CW: dissociative episode, self-harm.

Chapter 9, part 2.

Alice spent two hours the next morning interviewing Castor about his time with Jareth. He remembered a lot of details that did actually give her some insight into what the Wraith was doing—confirming her earlier presuppositions.

"He's got at least a couple hundred Wraith with him, mostly commanders, with a relatively small number of warriors," Alice reported back to Carter a little later. "Castor didn't see any queens, but that doesn't mean that there weren't any. Jareth would make damn sure to keep any allied queen well protected. He may have lost the ZPMs, but I doubt he'd forgone his dream of creating a cloning facility completely. From what Castor told me, it seems to me Jareth was trying to grow a Hive ship, which makes perfect sense; without it, even if they use Ha'taks or other types of ships available in this galaxy, the Wraith are at a disadvantage: they need cocoons to keep their victims alive until they're ready to feed, and hibernation chambers to pass the time between feedings when they have nothing else to do. What I find interesting is that, according to Castor, Jareth manipulated the Wraith pathogen that starts the process. And the Naquadah he'd mined was apparently used as a raw material to feed the pathogen, which leads me to believe that he's trying to build a better, more powerful version of a Hive ship."

"That's not concerning at all," Carter noted sarcastically.

Alice nodded. "Castor also told me that Jareth spent a huge chunk of his time in a lab he's built for himself on another planet, aided by a couple other Wraith. That's a change; previously Jareth worked alone, and it makes me wonder if perhaps his abilities do not work on Wraith as well as humans; or perhaps it's the queen that can resist him and therefore he must accept some level of cooperation? It's also possible that he does control all the other Wraith, including the queen, and is simply using them."

"What about the humans?"

"Castor has seen a few dozen of humans and Jaffa, most were engaged in Naquadah mining. When the source got depleted, they all ended up on Jareth's exam table and eventually got fed upon, either by him directly or the other Wraith. Jareth kept a number of them from suffering the same fate, though what for, Castor couldn't say. I think they make up Jareth's personal guard, and they might also be used to get more people to feed on. Jareth clearly doesn't want to risk a proper culling—it would be difficult without a Hive ship and Darts to pick up the victims, anyway—but he's got over two hundred hungry Wraith to think about."

"How did Castor get out?"

"He and a group of others were sent out on a hunting trip, sort of. He was supposed to use his connections to meet up with some mercs, grab them and bring them to Jareth, but I guess the news had already spread that something was up and they came in much greater numbers. There was a fight and Castor and his people lost. As soon as he'd been captured, his 'programming' got canceled. The only reason why he wasn't executed on the spot was because his original contact figured his altered state must have been a result of some sort of brainwashing—the Goa'uld used to do this sometimes, too, so some people know the technique. He kept him alive, and after a while he reached out to Castor's family. Castor's brother-in-law bought him off the mercenary, brought him home, and that's where Fourteen found him."

"And he couldn't say where Jareth's base of operations was? Aside from the Naquadah mine?"

"He was never permitted to see the symbols for the final destination, they always waited for Jareth or one of the other Wraith to come get them on an intermediate planet. We have the symbols for that one." And Alice pushed a sheet of paper with six images printed on it. "It's unlikely that we'll find anything there, but we could stake it out, wait for someone to appear. That, of course, under the condition that Jareth isn't aware that there was someone from Castor's hunting group who'd survived the battle, and that he'll use the same planet again."

"And how likely is that?" Carter took the page to have a closer look.

"It's hard to say. He doesn't have a reason to think we'd found Castor, but then again—he doesn't make the same mistake twice, and we once found him because of someone who's been left behind. If I were to bet, I'd say when his party didn't come back, he declared the intermediate planet off-limits and wouldn't allow anyone to come back just in case."

"You really think he's that clever?" Carter shook her head disbelievingly.

"Yeah." Alice nodded gravely. "You think I'm overestimating him?"

"You know him best, but I have to wonder if your intimate knowledge of the future doesn't interfere with your judgment of the present."

Alice cocked her head to the side, surprised with the astute remark. "I'm sure it does, but I don't think that's a bad thing. I've seen his endgame. We've thrown him a curveball for sure, but he's not done, and the longer it takes us to get him, the harder it will be. I'd rather overestimate him now than wake up in forty years and realize I've let it happen again."

"Hmm." Carter looked at Alice for a long moment without saying anything. Her eyes were piercing, her gaze intense, and Alice wanted to flee, as much because it was a little uncomfortable to be at the receiving end of such a penetrating stare, as because it was very familiar to her, and the memory of Karim's eyes was the last thing she needed right now. "You know, Alice—" the general finally said after what seemed like a full five minutes but couldn't be more than a few seconds "—even if everything fails and it all does happen again, it won't be your fault. You're not alone in this fight."

