AN: this is my activity day prompt for Jiara July Jubilee and the title is a result of my new obsession with Folklore! I'm posting it a few hours early here, but shhh.

Invisible String

Kiara loved making bracelets.

It was in the magic of creating something from nothing, something that could be woven as simple or complex as she wanted, in various colors or one at a time. It relaxed her, she thought, when the pressure in her twelve year old chest was getting too much. A push and pull, like ocean waves lulling in the sand.

Her mom had brought her home the set of strings and directions as a throwaway gift last Christmas, and she'd since moved on to collecting her own strings and using ten strands at once. She sometimes even brought it with her to school to fiddle with at lunch, where she was realizing with a growing sense of solitude that she just… didn't really have any friends.

She wasn't a loner, exactly, but she was certainly a floater. She talked to people, but they didn't get her. It kind of sucked, not belonging anywhere. The older she got, she found the worse it was becoming.

But then came John B Routledge, with his grin warm as the sun and freckles painted across his cheeks like constellations. Five minutes paired together for their sixth grade frog dissection, and then he was suddenly inviting her to his lunch table.

It made sense when she caught sight of the two other boys, and she realized John B collected strays like old ladies collected refrigerator magnets.

She remembered Pope Heyward as the dark skinned boy that always sat in the front of class, scribbling notes down frantically while the teachers lectured. She'd heard his name at every award ceremony she could remember, even though he'd never said so much as a single word to her in her life (And she suspected it was the same case for every other girl in their grade).

And then there was JJ Maybank. Everyone knew who he was. A class clown who was constantly getting sent to the principle's office and hardly ever showed up with more than a pencil to his name. Kiara was sure her parents wouldn't approve of her sharing a lunch table with him, which made her ever surer she'd probably enjoy it.

Pope forced a pained smile on his face as John B introduced them, then turned to JJ and whispered, too loudly, "Have we discussed this?"

JJ just stared at her, very clearly unimpressed. He spoke around her the entire lunch, and she got one clear impression from him: you don't belong here.

His eyes were piercing and bluer than a Caribbean Sea, but somehow, Kiara knew this game. If she backed down or looked away, she'd be lunchmeat. No better than chum.

John B seemed oblivious to the tension Kiara's presence wrought. Either that, or he just didn't care. He carried the conversation, smoothing it over between the three parties. At one point, he fingered the growing stack of bracelets on Kiara's arm.

"You like these, huh?" he asked.

She shrugged one shoulder, a little bashful for some reason. "Yeah. I make them."

"Uh, wow, that looks like something from a kook touron shop." John B grinned, and Pope analyzed them a few seconds across the table before nodding in agreement. JJ, meanwhile, just rolled his eyes.

"See you tomorrow, Kiara," John B announced, when lunch was over, and wow, Kiara guessed that was her official invite back to the table. Pope gave an awkward little wave, but JJ scoffed.

"Bro."

Kiara didn't know why, but she wanted these boys to like her. Maybe because for once, she hadn't felt like a fish out of water amongst her peers, or maybe because she'd smiled more times in the past thirty minutes than she had the rest of the day combined. Maybe she was just that lonely.

So despite JJ's blatant rudeness and the glaring contest going on between him and John B, Kiara gave her nicest smile. "See you."

The rest of the week continued in a similar manner. JJ made rude comments or ignored her, but Kiara went out of her way to say, "Hey, JJ" and, "What do you think, JJ?" even though it scraped away at some part of her pride.

But she and John B clicked, like their friendship was meant to be, and even Pope had offered to tell her about the dead bug collection he had had in elementary school. Only JJ seemed to dislike her. He got a peculiar expression on his face when looked her over, like maybe he thought her shoes were too expensive to be infringing upon his territory.

It was going to have to come down to a war of who was more stubborn, then.

Soon enough, John B was proudly adorned with two of her woven bracelets, and even Pope took a thin one she offered him. Privately, she couldn't help but think of them as friendship bracelets, even though the boys might laugh at her for being so sentimental.

