Chapter Text
The first time Alex and Jonas left the island, they suffered for it. They cried their ways through nightmares, and clenched their fists when anyone talked about Edwards Island, and hyperventilated when headaches pressed a little too close between their eyes and they wondered, is this real, am I here, did I leave—
Alex soon found out the answer to that question was, no. She found that out half a year later, and then several years later, when it finally clicked that I’ve been here before. I know this place. I know these people. I know the birds fly out of this bush and I know the anomaly asks me if I want to play a game and I know Maggie’s key is a radio and I know—
After that, leaving Edwards Island felt like a bubble. It was a tight cocoon, where panic wasn’t real, wasn’t allowed to be real, just yet. There’s no such thing as post-traumatic stress when the trauma is fresh, and real, and happening, flickering in the corner of Alex’s vision not as a memory but as a continuing event. When she was stuck, but those around her were falling into the aftermath, all she could do was help them through it.
“You seem, like, really unaffected by this stuff,” Ren told her, once, on the fifteenth or fiftieth time they sat on his balcony with their legs hanging between the railings. She hummed in agreement. She wasn’t affected, not yet, because she wasn’t allowed to be. Not yet.
Leaving Edwards Island after being pulled out of the rift seemed to have a healing effect on Jonas. By some strange miracle, he knew Alex was trapped and he stayed in the cocoon with her. For Ren, and Nona, and Clarissa and Michael, the Kanaloa and everything surrounding it was a fresh memory for them to cry over and bond over and, through time, forget.
Jonas knew Alex could flicker back out of existence any second. So did Alex. And even though logic and time and event suggested that she wouldn’t, they were both aware that she could. They didn’t dare step foot outside the horror show, just as Alex never did before.
It was good, at first. Jonas was more afraid of the dark, and yet, less afraid of what he could find in it. Afraid in a practical sense. Afraid in that he’d grab the candlestick when he heard a bump in the night, not dissolve into a panic attack. Alex almost thought she might have saved him from the pain, by helping him remember.
Of course, there is a sharper pain that comes with remembering, but that’s what the candlestick is for.
Because he remembered, Jonas could also help Alex. “You’re not gonna leave this time,” he promised her, and for a brief moment they both pretended it was something he had the ability to promise. “We pulled you out. This version is the real version.”
“You don’t know that,” Alex replied, and their skulls bumped lightly when they leaned into each other. (It was three in the morning. Neither of them actually meant to hit heads with the other. That doesn’t mean they didn’t stay there.)
“No,” Jonas said, honest, “but I really think it’s true. And if it’s true, then everyone’s gonna remember what you’re acting like. And if you keep acting like none of this matters and nobody’s gonna remember it in a few months, then everyone’s just gonna think you’re some kind of creepy nihilist.”
Alex laughed at that, but it came out slightly strangled. “Excuse you,” she huffs. “I am a creepy nihilist.”
Jonas then explained he only knew the word nihilist because his dad used it last week and told him what it meant, and Alex shoved a hand over his mouth and interrupted with, “I don’t care and I know what you’re doing. And you’re still smart.”
(Jonas groaned at the compliment, and when Alex wouldn’t remove her hand, he licked it. She immediately took back the compliment. They both ignored that he’d learned that trick from her in the first place.)
And so Alex’s birthday came, and she didn’t glitch out of existence when she finished writing a love letter to her former self, and they celebrated. Their celebration was a quiet one, with a store-bought bag of popcorn shoved between them as they watched some dumb film from the eighties and threw the aforementioned popcorn at the television, and then each other.
Now they go to Alex’s 18th birthday party, organised by Ren instead of Alex because you’re way too apathetic about parties to make this as cool as it deserves to be, and Alex finds out what closing that chapter of her life looks like.
It looks like Jonas. It looks like disco lighting that changes into red strobe lighting mid-song, and it looks like Alex watching her former step-brother go rigid in front of her, eyes wide, breath caught on an inhale, hands frozen in mid-air—
It looks like Alex, tugging Jonas away, away to a place that’s safe and quiet where no red lights are flashing overhead.
“Hey,” she says softly, as he gasps for air in lungs that won’t work, drowning in memories of red eyes and black smoke. Alex knows where he is. Jonas has been there every single time they left Edwards Island together.
So, she also knows to calm him down by holding his shoulders, rubbing circles into his skin, and whispering, “You’re not there anymore. We’re not there anymore. It was just a red light, Jonas. Nobody’s in your head.”
