Chapter Text
NED WAS AT THIS VERY MOMENT twenty eight years, three months, two and a half weeks, eight days, four hours, and three minutes old; and he was waking up. He rubbed the back of his head with a groan. His last memory had been a good one. Chuck had been snuggled against him, his arm wrapped around her and seperated from her bare skin by a vinyl sleeve and a vinyl sheet that stretched up over their bed. He could feel the warmth of her through that sleeve, and almost feel her softness. Chuck was soft in the way of spring sunshine, gently filtered through a jar of honey: pure and sweet. The Piemaker loved her with all his heart, but you see, he could never, ever touch her.
Ned had a secret. One that he kept well for many, many, many years. He could touch dead things and bring them back to life. But if he touched them a second time, they would die again. Forever.
And Ned had already touched Chuck once.
The small smile that pleasant memory had conjured faded. The Piemaker’s special circumstances with the woman he loved left a very peculiar bittersweet taste in his mouth. And… There was another taste there as well. Was that… copper? And.. what was he laying on? It certainly didn’t feel like a mattress. The piemaker opened his eyes. Stars stretched above him, blinking and winking in the night. They were beautiful, but they shouldn’t have been there. A ceiling, with a little water stain where an upstairs neighbor’s pipe had leaked should be there. And what was he laying on? He sat up. He was stretched prone in the middle of a road. A random road. He was lucky he hadn’t been hit! He scrambled to his feet, the taste of metal in his mouth and a pounding in his head. It was then that the biggest question of all made itself unmistakably apparent to poor Ned.
Where was Charlotte Charles?
JAYE TYLER WAS AT THIS VERY MOMENT HERSELF twenty four years, eight months, three days, and fifteen seconds old;and also waking up. Jaye was not, however, waking up because of the roughness of asphalt scraping against her cheek. Jaye was safely in bed and awake only because some moron was wandering through her trailer park making much more noise than she cared to hear at any hour of the night - but particularly this hour of the night.
“Chuck,” a man’s voice stage-whispered as a man’s shoes crunched on the gravel outside. “ Chuck. Chuck?”
She hauled herself out of bed, drawing her sweater closed over her tank top and shuffling to the door. “Hey Genius,” she snapped, not at all in a stage whisper. “Maybe think of relocating your game of marco polo or whatever to daylight. Some of us need rest - oh my God. Aaron?”
Jaye’s brow puckered as she gaped at her brother, in a sweater and jeans, slouched awkwardly on the path before her. Aaron, too, stared at her like he’d seen a ghost.
NED GAPED at the woman in front of him. Small, brunette, and fiery, when he saw her he’d immediately thought of chuck. Bu she wasn’t Chuck. And it occurred to the piemaker as he gaped at her and she gaped at him that she had called him a name. A name that wasn’t his name. As quickly as he could, he tried to save face. “Wh-what? No, it’s… I’m-”
His face saving wasn’t quick enough. The brunette rolled her eyes in exasperation and tromped down the steps of her aluminum trailer to grab his arm. Ned’s eyes widened.
“Come on,” she said. “Come inside and siddown. Are you drunk?” she asked, almost as an afterthought.
“No! I’m not drunk,” Ned protested. “And I’m not-”
But the brunette cut him off again. “Well then, Mister I’m-so-smart-I-almost-have-a-PhD, if you aren’t drunk why the hell were you wandering around here at two a.m? And… when did you get your hair cut?”
Ned was being bombarded. He didn’t like being bombarded. He liked when questions came in a gentle stream, or, vastly preferably, not at all. “I… don’t know,” he managed weakly.
The girl frowned and folded her arms. “Are you sure you’re okay?” she asked. “You’re being weird.”
“I’m okay,” Ned reassured her, un-reassuringly.
The young woman glared at him, assessing him a moment longer before shrugging. “Whatever. You can take the bench tonight. There’s blankets in the cabinet. I have work, so I’m going to sleep. Night.” She stepped through a screen and closed it behind her, hiding her from view.
“Night,” Ned said, voice numb. When the girl left the room, he realized the pricking sensation on the back of his neck wasn’t receding. He thought it had been from the way the little Brunette was glaring at him, but he now realized it was from the eyes. Dozens of eyes, in wax, cloth, metal, or plastic. The brunette across the way was hoarding toy animals. And they were all staring at Ned.
The piemaker felt, rather than heard himself quietly whimper as he sank onto the bench. His eyes darted around to the eyes of the animals, and he shuddered. She was crazy. That would explain why she called him Aaron. She was delusional.
