Chapter Text
The sun shines bright in the clear sky, rays of light filtering through the trees standing sentinel in the Amity Park cemetery. A light breeze flits through the grass and the leaves and Jazz’s hair, carrying the scent of plants and dirt and living things. If she just closes her eyes, it would be a normal, beautiful spring day.
But it isn’t.
And the fact it is in a way makes something deep inside her scream wrong, wrong, wrong.
Jazz wraps her hand in her skirt and looks at the headstones lined in neat rows, marking where the dead lay under thriving grass. All except for one. His coffin sits above the hole near his own headstone. She can’t look at it. If she looks at it she will cry, or run away, and right now she can do neither.
These are natural responses to grief. Crying and feeling the urge to run away is normal after losing a loved one –
Jazz shakes her head, gripping her skirt tight. She can’t think like that, not now, not when it’s someone else but her. She glances at the small group standing near the coffin she cannot look at. Mom and Dad stand with arms around each other, crying. Dad full on sobs, burying his face in his massive hand, while Mom stares straight ahead, tears running down her face. For once, neither are wearing their jumpsuits.
She clenches her fists. Too late, they’ve taken them off and their stupid obsession too late, after –
A lump grows in her throat and she looks away from them. She can’t look at them for much longer than the – his – coffin. Instead she looks at the few other people here. Their grandparents, their aunt, for some reason Mr. Lancer, and – Sam and Tucker. They stand a little away from the family, as if they don’t think they are welcome. Both are dressed in black, Tucker missing his beret, and Sam her gothic makeup. They both seem to be struggling not to cry.
The last time she had seen them they had been crying, faces flushed from running up the stairs and screaming about a portal and they’re fault and Danny –
Danny.
Jazz can’t look at them either now. She stares at the grass instead, a lump growing in her throat.
Mom and Dad had run down immediately after Sam and Tucker came back up, leaving Jazz to try and comfort the younger teens even as her own hands shook, and her pulse tripled in fear. Tucker babbled incoherently about electricity and improbability and Danny screaming. Sam could only say it was her fault.
She had called 911 and given them tea and hoped that somehow, it was okay, like it always was. Danny got into trouble and her parents’ inventions malfunctioned, but it always turned out okay, always.
The paramedics went downstairs. Silence filled the house until it almost choked her.
Then her mother came back upstairs, crying. Jazz had never seen her mother cry like that before, all gut-wrenching sobs and broken emotions. She turned Jazz away from the door and stood in front of Sam and Tucker so they couldn’t see the stretcher with a sterile white blanket covering her brother take him away.
Jazz understands why she did that. Part of her still hates her for not letting her see him.
What words that can be spoken here are said, by Mom in a halting, choked voice. Jazz tries to listen for the sake of Danny, but every broken word said by her mother about him – his curiosity, his dreams of space, his stupid jokes, his good heart – only hurt her in a place she can’t name. She stares at the trees blowing in the spring wind as Mom can no longer say anything else and they begin to lower the coffin into the ground. The machinery creaks and moans and Jazz wants to scream over it that Danny should not be buried in the stifling, dark earth. He should be in the stars.
He should be alive.
The coffin hits the bottom of the grave with a thump. Jazz exhales once, and it carries the weight of tears.
Her brother is dead.
~
Something is wrong.
He shouldn’t be here, but he is.
He should be here, but he isn’t.
He is everywhere; he is nowhere. He is scattered, he has lost himself.
He is alone.
Where is everyone?
Who is everyone?
Everything is gray and cold. He can’t see, but he feels this, the grayness and the coldness, but he cannot feel himself. He feels he is alone, in this place that should have people, but he doesn’t know what people.
He loves these people.
He can’t leave them.
But he is alone.
He doesn’t want to be alone.