Prompt: Cashmere, from the list of one-word prompts that I reblogged on tumblr! If you would like to see anything else on that list, please check out my tumblr and send me an ask!

December, 1983

Elizabeth had not been looking for the sweater.

She had not really been looking for anything at all- more like sifting, aimless and distracted and trying very hard not to think about the boxes or the possessions they contained. It was all that was left of the horse farm, and Elizabeth's former life.

For the most part, she wanted nothing to do with it. But something in her, some sense of duty that she could never quite pin down, drew her to the attic and its haphazardly placed boxes nonetheless. She didn't spend much time here; her aunt was busy, and they had never been close.

Maybe that was really why Elizabeth was in the attic. It was better than being anywhere else.

She thought that maybe the sweater found her, really.

It was tucked away in a box that was otherwise filled with books, and when she pulled it out by its thick collar and surveyed the deep navy cable knit cashmere, she was overwhelmed quite suddenly with a wave of warm nostalgia.

Since the crash, she had mostly alternated between angry and despondent, and spent much of her time pushing away any happy memory she might have of her mother and father. Elizabeth, once happy and vivacious, had receded into a shell that she didn't even know she had. Some days, she felt like she was living in someone else's body and mind altogether, drowning in a loss not only of her parents, but of herself.

But this- just a sweater, the whiff of old pages and wool and something else familiar- took her back to a place that she missed. The cashmere against her fingertips reminded her of her father's solid chest, his big hugs, the early wintry mornings when he would indulge her in a cup of coffee before her mother woke up. Clutching the sweater in her slender hands, Elizabeth brought it to her nose, closed her eyes, and inhaled deeply. The soft wool pressed into her skin and, for a brief and fleeting moment, she could conjure the way her father laughed over that kitchen table as he teasingly made her promise not to tell her mother about the coffee. She was still convinced Elizabeth was too young, but he knew she could handle it. Always, there was a knowing smile and a little wink and Elizabeth felt like she could float on the knowledge that her father believed in her.

A few minutes later, the boxes were closed up again, but the dark blue sweater was still held tightly in Elizabeth's grip when she left the attic looking as if she had never been there at all.

And if, when she returned to school, it was tucked neatly into the bottom of her bag, well- she was sure that no one would miss it.

February, 1995

"Henry?"

Elizabeth was hovering in the doorway of Stevie's nursery when Henry looked up to meet her gaze. She was waiting, watching in a way that looked vaguely hesitant and young.

Sometimes, Elizabeth seemed so grown up. And other times, Henry thought she looked remarkably young; it was always a stark and startling reminder that they still had so much to see and give, the vast majority of their lives still laid out in front of them.

He smiled at her from his place next to Stevie's crib, and with a final glance at the sleeping infant, he pulled himself away and joined his wife in the hallway.

"Hi," he said, leaning in to kiss her cheek and coaxing a smile out of her in the process. "What's wrong?" he asked. The hesitance and uncertainty was written all over her face right now, but it was for the most part unlike her.

"Nothing," she insisted with a shake of her head and another smile as if to prove her point. "I just- well, come here, I have something for you."

"Something for me?" Henry asked, puzzled, though he let her take his hand and lead him down the hall, away from the nursery and into their bright, warm kitchen. Sitting on top of the light oak table, there was a box labeled on the side in dark marker: Elizabeth. It was her own handwriting, but Henry couldn't exactly recall seeing it before. He must have, he mused, at some point in between their various homes, but he wasn't entirely sure and he certainly couldn't recall its contents.

"What's this?" he asked. Elizabeth bit her lip, the way she still did sometimes when she was nervous about something. When they first met, Henry saw her doing it a lot. As the years wore on and Elizabeth grew into herself, the habit appeared less and less.

Henry found himself equal parts proud and nostalgic.

"It's a box of things that I still have from my parents' house," she said softly. "There's something in here that I want you to have."

Henry watched her quietly as she reached into the box and pulled out a dark blue sweater, with a thick collar and a cable knit, folded neatly. She held it in one open palm, and put the other down on top of it, sandwiching it between her hands as she glanced up at Henry, and then back down to the soft wool in her hands.

"It was my dad's," she said. As she gazed down at it, a wistful sort of smile slipped onto her features, the kind of thing she did without quite realizing it. "He used to wear it in the mornings at home, this expensive cashmere sweater with his ugly old sweatpants."

She looked up at Henry and smiled, this time like she meant to do it.

"I found it the Christmas after the crash, and I took it back to school with me and I kept it in my dresser until I moved in with you. And I always thought that…maybe someday I'd be able to give it to you."

There was a shyness in her voice, suddenly, that wound its way around Henry's chest and squeezed his heart in a vice-like grip.

"You want to give it to me?" he asked softly.

Elizabeth nodded her head and bridged the space between them, keeping the sweater in one hand and resting the other on Henry's chest, right over his heart.

"I want to give it to you because I've seen you with Stevie," she said. Looking up at him with shining blue eyes and the golden light of their incandescent kitchen lamps on her skin, he thought she looked aglow. A far cry, he imagined, from the shattered young girl who had found this sweater, a piece of her father, and kept it safe for the intervening years.

Henry was a father now, too, and the thought of his own daughter suffering the way Elizabeth had made something twist within him. Parenthood had changed his perspective on everything, and he found quite suddenly that he was more sensitive, more thoughtful, than ever before.

"You remind me so much of him, when I see you with her," Elizabeth whispered, and Henry could no longer resist. He reached out, with his hand on her shoulder, and drew her into a fierce and tight hug, the folded sweater between his chest and hers. She relaxed instantly into him, like it was an instinct, and he held her there for what must have been several minutes, neither of them saying a word.

