Chapter Text
Sometimes healing looks like a shortness of breath and a panicked stare when the strobe lights at a party turn red. Sometimes it looks like sitting at a ferry port for hours and screaming at a mass of dirt and trees for ruining your life. Most of the time, it looks like toes jammed under cushions to stay warm and mugs of coffee in the early hours while recounting every fear, every doubt, every memory to the only person you can trust enough to listen to them.
“Yesterday,” Alex says, a flicker of amusement in her voice, “Nona was asking me if I remember finding her at the campground when we were on Edwards Island. And I just – I just stared at her, like, Nones, you weren’t at the campground. It was like – we spent, like, fifteen minutes just arguing about whether she was at the campground. Then I remembered I had no idea where I found her.”
“It was at the campground,” Jonas replies amicably. “I was there, too.”
Slumping back, Alex pulls a face as she tries not to spill the coffee over the brim of her mug, and rests her chin on her chest. The sofa isn’t big enough for the two of them, and it’s equally small enough for her to be able to stick her feet in his face. “Shut up. Wait. Is that why you still have that picture of me with the ball? Because we were there together?”
Jonas grimaces at Alex’s feet, but nods. “Yeah, you were, like…” He pauses. “Wait, you went through the same six months, like, a hundred times—”
“—Ninety-seven.”
“—Ninety-seven times, and you never thought to ask what actually happens on the island when Michael comes back to life?” Lip quirked, Jonas stares at Alex, and his fingers curl and uncurl repetitively around his mug to busy his hands.
“What exactly was I going to say?” Alex asks. “Hi, I don’t remember anything from our weirdly traumatic experience of Edwards Island, can someone take me on a step-by-step of the night’s events?”
Jonas chuckles. “Okay, fine. Just… I went into the cave first, again. You and Michael both followed me, because I was Ren’s friend but Ren was too stoned to move. The cave entrance blocked up, we were stuck down there, we saw the green triangle, you did your radio thing… only, you and Michael woke up at Harden Tower. I woke up in the middle of Fort Milner somewhere. A different part of it to Clarissa. But I guess you guys still came to get her after talking on the radio – I just followed the speakers. She kept saying where she was, so I was trying to find it, and I found her, like, a minute before you did. And then all the crazy time loop stuff happened and she – you know.”
Alex vividly pictures watching Clarissa drop from the window. It’s a sight she’ll never forget. “Yeah, I know.”
“Anyway,” Jonas continues, “we went to get Ren. I guess you guys came for Clarissa first because she was Michael’s girlfriend? I dunno. But we found Nona along the way, so I volunteered to go with her back to Harden Tower.”
“D’aww,” Alex replies, and it’s Jonas’s turn to shove at her with his foot. “What? It’s cute. You being all… chivalrous. Gentlemanly.”
She grins at him, and he rolls his eyes in return. “Or, Nona was on the verge of a breakdown and I was one hundred percent third-wheeling on the Alex and Michael Adventures already,” he says. “Seriously. It’s not your fault, you two just click super well, and I barely knew either of you.”
“Sorry,” Alex says. “I mean it. I… other-me wouldn’t have wanted you to feel left out.”
“Yeah, yeah,” Jonas says, half-hearted. “I mean, it wasn’t just that. Someone had to take care of Nona and none of us wanted her coming to find Ren, and I’m pretty sure Michael wasn’t going to let you out of his sight after what happened to Clarissa, so it kinda just fell on me.”
Alex raises an eyebrow. “Oh, I see. Michael saw you as the expendable one.” She looks mildly amused. “I’m gonna have to have some real stern words with him when—”
“Nope,” Jonas interrupts, “no stern words. No thank you.” He pauses to remember what they were talking about, and then continues. “So, I took Nona back to the Tower while you went to find Ren. Then you came back to the Tower, with Ren, and came up with the plan to steal Maggie Adler’s boat, and then…” He hesitates. “Then you went with Ren and Michael to go find the key while Nona and I stayed on the Tower. Like, you had the radio, Ren had the plan, and Michael still had that overprotective older brother thing going on.”
