Fall 1997 - Spring 1999, Cambridge, Massachusetts
Frederick was ecstatic as he made his way back to Cambridge at the end of the summer. After all, how many 19-year-olds could boast that they had flown their own airplane? He'd got his private pilot license, gone up on his own solo, and that made him feel more adult than ever. And for sophomore year, he and Anne were moving off-campus; he could finally get out of the frat house now that his buddies Thomas Harville and James Benwick were moving out of the dorms and they could be roommates. Similarly, Anne had rented a next-door apartment with her freshman roommate Harriet Smith, as well as Lizzie Bennet and Emma Woodhouse from their floor. That was a relief, because his ROTC commitments were piling up - for one, he had to study for extra tests to qualify for the officer course in junior year, as well as to compete for pilot slots.
He found Anne sitting on the floor of her empty bedroom amid the moving boxes, slicing through the masking tape with a penknife, a murderous expression on her face.
"Hey, baby, I'm back," he called out. When Anne didn't look up, he crouched down to her eye level. "What's wrong, Anne? Is something bothering you?"
"It's nothing. Nothing of consequence, at least." Anne didn't want to burden him with her family's objections, and she wished she could shelter him from the whole thing.
"Well, you looked like you wanted to tear that box to pieces. Surely you'll feel better if you could vent to me, instead of eviscerating a moving box? It's your family, innit? What'd they do this time?" There couldn't be any other explanation, given that neither he nor Anne agreed with her family's attitudes most of the time, and she'd just come from home.
Anne rolled her eyes. "They're just being annoying, as usual. It's more of the same old, they won't be happy till I'm married off to some preppy scion rolling in money. Not like that'll happen anyway - I'm sticking with you, and that's that. You have my promise on that at least. Anyways, enough of that. We're back here, and we'll have a great year ahead of us." To wrap up the subject, she looped her arm around his neck and leaned in for a kiss.
And as it turned out, that strategy was completely successful to get them both to forget the whole thing, at least temporarily. Frederick had never seen Anne be so forward before, but no male, especially a college boy, could possibly protest - within moments, they were both completely wrapped up in each other, all else put by the wayside.
Summer and sophomore year changed Anne and Frederick in ways that they couldn't have imagined before. They both felt a new level of gravitas as the carefree aura that had pervaded their freshman year faded. The weekend pick-up basketball games and teen flick movie nights gave way to more serious pursuits as they started spending increasing amounts of time in the lab and the machine shop. Anne was eager to help Frederick with his workload by offering him the type of home support he'd missed out on in his teen years - she taught herself how to cook, and made extra portions for him so he wouldn't have to worry about meals. She also offered to do his laundry and housework, even ironing his uniforms, but he flatly refused.
"A man needs his dignity," he protested.
Yet, in spite of their mounting workload, they still seized every opportunity to enjoy and experience life. Spring break was a means for them to explore those places off the beaten track that they wouldn't ever entice their families to visit. Of course, some of the places on their wish-lists, like Europe, were out of the question from a cost point of view; but with a little creativity and the right sense of adventure, they could still put together trips which gave them memories for a lifetime. In sophomore year, they hiked a section of the Appalachian Trail with their friends simply because it was exciting yet nearby; in junior year, they decided to venture a little further and fly budget to LA, then drive to Las Vegas, deliberately making a detour to pass by the aircraft boneyards in the Mojave Desert. The idea of going to Vegas came out of Frederick reaching his 21st birthday; he celebrated his coming-of-age by gambling away $20 just because he could, and then walking off because he didn't think it made sense to lose any more money like that. There were so many things they wanted to do, ranging from small-scale adventures like visiting the New England countryside towns to larger-scale ideas like mountain biking down the slickrock trails of Moab, and never enough time or money to do them all.
If Anne thought balls were an archaic construct that didn't exist outside the Elliot world, she was wrong - the ROTC program had annual military balls which were every bit as grand and larger in scale than her own debutante party had been. The dress code was formal but conservative, which suited her fine; she had left all the fancy formal wear that Walter had got for her for parties and dances through her teen years back in Grosse Pointe, so she would find understated, elegant numbers on sale at Filene's Basement to dress up for those occasions. Those were the only times when Frederick saw her in anything that wasn't running gear, denim, leather or cotton. All along, Anne never thought herself pretty by any stretch of the imagination - after all, she didn't have the kind of leggy, buxom model-looks that Elizabeth had. But when she stood in front of the mirror the evening of the first military ball she attended as Frederick's date, clad in a floor-length ivory sheath dress, she realized that looking good wasn't an all-or-nothing game. That if she took away Elizabeth as a yardstick, she could actually appreciate her own finer points - the fact that even if she was petite, her figure was perfectly proportioned; and that her features were attractive in an understated but refined kind of way. She might not be the type of girl who turned heads the moment she stepped into a club or a bar; but she could be the kind of girl that people would imagine dancing the role of a fairy queen in the ballet, when she was decked out as she was that night. In that way, they complemented each other perfectly - Frederick being the picture of energy and vigor in his dress uniform, set against Anne's gentle but dignified bearing - there were already hints of the couple that they could become in the future: the dashing, daring military officer accompanied by his regal, queenly wife. Whenever Frederick thought of that image, he puffed up with pride; superficial though it may be, it suited him all the more that they looked so good together.
