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This story was.... exhausting, and definitely not one I could have done on my own; troyswann did a very helpful edit of this story; forthwritten sorted out some plot points; Shim took on the mess of coding it and was triumphant. Thank y'all.

(Usually I post stories on LJ/DW and on the AO3, but for reasons that will become abundantly clear should you click, this one is just on the AO3. Content notes on the story page itself; if you're an AO3 refusenik for whatever reason please feel free to comment here obv.)

Written in response to someone's observation on Tumblr - at the end of Fringe, everybody lives (everybody minus one).

fic:: you who fly with them / you who are nether before nor after
by Raven
12,000w, Fringe, gen, Peter/Olivia, September, Astrid, Nina, Sam Weiss and others.

"Who are you?" Olivia asks. / "My name is September." 2015, seen across two timelines.

This week - has been a week. I'm on day six without ever sitting down for long enough to eat an entire meal, so today Shim is making me one! With actual food! And hot, and stuff! It's gonna be the best.

Otherwise: I worked a lot this week. Did a quiz-based networking event out in Girton, which I enjoyed even though we did terribly badly, and I'm apparently the department's new favourite person because I knew the meaning of the word "crepuscular" and thus we didn't come last. Saw the Gaslight Anthem at the O2 in Brixton, which I would have enjoyed more if I hadn't been dog-tired, but oh the Gaslight Anthem. They did "The Queen of Lower Chelsea" and I can basically be happy forever now. And yesterday I had a sequence of work disasters, rain, rain, more rain, got soaked getting to the station and forgot that the major drawback of the cut and cover Tube lines is that they go at twenty miles an hour, but I went to see Dar Williams at Bush Hall with happydork and it was delightful. She's so beautiful and talented and oh, even when she sings songs I don't have a particular liking for, she still sends shivers down my spine because of how ridiculously talented she is. I love her. And she is also the best. She came on and sang "The Light and the Sea" and it ended a bit awkwardly and then she looked at her audience as if noticing them for the first time and said, "Whoa, did I forget a verse?" Her backing musicians nodded sadly. I love her.

Also this week: my best friend in the world moved away for two years. Some of you I think may have a minor inkling who she might be. She's in the process of becoming; she's going away to be glorious. I will miss her so.

And now here we are firmly in autumn, I am sort of resting and sort-of having grim-spectre-of-the-future to the point where I can't sleep at night (this, with months to go before definite unemployment! I am such a failboat) so let's talk about serious things.

Firstly, muskratjamboree, I am going. It was a total, day-of impulse decision - I know some people have literally been waiting years for registrations to open! - on the grounds that I can still pull out and god knows there would be a grateful person on the wait list if I did, but you know, I'm not going to pull out, I'm going. I love Boston, I'm apparently a grown-up now (?) and I'm going! Who am I gonna meet there? Tell me!

Secondly, Fringe is giving me feelings all over the shop. Peter! Olivia! Walter! Astrid! Etta! Even September, for goodness' sake. And you know, I think it really is because it's at heart a show about family, that which you're born with and that which you find. Which is why I love Deep Space Nine, too, and seems to be what I want in my speculative fiction TV. (I am oddly hesitant to class Fringe as SF - I sort of want to call it a kind of heavy-tech fantasy.) I am not quite caught up - am halfway through "In Absentia".

Also. "The Day We Died" universe, the sort of greyish white one? The one Peter lives through in the machine, anyway. Is it the only instance of a married straight couple on TV, who are happily married, who have different surnames, and it's totally not a thing? It's the only one I can think of.

And thirdly, there is no thirdly, it's time for lunch.

It's turning into a clean and chilly autumn, here. Several things make a post:

1. ( queer )

2. I was blown away by Julia Gillard addressing the Australian House of Representatives on the sexism and misogyny of the Leader of the Opposition. Just... blown away. I'm embarrassed by how little I know about Australian politics - I wrote a paper once on Australian reproductive rights law and that is the sum of my knowledge - and I don't know much about how Gillard's government has served its people in other ways. But this did my heart good.

3. So next week I am seeing both Dar Williams and the Gaslight Anthem! I am super-excited about both, but particularly the Gaslight Anthem, because I love Dar Williams, I love her, I want to get I am the one who lives with the ocean tattooed on me at some point, but at heart it's a reasonable and rational grown-up love. Something about the Gaslight Anthem bypasses my brain and goes straight to etched-into-my-bones, stars-in-my-eyes, every-word-handwritten-in-my-heart-oh. Shim says he often comes into a room and thinks, "why's she listening to early Springsteen - oh." I just, oh, oh, the Gaslight Anthem.

(I sometimes think I will grow out of being a fangirl. And then I think, wouldn't that be growing out of love.)

3. Speaking of fannish love. I am watching Fringe again. I stopped round about halfway through season 4 and now it's back and I want to get caught up for the finale. I stopped round about "A Short Story About Love" - because urgh. No. ( spoilers ) But I'm actually enjoying it just as much as I was, once I'd got past that - because oh, Fringe.

The thing is I am not even fannish about Fringe. I'm not, though - I don't really want to write fic about it or meta about it or whatever. (Icons and gifs, though - hiiii, there are no non-beautiful people in this cast.) I guess the reason for that is, I believe it's a complete story: there are no shadowy gaps in the edges of Fringe, at least not the character ones, the ones I want to fill, because you see the whole thing evolve bit by bit. I especially love what they do in "Peter" and "Subject 13", it's a much better approach than say, The X-Files, which would drizzle the backstory out over five seasons and then fizzle unimpressively at the end anyway. No, I'm not bitter.

("Subject 13", though! Peter on the lake, surrounded by ice - that destroys me.)