The panic attack subsides, after a minute, two minutes, an hour, nobody cares, and she grabs him as he falls forward into her. She holds him steady as they breathe.
After a minute, Jonas awkwardly tries to pull away, cheeks pink with embarrassment because he forgets Alex has seen him go through this a hundred times before (and normally a hundred days earlier). She doesn’t let him step back. Normally, she does, but this time she doesn’t. This time, she pulls him right back in, and wraps her arms around his neck tightly.
He doesn’t respond at first. She can still feel him trembling minutely under her hands, and there’s nothing she can do to soothe him that she isn’t already doing. She just holds on.
Slowly, carefully, Jonas’ arms lift to encircle her waist.
“Thanks,” he mutters roughly, the humiliation still tainting his voice, but apparently Alex’s presence is too inviting for him to push her away again. She feels his face press into her neck, and one of her arms unloops from where she pulls him in, instead resting a hand on his head.
“Don’t mention it,” she replies evenly. She’s balanced on her tiptoes, now.
Jonas pulls back again, a hand shoving its way uncomfortably through his hair, and Alex lets him go. “I, uh,” he starts, and her stomach clenches at the thought that he’ll apologise, but — “You’ve seen me do that before, haven’t you.”
It’s not a question. Sometimes, Alex forgets that Jonas remembers the first six months they spent together, too. He just doesn’t remember the others that followed. “Yeah,” she says. “Yeah, sometimes you start with the panic attacks, like, a week after we leave. Sometimes it’s a day, if we had a super rough time on the island.” She hesitates. “You did pretty well this time. Might even be a record.”
Jonas rolls his eyes, and Alex ignores how wet they are for his sake. “Stop talking like it’s gonna happen again. We’re here now, aren’t we?”
“Yeah,” she replies, softer than she intended, and she watches his shoulders relax fractionally. “Yeah, we are.”
They stand there for a moment longer, unsure of what to say to each other, unwilling to re-enter the party before they’ve really caught their breaths. Alex isn’t particularly popular at school, but she isn’t unpopular, either, and Ren must’ve invited between sixty and eighty people to this party. Most of them are outside, as the evening is uncharacteristically warm, but a decent number are still inside, with the music and the flashing lights and the snack table and no sense of personal space. Drunk people tend to be like that. High people tend to be like that.
Alex is sober in both respects, and she’d rather keep it that way. Ren’s study is a cool, quiet break from the intensity of the gathering, and she’s content to share it with Jonas while they both prepare themselves for this new chapter of their lives.
“I don’t wanna go out there,” Jonas says.
“God,” Alex replies, the relief bubbling through her and spilling out, “me neither.”
They pause, looking at each other in the small space. Blink. And then, slowly, together, they begin to laugh. It’s a quiet laugh, an understanding one, and they draw together in the fairly compact space just to lean against the desk. The giggling peters out, eventually, and Alex exhales slowly.
“Guys, Macy says she saw you—are you two making out in here?”
Ren bursts in, and Alex flinches, Jonas likely jumping just as much as her as they scramble upright and glare at their new company. Ren currently looks exactly like any other teenager at a party when the hand’s hovering dangerously close to midnight – slightly sweaty, wide-eyed and buzzed, somehow grinning stupidly even when he isn’t actually smiling.
“Ew, no!” Alex’s nose scrunches up. “He’s my st—friend. He’s my friend. We’re friends.”
“Kinda sounds like you have a crush on me,” Jonas replies easily, and when she turns back to him, he’s got a stupid grin that almost matches Ren’s completely. “What? You denied it pretty aggressively.”
“That’s because I’m feeling pretty aggressive,” she shoots back, punching him in the shoulder. He winces. “Besides, you know what I was about to say.” Before Jonas can respond, she turns back to Ren. “Stop barging in on stuff and tell Macy to shut up. And go drink a glass of water or something.”
Ren giggles, backing out of the room obediently, and Alex looks back at Jonas. She wants to be jokingly annoyed at him, but the smile on his face is so brilliant in comparison to the expression that was there before that she can’t bear to wipe it off, even in jest. “You shut up too,” she manages instead.
He snorts. “I wasn’t saying anything.”
She pulls the door open. “Ready to go own all those strobe lights?”
The smile slips, slightly, and Alex immediately regrets her words – but it’s okay, apparently, as Jonas replies after, “As I’ll ever be.” He gestures for her to go first, and they leave the room together, fingers twitching as though they want to hold hands for the comfort.
They don’t hold hands. They just enjoy the party.