A/N: I do like to reply to each review, so we're kicking it old school - replies to those I can't PM are at the end of the chapter.

A month later her phone rang as she was packing up after rehearsal. It was Dennis, talking in excited bursts. Before he finished, a crowd was call waiting or texting her in a jumble. They all said the same thing.

Derek just fired Karen.

Sam was waiting when she got home. She took a quick shower, trying not to care beyond the usual interest in dramatic gossip, with a little bit of satisfaction on top. None of it had anything to do with her, not anymore.

"What happened?" She curled damply in her armchair with her glass of wine.

"He's been losing it ever since Boston, but we thought it was just Derek being Derek. You know how he can get." Sam winced a little, watching for a reaction. They hadn't talked about the break up. "Today he freaked out. It was bad, even from him."

More than once, Derek had driven her close to her breaking point. Once, she had snapped. Not much could be worse than that, nothing that wouldn't result in someone calling 911. There was a line, he bent it all the time and slid over it now and then, but there was still a line. Whatever he'd done now, it probably wasn't that bad, not really. It would just look worse because Karen wasn't Ivy Lynn, she was so innocent and beautiful that any little snip was like kicking a puppy.

"One minute it was about missing a cue, the next it was something about costumes and coming back down to Earth, and he fired her." Not much flummoxed Sam, but this had him talking serious. "I know she's the last person you'd feel sorry for, but the way she ran out crying-" He shook his head, a note beyond his usual blanket compassion. "I don't think she even knew what he was screaming about."

At least she wasn't the only one he abused. That was her first thought, and that was very callous. Let her get a taste of how the other half lived. That was her second. Sam would understand, he had known her through a lot and for a long time. Still, she pushed those thoughts aside.

"Derek gets that way. It'll blow over and she'll be back Monday morning." By flattery, threat, or whatever it took: Derek always got his way.

"I don't think so." He had to be wrong. But the thing was, Sam was a pretty good judge of people. He always had been. He eyed her over the rim of his glass, waiting. Gossip was a guilty pleasure. He'd dispense, but only after you put in a question.

She took a sip herself. More of a gulp, really. "Why?"

He resettled himself, leaning over the coffee table, strong lines and muscles, even though there was no one to overhear. "Tom's been in prod meetings every night this week. That's where he is now. He won't talk about what's going on, but it's something big."

She let that sink in. "It could be anything. Investors, sets, booking a theatre, a million things." With such a compressed timeline, every detail was up in the air every minute, and nothing could fall through the cracks.

He nodded, but not believing. "Could be."

"She did an amazing job at previews. The reviews said so, everyone-" She winced. "Everyone said so, Derek said so." Not that she'd thought he'd be disappointed, not after he chose his star so definitively. Derek always got his way, and Derek was always right. "Why would they want to change her out now, even for another star?" After all, she'd risen above the star. With the world watching.

"She was great in Boston, but you haven't seen her lately. It's not that she's bad, exactly..."

"But?"

"But I probably shouldn't be telling you this. I'm not supposed to know. Hell, I don't know. But last weekend, Tom went somewhere dressed up."

Only a little unusual, unless- He wouldn't. She'd known him through more than a few boyfriends. He moved on, but he didn't cheat. "You think he's seeing someone else?"

"What?" Sam's head shot up. The tension of the evening broke when he laughed. "No. Look, I really don't know anything, but I think they did a private show. You know how it goes."

She did. Investors wanted to be kept in the loop, the influential and the just-plain-rich-and-famous wanted a peek at something they could be smugly silent about to their friends, pleading the confidentiality clause. It would have been Karen, a pianist, maybe their DiMaggio, for scene work or duets.

"And you don't think it went well?"

He fell back, lounging as only a dancer could, and spread his hands. "All I know is that today, Derek fired Karen, and Tom and Julia didn't look very surprised."

They spent the evening skimming through topics: Sam and Tom, Ivy and Peter (whom she was sort of seeing), fumigation and the pregnancy scandal in Wicked. Then a movie, light and familiar. Perfectly non-demanding, because Ivy couldn't shake one strange, confusing thought:

Derek had fired Karen.

The next morning, her phone woke her up before her alarm clock had the chance.

"Hello?"

"Ivy, hello. I hope I'm not waking you?"

Clearly, from her groggy greeting, she had indeed been woken. But she was Eileen. Ivy woke up fast.

"No, I was just getting up. How are you?" An exchange of pleasantries with a major producer at 6.30 in the morning. Theatre had its moments.

"I'll cut to the chase. I think you know why I'm calling. These days everyone has their phones out any time something interesting happens, and I hear yesterday was quite interesting."

Ivy offered a noncommittal agreement. Gossip did spread fast.

