Chapter Text
Working the morning shift in a podunk gas station that mostly only serves fishermen and hunters at 4 AM is not the most mentally stimulating job. But it pays! And employees get free food. Which is about the only two positives the cashier can think of, hunched over with her elbow on the counter, face in hand, phone in the other. She technically isn’t supposed to be on her phone while on the clock, but every straggling hunter and fishermen and johnny-come-lately had already swept through the store, so she’s sure there’s nothing to worry about and little to look forward to outside of the odd hiker stopping in.
She barely registers the chime of the door as two new customers came in.
“Welcome,” she mumbles out of habit.
“Hi,” the woman responds with a smile. The cashier’s head jerks up from her phone, hastily shoving it back under the counter.
“Welcome!” she panics and repeats herself, almost feeling guilty for being caught slacking off. Almost.
The woman cocks her head a little and smiles, disappearing down an aisle, the other customer following after her.
Of course. The minute I start to relax, people show up.
She shoots a glance out the automatic doors and spots a lone, old, SUV parked at one of the pumps, then looks back to her new patrons. The woman is all red hair and black clothes, complete with leather jacket, and making a beeline for their wall of drinks. She stretches as she walks, reaching her arms up, and the cashier spots the butt of a gun tucked in a holster in her waistband. Good to know. The other— a guy in a blue flannel and dark sweatpants— is shuffling down one of the aisles, slowly looking at everything, picking blindly at the buttons on the corner of his shirt. The cashier not-so-subtly attempts to watch the two, out of nothing but pure curiosity and entertainment. Who are these two anyway? Neither of them are dressed for hunting, hiking, or fishing. Undercover cops? She wonders. Maybe the lady. Not the other guy.
“You wanted water, right?” the woman asks, heading back down the aisle, bottle in hand. The man doesn’t respond. At first the cashier assumes he’s still picking something out, or didn’t hear his friend, but he doesn’t even acknowledge her. “Dylan?” the woman asks, quieter this time.
The man— Dylan— stands unmoving. The cashier wonders with a twinge of anxiety if everything’s okay, letting her hand hover over her phone, just in case she needs to call for help. But the woman in the leather jacket seems unworried. So everything is probably okay.
Dylan blinks suddenly and looks around, like he just woke up. He picks at his sleeve again and says something the cashier can’t make out (despite straining to and leaning ever-so-slightly over the counter). The two talk quietly for a while, until she can finally pick out pieces of the conversation again.
“Did you find what you want?”
“There’s no Butterfingers,” Dylan replies. The woman raises an eyebrow and points at the shelf. “Not those ones. The little round ones. In a bag.”
“What?” the woman replies. “Oh, wait. I remember those. They stopped making them a long time ago.”
“Wow,” he sighs, grabbing a few different things off the shelf. “Did they just discontinue all my favorite things while I was out?”
Okay. He’s definitely not a cop.
He grabs a few more things, but hesitates reaching for a bag of chips.
“I— is it okay if I get—”
“Yes,” the woman answers, smiling and shaking her head. “No limits. Get what you want.”
Who are these two?
The cashier scrambles to think of a way to get more information from them. Make small talk to ask where they’re headed, see if she recognizes the name on the card they pay with— anything she could use to tell a story to her friends after work. But the two are already headed to the counter, and she can’t think of anything good to say or which of them to ask, and her customer service script kicks in before she can say anything else.
“You guys find everything alright?” she asks.
Dylan makes a face, but looks around the store instead of answering. The woman smiles slightly.
“Yeah, thanks.” She sets everything on the counter and the cashier starts to scan it all, when Dylan speaks up again.
“Jesse,” he says plainly. “Those guys hit our car,”
Jesse snaps to look out the doors as the cashier does too, and watches as the rickety truck of one of the local fishermen shudders to a halt at the pump behind their SUV, which is now rocking slightly from the hit against the rear bumper it just suffered. Jesse swears under her breath, dropping her credit card on the counter and heading out the doors. Dylan’s eyes widen.
“Jesse, wait—”
“I’ll be right back!” she calls, already outside and headed for the driver at the pump. Dylan’s shoulders droop, until he finally looks back at the cashier, carefully scooping the card back up.
“Sorry about them,” the cashier tries.
“Mmm,” is Dylan’s only response, eyeing the register warily.
