she was Waterford’s.”

I can’t tell if he’s snarky or serious. But he knows my bloodline, and he doesn’t seem to mind that Nick knows that he knows. He doesn’t dress exactly like a Commander, though I’m pretty sure he is one. Instead of a tie, he’s wearing an old-fashioned silk scarf, and his blazer is grey, not black. A rulebreaker? A super-high-status man? Whoever he is, he’s rude to talk about me in the third person, as if I’m deaf.

“You’re glaring at me, young lady, just like June used to glare at me,” he says.

Nick glances in my direction and rolls his eyes.

If this old man is going to be cheeky, I can play along. I tilt my head and ask, “What did you do to piss June off so much that she had to glare?”

He laughs at that, a genuine laugh. Then, surprisingly, he answers my question. “Oh, plenty. Mostly, I didn’t go along with her hare-brained schemes.” He looks back at Nick. “Like this one. You sure you want to upset your entire applecart?”

“I’m sure. It’s time, Joseph,” he answers quietly.

“Okay, then.” He shakes Nick’s hand (Dad’s hand, I should really start thinking of him as my Dad), then pulls him in for a long, honest embrace. So, this guy is a trusted friend. “I’ll tell the rebels in Maine to act up today, to pull the Vermont border guards away from you. Godspeed, Nick.” To me, he adds, “You’re not going to be any trouble, are you?”

“No sir,” I reply smoothly.

‘Joseph’ gives me a funny look, then shakes his head. “It boggles the mind,” he murmurs.

I have no idea what he’s talking about. No matter. It’s time to go home. Agnes, Jeremy, Nick, and me, our weird little family.

Chapter Text

Jade to Holly (2033)

I’ve been running since the day I was born

I am the definition of worn…
Pity the man that stands in my way
I’m a nightmare, even in the day
I’d be wise with which words you say
‘Cause they could be the last breath you take
I thought I told you not to ‘baby doll’ me

Well, I ain’t nobody’s baby
Baby, I’m an outlaw
Call me a criminal, maybe
Baby, I’m an outlaw
You know I ain’t evil, but I ain’t a saint
Can’t help it, I was born this way
Yeah, baby outlaw
Ooh baby, I’m an outlaw.

--Baby Outlaw, Elle King

Nick Blaine looked critically at the girls’ outfits: Agnes in Aunt brown, Daisy in ‘immigrant to Gilead’ silver. “There’s no way to explain what a Pearl Girl would be doing in a Commander’s car, Daisy, so you’re going to have to change clothes.” He opened the large cloth laundry bag which his friend Commander Joseph had brought over. All three children looked on curiously as Nick pulled out a condolence card (deepest sympathies on your loss), a Bible, a small gauze sack full of muffins, a teal dress suitable for a Wife, a white bonnet, and finally a red garment. He handed the last item to Daisy.

“Is this a Handmaid’s dress?” She took it gingerly, like it might explode in her hand.

“That’s right.”

“Is this…was this my mother’s?” Her voice caught. She held the fabric up to her nose, breathed it in to see if she could discern a trace of her mother’s scent. She remembered that as a child, she’d liked how her mom smelled. A perfume or lotion. Something floral, maybe. But this dress just smelled like detergent.

“No.” Nick considered. “Or at least, I don’t think so. It’s probably not that old. Although, well, it does belong to the Lawrences, and June was his handmaid for a while.”

“So, she might have worn it.”

“If not that dress, one just like it. Is that okay with you? You could wear the teal instead, pose as my wife, but then Agnes would have to play the handmaid.”

“Ew, no thanks. She can just be the Aunt in charge of me. I’ll go try this on.”

“Make sure your hair is in a tight bun,” Agnes reminded her on the way out, with a typical Aunt’s tone of voice. “And make sure the green is covered.” Ada had dyed Daisy’s hair with a streak of green before coming to Gilead. By now, the color had faded to a sort of silver, which happened to match the Pearl Girl outfit.

