Riona (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
rionaleonhart) wrote2022-01-08 03:22 pm
rionaleonhart) wrote2022-01-08 03:22 pm
Fanfiction: Breaking Through (Life Is Strange: True Colors, Alex/Ryan)
This fic is more hopeful than I was expecting! I just set out to write some misery, but somewhere along the line it turned into the 'these two have a lot to grapple with, but their relationship probably isn't unsalvageable?' approach that I wish the game had taken with Alex and Ryan.
Title: Breaking Through
Fandom: Life Is Strange: True Colors
Rating: PG-13
Pairing: Alex/Ryan
Wordcount: 2,100
Summary: After the game, Alex and Ryan have a lot of issues to work through.
When Alex kisses Ryan on the roof of the Black Lantern, she’s almost overwhelmed by his joy and fear, so powerful it’s difficult to take in anything about the kiss itself.
His feelings and thoughts flood her entire body. The fact that he’s kissing Alex, this incredible girl who has powers he can’t begin to understand. The fact that she’s Gabe’s sister, who watched him die as Ryan held her back.
It’s hard to pick out her own emotions from his. It feels like she’s kissing herself.
-
The second time they kiss is a little more complicated. Alex hadn’t realised it got more complicated than ‘the guy you’re kissing can’t stop thinking about how he killed your brother’, but somehow Haven keeps finding new ways to surprise her.
She almost doesn’t answer the knock. She knows it’s Ryan; she can feel his nervousness radiating through the door. She’s not sure if she’s ready to face him, knowing that he’s Jed’s son, knowing that he didn’t believe her.
And, yeah, she guesses ‘your dad tried to kill someone you care about’ probably isn’t the easiest thing to accept, but—
Fuck it. She opens the door.
It’s a few seconds before Ryan seems to find his voice.
“I’m so sorry,” he says.
Alex isn’t ready to talk about this.
She kisses him instead. Yanks him over the threshold by the front of his sweater, and he jerks away so sharply he bangs his elbow on the doorframe.
“Wait,” he says, breathing fast. “I think we need to – I had a whole speech, I—”
“I don’t want speeches,” Alex says. “Kiss me or leave.”
He hesitates, and she reaches for the door as if to close it on him. He’s quick to kiss her then. But he breaks away just as quickly, wincing and backing away.
“My mind’s really on my dad right now,” he says. “I – I mean, if you want to make something out of this, I’d be thrilled, I’m all in on that. But not right now.”
If it helps, I can’t really stop thinking about your dad either, Alex almost says. It’s probably not going to help.
“This isn’t going to be a good relationship,” she says, instead.
“I don’t care,” Ryan says. “I mean, I don’t care if you don’t. Wherever you go, I’m in.”
-
Steph leaves town before long.
It’s not like Alex didn’t know it was coming. It still hurts.
“You should come with me,” Steph says, before she goes.
Alex hesitates. “I can’t leave Ryan. He’s lost everything.”
Steph winces, her aura flaring blue; she doesn’t like being reminded that she’s another thing Ryan’s about to lose. “Yeah, well, that’s why he should come along as well. A lot of fucked-up things happened in this town. It can’t be good for you guys.”
“You know he’d never leave Haven Springs,” Alex says.
Steph sighs. “Yeah, I know.”
Ryan said he was in, wherever Alex ended up going. Said he’d leave Haven for her; he was afraid, when he said it, but he meant it.
Alex isn’t sure why she’s lying. It’s just...
If she tells the truth, Steph might actually talk her into leaving. It’s probably the healthier thing to do. But Alex doesn’t want to do it.
It’s true: a lot of fucked-up things happened here. But they feel like anchors, somehow. This place feels real to her, it means something to her.
Not something good, maybe. But something.
-
It’s not good for the two of them, being alone. It seems strange when Steph’s so wild, but she actually helped to keep things stable. Someone else who knew Alex’s secret. Someone who cared about Alex’s pain without being dangerously tied to it.
Steph knew about Gabe’s death, about what Jed did, but she wasn’t rooted in it, not the way Alex and Ryan are. Steph wasn’t there when Gabe died. Her dad didn’t kill Alex’s.
Ryan’s constantly caught up in guilt around Alex, and of course that just amplifies her guilt for robbing him of his father. When Steph was around, she was a distraction for both of them, at least. With her gone, it’s just the two of them and their shadows.
By this point, the secrets and the guilt and the shared trauma feel like cords binding them together. Too intricate to untie, too strong to cut. If Alex falls, Ryan is getting pulled after her.