“Oh, I already scanned everything.” She turns the tablet on the register to face him. Dylan just fiddles with the card a moment, looking for a place to slide it.
“You can just tap the card against the screen,” the cashier finally says. Dylan does so, then looks around for a stylus or a button to press. “It’s a touch screen,” she offers again.
“Oh,” he says, pressing credit, eyes locked on the tablet.
The cashier asks before she can convince herself not to. She can’t help it. They’re both the most interesting thing to happen there today.
“You like— just get out of prison or something? Or like, the hospital?” she covers quickly, realizing how insensitive the prison comment might sound, before sticking her foot in her mouth again. “Or a cult? Or…”
Dylan’s eyes go up to the cashier’s for the first time, and she suddenly feels very… seen. He just stares at her, head tilted slightly.
The register dings an approval and spits out a receipt, and the cashier grabs it on auto-pilot. Jesse appears again in the entrance.
“Yeah,” Dylan says finally, scooping up all their snacks in his arms, forgoing a bag. Jesse rolls her eyes and holds the door open.
They’re already in the car before the cashier manages to squeak out,
“Wait, which one?”
New York to Ordinary is nearly a two day trip. About eight hours of driving, which they could’ve done in a day, like Emily suggested, but after talking about it in the months leading up to it, Jesse and Dylan decided they’d rather get to Ordinary in the morning and leave themselves as much time as they want. Emily points out they could stay there overnight— it’s a Bureau owned town, and their home, after all— but neither are sure they could do that. And Dylan is quick to shoot down the concept of an eight hour straight car ride.
Officially, on the Bureau paperwork, the Fadens are ‘being dispatched to check the status of an important AWE site personally due to exclusive knowledge and expert knowledge on the local area’, but it’s really just a fancy way to say they’re on a long overdue vacation together to go back home. It being Bureau business, however, means the FBC is paying for everything— motel stay, food, snacks, gas, the rental car— and that they both continue to get paid while they’re out.
Dylan, as well as successfully arguing that he should get some form of backpay or compensation at the least for his years in the House, has also been bestowed the role ‘Supervisor of Houseplant Wellbeing’. It is, technically, a job Jesse invented, and ultimately just a title to land him on official payroll in some capacity to appease the bureaucratic rules. But Jesse encouraged him to genuinely go care for the plants around the Bureau if he wanted, mentioning that they liked to be talked to. He later found a note from Ahti requesting the same job be completed, and made a pretty decent show of dragging his feet and complaining about how ridiculous talking to plants seemed. That is, until he finally went and tried it.
Now if anyone else tries to take the job, Dylan is the first to complain and point out it’s his responsibility and title. The Bureau plants have honestly never looked better. Any attempt to point out his previous reluctance and complaints about the job are met with absolute denial. (One Researcher is still adamant she heard Dylan singing to the plants, but nobody believes her).
A lot has shifted and changed in the Bureau. The path to lifting the lockdown was a bumpy, growth-pain filled journey. But things are shaping up. Staff had a lot to grapple with— new bosses, new guidelines, new rules, new revelations. So few had known anything about what Trench, Darling, and Marshall had done. Some still don’t know, with certain details locked behind classifications and redactions. But the new Bureau— Jesse’s Bureau— is far more transparent with staff than before. It’s a policy not everyone has adjusted to yet. Comparisons are still being drawn between the new and the old. (Nobody is denying the fact that everyone is feeling the grief of the missing staff, or how important their work was and still is). But the most disturbing revelation for many is still Dylan.
Dylan, at first, assumes it’s shock and disgust about him. The failed prime candidate. The Hiss spokesperson. The black sheep. It rattles him the first time he realizes staff are appalled that he was a prisoner. That something so inhumane and horrifying was happening at their work, their home, by people they love and trust, right under their noses, none the wiser. That they came to work every day— maybe even within those 17 years— and never realized the Bureau was holding a child, an experiment, a prisoner.
Dylan isn’t sure how to process that.
It makes his original plan to rub it in, to seek some sort of repayment by gloating and never letting them forget, much, much harder. His attempts to pin black-and-white blame on someone falter and fail.
(There are still, of course, staff who don’t trust him. Some, by extension, don’t trust Jesse much either. He doesn’t care. He does, but he doesn’t. They’re fun to unnerve by taking up space in the Bureau. Some swear to quit once the lockdown lifts. Good riddance.)
