disclaimer: disclaimed.
dedication: to emily, like always.
notes: crawls back into the trash with a bottle of gin HELLO GARBAGE MY OLD FRIEND

title: nightbloom
summary: Alex, stumbling through the time-stream. — Alex/Jonas, others.

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As for me, I'm—

[—fast-forwards; can't we skip this part? alex, come down here please!]

The first days after the island are always a little unreal. It's like everything's just—yeah, no, Alex doesn't really have an explanation for it.

It's a lot of things, but unreal comes closest.

So the first days after the island are unreal, and everyone's skittish, and there's no getting around the fact that they're not all sure how to even exist anymore. Edwards Island was a gong show, so loud that the echoes of it last forever and for always, a tightly-knit skein of thread that binds them all in that dark and quiet place.

Ren's stretched out on her bed with his arms folded behind his head instead of a pillow. The sunlight filters in through the curtains gauzy and too-bright white, so brilliant that it dazzles and Alex has to look away to keep from flinching. His hair is glowing copper-orange, every strand on fire.

Fire, flames, the bonfire on the beach underneath the stars—

The ghosts haven't let her go, yet. Alex can't stop the flinch, this time.

"So," Ren says. "Jonas."

"So," Alex parrots. "Nona."

"One of these things is not like the other!" Ren laughs. Something catches the light and flashes; he's just started with the gauges, and even though they're still so small, they sparkle. Of course they do—this is Ren. If there's not sparkle involved, it's probably not actually Ren. By summer's end they'll be twice that size, glittering diamonds in his ears, and Alex only knows that because she's seen him do it before. Besides, this is how they are: she plans huge sprawling flower tattoos that'll never come to fruition, and he plans to pierce himself full of holes but never actually does because he's been terrified of needles for as long as she's known him.

The gauges were a dare, or proof that no little needles were going to scare him anymore when ghosts had happened. They were an act of defiance in the same way that living is an act of defiance, the same way that listening to a radio is an act of defiance. You can't stop me. Nothing can stop me.

Or maybe they were just to impress Nona, because Nona likes her boys pierced, and honestly Ren is a suck when Nona's involved. God, they're gross. They're the only categorically good thing that ever came out of the island.

(Ren had fainted very briefly in the piercer's chair. Nona and Alex had laughed themselves silly. It was a horrible thing to laugh about, but it was also the first time either of them had laughed since they got on that stupid ferry three days prior. When he finally came 'round, it was to the pair of them leaning over him and grinning like maniacs, and he'd tried valiantly for a smile. That had been a good day.)

Alex forces herself to look at them, and finds that they don't hurt so much.

"You never used to space out so much," Ren says. He moves kind of weird, shoulder shrinking in then out like breathing, like beating, like a crow learning how to laugh.

"You're worse, man. And don't even start, I still haven't forgiven you for that second brownie," Alex says, and shoves him over to plop herself down next to him. The bed sinks down beneath her, cool pillows and cooler sheets burnt out white in the soft light of the sun. "It's not like that."

"Let it go, my friend, the magic must be mixed. I will concede, however, that that second brownie may have been a bad decision. But, uh, Alex? You about Jonas? It's like, really like that," he says. He's teasing, still, but there's genuine curiosity buried somewhere deep in the statement. Ren looks at her out of the corner of his eye. It feels like a long time, even though it probably isn't.

And again: time doesn't really work the same way for Alex the way it does for everyone else. It just… doesn't.

"Oh my god. Stop that, will you?" Alex pokes him in the stomach when he doesn't stop giving her That Look. "It's really not like that! It's—I don't know. Something else."

"Yeah?" Ren asks. "What else is there?"

"It's—" Alex starts, but has to stop to reign herself in. She can't… the thing is, Ren seriously doesn't remember any universe where Michael died. And that's how Alex likes it, because yeah, dead brother? Not super fun.

But then there's moments like these, and they aren't super fun, either.

Given the choice, though, she's always going to bring Michael back. Alex sighs with her whole body, and starts again. "It's—okay, maybe it's a little like that. He just—he gets it, you know? All of it."

Ren goes back to staring at the ceiling. "Yeah," he says. "I know."

Like Nona gets it, Alex doesn't say. Doesn't need to say. She reaches over to knock her knuckles against his ribs, because for Ren, Nona gets it the same way that Jonas gets it for Alex. The same way that Clarissa gets it for Michael.

