Chapter Text
If there was one thing Emily Charlton wasn’t, it was sentimental. She never believed in keep sakes, old cards, or old friends. The fashion industry was simply too ruthless to be sentimental. New trends, new fabrics and the ever-revolving door of women who thought they had what it took but rarely did.
And yet for some reason, Andrea Sachs was the single thing she was able to be sentimental about. The pure fashion disaster who had walked into the office and was hired on the spot. Emily believed for a long time that Miranda had only hired Andrea to make a fool out of the girl. Or she was simply too tired of not having everything right where she wanted it when she did, as Emily was only one person. And then Andrea had walked in one day wearing Chanel and had started to make her mark on Runway.
For long time, Emily had held grudge against the girl, taking away her opportunity to go to Paris. She got to live the single thing Emily had let herself dream about. Sure, yes, she had gotten hit by a car and wouldn’t have been able to perform as Miranda’s assistant, but it was the principle of the matter.
Which had sucked at the time for Emily, as she had started to like Andy. Did she still talk too much? Yes. Did she still make a fashion fuax pas at least once a week, despite Nigel dressing her? Also, yes. Yet, those mistakes made Emily start to respect the girl more. It made her human in a robotic world, and a breath of fresh air Runway didn’t know it needed. And damn it, when Andrea finally figured out the job, she was good at it. Which should have threatened Emily, but Andrea was so earnest in her intentions to just be good at her job, Emily couldn’t be anything other than appreciatory.
Emily started to engage more with Andrea. She answered some of the insistent questions, gave pointers on makeup, and sometimes went to the cafeteria with Andrea if Miranda wasn’t expecting calls. And to Emily’s horror, they connected.
The sarcastic humor of Emily meshed perfectly with Andrea’s earnestness. Were all her points wrapped in a condensing tone and sentence, yes, but Andrea read through the lines. Gave a smile and a, “thanks, Em”.
She listened to Andrea rant about Nate, how he didn’t understand her job and didn’t try to understand.
“Very few understand this job, Andrea. You didn’t understand, but you are trying. Something your half-baked boyfriend doesn’t seem capable of,” Emily had said. Harsh but true and something Andrea desperately needed to hear.
They didn’t go out for drinks after work, they weren’t friends. Co-workers who now respect each other, yes. But occasionally, Emily would feel the need to give a reassurance, to give Andrea a pat on the back.
Then the Met Gala had happened, where Andrea saved Emily from probably getting fired. Where Andrea looked good and Emily’s brain had to reboot quickly. She thought it was the illness that had rudely flooded her system. It was that night when Emily’s hand had brushed the back of Andrea’s and she felt a small jolt. Too many types of fabrics around, clearly just static electricity, her brain had supplied.
From then on, Emily found herself watching Andrea. Once, Andrea had caught her, mouthed a quick ‘what’ but Emily just rolled her eyes and had said, “just making sure you don’t mess up Miranda’s list.”
So yes, all those facts made it harder for Emily to be mad at the Paris situation, but fuck she needed to be mad at something, or in this case, someone. But then Andy had quit. The culmination of Miranda booting Emily out of Paris and Nigel out of his much-deserved promotion had made the girl snap.
Suddenly Emily was once again the only assistant, trying to find a new second assistant who had very large shoes to fill, physically and metaphorically speaking of course. And when Roy had dropped off all the vintage Chanel at Andrea’s request, Emily knew that Andrea would be something she remembered.
So she called.
And didn’t get an answer. Not even a call back.
She only knew from Nigel that Andrea had ended up working for a real newspaper. Became an actual journalist. And the traitorous part of her heart was genuinely happy for the other girl. Her stint at Runway had paid off, she got to live her dream.
And Emily? Well, she was still obliviously Miranda’s first assistant. In her dream industry, working the job a million girls would kill for.
And it had paid off. Two more years running the first desk and she got the promotion she desperately was pining for. Senior Fashion Designer, one of three at Runway. Exactly where the other previous first assistants wound up. The one she had replaced ended up taking a role at Louis Vuitton as the Head of Design.
Two weeks into her new job, she saw Andrea’s name on the byline of a front-page story. Something to do about underpaid laborers going on strike. Emily didn’t read it. But if she stuffed into the back of her drawer, that was no one’s business but her own.
Six months went by and Emily had peace. She could wear the Chanel Andrea had gifted her without thinking about the doe eyed girl.