The Bureau changes. So do staff. So does he.
It’s weird. But Jesse tells him it will be okay. He’s inclined to believe her.
Lockdown finally lifting was a massive celebration, and no doubt the originator of many new Bureau legends, stories, and rumors. Everyone couldn’t just leave at once, of course, which resulted in a lot of people getting antsy for their shifts to finally end. Communications worked double time to explain absences, contact families of those lost in the crisis, and formulate a fitting cover story for the lost time. It also saw the return of all the employees who were out in the field, on vacation, or just not in the Bureau during lockdown. They felt overwhelmed for entirely different reasons, going through pages and pages of information and debriefing to catch back up. New Director, new Head of Research, new Head of Operations, new rules, new Bureau.
Dylan’s long-awaited exit takes a little longer. Not due to any rules or restrictions, but simply because it was just… so much to take in. Instead of just waltzing out the front doors into the City, Arish suggested heading through one of the Bureau’s many back exits or subway tunnel accesses, to try and cut down on how absolutely overwhelming the world outside would be after 17 years of absence. He works up to it, over time, standing in the tunnels with Arish and Jesse, listening to the trains, walking through maintenance tunnels, getting closer to the crowds. All he wants is out— his long overdue freedom— but he retreats back into the House each time, overwhelmed by the sound and smells and smog and input of everything old and new he hasn’t experienced in so long.
He’s infuriated that he finally has a chance to leave and can hardly take a step. But Arish hears him out, listening to him. Telling him about what the city is like, all the people in it and the stuff he sees on his way to work. Jesse finds an apartment close enough to the Oldest House to be a simple walking commute. It’s about as close and quiet as you can manage in New York, and she makes sure Dylan likes it too. He’s offered his own place, even one right next to Jesse’s, but he’s adamant on staying with her. He says it’s just temporary, until he’s ready for somewhere else. And Jesse tells him she doesn’t mind, and he can stay as long as he wants, she’s just glad she found him. She says that a lot. She knows she doesn’t have to— words don’t do any of it justice, and Dylan feels it too— but she says it anyway.
He walks there with Jesse one afternoon after Emily and Arish forced her to take a break from work and head home. Dylan silently fell in step behind her, and they passed through a back way, coming out in a subway station, before ascending the steps out onto the street.
Dylan craned up to look at the top of the buildings, and the pink-tinged evening sky, and the clouds, and the pale moon hanging in view. Jesse tried not to laugh and took his elbow, guiding him through the crowds to their new apartment building. He spent the rest of the day at the small window in their kitchen, watching the city move, counting cars and people and lights and signs, breathing in the exhaust and smoke filled air as deep as he could, revelling in it.
The nightmares are a new development. Rather, these nightmares. Dreaming is not a foreign thing to him by any stretch of the imagination, but these are… different. Traumatic. He wakes Jesse up one night in a panic, deeply unnerved and confused. They turn every light on in the apartment, and he sits on the couch and focuses on everything else around him, while Jesse sits and waits. They’re infrequent, but they still rear their ugly heads as time passes. He can’t bring himself to talk about most of them. Most, mercifully, slip away from his memory before he can dwell on them. It breaks Jesse’s heart. She wishes she could do more than just be with him. That she could flip a switch or say the right words and make it so a bad dream never haunts him again. But he just wants her there with him, and she’s more than happy to oblige.
Coming back to the Bureau after his first night out is odd, but paradoxically comforting. As much as he hates the Bureau (or rather, the old Bureau), it’s hard to not cling to the familiar, the safe. He roams as he pleases, doing whatever he deems helpful. A stack of notes sometimes appears on Jesse’s desk with random comments, suggestions, and observations from Dylan. Langston once received a cryptic note addressed to 'Tennyson' that claimed the rubber duck wished to tell him hello. Langston didn’t find it very funny.
Ahti’s requests, still appearing on the board despite his prolonged absence (that does not escape Emily’s interest, as she tries to figure out where he could’ve gone), get split between the two Fadens. Dylan eventually discovers the joy of the pneumatic mail system, and Arish starts getting random notes delivered to his office.
Not everything is smooth sailing— HR has a nightmare trying to sort between the real complaints (such as the new, tv-sized dent in the wall in Central Executive that Dylan nonchalantly refuses to explain) and the false claims from disgruntled employees who either give up or altogether quit.
