disclaimer: disclaimed.
dedication: to cola, who is cute.
notes: anxiety attacks are the worst lmao
notes2: so this is weird.

title: until dawn (no one you know)
summary: Alex, stumbling through the time-stream. — Alex/Jonas.

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As for me, I'm—

[SCKTCHHHHHCHHHHHH—uh, hello? um. is anyone. is anyone there? uh, um. oh, jesus. alex? alex, can you hear me? it's, uh, it's alex. listen—SKTCHHHHHHHTTTSHHHCKK—]

"Seriously?" Alex says, unsmiling into the dark.

The dark doesn't respond.

"You know, I should have expected this," she tells the dark aloud. It's a matte kind of dark, flat and all-encompassing, so thick Alex thinks she's not even breathing air anymore because it's not like any kind of dark she's ever seen before. It's not like nighttime dark, shot through with starlight and leavening greys. And it's not like inside dark, the dark that's soft and warm and safe, the dark that rocks a person to sleep. It's just… dark.

But she's sitting on something, so there must be ground and there must be something above her head. Darkness isn't nothing, but it's not not nothing, either. Jonas is gone, but he's always gone. Alex has never asked him what he's found on the other side of those tape recorders, or if he even remembers it at all. Maybe that's something to talk about when they get out of this. Maybe there are a lot of things to talk about when they get out of this.

If they get out of this. The ghosts don't really want to play with anyone else. And why would they? They have Alex, they have their loops, they have hangman and handprints and the whole entire universe in the great gaping chasm of their mouths. They pull her back through the radio waves, sure as the tide. They pull her back, sure. They pull

But whatever.

Alex can't stay here, wherever here is.

(God, she's so fucking tired. Sometimes, though, she thinks that they get it. This whole time, the temporal shifts have been… different. Alex thinks about Maggie and Anna, and then about Jonas. And the ghosts are a lot of things, but in this they're right. Yeah, love's nice.)

She's a little wobbly as she gets up, knees cracking sickly beneath her as she moves. Alex stretches herself out, jeans a worn-soft scratch against her thighs, feels like she's shaking off an aeon. Time is so weird. If it's ever consistent again, she's calling shenanigans and getting the hell out while she still can.

It probably won't be, though.

Alex wanders for a long, long time in the dark.

"Mike" she calls. "Jonas? Is anyone there?"

No reply. Just an echo: —nas—nas—nas—

"I guess not," she mutters under her breath. She looks down at her hands, which she can see perfectly clearly. The laws of physics don't seem to apply here; light, reflection, refraction—

Thud.

"I'm—oh, oh my god," Alex says, when she gets her bearings. They've both gone sprawling, head over heels, the bend of knees and elbows and knuckles all akimbo. Alex struggles to sit up with the wind knocked out of her, struggles to get it back a second time when she finally gets a good look at whoever it is she's knocked into.

She knows that face. She knows those eyes. She knows that nose.

(The nose knows, she hears Michael say. Useless, Alex thinks.)

Oh my god, that's me.

"Okay," Alex says, staring at—herself? Her reflection? Her… other self? There are no words to accurately reflect this—the girl, blinking owlishly as they kind of awkwardly help each other up while desperately trying to avoid touching one another. "This is—I mean—I have seen weird, okay, but this is like. This is like a whole other level? I—I don't—what is going on?"

"I dunno," says the other Alex—god, there's another Alex, what the hell, this is such a trip—sort of shrugs and does this thing with her face that Alex knows that she does, too. It's so weird, it is so weird to watch the way the pattern of freckles scrunches; Alex knows it only flipped in the mirror, but seeing it in glorious real-life technicolour motion is a whole other ballpark. "Are we—are you—you're me, right? You have to be. Why is your hair blue?"

"It's teal," Alex says automatically, and that's when it registers: other Alex still has brown hair.

Other Alex still has brown hair.

The dye had been a rebellion, a revolt, a red waving flag in a bull-fighter's ring. It had been Alex telling her mother that no, this isn't something she was going to accept and no, it was never going to be okay. It had been an outward expression of inward grief, like the ocean of salt and rust that had engulfed her when Michael drowned had leaked out of her and tainted everything awful. The dye job had just made sense at the time, still makes sense if Alex is really honest about it but—

Jesus, other Alex still has brown hair.

