The room is mostly dark when she gets in there. The one source of light is the lamp Matt is using to keep reviewing Tiff's attack plan. She appreciates that she gets to work with someone who cares about plans (for once) and that will pick up the slack when she's dealing with all this shit (oh, how the tables have turned for Tiff Sheridan), but she kind of just wants him to turn out the light. She doesn't even want to eat dinner, which someone definitely put in the fridge.
The other light source is from under the bathroom door, where she can hear Drew engaging in a passionate debate about whether or not Kepler is allowed to get in the tub with him. (He isn't and he knows it.)
Both sources are more than enough to see that Andy is standing in a corner, terrified, dressed in an unholy combination of Drew's basketball shorts and one of Tiff's Doll Skin shirts. Matt or Drew must have gotten them out for him so he didn't have to wear dirty clothes from the hamper. It sure as hell wasn't Tiff's doing. He clutches the clothes he had been wearing to his chest.
Tiff remembers herself, two years ago: wearing Aunt Esther's extra pajamas, unsure what to do with the board shorts and the white shirt, unsure what she was and wasn't allowed to do. Maybe time is a loop. Tiff became Eliza, so Andy must become Tiff. That's the way the story goes. Someone must play the role of a wounded child, or the circle breaks and the story stops. The wounded child, the angry teenage girl, the responsible adult— the roles are filled. Must this be a story?
If she fulfills her role, she lashes out like she does in the heat of the moment. Life is not a story, though; it is a series of events, neverending. Why, then, should she stick to the script offered to her? Must the angry, terrified teenage girl be confined to her Cruggs and mommy issues? Must she be defined by lashing out and going into a rage?
She crosses the room to her brother. She's so much taller than him— she has been for years, and he definitely hasn't hit a growth spurt of any kind yet— and it's a challenge not to tower over him. Scaring her brother is not the goal here.
"Hey, bud," she says, voice gentle.
This is hard. She isn't good at this. What would Denny do? What would Aunt Esther say? Tiff isn't meant to help people out on a small-scale emotional level. She tried with Eliza. It didn't work. It never works. She's the one who stands outside the shack to make a bomb while her friends engage in relationship drama inside. She's the one who stabs a man to death when she should be crying. That's the way it goes. That's what it is. She should go back to her mother's house and burn it down. She should break her father's glasses. She should find vengeance through violence, should be enraged, should let herself die if she can spit in their faces first.
She can't light the match against the gasoline. She should. She should stand up for Andy. She should go off on her parents. She should show them who she really is, should take the sword to Ruth Sheridan's neck, should end it, should kill the monster to save the world.
But is it even an option? This is the real world. For once, this isn't a dream.
She puts a hand on her brother's shoulder to steer him away from the wall. For some reason, all she can think to ask is, "Did you eat dinner? Did you brush your teeth yet?"
It takes him a long second to answer. "I don't have a toothbrush."
"Ah. Yeah. Well... Could you use your finger?"
"I guess so."
"Alright. Good. Good, good." She nods. (How the hell does Denny do this? This would be so much easier if she were here.) Tiff takes a deep breath and turns to Matt. "Hey, Matt, would you mind going to get Andy a toothbrush?"
He pushes himself up from the bed, closing the book and the files inside it. "Yeah. You need anything else?"
"I'll text you if it comes up."
Matt nods, chewing his lips absentmindedly. He sweeps his raincoat over his bare shoulders. "I'll be back soon, then."
Tiff knows full well that she's going to ask him to pick up a treat for Andy. Typing out the text to Matt with one hand, she hopes to god that the kid's tastes haven't changed over the past two years, because the solution here is lemon bars from the bakery section of whatever grocery store is still open. Andy deserves a treat in the morning.
