title: just like clockwork
a/n: i think this is the most difficult thing i've had to tackle in writing. i didn't expect it to turn out as it did, but, well... it did. i'm a sucker for complicated sibling relationships, so i tried to make this as complicated as possible. mostly told in ali's pov, because we all sort of know what happened to jason when she was gone. slightly angsty, i guess, but fluffy at times, too. not exactly canon-compliant, for jason's around after the time jump, and ali doesn't check herself in the mental institution.
summary: This is a story about a girl who was fearless, and a boy who was, too. / Let's rewind, and start from there, an hour at a time. —alison/jason, and how things change over time. [no incest!]
with every heartbeat i have left...
12.
Her fingernails are raked, and bloody, and her hands are rough in all the wrong places. It's two in the fucking morning, and she's out in the cemetery, a lovely November breeze prickling her skin. It's freezing her, it's freezing her, and she can feel the ice on the surface, but she doesn't care, for her tears are warming her up, piece by piece.
She's breathing into the air, and she's still crying. The ghost of her last breath lingers in the ghost of many last breaths before that, but she doesn't seem to be noticing anything, because her head's underwater, and every noise is so muffled she lets it pass by her within heartbeats.
She says the first words she's said since it happened—"I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I didn't mean anything to happen to you, and it wasn't your fault, and I wish, I wish..." And then she stops, because she's pretty sure she'll crumble into the thin, thin air if she even so utters another word.
She looks out into the darkness, and closes her eyes. "You and I both know it shouldn't have been you. I shouldn't have let you go to find her, to find Elliot, and... I'm sorry." She pauses. "You forgive me... right?"
It's a while until she speaks again.
Talking to a ghost has never been more difficult. "I love you, you know. You're my brother, and you're the bravest, most fearless person I've ever known. You're my brother, and I need you."
Lying to a ghost has never been more easy. She does love him, she really does, and he really is the bravest person she knows, but does she need him? She hasn't needed him for years, and it's a cliché, but you only know how much you need someone when they go. She doesn't know if she needs him: maybe she does, maybe she doesn't. And now, she needs to convert to past tense, because that's what Jason is now.
Her fingernails are raked, and bloody, and her hands are rough in all the wrong places. It's four in the fucking morning, and she's still out in the cemetery, a lovely November, on the brink of December, breeze prickling her skin. It's freezing her, it's freezing her, and she knows the ice has all melted, and the surface is all cracks, and nozzles, and that only signifies the fact that she's numb, and she can't feel anything anymore.
She's disappearing, piece by piece.
And then...
She disappeared, because he was no longer there.
11.
She's never going to be able to classify herself as a good person, because there are just some things that you can't be, because that's not who you are. Alison will never be nice, she may try, but she'll fail each time, because that's not who she is. Like Emily can't not be a good person, and Hanna can't not be a bitch (like her, but Hanna has a heart), and Aria can't not care, and Spencer can't not be smart. Mona can't not stop playing the game, and neither can Charlotte.
For her and Jason, it's pretty simple, a little like the colours of the rainbow, except more dull, and more lifeless, adding a few deaths and disappearances here and there. Alison can't not be a bad sister; Jason can't not be a bad brother. It's just how it is. And things like that don't ever change—make-believe is an option, pretending's always open, but never will it feel right, because there are just some things you can't be.
But now, Jason's lying in hospital after a run-in with her mother's alleged twin sister, and he's dying. He's dying, and what else can Alison do but tell him that he's going to be okay and everything else will be okay and she'll be okay and everyone will be okay and he'll be okay—
"Alison DiLaurentis?"
She cranes her head up as she sees a nurse, wearing that very expression, that obviously meant that very thing, and Alison doesn't want to know anymore. She sees Emily looking at her in concern, and she lets it all go down the drain; she sees Spencer (given that it was her brother, too) letting out a dry, raspy sob, and she lets that go drown, too; she sees Aria looking torn between crying, and getting up to comfort them, but that's followed down the same way; Hanna's already crying, Ali sees that, both from fear, and a hundred more emotions, but Ali ignores that. Ali's good at ignoring. She can't not ignore everything around her.
"Ali," says Emily from beside her.
"No," Ali says, and she covers her ears. "I said, no!"
She's never going to be able to classify herself as a person with an actual heart, because that's just who she is, and she'll do anything to change that, but
it's
too
late.
10.
Time's a grenade: it explodes all the time.