Alice blinked and had to look away, unable to maintain eye contact anymore. Carter meant well, and there was a certain degree of truth in her words, but none of it absolved Alice from her singular responsibility. She was the one who'd seen the future. Her life was saved by an Ancient so she could carry out this task—and she failed it on her first try. She allowed Jareth to escape, and got her teammate—and lover—killed in the process. It all fell on her; it was her fight. No matter how many other people might help along the way, if they didn't succeed, it was going to be her fault; she was ultimately accountable.

"Yes, ma'am," she replied, because Carter clearly expected her to say something.

The general sighed, but apparently decided not to press the issue, because after a moment she went back to discussing the intermediate planet. They agreed that, unlikely as it seemed, there was still a chance that one of Jareth's people might come back there, and they worked out a schedule for a few SG teams to keep surveillance of the place over the next few weeks. Alice's own SG-7 was going to go immediately and check out the planet, figure out the best way to stake it out, and take the first shift, which meant that they'd spend the next seventy-two hours off-world.

By the time they got back to Earth, three days later, Alice was utterly exhausted. It was the longest time she'd ever spent with her team in a row, which meant constantly being on her best behavior, never showing any of the internal struggle that seemed to always simmer beneath the thin layer of calmness in her nowadays. It also meant next to no sleep; they had a rotating watch set up, of course, but even when it was her time to sleep, Alice found it very difficult to let go of her vigilance and at most drifted off into short fits of light slumber that never really reached the phase where she would actually rest.

That night Alice took the second sleeping pill she'd gotten from the SGC's on-call doctor ten days before, washed it down with a glass of whiskey, and fell into restful unconsciousness for nearly ten hours.

Alice, Morgan and Watson were given a pass the next day, which meant they effectively got a three-day weekend. Alice was rather unhappy about it, since it meant she still couldn't begin her training sessions with Castor—as she thought about it—but she ended up sneaking into her lab to do some work anyway, which is where Carter caught her a few hours later.

"I'm pretty sure I told you to take it easy today, Major," she said with a smirk, standing in the open doorway and leaning on the frame.

Alice sent her an appropriately contrite smile. "I am taking it easy, ma'am, I promise. I'm just working on one of my pet projects, it's fun." She was actually well-rested and the work was going better than usual, so it wasn't even a lie.

"Mhm." Carter didn't look convinced, but she stepped inside and approached the table where Alice had a pile of papers and blueprints spread all over. She picked up one of them and looked at it with interest. "Is that an Asgard neutrino-ion generator?"

"Yes. I've been looking into it for a while. I mean, I know I'm not the only one and I regularly exchange information with the Groom Lake people who are studying it, but while they're working on retrofitting it as is to be able to put it on new 304s, now that there's no actual Asgards to give us a ready-made thing, I'm simply trying to understand it. It's not always the same thing."

Carter nodded thoughtfully. "We've often been accused of meddling with technology we don't understand. D'you have any conclusions already?"

Alice sighed. "Not really. I mean, I have almost all the pieces of the puzzle, except how the Asgard were able to accelerate the beta decay and how they harness the neutronium expansion energy in the first place… Doctor Jensen from the Groom Lake is getting very close to reconstructing the thing, and we still don't know how it works." She shook her head disbelievingly.

"Yeah, that's all the fun of dealing with alien technology," Carter quipped lightly, putting the blueprint back onto the table. "Anyway, I just had a communiqué from Atlantis. They're going to send some people over later today, including your brother. I was going to call you, but then Sergeant Harriman told me you were already here…"

Alice snorted. "How does he always know these things?"

"I'm pretty sure he's got some sort of ESP," Carter deadpanned and they both chuckled. "At any rate, they're coming through in three hours or so."

"Thank you, ma'am. I guess that means Jake'll spend the night at my place," Alice said thoughtfully. "I've known he was coming home this weekend so I got tickets for tomorrow to get him to L.A."

"Call the TMC, maybe they'll have something for tonight," the general suggested. "You deserve a day off, too."

Alice sighed, but then nodded. "Maybe I will." It would perhaps be better if she were there for the first two days.

"Good." Carter smiled pleasantly at her. "Carry on, then—if you must."

"Yes, ma'am."

The general left. Alice pondered her suggestion for a little while longer, and then decided to follow it and called the Travel Management Company to reschedule the flight. Afterwards, she went back to work.

There were five people coming through at the same time: three were civilian scientists going off on vacation, and then there were Corporal Ruiz and Jake.