“Why did Commander Lawrence give you a Bible?” Jeremy asked his father, poking through the contents of the bag. “You’ve already got one.”

“Ah, this.” He opened it to the first page of the second Book, and showed Agnes and his son the small raised bumps over the large ornate word EXODUS. “Feel that? They’re called microdots. Each dot contains a bunch of information, printed super small. With a special camera, spies can read the dots. We’re taking some critical intelligence to our friends in Canada.”

“In the Book of Exodus, because we’re making our own exodus today?” asked Agnes.

“That’s right. The people who put these here definitely have a Gilead sense of humor: the microdots are on the first pages of Exodus, Judges, and Revelation.” Nick wiped the smirk off his face and looked at them seriously. “Listen, if anything goes wrong and I get captured, I need you guys to get this Bible to any American consulate across the border. It’s very, very important. Okay? Exodus, Judges, and Revelation, can you remember that? And the sympathy card has dots, too.” He flipped through the Bible, seeking a particular passage, then tucked the card in as a sort of bookmark. Jeremy saw which page his father chose: Proverbs 11. Verses about retribution and justice, if he remembered correctly. He’d always admired his dad’s thorough knowledge of scripture and his ability to prove a point or win an argument using verses. It was a skill he had used to outmaneuver his son (and other Commanders, too) on many occasions.

Daisy returned to the sitting room within a few minutes. Nick stared at his daughter. Her face didn’t resemble June’s much, but the red fabric against those bright blue eyes…it was disquieting. Haunting. Shaking off the déjà vu, he swallowed, then gestured to her throat. “Take off the pearl necklace—we’ll leave that here—and put this on.” He handed her the white bonnet.

“Uh, is this a hat or a scarf?” She turned it over in her hands, inspecting the stiff garment.

“Doesn’t anyone in Canada wear bonnets?” Agnes asked.

“Bonnets?” She fumbled with it, trying to get it to somehow fit on her head. “Hell, no.”

“Jade!” She reprimanded her sister automatically, forgetting her ‘real’ name. “Language.”

Nick smiled at the girls’ exchange. The ‘hell no’ sounded foreign but funny to his Gilead ears. He closed the distance between him and Daisy. With practiced fingers, he put her bonnet on, tucking in stray strands of her light brown hair and securing it with the attached bobby pins. “It’s been a long time since I put one of these on a woman,” he murmured.

My apartment above the garage. Ten o’clock at night, shift change for the Guardians outside. Time for June to take advantage of the relative safety, the lack of searchlights and barking dogs, and run back into the Waterford house. Laying in our warm bed, my eyes drinking her in as she’d get dressed, sometimes pulling her back to me for a last embrace. Or else standing up to put her bonnet on for her and give her a long, lingering kiss for protection before sending her back to the lions’ den.

“Have you ever had a handmaid, Commander?” Agnes asked him.

“No,” he said, too sharply. With an apologetic half-smile, he added, “I saw all the horrible things your mom had to go through, and never wanted to be part of the, uh, handmaid system.”

Agnes nodded. “I understand that. My father, I mean Commander Mackenzie, had handmaids. One of them died while delivering his baby. She fulfilled her sacred purpose, but….” She trailed off. “There was a lot of blood and screaming,” she finished in a whisper.

Daisy gave her a mortified look, then glanced back at her father for support. He grimaced in sympathy. With her hair covered, she now looked much more like June, especially when she caught his gaze from the side. It boggles the mind, as Lawrence had said. With an effort, Nick pushed June out of his thoughts. Instead, he announced with forced casualness, “All right, everyone. It’s time to leave this place. Grab your stuff.”

Being the only boy, Jeremy sat in the front passenger seat while his father drove. It was a new experience for him; he’d always been relegated to the back seat, while his mother rode in front. Not that he went anywhere with his father very often anyway, he mused, but it was nice to be granted this prestigious role on a day when his new sister and now Aunt Agnes were occupying so much of his dad’s attentions. Jeremy reminded himself not to be jealous.

