disclaimer: disclaimed.
dedication: hey, y'all p cool. have at 'er.
notes: am i a gross sap who believes that love conquers all? yes
title: winter hymns
summary: Alex, stumbling through the time-stream. — Alex/Jonas.
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As for me, I'm—
[—pause; wait, wait. shouldn't this be a rewind? where's the rewind?]
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Alex isn't surprised when the world blots out and she's all alone.
The jangling tune isn't Jonas' mom.
It never was. It never is. It never will be.
But it makes him happy, and there have been so many lives where they've lain side-by-side staring at the night sky and he says, I know it wasn't her but… thanks, and even though it's shitty and wrong and awful, it's all Alex can give him. She's not all the way—not all the way in the world, sometimes, is Alex. And maybe it's just a product of slipping through time or being outside it or whatever her relationship is with time as a construct, but even before the first reset (even before Michael died, really, but that's not something she wants to think about too hard because it scrunches all her insides up), there was… something.
She's just different, maybe.
Alex wanders through air thick and black as ink. Breathing it is hard like her lungs can't quite—can't quite figure out what they're supposed to do with it. It's dead space, not quite oxygen and not quite not oxygen, which isn't really a thing that should make sense but what actually makes sense, anymore? She's lived a hundred years, and she's still only seventeen. She's always only seventeen.
(Being seventeen forever is the actual worst. Alex needs to find some chill, seriously, this is not a young adult novel and jesus, she really hopes that eventually she's going to grow up.)
"Okay, I give up, you win, let's talk," Alex says into the darkness
Giving up? Already? That's new, not-Clarissa says. The body hangs suspended in midair, arms crossed over it's chest. The world coalesces into being like this: ground first in blocky shocky black, old-blood sky, crimson lamps for eyes. The ghosts hover, and they wait.
"Yeah, well, a lot of things are new this time around," Alex mutters. She drops her head back to look up at them. "Are you going to keep resetting this every single I kiss anyone?"
Mm, probably? they say, but it comes out sound like a question. We don't control everything, you know.
"Sure feels like it," Alex says. She pulls the radio out of her pocket, turns it on and fiddles with the dial. Not to the frequency that'll end this, but just—something. Looking for something dumb to do.
Wait, the ghosts say.
It's not like she really has a choice, though, is it.
Alex waits.
They build him out of stardust and leftover tape recorders, dandelion fluff and hot summer nights. Bones out of broken bed frames, muscles out of wire, stretched canvas for skin. They build him out of memories and cigarette smoke and when they're finished, when they're finished they set him in front of her with a flourish, with a wide smile and sparkplugs for eyes and god, god, it's Jonas but it's not Jonas even a little bit.
Maggie had thought that the Kanaloa officers had regressed into something like childhood. It's in the games, the scratchy old fifties propaganda, the flickers of little boys kissing little girls. And now there's this, a boy built wrong for a girl built broken, and they're still trying to find ways to play.
Well, she wasn't wrong.
What, they say, don't you like him?
"Seriously?" Alex asks. She stares at the starshine boy with his canvas skin. She thinks that if she touches him, he'll fall apart. "Like are you—are you even kidding me, right now. What is wrong with you? Put this back!"
We can't, pause, unmake.
Unmaking does not come naturally to the ghosts. Unmaking requires forethought. Unmaking requires finesse. They built this boy and offered him up to her like a sacrifice, like all the sacrifices. Four people in a car underwater or the Kanaloa's hungry reactors or Clarissa herself.
All of them part of the long and glorious history.
Alex breathes out, and the star boy blows away.
"Yeah, I didn't think so," she tells them. "Try it again."
The ghosts sigh, ninety-seven voices layered over one another. Eighty-five officers and twelve passengers died when the Kanaloa exploded, but sometimes it seems like so many more than that. Sometimes it seems like thousands, the thunder of all those minds compressed into one body so loud that it shakes through her bones.
Space-time wrenches.