A part of her is convinced that she’s going to destroy him.
Maybe she already has. Before Alex came to Haven Springs, Ryan had friends here, he had a father. What does he have now?
She thinks sometimes about a world where she never came to Haven Springs, never led Gabe and Ryan to the mines, never kept digging. Gabe would still be alive. Steph might still be here. Jed... well, Jed would still be the same coward under the surface, but at least Ryan wouldn’t have to lose the father he thought he had.
And Ethan would be dead, probably. The night of the blast was never going to be a good one for this town. The roots of this tragedy run too deep; Alex can’t see a way out, even in her what-ifs.
-
Alex wakes up afraid. It takes her a moment to make sense of what’s going on.
She and Ryan fell asleep on her bed last night, fully clothed. He’s been staying over a lot since she took Jed from him, although they haven’t so much as kissed since the time he tried to apologise; it’s hard to know what they are to each other, exactly. They’re still holding each other now, with Alex just waking up. And Ryan is glowing with fear.
She listens for his thoughts, trying to keep her breathing steady.
He’s thinking about going into the mines.
Alex goes still, her heart jolting into high speed. For a moment, all she can think is that he’s planning to take her out to that isolated spot and push her into the mine shaft. Or pull her into it, maybe. Dragging her down with him.
She needs to take a moment to breathe, sort through the feelings in her head. It’s not the first time she’s been frozen by fear around Ryan.
She’s being ridiculous, she knows. Ryan’s never wanted to hurt her. She knows through her power that he’s terrified of her coming to harm; he’s lost too many people already.
But he killed her brother. His father tried to kill her. It’s hard, sometimes, to disentangle those associations from the man Ryan actually is.
“Alex?” Ryan asks. “You awake?”
Her throat is dry. She swallows, tries to speak, doesn’t quite manage it.
“Are you okay?” Ryan asks, instantly concerned.
“I can, uh.” She swallows again, and Ryan shifts away from her so he can see her face. “I can show you the spot where my – the miners – I can show you where it happened. I might just, uh, need some time to brace myself.”
Ryan’s eyes widen in realisation. “I would never ask you to do that. I wouldn’t make you go back there.”
“It’s fine,” she says. It’s probably not fine. “If you’re going, I want to be there.”
“It was just a thought,” Ryan says. “I’m not actually planning to go into the mines. It’s dangerous. And it’s illegal.”
“Okay,” Alex says. “But, just so you know, I can show you the way.”
-
“This is it,” Alex says. “I found my father’s pendant here.”
It hits Ryan like a blow; she feels the echo of it through her power. She turns around to check on him. He’s moving a little unsteadily; he finds a large rock, one that’s set a little apart from the rest of the rubble, and tests it to make sure it’s stable before he sits down.
He sets his flashlight down next to him, casting its light on the fallen rocks. Stares at the debris for a while.
“I don’t really know what I expected,” he says.
“There’s not much here after the explosion,” Alex says, half agreement and half apology. “I don’t know. Maybe it’s meant to give us some kind of closure. However that works.” She watches the colours shifting around Ryan for a moment. “Is that what you came here for? Closure?”
“I don’t know,” Ryan says. “I’m... trying to understand how much of the dad I knew was real, I guess.”
Alex closes her eyes for a moment. Thinking about that night in the middle of nowhere, the moment she realised that something was wrong.
“I felt his sadness,” she says. “Just before he shot me.” Maybe it’d be easier to believe in monsters, but with her ability – knowing Jed’s sadness, Diane’s guilt, Pike’s fear – it’s hard to draw a clear line where humanity ends. “I think he really did care about me.”
“Just not enough not to kill you.”
Alex lets out a breath of a laugh, although there’s no humour in it. “I guess not.”
There’s a long silence before Ryan speaks again.
“Do you think he had any control over the explosion?” he asks, his voice quiet and strained. “I mean, we were all up in the mountains, and—”
She can feel the specific thing she’s afraid of, and she’s shocked by it. “He wouldn’t have killed you. I don’t think he’d have tried to even if you found out.”
“There was no guarantee any one of us would make it back,” Ryan says.
“Then it was Typhon’s decision,” Alex says. “Jed loved you. He wanted to protect his family. I think that’s why he could do the things he did.”
She realises as she’s saying it that it’s not going to help Ryan, and the flare-up of his emotions confirms it. The regret of knowing his father’s love for him was real, when he can’t picture ever being prepared to speak to his father again. The guilt of knowing Jed used that love to justify killing Alex.
He presses his hands over his face, breathes deeply into his palms. “I’m sorry,” he mumbles.
