Best Day of Our Lives
The collar of Cal's jacket is stiff and unyielding beneath his shaking fingers as he stands at the altar, convinced he looks like a penguin in his black and white clothing. The tuxedo's expensive, worth a month's salary and part of the Harper's Island compensation but it'll be worth it once he sees her.
Cal's prayed that this day's would come – when he and Chloe were racing across rickety bridges and freezing rivers, scrambling onto the boats with Abby and Jimmy and Kelly. The hours and hours of questioning against the cold gazes of Detectives Schule and Johansson and with cup after cup of black, rapidly cooling coffee at Cal's elbow.
Eventually all of them had released – Madison and Shea meeting them afterwards – and Chloe had dug into her accounts to get them to Los Angeles within the hour. The sun is warm on their skin when they land at LAX, a million reporters' questions breaking them from their hopeful, thankful reverie.
Cal insists on pushing the wedding forward, a small ceremony and Chloe agrees. She's spent the week with Shea, Madison and Abby getting ready, Cal relying on the good nature of the tuxedo shop and the wedding planners of LA to get this mini-event suited and booted as it were.
The church hall is lavishly small and up-market, but the priest is a wizened liberal Asian American who Cal will later find out helped certain states legalise gay marriage and has a taste of single-malt whiskey that Chloe buys him as a thank-you.
Flowers are in bunches near the altar and Cal can fear the faint organ strains of some classical number, a seemingly ancient tune that evokes memories of being four and back in Oxford, listening to his professor father teach him the song on the piano.
Kelly and Shea are in the front row, each of them in their new, freshly bright and colourful dresses and beside him, Jimmy fidgets in his own tux. Then the glass-panelled doors at the back of the church hall open and Madison enters, a smiling paragon of innocence despite what they've all survived.
Behind her is Chloe.
The dress is modest and simple and sweet and Cal turns, feeling the world shift irrevocably around them and he loves it. Loves her.
They deserve this, this is their reward and prize. They survived and helped others to survive a nightmare on Earth, Henry and Wakefield's reign of terror. They stayed together despite everything.
Chloe reaches Cal, calm smiles and shimmering eyes visible underneath her Grecian veil and Cal reaches out. He slips his hand into hers, like it was meant to be there.
The priest smiles kindly as their friends sit. Cal and Chloe hold onto one another gently as the priest starts his speech.
And they witness the best day of their lives.
Fin