"I'll go," proclaims Jason, and he steals a glance at Ali, who shakes her head like a maniac. The others look hesitant, but all the same relieved that it's not them who has to go and find out what's true and what's false in the world. Spencer looks more reluctant than the rest, but she agrees, eventually. Alison is still shaking her head.
"Jason, you can't," frowns Alison.
"Ali, not now," he presses.
"What do you mean, not now?" Alison exclaims, a little exasperated. She doesn't care about any daggers digging into her soul, because she can't let Jason disappear. "How are you so sure that there will be a next time? This is our mother's twin—A—we're talking about!"
"Ali..."
"I'll go with you!" Alison blurts out, and the whole world stops.
Hanna and Caleb are stiff, and silent, as if saying something will mean the walls crumbling down; Aria and Ezra exchange forbidden looks, and Aria sends compassionate ones, unsure ones her way; Toby stands where he is, a bit like a toy soldier; Spencer seems torn. Alison is shouting and the whole world stops.
Jason frowns. "Ali—"
"You can't go," Alison sobs. "You're my brother." Pause. "What if you die?"
He doesn't answer. He squeezes her hand, still wordless, and then walks away. (This is their last interaction.)
Time's a grenade: it's already ticking.
9.
"I wish the world wasn't so messed up, you know," Alison quips up as he pours her coffee, and she plays with her pancakes, making funny faces with the cream and kiwi. He stops, she stops, and they look into each other's eyes, a green contrasting with a blue, fire playing with rain. "It's confusing. The world. And it's not just the big things, it's the little ones, too."
"I know," Jason nods. "But it will be over soon."
"No, it won't," Ali says miserably. "And you know it."
Ali isn't stupid, but she isn't exceedingly smart, either. Looks, like words, have double meanings, and Jason's look ties in one of those, something screaming I know I know I know, and another screaming the same, but with darkness looming over with a double-locked keyhole.
"Do you think Mom would be proud of us?" Ali asks, her fork half-way up to her mouth.
Jason looks at her, and props up an eyebrow. "Why would you say that?"
"Well," starts Alison. "We haven't had a fight since... last Tuesday."
Jason smirks, and takes a seat, placing the kettle back on the counter. "Ali, your face looks wonky, and your hair's terribly out of place, and... and is that a black tooth I see?"
8.
He resembles a skeleton. His face is so worn-out he looks like twenty-seven going on to forty, and to Ali, it hurts. He is still very much Jason, and he's still that guy, her brother, her brother, but something's changed, and Ali hates it.
This is the first time she's seen her brother in almost four years and she hates it—moreover the fact that it really has been fifteen hundred days, and things were left incomplete, unfinished, and she missed him. But she also hates it because he's changed so much, and it's like a mother watching a child grow up, and that hurts, too.
"Hello there, stranger," Ali hears Jason say.
Alison doesn't have much time to think, and jumps at him, wrapping her arms around him, holding him tight as if letting him go would mean being hurled down into a pit six feet under.
"Hello there, stranger right back," Ali grins. "I'm glad you came. How was travelling the world?"
Jason winces. "Pretty crappy. I'm... I'm glad I'm back."
"Jason," Ali presses on. "I know you. You're a terrible liar—just tell me if you're uncomfortable about lying about... Charlotte. I know it was a pretty shallow thing to do... ask, but..."
"Charlotte's my sister, too," Jason says. "She doesn't threaten me, not in any way. She deserves a home, and I believe that. You're not making me lie, Alison, I swear." He pauses, and a smile reaches his lips. "And I'm a great liar, thank you very much!"
"See? Liar!" Alison scoffs, and she takes her brother's arm.
His arms no longer have that muscular sense it did years back: he really is different. He's a skeleton, but Ali's going to make sure that he'll make it out.
7.
She vaguely recalls something someone told her about how the truth made the world crash all its weight down on your back once it was out. Or maybe it was just her mind speaking out, something she hasn't let happen since she first started to run.
Her heart beats out of her chest, and her head pounds as if it will burst, and she's stuck in that wretched hospital room, waiting for him—both Jason and her father—to be discharged.
The door, it finally opens, and once she can see a hide of Jason's dirty-blonde hair, she rushes towards him and envelops him with her arms; her scent. He winces as she puts her weight on his shoulders, but all the same, she knows he is smiling, and no, it isn't perfect, but it is a start. A start. Of something.
"Hi, Princess," Jason smiles.
"Hey," Ali says, and both her and Jason watch as Kenneth DiLaurentis emerges, and walks to the exit—he's running, they know it. They both tried running before, and that only caused them to run right back, like Ali from A, and Jason also from A, and now their father, once again, from A.