“It wasn’t you,” Alex says.
A long moment passes. The air of the mine feels thick and still and heavy around them. Ryan’s aura, blue and purple mingling, seems very bright in the mostly-darkness; Alex wonders what this place looks like to him, lit only by their flashlights.
Ryan drops his hands at last. “I keep thinking about your power. It must be tough to be around me when I’m like this.”
“It’s okay,” Alex says. “It’s not like I don’t think about these things myself. And...”
She doesn’t know how to express this, or even if she should. But she needs Ryan’s guilt to survive.
It’s constantly on his mind. If he hadn’t been so quick to cut the cord – if he’d tied it to himself, rather than putting Gabe at the other end – if he’d realised something was up with his dad—
He blames himself for all of it. And it’s a way for Alex to tell herself that she’s not responsible. When she’s around Ryan, feeling his guilt, she can believe that it was all his fault.
And she can forgive Ryan. She can’t forgive herself.
“And?” Ryan asks, looking up at her.
She stoops to kiss him. He goes still at first, the memory of that strange, uncomfortable last kiss creeping into his aura. But then he raises a hand to stroke along her jawline, slide into her hair, tentative.
It’s a long time before they break apart. Alex has her eyes closed; she can hear Ryan’s breath trembling in the darkness.
“You said this wouldn’t be a good relationship,” he says at last.
She opens her eyes. “It won’t. I mean, you’re a good guy. But I think we’re too screwed up.”
“I mean, yeah, maybe the odds are against us,” Ryan says. “But you’re a good person too. I feel like, if we try, we’ve got to be able to build something that’s at least... I don’t know, adequate?”
Alex snorts with sudden laughter; that’s not what she was expecting. “Adequate? How romantic.”
“Hey, it can be a starting point,” Ryan says. “I just feel like that’s an achievable bar to aim for.”
Is it achievable? It’s hard to believe it, after everything that’s happened. But Ryan believes it, strongly enough for Alex’s power to pick up on how sincerely he means what he’s saying.
Maybe she’s just mirroring Ryan’s feelings, but a small part of Alex is wondering if he’s right. What if they don’t have to accept that they’re just screwed up forever?
“You know Steph wanted us to come with her?” Alex asks.
“Wait, really?” Ryan asks. “I thought she wanted to leave all this Haven Springs stuff behind.”
“I think she just wanted to leave the bad parts,” Alex says. It’s not easy to picture, but she’s starting to wonder if they might have that option as well. “Maybe we should give her a call?”
Title: Breaking Through
Fandom: Life Is Strange: True Colors
Rating: PG-13
Pairing: Alex/Ryan
Wordcount: 2,100
Summary: After the game, Alex and Ryan have a lot of issues to work through.
When Alex kisses Ryan on the roof of the Black Lantern, she’s almost overwhelmed by his joy and fear, so powerful it’s difficult to take in anything about the kiss itself.
His feelings and thoughts flood her entire body. The fact that he’s kissing Alex, this incredible girl who has powers he can’t begin to understand. The fact that she’s Gabe’s sister, who watched him die as Ryan held her back.
It’s hard to pick out her own emotions from his. It feels like she’s kissing herself.
The second time they kiss is a little more complicated. Alex hadn’t realised it got more complicated than ‘the guy you’re kissing can’t stop thinking about how he killed your brother’, but somehow Haven keeps finding new ways to surprise her.
She almost doesn’t answer the knock. She knows it’s Ryan; she can feel his nervousness radiating through the door. She’s not sure if she’s ready to face him, knowing that he’s Jed’s son, knowing that he didn’t believe her.
And, yeah, she guesses ‘your dad tried to kill someone you care about’ probably isn’t the easiest thing to accept, but—
Fuck it. She opens the door.
It’s a few seconds before Ryan seems to find his voice.
“I’m so sorry,” he says.
Alex isn’t ready to talk about this.
She kisses him instead. Yanks him over the threshold by the front of his sweater, and he jerks away so sharply he bangs his elbow on the doorframe.
“Wait,” he says, breathing fast. “I think we need to – I had a whole speech, I—”
“I don’t want speeches,” Alex says. “Kiss me or leave.”
He hesitates, and she reaches for the door as if to close it on him. He’s quick to kiss her then. But he breaks away just as quickly, wincing and backing away.
“My mind’s really on my dad right now,” he says. “I – I mean, if you want to make something out of this, I’d be thrilled, I’m all in on that. But not right now.”
If it helps, I can’t really stop thinking about your dad either, Alex almost says. It’s probably not going to help.