Briefly, he visualized an escape, dashing through the door and onto the gravel path to safety.
But then he visualized her leaping after him and stabbing him to death with the smiley chameleon knife on the drying rack. He shuddered.
Crazy lady did say she had work tomorrow. When she left, that’s when he would leave too, sneak away to get to a phone and find Chuck.
In the meantime though, Ned wasn’t about to let his focus waver. He would stay up and alert all night if he had to. No one was going to get the best of the piemaker this time.
NED AWOKE to the brunette shaking his shoulder. “Earth to Aaron!” she snapped. “I’m running late, some on.”
Ned sat upright with a start, swiping the corner of his mouth. “What?”
“I’m dropping you at home on my way to work. And there’s an evaluation today, so I actually have to be on time for once. Are you coming?”
“... What?” Ned asked blankly, still trying to process the fact that he hadn’t been murdered while he slept.
The brunette rolled her eyes. “Oh my God. The one time I go out of my way to be nice.” She was wearing a flimsy yellow vest, with a name stitched onto it in a pleasantly formal script. Jaye.
“... You’re right. Sorry, Jaye,” Ned said carefully. “I’m just a little out of it. Rough night.”
Jaye eyed him. “Uh-huh. Well, come on.” she stood, snatching a purse and departing the trailer. He had to duck to get through the door. Jaye was sitting in an old robin’s egg sedan, looking a little worse for the wear. The door creaked when he opened it, and the car creaked when he sat down. There was slightly too little room for his long legs, so he drew them up slightly closer to his chest than as necessarily comfortable as he fought with the stubborn old seatbelt.
Jaye eyed him as she started the car, but said nothing. Ned fidgeted and heartily appreciated the silence.
JAYE WATCHED THE ROAD as she drove, and Aaron watched his knees. She had thought the pair of them had been getting closer recently, what with the whole ‘smuggling their former housekeeper out of Canada’ ordeal and the reveal that inanimate animal faces talked to her and told her to do things. Which Aaron was really only questionably okay with. Jaye was fairly sure that he believed that she believed it, but she couldn’t gauge how much farther the belief went than that. For a theologian, Aaron Tyler was surprisingly skeptical, and she had to wonder if seeing her… collection of animals hadn’t shorted his circuits a little.
She wanted to press him about it, to investigate and see what was bothering him so profoundly, but she knew that if you messed with a short circuit, you could get shocked.
So she dropped him off in front of their nice house with its nice lawn and nice cars in the driveway without a word besides “Say hi to mom and dad for me. And ignore Sharon for me.” She offered her brother a smile as he folded himself out of the car, and he smiled a rather watery smile back, offering her a little wave as she edged out of the driveway and headed to work.
THAT WAS IT. Ned’s chance for escape. He looked around, realizing he had no idea which way to go. Well… Jay had gone left, so he’d go right. He took a deep breath, cleared his throat and started walking.
“Aaron!” a woman called. A woman that wasn’t Jaye. Ned froze. “ There you are! You didn’t come home last night. Where have you been?”
“... I stayed with Jaye,” Ned said, turning. His nerves rose up, as they often did, to wrest control of his tongue away from his better judgement. Faced with this stern blonde woman bearing down on him, his nerves began their traitorous dance. “I didn’t sleep - couldn’t sleep - wasn't sleepy so I… went for a walk. Under the moonlight. To… clear my head. Of… things. Things that needed clearing. Like how you get cobwebs over your favorite photograph and something about that photograph just feels so different until the cobweb and the memory of that cobweb have been wiped away and the photograph is clean again. So that’s what I was doing out there. At night. In the dark.” The blonde woman was rapidly losing patience for Ned’s rambling, so the piemaker concluded. “So I crashed at Jaye’s place.” His eye twitched. It often twitched when he lied.
The blonde woman just stared at him incredulously for a long silent beat, before looking up at the sky. “ One normal sibling. That’s all I wanted.” She strode past ned to a sleek, silver SUV. “Mom and Dad are still eating breakfast. See you later.” She climbed in and drove away. Ned looked after her. His head hurt again. Apparently Jaye’s delusion wasn’t just hers. The affliction seemed to extend to her family. And Ned, as caught off-guard her as he had been by Jaye the night before, seemed to have further solidified the idea that he, somehow, was this family’s flesh-and-blood. He sighed and, momentarily defeated, turned to go inside.