Title: Slow Down, Girl

Author: OpheliacAngel

Pairings: Alice/Claire

Genres: Romance/Hurt/Comfort

Rating: Teen

Summary: Claire could feel her own heart beating like an erratic, reverberating drum in her throat, making the agony and impatience stretch into eternity. Her heart twisted and squeezed the short amount of air already in her; it robbed her of any ability to collect her thoughts.

She didn't even have to ask.

A/N: Written for SadieFlood for The Final ShipSwap. Missing scene from Afterlife.

Soundtrack: Title and lyrics from Hawthorne Heights' 'Decembers'

~You don't even have to speak because I can hear your heartbeat

Fluttering like butterflies searching for a drink

You don't have to cover up how you feel when you're in love

I'll always know I'm not enough to even make you think~

The bathroom was chilled and dark as Claire ran careful, barely trembling fingers through her tangled hair. It would be an understatement to say that she was anxious, thrown into a nightmare world with people who claimed they knew her, breathing down her throat, expecting so much when all she was doing was crawling at the walls trying to stay alive.

Except Alice. Alice was just… Alice.

She wondered if the old her, the her her instead of this blank, frustrating thing, would have said the exact same words.

Claire knotted the towel around her waist and ventured over to the small, cracked mirror, willing herself to remember how she used to be. Willing herself to figure out what the hell Alice saw in her. Nothing. Just a miasma of confusing images behind her throbbing eyelids that she couldn't explain or talk to.

Footsteps behind her to break the comforting lull of steadily dripping water, the sound intentional. Claire had no doubt that Alice could sneak up on her if she wanted to, though she doubted the purpose that would achieve. Regardless, she breathed out a sigh because her nerves were already frayed and her fears already amplified. It wasn't lost on her that Alice had sought her out for a reason: asking Claire if she remembered anything. It wasn't that she didn't want to remember her life before all of this, even if it wasn't what she hoped for despite low expectations. It was just that she wanted Alice to look at her and see someone other than a girl who she used to know who couldn't remember her or a damn thing.

But Alice wanted answers more than anything else. She cared enough to the point of getting answers and maybe saving some lives in the process and that was that. After that Claire would just be in the way, excess baggage, or they'd be on the road again until one of them was fated to fall behind. Claire would be the first to go. She had barely made it out alive before, why would next time be any different? She swallowed around the lump in her throat and nearly jumped as Alice's shadowed face appeared in the dirty mirror.

They looked good. Alice especially. Even underneath all the dirt and grime and wry, guarded remarks Alice still shone like a beacon, set to guide Claire to where she was meant to be or burn her out or even blind her. Still, Claire followed, fell into step beside her despite the hammering of panic in her chest, content in the faint beat of familiarity Alice exuded. Alice had her back, literally now, but she wouldn't turn away from Claire so easily, not since Claire suspected they had been through enough together.

A hand resting on Claire's shoulder then, slicing effortlessly through the nagging thoughts tumbling around her head. A hand that offered warmth and support. An Alice standing behind her that felt familiar and different - not different, more like altered - at the same time. Still, they only trusted each other as far as they could throw one another. Claire remembered learning that, in another lifetime.

No… they had been friends. Right?

Unless she was wrong, unless Alice had changed. Or Claire had. Still, Claire couldn't take the first step, couldn't assume when she didn't know where it would get her.

"We'll figure it out," Alice breathed against her neck. Claire couldn't even remember her leaning forward, neck tilted just the right way to catch the light from the torch dappled on her skin, though she could see it and dream it and taste the salty sweetness of sweat on her skin. Claire could remember the reflection of fire in her eyes and the ash in her hair, ash that coated her fingers as she rubbed the darkness off Claire's skin. She remembered the sharp cut of her own hand shielding her eyes from the sun filtering in through a window, big eyes blinking down at her through her fingers. The image faded like rain slanting down and washing it away, and Claire knew enough not to reach out for it.

It would never come back.

And then she did.

Alice had found her and set her free. Alice was keeping her alive even though it was setting her back, to find out what happened, Claire reminded herself. And maybe Alice cared too much, enough to get her killed one day, but one of those people she had cared about was Claire, and Claire knew all the way deep down where she was scared to look that she had cared too much too, for all the right reasons but all the reasons that would get her killed.

Claire desperately wanted to see that soft look that would always come unbidden to her mind, wanted to turn around and beg for it because Alice had so much hope and it seemed to come so naturally to her, and Claire knew she had that hope once too. She wanted to have it again for Alice, but Claire knew herself well enough that the old her, the one she was supposed to be, never would have acted like that or asked for anything period. She couldn't drive Alice up against a wall, couldn't go looking for things that probably weren't there.

Couldn't set them back any further than she already had.

Yet the soft curve of Alice's neck; the willing exposure of her throat as her head tilted up; her dark, beautiful hair that had grown out from its medium brown shaggy confines that she remembered so well, wanting to curl around her fingers… why were these the things she was recalling? And why couldn't she so easily ignore them?