Nick spent much of the journey talking over his shoulder to Agnes, explaining the unfamiliar life story of “Hannah Bankole.” He emphasized how much her parents had loved each other, what a cherished child she had been, how hard both her parents had tried to get her out of Gilead. Agnes remembered meeting June in the Mackenzie summer house as a ten year-old, though she had no memory of the black-clad driver watching them from the sidelines. Daisy showed her the pictures of Luke she’d pulled out of her box of photos, but his face was just a blank for Agnes. Scratchy beard, hearty laugh, his finger pointing out stars on her bedroom ceiling: the only scraps of memory she had maintained.

Whenever Agnes needed a break to process her thoughts, Nick cranked up some forbidden radio station and sang banned rock songs with Daisy. He was delighted to learn that she liked older songs, so their tastes overlapped. Nick’s knowledge of the lyrics—some quite sinful—stunned Jeremy and Agnes. “I was made for loving you, baby, you were made for loving me,” Nick and his daughter sang with gusto, “and I can’t get enough of you, baby, can you get enough of me?” And later: “Rebel rebel, you’ve torn your dress. Rebel rebel, your face is a mess…Hot tramp, I love you so.” Agnes and Jeremy exchanged a bewildered look. Where in his brain had the esteemed Commander stored all of these devilish songs?

“Do you know this one?” Daisy asked her father. “Elle King? It probably came out after Gilead was founded.”

“Um, no, I don’t think so.” Radio Free America mostly played nostalgic pre-war songs that refugees and Gileadean subjects would recognize.

“It’s named after me,” she said with a wink. “Baby Outlaw. You know, like Baby Nichole, but all grown up.”

“There are songs about Baby Nichole in Canada?” Jeremy asked. It seemed possible; children in Gilead prayed for her safe return every time they went to a prayvaganza and there were poems dedicated to her, a symbol of Gilead’s kidnapped children. He still found it difficult to accept that his lost sister Daisy was in fact that missing baby.

Daisy smiled at him. “Nah, it’s just a pop song. But I’m claiming it as mine. We’re all outlaws now, aren’t we, Jeremy?”

He shrugged in discomfort. “I guess.”

After they’d cleared the Boston area and I-93 had become the most desolate highway Daisy had ever seen in her life, their father pulled over into a bank of trees. He took a big, boxy phone out of the SUV’s glovebox.

“You want a rabbit-ears antenna to go with that clunker?” Daisy teased him. “That cell looks even older than you, old man.”

“Oh, that’s very funny,” he muttered before explaining, “It’s a satellite phone—no cell tower necessary. Courtesy of the US government.”

“Cool. Who’re you texting?”

“As we’d say in Detroit: yo’ momma.”

“Are you referring to my mother,” she asked primly, “or are you just insulting me?”

He smiled, enjoying the banter. “The former. I need to tell your mom to meet us at our safehouse. Sherbrooke is an hour away from the border.”

“You have a safehouse?”

“Mm-hm,” Nick murmured, thumbs tapping away.

“What’s a safehouse?” asked Agnes.

“It’s an empty house that we can go to,” Daisy told her, “where we can be in secret, and nobody knows who we are. Smugglers and rebels use them along the border. I went to one in Toronto, too, after my parents—my adopted parents—were murdered last month.”

Agnes put a hand on her sister’s. “I’m so sorry about your parents. I know how that feels. My mother, I mean Mrs. Mackenzie, got cancer when I was twelve, and my father died in a car accident just two years later.”

“My mom was salvaged six weeks ago,” Jeremy whispered.

The three of them sat in sympathetic silence for a minute. Eventually, Agnes said, “Well, we’ve got each other now. And Nick. And by His hand we’ll meet our new mother soon, in our new country.”

