Chapter Text
‘It’s raining.’ You press your forehead against the glass and grimace. ‘Because of course it is.’
I mean, it’s not like you checked the weather app fifteen hundred times over the last week. It’s not like you tried to strike a bargain with the universe—your soul for a single dry afternoon. Who would be that desperate? Definitely not you. Not even a little bit.
Thunk!
The bus hits a pothole, and your skull meets the window with a dull, vibrating ache. You catch a few pitying glances from the commuters across the aisle, but you don’t pull away. You just watch the world outside dissolve into a gray, watercolor smear on the glass. Thinking about it a bit more, the window looks like it’s weeping, and honestly? Same.
Wincing, you peel yourself off the glass before whipping out your phone and snapping a photo of the bleak horizon. You fire it into the family group chat with a single line: I want to go back!
You don’t wait for the pings. You know they’re coming—the laughing emojis, the 'bring an umbrella’ texts that arrive too little too late. You shove your phone back into your pocket just as the brakes begin to squeal.
The driver offers a solemn nod—the kind you give a soldier before they charge into battle, or for the poor bastard stepping into a storm. Then the doors hiss shut, severing you from the bus’s stale heater. The warmth vanishes instantly, replaced by a rude slap of wind and a peppering of rain that feels like a direct insult from the sky. You wrench your hood up, but it’s already damp. You cringe as a few drops find their way down your neck.
You used to swear you knew this town like the back of your hand. You knew every in, every out, every little shortcut—but apparently, you haven’t looked at your hand in fucking years. You squint at a street sign like it’s written in a dead language before doubling back past storefronts that have been gutted and replaced. You spin in circles a few times before you come to terms with the fact that the landmarks you relied on are gone.
To add injury to the already mounting insult, the clouds finally drop the act. The drizzle mutates into a full-blown deluge—a generous, unsolicited gift that you didn’t ask for. The traffic noise disappears, replaced by the deafening white noise of a downpour. You let out a short, bitter laugh into the void. You don’t just feel wet now, no. You feel targeted.
You duck under the skeletal frame of a storefront awning, shivering as you drip a steady, pathetic puddle onto the concrete. You grit your teeth, which are now chattering in a rhythmic, traitorous beat, as you pull out your phone and squint through the blur of your contacts.
When you hit your brother-in-law's name, you pause. You weigh the cost. On one hand, you have to listen to his inevitable wisecrack about your little scenic commute. On the other, you have the slow onset of trench foot. You feel the icy water finally penetrate the deepest seams of your shoes and realize pride can officially kiss your ass.
He picks up on the second ring. The background noise is taunting as you hear the unmistakable hum of a TV and the groan of a reclining chair.
“What up, Hoe?”
The greeting is a physical blow. You stifle a comment about his thinning hair, knowing that pride won't get you a heater and a dry seat. You dig deep, past the shivering and the damp spite, to find a voice so sickeningly sweet it practically drips honey.
"Hey!" you chirp, the words vibrating through your chattering teeth. "You absolute legend, you. My favorite person!"
There’s a long, heavy silence. You can almost hear the gears turning as he calculates the cost of this sudden affection. "Did you slip and hit your head on the curb? Or are you being held at knifepoint?"
“Neither,” you mutter, your shoulders slumping as a fresh rivulet of ice water finds the exact gap between your hood and your spine. “Are you busy?”
On the other end, a sudden, violent clatter of pots and pans erupts, followed by the muffled thunder of your mother’s voice in the middle of a high-volume lecture. You hear him scurrying away, the sound of a door clicking shut behind him.
"Actually," he says, his tone shifting to one of profound relief. "I am suddenly, miraculously free. Do you need a lift?"
"Yeah," you sigh, letting your head thud back against the cold, grit-covered brick of the storefront. “I got turned around, thinking I could just walk home from the stop.”
"I kinda figured as much when I seen your name pop up," he says. On the other end, you hear the heavy zip of a jacket and the rhythmic, metallic jingle of keys.
"Saw," you instinctively correct, even as a shiver wracks your frame. "You saw my name pop up."
A beat of heavy, dangerous silence follows. "I will leave you there.”
"No! Wait!" you backtrack, your dignity dissolving faster than the cardboard box in the gutter nearby. "I’m sorry! Please come get me!”