Ruiz rolled through the Gate on a wheelchair, his left leg missing from the knee down. Jake stood right beside him and they were talking while the event horizon behind them flickered and disappeared. Alice waited at the foot of the ramp until they both came down.

"Hey, Jake!" She said and hugged him carefully.

"Hey, Allie," he murmured back into her ear and they stepped back.

She turned around to Ruiz.

"Corporal, it's great to see you up and about. I'm sorry about your leg…"

She extended her hand and he shook it quite vivaciously.

"Thank you, ma'am, but I'm alright," he answered quite optimistically. "I'm just glad to have come out of this alive, unlike our poor lieutenant…" He shook his head. "I'm just sorry I couldn't attend his funeral."

"Me, too," Jake added.

Alice nodded. "Same here. I was off-world," she explained. Both Moors's and Doctor Porter's burials were organized in their hometowns, in Ohio and Virginia respectively, on Wednesday, while the SG-7 was on their stakeout. Alice could've probably requested the schedule to be changed to allow her to attend at least Alison's funeral, but in the end, she decided against it. There were a few people from Atlantis who went, and Alice asked Major Teldy (whose wound was relatively superficial and therefore she was let go from the infirmary earlier than either Ruiz or Jake) to pay her respects to the family in Alice's name, too.

Corporal Ruiz smiled and then twisted in his seat to look at the Stargate.

"I guess it's the last time I'll ever see it," he said wistfully. Alice looked away; with that kind of injury, the young man had very little chance of remaining in the service.

Jake patted Ruiz on the shoulder. "You never know, Corporal. The prosthetics these days are little wonders of technology, and who knows? Maybe the Program will find a way to regrow limbs one day. I've seen crazier things happen."

Ruiz laughed nervously. "Sure, sure." He looked at an EMT who stepped up to him. "I guess it's time for me. Sergeant—" He turned to Jake.

"It was an honor serving with you, Corporal," Jake said, shaking his hand. "We'll keep in touch, I'm sure."

"Yes, sir," Ruiz replied, smiled ruefully again, and allowed the EMT to wheel him away.

"Ready to go home?" Alice asked Jake a moment later, picking up his travel bag.

"I got it," he snapped, trying to take it away from her, but she was too quick.

"You're not supposed to carry more than ten pounds," Alice admonished him. "Doctor's orders."

He rolled his eyes, but followed her without any more protest.

She walked slowly, but even so, by the time they reached the elevators, he seemed winded. Alice didn't comment; she knew he was hating his own weakness and any attempt at convincing him to take it easy were futile.

"I managed to get us tickets for this afternoon from Denver," Alice said after they got to her car. "I just need to swing by the house to pick up my suitcase."

"Sure," he agreed offhandedly. "Does mom know we're gonna be there tonight?"

"Yeah, I texted her."

"What did you tell her about my injury?"

Alice sighed. "I didn't mention how close it got, if that's what you're asking. I told her it wasn't as bad as the one from Iraq, but that you'd be out of commission for at least two months."

He grimaced. "Maybe it won't be that long," he contradicted hopefully.

"I got six weeks after a mere Wraith claw cut." Her voice was full of doubt.

"Yeah, but I heal better than you."

"You do not!" She raised her voice in indignation.

"Of course I do. You're so small and fragile that any scratch makes a big dent!" He teased.

"I am not fragile, and if I catch you saying that to anyone else, I'm gonna kill you!" She warned half-jokingly.

"Oh, come on, a stronger wind could knock you down, sis!"

She shook her head, but didn't respond because she was pulling up at the curb at her house.

"Wait here," she told him and headed off to grab her carryon.

Deanna wasn't there yet, but Alice had already texted her about the change of plans and she was in and out in a few minutes. After she got back to the car, Jake didn't continue the line of mocking, and instead they spent the ride catching each other up on the latest developments in both galaxies. Jake, despite being stuck in the infirmary the whole week, was up to date on everything that was going on, and had much fresher news than Alice could get from reading the weekly Atlantis summary report. She, on the other hand, had the whole Castor story to share.

"I'm not sure if this is such a good idea, Allie," he warned her after she'd finished. "They may not seem like it to you, but Lucian Alliance are a pretty hardcore bunch. And Carter is right, you don't look like a mercenary."

"Well, that's why I'm not gonna play a mercenary. I'll just be who I am—a scientist. Shouldn't be too hard." She shrugged dismissively.

"You'd be surprised."

"Castor will teach me what I'll need to know," she brushed him off. "Everything's gonna be fine."

"Are you sure this whole Jareth guy is worth the risk?" He asked doubtfully and Alice had to remind herself that he didn't know anything about the future scenario she'd seen.

