Chapter Text
It doesn’t go away; she figured that much within days, static playing at the back of her mind, drowning voices, suffocating everything (how long did it take, for Michael’s lungs to be filled to the brim, for him to slowly sink at the bottom—) until they’re a familiar distortion.
Everyone forgets (well, mostly) except for her. Isn’t it the kind of ending she hoped for? For that endless night (she stopped keeping count after loop 420—come on, it’s a little bit funny, Ren would have found this endearing) to finally end with the glow of that cold morning. Happily ever after, ferry ride causing something in her stomach to churn (and sink, like Michael, like the Kanaloa—), radio imprinted against her palm so hard it ripped skin off, leaving blood stains against plastic.
There was no ride home this time around though—merely a familiar tower, and countless falls, sky breaking apart. Another impossible choice (not hers, she lied about that too) and what was left of her mind staring at shattered people while she flickered into someplace else (nowhere and everywhere, from the beach to the bottom of the ocean—eyes darting away from the catastrophe, yearning for a brother long gone), merely another witness to usual horror. And then the dock, and homemade happiness as a side dish, a little treat for all her hard work.
There was a point where her companions were still aware, and then they faded into backseat passengers, hushed complaints and repetitions; she played puppeteer with a bunch of corpses, and it was the closest to normal she could get. (When they addressed Riley, it could have well been herself talking through them, casual possession rather than collective hope) an array of disasters erased, replaced by some twisted ideal.
Happy couple, concerned step-brother, Clarissa as more than their shared grief, perhaps even the beginning of mended wounds—they don’t recall when she started to slip. For them, it was simply a comforting night, shared secret and booze. Alex has whole timelines shoved into her skull, fracturing it slowly but surely; she got tired, then simply curious, she’d say. Bodies crashing off buildings, friends forgotten in a tower, shoving someone off a cliff just to see if the loop would drag her backward, the appeal of drowning into the ocean. Nope, that one is still terrifying, thank you very much (she figured pretty early on there was no point in ensuring Michael would live—dead people only become insufferable ghosts.)
Her joints are stiff, body stuck into something where she’s there and still on the island. It doesn’t go away.
Jonas buys her a bunch of stim toys, cheap plastic stuff, so she stops digging nails into her palms until blood is dripping on the floor; he doesn’t know, can’t remember. Something happened, she got lost in the caves for a couple of hours apparently. That’s the official version, the one crammed into everyone’s minds, except her own. She can’t say she isn’t scared of the caves, of suffocating or tumbling to her death—two weeks in, she smashes the radio with a hammer she found in a kitchen drawer.
Jonas comes home to tears, nonsensical sentences on her tongue as she pours into horror, trying to glue together shattered plastic. They’re coming, she whimpers, they’ll take you if I don’t fix it—the loop.
Are they out? Alex has no idea. She doesn’t get better.
The voice at the back of her head (common sense, concern, she has no idea what it is anymore, it scares her) is multiple rather than unique; it bursts into various tones, never quite sounding like herself. Is. Leave. Possible.
Isn’t she out already? (Who did she sacrifice for that phantom of normalcy this time around? Ah yes, it was Riley. Riley who was going to have a kid—she told her it wouldn’t go well, as if Alex knew anything about happy endings) some days, she’s still on Edwards Island, her mind unable to be unlocked by a random WAL, trapped between the intense relief she felt the morning after, and the absolute horror which crept back right after.
Named after the Hawaiian god of the sea, the USS Kanaloa was launched on January 15th, 1941, and commissioned—
Alex stops, as if the loop had been put on hold, desperate rebellion turning into radio silence, days where she lays on her bed, afraid of closing her eyes, of waking up back on the beach, glowing figure towering above her, Michael’s hollow voice turning into ‘did you have a nice dream, are you ready to play even more?’. She collapses, rather than sleeping, her hands are red and itchy, the patched up radio underneath her pillow, the same jacket she wore that night rolled into a ball next to it.
