Work Text:
Ted didn't find Olivia in Spain, but he did find Rachel. Or, well, technically Rachel found him, but Ted thinks it sounds more poetic the other way around.
Now that Rachel's home from Charlie's do-it-yourself witness protection program tour of Europe, she's decided she wants to start applying to colleges. Which is really great, Ted thinks, and just the kind of future planning they should all be doing now that they aren't going to be murdered by money-laundering ex-cops or sociopathic Russian mobsters, and so--
"Forget that," Rachel says, glaring at the various college admissions materials spread out at the kitchen table under a layer of breakfast items. "I'm not doing this."
"I know it can seem overwhelming," Ted says, nevermind that he's already feeling out of his own depth. The college application process is one of the many parts of Ann's adolescence that he missed out on while he was locked up.
"Nope," Rachel says. "Not doing it." She's brandishing a butter knife and applying jam to her toast in short and violent swipes. "Charlie, can't you just, like, buy UCLA a building and tell them they have to let me go to school there?"
Charlie looks up from his struggle with the brand-new juicer currently taking up most of the available real estate on the kitchen counter. "Uh, no?" he says questioningly. "I mean, I don't think you can just tell some place that you want to buy them a building, right? How would you know if they needed a building, or what kind of building they needed?"
Ted sighs, tipping his head forward as he pinches the bridge of his nose between his thumb and middle finger. "Actually," he says, "a substantial capital donation to a hospital or institution of higher education is at the top of that list of possible short-term income tax deduction strategies that I've been asking you to look at for the last three months."
Because he's kind of a jerk sometimes, Charlie doesn't even bother to look sheepish.
Ted looks up, turning his attention back to Rachel. "I know it seems like all they care about is your GPA and your SAT score," he says. He isn't sure about Rachel's academic performance after twelve years at the Kyle Hollis school of child abduction and evangelical homeschooling, but he imagines it probably isn't great. "But," Ted adds, "the admissions office will look at other factors, too, like your personal statement."
Rachel glares at him from behind her toast. "That's the problem," she says. She jerks her head at the UC system application packet on the table. "Read that."
Ted reaches for the stack of glossy paperwork, shaking off a light shower of toast crumbs. "Describe a significant turning point in your life," Ted starts to read aloud.
And well, yes, he can see why that's a little … awkward. A college admissions officer would be expecting an essay response from a high school track star who broke their leg right before the state championship meet, not a girl whose whole life changed after her entire family was murdered and her honorary uncle was wrongfully convicted of the crime.
Ted turns back to Charlie. From the looks of it, Charlie has fed about a dozen oranges to the juicer and so far only managed to produce about two tablespoons of orange juice. '
"Charlie," Ted says, "I think you should offer to buy UCLA a building."
Just then, Charlie's cell phone starts to vibrate, jittering across the kitchen counter tile like an over-excited insect. "Huh," Charlie says when he flips his phone open. "Ted, do you know the fastest way to get to LAX?"
"What's at the airport?" Rachel says, seeming grateful for the distraction.
"Apparently," Charlie says, swigging his hard-won sip of orange juice, "there's a dead body."
*
Dani dislikes any place that draws large groups of slow-walking people obstructing the flow of foot traffic, which included malls, open air street fairs, farmers' markets and, of course, airports.
The uniforms who are already at the scene didn't say exactly where the body was found, just that Dani and Crews should meet them at one of the Terminal 3 departure gates. She and Crews find the uniforms exchanging disdainful glances with a bunch of amped-up airport security guards but no dead body and nothing else that suggests a crime scene.
"Hey fellas, where's the body?" Crews asks, apparently oblivious to the fact that the uniforms and the security guards look ready to act out West Side Story.
"Seat 16D," says one of the security guards, smirking.
"Uh, what?" Dani says.
"The body's still on the plane," one of the uniforms says. "They didn't realize the guy was dead until they'd already landed."
While the crime scene techs try to figure out the best to way to move the body, Dani and Crews are forced to crowd together in the galley at the back of the plane. Crews is flipping through a seatback flight safety booklet like it's an issue of People magazine. "Listen to this," Crews says. "'Take a moment to locate the exit nearest to you. Bear in mind that the closest exit may be behind you.' I mean, wow. Think about that for a second."
Dani knows that there's no such thing as nipping Crews in the bud, but that doesn't mean that she won't keep trying.
"Stop it."
"Reese, do you ever think about how something becomes a major turning point in your life?"
"No. And stop it."
"Stop what?"
"You know what."
They're trapped inside an airless tin can with the increasingly-ripe body of some poor bastard who managed to bleed out under an inflight blanket. What Dani needs is the Crews who's a prenaturally intuitive detective, not the one who's a lunatic who babbles in Starbucks cup inspirational quote brand Buddhism.
"Crews, even if Homeland Security doesn't waltz in here and claim that any homicide on an airplane is a probable act of terrorism, we've still got the feds on our asses, because--"
"If the coroner gives us a probable time of death that's before the plane crossed into California's airspace," Crews interrupts, his eyes widened with realization, "then we're looking at a corpse that's been transported over state lines."
Dani nods, but also says, "Quit finishing my sentences. Because I know that you know that I hate that. So," she continues, "as I was saying, I figure we've got about 20 minutes before the fucking FBI shows up. Let's just go ahead and stick a pin in the existential crisis of the day and start figuring out what you could manage bring onto an airplane and use to give someone a fatal stab wound."
"The shiv game!" Crews says brightly. "I'm good at this one."