The road trip is their newest venture, and the furthest either of them have been from the House in a long time, as well as the closest to home. They pass the time on the first day of driving by just thinking back, talking about where they want to visit, things they remember. Dylan fiddles with every single thing in the car, until Jesse eventually locks the window controls so he’ll stop rolling it up and down out of boredom. They find a motel and, by some miracle, resist making a single joke about the Oceanview.
Both of them never mention it, but they’re almost anxious to go back. To see it all again. Neither have been there since it all happened. What will it be like? Will it hurt? Is the wound still too fresh? The memories? Will they be good, bad, neutral? Will it be closure of some kind? How will things have changed? But they continue on, starting the next day at the gas station, taking off with a full tank and an armful of junk food.
“Did you seriously tell that girl you were in a cult?” Jesse asks, shooting Dylan a glance from the driver’s seat. He grins lazily.
“Am I wrong?”
“I mean. I guess, ” she laughs. “Way to freak the poor lady out though.”
“The cult of the black pyramid,” Dylan says, waving his hands in the air. “Where everyone’s lost their minds. Next time on Night Springs…” he trails, mumbling, smiling at his own joke.
Jesse’s phone buzzes in the empty cup holder, and she snatches it before Dylan can.
“You’re gonna get pulled over,” he complains as she answers and puts it on speaker. She just gives him a look.
“Arish,” she answers, holding the phone up in one hand, steering with the other. “What’s up?”
“Hey Faden, just calling to see how you two are.”
“My sister drives like a maniac,” Dylan answers, slumping down in his seat.
“I do not,” Jesse rolls her eyes. “You’re on speaker, by the way.”
“She does, Arish. Our car got hit already once.”
“No,” Jesse clarifies. Dylan grins, hearing Arish laugh in the background. “We were parked and weren’t even in the car. Someone else tapped our bumper backing up. Not my fault.”
“You still drive like a maniac.”
“You can’t drive at all.”
“Neither can you. You don’t even have a license.”
“I don’t need a license to drive.”
“What if we get pulled over?”
“I have a government ID, the Bureau can get us out of it. Look— Arish, sorry, why did you call?” Jesse says, Arish still laughing on his end.
“No, I love it. Don’t worry about it,” he trails, trying to get himself together. “Glad you two are having fun. Actually, that’s why I called, you’re getting closer to Ordinary, yeah?”
“Yeah,” the two answer at the same time.
“We still have a few agents stationed around there to keep an eye on things, I’m sure they know you’re coming, but one of them is a little more… committed than the others, he might try and pull you—”
A motorcycle dips in from the side of the road behind them and flips on his lights. Dylan lets out a single 'ha!'
“...over,” Arish finishes as Jesse swears, flipping on her blinker.
“Yeah. Thanks Arish. We’ll have to call you back later.”
“Have fun,” he chuckles, hanging up. Jesse slows the car to a stop on the side of the road.
“No license,” Dylan whispers.
“He’s a Bureau employee, I don’t need one.”
“I hope he doesn’t know your Director. I want to see the look on his face.” Jesse watches him approach in the rear view mirror, a perfect image of the Maine State Police officer. She rolls down her window, and he leans forward to look in the car.
“Hi officer,” Jesse gives a forced smile.
“Ma’am,” he answers. He really is a stereotypical motor cop. Mustache, sunglasses, and all. Dylan’s trying not to laugh, waiting. “Nothing wrong, don’t worry. Just wanted to give you a warning.”
“Oh?” she fakes curiosity, and it is unconvincing.
“There’s not much ahead, not sure where you’re headed, but the road’s too dangerous to continue. Might want to detour a different way. Can I ask where you’re headed?”
“We’re headed to Ordinary, actually.”
“Oh, I’m sorry to tell you it’s blocked off entirely. Public can’t get to it right now.”
“We’re not exactly ‘public’, agent.”
“Sorry, I don’t follow,” the cop squints, bushy eyebrows bunching together. Dylan chuckles, waiting to see if he catches being called agent.
“May I?” Jesse asks, gesturing to the center console. The ‘cop’ gestures with an open palm, and she opens it to produce her FBC ID. He takes it out of habit before really looking at it, then straightens suddenly.