(It’s been five years yet it’s not—the timeline rewrote itself so they’re five years later yet it’s only been a couple of weeks since their return, it makes no sense. And no one notices how their birth years have changed, how their parents are still the same—it drives her insane to think about it.)
● ● ●
They visit, although there is little understanding. Ren brings his special brownies, so she can take her mind off things, (and she remembers pushing one down his throat, watching him squirm and suffocate until he stopped moving. Loop 277.) and mostly his company, feeling the gaps in her brain with anything he can find. She misses Nona’s birthday party, and that’s for the better, she would ruin that too (one time she wrapped her fingers around Nona’s throat, and then she casually strolling back to the communications tower, shrugging at the pressing questions, Ren shaking her shoulders so hard she burst into terrifying laughter. Loop 346.). Clarissa grieves, and then moves on, good for her, Alex guesses, uninterested by how Nona and her sit at the end of her bed, trying to get her to say what’s wrong. Nothing, she says, nothing at all. (She doesn’t have merely one occurrence of violence against Clarissa—or what the Sunken left behind, a boring husk for Alex to carve into another puppet of hers.)
There’s no college when she’s unable to leave the house, not even online courses. She doesn’t even graduate, her seat at school remaining empty for weeks. Jonas lingers close by, of course. Brave Jonas, always there to bring her food or simply sit down on the floor, as silent company. Unsure of his voice, second-guessing himself as if he had not clung to sanity longer than anyone else. The others skip prom, car blaring some catchy song almost loud enough to drown her voices, next to her house, Clarissa in a stunning dress telling her to get her ass down so they can party. And she does. Eh, they’re simply lucky she had the motivation to shower and to wash her hair that day, that’s all there is to it—her roots don’t match the rest of her hair, and she doesn’t quite care. Not when it’s her first time out in weeks.
They drive aimlessly, laughter on Ren’s tongue, Nona pushing a beanie over her hair, to hide the damage she mumbles, and Alex’s chapped lips break into a tentative smile.
The official story isn’t the right one, and deep inside, they must know.
See a man about a dog (she knows it’s about departing abruptly, but sometimes her mind drifts to Jacob and his beloved pet, and then, inevitably she’s brought back to Riley, who chose temporary happiness to spare them all.) / I may have mismeasured the magic (yeah no joke there, Ren) / Listen. Bobtail. Shave tail. Sleepy time gal. (stop it, please…)
Five little children went to an island for fun, four came home. One was lost forever. The caves must have messed her up, someone says while she pukes her guts on the sidewalk, burning vodka still on her tongue. She got lost for hours, so yeah, it’s kinda creepy, it would make anyone claustrophobic—that’s Nona talking this time around, Alex guesses. It’s not your fault, Clarissa adds, and when Alex lifts her head, eyes shooting up in surprise, the girl shrugs, taking the bottle from her hands and handing her water instead, don’t puke on my dress on our big day.
Wouldn’t dream of it, Alex manages to articulate, and for a second, she’s with them—except there is sand underneath her feet, a fence in the corner of her eyes, and that stupid cooler—she doesn’t get better. She wasn't there at the ceremony, no diploma in her damaged hands, so it's definitely their day, not hers.
● ● ●
Their parents notice, eventually. ‘Their’ as in Jonas and her. Weird. How many times did she pry into his mind by saying the right thing when needed, just so he’d be easier to befriend. Not so different from the Sunken, scheming as if time didn’t only move alongside the plot, hours feeling like days if she didn’t follow repetitive instructions.
(She’s not going to stay seventeen forever, it baffles her. The idea of growing older. Of not being stuck.
She is stuck though.)