“That’s exactly right,” Nick said. “Your real mother, Agnes, old and new. You’ve all lost people you loved and I’m truly sorry about that, but we’re going to build ourselves a new family, okay? We’ll be there in under four hours, by His hand. June will meet us there.”

“My, my, what a high opinion of yourself you must have,” Daisy teased, “thinking she’s just gonna drop everything and jump in the car, just to obey her Commander.”

He read the very-explicit text June had sent back, then closed the phone with a smug click. “Yup,” he informed his daughter.

“It’s been five years since we had our children torn away from us. An eternity. We’ve missed everything: the steps, the smiles, the tragedies.”

–June Osborne, Season 3 x 10

After hours of driving, holding their breath at checkpoints, singing, and evading border patrols, they crossed into the twenty-mile strip on the Vermont-Quebec border ominously called No Man’s Land. There, their progress slowed to a crawl as the car navigated the densely forested backroads. Twice they were checked by resistance groups. Women with guns. Daisy was impressed by that; Jeremy and Agnes were shocked silent. Women wearing pants and tight shirts, arms exposed immodestly, holding weapons, barking at Commander Blaine, controlling the path like Guardians. This was their first impression of a ‘free’ country.

Then Nick was stopped and frisked by brown men and women, also bristling with weapons. He assured the children that they were friendlies, members of the Missisquoi tribe who had lived on this land for centuries, way before it was Gilead or even America. A couple of them seemed to know him; they called him Nick rather than Commander, and let him pass. They even smiled at the children. They waved back.

After several tedious miles of that, the dirt road suddenly became paved and widened into two lanes. The occasional shops they began to pass had red and white flags with a leaf in the middle. The road signs had writing in the familiar Gilead alphabet, but the kids couldn’t understand most of the words. It’s French, Daisy told them. This part of Canada speaks French, not English.

“So, we’re in Canada,” surmised Jeremy. The godless, combative enemies to the north. So far, he thought the country didn’t seem threatening at all. No armed gangs with guns like in No Man’s Land, and no gallows or checkpoints like in Gilead. In fact, Canada didn’t seem to have any Guardians. Just really tall trees, smooth roads, lots of leaf flags. The few people they saw seemed friendly. Despite the car’s Gilead license plate, they either waved politely or raised two fingers in a salute that Nick said meant ‘peace.’ The Canadian street signs were even funny: they passed a yellow sign of a deer jumping—no explanation—and another that said ATTENTION! with a picture of a bear and cubs.

Nick seemed to know where he was going despite the foreign language signage, and sped along the winding forest roads with confidence. It wasn’t long before they reached a one-story econo-house with yellow and pink flowers in the front. No neighbors. Although it was getting dark out, warm light shone through several windows, giving the house a cozy feel. In the driveway was an old white car labeled a Subaru, which seemed very exotic. Jeremy and Agnes had never seen a white car…or any other color, except black.

A petite blond woman opened the door as soon as she saw the car pull into the long driveway. June, they assumed correctly. She leaned smiling against the door frame. Light poured out of the entrance behind her, hitting her hair like a halo. Nick suddenly seemed off balance. “Uh, why don’t you guys stay here and let me say hello first?”

“Sure,” Agnes whispered, speaking for all three. She was grateful for a moment just to watch her mother—not in handmaid red, not in prison brown, but in cheerful sky-blue and white, looking like a Canadian—without having to interact with her yet.

“Yeah, I’m not ready to say hello,” Daisy confessed. She noticed that both she and Agnes had shrunk down in the back seat, in order to not be seen.

“Me either.”

Jeremy, who had no connection to the woman, said nothing. But he watched his father like a hawk. Nick had already stepped out of the car and shut the door behind him. Then he trotted over to his friend. His handmaid, Jeremy thought snidely before censoring himself. Her name is Mrs. Osborne, and you have to respect her. He lowered himself in his seat like his sisters had done. The woman leapt straight into his dad’s willing arms, her legs coming off the ground to embrace him with all four limbs. Her hands started roaming over his body and he didn’t even try to brush her away. On the contrary: he put a hand on her backside to hold her tightly against him. Jeremy’s mouth fell open in shock.