“Did you feel put out of a job?” Alex coos, and he shoves at her again. She snorts gracelessly.
The forgotten television screen flickers in front of them, and they both glance to it briefly as it plays some dumb commercial. It’s been on mute for the last three hours – Alex isn’t even aware what early morning film is even playing right now.
After a moment, Jonas returns to glaring at her. “Anyway, Nona and I decided to come find you at Maggie’s house, and… everything from there was basically the same. Clarissa was in the house. The ghosts started playing weird games with all of us. We found a way back into the cave.” He clicks his tongue. “Uh, you and Michael went to go do the call and response thingy in the forest. I stayed with Ren and Nona. And then they got together, which was – like, super awkward. I was just… standing there.”
Alex hesitates. “You’re not in the picture,” she says. “The one before…”
“Yeah, no, I screwed up. Went to the bottom of the hill for a smoke while we were waiting for you, and there was the, um. The tape player.” His voice sounds oddly thick at that, and Alex shifts in her position on the sofa. “Ren was like, don’t touch it, but Nona thought it would be okay, so I tried to get it to work… then you guys came back, and I asked you to help with the… well, you helped me with the radio, and I disappeared into Sad Memory Land. I’m super useful like that.”
“Hey,” Alex says. “If it’s any consolation, you disappear either way. Guess the ghosts just didn’t want you around.”
Jonas snorts. “Well, that makes me feel better.” He shifts in his seat. “Anyway, Michael woke up on the beach, and he carried you to the ferry port, and we went home. And you woke up.”
Sipping from her mug, Alex thinks back over what Jonas just said. “Is that what happened to us?” she asks. “When – when Michael wasn’t there. Did we just get dropped off on the beach? I remember someone saying you carried me.”
“What else was I gonna do, leave you there?”
Alex blows her fringe out of her eyes. “Bet your arms were super sore after that.”
“Not really,” Jonas replies mildly, and then pauses. “That wasn’t, like – I’m not bragging, or anything, you’re just really light.” At Alex’s amused eyebrow quirk, he adds, “Seriously. It was like carrying dinnerplates. Anyway, I was less thinking about my arms and more thinking about how you weren’t, you know, waking up. We figured if you didn’t wake up by the time the ferry docked, we should take you to hospital.”
This causes Alex to giggle, and she’s not entirely sure why. “God, what would you even say? Doctor, Doctor, my sister fell through a rip in time and space and she won’t wake up.”
Jonas rolls his eyes. “Well, when Michael was there, he said the same thing, basically. About the hospital. It’s actually really freaky to be, like, completely unable to wake someone up, you know?”
Alex tries to reply, but she blinks and the world behind her eyelids is Michael, floating lifelessly, dragged to shore but he won’t wake up, skin cold and eyes closed and—
“Yeah,” she mutters, “I know.”
When she looks back up from her mug, Jonas is frowning at her. She raises an eyebrow to ask why. Jonas looks away, briefly, but there’s clearly a question on his mind that he doesn’t quite want to ask and Alex knows she won’t quite want to answer.
“How… how is Michael not dead anymore?” he asks eventually.
Alex releases a breath she didn’t know she was holding, and quickly, Jonas adds, “I mean – if you don’t wanna talk about it, then that’s, like, totally fine, I was just wondering because—”
“I went back,” she interrupts. “You know all those memories we kept getting slammed into? They were, like, actual time travel. And I kept getting thrown back to the same moments every time, and sometimes I could save Michael’s life by telling him not to move out with Clarissa. It was like, if he didn’t move out, we didn’t go swimming in the lake to celebrate, and he didn’t… you know.”
“Yeah,” Jonas replies, and there’s a careless reverence in his voice. He knows what death is. “But Michael did move out.”