And then it's all the other little things that are incongruous; other Alex is half an inch shorter. Other Alex is still wearing those friendship braid-bracelets that Ren learned how to make two summers ago, but Ren has no sense so the things are neon green and puke orange and they're new enough that the colour has bled out of them yet. Other Alex is wearing the scuffed pair of high tops that she'd lost in the lake. Other Alex isn't wearing Michael's jacket.

Alex thinks: oh, you're still Alexandra.

It'll have to do.

(Here is something that Alex has never told anyone: the schism between Alex and Alexandra was a cataclysm, submerged and reaching for Michael's hand and just, just, just missing his fingertips. Sunlight through water, stale oxygen in her lungs, fear a sudden paralysis locking up her throat. Here is what Alex has never told anyone, what Clarissa has never understood: when Michael drowned in the lake, so did Alexandra.)

"I bet Mom hates it," Alexandra says. She stares with a kind of sick fascination. Yeah, Alex knows what that's like.

"Yeah," Alex says, which isn't the case at all; her mother doesn't care anymore. She's far too busy on her honeymoon with Jonas' dad or so pleased that Michael's decided to stay home for college that she doesn't have the energy to scold Alex about what is a relatively harmless life choice in the big scheme of things.

They walk side by side, and Edwards Island materializes around them in impressions, in shadows. It's all muted down, the colours dimmed nearly to perdition. It's all nothing. And then nothing blooms into Main Street, Main Street into Epiphany Fields, Epiphany Fields into the beach with its frozen shores and its crackling fire.

It would be weird, but Alex's scale for weird is pretty much broke, at this point. And when she turns, Alex catches a gleam of red in Alexandra's eyes.

Oh, she thinks, there you are.

(Because the ghosts can't leave her alone, even here, even now. Maybe she is trapped in the void. Maybe she's becoming exactly what they are—maybe she's losing her mind, and Jonas is on the outside of it all, waiting. Or maybe not.)

When they reach the cave mouth, Alex and Alexandra, it's like time has… stretched. Clung, somehow, wrapped its knotted strands around them both. The weight of the combined lifetimes weighs heavy on their shoulders, and they slump together in front of the fire.

"Hey," Alexandra says.

When Alex looks at her, she's not surprised to find that her hair has bleached out to teal, that the thin fabric of her shirt has bulked out into the heavy folds of Michael's jacket. That's the nature of the island, really. Complete chaos when it's happening, but in hindsight, it makes a twisted kind of sense. Even the empty space behind the sky has rules to follow. And now Alex and Alexandra are the the only real thing left, the pair of them sitting together in their bright red jackets, mirror images and foils and perfect fucking complements. "What's up?"

"Do you really wanna leave? I mean… is it really so bad here?" Alexandra asks, so quiet. She's drawing radio waves in the sand, up and down and up and down. It's an unconscious thing. If the ghosts are inside of her, they're not doing a very good job of hiding it.

Alex tips her head back to look at the sky. A sky without colour is a flat experience, and she'd never realized how much she'd relied on it being painted right until all those dyes leached away. The stars are pin-pricks of white, but they're just as still as everything else. Ghosts, fire, cold beer in the cooler. There's nothing alive.

"Do you remember when Michael died?" Alex asks, instead of answering.

"Yeah," Alexandra says. She pulls in a whistling breath through her teeth. "It was awful."

"Really was," Alex agrees, because, god, burying her older brother was the worst thing she ever did, and no one is ever going to understand that. Not Clarissa. Not Mom. Not even Jonas. "This is worse than that."

"Why?"

"Because it keeps happening," Alex tells her, shifts over a little so that Alexandra's head doesn't dig into her shoulder at such a crappy angle. They both settle. "And I'm done, man. I wanna go home."

Alexandra nods with her eyes closed, doesn't say anything.

Alex thinks that there are very few things more strange than sitting on the beach with your former self's head on your shoulder. Or maybe it's her future self. Time is a circle, riding the radio waves into eternity, over the crests and into the valleys, crooks and crags that history forgot.

