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This, whatever was happening with Navi had been going on for a long time. Too long, and they’d passed through too many miles for it to be simply another anomaly that was affecting Them. Slowly, almost incrementally there had been changes to those who had teenage minds still. The signs had been slight when they’d started and they were ones that seemed pretty normal given what happened when they traveled through space. Alex had lost some weight (not that much but definitely equal to how bad she was during the whole not sleeping, not eating, crazy and paranoid version of herself) at first, and then somehow she was tripping over any pant that wasn’t a legging. While she was normally the first person to jump to conclusions with the smallest amount of data possible (even if she was more right than she was wrong) this time Alex filled the space around the questions with much smaller and more rational things: laundry grows sometimes, she hasn’t been hungry, and all of that.

But when there was finally a sign that Alex could no longer deny it was both something with the insignificance of a single atom but with all of the energy of the big bang. Alex had been sitting in one of the chairs in the library and she’d been reading a book for the third time. No matter how many times the pages had been run over by nervous fingernails or the book had been used by someone who had no respect for it, it was still possible to get a papercut from the edges. Getting one with a hiss, the immediate response was to put it into her mouth to suck as if it would somehow make it better. But as she raised her hand, there was something that was entirely missing.

During one (of thousands) of the attempts that Alex had made with cooking, where her hand and index finger met had been accidentally dragged over the top of a hot oven. It wasn’t a particularly bad burn, and it had faded into a rather unremarkable scar on the back of her hand. It’d just been one of the sorts of injuries that people accrue over the course of a lifetime, even if it had only been thirty years or so. But it was gone. Watching the thin beads of blood form into a line that ran across the back of her hand (chaos of the universe and all of that) only cemented that the scar had disappeared.

In a bit of a panic, Alex shoved the sleeves of the sweater that she was wearing almost to her elbows, and yeah there were things missing there as well. How often, really, does one actually look at their skin with an eye towards inspection? Tiny differences, each just slight enough that taking off her makeup at the end of the night or applying eyeliner didn’t inspire any sort of panic in her. As a frog in a preverbal bucket of water that was slowly raising its temperature didn’t notice neither did one Alex Reagan. Racing down to her room and standing in front of the mirror in the bathroom, she just stood there, finally noticing the things that had happened and were still in the process of happening. Pulling up her sweater and turning to one side, Alex couldn’t scream as she realized that the tattoo that ran along her ribs was much darker than it had been. It was much darker than it should be, not touched by the time since she’d first snuck into a tattoo shop in Vancouver to get it against her mother’s wishes.

Alex panic only increases more, questions of how and why and what racing along the hamster wheel inside her head. There was another question of course, but her other questions swirled around it like the spiraling arm of a hurricane: what does all of this mean?

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In a lot of ways, Alex was used to him being more perceptive, especially since Richie had disappeared much earlier on. Protecting her is something that Alex knows Simon thinks he has to do, even if she really doesn't think that he needs to. Of course, it's an argument that happens like the two of them are going around on a wheel, with neither of them giving in. So when there's the truce between them (a pause in the argument), Alex knows that he's going to have a supernatural knack for when there's something up with her. That was why she'd left the bathroom door open, so it wasn't something as awkward as it was going on.

As she looks to him, her eyes are wide and wild almost, and there's a vulnerability in them that even the sixteen year old version of her self attempts to mask. Simón knows that there's a history that Alex doesn't remember, and that's where the emotion came from. Right now, there's no being able to keep her face neutral, not with everything going on that had been going on.

Before she says anything, Alex just shifts to one side and catches the hem of her sweater over her tattoo so that he can more clearly see it. "It looks newer." Yes, it's a stupid thing to say, Simon but she's still working it out. "And there are scars that are missing." A deep breath in and out before she circles around the question: "I'm not going to be going home am I? I don't match where Navi took me from anymore." As she reaches the end of what she is saying, her voice gets softer and there's the first edges of a loss pressing against them.

Alex doesn't know how skillfully she finds trouble that's far beyond her weight class. If she did... she'd probably still think she didn't need his protection. Which was fine, Simon wasn't exactly about to press the issue, he just also wasn't going to stop. Annoying over-protective Cheshire Cat that he is. Fortunately he's not overbearing about it, not too much, just shows up when things are going sideways... like now. She can argue all she wants Simon's not backing off.

That look is like a punch to the gut, even the normally weirdly impassive Simon balked a little at it. He wasn't used to seeing Alex this vulnerable, he didn't entirely know what to do about it. It wasn't like Simon was the most emotionally adept individual.

