UPRISE

020

Everyone had offered Jasmine their beds, but it was eventually Harper who had won out. Today, Jasmine can't bear to face her roommates and show them her band. Instead, she decides to go back to the Complex, the place she now belongs, and grab all of her belongings later.

One of Harper's roommates has gone missing, so she gets his bed. Sometimes, it had belonged to Reagan, but he was more than willing to give it up. Since a few of the roommates are home, and no one is in the mood to explain where they have been and what has been going on, Jasmine and Harper go to the park and sit beneath a tree.

The frozen grass crunches beneath them. Jasmine can feel it soaking her pants, which wouldn't have bothered her only a few hours ago. Things are gone now that weren't there before.

"You shouldn't have sacrificed yourself like that," Harper points out. "We could've just walked out the door."

Jasmine offers what she hopes is a smile but looks more like she is contorting her face in odd directions. She doesn't need Harper second-guessing her call now. "It's over now. I can't change it. But, I did, you know... save us."

It wouldn't help anything if Harper added that they don't know what the Clears plans are. Desperation is a shadow that follows him but isn't his. Perhaps they would have dismembered the crew in exchange for food. Perhaps they would have kidnapped them and forced them to tap supplies. There are too many unknowns.

All he knows is that he was wrong about Jasmine.

"I've been unfair to you," Harper tells her. He doesn't elaborate that it's because he had assumed that she would be like the mother of his child and ignored the possibility that she is a fully-fledged human, and that Harper had been doing the same to all of them. He was first proven wrong about Corbin, and then Rinn, and now her.

Jasmine offers him a playful push. "No you haven't."

"I thought you were an airhead," he points out.

"I kind of was," she sighs, her breath chilling the air. Snow lands in her eyelashes and she tries to blink it away. The night is dark, but the white snowflakes brightly reflect light. Jasmine feels like she is in the most peaceful disco of her life. "Like, not actually. I just... I didn't care about things that matter."

"What matters to you?" Harper asks, as he watches the snow forms a crown on her hair. He finds himself confused, caught between the girl he had heard of, with famous parents and a dowry, and the girl he had first met, with a sweater in her hand and secrets in her lips, and the girl he knows now. All equally reckless, a pain that burns his stomach, but none as selfish as he had first thought.

Jasmine is from California, so she decides at this moment that she likes the snow. She knows that the Colourless in the forest are probably freezing to death, quite literally, but perhaps that discomfort is what makes it her preferable. Something so light, so beautiful, yet so deadly.

"You matter to me," she finally turns to him. "Wren and Noah too. The people who actually seem to give a shit about me, I guess. I've kind of fucked up with Corbin and Pluto, but I still care about them too."

Harper nods, swallowing. She watches his Adam's apple bob up in down, moving like her stomach. Jasmine still feels panic hiding in her from earlier.

"I've been trying to figure out what matters to me too," Harper points out. He scratches the back of his neck. "Like, I have never really known what I'm doing with my life."

"You don't have to know," Jasmine tells him. "You've got your whole life ahead of you."

After today, Harper isn't so sure. He watches Jasmine, admires her confidence, if only briefly.