Harbor —
noun: a part of a body of water along the shore deep enough for anchoring a ship and so situated with respect to coastal features, whether natural or artificial, as to provide protection from winds, waves, and currents; such a body of water having docks or port facilities; any place of shelter or refuge.
verb: to give shelter to, offer refuge to; to conceal, hide; keep or hold in the mind, maintain, entertain; to shelter (a vessel).
"Natalie, are you ready?" A voice calls from the hallway and Grace, my roommate, pops her shiny auburn head into view.
She takes stock of the boxes around me, my few possessions packed away for transport. I shake my head and point to the last box, which has yet to be sealed.
"Not yet. How long until we need to go?" Grace checks her watch, wrinkles her nose and presses her hand to her head. She hates calculating time, but I'm glad she's willing to attempt it for my sake.
"Um ... maybe twenty minutes? I don't want you to miss your train."
"That'll work," I respond. "Thanks, Grace."
"Sure thing. I still can't believe you're leaving. I'll have to come visit you sometime." She begins to ramble, so I point to the box again and put my best scolding face to work.
"All right, all right," she concedes, laughing and taking the hint. "I'll let you finish. We can talk on the way to the station."
I smile. As much as it will be difficult to say goodbye to Grace, nothing else ties me to Los Angeles. The time has come to move on, to finally start over for the last time.
A handful of items remain in my closet, ready to be dumped carelessly into the remaining box: A UCLA paperweight, a bound copy of my thesis that arrived two days ago, the sweater I wore yesterday and a few papers that I retrieved recently from my last professors. I move the items into the box, placing them systematically inside – stacked as neatly as possible.
One of the papers catches my eye. An elective. I picked it up but never read the professor's comments. Instead of adding it to the box, I place it on the bed next to my bag. I've been looking for things to read on the train. Maybe it will help me pass the time.
Maybe it will help me in other ways.
I grab the tape and stretch it across the box, taking care to line up the cardboard corners to prevent distortion, and stack it on top of the others next to the door. Everything in boxes.
Knowing Grace is eager to get going, I reach for my bag, my jacket and my suitcase, heading toward the doorway. That's all I need. I feel strange leaving most of my things behind, but I've done it before. Someone should be by later today to pick them up and move them for me.
"I'm ready, Grace," I yell toward her room. "Let's go!"
The train rolls beneath me, carrying me across the country. It seemed like a good idea to travel by train, to see the States this way, because I don't ever want to move again. I feel I'm leaving every version of myself behind me with each mile under the wheels – the sad part being that I don't even know what version of me I should be when I arrive in Manhattan.
I sigh, looking out at the passing landscape before pulling a few items from my bag: Eliot's Middlemarch, lip balm, my phone. Nothing appeals, so I put it all back. Middlemarch, while lovely, is full of lonely people; my lips don't need anything; and, of course, there's no one to call. My eyes fall on the paper I stuffed in there earlier.
Sociology 101.
What reason I had for taking an elective freshman survey class the last year of my five-year master's program still eludes me. I think I thought it would be easy and helpful in better understanding people and how they work in groups. Understanding people is key to communicating with them.
What I didn't expect was how the class would examine where I fit into the context of those people. Our final assignment: Evaluate yourself in light of your social groups and background.
An easy subject for most freshmen, perhaps, but a painful one for me. The assignment took weeks to craft, Grace finding me in my room night after night – agonizing over what to tell and how to tell it.
A piece of lint lies on the cover, so I brush it aside. Curiosity takes over as I wonder what my professor thought. Surely, she had never had a student write that before. I open the cover, my eyes scanning over the title page. Before I can help myself, my fingers are already turning the page and I'm starting to read.
To begin with, my name is not Natalie Lowell. The U.S. government created Natalie Lowell five years ago when I moved to Los Angeles to attend the University of California. In high school, others knew me as Julia Hartman; before that, Sophie Smith; and at the beginning of their attempts to hide me, my name was Amanda Burne.
All of these incarnations are more real to me than Mary Stuart, who had both parents taken from her at age six. My father? Murdered by men from a competitor on the eve of his tech company going public. My mother? Insane, for all intents and purposes. My last memory of her involves watching the men drive her away while the U.S. Marshal stood at my side and held my hand.
Little remains of Mary Stuart.
At least, I recall very little of my life before I became Amanda Burne. Finding my father, bleeding on his office floor? That I'll never be able to forget. My mother, screaming and unfit to care for me? Every inch of me runs cold at the thought. My father's kind eyes and the spin of the brown leather chair in the library at home? The Sacramento sunlight? Sand crunched between my toes when they took me to the beach? I suppose those are the few things I can never fully leave behind.
For sixteen years, I have been a vessel adrift, finding harbor where I've been directed until the weather required me to move on to another port. Each of those harbors formed a sort of social group, I reckon, but none of them were permanent and I knew that – even at a young age.
I docked in Connecticut shortly after my mother was relocated to a treatment center in San Francisco. They wanted me as far as possible from Sacramento and the men responsible, whom they couldn't locate. As a rare case at the age of six, I was placed into the protective custody of the Valois family – a mix of foster care and witness protection. For all intents and purposes, they were to be my family.
They welcomed me warmly, though I cannot say I remember much of my first few months. It was shelter, respite from the pressing tides. Everything was hazy, numb. I missed my parents, my home. Nothing seemed right.
The one thing I do remember: The eyes of their youngest son, Francis. Clear blue. Patient. A beacon of hope in such a dark time. He would sit with me for hours, just waiting for me to speak and trying to find a game I'd be willing to play with him. In time, his efforts worked and life opened before me again. Of everyone I have met in sixteen years, he likely knew the real Mary Stuart.