“This isn’t going to be a good relationship,” she says, instead.
“I don’t care,” Ryan says. “I mean, I don’t care if you don’t. Wherever you go, I’m in.”
Steph leaves town before long.
It’s not like Alex didn’t know it was coming. It still hurts.
“You should come with me,” Steph says, before she goes.
Alex hesitates. “I can’t leave Ryan. He’s lost everything.”
Steph winces, her aura flaring blue; she doesn’t like being reminded that she’s another thing Ryan’s about to lose. “Yeah, well, that’s why he should come along as well. A lot of fucked-up things happened in this town. It can’t be good for you guys.”
“You know he’d never leave Haven Springs,” Alex says.
Steph sighs. “Yeah, I know.”
Ryan said he was in, wherever Alex ended up going. Said he’d leave Haven for her; he was afraid, when he said it, but he meant it.
Alex isn’t sure why she’s lying. It’s just...
If she tells the truth, Steph might actually talk her into leaving. It’s probably the healthier thing to do. But Alex doesn’t want to do it.
It’s true: a lot of fucked-up things happened here. But they feel like anchors, somehow. This place feels real to her, it means something to her.
Not something good, maybe. But something.
It’s not good for the two of them, being alone. It seems strange when Steph’s so wild, but she actually helped to keep things stable. Someone else who knew Alex’s secret. Someone who cared about Alex’s pain without being dangerously tied to it.
Steph knew about Gabe’s death, about what Jed did, but she wasn’t rooted in it, not the way Alex and Ryan are. Steph wasn’t there when Gabe died. Her dad didn’t kill Alex’s.
Ryan’s constantly caught up in guilt around Alex, and of course that just amplifies her guilt for robbing him of his father. When Steph was around, she was a distraction for both of them, at least. With her gone, it’s just the two of them and their shadows.
By this point, the secrets and the guilt and the shared trauma feel like cords binding them together. Too intricate to untie, too strong to cut. If Alex falls, Ryan is getting pulled after her.
A part of her is convinced that she’s going to destroy him.
Maybe she already has. Before Alex came to Haven Springs, Ryan had friends here, he had a father. What does he have now?
She thinks sometimes about a world where she never came to Haven Springs, never led Gabe and Ryan to the mines, never kept digging. Gabe would still be alive. Steph might still be here. Jed... well, Jed would still be the same coward under the surface, but at least Ryan wouldn’t have to lose the father he thought he had.
And Ethan would be dead, probably. The night of the blast was never going to be a good one for this town. The roots of this tragedy run too deep; Alex can’t see a way out, even in her what-ifs.
Alex wakes up afraid. It takes her a moment to make sense of what’s going on.
She and Ryan fell asleep on her bed last night, fully clothed. He’s been staying over a lot since she took Jed from him, although they haven’t so much as kissed since the time he tried to apologise; it’s hard to know what they are to each other, exactly. They’re still holding each other now, with Alex just waking up. And Ryan is glowing with fear.
She listens for his thoughts, trying to keep her breathing steady.
He’s thinking about going into the mines.
Alex goes still, her heart jolting into high speed. For a moment, all she can think is that he’s planning to take her out to that isolated spot and push her into the mine shaft. Or pull her into it, maybe. Dragging her down with him.
She needs to take a moment to breathe, sort through the feelings in her head. It’s not the first time she’s been frozen by fear around Ryan.
She’s being ridiculous, she knows. Ryan’s never wanted to hurt her. She knows through her power that he’s terrified of her coming to harm; he’s lost too many people already.
But he killed her brother. His father tried to kill her. It’s hard, sometimes, to disentangle those associations from the man Ryan actually is.
“Alex?” Ryan asks. “You awake?”
Her throat is dry. She swallows, tries to speak, doesn’t quite manage it.
“Are you okay?” Ryan asks, instantly concerned.
“I can, uh.” She swallows again, and Ryan shifts away from her so he can see her face. “I can show you the spot where my – the miners – I can show you where it happened. I might just, uh, need some time to brace myself.”
Ryan’s eyes widen in realisation. “I would never ask you to do that. I wouldn’t make you go back there.”
“It’s fine,” she says. It’s probably not fine. “If you’re going, I want to be there.”
“It was just a thought,” Ryan says. “I’m not actually planning to go into the mines. It’s dangerous. And it’s illegal.”
“Okay,” Alex says. “But, just so you know, I can show you the way.”
“This is it,” Alex says. “I found my father’s pendant here.”