Of course, Alex doesn’t quite say that; there is a limit to what their parents would believe. Perhaps with Jonas, she could push further—get him on her side, as if it wouldn’t mean endless sacrifices. Sleepless weekends turn into permanent insomnia and she gets her own box of little pills to take so she can crash without any dream, or so doctors claim. At first it’s the family’s GP, a guy who should have retired ten years ago, patting her shoulder with an affectionate reminder that teenagehood is often a bit difficult. Yeah, if he knew he’d freak out. It goes from ‘Alex is traumatized from getting lost on Edwards island’ to ‘holy shit something is wrong with her’ so fast she barely has time to blink and then she’s sitting in a waiting room, lavish blue chairs and psychology magazines organized into neat pills onto an ugly coffee table. (A psychiatrist and a therapist? All for her? Aw, they shouldn't have.)
Alex doesn’t quite spill her guts; she could, although there would be questions regarding grief and attention seeking behavior, and urg she’s been there before. She doesn’t bother twisting bored lips into anything resembling a smile, busy staring at her bandaged hands instead. Colorful cartoon characters around some fingers, one on a palm, corners unable to stick after she pried at them.
I got lost in the caves, it was fucking scary, she says instead, what’s the big deal?
(Could she be one of Them, borrowing the woman’s face in order to seek answers, to figure out the best time for the hilarious reveal that she never left—)
Is it about your brother, the therapist remarks, and Alex rolls her eyes.
Which one? Oh, the dead one, you should, like, have asked better. Yeah, not really.
(There was no body floating down there, she bites her tongue until she draws blood to avoid admitting, sure, there is water, yet, it has nothing to do with when I had to watch his lifeless body lifted on a gurney, white sheet covering his face—Clarissa’s rage, the paramedics’ pity—fucked up, right?
Loop 277 had Nona’s corpse floating face down—and Alex simply moved on.)
Therapy won’t fix whatever is wrong, the mini-fridge in Jonas’ attic bedroom sounding akin to a hundred whimpers at night, shadows on the walls growing eyes until the sleeping pill is sticky in her hand, and then shoved onto the tip of her tongue, or else she chokes.
Alex goes anyway, climbing into Clarissa’s car until she moves out for college, followed by everyone doing whatever they want too—she keeps saying it’s fine, although her hands are shaking and she peeled the skin off the tip of her fingers with her teeth—she’ll be okay. There are no more monsters around.
(Except herself.)
● ● ●
Ren and Nona break up; that tends to happen. Nona tells her first, during break, still wearing one of his sweaters, and Alex finds herself unsure of what she should reply. (There were loops where Nona fell for her instead, or the other way around maybe. Alex’s fingers clamped around her wrist, clumsy lips finding confused ones—and yeah anyway everyone died, or they lived for a while. Never worked out. Ren’s mouth bursting with accusations when she couldn’t even partake in caring any longer. Anyway.) It sucks that he didn’t come to her first, and they’re all drifting apart, it’s how growing up is like after all.
Alex caught glimpses of that sort of thing when Riley was around, as a person and not a box of long lost trinkets, she guesses. Her friends are on different wavelengths, and she cannot connect to any; Alex stares at the ceiling, wondering if it could turn around, a hangman game of life of death ending with her body dangling into the attic, bed sheets wrapped around her throat. Well, she wouldn’t do that in the attic, Jonas doesn’t deserve to come home to some pathetic human pinata in his bedroom.
Wanna dye your hair and watch a movie, she manages, and that’s the most normal she has sounded in months.
Sure, Nona whispers, and perhaps it’s all a grand scheme to get Alex to leave her house and stop leeching on her parents, who knows. Hey, she’s been doing slightly—not worse. Good enough to start going on walks and eat twice a day, which is already something, right?
In a way, they both drowned. Michael on that fateful day, and Alex on a never ending night.
She doesn’t share that with her therapist, obviously.
● ● ●
“You!” It all comes crashing down in the small waiting room one evening—there is always a kind soul willing to drive her there, as if the weekly fifty minutes she spends in therapy could help. Truth be told, they won’t. Or not much. Moving on—the girl stares, fury so high it ravages her face, twisting it into pure hatred, and Alex blinks as the office's door is still hanging open behind her.