"I'll think about it," he says, but the rumble of a heavy engine tells you he's already moving. "Give me a street name."
"Why would you ask me that?" You squint through the gray haze, looking for a landmark, but the rain casts a blurry curtain. “I'm not seeing a street sign anywhere. It’s just… rain and sadness.”
Silence. Just the steady thrum-thrum of his truck.
“Whatever. I'm sending a pin," you grumble. You pull the phone from your ear to fight with the map app, your wet thumb sliding uselessly across the glass like a windshield wiper.
When it finally sends, his laughter is so loud it actually crackles through the phone’s tiny speaker. “Are you serious? You’re practically in the next zip code! How do you get lost in your own hometown with a literal computer in your pocket?!”
“Oh fuck off, I thought I’d be able to walk home like old times,” you confess, the words tasting like ash. You’d expected these streets to welcome you back, to guide you home like an old habit. Instead, disappointment knots in your chest, tangled with a sharp, unexpected pang of dysphoria. Every unrecognizable store and new, bright neon sign drives the point home: you’ve been gone too long.
The silence on the other end stretches out, the mockery replaced by a rare, uncomfortable moment of sincerity.
“Four years is a long time,” he says.
You offer a quiet hum of agreement. Four years is a blink in the grand scheme of things, but apparently, it was just long enough for the city to outgrow your memories of it.
“Stay put,” he says, the gruffness returning to shield the sentiment. “I’m five minutes away. Don’t drown before I get there.”
The line clicks dead. The silence that follows is filled only by the rain and the occasional splash of a passing car. You lean your head back against the brick and stare into the downpour, restlessly counting the seconds until that ugly-ass truck rounds the corner.
You’re half-tempted to duck into the shop behind you to reclaim some warmth when an unexpected, bone-deep crunch cuts through the rain. You jump, your spine catching on the grit of the brick wall as you scan through the curtain of rain. At the intersection, a small car lurches, its frame meeting the road with a grimacing scrape of steel on stone. The sound is loud enough to drown out the storm for a split second.
“Damn,” you wince, watching the car limp away.
Now that you're looking for it, you see the monster. It’s a jagged, hungry-looking fissure right in the middle of the lane, hidden perfectly by a pool of black water. It’s a deceptive trap, a piece of the old town literally falling apart. You watch the water ripple over the pothole, wondering how many more axles it’s going to claim before the city bothers to send a crew.
“Hey, dumbass! Turn around!”
The shout is louder than the rain and twice as annoying. You spin toward the sound, shielding your eyes as two high-beam spotlights pin you against the brick wall. Behind the glare sits the Red Menace—that same beat-up, rusted-out truck you’ve spent years mocking
˗ˋˏ ♡ ˎˊ˗
You look at the yellow house and realize you’re looking at a stranger. It’s still the same address, but the silhouette from your memory is all wrong. For the last four years, your parents have been adding on and making updates until the original frame was hidden under new siding and angles.
“Since when do we have a wrap-around porch?” you ask, stepping out into the rain. The gravel is fresh, dark, and slick under your feet.
Your brother-in-law shrugs. “Two years? Three? Your Mom had been begging to add one for a while.”
“Oh,” you trail off. You search your memory for a phone call or a text mentioning a construction project, but you find nothing. Lost in a frantic cycle of exams, deadlines, and the desperate hustle of a life elsewhere, it had been far too easy to tune out the extra noise of home.
The front door swings open, spilling a rectangle of warm, golden light onto the damp porch. It frames a silhouette of dark, messy hair and equally dark clothes.
“Finally!” The shadow snaps. “Mom’s been breathing down my neck because you two were taking your sweet time!”
You blink, trying to reconcile this gothish apparition with the small child who once knew the exact order of the rainbow and refused to leave the house without a bow in her hair.
“Oh my god,” you breathe, eyes wide. “Who are you, and what did you do to my baby sister?”
You actually recoil as a shoe—a literal, solid-soled sneaker—comes hurtling out the doorway. It whistles past your shoulder and thumps into the damp grass behind you with a wet thud.
“Oh shit, it’s feral!”
From deep inside the house, your mother’s irate voice cuts through the chaos. “Quit acting like a toddler and get your damn shoe.”
You pick up the sneaker and offer it back, arm extended as far as possible to avoid the danger zone. She lunges forward with a pointed glare, claws the shoe out of your hand with a sharp tug, and vanishes back into the house without a word.
