"ALMAAAAAAAAAA!"
The screams of her brother echoed in her head, and she fought the tears as it beat against the inside of her skull like a migraine. The loop had been closed and destroyed, and they were fully and truly gone, but it didn't cease the screaming in her head.
Myron and Call Bertram was dead, but their voices would never die inside Alma's head.
For so many years, Alma had been waiting for this moment. She had been waiting to experience the joy of finally being free of the guilt and shame tormenting her for everything they'd done, for every time they claimed it was her fault though she knew it'd been their own decisions.
Yet, now that the moment had come and gone, Alma couldn't feel the relief she'd been waiting for so long. She'd made up for her brother's sins, and yet,instead of happiness and relief, all she found inside her was pain and grief and, somewhere deep deep down within her very core, anger.
Anger, because they had dared to betray her, to kill her allies and to die for what they believed a greater goal and finally leaving her all alone.
Anger, because they'd been her only family, her only siblings, and despite how much she tried to despise them she could never let go of the love a sister always had for her brothers.
She'd spent her life wishing death upon those she loved, and now that the wish had been granted, she wanted no more than to reverse time and make it undone.
She wanted her family back.
"There should have been something I could have done…" She mumbled to herself, stumbling away from her Ymbryne sisters and her children who were trying to create some order in the midst of all the chaos, instead finding herself coming down to sit on a piece of debris from the collapsed tower. The piece of stone is cold and she shivers despite the warm weather.
She should help them, she knew. She should be watching over her children and helping her Ymbryne sisters organise everything, but she couldn't. Her limbs felt as heavy as Olive's lead shoes and she was shacking, curling up on the stone piece like a little lost child.
They were really dead. They'd been dead in her eyes for decades, but first now, they were truly dead.
First now did she realise she would never see them again.
With shaking hands, she opened her coat and took out the small square paper she always stored in the inner pocket of it. All her photos and papers had been lost when her loop collapsed, of course, including the picture of her class when she attended Miss Avocets academy, but she still had the photo in her pocket.
In the photo, were all of them, her and her brothers, the way they looked when they first arrived at the Academy, complete with coats and suitcases and everything.
Call is squeezing Alma's hand, staring coldly straight at the camera, while Alma's own gaze is diverted as she look down at Myron, who is clinging to her arm with his free hand.
In the background, younger versions of Miss Avocet and Miss Buntings is standing and smiling encouraging. They had been so happy to welcome Alma, and subsequently her brothers, to the academy.
They had no idea what was to come. If they had, they would probably have separated them at first chance, sending her brothers to live in a normal loop instead.
Maybe it would have been better for them if they had, so that they wouldn't be poisoned by ideas of that Ymbrynes believed themselves to be better than others.
When she was finished with her education, Alma could have gotten them from the other loop, and they could all have lived happily ever after with their sister and her charges.
"But instead they died." She refused to break down and cry. Though she was dimly aware that she was already breaking down, she still refused to cry. She wasn't a baby, or a child, it shouldn't have been that hard.
It wasn't like her brothers would be worth crying over anyway, not with all the sins they held responsibility for.
"Miss P? Are you alright? What are you doing over here, when everyone else is there?" Alma looked up from her photo, and she immediately noticed the pale boy with his tangled dark hair and tired eyes making his way over to her. There's a lot of debris in the way, and Alma suddenly wondered how she got there herself with her limping leg over the uneven terrain.
"I'm fine Mister...Enoch. I'm fine Enoch. Please go back to the others, and i will join you soon." As she say the words, and she tell her child not to worry about her, she can feel her facade cracking. Heavy tears is gathering in her eyes, drapping down her cheek and her chin and eventually landing in her lap, making wet marks on the dark fabric of her dress. "It will be alright."
She knows Enoch is too clever to buy her lies, and too loyal to leave her be and return to the rest of the Ymbrynes and the children as she asked him too. Still, she hopes that for once he won't be so damn stubborn, because she can't control herself and much less him, and all she really wants is to be left alone.
"Why are you crying Miss Peregrine?" He asks, neither moving closer nor further away from her, but rather just staying where he was. There was a curious, puzzled look on his face, like when he was trying to figure out the rubik's cube she gave Millard last christmas on his own. "Are you not happy that we won?"