The three children watched Nick and June kiss with more passion than Agnes or Jeremy had ever witnessed between two people. Even their worldly-wise Canadian sister was impressed. “Wow,” Daisy murmured. She abruptly decided she liked her parents kissing. Their obvious love for each other validated her entire existence; as someone who until today had thought of herself as a child of rape, this was an important paradigm shift.

Agnes threw her a confused look. “What does that mean?”

“Wow? It just means…I’m very surprised at how thirsty they are for each other.”

“They don’t look thirsty. Just lustful.”

“Uh, that’s what I meant.” Canadian slang wasn’t the same as Gileadean.

“This is hard to watch,” the older sister commented.

“Why?” Daisy countered. “They’re finally together. Talk about a long-term, long-distance relationship. They’ve been apart for fifteen years!”

“But they’re not married,” Agnes argued mildly.

“They always wanted to be.”

“No, not necessarily,” Jeremy said in desperation. As much as Daisy was happy seeing her conception validated, he was feeling exactly the opposite. He’d suddenly been slammed with the realization that his parents’ marriage was a sham. Although his parents always been friendly and respectful towards each other, Jeremy had never, ever seen them display passion like this. His dad never even kissed his mom, except on the cheek. He felt like he’d just been punched in the face.

Daisy tore her eyes away from her parents to look with sympathy at her little brother. Reaching into the front seat, she put a hand on his thin shoulder. “I’m sorry, Jer. I didn’t realize how hard this would be for you.”

“It’s fine. I’m fine.” Stiff upper lip, as he’d been taught at school.

“No, it’s not fine. Dad loved your mom a lot, too, in a different way. Your mother was his best friend, the one he built a life with and raised a child with. That’s a good marriage. June was just his pipe dream.” She squeezed his shoulder. “You were the lucky one, raised by your real parents. I wasn’t.”

Agnes leaned in. “Neither was I,” she said. “I always wanted to know my real parents. I just had shadows where I was supposed to have memories. By His hand, Jeremy, you were the lucky one.”

“I have three presents for you in the car,” Nick said breathlessly between kisses.

June held her lips near his ear. “They can wait til tomorrow.” She tugged on his arm, pulling him towards the doorway.

He laughed softly. “No, they really can’t.”

“Did you bring me daisies?” she asked playfully. He’d done that twice before.

He lowered her carefully to the ground and took a step back. “Well, yeah. I brought you one Daisy.”

Hearing his serious tone, she blinked hard. “Our Daisy?”

He looked straight into her eyes, nodded. “Our Daisy. And Hannah—she goes by Agnes—and Jeremy, as an extra bonus. I’m done with Gilead. We’re here to stay.” As an afterthought, he added, “if you want me.”

June couldn’t even deal with that last bit; her mind had stopped working at ‘our Daisy and Hannah.’ She kept staring into Nick’s eyes, afraid to turn her face towards the car. “They’re here?”

He nodded again.

“They know who I am?”

“Of course. I explained it all the way from Boston. I don’t think I’ve ever talked more in my entire life. My throat’s so dry; I’m really thirsty now.” He took her hand. “You want to meet them?”

Her blue eyes widened. “I wasn’t…I’m not prepared for this.” She looked frozen in place.

“There’s nothing to prepare. You always know what to say, June. Always. And they want to see you. They’re fantastic kids.” He tugged gently on her hand. “C’mon, I’ll be right behind you.”

Even from the car, Daisy could see the woman’s indecision and opted to seize the initiative. She opened the car door and walked towards her mother—slowly, then faster. June looked just like an older version of the picture in the Bloodlines file which the girls had seen in Ardua Hall. They’d dissected every detail of her face in that picture, just as they had scrutinized the photos in Nick’s box. Her hair was graying a little, but her eyes were the same vibrant blue. And those eyes were suddenly looking straight at Daisy.