(She just wanted everything to end, when Riley got into the portal and vanished for good—didn’t quite care about her fate. As for the fellow teenager she slowly but surely convinced to join her one way plan—well, Alex can’t say Olivia was emotionally valuable.
Merely an efficient means to get what they (she) wanted.)
Alex stares at a mirror, and she squeezes the tangle so hard a part snaps—the sound brings her back, although distorted voices mock her somewhere behind her eyelids.
“Shit,” she feels so eloquent today, “you’re the appointment after mine—”
Olivia glares at her, and then promptly slams the door shut, barging into the therapist’s office to unleash pent-up anger she should seek help for, seriously. Oh, wait.
By the time that tempest is out, a tiny bundle of distressed clothing and mind also frayed at the edges, Alex is left back with herself, and a bunch of ghosts.
(DID YOU KNOW? The bird featured on the USS Kanaloa Memorial is not actually an eagle, as many people think, but a broad-winged hawk. You will die alone, and unloved.)
She ignores the static, the radio she keeps in her bag without any battery, as Jonas won’t allow her to spend hours trying to lure out nonexistent ghosts (for her own good, damn he sounds so caring sometimes she wants to spill every secret of his just so he’d leave her to her misery) anymore. Hands creep up, tangle forgotten in her pocket, and she covers her ears until she cannot hear anything.
● ● ●
It’s akin to a loop, isn’t it? Finding the same girl sitting on a chair, foot tapping against linoleum in an aggravated rhythm—Alex leans into the door frame, aware it’ll be only them anyway. She’s always a tad late, not that the therapist herself is often on time, which makes Olivia’s presence even weirder. An error, someone who isn’t where they belong, and her thoughts are interrupted by a bag shoved off a chair and falling onto the floor in a loud thud.
“Aren’t you going to put your ass down already?”
“Hello to you too,” Alex sighs, dropping her body onto the chair next to Olivia’s, “did you miss my charming company so much you decided to come by early again?”
“Don’t flatter yourself, you’re a rotten liar, nothing more.”
“Can’t really say otherwise,” she admits, fumbling through pockets to fetch anything to keep her fingers busy. (Jonas is visiting over the weekend, and Alex is kinda trying not to worry him by inadvertently chewing off her skin so badly she looks like a pruny mummy. She’s so stable these days!)
“Why are you even there—you got the ending you wanted—”
There’s something in Olivia’s voice, in the sharp breaks she takes, as if her tongue was running way ahead of her brain, it sounds familiar—desperate perhaps. Akin to bargaining with bloodthirsty ghosts to spare a friend, only to lure a bunch of kids into the same demise as a last resort. Oh, she forgot the tangle, but there is a paper clip jammed in fabric, and she digs the tip underneath a fingernail, wondering if she could make it pop off.
(DID YOU KNOW? The model for "The Sentry" was Jake Carlisle, a personal friend of the sculptor. Shortly after the statue's reveal ceremony, he suffered a pulmonary embolism and died.)
“I got out,” she repeats, with the same fake cheerful tone her therapist uses when she praises her for taking a shower every day this week, “lucky me.”
Left stranded on the shore, everyone waving on the ferry while dark matter engulfs her body, dragging her down as if the beach had turned into quicksand; she’s drowning as she should have that day, surely Michael wouldn’t have been stupid enough to toy with so many lives, and death, and the uncomfortable in-between where you’re stuck in caves with no exit.
Alex had no qualm sending someone in that unfathomable zone, as long as they would take her place and allow her to return to a semblance of sanity.
Been months and said sanity remains an absent companion, and she wonders if there was a miscommunication somewhere, a friendly missile torpilling a vessel and leaving only gaping wounds in its wake.
There aren’t any tears between them; unless you count how they pried open time and space, the multiple anomalies along the shore of Camena—all closed by now, life gone back to what it was. Dead relatives haunting their nights, Alex supposes.
“Then, why are you here?!”