(Yeah, alright. Alex blows all the breath in her lungs away. She gets it now, about Clarissa. She gets it. It churns through her stomach, the knowing and the regret. If this is growing up, Alex doesn't like it very much. Maybe the ghosts have it right: reset, reset, reset.)

Alex opens her mouth to say something, but the words get stuck in her throat, rolling like marbles in between her teeth. It's just… hard. That's all. She flops backwards into the tiny crack of space between Ren's side and the edge of the bed. "Hey, move over, this bed is big enough for like, three people!"

"Do I have to," Ren purses his lips at her.

"Yes," Alex purses her lips right back.

"You wound me, madame," he says mournfully, but he rolls and there's space between them that Alex immediately steals because it's more comfortable and also falling off the bed is like, the last thing she wants to do today. Because falling makes her think of Fort Milner, and Clarissa in the window or hanging from the ceiling and the sound of bone crunching which isn't even a real thing, so much of the time, she must have dreamed it because they were two stories up and there's no way she and Jonas could have actually heard that—

Aw, shit.

It's never going to end. She told the ghosts that she didn't want to play anymore, but they're still here. They're always still here. Alex presses her face into the pillow and takes two very long, very slow breaths.

You're okay, she tells herself. You're okay.

Nothing is okay, though. Not really.

"I guess you coulda picked worse," Ren says, a long time later. He folds his arms behind his head, lounging like he's cool. "Matt Davidson's been talking about asking you out for weeks."

"Liar," Alex says, half-heartedly smacks his chest. She hardly even remembers what Matt Davidson looks like. He has a face probably. Maybe even hair. Who knows. She reaches over to smack him, the back of her hand hard against the cavity of his chest.

"Ow! We are never playing Truth or Slap ever again."

"Yeah, you know what, let's not," she sighs, doesn't tell him that there was a whole string of resets where she cheerfully hit him in the face because she was tired and furious and he was being a lying liar who lied about things like being in love with Nona when he so obviously, painfully was. Alex is usually a pretty chill kind of dude, but there are only so many times you can do a thing over before getting frustrated and quitting out of sheer spite. Like a video game, dying against the same boss over and over and over until you've played it so many times that you're mouthing their stupid dialogue right along with them, and then when they kill you anyway, you end up screaming and throwing the controller.

Ragequit. That's the word.

But anyway, the point is that it's things like that that she doesn't know how to go about navigating. There isn't a definitive line, what is and isn't okay. They say sailors used to use the stars to find their way home, but Alex doesn't have much in common with sailors. Not ones that are alive, anyway.

(She doesn't have much in common with anyone, period. Home is getting to be a pretty impossible concept, these days.)

And that's the real tragedy of the thing. Edwards Island was a choice. Not a good one, but still a choice, and everyone outside of it could never understand—they lived a dark carnival, a horrorshow nightmare, and there is no coming back from something like that the same. You live and you live and you live until you don't, but it's not…

It wouldn't be fair to expect someone outside to really get it.

Even now, in her own bedroom with her dumb best friend flopped down next to her, Alex doesn't really expect him to get it. He doesn't remember the airwaves, the hum of Epiphany Fields, the clawing terror of the full press of the ghosts' fear.

The only person who gets it, who really, really gets it? Is Jonas.

Even when he doesn't remember, he still gets it.

Yeah, it kind of scares Alex half to death.

"Wow, are you two still in here?"

Alex and Ren both sit up like a gun's gone off, and not just a voice.

"Chill," Michael says, blinking, "it's just me."

"Helpful, Mike," Alex mutters, flopping back down. Her older brother is washed out unreal in the sunlight. She can't even tell who's a ghost and who isn't, anymore. That's probably not a good way to start this loop off, jesus. "Now my nerves are completely shot, thanks for that!"

"Shot nerves? There's a couple of brownies in my bag, I can go grab 'em—"

"No brownies, Ren," both Alex and Michael say sternly at exactly the same time, and Ren shrugs kind of sheepishly. But he doesn't apologize. Some things never change, Alex thinks wryly.

"So what are we talking about?"

"Alex's crush on Jonas," Ren says blithely. "Come sit and help me tease her about it, it'll be a great time!"

"Wow, stab me in the back, why don't you," Alex says.

"It is my duty as your friend to inform your older brother of all teasing opportunities," Ren says solemnly. "I mean, what else are friends for, amirite?"

"I'm telling Nona that you're mean and that she should date me instead."

"You wouldn't."

