Chapter Text
Isaac always imagined he would get a stalker at one point or another. Maybe one of the girls he rejected would decide they couldn't let him go, or some guy whose chick he stole would catch up to him. He made a lot of mistakes in his younger days, when he went through his crazy phase in an attempt to piss off his father. Isaac always figured it would catch up to him somehow. Though, when he pictured his hypothetical obsessed fan, he pictured someone a little more blonde and a little more... Not that.
The redhead looks at him desperately, and Isaac thinks that a sharp word could shatter the delicate looking girl.
But Isaac is wrong. He's wrong about a lot of things.
Her frame is thin and she has to move her legs twice as fast to keep up with him. The shifting crowds of the busy sidewalk keep a safe distance between them. He winds through the packed street of people in an attempt to lose her, but she's exceptional agile in her pursuit.
"Listen, Red. I don't know how more times we can go over this. It's understandable why you would want to fixate on me. I mean, look at me, but this little game is getting old. I have a meeting of the work variety in fifteen minutes that I can't be late for-" He glances at his watch, mostly as an excuse to look away from her face.
"Dammit, would you listen to me- this isn't a joke, Ike." She cuts him off. Maybe Jade was like a piece of glass once, but she's been forged in the flame for far too long. There's nothing he can say to shake her. She plants her feet and holds a steady gaze, her breath fogging in the air around her. Jade has never been much of a city person. That hasn't changed. She is about as comfortable as she looks, with her arms folded in an attempt to look serious.
"Listen, as much as I truly enjoy these daily stalking sessions, I really don't have time for your delusions today. There's no shame in it, I've seen my far share of therapists over the years, and if I can direct you to my secretary I'm sure she'll be more than happy to give you the number of one." This time, Isaac doesn't wait for the girl to respond. She won't be able to follow him into the building, so he makes a beeline for the shelter of his workplace. The streets of New York are filled with the unstable, the homeless, and the desolate. Isaac is all for public service, but that's why he donates money to organizations so he doesn't have to get personally involved.
"Ike! Dammit. It's me. Ike, please, you have to-" She's got a scarf wrapped around her neck that isn't hers, and it's muffles her voice. Jade jogs after him.
"That's not my name, sweetheart. I'm Isaac Cohen. Heir to billions. Playboy. Now under-qualified VP of marketing. Ringing any bells? I don't go by nicknames." He raises his voice but he doesn't sound annoyed, just vaguely bored.
"Yeah, your father is Abraham and you're Isaac. You hated the name though, and rebelled by making everyone call you Ike." Her face is all freckles and she looks funny when she scrunches her eyes like its the most obvious thing in the world.
"You're wrong." He tells her flatly. There's no room in his tone for an argument, but of course, she continues.
"No, I'm not wrong." She glints, "I'm Jade."
She smiles slightly and tucks her hands in the pocket of her red leather jacket which is zipped up to her chin. It looks like a suit of armor wrapped around her. Isaac wonders what she's trying to protect herself against.
"Funny. But I need to get going. I've got a marketing meeting. Good luck with saving the world or whatever it is you're trying to do."
"You said you would rather burn in hell than ever work for your father. You hate Abraham, Ike. You know this isn't right. None of this is right." She pleads again, "You can feel it, can't you? Something is terribly wrong. This isn't you." She points at him, at the suit, the hair gelled over on the wrong side, and dim look in his blue eyes. There's no spark in them.
"The point that I've been desperately trying to get across to you is that you don't know me. We met for the first time five days ago when you chased me down in the street!" He glances down at his watch again. It's eight thirteen. He's going to be late. "What a great stroll down memory lane. I shall cherish these last five days and remember you fondly. Now if you'll excuse me I have somewhere to be."
"We were sixteen and about to die when I kissed you to distract Gribbs. Remember how dark the cell was? And you told those lame stories to the guards to buy us time? Then you held a sweaty gun to my head the same day. You prayed with me in the cave when I asked you to. You did a lot of stupid things because I asked you to. We were friends. When we escaped from the Academy, I broke my ankle and you carried me all the way through the tunnel. We helped Casey and Hunter move into their college apartment in Chicago, and on our twenty first birthday, I stopped you and Hunter from getting matching tattoos. You owe me. You're a douche, you know that? But through all this shit we've had each others back." Jade shudders, an angry chest rippling through her body. Isaac thinks she may burst out crying, in fact, he almost expects her to, but she just balls her fists at her sides, "And I don't know what's going on right now, but I know we can fix it. This isn't your real life, ok? None of this is real. I just need you to remember me, ok? Ike, I need you to remember." Jade steps closer and she's close enough that he's hit with the scent of cinnamon. Her desperate tone is pulling at something inside him and he turns away from her.