She didn't tell Alice that she remembered, well, some of it anyway. All the wrong things. The same damn confusing images swirling around in her head, as if Alice had been the only one in her life. Or at least the only one that she had cared about, felt a deep connection to, and that was what Claire was terrified of even more than not ever regaining her other memories. She felt like she was betraying Alice every time she stole a glance, every time she saw Alice doing the same thing just out of the corner of her eye and chalking it up to desires and dreams distorting the real world. What the hell would she say? That she was fantasizing about Alice? For all Claire could remember she wasn't even into girls, yet she couldn't imagine that that her would have been so adverse to it either.

Life was short. This life was shorter. Alice had saved her, brought her back. She should be grateful and just leave it at that.

It still wasn't enough.

Still, Alice caught Claire's gaze in the mirror and her heart was in her eyes, every single little piece of it. Claire could feel her own heart beating like an erratic, reverberating drum in her throat, making the agony and impatience stretch into eternity. Her heart twisted and squeezed the short amount of air already in her; it robbed her of any ability to collect her thoughts.

She didn't even have to ask.

Alice's look grew softer, blanketing her. There was a warm fire in her eyes now, reflecting the torchlight, and her face, which was usually hard around the edges from the weight of the world on her shoulders, caved and melted into how Claire remembered her. There was noise behind the wall echoing, scrabbling as if something wanted to get at the two of them. Claire knew nothing ever could. Alice's fingers wrapped around her own, gently pulling Claire away from the mirror and leading her out of the bathroom. Warmth seemed to seep back into Claire's bones immediately as she followed. She trusted Alice more than anyone else in the world, even above the guy who was supposed to be her own brother.

It seemed too good an opportunity to pass up, that and her sense of self-preservation evaporated. "Did we…?" Claire stopped, half-formed words fluttering around in her mouth, begging for exit. Alice shot her a knowing look and they sat down on the floor, closer to the others but not too close. Claire didn't care, she just felt safe being around Alice. "What were we exactly?" She finished, in a rush, drawing in air discreetly as she drew her legs up against her chest and wrapped her arms around them.

Alice was close, knee brushing against Claire's leg, but not close enough.

It wasn't that Alice didn't want to answer her question; Claire could hear her thinking in the darkness, carefully forming her words. She immediately wished she could revoke the question, said in a moment of weakness. Better yet, scrap this whole night. Why the hell had Alice come to find her anyway?

"We were good," Alice responded, and Claire could feel her small smile in the dark shedding light and color and even gratitude. Even despite being given this, not for the first time she wished more than anything else that she could read Alice's thoughts. It was frustrating not knowing the exact words they had shared, how close they had been. Claire knew enough that nothing had come out of her infatuation, an intense fascination with everything pertaining to Alice that might not have even existed before, yet she also didn't know whether to take Alice's teasing as literal or just an outpouring of uncomfortable energy.

The tension between them sparked and crackled, sharp against Claire's skin like the sting of fire. It was a sharp reminder to rethink what she was trying to do, what could come of it, to confuse everything between them when confusing things got people killed. Would get them killed.

"Tell you what," Alice offered, soft, eerily familiar voice a balm against Claire's uncertainties and the heavy weight of encroaching panic. "Once we find Arcadia, we'll figure it out from there. I don't know when that'll be or how we'll get there, and I don't know if you'll remember me and if that will change things, but I promise you that no matter how many years it takes I will never forget tonight. I'm not leaving you, Claire."

Claire knew this, if she knew anything it was this. The words were etched into her skin, hell, even deeper, a scar on her soul. Alice would only leave her in death, and Alice would never die. Claire, on the other hand, could, and she had to remember. Remembering would put her and Alice on good terms again, would make everything seem normal and calm and close to perfect again. Yet there were some things she did remember, things she didn't have to lie about.

"I remember you."

Her hands framed Alice's face, pads of her fingers measuring the heat and softness of Alice's skin, carving it deep into her memory so it could never shred and drift away. Alice was still for such a long moment that Claire was sure she made the wrong move, one she couldn't shed lies to explain so easily, until Alice's hand settled where Claire's heart was all those layers down, beating heavier and harder in response, and the quirk of her mouth pressed against Claire's damp hair, inhaling her.

And then pressed against her own mouth. Slowly. Briefly. As if afraid she was making the wrong move too.

Claire smiled and cupped the back of Alice's neck. She could work just fine with slow.

She tilted her head until it was resting on Alice's shoulder, basking while she could in the heat emanating out from her skin and seeping steadily into Claire's own. She could smell the ash and feel the fire, her first memory since returning, fingernails bloody as she grasped onto it and held tight. Those fingernails scratched against Alice's arm ashamedly, like she was a wounded animal still desperate for reconnection, and Alice wrapped her arm around Claire's shoulders, chin resting on top of her head. "Easy," she murmured, and Claire relaxed boneless against her.

Everything would get back to normal, it was only a matter of time.

But until then, Alice could hold her up for a while.

FIN