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It began at six o'clock; that place called dusk. It ended at one o'clock; midnight hour's tardy sibling.
Nan Blake found her memories while glancing at pamphlets about medical fields, driving courses, runway shows, and army sign up sheets she'd picked up on a lark for her eldest daughters. All four at hand, right after her, seemed to come to their senses as they were supposed to be--hugging and crying and disappointed in themselves and their parents, but mostly worried about their baby sister.
Barty Blake was near a construction site on the other side of town, wrecking balls and dynamite blowing down old foundations made of red brick, when he took off like a shot to see his wife, his daughters, to find out where his youngest was--he needed to know they were alright.
Angie Dinkley was tending her garden, getting rid of the weeds with her own organic product and nearly went face first down into the slimy remains of the weeds, bent over double and biting back nausea.
Marcie had dropped into an arcade to ask for change for five dollars when the sounds of a shooting game, the flashing lights, and a poster for a game on the wall with a massive bird of prey staring down across the aisles had her on the floor, gasping for breath.
Cassidy accidentally turned the knob in the shower to cold and a whole lifetime of regret seeped into her bones like an electric charge; Ricky in the living room browsing through movies they could watch and pausing the screen to the most terrifying and gruesome part of Jaws--the smell of rot crossing his mind with a sudden increase in adrenaline from out of nowhere sending him to the nearest bin to empty that morning's breakfast.
Harlan Ellison went to check in on his boyfriend, H.P. Hatecraft, when he found the man at his usual seat in the back of the school's library, but in a different sort of state than his usual half-nodding off/staring dopily into the middle distance while scribbling doodles of his Gothic Horror works. He was pacing the length of the hallway nearest his usual seat near the window, shaking like an abused dog and sweating enough that Harlan simply touching his hand left his own soaking wet before the other bit back a scream and started hyperventilating. Terror was radiating off of him and he looked at Ellison like he didn't even know where he was.
(Which made all the sense in the world to Ellison after ten minutes of reminding his boyfriend how to breathe and taking a glance over his sketches to find images of monsters that had never featured in any of Hatecraft's books, but were no less familiar to Ellison after becoming something of a mentor to those kids that felt like they didn't belong in a place that was too perfect, even in their own imaginings.)
Fred Jones awoke screaming his son's name so loud and so late, without warning or what seemed like an end, that his neighbors called the cops, thinking someone was killing him.
Sheriff Stone caught the call, both he and Janet having put the kids to sleep an hour before and dizzy when thoughts and knowing hit them both when they were getting ready for a little personal time.
He went to see the man, barely holding himself together enough to unlock the door with the key hidden under the mat instead of breaking the wood down, and tried to comfort the one person reacting that night to waking up remembering three lives both different and the same as the rest of them; though none as tainted by the Entity as Jones, with twenty years of close influence and eighteen of fighting back as best he could.
Bronson Stone, knowing Coach Jones-Mayor Jones-The Freak had more regrets than anyone, tears running down his face without end, wasn't going to question dialing the phone for him to call the young man that shouldn't by rights have been his in either--any--life, but was his son.
Daphne had hesitated at first, answering the phone whenever her caller ID showed the names of her family on it. But when every last one of them were calling almost at the same time at the start of the evening, she picked up.
Her father asked her if she was okay, so much desperation in his voice, her mother and sisters in the background all talking at once about robots, caves collapsing, the Mystery Machine blowing up--and Daphne just knew. And she didn't know if she started crying out of desperate relief or joy or a little regret at their remembering, but also didn't care; she was getting her real family back and they were even apologizing and that was all she really wanted.
While Daphne cried over the phone, Shaggy and Scooby paused mid-bite with their dinner, Velma and Fred next to the fire they'd set up in a campsite beside the Mystery Machine for the evening as they made their way to Miskatonic University--they shouldn't have been that surprised when all of their own phones started blowing up at once.
Marcie and Mrs. Dinkley greeted Velma on the end of her phone, both of them sounding a little sore and wet from their own crying, but Velma could understand what they were saying when Angie started off on how proud she was and Marcie promised it had been worth it, "And hey, at least, technically that bird didn't win in the end."
Shaggy was both surprised and not at all when both he and Scooby found messages in voicemail and text that weren't from the Rogers, but maybe meant more in their own ways. Harlan Ellison leaving a text about Hatecraft remembering the gang, but especially Shaggy and Scooby and their helping him as best they could with his writing and trying to save his life. Cassidy and Ricky left the voicemail, but he was pretty sure Cassidy's words were for everyone, and Ricky's were just for him and Scooby.
"I'm so proud of you."
"I'm glad that you were better than us."
Fred couldn't seem to draw in more than a little breath at a time once he'd pressed the green button on his phone and heard Sheriff Stone on the other end gruffly say, "Talk to your father, kid, before he gives himself an aneurism," before his Dad was crying in his ear, ragged and almost hysterical.
He'd never seen his father shed a tear, so hearing him despairing and emotional ripped right through him, bringing down all the barriers he'd built up after The Freak, after Brad and Judy just showed up and then hurt him worse than Jones ever did in more way than one, after everything else. It dug right into his heart almost as sharp as the words ex-Mayor Jones kept repeating over and over.