"Yes," she replied curtly. They were approaching the airport now.

He exhaled with frustration, but his voice was gentle. "I know he's responsible for Karim's death, but it'll serve no-one if you get killed trying to avenge him."

She didn't reply immediately, focusing on taking the right exit to get to the correct terminal. It gave her time to collect her thoughts and decide on an honest answer, for once.

"That's part of it," she admitted finally. "But it's far from the only reason. He's dangerous, Jake, more dangerous than you realize. Can't tell you why—you'll just have to trust me on it."

"I do trust you, but—I worry, you know?"

She huffed indignantly, but relented. "I know. I do too, about you—and not without reason." Her eyes flickered to his abdomen where, though now hidden by a t-shirt, the bandages covered his latest wound.

"You have more individual scars than I do," he countered.

"Yeah, but yours were more serious," she reminded him.

Unexpectedly, he laughed. "You know, we're some kind of fucked up if we're sitting here trying to outbid each other on who's got more screwed up in the service."

Alice had to give him that one. "You're not wrong."

They let it drop after that, since they were arriving at the airport parking lot. Once they got out of the car, they could no longer speak freely, as someone could overhear them, so instead they reverted back to discussing normal life stuff.

As they were getting their boarding passes, Alice thought for a moment to use their CACs as photo ID in hopes of getting bumped to first or business class, but then she remembered with horror the circumstances of the last time she got upgraded and decided their driver's licenses would do just fine.

Because their tickets were bought only a few hours before the flight, their seats weren't next to each other. Alice thought about asking someone to switch their places, but again the flashback of the incident on the plane to London prevented her from doing so, and Jake either didn't think about it, or didn't want to, because he took his seat a few rows down without talking to anybody around.

It was almost seven in the evening when they finally pulled up on their childhood home's driveway and Alice could tell that, despite his assurances to the contrary, Jake was tired with all the travelling. He kept his hand propped on the place of his belly where the wound was and didn't even protest when Alice grabbed both her carryon suitcase and his travel bag from the trunk of their rental.

Their mother greeted them at the threshold and there was a lot of hugging and some tears before she led them through to the kitchen to have a delicious homemade dinner (Jake's favorite, Alice noted). They spent the evening enjoying each other's company, compulsively reassuring Eileen that they were both okay and dodging questions about the source of Jake's injury. It got so bad that eventually Alice had to pretend like she was getting tired, which finally prompted mom to relent and they all went to their respective bedrooms for the night.

Alice didn't really sleep that night; she caught maybe an hour of shut-eye at dawn, but otherwise spent half the time lying in bed, eyes wide open, and the other half surfing the web on her new smartphone. Sometime in the wee hours of the morning, she got bored with news sites, opinion pieces and online research papers and, in the kind of spur-of-the-moment decision that she took more often recently than ever before, she decided to check out what was the whole fuss about the social media. Never before she felt any urge to get onto them, but she knew Aaron and Deanna—and many other people, but these two concerned her the most—were positively obsessed with social media sites and it intrigued her what the appeal could be. It amused her for a while to create a profile on Twitter and Facebook (the former under the handle SpaceTinkerbell, which she felt was very tongue-in-cheek of her, and the latter under her own name), to find Aaron and Deanna (they both turned out to be following each other) and then discovering other people and pages to follow. Unfortunately, that diversion wasn't enough to pull her out of the darkness for long, and she ended up lying on her back, staring into space and trying to suppress the emotions that threatened to overwhelm her again, until she finally drifted off to an hour of fitful sleep.

The next day didn't bring much in the way of relief. Alice could tell that mom was still pretty freaked out about the whole thing, and she'd let slip out once or twice how it must have been a government conspiracy to harm her children, since it happened so often. This worried Alice, because paranoid delusions were one of the main symptoms of mom's schizophrenia, and she spent extra time and energy on trying to allay those fears. Separately, Jake promised to ensure mom would reach out and get an extra appointment with her therapist on Monday, instead of waiting for her weekly one on Thursday.