Jason stays with Ali—she asks him every day if he's okay with that, and the answers are always the same, that hesitance, and reluctance, but ultimately, with that same tone of voice, "Y-yes". It will be a long time until the scars finally fade, and a long time until the cuts are covered, and every time, yes, it does hurt, like salt meeting wound, but it's okay, in the end. (Just about.)
Three hundred and forty-seven days later, he leaves. He tells her, "Yes, we'll meet again, Alison, I don't think I can go out without seeing you for..." He stops there, because in technical terms, yes, he has. Once before. "It's only temporary."
Ali sees him off, and tries so hard to keep her tears within her eyes, and she tries to forget what it's been like, even for just a year, to have a brother who cared. But she's Ali, and he's Jason, and siblings or not, they just can't help neglecting.
(They say you only know so much from experience.)
Ali cries for eight days straight.
She knows it's only temporary, because she knows she can mark his words, and above all, she knows that even if the truth pours out like insidious tar, and even if the world crumbles down on them like chess pawns, and armour, they'll still make it out, barely scathed. They're only swimming, and not drowning. They're just caught in the landslide, and that's all.
On the ninth day, she opens the curtains, and breathes in the fresh air of Rosewood.
6.
The DiLaurentis family has a history of forgetting people exist. It's the way they roll, it is, and it can't really be helped if it runs through the blood. Alison forgets people exist; Jason does; Kenneth and Jessica do, too. But it's in their bloodstream right from the start, and it's the way they roll, and the only way they'll roll.
Alison tugs on the tiny threads from her pink cashmere sweater. Her hair lands in blonde curls around her, and her jeans feel a little too baggy. Her shoes are all clodded up and wrong, and she takes a seat on that front porch, the same one she was raised upon, thinking about how it feels... strange. It doesn't bring back the same memories as before.
She cranes her head up, and sees Jason already against the bannister. His eyes are closed, his face a little weary, and he's shivering.
"You haven't asked me a lot of questions," Alison remarks, and he looks down at her.
"Well... I thought you might need your space," he returns.
Ali knows that look—she has that look. The look of concealment, because you don't want the person you are talking about to know how you are feeling. It is the look that makes her wonder if Jason really did miss her, as a person, not a figurine. As a sister, not a dark detail.
Alison has a lot to ask him, about which soccer team won each final, about school, about playing the piano. Alison has a lot to say to him—namely, one.
I'm sorry, Jason. I'm sorry that you had to go through so much shit because of me, she wants to say, she wants to shout, she wants to scream, And it's my fault... But forgive me. Please. I want to be your sister, your normal sister. Can't we have that?
Instead, she gives him a smug look, and tilts her head at a lopsided angle. "What was Mom's reaction when she found out I was alive?"
Jason looks at her disbelievingly, and that look is almost gone. "What do you think? She was surprised?"
And you'd be surprised, too, if you found out what our mom was capable of, Alison wants to say, wants to shout, wants to scream.
"Ali, go inside," Jason says. "The police will hound you in like dog-hunters."
Ali doesn't budge, and tries to stop her eyes tearing up. Jason, I tried, I tried to forget. I wanted to give up. I wanted to stop running. I wanted help, but I was too scared. Can you forgive me?
He sighs, "Alison, please." His voice is of such desperation she almost doesn't recognise him. His look is of such sincerity he doesn't look like Jason. "Ali."
I can't I can't I can't Ican'tIcan'tIcan't—
"Suit yourself," shrugs Jason, and his voice is wobbly, something she barely notices.
Alison watches him go, her head filled with echoes. She looks as he shivers again as he reaches the table, and she looks as he pinches the bridge of his nose, taking in deep breaths.
She looks at him. She looks through him. She looks into him. Can I trust you?
5.
Chess is a pretty stupid game, and it makes barely any sense. The pawns, always at the front, even if they were to crumble into feathers and nothingness anyway. The rooks, acting like guards, and castle walls, with the bishops, and its sermons, and its killings. The knight, gallant in all, yet its stupidity reigning over at each strike. The queen, the beauty, and the beast. The king, the most powerful, yet the most fragile.
Alison knows where she stands, and she knows where everyone else does, too. But sometimes, just sometimes, there are people who make her want to switch players, because she realises that you can't be one thing without not being the other. They come in a package, whether you like it or not.
Alison pulls the hood of her red coat over head, and walks into Room 33. She's been here before—after leaving town (for good), she'd had half a mind to come back, and visit him, here, at the rehabilitation centre. Her cowardice got the better of her, and yet she's positive she's not her anymore, she's frightened of what is yet to come. She smells the familiar smell of alcohol, and hears the familiar sound of screaming.