“Oh! Ma’am— Director! I’m— I’m so sorry—” Dylan can’t keep it together anymore, barely containing his laughter.
“You could get in trouble ,” he taunts. The officer shoots her a worried look over his aviators.
“It’s fine. Just… try and be more aware, you know?” she says.
“Of course, Director. Ordinary’s straight ahead,” he sputters. “Can’t miss it. We keep everyone out of it. Not really on maps anymore, anyway. You. You have a nice day. Again, I’m—”
“Don’t worry about it,” Jesse smiles, throwing the car back into gear. “Thanks.”
They both watch with a quiet awe as the road winds closer and closer, things growing more and more familiar. Dylan points out the old train tracks, where they walked with Dad once, picking up stray bits of coal, now overgrown and forgotten. They both watch as they pass familiar, broken down buildings buried back behind the trees, more dilapidated, but somehow still standing all these years later. Eventually, Jesse glimpses the town sign on the side of the road on the horizon. Polaris shimmers around it as they get closer, and both of them can feel the quiet anxiety in the car.
Jesse slows the car to a stop just in front of the sign, brakes squeaking.
The green sign had somehow escaped vandalism, but entropy had begun to peel and weather away the white-painted lettering, and the nearby plants stretched and reached around, obscuring parts of it. Dylan leans forward against his seatbelt, trying to read the whole sign.
Welcome to Ordinary
“America’s Most Unusual Ordinary Town”
Population: 2,365
The engine idles as they sit on the threshold of Home. A return, all these years later.
“Are you ready for this?” Jesse asks, adjusting her grip on the steering wheel,
“Are you?” he calmly fires back.
“I asked you first.”
“Mm-mm,” he shakes his head. “After you.”
“Dylan.”
“You outrank me, you are older than me, and ladies go first.”
Jesse squints.
“I’m using that next time,” she says as she throws the car into drive. “Well. Here we go.”
“Home,” Dylan says, swallowing. Polaris winds between them, reassuring.
Buildings begin to crest on the horizon, and both are shocked at how untouched everything is as they wind into town. Some things look restored, or changed, or newer— apparently the FBC tried to ‘reopen’ Ordinary to new citizens, but the attempt failed, and they quietly removed the town from maps, purchasing the land as their own.
“Where are we going first?” Dylan asks timidly, realizing neither of them ever really made a plan.
“We can drive around, I guess, until we find a place we want to stop,” Jesse shrugs, driving slowly down a row of stores, peering out the windshield. “It’s just us, so we don’t have to worry about anything.”
She hooks a right at the empty intersection, the long-dead stop lights swaying gently in the breeze.
“School’s kinda nearby,” she offers. “If you want to stop there. We never got to get our stuff out of our cubbies.”
“I have overdue library books,” Dylan comments absentmindedly.
“Is that a ‘yes, let’s go to the school’?”
“Sure,” Dylan says. “Yeah.”
Sure enough, it comes into view at the next turn, surrounded by weathered, billowing caution tape the FBC never took down. Jesse pulls to a stop at the curb, dropping the key into her jacket pocket.
“Well. Here we go.”
Dylan gets out, slamming his door shut, shuffling up the cement steps to the big blocky building. A shredded flag flaps in the wind out front, reflecting off the windows, classrooms dimly visible inside. Jesse follows behind him.
“Kinda eerie,” she says, shoving her hands in her pockets.
“Home’s a ghost town.” Dylan tugs on the big red doors, but nothing gives. He plants his feet and pulls harder. “Locked. I don’t want to break them. Maybe the back is open…?”
“Nah. I got it.” Jesse pulls a lockpick out from her back pocket and sets to work. Dylan watches her work with a mixture of horror and awe.
“You just keep those with you?”
“Yeah. It’s a tool.”
“I— that’s illegal,” he protests innocently.
“Really?” Jesse can’t help but laugh, shooting him a look. “The town is abandoned, and the FBC owns it. So really, we own the town.”
Dylan pauses for a moment, considering it all.
“Teach me.”
“Alright,” she shifts back, making room for him, passing him the pick and tension wrench. “This one’s easy anyway, you just have to rake it over the tumblers a few times. It’s not delicate at all. Just keep some tension on it with this, and keep doing it ‘till it gives.”
He hunches over, holding the wrench in place with his thumb.
“What do you do if you don’t have a lockpick?” he asks, partially rhetorical.
