#my aunt offered to travel with me to oxford and maybe try and bring my dad too

[silverysongs]

really want someone to say to me "let's go for a ramble" and we have a walk in the park

[queenbirbs]

the way home | Ch. 1 | Edward x MC

Pairing: Edward Mortemer x MC

Word count: 2,048

Summary: In which traveling to the past is only half the battle; or: Elena finds her way back.

Warnings: language

Notes: This series is complete. I’ll be posting chapters on here and over on AO3. Title taken from Tony Anderson’s The Way Home.  Continue on to chapter two.

Inspired by @choicesmonthlychallenge day 16 prompt “tick tock / time.” 

------

“You heard what my colleague said.” Robert’s voice sounds from the backseat, pulling her from her study of the countryside. “If this doesn’t work, then we may get stuck somewhere else with no--”

“Fuck that,” Elena cuts him off. “It’s going to work.”

He rolls his eyes at her in the rearview mirror, but says nothing more. They’ve spent enough time together over the last two years that he’s learned when to stop bothering with trying to change her mind. 

“Damn straight it better work,” her sister Gabby says around a mouthful of sour gummy worms. “I didn’t put two-thousand miles on my car for you all to get skunked.” 

Robert makes a face at the unusual term. “Are you forgetting that if we get caught then you’re an accessory before the fact?” he points out. 

“Yeah, but that won’t really affect my trade-in value, now, will it?”

Up ahead along the highway, a yellow sign reads: Welcome to New Mexico; Land of Enchantment. With Colorado in the rearview now, Elena pushes out a breath, trying to calm her racing heart as the pockmarked landscape passes in a blur. 

She’s tired of having her fate sealed, printed onto expensive cardstock, and ogled by museum-goers. What a life she led! How tragic, though, about Captain Mortemer spending all that time searching for her! the people at the museum tut and shake their heads before moving on to the next room. Elena’s tired of coming back home, of staring at that portrait of him and wondering if it’s the last she would ever see of him. 

During their four trips to the past, she’d managed to find Edward only twice. Though she was glad to be leaving it behind, there was something to be said about the ease of communication in the twenty-first century. After their last return, Elena and Robert didn’t bother with the faulty compass or time anomalies. Every deadend, every long night of research, and every weekend trip to scope out a lead was for the assurance that this would be their final voyage to the past. There would be no more time-hopping, no more disappearing for months at a time. With each stone they overturned, there was hope that it would bring them here. Here, she bemuses, to the long stretch of empty highway between southern Colorado and northern New Mexico. 

The trip to South Dakota had been a last-ditch effort. Robert’s old colleague from Oxford let him know about a warehouse hidden away in the Badlands, rumored to house hundreds of artifacts -- including the one they were after. Convincing Gabby to be their getaway driver was the hardest part; putting on a show of being a damsel in distress with a broken-down car and incapacitating the guards was much easier, in Elena’s opinion. 

Under her touch, the artifact in her hand glows the same eerie shade of blue as the compass. The whistle is a tarnished gold, engraved with the initials of a sailor who escaped H.M.S. Fletcher after its sinking off Cape Horn in 1890. News articles about the event were vague. The sailor’s diary, however, detailed his two days trapped in an air pocket, blowing his whistle desperately for help, and suddenly appearing on the shore eight years in the past. The only corroboration was the event log of a fisherman who watched the man “step out of thin air.” By all accounts, the tale was nothing more than a fantastical story. 

They reach Urraca Mesa with plenty of light left -- surprising, given that they were forced to hike around the scout ranch that owns the property. The mesa glows crimson in the afternoon sun, towering above them as they make their way up the trail. Elena’s duffel bag smacks against her thigh with every step. Along the next rise, Robert stops and consults his map with a scowl. 

“The lodestone minerals makes navigating this place a pain in the arse,” he grumbles as his compass refuses to cooperate. The needle jerks back and forth, never settling on a clear direction. 

“Does it have to be exactly on the ley line?” Elena asks, fidgeting with her bag’s strap to move it to a less sweat-drenched part of her back. 

“Of course it does. That’s why we drove all the way down here in the first place. The electromagnetic energy is at its peak along--”

“Okay, okay!” Gabby interrupts. “How about we try something else: do you have the exact coordinates?”

“Yes, but a compass doesn’t work like that.”

“Yeah, but a phone does,” she snaps back, tugging her phone from her backpack. “Lemme have ‘em.”

“We’re too far out of range for cell service.”

“Maybe, but it’s worth a shot.”

Robert sighs, then flips his map over for the coordinates scribbled on the back. Gabby’s fingers fly across her screen. Within a minute, the automated voice is telling them to continue south for 256 feet.

“Verizon,” she offers at his look of surprise. 

You have arrived at your destination! the phone announces as they come to a copse of trees underneath the mesa’s shadow. Elena isn’t sure she really believes in all of Robert’s theories about magnetic fields, but there’s something different here. An odd sensation tingles down her spine and through her fingers, as if she’s touching a live wire. The smell of ozone is heavy, as if a tremendous rain fell moments ago, though the desert is bone-dry. 

“Well?” Robert motions to the whistle in her hand. 

She lifts the whistle to her lips and blows. Its shrill cry pierces the air, the mesa’s steep walls echoing the noise. At first, nothing. Then, as if ripping a seam through the fabric of reality, a portal cleaves the open air before them. That blinding blue-and-white color shimmers before them. 

“Holy fuck.” Gabby grabs her arm and squeezes. “You-- you weren’t making this shit up.” 