*
After the feds show up and demanded jurisdiction over the dead guy on the airplane, Charlie goes to get airport kiosk fruit smoothies while Reese calls back to the station. He gets Reese something called a Guava Strawberry Fusion Nirvana, and when Charlie walks over to hand her the smoothie, she's hissing into her phone about whether the FBI Academy has a minimum IQ requirement.
Reese hangs up the phone and accepts the smoothie, with that raised eyebrow look she gives him when she wants him to know that she's humoring him and that it's costing her an enormous amount of effort. "Captain Gutierrez wants us head back to the station," Reese says.
Right around the same time Internal Affairs stopped pretending they were actually going to investigate the events that led to Roman's death, Tidwell's father suffered a massive stroke. Before Charlie even got his badge and gun back, Tidwell had already resigned from his position, with plans to move back east to be able to take care of his father.
"I mean, sure, my pop says he'll be fine," Tidwell said the last time Charlie saw him at the station. "He told me not to worry, that Janine could come look in on him," he told Charlie, shaking his head. "Janine!" Tidwell abortively started to throw his hands up in disgust before remembering he was holding a file box. "My second ex-wife," Tidwell said darkly. "Can you believe that?"
Charlie considers the abrupt swerve of Tidwell's departure as Reese drives the two of them out of the maze of the airport and back to the station. "When you didn't go with Tidwell when he moved back to New York," Charlie says to her, "would you consider that a major turning point in your life?"
"What are you talking about?" Reese snaps, her fingers tensing on the steering wheel. "I didn't go with Tidwell when he moved back to New York because that wasn't even an option, it wasn't even a remote conceivable possibility. That's like me asking you if it was a major turning point in your life when you decided not to go to prison."
Charlie thinks about this for a moment, wondering about the slim difference between the things a person knows have happened to them and the unknowable possibilities that slide past them in the dark. It would have been a major turning point in his own life if he was partnered with someone else other than Reese when he first started back on the job. But he wouldn't know that, necessarily. The unknowable possibility of all that would come from his partnership with Reese would just be out there, beyond him, ephemeral as fog.
"So what you're telling me," he says, "is that every moment is a turning point that we might not even realize is happening."
They're at a stoplight, so Reese can lean her head back against the headrest for a second, her sunglasses sliding up the momentarily inverted slope of her nose. "I will stop this car right now and make you walk back to the station," Reese says. "Do not even think I won't do it."
Even though there's no real heat in Reese's tone, Charlie decides that a change in the topic of conversation might not be a bad idea. "Hey," he says. "Did I tell you that I think I'm going to ask UCLA if I can buy them a building?"
*
For dinner, Ted and Rachel order Indian food, and it gets to the house before Charlie does.
Rachel watches Ted unpack the takeout cartons onto the kitchen counter. "Remember that awful chicken tikka we had at the airport?" Ted says.
Rachel rolls her eyes, because seriously, can Ted get any more corny. "Uh, yeah," she says. "I remember because it was only, like, three weeks ago."
Charlie had sent Rachel off with enough money to pretty much buy her own small country, but Rachel still felt safer staying in hostels, like the one where she'd been stashed before Charlie had caught up with her. At a hostel in Amsterdam, she fell in with a group of other American kids, two girls and three guys, college students who were traveling around on the tail end of a semester abroad.
Rachel traveled on with them to Brussels, then Paris and finally Barcelona. She told them she went to UCLA, and learned that saying, "Hey, why don't I go grab the next round," was a good way to get out of conversations that started to veer too personal. It worked out okay all the way up through a week in Barcelona, when it was time for the rest of them to fly home.
One of the guys, Toby, maybe she liked him a little more than the other two. On the train from Paris, she fell asleep and woke up with her head on his shoulder and he wasn't a jerk about it or anything. That last night in Barcelona, Toby came with her to get the next round, and he said, "You don't go to UCLA, do you?"
"What are you talking about?" she said flatly.
"Hey," he said, putting his hands up in surrender, "no worries. I don't care or anything. But you didn't get it when Anya said she missed having a meal plan card, and you never talk about your major, and--"
"--And, what's your point?" Rachel snapped at him.
"I don't know," Toby said, shrugging. "Just, college isn't the be-all end-all or anything. Sometimes it's just like -- I don't know what the hell I'm going to do with my life, and college seems like a good place to hide while I figure that out."
The next morning, when it was still barely light out, she went to the park with all the crazy mosaic sculptures. At the top of the hill, sitting on one of the benches that looked like it was made out of smashed china plates, Rachel found Ted.
"So, you're not dead," she said.
"Nope," he said. "I guess not."
Ted smelled like cheap cava and he looked at her like she might be a figment of his imagination. He told her it was complicated, but Charlie was basically okay, and it was probably safe to go back to LA if she wanted. They took a cab straight to the airport and ate awful airport food court chicken tikka masala. Then they got on a non-stop flight to LAX, and Ted told her way, way, way more than she ever wanted to know about his whole thing with Olivia.
Three weeks later, eating significantly better Indian food but with Ted still walking around looking like a kicked puppy, Rachel wonders whether that's the kind of significant turning point that belongs in a college application essay. It's basically the only significant turning point in her life that doesn't involve someone she loves either almost or actually dying, so it might just have to do.
Rachel hears the front door open, and a few seconds later Charlie walks into the kitchen.
"What happened with the dead body at the airport?" Ted asks. Rachel smirks into her mango lassi, because that's basically what passes for, "How was your day, honey?" around this place.
"Funny story," Charlie says as he starts poking through the takeout containers. "The body wasn't technically at the airport, because the dead guy never made it off the plane."
Rachel thinks maybe she'll give the essay another shot tomorrow. Ted's been moping around the house since he and Rachel got back, so he'll probably help her out if she asks. And if that doesn't work, then Charlie can always buy UCLA a building.