"Here," Elizabeth murmured eventually, as she drew back with some reluctance in favor of handing the sweater to Henry. He took it carefully into his hands and ran her fingertips over the fabric. He'd thought often about Elizabeth's father; what he'd been like, and if he would have liked Henry. If he'd have thought Henry was good enough for Elizabeth, good enough to be the father of her child.

Something in the sweater felt like a blessing, suddenly, like it brought peace and stillness to Henry's thoughts. With a questioning look at Elizabeth and the encouraging nod, he carefully unfolded it and slipped the cashmere over his head. When the fabric came to rest snugly against his broad chest and over his heart, that tightness eased away and left in its place a strange and wonderful lightness that he saw reflected in Elizabeth's ocean blue eyes when she looked back at him.

He had just opened his mouth to ask her if it was okay, but Elizabeth spoke before he could.

"It's perfect," she murmured as she stepped close to him and pressed her hand to his chest again. And that was all that Henry needed to hear.

November, 2058

Or, a Sunday in the distant future

The sun had not yet risen over the horizon of the Virginia hills when Elizabeth McCord Moran- Ellie, as she'd been known all her life- made her way down the farmhouse stairs and into the familiar dim kitchen to make coffee.

She'd turned thirty this year, but this morning she was feeling about eleven or twelve. Here, she always did.

The rest of the house was still sleeping and, as she crept quietly across the worn hardwoods, she felt like the house itself was sleeping, too. It was full of her family, of course- her parents and younger brother were here, her aunt and uncle and their families. During the day, the house was still aglow with activity.

But the true owners of the house- Ellie's beloved grandparents- were not here, and without them it felt somehow dormant.

Especially right now, because aside from Ellie herself there had been only one pre-dawn riser in the family. When Ellie was small, she would creep down these very stairs on summer mornings and without fail, her Grandpa Henry would already be awake, sitting at the empty table and gazing out the window. One light would be on, reflecting its soft light off of the darkened window panes, and when her footsteps made the stair creak beneath her, he would look up and smile so brightly at her, extend his arm, and welcome her to the table. It had felt like a sanctuary to Ellie, those early mornings with her grandfather.

Henry understood her like nobody else ever had and those mornings with him remained sacred and special to her no matter what else was going on in her life. At first, they would talk about bugs and books and the rotating cycle of Ellie's interests. As she grew into the teenage years, she would sometimes use the time to tell Henry about the problems she faced with her parents, or her worries about going to college and if she would measure up to her family. Henry always reassured her that she would, that she already did, and when she was about fifteen he started offering her a cup of coffee. Even when she went away to school and life swept her up, she always visited her grandparents' horse farm in the summer, and Henry was always awake early in the morning, and she always, always made sure to take advantage of the time with him. It was her favorite time of the day, even when she was all grown up.

The funeral would be this afternoon, on a sacred Sunday, no fuss, just family- the way they were all sure Henry would have wanted it. This would be Ellie's very first morning at the farmhouse without him and though she had thought she was ready, the sight of his empty chair at the head of the table was nearly too much for her to bear.

Still, she made the coffee and sat down and stared out the window in silence as the sky began to lighten.

When the sun's rays began to creep over the oak finish on the dining table, Ellie caught sight of a box in the corner, its flaps folded over one another to close it. The night before, her mother and her siblings had been sorting through some of their parents' old things, looking for photos to bring to the service. Ellie had been outside, watching some of the younger family members play on the lawn. But now, her eyes fell on the side of the box; in dark, fading marker, Elizabeth was written and crossed out. And underneath, in her grandfather's familiar slant, Henry.

She rose from the chair and opened the flaps of the box, and inside she found an assortment of books- including one that she recognized from the corner of the spine as being one of Henry's own writing- and, on top of them, a navy blue cashmere sweater, folded neatly.

Ellie knew it well.

Henry had been in the habit of wearing it on winter mornings with his sweatpants before he got ready for the day, and Ellie could remember countless mornings spent right here with him, the blue cable knit stretched across his chest. Distantly, like it might have been a dream, she thought that she remembered climbing into his lap when she was very young and running her tiny fingertips over the intricate cable knit as he spoke to her in his familiar, calming voice.

Now, she clutched it in her fingers and brought it up to her nose, and found that the scent of her grandfather's big hugs still clung to the wool. Without a second thought, Ellie slipped it over her head and some of the tension inside her ebbed away.

She sat back down with one of the books from the box, and that was exactly how her mother found her when she emerged a little while later.

"Hi, sweetheart," she said, leaning over the back of Ellie's chair to kiss her daughter on the head.

"Hey, Mom," Ellie replied, turning to look up at her, hit with the realization that it was quite like seeing her late grandmother again when she looked at her mom these days.

"Hey, what's this?" Stevie asked; her hand had grazed the wool of the sweater where she rested it on Ellie's shoulder, and now she was looking at the sweater as if she thought she ought to be able to place it, but couldn't. Ellie smiled, bittersweet.

"It was Grandpa's," she said, and Stevie's eyes lit up in recognition.

"Oh, yeah," she said. "I remember him wearing this old thing even when I was little."

She smiled fondly and turned toward the coffee maker.

"Where'd you find it?" she asked over her shoulder as she reached for a coffee cup.

"In one of these boxes," Ellie said, glancing over at the crossed out Elizabeth on the cardboard. It occurred to her that she, too, was Elizabeth, and wondered what it all meant. Maybe nothing, but she couldn't help but think that her grandfather would have seen a sign in all of that- and that maybe she could, too.

"Do you mind if I keep it?" she asked, looking over at her mom. Stevie smiled at her, a warm and knowing kind that Ellie had come to expect from her mother.

"I think he would have loved that," she said softly, and Ellie smiled back and when she looked outside and caught sight of a cardinal diving swiftly from one tree to another, she thought that maybe the signs were all around her, should she choose to see them.