He could have died. Jason—her brother—almost died. She may not be A, but whatever it is, she feels the blood trickling down her slightly gnarled hands—it feels like fire under her fingertips. It feels like it's
all
her
fault.
(It has to be, doesn't it?)
But however heavy-hearted she may be, Ali enters Room 33.
He is peaceful in his slumber, she declares, and even if he's five years older than her, she still sees him as a baby, as a child. As a person who knows nothing but its weakness.
"I'm glad you're safe," she murmurs into the darkness. Ali knows very well that he'll wake up, because he's not a deep sleeper, and he's scared of the dark. He'll wake up, and she'll have to tell him the lies that caused this. "I really, really am."
Cue: Jason wakes up, and he turns his head, eyeing her in sheer perplexity. She knows what will happen next, just like moves in a chess game, and she knows what she has to say to win, or even to lose. (Maybe she's already done both.)
"I'm proud of you," Alison smooths down his hair, and blinks back the painful tears. "I'm glad you got your shit back together and became the Jason I knew was still there." She lets his fingers glide over her face, and she lets his fingers run through her locks. She closes her eyes, because this is the first time he's acted like he's actually missed her.
"Is this a dream?" Jason asks, still dazed.
Alison pauses—she wants to tell him. She wants to tell him about everything that happened, everything she was running from, everything that had made him fall into old patterns, into rehab, with near to no support.
"Yes, Jason, it is a dream," Alison smiles weakly—it's different to visiting the other girls. She wants Jason to know, because she wants him to stand there, protect her, unlike the girls, who need protecting themselves. She wants Jason to be Jason, her brother, her best friend.
He blinks a few times.
"Get some sleep," Ali says smoothly, and lets him rest back into his pillow. Once she is sure that he is fully asleep, she leans in and kisses his forehead, brushing his hair back. She whispers, "I will be back soon, Jason. But there are many things I have to meet first."
She looks around the stripped walls, and sees a picture poking from his backpack. She knows what's on the picture, and doesn't pick it up, because if she does, she'll lose herself, and go spiralling into some vortex.
Instead, determined to win, Ali turns, and places a white king on his bedside table.
4.
Jason, I see you.
Jason, peek-a-boo!
Jason, turn around.
Jason, can't you see me, too?
It loops around in circles, and goes past in an incandescent flash. It's colourful, and then it's as dull as dull can be. It's beautiful, and then ugly. It's a rainbow, and then it's a rabbit hole. It's everything, and then it's nothing.
Ali watches from behind the trees, with the slight rustle rustle being her only company. She watches through the corner of her eye as Jason sits there. On a bench. Alone.
She watches, still, as Aria approaches him, in a black dress (figures—a funeral). She sits down beside him, and Jason gives her the weakest of smiles, and they begin to talk. Alison watches, because watching is all she can do.
(She could breathe, with a simple inhale, then an exhale, but her breath is somewhere between unuttered words—letters all in a jumble, in an apology. An apology miles away from her soul.)
She hopes.
Jason, turn around.
"...Did she ever?" Aria asks, and both Ali and Jason look up.
"Nah, she was too smart for that. Even as a kid," Jason sighs, and looks tempted to laugh. Ali can hear the truth, hear the purity of his words, but she doesn't want to believe that Jason resents her to this day. "She was fearless when she needed to be."
Jason, can't you see?
You're fearless.
You made me fearless.
That night, as she hides away again, and that night, when she can finally breathe, she hums into the darkness.
"I'm sorry, Jason."
The silence is deafening her. Science runs backwards, and the stars; they are screaming, they are wailing.
"I can't do it," Alison says, her eyes darkening. "You're stronger than me, Jason. You always have been." An she's alone, and yet her insides, they are begging, pleading for her to just say, "Come find me! I'm here, and I need you! Please!"
3.
"I need to say goodbye to someone," Alison urges as she gets into Mona's car, in a frenzy to hide away. A's still after her, she isn't safe, but she needs to see someone, because it's more important than any of the above put together. "Please, Mona."
Mona contemplates, and then sighs, "The girls? Wouldn't it be more safe not to? If you really want to get—"
"No, Mona," snaps Ali. "I have to. Before the sun comes up."
Mona groans, but grudgingly agrees, and drives to where Ali instructs. As Alison opens the car door, her hair well hidden behind her Vivian wig, Mona grabs her hand.
"Every person has two sides to their soul, Alison," Mona tells her, with a look on her face that screams Mr Hyde. "Remember that."