"We've lost our Marilyn" Eileen continued briskly. "We need you back."

It was what she'd been waiting - hoping – to hear ever since she'd found out. Now that it was happening... She wasn't sure she could do it. Second choice yet again, the stress of living up to Karen's performance, which was sweet and soft, apparently what they wanted and absolutely nothing like her own. The very real possibility that Karen wasn't really gone this time either, and when Karen came back, what was left over but more cutting nothing?

Her thinking had manifested as a lengthy pause.

"Don't give me an answer now. Think it over – Tom is going to find you later to talk specifics." Eileen's voice wasn't exactly a kind voice. But it was reassuring, in an efficient sort of way.

"Okay." She managed to sound like she was not freaking out. "Thank you for considering me"

Eileen wasn't kind, but she did do gentle. Professional to personal, a blurry transition at the heart of so many troubles in Bombshell.

"Ivy, you were always a spectacular Marilyn. You were my choice. And not just mine." A smile drifted along.

Tom had always been behind her. Julia, she thought, had wanted her mostly because she was a safer bet in the last hours. It didn't matter now.

"Thank you," she breathed, just before the line went dead.

It was Sunday, no rehearsal. A long shower cleared her head, a deep clean of her apartment settled her nerves, all the while thinking of all the ways it could end badly.

Derek figured into most of them.

Tom waited until 9, a more decent hour, inviting her out to brunch. He was cagey about it, in the too-cheery tone only he couldn't see through.

"I know, Tom. Eileen called me earlier."

"Oh good! So, um, what are you thinking?"

She sighed, settling down on her stripped bed. "I think I don't know what to think."

"We can work with that." He was going to do his best to convince her. She knew he was.

It was too bad he could never protect her when things went south.

Tom was already in a booth when she got there, a carafe of coffee and glasses of water waiting alongside him.

Part way into the meal they were still avoiding skirting the topic, but Ivy finally felt ready to face the real reason they were there.

"Did Derek really fire Karen?"

Tom put down his fork. "It's a little more complicated than that."

"She's pregnant?" Her heart was pounding. She didn't know why she had asked that.

He raised an eyebrow. "I don't think so. But we've been talking for a week or so now."

That fit. "Since the private show."

"Are there no secrets in this town?" he asked the room at large, taken aback.

One of the kids at a nearby table decided to answer. "Not if you shout!" General laughter and snickering commenced. In this part of the city, entertainment was a way of life.

Secrets were not. "Sam saw you going out, and with what was happening in rehearsals," she shrugged, poking at her eggs, "live in the ensemble long enough, and you learn to put the pieces together."

She'd read a book once, she couldn't remember much about it, but there was a cop, who said you could only know your city, own your city, after years pounding the pavement. And no one who hadn't would ever understand. That was the ensemble, she'd felt. Writers, producers, investors, directors; they owned and ran and shaped the shows, but they'd never really get it, walk the dark alleys, not like Ivy and her friends did. Not even Tom.

"Well, since the cat's already out of the bag," he poured syrup until his plate was an amber lake. "We did have a small show, to keep everyone excited about giving us their money."

"And she blew it?" That didn't sound like Karen, not when she knew the piece. Unless she'd had another fit and run off.

"Not exactly, no." He looked more troubled than anything. "She sounded great, don't get me wrong. There was just something a little... off."

The same something Karen had that she didn't? It wasn't fair to hit Tom with that one, even though it had punched her in the stomach and sent the contents roiling. It wasn't like he knew.

He was too preoccupied to notice her distress. "We didn't think it was a problem, exactly, everyone else was happy, but Derek stormed out in the middle of the USO number, and started calling meetings."

Talking about why she should rejoin the production, fine. But these were details she shouldn't know, edging into facts beyond the whispered gossip. She watched the ketchup, biting her lip.

"I wouldn't be saying this if you weren't you. If we weren't asking what we are. But Eileen thought you needed to know."

"Why?"

"So you'd know we're serious. If you come back, you're with us to Broadway. Unless," he smiled teasingly into the silence, trying to lighten the mood. "Unless you go off to become a big TV star, and abandon us."

As if she ever would. But her biggest fear was still her biggest fear. "What if Derek brings her back?"

This was a question he had been anticipating. "First off, we don't think he'll try. I haven't been to as many rehearsals lately, so I haven't seen it myself, but the way he's been talking all week, this isn't a recent thing."

She wondered if that thing was Karen sleeping with him... Or not sleeping with him. Tom might not even know, the ensemble probably would, but she still didn't want to ask. Maybe this was Derek, listening to her final advice. Only he got tired of his star too fast and cast it all off? That didn't sound like Derek.