"Yeah," He agreed quietly, watching her eyes more than her tattoo. "I... don't think so, no." He does sound somber, apologetic. Of course she wants to go home, most people would. No one wants to be stuck in space like this. "I'm sorry, Alex."

All of the things that Alex will never experience back home that she did before: graduating from high school and college, working as a real journalist, turning twenty-one, just getting the chance to be well, herself solidifies. It solidifies into a know in her throat that she's trying to swallow around before it strangles her, but she doesn't seem to be doing a very good job of it at all. Alex is trying to breathe in through her nose and then out through her mouth, and she's working on counting but none of those seem enough compared to this.

"But this isn't fair." Yes, Alex knows how that sounds, but none of it is fair. None of it is fair and she doesn't speak it in a whiny tone--instead it's unfair in a way that is unjust. Those years had been written into her very cells, and none of them in her body had lasted enough to be the same ones at sixteen as they were at thirty-one. It was life really, a sense of renewal and decay in cycles and now Alex feel almost affronted in the fact that the process too was happening in reverse.

"What about--" the question that had lingered, the one that Alex hadn't wanted to ask because she doesn't know if she can handle it, and Simon hadn't mentioned it so she assumes that he didn't think she was ready for it. "I know that back home you think I'm going to be doing something really important. Really important." The emphasis might as well as had the words as proper nouns, each with their own starting uppercase letter. "What happens to that? What happens to you?" Because of course Alex would be more concerned about him than herself.

Edited (html fail) 2021-10-24 23:28 (UTC)

At least one of those things she might do again... that turning twenty-one. The rest, definitely off the table. It is tragic, even Simon isn't certain if Alex will grow to become the same woman he first met. It doesn't take a psychic to recognize the emotions she's fighting down. Or why her outburst might sound childish. Simon understood.

"I know," It's all he can really say on the matter. It isn't fair. It isn't fair that she got stuck like this when no one else was stricken in this way. It wasn't fair that she was forever removed from their timeline. It was never going to be fair... but maybe it was a good thing. Maybe out of all of them Alex could be spared.

Just like her, Simon was more worried about her than himself. "I don't know, Alex," He admits quietly. "As far as we knew, I'm pulled from the latest part of our timeline and you were still there. Maybe nothing changes, maybe we're just... removed now." It's possible neither of them can go back.

Wrapping her arms tightly around herself, Alex just looks down and squeezes her eyes shut tightly as she can. The tears are started behind her eyelids and she doesn't want to cry so she's doing everything that she can in order to hold them back. Not only the tears but the miserable thickness in her throat, and the way that a fine tremor has set through her whole body. It feels as if someone is doing an extended dance on her grave, and while Alex doesn't want to think of it that way, she doesn't know what else to call it. She doesn't know what else to call anything.

Sniffling a little, Alex bites her lip. With her entire body coiled in fear and grief, Alex feels more than a little bit like she's just falling. Alex Reagan is falling and she doesn't know when she's going to stop. Finally giving into the urge a bit, Alex lets herself sink onto the floor between the bathroom and the rest of her cabin, and she wraps her arms around her knees before pressing her face into them.

Speaking against her leggings, Alex is still quiet--too quiet for her. "Richie went home. And he didn't get stuck when I did." Which was more than a little bit awkward, but Alex had just given him space until he'd disappeared. And now he's home, and Alex knows that he's just as connected to what was happening back home as she and Simon were, if not more so. Still not knowing how bad it was, only that it was, in fact bad, Alex adds: "I hate this. And I hate not knowing."

Oh... oh no. Simon knew she was upset and expected it would get worse when he told her but he wasn't prepared for how much it would hurt seeing her like this. He was so used to Alex being the strong one, the one to hold it together no matter how much things were falling apart he didn't anticipate just how hard this would really hit her. He didn't know what to do.

It's not like he could make it better. Simon can't take the pain away, he can't fix whatever's happened and he can't force them to go back home where everything was... not great. But it was theirs. There wasn't much he could do, but he could at least try to let her know she wasn't alone.

So, once she sat on the floor he moved to sit beside her, pulling his own knees up to his chest to wrap into a similar ball. Just a very awkward lanky ball compared to her more compact form. "He didn't," Simon agreed, that was about the time he'd realized something was very wrong. "If you want to know... you do have the tapes." She could listen, if she was ready. He'd left them for her for whenever that time came.

After a few long moments of silence he offered: "Maybe it's not such a bad thing." What could he be talking about?