Alex could say it simply: to me every gulp of water tastes like the sea, causing me to choke, the ground is always treacherous, one step forward turning in the beginning of another loop. How she dreams of Michael wrapping her into a tight hug as they both drown, so she can finally let go. Or the nights where she squeezes the pills between the creases of her palm, squishing them until they’re nothing but useless remains of a help she has no use for.
Instead, she shrugs with one shoulder, staring at the wall in front of them, wondering if it could melt into the insides of Fort Milner.
“I don’t need you haunting me—I’ve got enough ghosts already, tsk.”
It’s the way Alex can hear the tongue slap against the roof of Olivia’s mouth, how her elbow is digging into Alex’s arm without care; it grounds her for a handful of seconds. And then, the therapist is standing in front of them, calling out her name.
In a way, Olivia ain’t wrong, Alex is nothing more than another anomaly.
● ● ●
She has come to bear a visceral hatred for bridges; slippery bundles of metal or concrete, sometimes even wood. One wrong step and the world goes upside down, bones shattering, organs akin to balloons during a child’s birthday party, trampled by careless tiny guests. She has long memorized that sickening impact and how loud it can be—she decided to walk home today, although it’s forty minutes instead of ten by car, and that’s only if she doesn’t linger like she’s doing, steps faltering in front of a familiar bridge.
It’d be possible for her to rely on Jonas, or their parents—except they might be gone tomorrow, or perhaps she’d be—there is a burden she refuses to share, lying through witty humor to her therapist and everyone. Her teeth gnaw at a bright blue bandaid against her palm, and she stops after a few seconds. Yep, that’s disgusting. Urg. It’s only a bridge, one they drive on all the time to go to the doctor or to the supermarket—what’s so difficult about it?
A hand jolts into her vision—flesh rather than dark matter—and her headphones are ripped off, left to hang around her neck.
“What the fuck—I hope you’re working on your anger issues,” she serves Olivia with.
“Like you do with yours?”
“Ouch, I’m quite good at that, see, I only harm myself,” it hits her she wouldn’t joke like that with Ren or anybody, they would soften their gaze, tentative comfort on the tip of the tongue, and it’d drive her insane. They used to burst with cruel adolescence all the time, to simply let the words roll out, savoring the hurt on each other’s face, laughing as if it was bound to pass. She shows her ravaged hand to the girl, and she doesn’t look away.
“So what, I should feel bad for you?”
“Nope, it’d suck.”
Something flashes in Olivia’s eyes; fingers rub the metal piercing underneath her mouth, rolling the small ball into a circular motion. For a while, as cars drive by, deafening Alex’s heartbeat, and all the other sounds playing through her body, many foreign and hard to comprehend, they stare at each other, and then Olivia turns around, her whole body snapping into ‘I need to get away from you’.
Except, she stays.
“What’s so scary about the bridge anyway? It’s the same as any other, you were a ghost and a bridge manages to reduce you to pure terror? Pathetic.”
Alex swallows, something stuck in her throat; the weather has been dreadful over the past days, large clouds looming over them with the promise of an uncertain evening. The river running underneath the bridge keeps on rising when it rains, and now the current has turned into an ominous being on its own, ready to swallow everyone within itself. The water isn’t high enough to lick at the mass or metal and concrete underneath them just yet. But soon.
(Riley sounded so adamant, so heartbroken for the grieving little girl, when she claimed she shouldn’t wish to have drowned. It pissed Alex off, in a way she couldn’t explain, as if she didn’t want anybody to understand .)
“The Sunken preyed on your friends while they stood on bridges, trying to lure them to—”
“We’re not friends anymore. I couldn’t care less.”
“Yeah, makes sense. Anyway, after watching your buddies get crushed in creative ways over and over, you start to hate those fucking things.”
“Hatred isn’t quite fear,” Olivia counterattacks without allowing Alex a break, “are you moving or not?”
“Fuck off, you can walk past me and go on! Why are you such a bundle of negativity and arrogance?”