4. There is no number 4. No, wait, there is a number 4! I have started to watch Babylon 5, after tau_sigma lent it to me, and. And. Well, it's pretty bad, isn't it. It's really bad. The acting is so bad. But, I love Londo and G'Kar and I think they should do stand-up. I think the whole show would be better if it were called Londo and G'Kar: Live At The Apollo. I also love Ivanova, Delenn and kinda sorta, Lennier. And the worldbuilding, a little - I made noises of total delight at some throwaway line about waiting in line at the toilets for methane-breathers - and people tell me I'll like it from the second season, so I keep watching it. But I tell you guys, it's a good thing I'm a sucker for a portentous opening narration.

And otherwise, I keep on going on. My job is quite dull at the moment; I wrote a very long and very complicated letter today; this weekend I had planned to do nothing but watch Fringe and eat Swedish Fish, but I suspect there may be work involved. And so on.

Oh my god, you guys, I have ALL THE FEELINGS about Fringe. ALL THE FEELINGS.

Okay. Here are my non-spoilery feelings about Fringe. I love you, Olivia Dunham, and I love Peter almost as much. (And Walter and Astrid and Broyles too!) All the feeeeelings. I still think it's a show that owes a lot to The X-Files, not quite a spiritual successor but, clearly, would never have been made if The X-Files hadn't been. But it's, oddly, less foreboding - because, as one of my friends I forget which wisely said, the characters have control over the world around them, and that makes all the difference. And, they are real characters: they have family dynamics, desires and wishes and wants and loyalties and backgrounds, and these play out in front of and behind the "main" plots in a way I really, really like and isn't common enough in television science fiction. Although, actually, I don't think Fringe actually is sci-fi - I think it's got the glass, the chrome, the bleeping machines and the explanations, but really, it's fantasy, complete with quests, feet of clay and lost children.

Also... this is so embarrasing, right, but I love Olivia and Peter and I ship them liek woah. I have not been this much of a drippy shipper since I was fifteen. But I looooove them and I want to squish them together and make them have many babies. Okay maybe not the last part. But so much loooooove. And part of it is for grown-up reasons, honest!

What I love is that Peter is, for many reasons, the central character of the show - the plot almost literally revolves around him - and yet, Olivia is the protagonist. This is Olivia's story. Olivia's character arc, in a lot of ways, rings horribly true to me: a woman fighting against the pressures of an unfair world, against internal currents and forces that all seem devoted to telling her she's rubbish - and against that, the people who love her and see her truly, telling her over and over again that she is extraordinary, she is beautiful, she is strong, she is more than just good enough.

( more concrete spoilers - nothing huge )

I am now on 4x01, "Neither Here Nor There". Please do not spoil me! Though there is not that much to spoil me on, now. Oh show.

Also! If I could vid, I would make a Fringe vid to "New York Minute" by the Eagles. Just sayin'.

Hello, flist. I am home ill, flu-ish, headachey and not a little bit over-anxious. (Case in point: I thought I would make use of the time by at least popping out and sending some parcels. Mission aborted when yours truly was too pathetic to find somewhere to park, and came home having smudged the parcels' labels in the rain, but not actually sent them.)

So I am lying on the sofa, whining gently, trying to write my yuletide (it is awful, all is awful, I am a horrible writer, all is woe) and watching Fringe. Y'all have been watching this show for a few years now, and I have realised I will never get another show like my heart wants - happy, optimistic science fiction! remember that? me neither - and, well, I did like The X-Files. I liked it a lot. So I'm giving Fringe a try.

Thus far, I am four episodes in and I sort of like it. Sort of. Okay. Here's what I like:

-Olivia! I didn't at first, but she has grown on me; she's such a sensible sort of heroine to have. Ditto Peter - in the pilot I thought he was one of those insufferable know-it-all manly types that, inexplicably, whole shows are built around (The Mentalist, I'm looking at you), but actually he's not that bad. He's kind of sweet, in his way. And Walter, too: I love his combination of super-clever and very naive.

-Also Astrid, although what the show means to do with her I have no idea. At the moment it seems to be, well, passing things and answering the phone. She's lovely, and the actress is epically fanciable. Want more Astrid. Yes.

-And the cow. Dear cow, I like you.

Here's what I don't like:

-Naked women get tortured quite a bit, don't they? And then there's screaming. And I'm like... okay. Don't want or need.

-And I don't exactly dislike the homage, but I have seen The X-Files. It's not so far in history you can reuse its plots wholesale. Although, I appreciate it doesn't do the whole incredibly-stilted-monologue thing or the "let's turn down the lights! no, more!" thing. Instead it seems to use a swimming-pool palette, washed out blues and greens, which is nice and creepy without being invisible on VHS. (Not that this is a problem now, but oh, X-Files, way to stamp on my love.)

-Also, fringe science? I get that that's the thing, yes, but surely I am not the only person who wants to laugh sometimes at a show with the aesthetic and tone of The X-Files and the scientific realism of The Middleman. I mean. Really.

-Probably this is just me, but. I have the attention span of a gnat. Watching fifty-minute episodes is too long for me. I get twitchy in the middle, and fast-forward through the bits I'm sure are going to be some species of revolting. Really, I just have too short an attention-span for being a grown up. Surely there's some age you reach when the little man in your head doesn't jump up and down and shout, "I'm booooooooooored!"

Anyway. I am told I have to stick with it until the second season before it gets really good, and okay, I will try. But do I really have to watch another sixteen fifty-minute episodes? A whole bunch of you have lists of episodes that I actually need to watch in the first season. Please tell me.

In the meantime, I shall keep on watching this episode about a bald dude with no eyebrows, eat teacakes and feel sorry for self.