Jonah leaned in closer but didn't touch her, his arms tense like he wouldn't resist pushing her down the bleachers if he did.

She jerked away. The metal rail rattled against her back.

Then, in a Spanish that came out sounding more like Portuguese, he said, "Juntos o nunca, ¿te acuerdas?"

To him, if she had jumped, they would have died together, him a vicious Romeo and her as pathetic as Juliet.

Lilith's voice sounded in a rabid mew: ¿What did you expect?

Charlie's eyes watered, but she'd already cried all the tears she had left to cry. Even if it sounded pathetic coming from her, she gritted her teeth and asked, "What are you waiting for, then?"

His head lowered to hers, red and purple bruises filling her line of vision. And then her phone started ringing in a sweet, electronic melody.

He reached around her to grab it, buzzing on the bleacher. She held her breath as he got closer and closer to the point she could smell his hair, clean and sharp with his perfectly-defined curls—and felt entirely too frozen to stop him from answering the call.

"Peter!" he laughed. "Peter, how are you? Puking your guts out, I assume?"

She heard the sound of Peter's yelling from the speaker, drowned out only by Jonah's happy, gleeful laugh. "Where's Charlie? Ah, she's here with me. Thanks for asking."

She lunged for the phone. Jonah handed it to her easily, and she scurried away from him.

Peter continued yelling—something about what are you doing and ex-boyfriend and psycho—all while Jonah clapped, clearly satisfied with himself. Every cell in her body was a choir of stuffed animals screaming at once.

"Stop," she said. "Please, stop yelling. Where are you?"

"I'm at home, what do you think? I'm trying to rest here, and you're with him? What the..."

She stood. Felt Jonah's eyes on her thigh-high socks. Her pastel pink hair. His slow, amused smile made her feel all types of wrong.

"Charlie," Peter growled.

"I..." She nearly tripped over a bleacher. "I-I'm sorry."

"I don't care about I'm sorry. I care about you cheating on me while I'm sick!"

"Cheating on you?" she shrieked, and Jonah grinned. "I'm not... I didn't do anything with him; I was just... I was just talking to him, but I'm leaving now, okay? Please don't yell at me."

"I'm picking you up," Peter said. "Where are you?"

"I'm at school. I'm so—"

"Shut it. You think this feels good for me?"

"Please don't—"

He hung up.

"That's who you're dating?" Jonah commented, his laughter fading. "I personally would've preferred Raquel."

Charlie's frenetic thoughts swarmed in her skull. "Don't talk about her."

"Too bad you scared her away."

"You scared her away," she sputtered. "You've been saying all these things, like that I used to date you? Really, now you want to be my boyfriend? Now you want to make it official? You're four years too late for that one, Santos."

The sudden mention of his name shut him up like nothing else did. Good. Now he knew what it felt like. The unearned intimacy of it. Their forgotten last names only the other used.

He raised his chin. "You could never replace me, Charlie."

"You'll never replace me."

"I don't care to," he said quickly. "Believe me, I came to terms with that after what you did. But you're still trying to fill the gap." He leaned back, any tension gone as he relaxed against the bleachers, spreading his arms out as if the whole field—the whole city—was his territory. "It's sad, really. All you're doing is hiding. It's been four years, and you still don't even know who you are."

He'd read the exact same words in her diary.

"Because I gave all of me to you—all of it," she breathed. Again she had no idea where the words came from, but they rung truer than anything she'd journaled about in years. "And when you died, so did I. It..." Her breath caught. "It's fucked me up in ways I can't even explain, Jonah."

"Ah, yes—I'm sure it's been an awful time for you. So awful. Tragic. Truly traumatizing."

"I know it's nothing compared to what you've gone through," she whispered, bracing herself for the apology she'd been aching to say for years. "And I would do anything to—"

"—ease your guilty conscience? Please. And don't blame my death for your problems. You've never known what to do with yourself. At least when we were on top of that building, I knew what I wanted. You never have. You couldn't even commit to dying."

"And that means I deserve to get murdered?"

"Let's face it—you're weak. I'm just speeding up natural selection here."

For the first time, she didn't recognize the person in front of her with sheer disgust on his face. As if he was better than her. As if he was leagues ahead while she was stuck at fifteen, a nobody girl in limbo.

"I won't let you," she said, shaking as she reached for her weapon. "I'm not... I'm not agreeing to die again."

"Good to know." His lips curled in a humorless smirk far more lethal than her stupid pink knife. "Only makes it better if you put up a fight."

She hadn't slept, too busy biting her nails in anticipation for this morning. And for what? Here she stood in her ridiculous kitty socks, exposed head to toe for him to judge as he wished. His disappointment made her feel like a waste of space, a failure in every single way. It shouldn't. He was her stalker. He'd just threatened her with murder. His words shouldn't cut this deep. But they did. They did, they did, they did.

Lilith, quieter now: ¿What did you expect?

Charlie's capacity for logic had chipped away, lost somewhere between her heart and her knife. She turned and walked down the bleachers as fast as she could, leaving him in the fog without another word. 

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a/n: how are you feeling about jonah?? his supervillain arc is officially on :P