I lived with Henry and Catherine for nearly three years, but they never treated me as an outsider. Theirs is an old family, and with that came family money. I had every privilege their other children had been given, but I was also disciplined as the others – particularly one afternoon when Francis and I had a pillow fight in his parents' bedroom.
When I was nine, two of the three men responsible for my father's death were caught and stood trial. Because I had found my father's body, I had to testify. My location, my current identity, had been compromised, and so Sophie Smith walked into an elementary school in Denver the next week.
I have felt adrift since.
The paper falls to my lap, my finger catching my place and holding it as the train pulls under a tunnel. The lights flicker, the walls empty. We emerge again into the sunlight and I remember Grace's last words before I left.
"I hope you find what you're looking for, Natalie."
I hope I do, too.
My hands lift the paper back up to continue reading. I might as well try to figure out what I'm looking for before I get there.
I struggled with my placement in Denver. They loved me, I'm sure, but it wasn't the same. I missed the Valois family: Henry, Catherine, Elisabeth and Francis. I understood by then that I had to be Sophie Smith, regardless of what happened. It became a personal challenge to make each identity its own. Sophie liked the color pink, dreamt of unicorns and wanted to be a princess when she grew up. I read away my time in Denver, burying myself in Montgomery and Alcott and Lewis. Any world other than my own would do. The years passed and I continued to be a model child and student. I was alive but not really thriving, so they chose to move me again in hopes that I might find a better fit with the Hartman family in Kansas City.
By the time I sailed into Kansas City, I realized I could be whoever I wanted to be and I decided I wanted to be like my father – intelligent, capable, studious, kind. My teen years became a quest for utility and preparing for college, where I could finally be free of the family side of my protective arrangement. I wanted to be in charge of finding my next harbor. I was the quintessential student, my nose in books and my head in my AP classes, but I didn't have many friends. None of them could know who I really was anyway.
As if recognizing I was on the cusp of finally attaining my freedom, the last man the feds were looking for was spotted at my graduation. They moved me right after the ceremony was done. My belongings were stored while they figured out what to do with me. I didn't even get to celebrate the milestone with the Hartmans.
Natalie Lowell began summer classes at UCLA just after Memorial Day, and she has been here ever since. She never went home for a holiday or had family come to visit; she has just been here. And last year, when they caught that last man and I testified against him, Natalie could have disappeared, but it was too complicated to let her go. I couldn't start over as Mary Stuart for my one remaining year when everyone had known Natalie in her place for four.
Finally free to be the one my parents named and joyfully took home from the hospital, I didn't know where to begin. It isn't as if anything in my life changed. I still had no family to go spend time with or who could come for a visit. I still didn't let myself date for fear of getting too close and having to move. My only friends were the few girls I lived with while getting my degree and a few colleagues from the firm where I interned for three years.
Those traditional social groups we've learned about this semester – family, friends, work – none of them have had much bearing on my life.
Well, none but one. A box of letters was delivered to me after the trial and I was released from protective custody. Every month for thirteen years, Henry and Catherine had sent me letters about what was happening with their family – knowing it was likely I would never see them, much less be able to respond. And those letters have become a compass in guiding me to what I hope will be my last harbor.
Next month, at the close of my program here at UCLA, I am moving to Manhattan. Henry's company relocated there last year and they are expanding. Having corresponded with him and Catherine over the last year, he has decided to hire me as their new Chief Information Officer. It's gutsy for him to hire such a fledgling, but I'm grateful for the opportunity it presents.
I get to start over, to set down an anchor and disembark for the first time since I was six. Perhaps in one of the busiest, noisiest and most populous cities on this great planet, I will somehow manage to find answers to the questions that have evaded me for nearly the entirety of my existence:
Who is Mary Stuart and where does she fit?
A few red marks denote missed punctuation and awkward sentences, but there are no comments scrawled in my professor's hand until I reach the bottom of the last page:
"I hope you find her."
I drop the paper back into my bag and decide to head to the sleeper compartment. Re-reading my personal history didn't help as much as I had hoped it might – it just raises more questions than answers. Perhaps I can sleep away most of the time between here and Chicago. And then maybe I'll tackle Middlemarch. I'm certainly not going to find Mary Stuart on a train in the middle of the West.
Street level at Penn Station might be one of the busiest places I've ever seen in the morning. Standing atop a bench to make up for my lack in height, I scan the crowd looking for a man who was nine the last time I saw him. I assume it will be a fruitless endeavor, but I do it anyway. Strangers float by and I look at most of them, knowing instinctively that they aren't him. My eyes flit toward the exit and I spot two blue orbs staring straight at me.
Francis.
After all these years, his eyes remain a beacon – calling me to harbor.
He strolls over, hands in his pockets. There's a bit of an edge to him, though he's dressed professionally for the day. Perhaps it's the rumpled golden curls on his head that contrast most with the collared shirt and jacket. He never could tame those curls, even as a child.
"Amanda?" he questions, helping me down from my lookout on the bench.
"Please," I implore, meeting his eyes. "Call me Mary."
Author's Notes: I told myself never to write another multi-chapter fic, but here I am - and writing a modern AU at that. I plan to continue, but I'd like to know what you think! This was born out of our daily F/M thread challenge, which is intended to keep us busy for the remainder of the hiatus (and then some, for me, it seems). We get 24 hours after the prompt is released to write something. Today's prompt is "modern AU."
Disclaimer: I have no claim of ownership on "Reign" or its characters - that belongs to the CW, CBS and Laurie McCarthy. I just like the chance to play! The plot behind this modernized AU version of the show and any non-canon characters are mine, but I don't ever expect them to cross over with the show version.