“Kick it? If you have a screwdriver you can just undo the hinges on gates.”
He stops, turning to look at Jesse.
She stares back, incredulous.
“What?” she asks.
“Nothing.” He turns back to the lock, focusing.
“Sometimes I needed in places I technically could not get into, okay? It’s a useful skill,” she protests. He rakes the pick across a final time, and the door clicks open. “And now it’s also your skill. Leave it to the school to have crap locks.”
Dylan pulls the door open, and a wave of stale air rushes out to greet them.
“Ew,” he wrinkles his nose, pushing into the dark hallway.
“What happened to me going first?” she snarks.
“Changed my mind,” he calls, vanishing down the hall.
“Where are you going?” Jesse calls, jogging to keep up with him.
“I wanna get my stuff. See the classroom.”
“Well slow down a little,” she falls in step next to him. He just points at the wall to their right.
“There’s you.”
With the light filtering in through the dusty windows, the two can make out a bunch of photos stapled to the wall, yellow butcher paper covering the whole area. Sure enough, one photo features an 11 year old Jesse grinning up at the camera, missing a tooth, and holding up a snake.
“Wow. I remember that. We took a field trip to the zoo, and they let us hold some of the animals. Peter almost passed out when I walked over with the snake.”
“You’re tiny,” Dylan remarks absentmindedly, gently pulling the staple out of the wall and passing Jesse the photograph. “Our’s now.”
Something blue catches Jesse's eye, and she spots Polaris hovering around another photo. She reaches up and pulls it down.
“Wow,” she whispers, breath catching in her throat. Dylan leans over to see. It’s of the whole class in front of the bus, just coming back from the trip. Next to Jesse is a 10 year old Dylan, their dad behind them with a hand on each of their shoulders. Dylan’s eyes are squeezed shut, and he’s giving a huge, toothy grin. Jesse looks like she’s squinting against the sun, holding up one hand to shield her face.
“Dad picked us up that day,” Dylan muses.
“I remember that. Our bus got back late. You waited in the sandbox for us to get there instead of walking home. Dad came looking for you.”
“My hair’s still kinda red.” He points, careful not to touch the photograph. “It got darker, like Dad’s.”
“Think you’ll grow it out to be as long as Dad’s?” she asks, turning her head to look at her dad’s careful mix of ‘old rocker’, ‘construction worker’, and ‘biker gang’ vibe.
“Mmm. Maybe. Mullet’s still an option.”
“You are not,” Jesse lowers the photograph, glaring at Dylan in disbelief. He can’t help but smile.
“You and Arish hate it so much.”
“I mean… a mullet? Really?”
“Best of both worlds,” Dylan jokes, shuffling down the hall again.
“I genuinely cannot tell if you’re being serious.”
“Good.”
Jesse rolls her eyes, trailing just behind him.
“Where was your classroom, anyway?”
“Mrs. Chester’s. It’s over…” he slows to a stop, finding the door wrapped in crime scene tape. “...here.”
Ah.
The AWE. The gang.
Bye-bye, Mrs. Chester.
“Oh,” Jesse stops. “Right.” Dylan picks at his sleeves.
“Let’s find your room instead,” he turns, glancing at Jesse. It’s too hard. I don’t want to relive that.
“Upstairs we go then,” she says, smiling softly.
“I wanna make fun of all your guys’ artwork,” he deadpans, then perks up suddenly, turning back to her. “No. Not your classroom. The roof. I wanted on the roof so bad. The access hatch, in the janitor’s closet upstairs. Your lockpick. We can finally do it.”
“Hell yeah,” she grins, jogging up the steps. “See? Told you it’s useful.”
Dylan always suspected you’d be able to see the whole town from the school’s roof. All these years later, he can finally say he was right. Ordinary is sprawled out around them, peppered with stretching, giant trees, distant hills, and long-forgotten billboards. The town almost looks like a postcard from up here.
The roof is littered with composting leaves and outcroppings of metal ACs and heaters, but the otherwise level building gives them both a great view of Ordinary. Jesse climbs up on the tallest AC unit and stretches up onto her toes.
“I see our house!” she calls. Dylan clambers up after her, following where she’s pointing. He waves at it.
“The dump really is gone,” Dylan says, staring out at the distant patch of bare dirt where it had been. “Obviously. But. The whole dump?”