“Well, alright then, ya vicious little gremlin,” you mutter, careful not to draw any more of her ire
“Pot calling the kettle black,” your brother-in-law snorts, his heavy boots thumping up the porch steps. “Em said you were a nightmare at that age.”
The name Em hits you like a cold splash of water. You haven’t heard it spoken aloud in years—at least not by someone who wasn’t you. You bite your lip, caught between a nostalgic ache and a flash of genuine annoyance. “Of course she’d tell you that.”
You step inside and are immediately hit by a glorious, heavy wave of central heating. It’s like a hug from the house itself. You let out a ragged sigh, the first warm breath you’ve taken in an hour, and swing the door on the storm with a definitive click.
Dad’s head pops around the living room doorframe then. He doesn't offer a hug or a handshake; instead, he just stares at the dark, wet circle spreading across the entryway rug. He looks back up at you, his voice a dry murmur. “You might want to throw that in the dryer before your mother throws a fit.”
“Already planning on it,” you laugh softly, peeling the sodden weight of the coat from your shoulders. It hits the floor with a wet shlap, and you can practically feel the judgment emanating from the living room.
You kick your soaked shoes and socks into a corner and bound up the stairs with your jacket in tow, making a sharp right and down a hall where the smell of detergent greets you from the laundry room. You feed the dryer your drenched coat, and as it begins its heavy, metallic churn, you slip away. Your feet navigate the hallway by memory alone, a path worn into your brain by a decade of midnight snacks and school mornings. You pass your parents’ room, then the dark cavern of your younger sister’s, before your hand finds the cool brass handle of the third door on the left.
The door creaks open, and for a second, you’re nineteen again. It’s like walking into a time capsule; the air is stagnant, smelling of old paper and dust. The posters and photos on the walls are a gallery of a life you outgrew, and the books on the shelves are markers of a girl you don’t quite recognize. Everything is exactly as you remembered it—frozen in a state of mid-departure. Even Em’s bed is still neatly made, occupying its half of the room
It’s jarring to see it so untouched. It’s as if the house is waiting for a version of you and Em that doesn't exist anymore to walk through the door.
This room used to be the center of your universe. Even after Em moved out, her bed stayed—a safety net for the nights she needed to come home. You cherished those nights. You can still almost hear the echoes of those marathon conversations—the whispered secrets and the breathless laughter that lasted until the moon dipped low and one of you inevitably drifted off. Now, that warmth of those memories feels like a phantom limb. You know it was there, but you can’t feel the heat of it anymore.
You press your palm against the dark blue comforter of her bed. It’s stiff and freezing, a sharp contrast to the heater-warmed air in the hallway. There isn't a single wrinkle in the fabric, no sign that anyone has sat here in months—or years, really. A lump forms in your throat as the reality settles in. This room is a time capsule that no one wants to open. It will stay exactly like this until the day this house is sold.
A sudden, sharp glint of gold catches your eye in the dim light, pulling your gaze toward the nightstand. Your brows furrow as you reach out and lift the cold, heavy band. It’s her class ring. It had been an expensive thing. Custom-made with a gold lion clutching her birthstone in its jaws. On the inside of the band, it read: Em, Class of 2009.
The last time you saw this ring, it was a constant fixture around her neck, hanging from a delicate silver chain. She’d been too terrified to wear it on her finger, always worried the weight of the gold would make it slide off and vanish.
It feels wrong to see it sitting here, gathering dust while the rest of the house moves on. But you understand the logic. Your parents didn't leave it here because they forgot it; they left it because they couldn't bear to admit she didn't need it anymore. You carefully replace the ring, aligning it with the invisible mark it left in the dust, and turn your back on the room.
You spend the rest of the evening downstairs, performing the role of the person you used to be. You act like you hadn’t been gone for four years—like the house hasn’t grown new walls and you simply forgot the new placement of certain objects. You move through the kitchen with practiced ease, helping your mother plate a dinner that smells exactly like your childhood, and for a few hours, you almost believe the lie.
You pretend the empty seat beside your own at the kitchen table isn’t actually there. It’s a hole in the conversation, a space where Em should be sitting, leaning her elbows on the table, and correcting Dad’s stories. But no one looks at the chair. No one acknowledges the space.