Shit. That's the plan, then. Lemon bars. When they get back to Lake Wonder, she's going to get a recipe from Mrs. Lewis or from her baking blog, and she and Andy are going to make some lemon bars. Sure, it'll mostly be Andy doing it— but it'll be better than nothing. Something to take his mind off of it; something to let him know he's welcome and will always be welcome, and that he is family. Family doesn't send you away because they don't love you. Family doesn't make you live thousands of miles away from all you have ever known. Family frets about you when you go missing for a week. Family worries about you when they know you aren't doing well. Family doesn't hurt each other. Not on purpose.
Family takes your hand and guides you through getting ready for bed when you can't do it on your own. Family tells you that you don't have to pray if you don't want to— but you can, and then they'll watch over you while you do.
The work never ends but, for a family, it isn't a burden in the slightest. It is work, but not uncalled for. It is work, but not something to try to quit. Does he know he is loved? Or will it take him as long as Tiff to realize it?
"I don't want to pray," Andy decides, voice kind of hollow.
"You don't have to if you don't want to, I swear," Tiff assures him. "Here— Do you want to hang on to your clothes, or do you want me to take them?"
It's only then that he realizes what he is doing. It takes him a second before he awkwardly, hastily hands them off to her. Tiff folds them neatly, channeling her aunt, and sets them on top of her own duffel bag on the ground between the beds.
It's a repeat of when they were children, sitting on the couch while their parents weren't home. She sits on the edge of the bed next to him; he curls up in a ball and puts his head in her lap. When he starts to cry, she can feel it in the way his shoulders shake before the tears even begin to fall.
He isn't the same little boy he used to be. Even at eleven, he had started drawing away, preferring to bear the weight in private like she always did. But he repeats the behavior now, and she finds his scalp to draw circles on it gently. This is how comfort works, right? She's pretty sure this is how comfort works.
When she starts to speak, she can't stop herself. "You're braver than me."
"No, I'm not." He says it through a choked-up sob. "You fight monsters. I can't be braver than that."
"You can. You can. You are," she assures him.
Tiff strokes his head through his hair. It's unfair, that this is happening to him. He was supposed to be wanted. He was supposed to be loved. That was the hope when she left with her head held low: that Tiffany May Sheridan being out of the picture would make things easier for her little brother, because the environment would be easier to live in for all of them. That hope was futile. It was worthless. Maybe it never had anything to do with how lovable she was as a child. Maybe her parents were just horrible, horrible people.
"How could I be?"
"No," she insists, "you are. You always were."
The bathroom door opens. As soon as Drew steps out with a bathed Kepler in a towel in his arms and sees what's happening— as soon as he locks eyes with Tiff— he grabs the third and final key from the table and exits into the hall. Every part of her aching self is glad for that small mercy.
As soon as he's gone, she swallows the lump in her throat and continues, "I'm really bad at talking about things like this. When you live in a bubble where you're only supposed to be happy and then you're thrown into the real world like a dead fish into a lake— don't ask— you just... You never really learn to express that you're feeling something negative in a coherent way. You don't know how to say that you're angry, or that something hurt your feelings, or that you are hurting and afraid. You just... express it and pretend it isn't happening. Pretend the cyst hasn't burst and there isn't pus all over your hands. But— Here you are. Despite it all, despite everything, despite everything you have been surrounded with— Andy, you know how to do that. No matter how terrifying it is to lay yourself bare, you are doing it now. And you know— you're so much more of a kid than I ever was. I was afraid to be one, and I didn't try until I moved."
Her breath quivers as she takes it in. She has no clue what she's going to say, but she does know it isn't going to make sense. She's going to say it anyway, or die trying.
"God, it really is so much easier to fight something than to talk about it. A friend of mine wanted to talk about how I was feeling and I just wanted to go fight an evil wizard in a nightmare realm at the behest of a Time Gnome. It's so much harder to just be normal and healthy about things."
Tiff takes the edge of the blanket and pulls it up over to Andy's chest and shoulders, thinking briefly of her aunt doing the same for her when she dozes off on the couch. She breathes out, "I wasn't a particularly brave kid, Andy. Not in the way you are. I could fight a thousand nightmares, but I could never stand up to Mom and Dad."