The point is, there is nothing weirder.

But—

"I'd do it all over." Alex says out loud.

"What?" Alexandra asks. She's a fading thing, beginning to blend in with the empty beach.

Absently, Alex reaches over to tuck her bangs out of the way. Do they always look so dumb? She needs to do something about that. "The island, the ghosts… everything. I mean, it sucks, and some of it was, like, so unnecessary? Like, the handprints! That was so unnecessary! And uncomfortable? But I'd—yeah, I'd do it again. I guess."

"For real?"

"Yeah," Alex says. She thinks of Michael. She thinks of Jonas. Remembers that she doesn't get to have them both, and that that was what started this whole thing in the first place. She doesn't get to have them both, even though she wants them. The universe has weird laws, and that's kind of one of them. Clarissa will always end up possessed. Jonas will never remember. Ren will always like Nona. And Michael will always, always come back from the dead.

"Okay," Alexandra says a little slurred. Nods. "That's good. M'tired, sorry 'Lex."

"Don't worry about it," Alex tells her. "You can sleep. I'm not going anywhere."

Alexandra grins at her kind of droopy, eyes half-closed. For some reason, Alex thinks of the ghosts' star-boy. Alexandra isn't the same at all, but there's an underlying similarity that turns all of Alex's insides to glass.

There was an extra Jonas. Of course there's an extra Alex.

"Hey," Alexandra exhales. She's almost all the way gone, the teal in her hair turning dark again. Her mouth curls up a little, a merry lantern glow finally beginning to coalesce behind the eyes. She looks like a street lamp, warm and safe to guide a person home. "Hey, Alex…"

"Yeah?"

"I'll say hi to Anna for you, 'kay?"

"'Kay," Alex says. Alexandra shimmers like a heat mirage. Something very tight inside of Alex goes very loose instead, and she doesn't try to hold on. Forwards or back, time is finally beginning to move again. "I'll say hi to Maggie."

She doesn't expect a reply, because there's nothing there.

Alexandra is gone.

Alex opens her eyes to pale pink dawn and way more shouting than there should be.

"Jesus, would you just—!"

"Back off, dude, you don't even know my sister—!"

"Except I—Alex, can you tell your brother to shove off and let me hug you?!"

"God, shut up, you guys are so loud," Alex says, voice crumbling away. She feels like she's slept an aeon. She feels like she's turned to dust. It takes more effort than she's willing to admit to push herself into sitting, and that's not right, Michael should be hovering over her and Jonas—

Jonas shouldn't remember.

Alex takes a great big gulp of air, swallows down the abyss inside of her because hope is such a dangerous emotion. "Jonas?" she croaks. "Jonas, do you—?"

The next thing she knows, there are solid arms around her, a wide pair of shoulders, the familiar cologne of cheap cigarettes and laundry detergent. Jonas holds her so tight that all of her ribs creak. She's going to be bruised all over and she's not even going to be mad.

"It's you, it's you, it's you," Jonas is saying over and over. Like a mantra. Like a prayer. It's you, it's you, god, I'm so glad it's you. "Jesus, Alex."

"Fuck you," Alex hiccups into his shoulder. She can't even breathe. "You smell like smoke."

"Yeah, yeah, it's gonna kill me," Jonas says into her hair. He sounds scratchy, like he's been yelling too long. Maybe he has. "Als, I remember. My head's weird, but I—are you okay?"

Something inside of Alex breaks.

(It feels like this: a tipping point, a cracked radio, a hairpin turn. It's a breaking, but it's a breaking out. It's escaping a cage. It's starting over. All of the shattered things inside of Alex crystallize because it's nothing but it's also everything. Dichotomies, triangles, an open blast door. That's what it feels like.)

God, he would ask if she was alright, wouldn't he?

Jonas is always Jonas, no matter the timeline.

"Yeah," she says, and slips her arms around his neck to hug him back just as tight. She doesn't cry, even though it hurts. It's a good hurt, hard and bright, and Alex hasn't felt many of those. She presses her face into his neck. Breathes in. Breathes out.

Breathes.

"Yeah," Alex says again, nodding. Jonas, she thinks, Jonas. "I'm good."

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tbc.