Of course, then came another front-page story. This time about a local politician using campaign funds to pay off his gambling debts. It was times like these when Emily was happy she wasn’t a citizen, far too much to keep up with. Yet, that paper ended up in the same drawer the other one had. She didn’t have time to dwell, only an hour until Miranda would come to look over her designs, and she still hadn’t decided between the two or four inch heels.
Another four months passed before Andrea forcibly entered Emily’s stream of consciousness again. She was on a date with a man named Frank when she saw the name again. Andrea Sachs, lead investigative correspondent for CNN. Emily’s hand twitched in her pocket, thumb brushing over her phone.
A marriage and two more years passed when Miranda forced Emily out of Runway. Retail at Dior. Insulting. A waste of her talents she had cultivated over several years. Had she really wasted so much of her life doing everything to appease Miranda to just be castaway?
The first thought in her head had been, maybe Andrea was right to get out.
Regardless, she made the most of her new position. Better hours, better benefits, and she had to admit, more control over creative decisions. Also, a guaranteed spot at Paris, Milan, and New York.
Of all the places Emily had expected to see Andrea’s face again, it was not the recovery room after giving birth to her second child. Frank was off somewhere, probably a client call as apparently it couldn’t wait even though his wife had just delivered their second child.
Yet there she was, with a bullet proof vest with white blocky letters spelling out MEDIA and a helmet, somewhere out in the middle of nowhere covering yet another global conflict. Emily’s heart had clenched at the site, and for once it wasn’t at the ghastly fashion choices, but at danger Andrea had willingly put herself into.
After that, the cycle began of midnight feedings while reading article after article of Andrea’s. The typical stories of a junior reporter; new restaurants, small scale crimes, and traffic incidents. Slowly they started to evolve into stories about high profile criminal cases, political pieces, and housing crisis’. She came across the article about Andrea’s promotion, how after the story about the politician came out CNN had swooped in and offered her the lead position so she could cover any stories she wanted.
Emily could see why Andrea was given the position. Her writing was impeccable and thrilling, even to the point Emily started to wonder if she should care more about local politics. And at that moment, Emily forgave Andrea for everything. Runway had only been a steppingstone for the girl but a needed one because the world needed a journalist like Andrea.
It took Emily a few more nights to find the article about how Andrea ended up in an active war zone. Andrea had written about the humanitarian crisis in Yemen, how they were starving and had no medical care, and how the world leaders were silent about it. She was sent to Yemen two months later to cover the story from the ground. And from that point onwards, Andrea had been sent to nearly every active war zone in the world to report from the ground.
Two years later and finalized divorce was when Emily couldn’t physically contain her worry for Andrea. She had been sitting in her office, reading the latest article Andrea had written when she had let out a gasp. John O’Neal, our camera man for the Syria coverage was shot last night during our evening report. He was 43. He leaves behind three children, Jack, Nora, and Warren and his wife Charlotte. No others affiliated with CNN were harmed.
Emily didn’t know John, but she knew he was the camera man assigned to Andrea, which meant she had been right there when he was shot.
“Miss Charlton, are you alright?” Her head snapped up towards her assistant.
“I-, yes I’m fine, Lily.” A pause, “Please go get the latest design from Charlie on the West 64th store.”
Her assistant nodded and scuttled out. God was that how I was with Miranda?
Emily cleared her throat and forcibly closed the tab with Andrea’s story. Andrea, her Andrea, could have been shot. Was probably shot at. Watched as her camera man was shot and died and still had to the write the morning story.
Surely CNN would pull out its reporters, Andrea would be stateside soon. Later that night, Emily watched as a red-eyed Andrea gave the latest report on war. Emily had cried when Andrea read her monologue on John.
“CNN will continue to have reporters on the ground here in Syria. We will report back in the morning. Back to you, Melissa.”
For five years after that, Emily watched every report by Andrea, obsessively tracking global conflicts 22-year-old her would have not even known the name of. Throughout the years, she watched as Andrea aged beautifully, even covered in dirt and with no shower for who knows how long, Andrea was still beautiful.
Then came the report that changed wiring of her brain, “After eight years of being the on-ground reporter for war zone conflicts, I am heading back stateside. Thank you to everyone who has helped throughout this journey. And to John, thank you for watching over all of us for the past five years.”
Emily never picked up the phone again to call Andrea. No, instead she saw the woman in the hallway of the Dior office, standing next to Miranda and Nigel like no time had gone by. There she was, the woman who had been occupying Emily’s thoughts for seven years, right in front of her. She had fucked up her first chance at being friends with the woman, but the second chance stood right in front of her.
And there was no way she was going to mess it up again.