JJ just looked on with badly concealed interest, and Kiara decided the welcoming hand of friendship she'd been offering was about to become a grasping one.

Exchanging barbed insults with him wouldn't work. That was what he wanted, for her to be drawn into an argument, so she did the thing she knew would get under his skin more than anything.

She kept being nice to him.

"Hey, JJ." Kiara had arrived at the table specifically early that day, so it would be just the two of them. They normally had at least one of the other boys as a buffer, so she really hoped this wasn't going to end with the table on fire, or something.

"You're back," he said, as if she hadn't been there every day for two weeks straight. He sounded like he'd been hoping for otherwise.

Kiara ignored his tone. "I made you something."

JJ's spoonful of Jell-O hovered in the air, between his plate and mouth. "You what?"

The bracelet was fishtailed in several different shades of black and gray, which she picked because she couldn't yet tell if he was one of those guys who hated wearing bright colors. JJ blinked down at it, like it was something alien, and she was almost certain he hated it.

She'd come too far to let that stop her.

Kiara reached for his wrist, but he flinched back from her, and her hand paused over his. She didn't understand his reaction. Either he didn't like being touched, or he really hated her even more than she thought.

"Sorry," she said, stupidly. She gestured between them. "Can I?"

JJ's jaw clenched. After a moment, he held his arm out over the table. "Fine."

She knotted it delicately; loose enough so that the bracelet wasn't squeezing his arm, but tight enough that it wouldn't slip off. Her knuckles brushed his arm only a few times, because if someone didn't want to be touched, she wasn't going to force them.

When she pulled back, she could almost see his posture physically relax.

Kiara weaved her fingers together, leaning forward on her elbows. "Just so you know, that's a friendship bracelet, Maybank. You have to be nice to me now."

"Wow," JJ said. He was still examining the bracelet, turning his wrist every which way to catch different angles, and she might have even detected a smidge of humor in his voice. "That's kind of, uh, desperate, don't you think?"

"Maybe."

The bracelet didn't magically make them friends, but she didn't miss the fact that he wore it every day. And every day, he joked a little easier with her.

Kiara had never once in her life felt at home like she did with the Pogues.

John B was the first one to become her best friend, her rock. He dragged them on way too many adventures, but Kiara found that once someone was in John B's orbit, it was impossible to get out. They were in it for life.

Pope had learned to stop acting like she was an alien species because she had a vagina and start talking to her like a friend. He liked dead bodies a lot, but he was a great study partner and more fun than she'd ever given him credit for.

Once she fully won over JJ, she knew he'd follow her to the ends of the earth if she asked, even if he had to walk barefoot on knives to do it. He'd do it for any one of them. He was simultaneously the easiest person to love and the hardest person to love, and she wouldn't change it for anything.

She weaved them all bracelets just as surely as they weaved memories together.

The feeling of too many things bouncing around on his wrist made Pope want to break out in hives, so he normally only wore one at once. John B and JJ, however, both had growing collections to rival her own. Kiara had a sneaking suspicion it was a form of pissing competition between them to prove who her favorite was.

Kiara was laid in the hammock at the Chateau one afternoon the spring of eighth grade, string kit in hand. JJ and John B were kicking a deflated old soccer ball across the yard like a couple of loons, and Pope was trying and failing to keep up.

The hammock rocked viciously, and without looking up, Kiara threatened, "JJ."

"There is literally no way you knew that was me," he complained. "I feel ostradized."

"Ostracized," Pope corrected, from across the yard.

"Whatever." JJ waved a dismissive hand. He leaned down over her to peer at her work, and Kiara ignored the way her heart skipped a beat. That was new, and more than a little unwelcome. "Hey, can that one be for me?"

Kiara smacked his hands away from the half-bracelet. "Stop, you're gonna mess me up!"

"Wait, what color is it?" John B appeared on her other side, eyes squinted down at the string. "That should be mine."

"Uh, I think not. You got the last one."

"But you have more than me."