“Can you eat seconds?” your mother asks, but she’s already piling another helping onto your plate. It’s her own way of saying she missed you, a love language of her own. She doesn’t ask about the years of missed holidays; she just watches you chew, her eyes always searching your face for the version of you she remembers.
Even the ‘feral gremlin’ starts to come out of her shell when you compliment her band tee. Her eyes light up as you talk about a few bands that you still actively listen to from your younger years. For a moment, a tiny, ghost of a smile dances on her lips. It’s the first piece of your sister you’ve recognized all day.
Your brother-in-law keeps the mood light, filling you in on the changes within the community while shooting a few snarky comments every now and again. Dad nods along, occasionally glancing at you with a quiet, prideful smile that makes your chest ache.
By the time the dishes are cleared and the rain has eased, the exhaustion finally catches up to you. The performance has drained whatever energy the two-hour bus drive left behind.
“I think I'm going to crash,” you announce, standing up and stretching from the couch.
“Already?” your mother asks, face falling for just a fraction of a second before she looks at the time. “Ah, I guess it is pretty late. I hope you have sweet dreams, hun.”
She gives you a warm, comforting hug before you make your way up the stairs and into your room, but you never actually fall asleep. You toss and turn, the sheets becoming a twisted cage as you settle into a defeated stare at the empty mattress across the room. You stay that way for hours, watching as the shadows slowly retreat and the room fills with a pale, bluish hue—that cold light of early morning just before the sun finally decides to peek out.
By the time the birds start their first tentative chirps, the restlessness is a physical itch under your skin. You can't sit still a moment longer. You've hit the limit of your own exhaustion, where your body is tired but your brain is screaming for motion. You kick your comforter off more aggressively than you intend; it heaps onto the floor in a tangled, pathetic pile of fabric that you don’t bother to pick up.
Instead, you roll out of bed and grab a pair of black leggings and a worn-out long-sleeve shirt. You pull them on in the dim light, your movements jerky and impatient, eager to be anywhere but that room.
You’re halfway out the bedroom door when your gaze snags on the nightstand one last time. In the pre-dawn gloom, the golden band is almost unnoticeable, looking like nothing more than a dark blemish against the wood. You stare at it for a long, heavy heartbeat before a split-second impulse spurs you into motion. You don’t know why you do it—whether it’s out of spite, nostalgia, or a desperate need to hold onto something real—but you snatch the ring and slip it into your pocket.
You’re careful as you pick your way down the stairs, cringing at every creak that echoes down the halls. At the front door, you bypass your still-damp shoes and reach for your Dad’s gear instead. You’re swallowed whole by the bulk of his jacket, and you have to shuffle awkwardly to keep your feet from sliding out of the boots, but the bulkier layers are much better than your own.
Outside, the air is sharp and damp against your skin. The rain has finally ceased, leaving behind puddles and a low-hanging fog that clings to the asphalt. The boots make a heavy, wet scuff against the pavement as you trudge along the sidewalk with no real destination in mind.
You pass vaguely familiar landmarks, rendered almost unrecognizable by time and progress. You pause, forced to retrace your steps when a shortcut you used to take turns out to be a dead end—cut off by a high, sturdy privacy fence. Even the empty lot where the neighborhood kids once gathered has been erased, swallowed up by a sterile, brightly lit drugstore.
A strange, hollow ache settles in your chest as you take it all in. It’s as if you’re drifting through a counterfeit version of your own city; every renovated storefront and replaced sign makes you feel more like a visitor. For a moment, you find yourself mourning the way things used to be, and it makes the morning air feel colder.
The city slowly begins to stir, the fragile silence of dawn fading away as the first rush of traffic hisses over the wet pavement. You watch from the sidewalk as people emerge for their morning routines, moving with a purpose you can’t quite mimic. They look like they belong to this new version of the world, while you were still searching for the old.
By now, you imagine the house is waking up. Your mother is likely standing in the kitchen, peering toward the stairs, while your Dad finds your empty bed and discarded comforter. They’ll be wondering where you went, and more importantly—they’ll want to know why. The thought of the questions waiting for you makes your stomach twist, but you can’t stay out forever.
Overhead, the bruised, bluish hue of the dawn is burned away as sharp needles of sunlight poke through the fractured cloud cover. The light hits the wet asphalt at just the right angle, turning the road into a shimmering, mirror-like expanse that reflects the sky. It’s the kind of beauty you wish you could admire, but between the throbbing pulse of an exhaustion-induced headache and the stress of getting home before your parents panic, the view just comes off more as sensory overload.