Once Isaac is through the door, briefcase gripped tightly in his hands he hears her call:
"Jade Ellsworth, Hunter- Ike, wait-Jun Fukyama, Casey Blevins- please, I have to talk to him- Zoe- you have to let me through- Ian Si-!" The security guards surrounding the building flank her and pull her back by the shoulders. Her small form twists violently in their grasp and she kicks her feet out, trying to create some sort of drag and resistance. It seems like she has a lot of practice trying to escape.
The sight stirs and twists something uncomfortably in Isaac's stomach that gives him flashbacks to his mother's thirtieth nightmare birthday party, but by the time the elevator opens, he can smell his coffee waiting for him on his secretary's desk. His office is placed in the corner of the hallway near his father's messier one.
Ike. The name feels odd as he whispers it aloud, not fitting in any familiar way. He tries to remember if he even introduced himself as Ike. No. He sort of likes it though. The name was totally foreign to him but the way she sounded when she shouted it-
He steps inside his office, effectively shutting off everything from work from his mind.
Issac's office is as bare as his apartment. He has just enough pens and papers to get through the day, and he keeps a basket of morning glories flowers blooming near his window. The cleaning crew that sweeps through the offices always scrubs the hardwood floors and the room smells distinctly like lemons.
There's a memo sitting on his desk, one that wasn't there yesterday. When Isaac was seventeen he brought a stripper up here, back when he was consumed with booze and women and anger mostly. He's long since worked out his issues, as he recognized all the good his family's company does, as boring as it seems. His father opened his eyes to the responsibility that rested on his shoulders, so Isaac put away the bottles and learned how to tie a tie and make excel spreadsheets.
The Last Will and Testament of Abraham Cohen
Isaac reads the heading several times as he processes what the memo is. His father's will. Why would Abraham update it? How did this get here?
And to my son, Isaac
Did his father leave this for him?
The company has a dozen lawyers on retainer for stuff like this. As he said before, Isaac prefers to be hands off.
I leave nothing.
The paper crumbles in his hands and Isaac storms back into the hallway, shaking as he grips the paper in the air, "WHO PUT THIS IS MY OFFICE? Cheryl, who was in my office this morning?"
"I'm sorry. What seem to be the problem, Mr. Cohen?" The secretary has dark hair twisted around her neck and her work ethic is disappointingly lax.
"My problem, Cheryl, is that someone left this on my desk, and I want to know who." Isaac purses his lips tightly, "I want to know right now."
"Ah, I'm not sure, Mr. C. There's nothing written on it. Are you sure you didn't just leave it on your desk, or something?" She wiggles her eyebrows less then helpfully.
"Cheryl, remind me to boost your health insurance so you can get your eyes checked, because it clearly says," Isaac back ups towards the grand painting framed on the wall, finger raised pointedly, "Nothing. It clearly says nothing."
His eyes scramble over the paper, searching for the dark text he had just read. It's blank.
"Are you feeling ok, Mr. C?" Cheryl spins half way around in her chair, leaning against the palm of her hand.
"I don't pay you for your concern, Cheryl." Isaac flips the paper around again, but the writing is gone. Or maybe it was never really there in the first place. Great. The redhead's delusion is rubbing off on him.
"Maybe you should get your eyes checked." Cheryl murmurs under her breath as she turns back to her computer.
"I can't believe this is what my life has come to. I'm getting sass from my secretary. End me now." Isaac tosses the paper into the recycling bin and heads into the meeting ten minute late, and the entire time he spits her name out over and over in his mind:
Jade Jade Jade Jade Jade Jade
"I'm not trying to be a jerk or anything- But are you sure you want to get Ike involved?" The diner is pretty much empty except for two redheads crowded into the neon colored booth, awaiting their fries and milkshakes, "I just mean that you've been going through a lot of trouble just to talk to him. Maybe we should just get to work and then his memory will return when we fix whatever this is." Hunter scribbles designs on his napkin, mostly flowers and bubbly clouds, but there's one that he hopes looks like Casey. The yellow crayons don't nearly do her golden locks justice, but he's not complaining.
"We can't walk away from the people we love, especially not now. No matter how infuriating they are."