"Try me," Alex shoves him, and he shoves her back, and they squabble like a pair of magpies over a shiny object for long enough that Michael has to clear his throat to remind them that he's there.

"I want to join the cuddle party, kids. Or should I just leave you alone to practise kissing? Is that a thing kids do nowadays?"

"Ew, Mike!"

"You love it," Michael says smugly

"I'm rethinking that assessment," she tells him, dry as the desert.

Her brother laughs. It's nice to remember what that sounds like. Alex softens. Okay, she'll take the ribbing because it means that they'll all laugh, and things won't hurt so much. She's not wearing Mike's jacket. It feels like things might be… who knows. Okay, even.

She'll take the ribbing, but just this once.

"So, Jonas," Michael says after Alex and Ren have pushed over enough for him to lay down next to them, mostly because her brother has the most ridiculous sense of dramatic timing and is also completely incapable of letting things alone.

"I am not having this conversation with you, bucko, you are not my dad," Alex rolls her eyes. She wouldn't have this conversation with her actual dad, either, so that's kind of a moot point.

Her brother laughs until he doesn't. "Bucko, Alex?"

"You use it, too," she says, fond.

"I do, don't I," Michael says, pauses, and then goes, "Seriously, though, a crush on Jonas?"

"Better than Ren, you gotta admit."

"Hey!"

The three of them lay shoulder to shoulder, Michael then Alex then Ren—not short, short, shorter—all three of them staring up at the ceiling. Mike knocks his elbow into her ribs, so gently. When she looks at him, he grins.

But here's the thing: there's a year and a half of memories that Alex just… doesn't have. Never has. Can't have, really, because that year and half is the only one she's never re-lived. Everything else, yeah, everything else she's lived so many times that she can't even count how many times she's done it anymore, but that? The year where Michael wasn't dead? She's never going to remember any of it. And things happened that year. It wasn't just dead space, things didn't just stop, they kept—kept going. They kept happening. There are inside jokes that Alex has to pretend to laugh at because Michael laughs at them or Ren laughs at them or Clarissa laughs at them, and it's like, wow, I am so way out of my depth here.

There's another Alex out there somewhere. She's the one who lived that year, and she's the one who deserves to laugh at the stupid puns and the stupid jokes and the stupid, the stupid all of it because she wasn't dumb enough to get her older brother killed in the first place. Maybe she'd have been allowed to have them both, would have never even tried to think of Jonas as a brother. She'd not have been so torn, the ugly oozing cavity of her chest gaping open for anyone to poke around in. Maybe that Alex would have never dyed her hair.

Maybe that Alex would have never done a lot of things.

Maybe that Alex is a ghost, now, too.

But this Alex, current Alex? Time-out-of-time Alex? She doesn't get that. She doesn't get to make that choice, because she made it when she stepped onto the ferry and there's never any avoiding that. The ferry is a fixed point.

(The ghosts are a fixed point. The only fixed point, maybe. Maybe baby, baby birds, baby girls, baby sisters who keep screwing things up—)

It's too early for the reset, but Alex's fingers still shake. It's the stopping, or lack thereof; she can't, she can't, she can't. She just can't. It doesn't work. She can't just not bring Michael back from the dead—she looks at him out of the corner of her eye again. He's grinning up at the ceiling like an idiot, her own features on someone else's face. Siblings are so weird—because there are fixed points and then there are fixed points, and Michael's continued existence is a fixed point.

Michael's continued existence is as vital to Alex as air.

And not even the ghosts are going to deter her, from that.

Sometimes Alex thinks she's brought this whole thing on herself, because she never really learned to grieve right. Michael died, and her dad moved out and she didn't speak to him for six months because it hurt too much, and then mom went and got married and it's like—what do you do when things break so fundamentally that your whole world falls out from underneath you? What do you do when there's nothing left?

There are no right answers. Alex knows that.

"Hey," she says, a little too loud in the quiet room. It's like chewing broken glass. "I love you guys, you know? Like I really… really love you. Both of you."

Michael pretends to snore and Ren doesn't pretend to burst into tear, in fact just does burst into tears, and they're suddenly a pile of limbs and snot and saltwater and it's actually kind of gross, but—but Alex can feel her brother's heart beating beneath her cheek, and Ren doesn't smell like ocean death at her back anymore.

And maybe that makes it worth it.

The resets, the ghosts, even Jonas. Especially Jonas.

Maybe that makes it all worth it.

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tbc.