As much as she loved her family, being around them all day was not an easy thing for Alice. They didn't really do much—mostly sat on the couch in the living room, talked and watched TV—and so without something concrete to occupy the mind, Alice found herself slowly descending into the haze of darkness that always accompanied her these days. She kept spacing out in the moments of lull in the conversation and, as time went on, she found herself feeling less and less like herself. Her mind continuously churned bad memories before her eyes: Karim's last moments, putrefying bodies on Pennsylvania Avenue, the stuffy horror of the fallen underground where toxic air assaulted her with hallucinations, Jareth's vile touch on her body, Cho's tongue pushing into her mouth, the utter desolation of the dungeon, the empty eyes of a little girl holding a plush bunny, the look on Malcolm Spinner's wife's face in the kitchen of his parents' home after his memorial service, the phone call from dad's friend at the hospital that informed them of dad's passing, the pained expression on Mrs. Espinoza's face as she accused Alice of sleeping with her husband, the inexorable door that kept closing in on her as the hull breach on the Prometheus tried to suck her out into space, the hushed moans of the dying in Ben's makeshift hospital, the gut-wrenching despair on Keana's face that resembled Alice's so much, every single face of a person she'd killed or hadn't managed to save… It came to her first in waves, and then in an ever-faster turning kaleidoscope of images and emotions, until the living room and the sitcom on TV seemed completely irrelevant and unreal; she wasn't even watching them from her own body anymore, she was standing next to it and looking around from the outside, completely separate.

She wasn't sure how she got there, but she suddenly found herself out back, on the deck of the house, sitting on the steps and grasping an irregular rock in her right hand. She couldn't remember if she'd said something to Jake or mom, or if she'd just run away from the room, or when. The only thing she knew was that she was looking out at the backyard as the dusk settled around her, and she was squeezing the rock in her hand so hard its jagged edges were cutting into her palm. It hurt and it was a good feeling; the pain grounded her, made her a little more real while the world around seemed to be at the same time too large and too small to hold her. She knew what was going on: she was dissociating again. She knew all about it—it was another one of her mother's common symptoms, but it felt as if all the knowledge in the world wouldn't help her now. She remembered a grounding technique Doctor Borden taught her, but she got stuck on the very first task—name five things you can see; her eyes didn't seem to be able to focus on anything other than the rock in her hand, and the thin red lines it cut into her palm. It was as if the pain was not only the one thing that was real, but also the center of the universe.

She didn't hear him when he first spoke to her, but suddenly there was a presence on the step next to her and it snapped her out of the fugue for just a moment. She looked up without surprise or real interest, barely able to concentrate enough to recognize who it was.

"Allie, are you okay?" Aaron said with concern. Since she didn't respond, he continued: "Jake told me you went out for a moment, but you weren't coming back so I decided to check up on you… Allie, what's going on? What's wrong?" There was alarm in his voice now as he took in her expressionless face and blank stare.

She shook her head and tried to clear her throat, but it was parched. She struggled to swallow the lump that seemed to obstruct her airways and then licked her lips. "I'm fine," she said lamely, the sheer trembling of her voice belying that statement. She dropped her eyes back onto the rock that she kept grasping tighter and tighter in her hand.

"What are you doing?" He asked, reaching out and taking her hand gingerly into his. "Let go, Allie. You're hurting yourself."

She couldn't, of course; she was afraid if she let go of the rock, the whole world would collapse around her like a house of cards blown over by the wind.

Aaron tried to pry open her fingers, but she held on with all her strength, so instead, he began rubbing the back of her hand in little circles with his thumb, delicately at first and then a little more forceful as he sensed her fingers relax a little bit.

"Come on, Allie, let go," he said quietly. "It's okay, you can let go of it."

Against her conscious effort, it was working, and she struggled harder to keep a firm hold on the rock. Aaron continued to talk to her softly, and then he put his arm around her and started stroking her right shoulder, further relaxing her body against her will.

"Can't do it," she whimpered, then suddenly pushed herself off the step and up onto her feet, letting the rock fall to the ground. She stumbled forward as if she was trying to flee, unsure what she was doing or where she was going; she just felt like she had to get away or she'd crumble into a pile of ashes right in front of Aaron, and he shouldn't be made to see this. She needed to be alone, to get a hold on herself, to find a way to push past this episode of craziness because she couldn't break down, she couldn't give in to the fugue, she wouldn't, because she wasn't insane, she wasn't, and it wasn't the beginning stage of schizophrenia, she wasn't like her mother, she couldn't be…

She only took a few steps before suddenly Aaron was there again, and he had his hands around her and he was crushing her into his chest, speaking some comforting nonsense in a sing-song voice.

"It's okay, Allie, everything's gonna be okay, you're alright, I'm here, you're here with me, and I'm gonna make sure that you're okay, everything's gonna be fine…"

And as he kept up this litany, holding her in his arms, it was as if he was somehow pushing Alice's self back into her body. He had one hand on her back and the other was cupping her chin and pressing her face into the nook of his shoulder, and the physical pressure felt incredibly soothing to her. It restricted her world while also making it big enough to hold her inside, forcing her into herself, somehow making her real again. She suddenly noticed that she was gasping for air, sobbing into Aaron's shirt, treacherous tears falling down her cheeks. She raised her hands and put them both on his chest and he tightened his grip on her.