No matter how much time they spent together, Frederick never ceased to be intrigued by the many faces of Anne Elliot - the heavenly, fairy-like vision he danced with at the military balls; the intensely focused competitor when she ran; the creative mastermind giving a wacky touch to all their design projects; and the free spirit who enjoyed nature because she was an artist at heart - Frederick could hardly believe that all these personae actually belonged to the same girl. She was sassy, spunky, sometimes a smartass; yet sweet, considerate, always graceful and tactful; full of passion and the love of life. She broadened his horizons more than he could ever imagine by challenging him, yet complementing him at the same time - she though of ideas he'd never have come up with on his own, while also being behind him all the way in his quest to achieve his goals.
Meanwhile, Anne was also fighting her own battle. After spending her formative years steeped in the Elliot lifestyle, coming to MIT was like stepping into a whole new world, whose value system matched hers more than the Elliot way ever had. In this world, people were judged by their passion and ability, rather than by their family pedigree or wealth; people were challenged to push boundaries, often achieving more than they ever thought they could, rather than being hemmed in by endless outdated traditions. Having had a taste of this world, she wanted to spend the rest of her life this way, and she had to start thinking about her own future beyond college to make it happen.
More than once, Anne found herself wishing that she had the single-mindedness of Frederick, who'd homed in on his profession for life when he was sixteen and never looked back. She'd majored in aerospace engineering out of a vague curiosity to learn about the thinking behind how different aircraft were designed, but when she delved deeper into dissecting the industry, she found that there was no end to the hierarchy of systems and sub-systems that make up an aircraft, and that whatever she ended up doing as an engineer, she'd probably be working on only a tiny part of whichever system it was. It motivated her to think of the big picture - working on designing a minute part was boring, until she was able to place how it influenced the overall performance of the aircraft it was intended for. That led her towards the idea of getting a job with an airframe manufacturer.
Getting summer internships served double duty for Anne - not only did the stints help her to improve her career prospects, they also minimized her time in the Elliot world to just a fortnight-long sliver of summer in August. She went to Lockheed after sophomore year, and to Boeing after junior year; and at the end of that summer, she was so full of the Boeing 747X and Sonic Cruiser concepts that she finally knew exactly where she wanted to go after graduation, if only they would have her.
Much as they would have wanted to spend whatever time they could together, Anne and Frederick came to accept that their summers apart were a necessary step towards achieving their dreams. after all, every time they could fall back on the secure knowledge that they'd enjoy their respective new challenges for the summer so much that it wouldn't seem long before fall came around, and then they'd become a central part of each other's lives again.
Whatever time Anne spent in the Elliot world became more bearable now that it was relatively short, and that the matter of Anne's relationship with Frederick had been conveniently forgotten by everyone in the Elliot household. Anne took care to say absolutely nothing about Frederick to anyone at home - even if it was a lie by omission, it was convenient to let everyone fancy that it had been a passing fling that was now not worth mentioning.
By the summer after sophomore year, Charles had gotten over Anne, too. It wasn't in his nature to brood about things for too long; he went back to Berkeley and his swing dancing, and soon came to terms with the reality that he and Anne couldn't possibly have worked out, even if Anne had been single when he asked. Even as children, Anne had always been the one with the ideas; she was more driven, more curious, more adventurous at heart; and over time, it became clear that his life and Anne's were taking completely different directions. He'd never thought of doing anything after college except to go home and work in the family business; it was in his nature to do whatever was comfortable. He liked having company, and though he wanted to settle down someday but not just yet, it would have given him a sense of security to think himself attached to a girl from home, someone whom he'd grown up with. Based on their past, Anne had seemed like the natural candidate. Yet just one year on, it was clear from the excitement Anne showed about her internships and her new life in aviation that she wasn't ever likely to be satisfied with confining her life to the Musgrove home and garage, even though she said very little about exactly what she planned to do after college.
Anne never regretted her choice of Frederick over Charles. Close as she and Charles had been in childhood, Charles didn't inspire her the way Frederick did. There was something magnetic about Frederick's hunger, energy and drive that made everything she did just a little bit more exciting when she did it with him; it was as though his energy rubbed off on her as well. Even though they were now long aware of their different family circumstances and the Elliots' disapproval of their relationship, all that made no difference to them; they'd met as equals, and in their life at MIT, the only life that mattered to them, they always were equals. The new life Anne had built for herself since she'd gone to MIT was inextricably linked to Frederick, and that was the way she wanted it to be forever.