His voice is monotone and emotionless as he start to slowly step towards her, but his eyes are not. It was always in his eyes. Looking into them, Alma could see what he was actually feeling, and right now she could see the he is concerned and perhaps angered by something. She want to help him, want to make him feel better, but she can't even keep herself together and much less figure out what got her child upset.
She wish he wouldn't be so stubborn and leave.
"I'm fine, Mister O'Connor. Go back to the others, I will join you soon." She try to make her voice stern and angry in order to convince him to leave, but instead she end up crying even more, voice cracking and tears streaming down her cheeks as the last of her dignity is washed away and she crumble like an old letter someone tossed in the trash bin.
"Is it the wights and the hollows?" Enoch asks, hands balling into fists as he look at her with his mesmerising dark eyes. They've become clouded by something dark and ugly, that Alma doesn't know how to name, but recognise all too well, and Alma wished her wouldn't be so bitter. He was so much more beautiful when he was happy and content "Did they hurt you?"
"I miss my brothers." She needed to say it, needed to be honest with both herself and her ward. He wanted to know the reason for her tears, and in that sentence it lay.
She wanted her family back.
"Your brothers? The evil men? You miss them?" The puzzled look is back on Enoch's face, and Alma immediately regret saying anything. For all his maturity, and for all the years he'd lived, he's still a child in heart and soul. Nothing more, nothing less. It was foolish of her to think he could understand.
"Yes. They were my only family." She is fighting tears again, desperately trying to hold herself together but feeling unable to as she look down at the photo still in her hands. The evil men, Enoch had called them, because that's what he knew them to be.
To him, they were nothing but a murderous psychopath and a treatise madman.
To her, they were a man who, despite his hate for them, protected his siblings, and a little boy who never wanted for nothing more than to see his sister and his brother to get along.
"I can see that. Even if they were insane, they were your brothers. I miss my family too." Enoch's unusually soft voice bring Alma out of her stupor, and suddenly she notice that he's sat down beside her on the piece of debris, his short legs barely reaching down to the ground. He always acted big and mature, but in truth he was so very very small, and it made Alma want to cry all over again without really knowing why.
"I think everyone does, don't they?" She answered, attempting a weak smile that doesn't quite reach her eyes. She didn't know Enoch missed his family, but it was hardly surprising, as they appeared to have been honest and hard- working people.
"Yeah...but that's why we got you." His face is concentrated, furrowed brows and lips pressed into a thin line as he looked at her right hand, the one that wasn't holding the photo. "You give us a new family. You become our new mother and we get lots of new siblings."
Carefully, almost as if he is scared she'll move it, Enoch reaches for Alma's hand, quickly grabbing it once he get a chance and holding onto it like a lifeline. She's too shocked to even reacted, never ever having been called a mom before, but somehow she get herself to smile at him, and he smile back.
It's lovely for her to see him suddenly being so open and vulnerable, daring to be affectionate and kind in a way he never was when others were watching, but it hurt her that he had been forced to watch her at her worst before he could open up his heart.
"My mentor...Miss Avocet… she once told me something, that I think about a lot. She said, 'once you become an Ymbryne, you never want to have children.'"
"Why?" Enoch is curious, confused, trying to understand where she was going with the story but simply not figuring it out. "It seems like a weird thing to say."
Alma smile, hoping Enoch would too when she was finished. "It's not weird at all. She said it because it's already don't want children, because you already have children. Your charges are your children, the only children you'll ever want and love."
"Well, I love having you as my mom. Your perfect. You always know what we need and help us. We love you. I love you." Quietly, Enoch lean into Alma's side, and she wrap her arms around him, silenced by the heartfelt confession from the boy.
It made her think, and it made her realise something that she thought to be very true. Her brothers had died, and she missed them, but she wasn't alone or abandoned. Not at all.
Because her brothers died, and they had been her last living relatives, she had felt like she didn't have a family anymore .
Only, it was a lie. Because she had a family.
She had her children, her girls and boys that she loved more than anything, and would go to such extreme lengths to try and protect. They, if anyone, were her real family. She had always known that, always been able to feel it in her heart.
And yet, in the midst of it all, it had slipped her mind, and she'd forgotten, crying tears over the fact that she was alone when she wasn't.
She was never going to be alone as long she as she had her children.