Across the creaky table from him, Jade lets out a loud groan and drops her head on to the table, pushing her plate of waffles away defeatedly.
"It went that badly, huh?"
Jade raises a eyebrow clearly saying: you don't want to know.
"Well, I saw Casey again. She was studying in the library with her parents." There's a hint of optimism in the freckled boy's tone as he raises his fork.
"What did she say? Did she seem like she recognized you?"
"Maybe. It's hard to tell since she tried to pepper sprayed me again, but I think we made some progress. At least she didn't call the cops on me."
"Hunter, we're so screwed."
Three weeks ago, Hunter was sprawled out on the cold living room floor helping Casey make flash cards for her biochemistry test. It was a week after their twenty third birthdays, an extremely extravagant event they decided to always celebrate together. Casey was laughing at her failed attempt at making them dinner, and her pink slippers slid across the floor as she delivered burnt breakfast food to him.
Hunter had a to-do list: finish his lit paper, buy more Christmas themed paper plates since they couldn't seem to have enough of them, and help Ike plan some big surprise he wouldn't stop going on about. He was humming an off-tune song and the night was just like every other.
Until it wasn't.
Then there was a blinding flash of light, one that fizzled and blinded them almost instantly. Somewhere in a place they've been desperately trying to forget, the cylinder begins spinning again.
Casey lets out a scream that sounds distant and empty, calling for a name he doesn't recognize.
Someone is calling his name. Why is everything so fuzzy? Suddenly everything is all bright and vivid and crisp.
And then there's nothing.
Hunter is graduating from his public high school in Toronto on a snowy day, and the biggest challenges he's had to overcome is trying to pass calculus class and afford tickets to the sci-fi move marathon at the Bloor. He can hear Andy cheering all the way from his seat in the stands. He doesn't have any scars from where he was grazed by a bullet and he's never given his heart to anyone.
Hunter wonders what it would be like to fall in love at first sight, or solve a mystery, teleport, or get shot in the shoulder like an action hero.
He's never been recruited by any impressive schools, he's not brave, and he's never on time. He's Hunter. Life is good. But it's not his life. It didn't take him too long to remember what he was missing.
"So what's next, Ellsworth?" Although the milkshake was excellent during dinner, their strategizing was not.
"We keep trying to get them to remember. What else can we do? I just need to figure out how to get through to Ike. I have to jog his memory somehow." Hunter doesn't like the way Jade's eyes narrow as she says that. She got a look in her eye, one that often got her in trouble at her catholic school.
"I can't believe that in this alternate reality, or whatever were stuck in, Ike wears a monkey suit, works a nine to five job with his father, and is sober. He's the Anti-Ike." Never in a million years did Hunter think any of that was possible. Ike? Sober? Oh. The reality altering is shocking, but at least that follows the Morning Glories script. Hunter has become accustomed to his friends time traveling, murderous ghosts stalking people, and teleporting to mysterious islands. He's used to weird and strange and unusual. This is just freaky.
"You want to talk about changes? Casey was wearing a crop top, and drinking Starbucks. My kick-ass, rebellious best friend is a typical suburban white girl." Jade's smile breaks into a horrified expression, as she mashes her hand against her lips to hold in a gasp, "She probably reads John Green books."
"Woah. Well, now we definitely have to get things back to normal." Hunter bites at the corner of his mouth like he's holding back a smirk. Smiling is something he hasn't really done since Casey starting looking at him like a stranger.
"Her parents came to visit her over Christmas break. Her mom brought her homemade roast beef and Casey ran out of her dorm to hug them. Her life is so much better here. She's twenty three and doesn't have nightmares or regrets or scars and she's happy." Hunter stirs the straw in his drink, unable to meet Jade's puppy-dog eyes, "She's really happy, Jade."
He wipes at the edge of his eyes, which burn with exhaustion. He's pretty sure he could show up to Comic-Con as he is now, and people would think he was cosplaying a zombie from the walking dead. Not his best look.
"I'm sure she is, but her real parents are dead. This isn't her life. None of this real, and we owe it to them to get us all back to our real lives."
"Are we being selfish?" Hunter finally says it, spitting the accusation more at himself then at the girl sitting across from him. He runs his hand through his hair and wishes it was as easy to fix his problems as it is to smooth out his hair.
"If we get back to our real lives, then we win. We get to be with the people we love in the homes we made. But Casey gets her parents here and she's doing research that could put her on track to a Noble Prize! And Ike is actually a decent person. He never has to live with the memory of stabbing Abraham or having to bury his friends. He's a functioning member of society who is working side by side with his father who's proud of him. It's all they've ever wanted. How can we take them away from that?"
