AN: This fic is complete, please don't ask for updates. Thanks!
-Out of Time-
/
He's making a poor attempt at whistling as he dices up onions to add to the frying pan sizzling on the stove, when he hears the key turning in the lock. The door opens, slams closed almost immediately, and he waits for the footsteps down the hallway but they don't come, so Jérémie walks out through the kitchen to meet her.
"Aelita, you're home early-" he says cheerfully, but then stops dead when he sees her, her back pressed against the front door like a barricade, eyes glazed over.
Her face is chalk white.
"Aelita? What's wrong?"
She leaps up, whips her head around and sees him, but she stares right through him as though he isn't there. She opens her mouth and her hands curl into fists at her sides. She doesn't say anything.
Jérémie is panicking now, palms sweating, heart hammering against his ribs. He walks towards her, slowly, and his eyes run the length of her body; she seems unharmed, so what...?
An accident, someone's died, she's dying, oh god no...
The possibilities grow more monstrous with each passing second as they turn themselves over in his mind, and in this stretch of time fraught with tortured 'what ifs' he can't stand it, until she turns to him and says-
"Jérémie, they know."
He puts a hand on the wall to steady himself.
No.
"Shit," he says. "Wha- How?"
How can they know? Someone's told? No, they wouldn't... an error somewhere, something we've forgotten, but what...
Aelita shakes her head. Jérémie's gaze drifts to the hallway around them. This peaceful haven of domesticity that is their first house together is filled with so much of themselves and their lives, their safe and comfortable lives that have been irreversibly shattered in this small moment; he takes in photographs, ornaments, a pink umbrella, flowers on a table near the coat rack, and it all stands unwavering beneath his scrutiny, mocking him, telling him that they knew this day would come, the day they've lived in fear of for all this time.
Aelita tries to speak, finds her mouth too dry. Flicks her tongue over her lips and tries again.
"I don't know, Jérémie. I tried to take some money out of the bank but my account was frozen; I-I tried to ask someone about it, but when they looked me up on the system-" her voice breaks and one dry sob escapes her. Jérémie reaches out for her but she stands stiffly in his arms.
"And then they were asking for identification, and I heard them talking. A huge red flag, under investigation, I don't know how but they knew, someone somewhere, everything's gone... they told me to wait right there, but I heard police sirens and I panicked, I... shit, shit, Jérémie, what do I do?"
He's asking himself the same question but it races uselessly around a mind numbed with fear, and no answer will come to him.
He looks down at his hands. They're shaking.
Aelita is shaking too, on the verge of crying but only able to choke out dry sobs as panic renders her breath in short, shallow gasps. They stand for an eternity that is a few minutes, his arms around her with his glasses askew, her forehead damp with cold sweat and her hands clenching and unclenching at her sides, nails cutting open her palms in tiny crescent moons.
Aelita seems to realise suddenly that time hasn't stopped for them; she jerks away, the movement bringing Jérémie, too, to his senses.
"Okay," he says as he fights to keep his voice calm. His hands are planted firmly on her shoulders and he stares into her eyes, drinks her in, holds this crisp and clear in his memory, just in case. "Go upstairs. Pack a bag."
She nods, eyes sliding to a spot somewhere over Jérémie's shoulder. Vaguely, his nostrils prickle with the smell of burning.
"Just necessities," Jérémie continues, "Clothes and cash, and anything you might have written down about Lyoko – old diaries, notes on the supercomputer, we'll find somewhere to get rid of it, burn it, but for now just don't leave it in the house. Got it?"
Aelita murmurs assent.
"Right. Go." Jérémie releases her, pushing her gently away. Aelita springs to life, taking the stairs two at a time, not looking back. Only when he hears the frantic slamming of cupboard doors does Jérémie cross to the kitchen, where he fights through opaque grey smoke to turn off the stove. He coughs painfully as he dumps the frying pan, charred contents and all, into the sink.
No point opening the windows, and where's the smoke alarm? But none of this matters, so little matters now, so he closes the door behind him and moves to the living room, breathing deeply, focusing, planning.
In a strange fog of calm Jérémie opens the first drawer, sweeps out its contents, drops their passports and a handful of euros into a plastic bag. Moving onto the second, he begins rifling through it and snatches up his address book. He hesitates for a second before pocketing it.
No sense making it easy for them.
As he moves quickly and methodically through the room, scraping it clean of any factual evidence of their lives, Jérémie's senses are on high alert. He jumps with the sound of every car passing by, every footstep and voice on the street outside. He thinks he might vomit, and his knees are weak – he actually stumbles as he makes to stand up – but he forces it all down. He forces himself to be strong, because if he begins to unravel at the seams then Aelita surely will.
The questions start up again, a rousing chorus in his brain, despairing, until he wants to slam his hands over his ears to block them out. Where did they go wrong? How did anyone find out? But he knows, deep down, that it was never too implausible, that they weren't always as careful as they could have been, covering the cracks in Aelita's story haphazardly in the hope that nothing would stir them into splitting open.
And they had relied too much on external sources. Odd's parents, for one, unwitting accomplices... Jérémie recalls summers, bright and vivid, spent at Odd's house; Mrs Della Robbia's beaming face as she hands out ice creams and glasses of lemonade, and a knot of guilt twists horribly in his stomach.
Jérémie is afraid for Aelita, god he's afraid, but selfishly it's another thought that settles as a heavy block of ice in his stomach and turns his throat dry.
What will happen to him?
Memories of his own self flood him, thirteen years old, grinning broadly at his own damned cleverness, and he almost wants to punch that younger self in the face.
"One new false identity, coming up! … Oh, don't worry about funds Aelita. I've made a couple of tweaks... it's only temporarily, we'll pay it all back... It's for a good cause, so it doesn't matter too much right?"
And of course it was necessary, but... he realises he's staring into space, realises too that he's standing across from the living room window with its curtains flung wide, and the sunlight streaming in may as well be headlights to a helpless rabbit, because he's rooted to the spot, eyeing the silver car that approaches purposefully from the top of the road.
"Jérémie!"
Aelita stands in the doorway, chest heaving with the effort of carrying two bulging bags down the stairs. Twin laptop cases strain the taut muscles of her shoulders.
"We have to go," Jérémie whispers, and she whimpers almost soundlessly, makes to grasp his hand before she realises that both of her own are full.
There is still time, not much but a little, and in between planning where they'll go and what they'll do if they manage this escape (please let us get away, let her get away, let me get away), Jérémie strains mentally for alibis, guessing ahead at the questions they'll ask that neither of them can answer, and how much evidence do they have? How, how were they so unprepared for this?
His mobile phone is in his pocket. As he registers this thought, he sees that Aelita has set the bags on the floor and taken out her own, clasping it protectively in both hands like a charm. Jérémie catches her eye and knows what she knows – these are no use now. With suspicious identities comes frozen bank accounts and tracked phone calls... yet, he so badly wants to phone the others, Yumi, Ulrich, Odd and even William, to explain, say one last goodbye, but it's a risk they can't take, to further implement their friends in this.
He picks up the bags from the floor, feeling Aelita's gaze on him.
All he wants to do, really, is wrap his arms around her, breathe her in, tell her thank you for everything, just in case, but there's no time for any of this so he brushes his forehead against hers and lightly kisses her lips. She closes her eyes; he knows she's willing herself away for a moment, to a place where this hasn't happened yet, where there are a million more moments left, and he lets her have that one tiny reprieve, before he says,
"Aelita,"
And she opens her eyes, steels herself, reaches for the door.