Alice had no idea how long they stood there, motionless, as she slowly calmed down. At some point, Aaron's whispered reassurances faded away and they both remained silent. Somehow, Aaron's body flush against Alice's seemed to lend legitimacy to her existence as a singular and complete being. The fabric of his shirt under her chin and fingers was smooth, his warm breath tickled the nape of her neck, the strong, steady heartbeat in his chest measured out little chunks of time, and even the faint, sweetish smell of his sweat gave proof to the immediacy of the world and imbued her with the sense of realness that seemed so foreign to her just a little while ago.

Darkness fell around them and the night lull of the quiet suburban neighborhood surrounded them like a cocoon of stillness. Alice couldn't say if they stayed that way for ten minutes or two hours, but eventually she felt herself enough to risk disengaging. She stepped back, her hands still on Aaron's chest and his arms slipping onto her shoulders. She couldn't quite raise her head to look him in the eyes just yet.

"I'm sorry I freaked out," she choked out.

"Don't be," he breathed, his voice trembling a little. "Are you feeling better?"

She nodded quickly, inhaled deeply and looked up. "Thank you," she said emphatically.

He smiled warmly, his eyes soft and concerned; there was no pity in them, though, she noted with relief. "Always there for you, Allie."

"I know." She paused, and then added: "Even if I don't deserve—"

"Stop it," he interrupted, a little crease forming between his eyebrows. "Everyone deserves support, and you most of all."

She laughed nervously. "Yeah, that's not embarrassing at all, to break down right in front of you…"

He shook his head. "Please don't do this. I'm… you know I'm your friend and I am glad I could be here to help you through this thing."

She sighed, let her hands drop from his chest and gasped.

"Fuck," she murmured, raising one arm up again to touch a rusty-colored stain on his shirt in the place where her right palm had been. "Look at what I've done, I ruined your shirt…"

"Don't worry about it," he dismissed it immediately, instead catching her right hand in his left and turning it delicately to look at the damaged skin in the pale light coming off from the open door to the house yards away. "We should clean this up and put some Neosporin onto it or something…"

"It'll be fine, it's just a scratch."

"Nevertheless—"

"Yeah."

They stood there silently for a moment longer, Alice's palm in Aaron's, his other arm still grasping her left shoulder. Then Alice dropped her hand again and took another step back to get out of his intimate zone, severing all physical contact.

"You want to talk about it?" He asked hesitatingly.

She looked down at her feet, noting for the first time that she didn't have shoes on, only socks. It was still warm enough, though, that she didn't feel cold.

"No," she replied quietly.

"Okay."

She snapped her head back up to see his expression—but he didn't seem disappointed or put off.

"It's not that—I don't—I appreciate—" she rushed to explain.

"It's okay." He smiled and shook his head again. "I understand, Allie, you don't need to tell me anything. But—" he added, and his eyes became even softer than before "—I'll be here to listen if you ever want to."

Alice sighed, raising one hand to her temple, where a small, pulsating ball of pain was growing. "I really don't deserve a friend like you."

"Well, tough, because you've got one—for better or worse."

"It's definitely for better."

He continued to look down at her with warmth and it felt as if he was somehow peeling away the layers of walls and shells she was trying to build back up to protect herself.

"You're still embarrassed, aren't you?" He arched his eyebrows slightly.

"Ashamed would be a more apt word," she mumbled, shifting her gaze away from him.

She heard him take a deep breath, but he let it out without comment. "Come. You really need to clean up these cuts." And he took her uninjured hand and gently tugged for her to follow him back inside the house.

Deciding she couldn't face the night, Alice didn't even try to go to bed. Instead, when her mom and Jake shut themselves in their respective bedrooms, she tiptoed back down to the living room, installed herself on the couch with her laptop, and spent the long hours till dawn surfing the web again and continuing to play around with social media. To her surprise and amusement, a number of old friends—mostly from school and college—had sent her friend requests on Facebook, while her Twitter—which she kept anonymous, more or less—merited only a few follows from accounts that seemed to be bots. Deanna sent her a lengthy and enthusiastic message via Facebook, extolling the virtues of the site and pushing Alice to join others, too. Alice composed a long and cautiously optimistic reply, in which she admitted to creating a Twitter account as well, and linking to it; there was no doubt Dee would not waste any time following her back now that she knew Alice was behind the weird handle that had added Dee the night before.

Alice closed her laptop early in the morning, way before anyone in the house could be up, and went on a long run. By the time she got back, mom was already in the kitchen preparing breakfast, and there was the sound of a shower going upstairs, so it was clear Jake was awake as well. Alice said a quick hello to mom and jumped in the shower herself, so when she finally joined her little family at the table, she felt almost human.