Without even thinking about it, Alex just tilts her head and rests it against his shoulder. Yes, she'd kissed him and she'd been dating someone else but the person that she was dating had reverted to his old self and then he'd disappeared. But this wasn't like kissing him, this is Alex needing comfort because all of this is massive and scary and she doesn't want it to be true. She doesn't want to lose all of the good parts of home, even if she doesn't know about how bad it could be yet.

Not wanting to know how bad it could be was why Alex hadn't listened to the tapes that he'd given her. When he'd given her them after Richard had returned home, and she was still this version of herself, Alex hadn't wanted to know what Strand was going back to and what Alex herself wasn't. It wasn't that she was scared, exactly--though it was part of it--but it was also because she was worried that if she went home afterwards, that she might do something to mess that timeline up. When one added in the fact that it was bad (very bad from all the things that Dr. Strand and Simon didn't say to her) it would be something that she never could unknow again.

Closing her eyes for a minute, Alex swallows over sand in her throat, all of the questions that she always wanting to ask drying into something that would choke her if she let it. "I have the tapes," she agrees softly, but then nods a little bit. "But they're bad for all of us, but especially you and me." It's verbalizing a fear she's not going to not have, saying that, and Alex just asks: "would you go back if you had the choice? Like..." Even though Alex herself would be stuck here, but she can't put that into words.

She had kissed him, confusing their situation early on for something it wasn't but this was different. They had something between them now, not as long lived as back home no but no less important. Simon had tried to be there for Alex, as he always was, despite the confusion and the discomfort and growing pains into this new relationship. She didn't know what he was yet, what he'd done for her and what he'd done to his parents.

Simon still wasn't entirely sure how she'd respond to that now... older her understood, he knew that. Would it be the same here? He hoped so... it would hurt too much to lose her twice.

That wasn't important now, what was important was the horrible realization settling in and her seeking genuine comfort from a friend that she did have some kind of relationship with now. He scooted closer, winding an arm around her to make her resting on his shoulder more comfortable. They weren't dating, that didn't mean he couldn't be there for her. Simon would always be there for her.

He scoffs quietly. "It was bad for me anyway," So honestly, it didn't bother him. Simon never had good. This stupid trip was the best thing that had ever happened to him, sadly enough. When she asked he glanced over at her, brows furrowed. "Given the choice? No. Not without you." Sorry, Alex, he's sticking to you whether you like it or not.

Alex hadn't thought of the idea that Simon had lost her. After all, she was still here even if she wasn't the Alex that Simon had first met and had a crush on. Still being Alex was something that she'd tried to focus on even if it had fundamentally changed all of the relationships that she had here. Honestly, before Richard had left, she'd thought he had a stroke when he realized that she was still the same sixteen year old inside, but Simon was Simon, and Simon was different, at least she'd thought. If she ever figured out that he'd lost her, Alex is going to kick herself for not noticing that before then.

Curling against him more fully when he wrapped his arm around her, Alex just sniffles for a moment before she nodded. As much as she doesn't want to have such a huge sigh of relief, she does. The idea of losing Simon to going home was something that she really doesn't want to think about or consider. Simon is her friend and some days it almost feels like he's the only one that she has. Oh, she still has connections of course given the whole partner system but the difference is in how they treat Alex like she's a kid. Simon just treats her like Alex and she's relieved.

"It could be that there are versions of us back there anyway," she sighs softly. "And we just don't remember any of this, considering how we all were from different points anyway." Swallowing around her sigh, Alex adds even though it probably doesn't need to be said--at least she hopes it doesn't: "I wouldn't go home without you either, you know."

He had. Yes she was still Alex, yes all the foundational pieces that made her Alex were still there, but everything they'd been through, everything she'd learned was gone. Her life experience, her particular ways of dealing with him... all rewritten. There was a kind of loss in that. Still something to grieve. But Simon was Simon, he wasn't one to make his feelings known on the matter. Wasn't one to balk at a new hardship.

He brought his other arm around to hug her tight. Simon didn't offer hugs much, if at all, but for once Alex really seemed to need it.

"Ever since I learned that I was from the latest point in our timeline I've thought that might be the case. You, and Richard both went through our time without apparently remembering anything. As for her confession it earned a faint smile. "I know." He's annoying like that.

When Simon gave his normal 'I know' in that particularly Simon way of saying things, Alex lets out a little snort before she brushed him lightly with her elbow. One difference between herself now and then (or then and now depending on how one managed to look at this whole situation. Alex herself doesn't have a same sort of consistent terminology for it considering how little she likes to think about it.) is that she doesn't let him get away with his whole mysterious ways shtick like her older self does. Instead Alex is very much a teenager reacting to another teenager, and not an adult who's reacting to a known murderer who has a crush on her.

