Author's Note: In quantum mechanics, superposition is the idea that something can be in multiple states until it's measured and collapses into one or the other.
I got part of this idea from twitter user stablersbensons, who posted an AU idea of Jet and Eli being EO's kids.
Curious to know if the very last lines sound familiar to anyone…
She straddles the line between two worlds — what is, and what could have been.
The alarm rings at 6:45.
There's a soft glow of light shining through the window onto her bed. She feels beside her, hands running across the smoothness of cool, empty sheets. Her eyes squint to filter the morning sun as she reaches her arm towards the 'off' button.
A deep breath. She closes her eyes once more, reveling in a meditative moment of silence and solitude before her day begins and—
"Mom, have you seen my—what are you doing?" A small boy with dark, shaggy hair bursts through the door, interrupting her stillness with curiosity and impatience.
"Eli!" her expression startled but soft. "What are you looking for, baby?" His serious, 7-year-old blue eyes look up at her solemnly.
"I think Jet stole my Pokémon cards."
She sighs and rises, planting a kiss on his tousled curls. Mornings when he works all night are hard, but she doesn't think she'd trade this — her chaos and her children, her small home filled with happiness — for anything.
Eli Benson-Stabler bangs on the door of his sister, who answers with a well-rehearsed scowl she's learning to wield on annoying brothers and intrusive parents.
He makes his accusation and her daughter denies the allegations, spitting back words tinged with a biting edge she's found in the shadow of teenager-hood.
Their bickering fades as she becomes lost in her own thoughts, her children, her husband, her family — the doubts she's felt about domesticity, the bitter fights, the almost-leavings, the fear of settling, but in the end, she's left with just three words.
This is good.
****************
The alarm rings at 4:37.
Rather, not the alarm, but her cell phone's text tone, bright and harsh in timbre, echoing in the faint sound of sirens from the street below. We caught a case…meet you downstairs in 5. She sighs and rises through the darkness, stubbing her toe on the edge of her bedpost and curses loudly to an empty room.
Limping, she appraises her mirrored reflection. Following a well-worn pattern, a few moments later, it's pants on, lips glossed, jacket zipped, fingers running through tangled hair. She pulls on a black beanie that hides the lack of time for a proper combing, but tells herself it's for the November chill.
Her apartment is small, and it's not quite home — at least not in the way he has a home at his house in Queens, with his wife and his overflowing family, full of dramatics but full of life and love.
Sometimes, in her weaker moments she lets in the what-ifs. What if he didn't go back to Kathy that night? What if there never was a Kathy? What would our lives be? What would we be?
Stop it! she chides herself. She loves his children, and even worse, she loves his wife. He isn't him without them. She isn't her without them.
But still, the ghost of a small boy and girl with dark brown hair and bright blue eyes seem to appear at the edges of her vision as she stares at her exhausted reflection.
This world is okay too, she thinks, jogging down the steps to the sidewalk. This world gives her independence without responsibility — early morning runs and late night flirtations. This world is new, and evolving, unanchored, determined by possibilities.
This world gives her purpose and in it she is a hurricane, powerful and free. He is her harbor, her rest. They gravitate to each other like magnets, like planets orbiting the same sun, but they are not quite one.
****************
Maybe there's a universe out there where he never left. One where he left her instead. One where they never met, and a dozen where they've known each other all their lives.
In all of them, she finds her way back to him.
She's standing in her doorway, an umbrella protecting her from the driving rain. A gray sedan pulls to the curb. She dashes to it and hops into the passenger seat.