He doesn't say anything. He doesn't really move under the blanket, either.
"And, you know— you're still around. You're still here, still kicking. Even existing and getting back up again— that takes courage. It's so much easier to sacrifice yourself, to lay down and— And more than that, you're just good. You're good and you're loved and it just isn't fair that this is what's happening to you. It isn't fair, it isn't— Fate is bullshit and I hate the idea of destiny, but it wasn't supposed to go this way. It wasn't supposed to be like this. They were supposed to love you and—" She feels her nostrils flare as she breathes in and looks up to an unforgiving ceiling tile. There's a stain there that looks like a crucifix. "I'm fucking this up. I just want to comfort you and I don't know how to do that. I don't know what you need to hear. I'm— I'm bad at it, you could ask my friends— I wrote a freaking text-length email instead of talking about how upset I was at my one friend, and I made a bomb instead of confronting it, and I— I'll admit it, but... But I don't know what to say. I want to help, but I'm so bad at it."
Through tears and quiet hiccups fading into calm, Andy turns his head up to her and says, "Will you just sit with me until I fall asleep?"
"Yeah. Of course. Of course, bud."
His eyes glisten like wind chimes in the ocean. "Will you tell me a story?"
"What, to put you to sleep?"
"Yeah, like you used to." It comes out soft and shaky.
"I don't have a book of fairy tales with me, Andy. I don't..."
"Tell a story about you, then."
"I suppose it should be a comforting one."
"It doesn't have to be comforting. It—" He hiccups again. "I just want a story. I want to sleep, and I don't want to think."
Tiff has had enough of fairy tales and scripture, anyway. She doesn't know any stories off the top of her head. She can barely remember what she did last week, let alone any sort of comfort derived from what she has done. Unless she wants to talk about frog princes or chosen ones, about huntsmen and werewolves, about bucking against destiny and narratives, about knowing something on a rational level but not feeling it on a personal one— she has nothing to say.
But what of beauty in the combination mundane-and-supernatural? A small anecdote, a simplified version of something she has done—
Can she cast herself as the hero? That isn't allowed. She is not the hero of her own story. The hero is Drake; the hero is Eddy; the hero is Mr. Mathew. She's the supporting character. That's her role. Disposable, terrified, reckless, pathetic. The guy with the camera. The research guy. The one with the gadgets and the gun.
She has to say something, though. Before the guilt strangles her from the inside out, she knows she has to say something.
"Once upon a time," she begins, because this isn't AP Literature and she can begin a story with something familiar, "there was a young folklorist. and inventor in an unfamiliar town. She was not well-loved by those around her, but she was loved by her friends and family, when she found them."
She tells the story of fighting Oneiron. She tells the story of a girl who had to leave everything behind, even when she didn't want to; she tells the story of something. Censors it. Leaves out how she stuck her fingers in his wounds. Leaves out Eliza's breakdown and her screaming in response to it. By the time she gets to the end, there isn't much left to say.
She can't keep herself from yawning every few seconds. Andy can't seem to stop himself, either, no matter how hard he seems to try. He has stopped crying, mostly.
She looks away, to the wall. It wasn't a great story but, then, she is no storyteller. She can leave that to Arnold and his stories; she can leave it to the Crone and her curses; she can leave that to the journals of those who came before.
She's no hero, either, but she's trying to be.
"Is she happy?" Andy yawns, blinking for a moment too long.
"Yeah," Tiff replies, not even needing to think it over. "Yeah, I think she will be."
When she looks down, Andy is asleep under the thin motel blanket. His face is already fading from bright, frustrated red to a gentle, freckled, peaceful little mess. Thank god. She takes his glasses off his face, folds them gently, and sets them on the bedside table.
Tiff lets out a slow, shuddering breath. It isn't long before she joins him.