"Dork." She laughs softly, the sound still soft and not quite where it normally would be for the two of them talking, but it's more close to normal for this version of her. There's another sniffle after it, and Alex just tries to smile, and she blinks a bit in order to not cry. She doesn't want to actually cry on his shirt if she can avoid it--Simon doesn't hug and Alex knows it, and she doesn't want to take advantage of it.

But even with all of that, there's a question that Alex can't help but to ask him aloud because she has no idea what the answer to it is. Hell, Alex doesn't even know if there is an answer. There may not be considering the nature of Navi and the voyage they're on. "What's next, Simon? What happens now?"

That was probably one of the biggest changes Simon was trying to adjust to, how Alex didn't let him get away with his Cheshire Cat routine... which was really ruining the fun. He enjoyed being dark and mysterious! Granted this current Alex also didn't know he was a confirmed and confessed murderer... that was going to be an awkward conversation when it came about. He wasn't exactly hiding it, he was just waiting for her to seek out knowledge of the future on her own terms.

Simon just let out a huff at being elbowed and called a dork. As far as the crying goes, while he wouldn't hold it against her if she did cry all over his shirt (it's not like he can't wash it) he also wouldn't entirely know what to do with her so he didn't mind her trying to hold it together. Simon's not exactly great at this whole emotions thing.

He considers her question for a while, staring off into the middle distance while he does. Back home, Simon has all the answers. He knows what step to take next and what's going on in all the secret places he shouldn't be but here... here he was lost. Was that really such a bad thing?

"Fresh life?"

He suggested after a long silence. "You and me. We don't have to chase ghosts and demons anymore."

If there's one thing that this Alex is better at than her older self, it's letting Simon be quiet and not bursting into his silence with a thousand questions. Questions are still something that Alex does, but they're not the full part and parcel pieces of herself that they were at home. Someone once had asked Alex in an interview (in the time before the Tapes and the times before she'd fallen so far off of the prestigious journalist pedestal that she'd been on that had made Strand call her back) what she would do if someone ever made her stop asking questions and she'd responded 'what happens to sharks if they don't swim?' and she'd meant it. Asking questions was an interictal part of her personality that she'd not entirely developed as a teenager. Besides, to Alex back home, Simon had been a part of the story that she was telling even if they'd become friends here. Here, the two of them were friends first, and Alex can let him be quiet for a second.

His answer makes Alex give Simon a smile that isn't as wobbly at the edges as it had been before, it being shored up by the idea that whatever happens the two of them would be together. Alex doesn't want to think about what would happen if Navi were to send Simon home in the same way that they had Richard. Losing Richard had been frustrating more than anything, where as losing Simon would be like someone ripped the heart out of her chest at the same time that they tore off a limb. Honestly, Alex doesn't think that she'd survive it. She'd never admit it or say it aloud, but that doesn't mean that she's wrong about it in the slightest.

"Wouldn't be so bad," Alex say cautiously, using more of it than she'd probably used in both of the lives that Simon Reese has known her in. The whole kissing him and the sting of awkward and embarrassment that went along with it is all too fresh in her minds at moments like this, and Alex wants to avoid it as much as possible. "You, me and a fresh life with no demons or ghosts." Pausing, Alex looks to him out of the corner of her eye. "Just us."

As much as Simon never minded the questions, because he'd just ignore them if he didn't feel like answering them, he appreciates her allowing him his space to think even more. Especially here, like this. Back home he could be annoying and pace his words exactly how he wanted them to be through phone calls and voice mails and such, here he was expected to speak immediately and... sometimes he just needed time to think. They had a lot going on, and he had no easy answers. It made it easier being friends first and a story later in this instance. There was still the looming problem of what he was and her not quite knowing about that but...

Well, that was a bridge they'd cross before long.

That smile warmed his heart more than he could properly describe, even to himself. Seeing her light up, even just a little bit, made him think that maybe they could make it work after all. Losing Richard was difficult, yes, but there was a greedy selfish part of Simon that wasn't that sad to see him go. He knew it was awful but... Alex didn't have the same bond with him here. He'd always thought she deserved better than how Strand treated her. That didn't mean him, necessarily, Simon wasn't stupid and still wasn't sure if there could ever be something it just killed him to see her putting up with what she did from the evangelical skeptic. But he couldn't bear the thought of leaving himself, not with her still here alone.