"Casey needs you. In this life, we never went to the Academy, but for all the shit and torment we went through in that place, it made us who we are. Those kids, they're survivors and heroes. That's who we are. That's who Casey is. She's the girl who schemed to get me out of the basement when she barely even knew me. She's the one who charged head first into you in the hallway, and then in the end, she went racing into the greenhouse because she had to make sure it was really over. Casey Blevins got us out of that godforsaken place and we owe it to her to help her now." Jade argues because all she really knows how to do is fight. The line that separates good and evil has been blurred in her mind for a long time. She doesn't care anymore. She just has to do what she thinks is right and hope that Casey and Ike won't hate her after all is said and done.
Jade already lost her family once. She won't do it again.
"So what do we do?"
Jade doesn't say anything to that, but she lets her hand flop on to the table top, and she waits for Hinter to grasp it.
"How do the stories do it? When they have to jog someone's memory or wake a cursed princess?" Jade exclaims, still holding on to Hunter's sweaty palm.
"True love's kiss? Do you really think that could work?" He nearly jumps out of his seat, bouncing his converses against the ground eagerly.
"I'm open to any other ideas, but that's all I've got. I've tried reciting Ike's- I mean Isaac's life story to him, but it hasn't done anything. He didn't recognize our names or faces. So I'll try something else."
"While I'm sure Ike won't be opposed to a stunning redhead throwing herself at him in the streets, I have a feeling Casey and her black belt in jujitsu won't be so keen." Hunter does have a sense of appreciation for all his limbs and he's not particularly excited about the prospect of losing them.
"Once you kiss her, she'll remember you and your dorkiness so you don't have to worry about it." Jade mutters confidently, creasing her brow matter-of-factly.
"What if it doesn't work? And she-just an example off the top of my head-decides to tear my arm off? I won't be much help one handed."
Jade wants to respond that he's not much help two handed either, but she refrains.
"It'll be fine, Hunter. Now I've got a plan, and you're probably going to want to take notes." Jade reaches in her bag and pulls out a ringed binder, complete with skull stickers she stuck on it as a teenager.
"You made a binder? It really must be the end of the world." Hunter slides it across the table and he flips through the pages attentively.
They're quiet for a few minutes. She crosses her legs at the ankles like how the nuns taught her, and she focuses on keeping her breathing steady.
"Hey, Jade." His green eyes look at her tentatively, and he pauses his reading, "Before our lives went all Fringe Season two, when we were all living in New York, Ike was picking out a Christmas present for you. He dragged me all over, and he was being so indecisive and a real pain. He almost gave me an asthma attack." Hunter scowls, remember the day Ike shoved him around half the city.
"He's terrible at giving gifts. Didn't he get you a guide to puberty last year?"
"That's beside the point." Hunter mutters in a place of a yes, "You're confident about saving Ike. In fact, I don't think I can count the number of times you have saved him over the years. He's just as sure about you as you are about him. He asked me to help him pick out a ring, Jade. I think he was going to ask you to marry him."
Then they're quiet. Jade looks like she's been punched in the stomach, he knows that's the exact expression she made when one of the guards hit her in the gut. Hunter wonders if he did the right thing by telling her. Or would that just hurt more if they didn't find a way to get back to their old lives? His hand flies to the back of his head and he tugs loosely at a few stray hairs that grow at the base of his neck.
"In this life, we never went to the Academy. None of us ever stepped foot on the campus." Jade says aloud as if it's some startling realization. Her eyes become bright and eager. She slides her plate of fries out of the way as she begins to scribble something down on her notepad.
"That means that we never participated in the Woodrun. That means that you never almost got stabbed. It means that Zoe never got shot."
"Zoe." Hunter says her name aloud to reacquaint himself with it. He can't say it without tasting blood in his mouth and feeling the jolt of a bullet whizzing by him.
"She's alive. They all are. So what if we find the others, bring the Glories together. Maybe a group of us could jog Ike and Casey's memories." She suggests, already gathering up her jacket and binders.
"Do you really think we could find them?" Hunter grins excitedly, feeling like Jade has lit a matchstick inside him.
"We can do it." She says with the certainty of one hundred lifetimes weighing on her with only one goal in mind.
Maybe Jade was like a piece of glass once, but she's been forged in the flame for far too long. Nothing will stand in her way. She lost her family once.
But never again.