"I'm sorry, Freddy, I'm so sorry. I'm so, so sorry--!" Fred flinched hard at the sound of something being hit, glass shattering and Sheriff Stone cursing in the background; ex-Mayor Jones sucked in a deep breath, but it did little to steady his voice and Fred knew his knuckles were torn and bloody, "I can't believe I did that to you, and I know that you deserved better, and there's no excuse I could give that could ever explain away the things I did. But I am so sorry, Freddy, I'm so sorry--"
"We're headed to Miskatonic," Fred heard himself saying, refusing to stop even with his own shaking voice, "Can you meet us there? Please?"
They all knew that driving at night wasn't the best idea, and agreed to sleep and travel as they'd planned at first light. Even if they all knew they weren't going to sleep so much as stare and stare up at the ceiling of the van or out into the night sky, thoughts askew and out of joint.
Velma had her theories, absolute and not, but when she finally did pass out from exhaustion, second to last out of all of them besides Fred, the best she could assume was the Annunaki being aware of their not belonging, the wrongness of their time in this so-called perfect reality; maybe not-Nova had something to do with it...?
They barely ate breakfast when they woke up with wild birds and sunlight, charting their path along the backroad they'd chosen and dumping themselves onto the highway that would get them to Miskatonic faster, but probably not before their families. Give them more time to ponder and prepare.
The Mystery Machine was quiet, everyone stunned into melancholy at even the slightest chance of getting their family back in more ways than one--Shaggy and Scooby not really counting the Rogers in this; Shaggy loved his parents, but they hadn't done much over the years to endear them to their son and dog in much more than principal obligation. Cassidy counted as a kind of better, more understanding, family to Shaggy and the rest, and he was more than willing to give Ricky another chance when he'd been right about what was lying under the Cove needing to be destroyed and his own sacrifice for their safety besides.
When they pulled up to the university, all brown stone and grand Gothic architecture without the bite that would have made it stick out more on their side of reality, they all caught themselves holding their breath at the streak of cars parked along the side, all familiar and obviously in a hurry to get there with tire marks in the torn grass. What seemed to allow them to relax, breathe out, was the group of people hovering near the cars, some pacing, some still as rabbits in a field--all of them with their eyes focused on the van once it pulled over on the other side of the lane.
The air was still for what was probably less than a second, but seemed to stretch with all the things that hadn't been said before, terror and elation and devotion all rolled into that moment.
Then Marcie stepped out from behind the Dinkley's old cruiser and Velma was the one to jump out of the Mystery Machine first to practically sprint over to her and the Dinkley matriarch. Tears were running down her face, but happier than she'd had lately; she bulldozed right into Angie and Marcie, four arms wrapping tight around her and all of them talking at once.
The chain reaction to that was rather immediate.
The entire Blake family swarmed Daphne as she got out of the shotgun seat (Daisy stumbled a little, those heavy glasses would need to go; Delilah in heels that were so different from her boots right beside her,) with Barty getting to his youngest first, picking her up and spinning her off her feet much like when she was five and she'd dressed up as a strange mishmash of Little Red Riding Hood and Sherlock Holmes and told him she wanted to play hide and seek for no reason at all. When her feet were back on the ground, her head was tucked under his chin as he squeezed her tight; Nan taking up behind her, chin over Daphne's shoulder and arms winding around her middle above Barty's own.
Her quadruplet sisters made due with placing hands along her shoulders and hugging around them, two along each parent; Daphne thought that they probably looked like a Wonderland rosebush from afar.
Shaggy and Scooby loped with a little hesitation over to Cassidy and Ricky, Ellison and Hatecraft, but they needn't have been so shy when Cassidy reeled Shaggy in for a hug beside Hatecraft, Ricky and Harlan patting Scooby on the head and giving gentle greetings and welcome, explanations promised once everyone had cried it all out.
Fred hesitated the longest, stepping out of the van last and walking out in the open with his eyes scanning every which way, a little dread forming in his stomach, before he finally found who he was looking for near the beginnings of a decorative hedge, not quite skulking in shadow but still out of the way of everyone else.
Jones, ex-Mayor and current teacher in Crystal Cove, looked like he'd been spun through a washing machine and wrung out. Shaking at the very edges of the group, even as Fred observed he'd probably been there the longest, the marks his tires had made in the grass nearly evened out to what they had been and a little morning dew still hanging on his car windows.
He didn't seem to care like he once would have, though. Once Jones finally made his way over with his head hung low (steps cautious as Fred only remembered the likes of which when he'd been hanging off the cliff and would have died had The Freak not turned back to save his life,) he looked up to meet Fred's eye; and the young man practically took a running start, barreling into the other and knocking him on his ass. Fred's arms and legs wrapped around him so tight and familiar that it was as if Fred was seven years old rather than a late eighteen, clinging like a koala and crying into his dad's chest and rattling off all the things he couldn't say before, even in The Sitting Room.
"I'm so glad you're alive, I missed you so much--I'm not mad at you anymore, I promise; taking me away from Brad and Judy was probably the best thing that could have happened to me--I love you so much..."
The chest he was clinging to seemed to collapse into itself as tension and fear drained out of Jones as he returned the hug with feeling, nose and lips pressed to Fred's hair and forehead.
Callused fingers rubbed circles along his back and wove through his hair like when he was really little and sometimes shut down in crowds or couldn't talk because of too many emotions stopping up his throat, and oh, he missed that.
His dad continued his small comforts, ignoring everything else, "I love you too, Fred. I'm so proud of you."
Atop the steps that led into Miskatonic University, bright and peaceful as any elder god that was pleased at their choices to make things better, a cocker spaniel watched, smiling secretly at the display before her.
A beginning was a very delicate time, more so an ending. But this wasn't the ending or the beginning, and the in-between can always be negotiated.