It screams through her skull, fourteen billion years of pressure and hunger and want, the need to devour so intense it's painful. Alex grinds her teeth, riding it out, because it'll be over soon, it has to be over soon. What more can they do, except this? They watched the birth of the universe and they want Alex to see it too, but a little less than fourteen billion years is a lot of years to carry.
The tear closes, and time reels in on itself like a too-stretched rubber band. Snap!
Here, the ghosts say, god. Demanding, much.
"Don't do the slang thing, okay, you're not good at it," Alex tells them, and catches the body they shove at her. It's Jonas because of course it's Jonas, real Jonas, skin-and-sinew-and-bone Jonas. She catches him on the comedown, letting the earth rock them both back to sleep. He's warm. Breathing, at least.
"Stupid," she says, achingly fond. "I still hate your hat. C'mon, wake up, this is really not the time to be sleeping on the job. Garbage snowmen have lives too, okay?"
Alex can't say she's super surprised when she doesn't get a response.
She also can't say she's super surprised when the ghosts yank Jonas back, reeling him in. He's a puppet with cut strings, so pale against the carmine sky, so completely dead to the world. It's a disaster, this whole thing is a disaster, and god, she's just so tired.
"Okay," Alex says. "You made your point. Masters of the universe, whatever, I don't care! Can you please stop floating my friends and throwing them out of windows and things? We are way past enough here, I mean it."
Not just friends, though, are you. Not with him, anyway.
"Oh my god," she says, rolls her eyes so hard she thinks they might fall out of their sockets. "Will you please leave him out of this? This is not even about him! It was never even about him!"
So what is it about, ask the ghosts. Clarissa's body is tall, long thin lines, and they use her long thin fingers to tip Jonas' chin up, tilt his head back and forth to study. He's pretty, they say, if you like guys with big shoulders. You do, though, so I guess… What was it Ren called him, dear? A strapping young lad?
"I don't know what it's about, but it's not about Jonas," Alex says tightly. She grips the frayed cuffs of Michael's jacket, tries very hard not to scream GET YOUR HANDS OFF HIM, because that's just—that's just not helpful, okay. It's just not. "Isn't it enough that I keep coming back? That I don't just… isn't it enough?"
No, they say, shaking Clarissa's head. It's not.
Alex remembers: the cave, the graffiti, the man and the dog or lack thereof. The armoire. The triangle. The Source. Because it's scary!
And it is scary.
It is.
That great big black chasm of nothingness, it's scary. The end is scary. Being dead is scary and being alone is scary and being eaten alive is scary, too. The way that Jonas looked at her, such soft eyes, such a soft mouth, that's scary. The whole world is scary, and it doesn't—it doesn't end. Things never really stop being scary.
"I get it," Alex says. "I get that it's scary."
No, you don't, they say.
"I do, though," she tells them. Her chest burns with the things she's been too scared to say since the beginning, but they're all she's got left. Nothing left but the truth. Inhale. Exhale. "I'm scared that this is never gonna end. I'm scared that I'm gonna be stuck coming back to this stupid island over and over again for the rest of linear time! I'm scared that—"
They wait for her to finish the sentence. When she doesn't, they tilt their head. Scared that what?
"Don't be stupid. You already know."
Say it, Alex.
Alex sighs. "I'm scared that I'm never going to grow up."
That's not fair, the ghosts say, and she thinks that they might actually flinch.
"What's fair, anyway?" she throws back at them, and the words come, then, spilling out of that deep dark sticky place inside of her chest where she keeps her brother's smile. "You got to grow up! All of you, you had families and—and kids! You got to grow up! And you died, I know, and they lied about it, and that was wrong. But like, what do you expect? I'm still a kid!"
We gave you Michael back!
"And you keep taking him away!"
The ghosts go very still, and so does Alex. They look at each other, the ghosts out of Clarissa and Alex out of Alex, and for a very long time, no one says anything at all.
You know, they say, soft and strange and recalcitrant, we were always here.
"What does this have to do with anything?"
Shut up and listen, we're teaching you something, the ghosts scold. Even before the Kanaloa, there was something here. Not us. Also us. Kind of both?
"Again," Alex says, "what does this have to do with anything?"
