beautiful mess of chaos

Beatrice’s words were almost enough to draw a laugh out of the girl, but it instead came out as more of a snicker. “Oh wow, I guess being back here includes our former occupations, huh?” Her phone made a little ping at that moment, and she pulled it out of her pocket to see that it was an instagram post notification. “Hm. Nice lighting in that photo.” It seemed even her phone’s settings were the same. Why was she still surprised?

“I guess so. It’s all very confusing.” That was an obvious fact, one that didn’t really need to be stated. She slipped her phone back into her pocket with a laugh at Millie’s comment. “This place does have good lighting. I guess that’s one thing for the pro list. Kind of a short list though.” Somehow that didn’t compensate the amount of beheadings, fires, dares and destroyed cakes they had to deal with. “Let’s just hope we can avoid making the con list any longer this time around, yeah?”

They had always played a game of take, both parties taking too much of each other and leaving them dry and Gabe realized this wasn’t okay. Love had seemed so easy then, if that was what it was and now…. now he knew that love wasn’t about making yourself feel whole from someone else. He didnt want to admit this was a starting over with Beatrice but he also knew he couldn’t continue to live however he had been living before now. Not if he wanted a bit of the happiness he now knew existed for him. “Its good. I’ll lend it to you after Im done.” He replied, biting his bottom lip before he sat the book in his lap thinking over her question. “Is that really what you want to ask?” Shrugging, he looked away from her. “Surprisingly good, actually. Like im confused and a bit hazy but, but Im good. How are you?” 

“I’ll try to make sure it doesn’t get lost in the midst of fires and dare boxes and time travel,” she promised, though she wasn’t sure if that would happen again. She wasn’t sure what anyone’s plan was, but she supposed she would go along with it. It didn’t matter what her opinion was, really. She hadn’t lost her life yet. “Good. I think the confusion and haziness is to be expected.” She nodded, believing him. “Okay actually. I think. For now. I just don’t understand what the Hell we’re doing here but... I guess no one else does either.”

A smile crossed her face and she couldn’t help but giggle along in response to the girls contagious reaction. “If it’s even half as much as i missed you, then it must have been excruciating.” Thinking back to her fan page comment, the girl laughed. “I’ll admit, i’ve been a little slow lately, with the whole theatre thing i just haven’t had enough time to…” her words faded off. It really only felt like days ago that her schedule was filled with rehearsals, dress fittings and auditions galore. Yet things were far more confusing than that. “Do you think ‘being sent back in time’ is an acceptable excuse for not turning up to work, because at this point i feel like it should be,” she said, shaking her head in amusement at the whole situation. She had to laugh or else she might scream.

“Half?” She scoffed. “No, I’m thinking double.” She noticed the way her words dwindled and her grin slipped away, worrying that something was wrong. If she was having as much trouble figuring out the amount of lifestyles she had lead as Beatrice was, she could understand. A nun. A model. An alcoholic. A teacher. A wife. Too many different people wrapped into one. She couldn’t figure out what was real and what was make believe and what had actually happened and what was going to happen but she found it was easier to not fret over it. It was all out of her control anyway. “I mean, I can hardly see how anyone could say otherwise. But I’m not your boss.” She laughed again, relieved that Rose hadn’t remembered being put through a gruesome death or something. She could hardly keep up with what everyone else had been through. “I think getting fired should be the least of our worries right now. If need be, I’m sure we can always go back in time and do some meddling to make sure we keep our jobs.”

Her words were so light, so soft and sincere, and yet they felt like blows to his chest. Jonah didn’t feel like he deserved that title. Not today, not ever. “I remember you, well… us actually.” 

“It’s nothing solid, i just remember snippets but… we were arguing over what song to play on the radio, of course we couldn’t come to an agreement, so you just started singing louder than the song itself. I laughed so hard i nearly ran us off the road,” he said, a huff of laughter escaping at the thought. “- and one day i came home and there was a dog,” he said, his eyebrows raising in shock as though he was just seeing it for the first time. “The thing was though, we didn’t own a dog.” The day that Hendrix was welcomed into their home was one that Jonah would never forget.