The caution in her tone drew his gaze back to her, his brows furrowing slightly. That wasn't her normal tone by a long shot. "Just us," He echoed, pondering her words. "Maybe we could have Navi drop us off somewhere. Find a nice planet we like, where no one knows us. If we're not on the ship then no one gets taken away, right?" That's how he thinks it works anyway.

Alex didn't have the same bond with Richard here. Whatever it had been that had tied the reporter with her subject back home had to have come from time that she doesn't have now. Even if it's as simple as the fact that she's involved in this story and has found herself drawn into the middle through the fact that she couldn't get him out of her head when she'd heard his voice. To sixteen year old Alex, it's a nice voice, but he's too much of an asshole in a not fun way to be attractive, even if he wasn't old enough to be her grandfather which he was. And that's all Alex is going to think about because she doesn't want to remember that she was involved in a man who was literally almost twice her age and had a daughter who was older than she was.

It's not like that with Simon. It's not like that and he's only a few years older than she is even if he doesn't really feel like it to her. But that wasn't the point of it. The point is that Alex trusts Simon. She likes Simon and while her older self may have had chemistry with Strand, Alex would have noped out of that even if there had been anything but Strand being a dick to her and trying to convince her that she could somehow revert back to her older self if she just tried hard enough.

Well, this definitely proved him wrong, didn't it?

"Yeah, that's probably how it works," Alex just agrees with him about the planet thing, and then she bites her lip before blood fuses into her cheeks. Normally, she doesn't ask if it's okay if she kisses someone (see that terrible first day) but given that, she's trying to be more cautious. So her voice is soft, and she's worried that this is going to change something negatively with them, but Alex knows she'd regret it more if she doesn't actually talk about whatever it is that's between the two of them. "Can I kiss you now, Simon?"

The case, the intrigue, mixed with Alex's stubborn tenacity and those damned tapes. Everything had simply landed perfectly to get her hooked. Of course the rather significant age gap that now existed between herself and Richard was a much harder hurdle with a good extra fifteen years between them. With her staying young as she was now it was never going to work. Much to Richard's annoyance. Perhaps that was why he was returned, he'd never be comfortable with her the way she was now. Better to get him back on the path to whatever the hell he was going to do back home.

Besides, Richard was out of the picture now and not something either Alex nor Simon had to worry about. Just making sure they didn't also end up separated somehow. Trying to move forward with the new status quo. There was a part of Simon that still missed the old Alex, but he'd grown just as fond of and attached to her as she was now. Easy enough to do, she was sunsets at any age. And this one blushed a lot, which was pretty damn cute he had to admit.

Also, Alex? Cautious? Has the world actually ended? It's definitely a new trend for her, not one he's ungrateful for given just how much she worries him with her impulsiveness. This is one of those few times he actually wouldn't have minded... but he did still appreciate that she learned from the last time. The question comes as a surprise and even earns one of those surprised half-laughs out of him. "...Yeah, yeah I'd like that." Because this time? This time there was no concern of her being angry with him about it later.

Alex can't help but to let out a little sigh of relief when Simon says that she can kiss him. Not being an idiot, even when she's at such an idiotic age, Alex knows that Simon definitely had feelings for the woman she was before, the woman who she's probably going to grow up to be. Or at least did without this little sidestep in their stories. That Alex has so much more experience with life and confidence than Alex did, and she was a little worried that despite the feelings that she'd been slowly developing for Simon (yes, starting with the fact that he was a cute boy who was an asshole and has a nice voice of course, but then it had deepened as she'd gotten to know him over the last months.) that what he'd been feeling is just some need to protect her because of who she'd be. Been? The whole time travel aspect of this really did hurt Alex's brain no matter how many times Strand had tried to explain to her the scientific impossibility of it being permanent.

Yes, she's pretty sure that he thinks that Alex chose this form, when she wouldn't. Was being in space really cool? Obviously it was. Who doesn't want to go to outer space? Did she enjoy being on Navi and all of the random places that they took them? Yes, of course she did. Those were experiences that people would give their right arms for. But the difference is that the cost of admission for her is those fifteen years of her life. Alex can do a lot of things without thought or care for her personal safety, but she'd never have traded who she was then for the girl that she is now. There wasn't a choice involved in it, which isn't something that it seemed like Richard could understand.

Alex had fully fledged fallen for Simon Reese, no matter how improbable it was back home, and she leans closer to him again. He knew it was coming now, as Alex cupped his face with one hand, and her fingers slotted through his own on the other as she pressed her lips to his just very softly and sweetly. There's nothing that Alex Reagan does without her full and entire heart, and kissing him isn't an exception to that rule. Her whole heart is there in it, offered to him gently but without care.

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