The island doesn't keep us here. Nothing does. We're just part of a long and glorious history.
"And you don't want to be forgotten. I know," Alex says. She has to work not to roll her eyes. It's not like this is anything she hasn't heard before. The blast door is behind her like a tear in the world. The blast door is always behind her like a tear in the world. Escape, damnation, a new beginning all over.
But she's not leaving Clarissa. Michael would never forgive her.
Would you? they ask.
"Would I what?" Alex asks.
Forget.
"Oh, forget the worst night of my life, relived so many times I can't even count them anymore? Absolutely, I won't think about it ever again," Alex says, sarcasm thick on her tongue, and this time she does roll her eyes. "Come on, I can't stop thinking about you for five minutes. I couldn't forget even if I wanted to."
Not-Clarissa tilts their head. Do you love him? Jonas?
"Didn't I tell you to leave him out of it?!"
It's just a question! Do you love him?
"I don't know. Maybe."
We remember love. Love's nice, and it echoes, breaking up into static: love's nice, love's nice, love's nice. It bounces off the cave walls, repeating into infinity. Love's nice. Salt on the breeze, the island in the sunshine, a girl in a floppy hat staring out to sea. Bent over backwards and laughing into a mouth, sticky handprints on the wall, two sets of shoes. Maggie's dress, tugging on the skirt, ice cold beer against overheated skin—
Yeah. Love's nice.
"So are we going to do this again? Or like what, man?" Alex asks. She runs a hand through her bangs, and it comes away a little bit teal. Too much dye, last time. Maybe she'll go back to brown after this. The teal is getting kind of old.
You know the rules, the ghosts say. They sound tired of saying it.
Alex is pretty tired of hearing it, too.
But god, something's got to give.
"Yeah," Alex says. "But I don't want to play anymore. Okay? I don't want to play!"
That's not a choice you get to make.
It scratches out, then, the words crackling and it's not not-Clarissa or not-Jonas or not-anyone. Just the ghosts over the radio with their gaping mouths and empty eyes, grasping fingers sneaking into all the cricks and crevices of Alex's brain, searching for purchase in the swirling depths of her chest. It's a little like a dentist's appointment, invasive prickles against her gums, tongue too thick, can't breathe around the acrid fake cherry of anesthesia. Cherry, crimson, carmine, everything's all red today.
But here's what it comes down to: they can't take her soul, and she can't fucking stop.
"Actually," Alex says, "it really is."
And she pulls the stupid radio out of her stupid pocket, and god, everything's so stupid, it never stops being stupid, it never ends. It's going to be like this for the rest of linear time, this one stupid year looping back in on itself until there's nothing left.
But hey, maybe next time Jonas will have a clue.
(Maybe Alex will have a clue.)
Wait, wait, the ghosts gasp, ripping through half an octave in their desperation. It's all white handprints on black chalkboard, hangman's noose knot, blood between the teeth. Alex, wait!
Because this isn't familiar at all. Alex's fingers pause against the dial, regardless.
Let us have her, they say, running Clarissa's fingers through her hair. The push Jonas' body back towards her. His eyelids flutter, and it would be unfair if Alex thought they had any comprehension of the word. But they don't, because they offered her a star-boy in his place, and they have no idea what it's like to want to stop. They don't know how. Just her, just her, everyone else can go.
"Nope," Alex says. "Not feeling it today."
WHY NOT?
"Because Michael loves her," she says. It's weird, but she thinks she gets it, finally, what he meant when he talked about Clarissa pushing him up on stage and then cursing the whole bar out when they didn't laugh, and why it meant something. She thinks she gets it, because she can see Jonas doing exactly the same kind of thing, and it makes her heart swell painfully. She thinks she finally gets it, and that's maybe the saddest thing she's ever really got in her whole entire life. In all her lives. "And I love him."
And Alex tunes out, and tunes in.
[SCCTCCHHH—but it's nice. yeah. love's nice. SCHHTTCCHTT—]
She opens her eyes to her older brother leaning over her.
The sun's rising.
Alex starts to cry.
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tbc.