CRACK—THUD
The heavy metallic slam, followed by a sickening, reverberating pop, shatters the morning air. The sound hits your eardrums like a physical strike, vibrating straight into the center of your headache. For a heartbeat, there is only the ringing in your ears, and your exhaustion is forgotten.
Your boots clop heavily against the concrete as you break into a clumsy run. As you round the corner, a cold sense of déjà vu washes over you. You're back at the same intersection, staring at the same jagged crater from yesterday—only this time, it’s upgraded from being an inconvenience.
Ahead, a man paces with hurried, irritable strides, his fingers raking through his hair as he surveys the wreckage. At a distance, the vehicle looks like it’s just parked awkwardly, but as you close the gap, the reality of the situation becomes sickeningly clear. The pothole hasn't just popped a tire; it has almost consumed the rear of the car entirely. The wheel well is barely visible, buried deep within a jagged rift that seems to have doubled in size since yesterday.
“Hey, are you okay?”
The man snaps his head up. His eyes are still set in a deep, weary scowl, his face flushed with the kind of adrenaline that only comes from shock. He shakes his head, letting out a ragged huff of disappointment.
“Aye, I’m fine,” he grumbles, waving a dismissive, trembling hand towards his car. “But the car’s fucked. Fucking city can’t be bothered to fix their damn roads!”
“Can’t argue with you on that,” you admit. You follow along the side of the car, tracing the line of disaster. A pothole this size felt too hazardous to leave alone; the fact that it was already causing damage yesterday should have been enough for someone to flag it, but here it is: wider, deeper, and—
You freeze. The car is moving.
It’s just a ghost of a movement at first—a slow, agonizing tilt that makes you squint, certain your sleep-deprived eyes are playing tricks on you. But the silver frame is definitely lower than it was thirty seconds ago.
Then comes the sound
A wet, muffled thump followed by a sharp, structural pop that vibrates through the soles of your boots. The man stops pacing. He stops swearing. For a heartbeat, the rising roar of the city vanishes, swallowed by a heavy, suffocating silence. You look at him and see your own wide-eyed stare on his face. You are both frozen, caught in the same silent question: What was that?
Another pop cracks from the undercarriage, followed by a sickening, grinding crunch that makes your stomach drop. With a thunderous bang, the front of the car drops. The bumper slams into the asphalt with enough force to send bits of stone into the air, the entire frame shuddering as the street begins to swallow it whole.
"Get back!" the man screams, but his voice is already distant.
You jump backwards, desperate to put distance between yourself and the widening maw, but the oversized boots catch against one another, tangling your legs and sending you crashing hard towards the pavement.
It happens in the space between heartbeats. So sudden that there is no time to react, to think, to scream. It’s like a sudden exhale from the earth itself—a sound of rushing air and collapsing stone—and just like that, the ground below you dissolves. The last thing you see is the man’s back, a frantic blur of motion as he scrambles for safety, his instinct for survival far outweighing any thought of some stranger.
Gravity is more violent than you expect. It yanks you down with a savage force, and you’re forced to watch, paralyzed, as the road disintegrates above you. A thick cloud of crumbling concrete and dirt erupts, completely engulfing the morning sky. The roar of falling stone is deafening as it slams against your eardrums in waves, easily drowning out your blood-curdling screams.
You are a chaotic mess of flailing limbs, arms lashing out into the void, instinctively clawing for a handhold that isn't there. In the midst of the frantic scramble, you feel a sudden, sickening weightlessness in your pocket.
Your heart stops.
You reach out, fingers splaying against the empty air, just in time to see a spark of gold catch the fading light. It’s the ring. For one impossible heartbeat, it hangs suspended in the chaos—a tiny, defiant circle of light dancing against the curtain of rising dust. It looks like a star falling in a dying sky.
You lung toward it, your fingertips brushing the cold metal, but then a massive shelf of stone shears away from the rim above. A fresh wave of rubble tumbles down, a heavy shroud of black earth and jagged asphalt. The light is snuffed out instantly. The gold is swept into the dark, buried under a ton of debris, leaving you reaching for a ghost as you continue to drop into the deep, suffocating throat of the earth.