Leaving Nick behind, June ran towards her daughter, meeting her halfway. She held her arms out for Daisy to fall into. “Hi, baby,” she whispered, already crying.

The girl couldn’t respond for a moment. Too much had happened to her this month. Finally, she whispered, “Hi, mom. Can I call you mom?”

“Yeah, of course, oh my God, you can call me anything you want.” She swallowed audibly, searched for words, found only “Hi.”

Daisy buried her nose in her mother’s silky hair. That. That was the scent she’d been missing since she was four. “You smell right. Like an echo.” She wasn’t making much sense, she knew, but that’s the first thing she thought of.

“I do?” Her arms, wrapped around her daughter, were surprisingly strong.

After basking in that warm embrace for a timeless minute, Daisy stepped back a little. She nodded and smiled with her mother’s wide smile. “You do. It’s really great to be back with you.”

June’s blissful expression changed to worry as she realized what her daughter was wearing. “I thought you were going to Gilead as a Pearl Girl.”

“I was.” Daisy realized her mother was staring at the red dress, which was probably triggering all sorts of bad memories. She tried to make light of it. “Oh, this old thing? No, um, this is just a costume, for the trip. Because it made more sense for a Commander to have a handmaid in his car than a Pearl Girl.”

“Oh, okay.” She didn’t sound convinced.

“Nobody in Gilead lay a finger on me. Nobody.”

“Okay,” June repeated. Her shoulders relaxed.

After a meditative prayer, Agnes was ready to greet her birth mother properly. Amen, she thought, then burst out of the car and ran at them. June disengaged from Daisy to hug her elder daughter. She held her mother as fiercely as she had in that Maine forest as a six year-old, when Guardians had ripped them apart. She’d thought Maine was the last time she would ever hug her mother, but this moment was the closure—or maybe the sequel—of that embrace.

“Hannah, I’m sorry,” June whispered. “I promised I’d come back for you, and I never did, and I’m so sorry. My Hannah banana. I’m so sorry I left you there, sweetie.” She was really crying now.

Agnes wasn’t sure how to start, but being called ‘banana’ by that familiar voice instantly brought up memories of her life Before. She shook her head, embarrassed at her mother’s apology. “No, no. It’s all right, I understand why you didn’t come back. I had a good childhood. I was just fine.”

“But you weren’t fine, it wasn’t fine. I’ve missed you so much, Han—Agnes. I’ve worried about you every day for twenty years.”

“I missed you too. Praise be that Nick brought us here to you.”

A phrase that hadn’t come out of June’s mouth since she escaped Gilead, though she had no trouble saying it now. “Praise be.”

“Nick says you and my father never stopped thinking about me.”

“Never. Your daddy fought for you til the day he died. He loved you so much.”

“I always felt his presence, protecting me from heaven.”

“Did you?” Her mother hugged her even more tightly. “If your daddy is watching us right now, he’s going out of his mind with happiness.” She reached out for Daisy again, brought her in for a group hug. “My darling girls. I can’t believe you’re here.”

The car had gotten quite hot, even though the last rays of the summer sun were disappearing fast. Jeremy was beginning to feel foolish sitting there by himself. He didn’t want to disturb the girls’ obviously-emotional reunion with their mother, but when his dad looked at him and beckoned him over, he complied. He didn’t run as his sisters had done. He just sauntered, as if he belonged there. He didn’t really belong.

The blond woman detached from the girls and looked him up and down, blue eyes still shiny with tears. “You must be Jeremy,” she began.

He nodded, shook her proffered hand. “Blessed evening, ma’am.”

“It’s a very blessed evening,” she agreed easily. “And please call me June. Welcome to Canada, Jeremy. Your dad has told me a thousand stories about you over the years—he’s always been so proud of you.”