At that, Robert turns and lifts an eyebrow at her, a smirk stretching across his face. 

“You think we’d make you drive two-thousand miles for a practical joke?”

“I mean, we used to play them on each other growing up,” she says. “But this would be one hell of a trick.” 

“No trick,” Elena tells her, turning her attention away from the portal and back to her sister. “But it does mean…” she trails off, her throat too tight to finish the sentence. 

With tears welling in her eyes, Gabby throws her arms around her and hauls her in for a tight hug. The portal sparkles against Elena’s closed eyes; tears drip steadily down her face. 

“You’re really sweaty,” Gabby complains against her hair, prompting a laugh from her sister. “I hope you didn’t forget to bring anything, because there’s no CVS on the other side.”

“I’ll be okay. I have everything I need. And there’s always the local market.”

“Yeah, I’m sure they’re stock-full of tampons and condoms.” 

Robert clears his throat, gesturing to the portal when both sisters glance over at him. 

“I’m sorry, but we really need to go, sooner rather than later. I’m not sure how long the portal will stay open. If it closes, we may not get another chance.” 

Elena nods, crushing her sister against her one last time before letting go.

“I know you’ll have a badass sword or whatever, but make sure you use those moves I taught you,” Gabby tells her. “I didn’t close up shop at the gym for a whole day just for you to rely on weapons only.”

“Okay,” Elena nods. “I will.”  

“And try to get a message to me. I’ll keep an eye out for any new pirate documents and artifacts. There’s a subreddit I follow that keeps me up-to-date.”

“Okay, I will.”

“And tell that little boy of yours, whenever he comes along, that he has a really cool aunt.”

“Okay,” Elena promises, her voice breaking around the words, “I will.”

Nodding at Robert, she walks with him to the portal’s edge. This close, she can smell the salty wind and feel the humidity of the Caribbean. Glancing back at her sister, she gives her a watery smile. 

“Love you,” they say in tandem, prompting the other to chuckle. 

After a final wave, Elena turns and links her arm through Robert’s. 

“Ready?”

“Ready.” 

Together, they step into the portal, and the world closes up behind them. For the briefest moment, she glimpses that swirling mass of colors that surrounded the Intrepid during the chase with the Admiral. Then: white sand; a blazing, blue sky; palm trees swaying along the curve of a coastline. The salty wind that she caught the scent of earlier rushes past, a cool balm against her sweaty skin. Across the blue stretch in front of them, ships cruise toward the shore, their sails trimmed for an easy docking. Through the trees to the west, a bustling town sits above a busy port. 

“Where are we?” Elena asks, squinting at the buildings to see if she can recognize where they’ve landed. 

“Santo Domingo -- though you’d know it as the Dominican Republic,” Robert explains. “That white flag with the odd-looking red ex is a symbol of the Spanish empire. The ships out there are flying the same colors.”

“Okay. Now, more importantly, when are we?” she asks.

“The Spanish ruled this half of Hispaniola between 1697 and 1795.”

“Oh, yeah, you know,” she scoffs, “just a hundred-year span of time.” 

“Quiet, I’m not finished. Do you notice something off about the buildings? Extensive damage like that isn’t caused by a tropical storm. That would be hurricane-force winds.” As he lectures, he swings the bag on his shoulder round and starts to dig through it. “In 1754, Santo Domingo was hit with what would’ve been a category three hurricane. Twelve ships were lost.”

“That history degree of yours is coming in clutch,” she says, grinning when he scowls at the slang term.

“Our only real way of knowing, of course, is to go into town and find out.” 

Pulling a tube from his bag, Robert bends to set it down in front of the portal. She forgot it was there at all, too excited at the prospect of returning home. “I’d advise you to retreat,” he tells her as he backs away, a pistol in his other hand. 

Elena heeds his warning and follows him several paces away. She claps her hands over her ears just as Robert pulls the trigger. The gunpowder explodes into a ball of fire, eating away at the portal until it collapses in on itself, blinking from existence. 

“So.” Her words sound muffled to her, still ringing from the blast. “That’s why you didn’t want to fly to South Dakota.”

“Not really. I just hate flying.”

“Convenient that you picked a century when airplanes haven’t been invented yet.” 

Robert grins at her and shrugs, though the jovial expression drops from his face as he gestures to the whistle, still clutched in her hand. 

“For the next item on the agenda, you need to get rid of that.”

“What? No!” Elena takes a step back and holds it against her chest. 

“Elena--”

“Not until I find Edward. If we went too far in time, then this was all for nothing.”

He settles his hands on his hips and shakes his head at her. 

“If you hold onto that, you’ll be drawing unwanted attention to yourself. There are those that can… sense power in objects. You’d be wise to toss that thing into the sea.”

“Later,” she snaps, then hesitates, trying to reign in the irritation at his lack of understanding. “Look, I know that for you, your goal is complete: you’re back. But mine isn’t.” 

Robert grimaces, glancing away and towards the ocean beyond. Finally, the set of his shoulders loosens and his breath escapes him in a sigh. He digs through the bag at his side for a moment, before pulling out a long, gold chain. 

“Here.” He takes the whistle from her and loops it through the chain. “So you don’t lose it in the meantime.” 

Elena settles the necklace across her chest; the whistle disappears into the top of her shirt, hidden from view. 

“Thanks.”

“Now,” Robert gestures towards the town, “let’s bury these bags and go see about this pirate of yours.”

------

References:

The warehouse full of artifacts in the Badlands is a reference to Warehouse 13, a show about a warehouse full of artifacts in the Badlands.