“I am untethered and my rage knows no bounds,” Olivia gives a hard stare to her bandaged hands, marred fingers on display only for her greedy eyes apparently. Alex considers shoving her away, so it’d be over and done with, “you didn’t keep your promise.”
(She doesn’t trust her hands—not since Clarissa slipped between them in the first loop, and even less since they’ve grown into instruments of horror—picturing Olivia on the railing, taunts and promises for revenge erupting until Alex couldn’t take it, shoving her down into the furious river below—bile rises in her throat.)
“Yeah, my bad it isn’t kindergarten, we don’t get snacks and naps either!”
Olivia grabs her jacket, always stepping into her personal space—their first meeting, she kept away from Alex though, or rather the imposing shadow whispering it could grant any wish. And now, they’re just kids facing each other, a couple of piercings on one side and half-teal half-whatever doesn’t mix well with teal hair on the other. She still wears Michael’s jacket everywhere, although the right pocket has holes in it and her fingers keep slipping too deep. They’re children who have lost what cannot be returned, loved ones buried or lost somewhere between the air and the sea; and Alex has no one who could remember, except for strangers.
(The man with the dog kept his memories, living on for Riley and the ones who couldn’t, and Olivia’s ex-friends have simply moved past this. Perhaps they’re plagued by nightmares too, reduced to blubbering sobbing messes at night, but neither Alex or Olivia would know.)
Alex takes in the whitened knuckles, the way Olivia’s breathing has quickened, how close their lips are—she inhales sharply, filling her lungs at once.
“I’m still on that island,” it comes out so low, as if she couldn’t recall how to scream, her vocal cords refusing to accomplish such a feat, “I’m—stuck. Like you. I don’t know where I’m going with that, I can’t boast that I get what you’re going through, because—yeah, it’s not a great conversation to have. Has the therapist ever told you you’re coping by hiding your problems underneath a thick layer or sarcasm or is it just a me thing?”
She has no apology to give in order to appease Olivia. Doesn’t have to spare since loop 44. Even as she was talking to Riley, promising they could fix this, her mind was begging to be let out, and nothing else truly mattered.
(She’d rather paint herself as a villain, than be a bawling little girl dragged out of the water without her brother again.
Aren’t they the same way, the two of them? Grieving without coping in the slightest, stuck on what-ifs.)
“You’re nothing like me.”
(They had talks, Alex slowly worming her way as some kind of savior, and she talked about Michael. Drawing a steady thread between them, ensuring Olivia would feel understood—Alex knew it was compulsory for her plans. Doesn’t make her any less awful though.)
The grip on her jacket fades, and then fingers clamp around her wrist, tugging in a swift move.
“What—”
“You don’t get to wallow in self-pity and be so afraid of—a bridge. It’s perfectly safe, you moron.”
Mouth twisted into something unpleasant, Olivia, only one year younger than her (shouldn’t be the case), Alex has to remind herself, starts to walk, dragging Alex behind her, and then by her side when her victim starts to pick up the pace. She focuses on Olivia’s heavy shoes, how they let out steady sounds against the ground as she follows, anything except for the bridge, and the mocking current roaming under them.
It’s only minutes later, the bridge long behind them, that she realizes Olivia is still holding her.
“My house is that way, so if you could release me I’d appreciate it,” she doesn’t mean for her voice to snap, it just sort of happens.
“Would being grateful burn your tongue, ghost girl?”
“Woah, attacking my weakest point with that nickname. And, yeah, probably.”
The pressure against her wrist suddenly vanishes, and she’s left glancing at the form of Olivia, how she’s already walking forward, like she couldn’t be bothered.
“Thanks!” It comes out rushed, and wrong—she would still be standing on the other side of the bridge like some fool, had that unlikely heroine not come to her aid.
“Whatever, see you next week, ghost girl,” Olivia gives her middle finger, without bothering to turn around.
“Damn, that nickname is gonna stick…”
(They won’t get better, will they?)