Chapter Text
“What?”
Dylan was staring at her weird. Jesus he really looks like Dad, it must drive him crazy. And he’s a doctor, an honest to god doctor. That honestly might freak her out more than the time travel thing. Back in ‘88 she wasn’t sure he was graduating high school.
“My sister is dead. She died of cerebral lymphoma four years ago. Who are you? Who put you up to this?”
What. The. Fuck.
“What did you say?” Mac’s voice shakes. She misheard him. She must have.
“My sister has been dead for three years. I don’t know what kind of sick joke this is, but whoever-”
A woman cuts him off. Mac’s ears are ringing. He’s lying, he has to be. She would have been what, 39, 40? Far too young to die. He’s gonna break any second now laughing about how he ‘totally got her’ this is just like a more twisted version of when she was younger and he would tell her that he accidentally ran over the stray cats she liked to feed. It isn’t fucking funny. The woman is talking, presumably to her but she isn’t listening. Now Dylan is. Mac still can’t get the room to stop spinning.
“Are you serious? This is what you fucking think?” This can’t be real, this can’t be real. She needs to find Tiff, she probably knows what cerebral lymphoma is. She needs to find Erin who can help her old Erin who can track old not dead her down and confirm this is all some time travel induced fucking nightmare. She needs to find KJ because… she doesn’t know how exactly KJ could help in this shit storm but she needs to find her anyway.
“Fuck you Dylan” She stares him down for as long as she can. Hopes that this will haunt his fucking nightmares. It’s certainly going to start starring in hers. The woman drags her off. She doesn’t remember much of what she says. The only thing she can think of is Dylan's words.
My sister is dead. My sister is dead. My sister is dead.
They don’t talk on the way out to his car. For what might be the first time in her life Mac Coyle doesn’t have shit to say. She has so much she wants to say, she wants to ask why he didn't believe her, what changed his mind. How long was she sick, if she knew it was coming, if she eventually just stopped fighting. But she just can’t find the words.
Eventually Dylan breaks the silence.
“You want a… you want your seat cooler on?” His voice is rough, like he’d been crying. Mac can’t remember if she ever saw Dylan cry. Even when dad was at his shittiest, even when mom died. But here he is crying over Mac. It makes her skin itch, this tangible proof he cares about her.
“I’m okay.” She doesn’t think she’ll ever be okay again.
“When we get home do you want to see some photo albums?” He asks tentatively.
“What?”
“You first got sick when you were 16. It was…” He drifts off like it’s difficult to even say. “We didn’t think you were going to make it. After that Alice got really into scrapbooking everything. I thought it might be nice to look through them, know some stuff about your life other than how it ends.”
“Yeah sure, sounds cool.” Sounds fucking terrifying but she isn’t gonna tell him that.
Mac doesn’t completely know why she’s spending the day flipping through old photo books of memories she never had. Curiosity maybe, unlike the rest of the girls she can’t meet her future self, all she has are her scrapbooks. Maybe it's also reassurance. Proof that she was happy before the whole brain cancer and dying at 30 shit.
The albums have a lot of gaps, especially in the beginning. You can tell what years Alice spent sober by how many more mundane moments are captured. Haircuts, halloween costumes and school dances. Tiff and Erin show up some, KJ a lot more. They’re all at her graduation apparently, it’s kinda nice knowing they stuck together. Tiff and Erin start to fade out, KJ doesn’t. They move to New York and even with all the shit she knows comes later in her life, Mac is fucking ecstatic she got out of Stony Stream. They got a dog apparently, Macs always wanted a dog. If you ignore the whole dying thing her life seems to be pretty cool.
Until she turns the page.
Because what the fuck what the fuck what the fuck what the fuck why is she kissing KJ .
“Hey Mac you good? We have to go pick up Alice and Wilder soon.” Dylan says as he walks in “were you looking through old photos?” She should close the album, pretend she never saw it, act dumb. But she can’t move. Does he know? The albums in his house. Has he ever looked through it before? Can she risk asking?
“Yeah…”
“Feel free to ask any questions you have about anything in the-” His eyes fall to the page. “Shit.” She instinctively leans back, what the fuck was she thinking? Why didn’t she close the book, or just switch to another page. She could have found out what her dog was named, instead she was gonna get kicked out. Did she really think just because Dylan became a doctor means he transformed into Mr. fucking Rogers or some shit? Nope. She was so totally screwed.
“I did not at all prepare for this." He says, more to himself than Mac. "That’s your wedding, August 2015.”
“No, no, no. I know her.”
“Yeah, from your paper route right?”
“I don’t marry her, I can’t. She’s…” Annoying, persistent, reliable, scary, badass, possibly her best friend “a girl.”
“Gay marriage was legalised in 2015.”
“Okay cool, good for them. Doesn’t have jack shit to do with me.”
“Mac.”
“I’m not some fucking lesbo!” She’s not .
“Don’t say that.”
“Why the fuck not? I got it all from you.”
“I know, I’m sorry.”
“I’m not some fucking freak… I’m not.” She can’t be.
“You're not a freak, I promise.”
Mac can count the amount of times she's hugged her brother on one hand and have fingers left over. But she lets him hold her as she sobs because he knows and he took her in, he knows and he drove across town to get donuts from the donut place she likes. He knows and he’s letting her cry into his arms in the middle of his living room making him late to pick his daughters up from school and telling her
“It’s going to be okay.”
They don’t talk about it on the way to pick up his kids. They don’t talk about it at the Chillis. They talk about everything else. But it’s all Mac can think about. She got married to a girl , to KJ . KJ the psycho hockey freak, KJ who always races her across town when they finish their routes, KJ who started bringing her breakfasts because she bitched about being hungry, KJ who was making eye contact with her from across the Chilis, wait… the fuck?
“Hey, I’m gonna use the john real quick. I’ll meet you back at the table.” KJ looks panicked, how did she find her? Why did she find her?
“We have to go, we have to go. We have to get out of here.” Mac is frantically trying to remember how she normally acted around KJ when she didn’t know she was gay and possibly in love with her.
“What are you doing here?” Mac looks behind her for signs of Erin or Tiff, it’s just her. She wonders if the others know she’s here at all.
“We have to get out of here.”
“I’m not going anywhere with you.”
“You have to.”
“I am not leaving.”
KJ wins and they leave, partly because she doesn’t wanna fuck up Dylans life with the weird time traveling murder thats been following them and partly because she had missed the other papergirls, missed KJ. And despite everything that’s happened she trusts that KJ wouldn’t show up here for no reason.
Mac cries into her shoulder on the drive to the farm and they don’t talk about it. Pretends it’s completely normal for them. Who knows, someday it might be.