Alex swallows. “Yeeeeah,” she says, the word dragged out uncomfortably. “When you guys pulled me out of the portal, there was a kind of… intermission, before I woke up on the ferry. I got dropped into another memory. Normally I’d tell Michael not to move out with Clarissa, but this time I just got dunked straight into Horn Lake.”
“Oh, shit.”
“Yeah, oh shit.” She laughs, but it’s humourless. “It was the moment he got his foot stuck and drowned. Only, because I was… prepared for it, I pulled him out. So he didn’t die.”
There’s an uncomfortable silence. Unable to bear it, she adds monotonously, “Whoo.”
Jonas pulls a face. “That’s – sorry, I shouldn’t have asked.”
“No, no,” Alex interjects, “it’s actually – I’m kinda surprised you didn’t ask before. I mean, it’s a super obvious thing to notice, my brother not being dead, so you, uh, held out pretty well.”
With a huff, he replies, “Yeah, I assumed it would be something weird and time-travel-y. Just didn’t know what.” He pauses in a way that tells Alex there’s another question coming, and she puts the mug down, getting comfortable in preparation.
Eventually, Jonas continues, “That actually reminds me. I wanted to ask about… about what happened in the cave. The second time. When you, you know, saved the day. I asked Michael what his experience was, but he said he just went into the cave with you and then you disappeared.”
Alex presses her lips together, trying to find a good answer. “I mean,” she says, “I actually have no idea what happened, because I don’t remember any of it—”
“Yeah, with Michael’s version,” Jonas interrupts, “but I bet the same thing happened to you both times. Or, uh, all times. The only difference was that Michael didn’t get hoovered up into a tape player beforehand. He just had to stand there and wait for you, from what I could tell.”
The television is still flickering. On closer inspection, Alex realises it’s one of the Indiana Jones movies. She wouldn’t be able to guess which one. “Well,” she says carefully, eyes still on the television screen, “I, um. I go through the rift – the big triangle – every time. Then I’m standing underwater with the Kanaloa, and Clarissa’s there and everyone’s possessing her, and then… then we kind of flick around a few places while we talk. Just parts of the island, but they’re… warped, different, wrong. The ghosts tell me I can leave, and they give me another portal to go back through.”
“And you don’t leave?”
“They asked for Clarissa,” Alex explains, skipping over the question. “Every time, they said, you can leave if we keep Clarissa. Every fucking time.” Desperately, she tries to swallow back the next words, but they come pouring out before she can. “And – it’s not that I wanted to, I wanted to save her, I tried to save her every time, but—”
She drops her head. “But after trying the same thing over and over and over again, I thought, hey, maybe this is it. Maybe they’re keeping me in the time loops until I give Clarissa over.”
Jonas’ lips part, as though he wants to say something, but nothing comes out. Alex continues. “I let them take her. It was – what, twenty times in? I don’t even remember. I just – I let them have her, ’cause I couldn’t do it anymore. And when I woke up on the ferry, it was like… she’d never existed. You’d all completely forgotten about her. Even Michael.”
“Holy crap,” Jonas says. That’s all he really can say.
“And now you think I suck.”
“No,” Jonas backtracks, “no, Alex, you were – come on, anyone would’ve tried it. Probably a whole lot earlier, too! You just—” He hesitates. “You were doing what you could. Trying every option.”
Alex doesn’t respond, and anxiety curls around Jonas’ ribcage as he wonders if she’s retreating again, back into her own mind to escape the real world. He watches her stare at the television. Thirty seconds. A minute. Two minutes.
Abruptly, he reaches for the remote and unmutes it, allowing the cacophony of whichever Indiana Jones film this is to blast out from the screen. Alex jumps, violently, and scrambles to re-mute it with a hissed, “What the hell are you doing.”
“Getting your attention,” Jonas replies calmly. Alex blinks.
The clock ticks over to five in the morning, and he asks lightly, “Okay, okay, real questions, now. In all your ninety-seven loops, did anyone ever get so scared they pissed themselves?”