Mom had prepared a real feast, of the kind one usually only saw in the movies: there were pancakes with fruits and maple syrup, bacon and eggs on toast, cereal, pop tarts, and even a small bowl of guacamole. Alice and Jake had a bit of lighthearted fun ribbing about how mom was a typical California girl, culminating in her mock-smacking them both with a kitchen towel as she started to clean up.

A couple hours later, Aaron came by the house again, this time with Ike in tow. They stayed for a long while and finally accepted Eileen's invitation for lunch. After the meal, Alice shouted down mom's attempt at cleaning up and instead chased everyone away from the kitchen and started on the dishes herself. A few moments later she was joined by Aaron, who wouldn't hear about leaving her alone.

"It's only right," he insisted. "Your mom cooked, Jake is injured so he gets a pass, means you and I should clean up together."

"You're a guest," she reminder him with a smirk, knowing full well that he felt as comfortable in this house as in his own.

"Just hand me the dish," he replied dismissively, grabbing a towel. "You rinse, I'll dry."

"Fine." She rolled her eyes and got back to work. "You're staying at your parents'?"

"Just for the weekend. They wanted to see Ike, and I—well, any chance to get away from home right now is welcome," he admitted.

"Because of Sarah?"

"Yeah. We're in that awkward post-breakup phase when you really don't want to see each other, but we have to because I still live there, and we have Ike to look after, so it's hard. I can't wait for the purchase to go through."

"Your new house?"

"Yeah. It's really amazing, Allie—as soon as I move in, you'll have to come up and see it. The view is just breathtaking."

Alice laughed out loud. "I'm sure I'll get there at some point, for certain. When can you move in?"

"Not for a few weeks. You have no idea how much paperwork it is to buy a property in Bel Air."

"And I never will," she quipped, handing him the last of the plates. "You know, if I were to tell any of your fans that you stood in my mother's kitchen and helped me do the dishes, nobody would believe it."

He chuckled. "Yes, well, who'd think I can be so domestic?"

"Or domesticated." She grinned at him, fishing out her smartphone from a pocket. "Smile!" And she snapped a photo of him, all handsome in his designer clothes and incongruous with a wet plate and a kitchen towel with a flower print in hand. "This one goes on Twitter!"

"Wait, you've got Twitter?! Why didn't I know about that?!"

"Because I created it two days ago." She rolled her eyes. "Facebook, too. I've added you, but you've ignored me." She smirked and pressed send. "Now it's out there."

"I get literally thousands of friend requests and follows every day, I don't exactly keep track," he said defensively. "Did you tag me on the pic?"

"Did I what?"

He laughed and grabbed her phone. A moment later he returned it and Alice took a look at her edited tweet—or, rather, she noted looking at the timestamp, a deleted and re-uploaded one.

. AaronStarr is such a pretty housewife. Should I get him an apron for his b-day?

"You didn't do anything, you just replaced your name with your handle?"

"Yeah, that's called tagging. It's so I can do this!" And he pulled out his own phone and started typing something. "Check out your timeline now."

She did and noted a tweet from him that contained her photo and repeated the entire caption, with Aaron's addition at the beginning.

Only if it doesn't clash w/ the towel RT SpaceTinkerbell . AaronStarr is such a pretty housewife. Should I get him an apron for his b-day?

As she watched, the application started blowing up with notifications about retweets, likes and replies.

"Wow. These people really love you," she commented, a little shocked at the instantaneous reaction.

"Well, I am really lovable," he quipped and then laughed. "Allie, how is it that you have an actual PhD in Computer Engineering, you've once hacked into the FBI servers, and you do god knows what every day that I'm sure is uber-complex science stuff, but you get stumped by Twitter?" And he made a mind blown gesture.

"I'm not stumped!" She protested, laughing as well. "I'm merely new to the concept!" She scanned the messages coming in. "A lot of people accuse me of being your new girlfriend," she noted with a snort.

"Welcome to my life." He rolled his eyes. "It'll be on gossip sites in a few minutes." And, seeing Alice's raised eyebrows, he shrugged and added: "You get used to it. Any time I go out or even just interact with a friend that happens to be female, the Internet immediately decides I'm in a new relationship. You learn to ignore it."

"Sorry." She looked back at the phone. "Should I write something to clarify the misunderstanding?"

"You can if you want, but there will be people who won't believe you."

"Seriously?"

"Yeah."

"You've used up all the characters," she noted, playing with the tweet. "If I reply to it, will everybody see it?"