“I know,” she replies. “I can see the fence though. I bet the hole we used is still there.”
“Neil’s place,” Dylan points at a closer building, a set of apartments near the school. “They said they never found him.”
“Yeah.”
“I wonder if he’s still here.”
“No way,” Jesse gasps, pointing closer to the center of town. “Blockbuster! I haven't seen one in ages.”
“Why?” Dylan squints, trying to make out the blue and yellow sign.
“They went out of business awhile ago. There’s not really a movie rental thing like we used to do anymore.”
“Oh. That kinda sucks.”
“There’s new things instead. We’ll have to see when we get back.”
They stand there in the silence together, wind whistling past them, taking in the quiet, empty town. Home.
“Mom and Dad’s car is still in the driveway,” Dylan says finally, breaking the silence. “I left one of my library books in there. Choose Your Own Adventure. It had my favorite bookmark. Casper said nobody could get it for me.”
He jumps back down to the roof with a thunk.
“Let’s go home home.”
They find their house unlocked and empty, besides the various evidence markers placed around the room from the FBC’s time there. It’s otherwise untouched— a time capsule back to 2002. Jesse can feel her heart beating in her chest, standing in the front door, taking it all in. The narrow entryway with the thin, rickety stairs. The open thresholds to the kitchen and living room. The old backdoor with the green welded security door in front of it instead of a screen, leading to the steep steps into their tiny backyard. Their own rooms upstairs.
The pictures on the walls. The shoes pushed up by the door. The peeling wallpaper that was old back when they were kids.
“I can’t see,” Dylan says, shoulders slumped, standing on the porch behind her.
“Sorry,” she answers, stepping in and aside. “It’s just kind of… a lot.” Dylan steps in behind her, searching her face.
“You okay?”
“Yeah,” she tries to smile. “It’s a good ‘a lot’. I think.”
“Yeah,” he answers, peering up the stairs. “It’s weird.”
“Yeah.”
Jesse tries the light switches, but nothing flicks on.
“There’s a flashlight in my room,” Dylan says, starting up the steps. “And everything else.”
He pushes his door open at the top of the stair landing. Jesse watches from the entryway, still a bit awestruck by being home.
“Aw, what? ” Dylan whines, disappearing into his room. Jesse can’t help but laugh.
“What?”
“The Bureau said they couldn’t find any of my stuff, so they couldn’t bring it to me,” he yells. “B. S. This place is a museum. They didn’t touch a thing.”
She can hear him rooting through the stuff in his room, old wooden floor creaking. She finally wills herself to take the first steps upstairs, cresting up at the top and poking her head in. Dylan has his old hand-me-down backpack from school in one hand, kneeling in front of his old bookshelf, and grabbing stuff to put in it.
“Wow. It really is just as messy as it used to be,” she jokes.
“Your room is just as bad,” he says, pulling a stuffed animal lion off his bed and dropping it into his bag.
Jesse shrugs, leaning against the doorframe, looking over his room, remembering all the times they built blanket forts and stole the old couch cushions from downstairs to make walls. Dylan pulls an old pencil case out of a toy box and adds it to his backpack.
“Are you going to take everything?” Jesse laughs.
“Why not? It’s my stuff.”
“It won’t all fit in the backpack.”
“We have a car.”
“Good point.”
He points his old flashlight at her face and flicks it on, and she recoils, shielding her eyes.
“Huh. Still works. Good batteries.”
“Ow,” she glares.
“I want to see your stuff,” Dylan says, switching it back off. “We spent more time in there anyway. You had the radio, and the glow stars on your ceiling.”
Oh yeah. I forgot about those.
Polaris spins cheerily by the doorknob to Jesse’s room. Dylan watches her expectantly.
Jesse steps back out with a deep breath, pushing her door open slowly. The last of the afternoon’s sunlight pokes through the clouds, painting her whole room orange.
“Oh. It is a mess,” Dylan remarks, peering over her shoulder. Everything is strewn about— her bed is unmade, the sheets ripped off and sprawled across the floor. Her short bookshelf is tipped over, books lying everywhere. Her small closet is wide open, and her old clothes are all piled in the bottom.
“Dad’s old ‘Old God’s’ poster looks fine,” she says, gesturing weakly at the wall with the big poster she’d convinced him to hang in her room all those years ago.