There was one memory though, that was the most vivid in his mind. It was clearer than almost anything else.  “We ordered take out,” he said, his voice an octave lower, somewhat apprehensive as he spoke, “You were in the car and Al asked me if we’d like fortune cookies with our meal. I said yes, but only on the condition that i could choose what fortune he put in there. When we got home you were saying how rubbish fortune cookies were, and that you swore Al always purposely gave you one of the crappy ones,” he said, shaking his head with laughter. “We sat on the couch and I watched you nibble at the cookie before you even got to the note, almost as though you must have known what i’d done. It was excruciating.” Jonah looked towards her face to see if any of this meant anything to her, if she remembered any of it all. So much in his head was hazy, or maybe it was just him in denial, his brain pushing away parts he didn’t want to remember. “You finally got to the note and doubled over in a fit of laughter, clutching at your stomach, wheezing for air. My breath stopped for a minute. I don’t know, i thought maybe i’d made a mistake.” He swallowed, taking a deep breath before he continued. “You asked me to crack mine, and see what other nonsense it contained. So i did - and it read the exact same two words. Your laughing started to die down, i assume because you saw the look on my face. I was terrified, Bea. I shrugged and told you the truth. I had asked Al to give me two of the same, because knowing my luck, i’d end up giving you the wrong one and i’d be sitting there like a fool with a note that read ‘Marry me?’. Thankfully you didn’t think it was quite as crappy as your usual fortunes” Jonah looked down at the tiles and scuffed his feet along them, feeling like a kid again (technically he was a kid again). “-it wasn’t a mistake,” he added, looking up once again to meet her eyes. “It was the best choice i ever made.”

An argument over a song. A mutual home. A dog. He sounded almost crazy at first, and her lips parted to call him out for it but then -- “Hendrix,” she remembered, “oh, God, Hendrix.” How could she miss an animal that hadn’t even been born yet? Ever since she had been a child she’d wanted another dog and Jonah had taken it quite well when she had, with no warning or explanation whatsoever, brought one home with her. He had always taken her spontaneous ideas and outbursts quite well. Not that she would call Hendrix a mistake; if she remembered correctly, they had been damn good pet owners. Beatrice barely had any time to dwell on that thought. The more that he said, the more that came back and it was all so real. Too real. He looked up, and she understood the silent question. Did she remember? But she couldn’t bring herself to answer him, to speak at all, her heart aching until the very last word when once again he met her eyes, a surprising amount of genuineness in them. She had never been anyone’s best choice.

“Damn it Jonah,” she whispered, wiping a stray tear away with her thumb. All of the knowledge was overwhelming, the memories of things they had never done coming back at full force, and he wasn’t making it any easier by saying things like that. But she had asked. She wanted to know. She needed to know. It was a lot too process, maybe too much in the amount of time that she had before she needed to answer. The worst part was knowing that because of some stronger force, something completely out of control, they had lost the life they had worked so hard to build. Something beautiful that rose from the ashes only to be gone in the blink of an eye. It felt like a bad hangover; the frayed emotions, the headache and the fuzzy incomplete flashbacks but if she tried, if she really tried to focus, she could sort out scenes in her head, a movie filmed in her point of view. Sitting on the couch, a paper slip between her fingers that for once was not telling her to do something but asking instead. The floor as she stared down, the sound of her own laughter filling the room. Cookie crumbs that had yet to be brushed away scattered on her jeans. And Jonah, who couldn’t have looked more frightened if he’d seen a ghost.

She remembered saying you’re a nerd (translation: I love you) before leaning forward to place a kiss on his lips. She remembered she had never been more sure of anything as she said I would have to be a fucking idiot to say no (translation: of course I will marry you) and kissed him again. She remembered thinking that she had found it, that her entire life she had not known what she was looking for but it had been under her nose her all along. It was him. Teenage Bea would scoff at the idea and possibly gag -- she’d always had a flare for the dramatics -- but she’d been blind not to see it. He was the person that stood by her during the highs and lows, even though she seemed to have plenty more lows. He reminded her who she was when she forgot. He kept her grounded. He gave her something to cling to, her own beacon of hope and light during the insanity they’d been forced through when they were just kids, not ready for the weight of the things that had been thrown on their shoulders. He was her security blanket, her safety net, her sanctuary. He was the one person in the world that she could trust entirely, with everything that she had. He was her best friend.

“I was happy.” She swallowed the lump in her throat but she did not tear her eyes away from his as she continued. “I was happier than I had ever been. And it felt like... somehow, some way, I had gotten my happy ending. But the best part was that it wasn’t the end. It was only the beginning. And I was scared -- no, I was fucking terrified that I would lose you. That one day you would wake up and you would realize you deserved better or, because life and death are sick and cruel and twisted, you would be ripped away from me and I would be alone. Again.” She shook her head, her eyes finally falling. “But I trusted you. And I thought that maybe karma or God or fate or whatever would realize that you and I had both had our fair share of suffering and it was time that we get a break.” She should have known better. There were missing years that she could not account for, gaps in the story, but that didn’t seem to matter in the moment. Her eyes flickered back to him, lips twitching into the slightest smile. “Saying yes. That was the best choice that I ever made.”