Maybe it was Karen, finally seeing Derek for who he was, and dumping him. That sounded like Karen. Overreacting did sound a lot like Derek.

As reassurances went, it wasn't very good.

Tom lay a hand on hers, until she looked up. "Second, he can't. Now that were officially a go, Eileen holds all the contracts, and I think Boston was the last straw. She's sick of letting Derek walk all over her. Not to mention excited about having you back, of course," he squeezed her fingers. "Everyone is."

They would hardly say otherwise.

She didn't want to ask this either, but she had to. "Even Derek?" she whispered.

"Especially Derek," he replied firmly. "As soon as he stopped telling us why Karen needed to go, he was pushing to bring you back." He dropped his fork with a splatter at her frown. "It wasn't a hard sell. We were just surprised, after Boston, and what happened there. With him."

Apparently, she was now the whim of the day. He'd always gone back and forth, playing them off one another.

"Why did he want me? There's time, anyone could learn it."

Tom's gleeful smile spread slowly. "You should have been there." Glee on Tom was actually very entertaining, even under the circumstances. "We made him eat so much crow. I've never seen him just sit there and take it like that – it's part of why I know he's serious."

She'd seen Derek like that. A few times. But particularly-

"He said– a lot of things, but mostly he kept going back to the USO number we did at Lyle's birthday party, you remember? He said everyone in the room was drawn in, and having fun," he paused, recalling. "And that they felt safe and close and that was what Marilyn was about, and what a show should be about."

She was surprised he'd had time to watch, between flirting sessions. But it had been a great night. She'd felt it. They all had. Even Derek had said so, but she hadn't thought he really meant it. So much of the time, she'd wondered if he ever meant anything at all.

"That was one night."

Tom blinked rapidly.

She got it. "Karen didn't."

He nodded.

If she had done anything better than Karen in Derek's eyes, that was something. She still craved his approval. She wished she didn't. All she wanted was to be first, for once. And to get to stay there. More than anything, she wanted her chance to be a star, for someone to believe in her enough to fight for her, and win.

"If I come back," she loved Marilyn, she was trying to move on but she knew in her heart it could only be Marilyn. "Wait, is Karen back in the ensemble?"

His hair tossed in vigorous negation. "Not this time. Not even if she wanted to."

"If I do..." There was only ever going to be one answer. Except for one thing that might make it impossible. "If I do, do I have to talk to Derek? I don't mean in rehearsal," she clarified. "I know he's the Director. But you know we were..." It wasn't discretion that made her trail off. She'd never actually known what they were, what she should call it.

"You don't have to talk to him." Tom's voice was low.

She'd never talked to him about her relationship with Derek, not their personal one. But he had to know. Everyone knew. And Sam would have told him things.

"Eileen's already warned him not to speak to you until you've made up your mind."

It seemed everyone knew everything about her life.

"And if you say yes, he can't talk to you outside rehearsal, or about anything other than the show. She threatened to strangle him, in her deadly voice." Tom thrust a fork at an imaginary Derek. "And if he does, tell him to fuck off. He can't do anything to you."

Nice in theory. Except she kept remembering that last conversation they'd had. How he'd sat down, when they didn't have anything to talk about. How she couldn't quite convince herself, even in the moment, that it was all about Karen. If he started it again – not that he would, not after how she'd left – but if he did, she wasn't sure she'd be able to walk away.

It made her chest flutter, fear and pain and a little bit excited. It was a risk she had to take. It was for Marilyn. She'd done scarier things for her dreams.

"Yes."

"Yes?"

"Yes, I want Marilyn. I want to come back to the show."

Saying it made it real.

The rest of brunch was fun - the weight of indecision lifted - almost giddy, and full of sugar when Tom's syrup lake lapped over the insufficient lip of his plate. She left with laundry to do, but also with a plan:

Today: Call Candy From Strangers and quit.

Monday: Meeting with Eileen to sign paperwork.

Tuesday: Dinner with Tom and Sam. Fail to call Mother until Bombshell was literally opening on Broadway.

Wednesday: Rehearsal.

Charlene - Thank you for the support, and I'm glad you enjoyed it! Not to worry; with a dozen years of tiny fandoms and odd ships behind me, I'm content to march to the beat of my own (oft peculiar) drum. :)

Ella - Aw, thank you!

Shanshii - It was a oneshot (and I still love it as one). But constantly breaking them up was depressing, and ch1 left an opening for a chance to (eventually) work things out. They deserve it, eh?

Ann - ITA, they just work on so many levels, even if most people don't see it. Truth be told, I hate the show, to the point where it morally offends me seven ways to Sunday, but I suffer through it because of how evocative Derek/Ivy is, even in the harshest moments.