"No, only if they actually open my tweet to see replies. You can make a new tweet, just remember to put like a dot at the beginning if the tag is the first thing you write, otherwise the system will think it's a reply."

"Oh, so that's what the dot was for." She nodded and sent a new message.

Why did everyone jump to the conclusion I and AaronStarr must be dating? I'm merely using his body! To clean the dishes ;-) Just friends!

She didn't even notice Aaron was on his phone before she saw a tweet from him.

Abandon all hope, ye who enter here… RT SpaceTinkerbell Why did everyone jump to the conclusion I and AaronStarr must be dating? I'm…

"Hey, you cheated!" She accused jokingly. "You're not supposed to cut the message you're retweeting!"

He grinned. "Sometimes you gotta cheat. 140 characters is not a lot of characters."

"And what's that supposed to mean? Are you saying I'm hell-like?"

He snorted. "No, I mean Twitter can be like the ninth circle of hell. See? Almost nobody believed you."

Alice looked back at the replies and had to concede the point.

"Love your handle, by the way," Aaron added, putting away his phone. "Tinkerbell was your old callsign, wasn't it? Why is it a Space Tinkerbell, though?"

Alice smirked. "Well, I'm part of the Space and Missile operations now, so it sort of made sense."

He cocked his head to the side, examining her with arched eyebrows. "I wish you could tell me what you really do."

She sighed. "I wish I could, too. But also…" She hesitated and then took a deep breath. "In some ways I'm glad I can't."

He frowned. "Why's that?"

She temporized for a moment, slipping her own smartphone back into a pocket and picking up the flowery towel to arrange it better on its hook above the counter. "I worry it might change the way you see me," she said, turned away and speaking so softly it was a wonder that he heard her.

"That will never happen," he disagreed confidently. "There is literally nothing you could do to make me feel differently about you."

She sighed and faced him. "You're a good friend, Aaron, and I appreciate it, but you have no—"

"Nothing," he repeated vehemently.

She smiled wistfully, but didn't protest again.

"You're not convinced." He shook his head slightly.

"It's just… there's a lot you don't know." She looked away.

"It's what haunts you, isn't it?" He asked gently, and then immediately backtracked: "No, forget it, I promised I wouldn't pry…"

"It's okay," she reassured him and lifted her eyes to his again. The least she could do was try to explain her last night's breakdown—he deserved as much. "There are things that happened… things I've seen, things I've done… and then I look around at this normal life that goes on… and it just seems—it seems incompatible. Incongruous, you know. And most days it's just a weird feeling, but sometimes it just gets—it's a little much. Like it can't be real. Like I can't be real. Like I'm seeing everything from the outside, completely disconnected from my body."

He frowned and opened his mouth, but then closed it and nodded to indicate that he wasn't going to interrupt after all.

"And mostly I can deal with it. I have these grounding techniques that a shrink from my previous base taught me. So when I'm flashing back to something… or dissociating… I can get back on my own. Except it's happened twice now that it didn't work. The first time I had just heard about Jake and I… I guess the fear for his life was just too much." She paused, shook her head and dropped her gaze. "I have no idea what precipitated last night's episode. I just sort of checked out… pain, I found, is a good way to remind yourself you're real."

"Hence the rock."

"Hence." She took a deep breath. "It doesn't help that dissociation is one of the first symptoms of schizophrenia, and I am the right age… it's just—I think it was what really pushed me over the edge yesterday. I felt like I was losing my mind, and—"

"You weren't." The force of conviction in Aaron's voice was surprising enough to make her look back at him. "I don't wanna—I mean, I'm not a therapist or a shrink, and I can't say anything from any position of authority, but, Allie, it doesn't sound like schizophrenia to me." He paused for a beat, and then finished: "It sounds like PTSD."

Alice closed her eyes and didn't reply for a long moment. Aaron didn't try to fill the silence, letting her process his words.

"No," she said eventually, her voice stronger than she'd felt—trying to convince herself as much as him. "It's just fatigue, that's all. And stress. I'm not sleeping well. But I'm fine."

"That's okay," he answered calmly. "I'll take it. But—" He exhaled. "Allie, you just gotta ask yourself if you're not lying to yourself a little by any chance."

"I'm not. I'm fine," she repeated quickly. Then she made a show of checking the time on her watch. "It's getting late, I gotta get to the airport."

Aaron wasn't fooled, she saw, but he let it go. "I'm gonna go, too—want a ride?"

"No, I have to return the rental. Jake's not supposed to drive just yet anyway and when he is, he can borrow mom's Toyota."

He nodded and they both headed off to the living room to pick up Ike—in Aaron's case—and say goodbye.

That night Alice took the third and last sleeping pill from the tiny bottle.