It hits Ryan like a blow; she feels the echo of it through her power. She turns around to check on him. He’s moving a little unsteadily; he finds a large rock, one that’s set a little apart from the rest of the rubble, and tests it to make sure it’s stable before he sits down.
He sets his flashlight down next to him, casting its light on the fallen rocks. Stares at the debris for a while.
“I don’t really know what I expected,” he says.
“There’s not much here after the explosion,” Alex says, half agreement and half apology. “I don’t know. Maybe it’s meant to give us some kind of closure. However that works.” She watches the colours shifting around Ryan for a moment. “Is that what you came here for? Closure?”
“I don’t know,” Ryan says. “I’m... trying to understand how much of the dad I knew was real, I guess.”
Alex closes her eyes for a moment. Thinking about that night in the middle of nowhere, the moment she realised that something was wrong.
“I felt his sadness,” she says. “Just before he shot me.” Maybe it’d be easier to believe in monsters, but with her ability – knowing Jed’s sadness, Diane’s guilt, Pike’s fear – it’s hard to draw a clear line where humanity ends. “I think he really did care about me.”
“Just not enough not to kill you.”
Alex lets out a breath of a laugh, although there’s no humour in it. “I guess not.”
There’s a long silence before Ryan speaks again.
“Do you think he had any control over the explosion?” he asks, his voice quiet and strained. “I mean, we were all up in the mountains, and—”
She can feel the specific thing she’s afraid of, and she’s shocked by it. “He wouldn’t have killed you. I don’t think he’d have tried to even if you found out.”
“There was no guarantee any one of us would make it back,” Ryan says.
“Then it was Typhon’s decision,” Alex says. “Jed loved you. He wanted to protect his family. I think that’s why he could do the things he did.”
She realises as she’s saying it that it’s not going to help Ryan, and the flare-up of his emotions confirms it. The regret of knowing his father’s love for him was real, when he can’t picture ever being prepared to speak to his father again. The guilt of knowing Jed used that love to justify killing Alex.
He presses his hands over his face, breathes deeply into his palms. “I’m sorry,” he mumbles.
“It wasn’t you,” Alex says.
A long moment passes. The air of the mine feels thick and still and heavy around them. Ryan’s aura, blue and purple mingling, seems very bright in the mostly-darkness; Alex wonders what this place looks like to him, lit only by their flashlights.
Ryan drops his hands at last. “I keep thinking about your power. It must be tough to be around me when I’m like this.”
“It’s okay,” Alex says. “It’s not like I don’t think about these things myself. And...”
She doesn’t know how to express this, or even if she should. But she needs Ryan’s guilt to survive.
It’s constantly on his mind. If he hadn’t been so quick to cut the cord – if he’d tied it to himself, rather than putting Gabe at the other end – if he’d realised something was up with his dad—
He blames himself for all of it. And it’s a way for Alex to tell herself that she’s not responsible. When she’s around Ryan, feeling his guilt, she can believe that it was all his fault.
And she can forgive Ryan. She can’t forgive herself.
“And?” Ryan asks, looking up at her.
She stoops to kiss him. He goes still at first, the memory of that strange, uncomfortable last kiss creeping into his aura. But then he raises a hand to stroke along her jawline, slide into her hair, tentative.
It’s a long time before they break apart. Alex has her eyes closed; she can hear Ryan’s breath trembling in the darkness.
“You said this wouldn’t be a good relationship,” he says at last.
She opens her eyes. “It won’t. I mean, you’re a good guy. But I think we’re too screwed up.”
“I mean, yeah, maybe the odds are against us,” Ryan says. “But you’re a good person too. I feel like, if we try, we’ve got to be able to build something that’s at least... I don’t know, adequate?”
Alex snorts with sudden laughter; that’s not what she was expecting. “Adequate? How romantic.”
“Hey, it can be a starting point,” Ryan says. “I just feel like that’s an achievable bar to aim for.”
Is it achievable? It’s hard to believe it, after everything that’s happened. But Ryan believes it, strongly enough for Alex’s power to pick up on how sincerely he means what he’s saying.
Maybe she’s just mirroring Ryan’s feelings, but a small part of Alex is wondering if he’s right. What if they don’t have to accept that they’re just screwed up forever?
“You know Steph wanted us to come with her?” Alex asks.
“Wait, really?” Ryan asks. “I thought she wanted to leave all this Haven Springs stuff behind.”
“I think she just wanted to leave the bad parts,” Alex says. It’s not easy to picture, but she’s starting to wonder if they might have that option as well. “Maybe we should give her a call?”