a/n: ...i don't have much to say for this one. all i have to say is this movie really stuck with me in a very gnawing way long after watching it, and i wanted to write something that fit in with what we were given at the end.
there are vague allusions to violence that occurred in the source material, but nothing very graphic.
Even with the bright blaze of fire — a vomit of dizzying oranges and yellows and whites — the sky above eventually goes dark. Since driving, they've all remained seated quietly, to talk doesn't really seem right to Jason. Perhaps if this were some semblance of normal he'd inch closer to Mom as much as he could, tucked beneath his seatbelt, and rest his head on her shoulder as she drives.
But tonight is as far from normal as it could possibly be. The light plastic of Jason's mask digs into his skin (he thinks of the doppelganger whose features were mangled and distorted, staring back not accusingly but simply curious with blank, dark eyes) and when he looks at his mother, he's not entirely sure who it is he sees. He almost wants to tell himself that that couldn't have been his mother, clad in white stained dark brown with dried blood, sweat gleaming on her dark skin and eyes that would stare back at him with warmth now gone as empty as the mirror of him he'd seen. But that was his mother, Adelaide Wilson.
Dad and Zora have long since fallen asleep in the backseat, and he turns his head aside to glance out at the first stars that have started to come out. He thinks of when he was even younger, how he'd anxiously creep his way through the dark hallways when the neon letters of his alarm clock boasted three o'clock to alert his parents to the fact that he couldn't sleep — sometimes shadows that looked too much like monsters, other times nightmares that left his stomach uncontrollably twisting in knots. Mom was usually the one between the two of them who'd scoop him up into her arms and tell him that he was safe with her, that she'd stay with him even after he fell asleep to make sure he was okay. But all of that seems so terribly distant now, a small forgotten pebble standing solitary on a sandy beach.
Who are you? Jason wants to ask his mother. Was that you? Am I like you? Are you who you've told me you were?
He doesn't understand much of it beyond fragmented "maybe"s, and knowing the dismissiveness that grown-ups are so frequently capable of he isn't sure he ever will. But something in Jason tells him it's wiser, perhaps for tonight at the very least, to stay awake.