Dog walks in the park. Her hand in his. Ordering takeout and laughing about nothing. Silly fights that were always resolved or forgotten about within minutes. A dream that she would have never been able to put together herself, a dream that she would have been to afraid to even wish for. She wanted to stay in ignorant bliss, cling to the hope and joy she had felt on that evening and every evening with him but something snapped her back to reality and she found it all slipping through her fingers in the blink of an eye. All over again. “But you didn’t ask,” she realized aloud. “And I didn’t say yes.” It must have been a selfish thing to care about during this time, at the wrong age, in the wrong place and no one with any knowledge as to how they had gotten there. But she had to know. Her voice came out much steadier than she felt when she forced her gaze to him again, but even then she wondered if he could hear the break in it. “So where does that leave us?”

The fragile voice that broke him from his thoughts caused his breath to catch in his throat. His brain went into overdrive as soon as he laid eyes on her. It felt as though a lifetime had passed since he saw her, or had she been there the whole time? He remembered most of it, so he thought. Though at one stage in the timeline, his mind was totally blank. He attributed that to the blue light. His memories may have been a total blur, but the one thing he did know was how he felt, and in that moment it was all he cared about. “I wouldn’t miss it,” he said, scuffling forward so that his long legs dangled on the side of his mattress. “If there was ever a chance for redemption,” he paused, thinking about the catastrophic events from the first reunion, “I guess this would be it for me.” His words held a double meaning that even he didn’t fathom in that moment. 

Looking at him hurt. He looked like home. He looked like loss. There were too many conflicting emotions clenching around her heart, none of them outweighing the other long enough to figure out what they were attributed to. He said he wouldn’t miss it and she wondered if he could, if he felt he had a choice. She didn’t. It was where she wanted to be, but it wouldn’t matter, there was a part of her now that knew -- she belonged to Whittemore. In ways that she had never belonged to anyone else. Be careful what you wish for. All Beatrice had ever wanted was to belong, but not in this way. “You don’t need to be redeemed,” she whispered. He had always had good intentions even if they blew up in his face. “You’re the best person I’ve ever met.” There was an odd tone to her voice that she couldn’t ever remember using with him, yet it seemed like she had, a fondness that seemed deeper than it was supposed to. Closing her eyes, she tried to piece broken memories together but it hurt nearly as bad as looking at him did. She was almost afraid to ask. “What do you remember?”

His smile faltered for a moment when he noticed it was Beatrice and his heart began to pound harder in his chest. He had left her, though he hadnt wanted to and she had been cruel, even if she didnt want to. It felt like everything had already been said and nothing had been said at all. He wanted to apologize for things he didnt know of yet, for things he had done or things he was going to do. He was certain about it but the words came out before he could stop them. “Im sorry.” His voice low before he held up the book for her to see, as if that answered her question. “Uh, The Silent Boy by Lois Lowry. I forgot how much I loved her writing and this was in a used book store on the way here.” 

What she and Gabe had, it had always been... questionable. And as she stood there, she wondered if there was anything left. If there could be, had things played out differently. She didn’t want to make his life harder, despite the way it may seem. She didn’t want to make him miserable. The outcome was up in the air all over again. Things that hadn’t happened seemed beyond fixing but she took a seat anyway, offering him a smile. It was meant to say I understand. It was meant to say I forgive you. It was meant to say me too. “Cool, cool. I haven’t read it.” She was distracted, her eyes searching his face, trying to find the answer to her unasked question. “How are you doing? Really.”

“Honestly? Same,” Chase sighed. Maybe forgetting even more could help distract him from how little he remembered. Or how much he remembered, but wasn’t sure was real. 

“I think we’re all in desperate need of therapy,” she commented, and despite the sarcastic sound to her tone, she wasn’t joking. “Maybe someone could put us under some kind of hypnosis and figure this shit out.”

Rose felt a buzzing in her pocket and glanced up at a welcome face. “Okay you caught me,” she said, clicking the notification that blinked impatiently on her screen. They say only the die-hard fans have real time notifications set for their favorite celebrities, but Rose had no doubt in her mind that half of Whittemore probably had them for the beauty that was Beatrice Ryder. As the post popped up she glanced admiringly at the image. “I must say, if there is one good thing about being bought back to this day and age, it’s gotta be this.” She stopped, a look of shock horror on her face as she waved her phone about. “Wait, you don’t think this is why i’m back here is it? To fulfill my destiny and finally create a fan page dedicated just to you?”

The laughing sound that came from Beatrice was sudden and loud and not at all ladylike but she didn’t care, it felt so good to laugh, and hard at that. Of course Rose would have her phone set to notify her every time she posted. Of course she would. It did make her feel better about whatever this new mess in her life was. At least if she ended up dead, someone would care. At least throughout everything, the woman standing by her had remained the same -- more or less. In all the good ways. “You mean you don’t have one already?” She managed to get out, though she didn’t even sound halfway serious. “Oh, Rose,” a hand placed on her stomach, she caught her breath as her laughter fizzled out, “you have no idea how much I’ve missed you.”