“What happened?” Dylan asks.
“I ran here to get a bag,” Jesse says, staring past it all. “I didn’t know what I’d need, or if they were going to come check here for me. So I just… grabbed what I could and ran.”
“Oh.” Dylan’s chest aches. Jesse blinks, then backs up a few steps, shutting the door.
“What else do you wanna bring home? Let me carry it down with you.”
They manage to fill the back of the SUV with a lot of their old stuff— a mix of photographs, books, CDs, and some of their parent’s things. Neither of them have to say anything, as they pick through their parent’s room, but they can both feel it— the long unanswered question of what and how and why. Jesse tries not to think about how or why.
The sun finally starts to set, turning the sky pink, and the Fadens find themselves in their sloping backyard, both planted on the metal swing set still standing all these years later.
Dylan rocks himself back and forth, watching the swing’s chain twist up above him. Jesse pushes herself slightly with her toes, metal bars creaking and groaning.
“I’m glad we came back here,” she says, staring down at her feet. Dylan hums in agreement. Polaris flickers between them. “It feels good to not be Director for a day.”
“I missed this,” Dylan adds. He lets the swing twist full around a few times before unwinding again, nearly hitting Jesse with his feet.
“I’m— I know I say it a lot,” she says, hands tightening around the chains. “But I’m just. I’m glad you’re here. I’m glad I found you. That you’re okay.” Dylan drags his feet across the ground, bringing the swing to a stop, watching his sister.
“Are you okay?” he asks her again.
“Yeah,” she says, eyes still fixed on the ground. “I just…”
What can she say? Where does she start? This 17 year journey, the fear, the doubts, the questions, the guilt. Finally finding Dylan. Being Director of the place they both feared and hated for so long, loving the place. Not loving the Board. Not loving the mess to clean up. Cleaning it up anyway.
“You’re the only one I can talk to openly about a lot of stuff,” she says finally. “You just. You get it. And I don’t have to worry about Bureau rules or the Board or whatever. I want your input. I trust you. Not— not that I don’t trust Emily or Arish, obviously. I trust them, too. It’s just… I guess… I’m glad you’re here,” she repeats finally.
Dylan just watches her.
“Even though I say it almost every day.”
“Me too,” he says finally.
Jesse looks up at him,
“I—” the words are never easy. “Me too,” he says again. But she knows what he means. Everything buried in those few words, everything he wants to say, that he hopes she understands. And she does. They get each other.
She shuffles back in the swing, pushing as far back as she can, then launches forward, trying to get some height. Dylan watches as she builds up momentum, then launches herself at the peak of her swing, levitating up in the air.
“You’re a nerd,” he yells after her.
“We’re related. It runs in the family.” She lets herself touch gently to the ground. “It’s gonna get dark if we don’t leave soon. I don’t really want to get stopped by that agent again. You ready?”
“Yeah,” he pulls himself up off the swing, turning back to the house. “I want him to make the same mistake again. The look on his face would be worth it.”
The sun is long gone by the time they reach the edge of town again. Stars are starting to shimmer, the milky-way bright and visible with the lack of light pollution. They’re just passed the sign on the border of Ordinary when Dylan sits up suddenly.
“Wait, stop the car,” he says, and Jesse hits the brakes a bit too hard. He gives her a weird look.
“What?” she asks, assuming he forgot something.
“I just wanna do something,” he says, grabbing something out of the backpack between his feet and hopping out of the car. Jesse opens her door and hops out after him.
Dylan wanders up to the town sign, shoving the overgrowth and brush out of the way, and uncapping a sharpie with his mouth.
“Just got to make it accurate,” he mumbles, cap pinched between his teeth. He scribbles over the six and five on the population marker. He starts to go for the three, but hesitates, and scratches out the two instead.
“Three?” Jesse questions.
“Yeah,” he says sheepishly. “You, me, and Polaris.”
Jesse smiles.
“You’re extremely cheesy. And a dork. I hope you know that.”
Dylan snaps the cap back on and turns back to the car, climbing back in and shutting the door.
“Yeah, well. We’re related. Runs in the family.”
Jesse rolls her eyes and climbs in the driver’s seat again, watching the road illuminate ahead in the headlights, before watching Ordinary disappear behind them in the rearview mirror.
Grow brighter.
Around one constant, they revolve.