Training for the Boston Marathon wasn't easy, because of the strict qualifying times. Just because they could run 12 miles in under two hours didn't mean that they'd be able to run 26 miles in four hours; and even if they could meet the four-hour marathon mark, a respectable standard for ordinary folks, they still had to shave off a considerable amount of time from that performance to meet the bar for the Boston Marathon, which was set at 3 hours 10 minutes for men, and 3 hours 40 minutes for women.
Soon enough, Anne and Frederick realized that they couldn't possibly do exactly the same runs together and both qualify. They worked out a system where Frederick either gave Anne a head start or covered more distance in the same time; even though they didn't start together, they always made it a point to finish together. It didn't take Frederick long to see why Anne was always so focused when she ran; the discipline they needed in monitoring their split timings was critical when they had such specific milestones to meet.
In October of junior year, they ran the Bay State Marathon as a qualifying event for Boston. The atmosphere was electrifying - an entire legion of people milling around in the morning light, the loudspeakers bellowing announcements, with Eddy Grant's Gimme Hope, Jo'Anna setting a peppy tempo in the background - even at the crack of dawn, the whole world was more than alive, it was raring to go. For Frederick, this being the first road race of this scale he'd attended, it was easy to get caught up in the excitement of the moment. He'd planned to follow the measured pace of the 3:10 pacer, but with all the energy he soaked up, what was the point of restraining himself when he felt that he could do more? Letting himself flow with nature, he edged past the pacer and surged ahead. The feeling was exhilarating.
10 miles later, Frederick was lost. He hadn't kept track of his split times, having simply gone with the flow at every point in the race up until then. To him, he'd been coasting along, but he had totally no idea of the pace that he was running at. It wasn't until Anne, who had been following the 3:20 pacer, picked him up that he realized he'd been so distracted that he hadn't noticed when he let 3:10 slip past him somewhere along the way.
Anne did just the same thing she'd done on the long-ago first run by the Charles River - she upped her pace bit by bit, and Frederick didn't need words to understand that he was expected to follow her. Mile by mile, Anne steadily paced them to shave off more than one minute per mile from their previous pace, until Frederick was reunited with 3:10, with 6 miles left to go.
Since there was no 3:30 pacer, the strategy Anne had originally planned for herself was to follow 3:20 at the start, and then allow herself to fade back a little about 18 or 19 miles into the race, knowing she'd still make the cut as long as she didn't see the 3:40 pacer getting ahead of her. Getting Frederick back to 3:10 took too much out of her for that to work, though, and she just had to take it easy to recover, even if it was just for a little while. That little while proved to be a little too long - she was still chugging along at a too leisurely pace when she saw the 3:40 pacer pass her. She tried to pick up her pace to follow, but she was always just that little bit behind. Eventually, she crossed the finish line at 3:42 - so near, yet not enough to make the cut when there was virtually no wiggle room allowed.
"You were close." Frederick tried to offer some comfort; he wished he could do more, since it was because she was helping him that she'd failed to make the cut. "There'll be other qualifying marathons you can run. Since I've qualified already, I can pace you the next time."
"I doubt it. The Boston Marathon fills up within days of the 18-month timeline for qualifying. Even if I did run again and clock a new time, it'd probably not be in time to qualify for Boston in senior year. But that's OK - I guess I don't have to do everything on my bucket list before graduation. So what even if it's after college? We'll still be young, and there'll still be plenty of time to make our dreams come true."
Chapter Notes:
Canon Divergence - Isn't it great that girls going to college is now the norm in this day and age? The extended period of time that they spend as a college couple, growing and chasing their dreams together, forms a strong foundation for why Frederick won't be able to forget Anne no matter how much he tries.
Canon Notes - The purpose of showing how they grow through their college years fleshes out the part of canon that says, "there could have been no two hearts so open, no tastes so similar, no feelings so in unison, no countenances so beloved."
Aviation Notes - The 747-X concept ended up as the 747-8 which went into service in 2010, slightly a decade after the time that this chapter is set in. The Sonic Cruiser was a concept that Boeing had in the late 1990s and early 2000s, though subsequently the high-subsonic (Mach 0.98) speed was abandoned and it evolved into what is today the Boeing 787 Dreamliner.
Diversity Easter Egg - The song reference to "Gimme Hope, Jo'Anna" is deliberate. I got acquainted with this song in almost exactly the same way Frederick does in this chapter, as a peppy background to my first long-distance road race (a half-marathon) that stuck in my mind and won't go away. Due to its high energy, it has been used as a workout song in many settings, and has inspired several TikTok dance remixes. Yet under deeper scrutiny, the lyrics are a politically and emotionally incisive look into apartheid in South Africa. The song was written in 1988, six years before the fall of the apartheid regime, and was banned in South Africa when it was released. Eddy Grant is a GENIUS!