Alison shrugs it off, and runs to the house, her house, and begins to wonder if her mother still thinks she's buried beneath the earth. The even so thought brings an unwelcoming shiver to her spine, but she slithers up the black pipe anyway, to Jason's room window.
"Jason? Jason?" Ali calls, as she jumps into the room. "Are you in here?"
She's too young to be on the run—she's barely fifteen. She's young, way too young to be saying goodbyes to people she loves—what's the "good" in goodbye, anyway?
"Alison! Hurry up!"
He's not there, and soon she won't be, too. She jumps down the pipe, knowing that their fight over the green ravioli yesterday will be the last time she'll ever see him.
2.
There is that saying—sharing is caring. Alison can scoff at that, like the way she scoffs at every cookie Hefty eats, like the way she scoffs at every cigarette Jason smokes. Sharing is just another word for "greed", and greed overpowers all, because it's this... monster.
Jason is her brother, and hers only. She can't share him with anybody. He is hers, and hers alone—he can't be Spencer's, prim, immaculate Spencer, and he can't be Melissa's, the Satan's spawn, perfectly imperfect in her wake.
The moment she finds out, she starts to sob. They start off as small dry calls, tiny messages telling herself that she's slowly falling apart. They escalate to fist-clenching, and pillow-kicking, because the thought, the concept, it's reached her fully, reminding her that she's already fallen apart.
Betrayal is worth than quite possibly anything else in the world—death is less painful. Betrayal signifies someone you care about turning into someone you don't; someone you trust turning into someone you can't.
And yet it's not quite betrayal at all.
Alison is just... she's just confused. And for a girl like her, so perfectly steady on the many facets of life; for a girl like her, so knowing of her actions, it has to be impossible.
(But maybe she is not that girl at all.)
"Whoever it is you're seeing, secretly or not, if you barge down the door at four in the fucking morning again, Dad's going to skin you alive," Jason says, in a voice that could signify a warning sign, yet has almost no emotion laced in at all. He looks like he would be able to care about her, and her well-being, once upon a time, but he's drunk, and high, and obviously hates her a little too much. He sighs, turns away, and Alison can only just about make out his next few words—"I knew I shouldn't have let CeCe near her."
"Dad won't care," Alison says indignantly. Maybe, if she was that strong girl she was before, it would sound more venomous, and perhaps Jason would roll his eyes, and walk off, but that is not who she is anymore, and the words are all dry, and wrong on her tongue.
He's not your dad. He's not your dad. He's only mine, and you're only my half-brother.
Jason laughs, and turns around. "You don't fool me anymore."
When he walks off, Ali can only think of one thing—Jason really understands her more than anyone else in the world.
She avoids him like the plague after that. It's easier that way.
1.
It used to be so easy. A little like a pale blue sky, so placid, so beautiful, with the sweet, sweet pearly white swirls coalescing with that blue to make it somewhat lighter. It was a mix of perfect, and perfect. It was nothing more than that—perfection. They were perfect; they were okay.
Jason used to give her piggy-bank rides over the old blue lake that reflected this oil painting, over the slightly wobbly bridge, and over the "blinking fish" (it's something Jason told her when he was in seventh grade). Jason used to complete jigsaw puzzles with her, and Jason used to play chess with her (and he always took the white side, of course, of course). Jason used to cook pancakes for her, placing the kiwi right in the middle, making them look like eyes, while squirting the cream to make a mouth, and a mono-brow. Jason used to play this "pretending" game with her—it looks like lies were their life-blood. Alison was a good liar, and so was Jason.
Jason used to agree with her; agree on everything.
They have their first fight over something that is so useless Ali decides to name it ridicule.
It's over the piano, the stupid, fucking piano, but that's only the first, with more to follow, tumbling after like dominoes and jenga bricks. It's about the television, and then about books, and then about ski goggles, and then about who the fattest teacher at school is. Years pass, and then it's about drugs, and alcohol, and substance, and everything else that gets in their way.
The simplicity turned into complexity. Inky black replaced pearly white. Darkness replaced light. Words turned to daggers. Hearts turned to stone.
And yet it's the fights that make them who they are. It's the fights that define them so clearly they shine upon the stars. It's all black-and-white, but it's still beautiful.
a/n: ...and this is why they are my favourite siblings in the show. aria and mike care for each other—they have from the very beginning. melissa and spencer, too. spencer's very unlike ali, and she shows her care openly. alison and jason slip past each other, and they support each other without knowing it. they love each other, just in a different way.