“He has?” That frankly surprised him. He knew his father loved him, but…proud? He didn’t often express that.

“Oh, yeah. Being your dad is the best part of his life.”

The boy glanced at his father, who was hanging back, letting June take center stage. Nick nodded in agreement and smiled at him. His father looked different now, somehow. Looser, more relaxed, more content than Jeremy was used to. Perhaps the pine-scented Canadian air had caused the shift, or perhaps June.

She put a supportive arm around Jeremy. “Let’s go inside. You must all be so hungry after that long drive. I’ve got a pizza I can heat up.” She began walking towards the little house. Quietly, to him, she said, “I heard about your mother. I’m so very sorry.”

“Thank you,” he said automatically. A lot of people had given him similar hollow sentiments…more religious than June’s language, which made sense, since she was godless.

“I wish I’d known her,” she told him. “Rose was such a gift, the only true friend your dad had in Gilead.”

Jeremy nodded, lips pressed together to keep from crying. Her simplicity was refreshing, compared to all the adults who talked about his mom as if they’d known all about her. “They were best friends,” he said softly, repeating what Daisy had told him.

“Yes, they were,” she agreed without a trace of jealousy.

June led the brood into the warm kitchen. There were four chairs around a cherrywood table. The three young people took seats. June started preheating the oven while Nick got glasses out of a cabinet and poured water for everybody. He then retrieved three wine glasses, set them on the counter. “Would you like a glass of wine, Agnes?” She was, after all, twenty-four years old. Not a child.

“Commander!” she said, scandalized. “Only senior Aunts are allowed to drink wine.”

“I’ll take her glass if she doesn’t want it,” offered Daisy.

“Nope, you’re too young,” her father chided.

“Oh, for fuck’s sake, I just got out of a christofascist nuthouse.”

That got a laugh out of both of her parents. “Yeah, that’s true enough,” June said with a wink. “Get the girl some wine, Nick.”

This time, Agnes chose to ignore her sister’s language and the barely-comprehensible  insult towards her homeland. Instead, she folded her hands on the table and regarded her mother leaning against the countertop. “May I ask a favor?”

“Anything, baby.”

“Could you call me Hannah?” she said quietly. “Agnes Mackenzie is my Gilead name, but it seems silly to use that here. I’d like to go back to Hannah Bankole. Or Osborne.” Daisy looked on in approval.

June’s throat became too tight to speak well, but she squeaked out, “Of course, Hannah.”

“While we’re at it,” her sister chimed in, “I’d like to go back to Holly.”

June and Nick both looked stunned by that one. “Holly?” Nick repeated.

“Yeah. It’s my true name, right? All the others are fakes.”

June sat down next to her. “In a way. Holly was the name we originally wanted, though we also chose Daisy four years later. Mrs. Waterford picked Nichole, and I have no idea how you got Jade.”

“I chose Jade for myself, just before going to Gilead. I like jade because it’s a tougher material than a flower.”

June traded a glance with Nick. “Yeah. You’re definitely tough. But if you want to be called Holly, we’ll do that.”

She nodded enthusiastically. “Now that I’m finally with my real family.”

For June, there was something so wistful and sweet about the way her daughter emphasized the word real that brought tears back into her eyes. All the vengeful anger, the guilt and anguish that she’d been carrying around since the day she’d been ripped away from Hannah, was beginning to dissipate. She could feel the rage leaving her body, like flotsam in an undammed river rushing out to the ocean. Her babies were back with her and Nick was here to stay. After twenty years of storm and stress, June gave herself permission to let go of Gilead, end her quest for vengeance, and simply live in peace from now on. Her soul suddenly felt as light as freshly fallen snow. “This is the best day of my life,” she sighed.

“It is?” Hannah said.

“It is.”

“It is for me, too,” Holly sniffled, “but tomorrow is gonna be even better.”