"Yeah, because you'd lose your ass if it wasn't attached," JJ said, as if the only reason he still had all of his wasn't because he simply never took them off. She had no doubt he'd have exactly zero left if that wasn't the case.

He had a point, though. John was constantly misplacing his bracelets or accidentally tearing them, even though she couldn't figure out how he managed it. JJ, meanwhile, seemed to be planning on wearing his until they came unraveled around his wrist. For that reason, she'd made a few beaded ones just for him in the hope that they'd be sturdier.

"This one's for me," Kiara declared. They yowled in protest, and she smiled.

Kiara didn't make a bracelet for Sarah Cameron. She didn't tend to wear things that wouldn't match her outfits.

Their friendship was a friendship of survival, a necessity for Kiara to get through each day of the kook academy her parents forced her into. It was real, though, in its own right, and she could talk to Sarah about things she'd never really talked to the boys about. It was like finding a sister she'd never had, a best friend in the dark, and Kiara needed that, okay?

Dropping the Pogues was an unintended side effect. Even though Kiara missed them like she'd miss an arm or leg, it was hard to maintain relationships between two groups that hated each other. The dark circles under her eyes grew and grew until finally one too many cancelled plans led to radio silence.

The closest she got the Cut became parties at the Boneyard.

Kiara milled around the fringes of the crowd one night early the summer after her freshman year of high school. She stuck to Sarah's side like glue, laughing along like the pretty doll she had become as guy after guy dropped by, begging for a scrap of the princess's affection.

Even now, she couldn't help but seek out her boys (Because she still called them that in her head and probably always would) in the throng. She'd noticed John B talking to some pretty Touron, and Pope had cast himself off to the side with what looked like his math team. They avoided Kiara's eye like the plague; either that, or they genuinely just didn't notice her any more.

Somehow, the second option hurt more.

She wasn't sure where JJ had slipped off to. Perhaps into the woods for a quick fumble with a Touron, a thought that brought an unwelcome churn to her stomach. Her question was answered when a cry rang out through the mass of teenagers.

"Fight! Fight! Fight!"

"Kick his ass!"

One benefit of being at Sarah's side was that the crowd seemed to part for her like the Red Sea. They pushed through the ocean of bodies just in time to see John B wrangling a blond head off the body of an older kook.

"Shit, this is crazy," Sarah said, somewhere between laughter and horror.

Kiara, however, was focused on JJ. The battle-hardened scowl on his face, the trickle of blood leaking out of his nostrils. He swiped the blood away, like it was just another typical Tuesday. Familiar strips of color flashed on his wrist, and emotion welled in Kiara's throat.

"Cut it out, man," she caught John B saying. JJ ripped free of his grip and stalked away, where he leaned under the overhang of a nearby palm.

As she and Sarah drifted back towards the more Kook friendly side of the party, Kiara couldn't help but linger near where JJ had withdrawn to. "Are you okay?"

It echoed through the night, so loud in her ears that she almost winced.

JJ's head shot up, like he was still hyper-attuned to her voice. She wrung her hands, eyes darting anxiously from the blood smeared on his face to the bracelets he still wore. His eyes flashed, a hurricane brewing.

"Like you give a fuck."

Kiara shifted in the sand. She tilted her chin up, like she was more confident that she felt. "I do. Of course I do."

"Don't you have a mansion to go play around in?" JJ scoffed, and just like that, she was dismissed, nothing more than another bitchy Kook to him.

Kiara trailed after Sarah, the hole in her heart inching outwards.

When Kiara returned to the Pogues, tail tucked between her legs and heart in shambles, JJ took the longest to forgive her.

She stitched their friendship back together with string and tied it over his wrist like a band-aid hanging just above the other bracelets. Some were more frayed and dirty than others, but they all remained.

"Kie, there's been an emergency. Code red."

The boys were surfing while Kiara experimented with a new bracelet pattern. She looked up, expecting to see blood at the least, dismemberment at the worst.

JJ's black bracelet, the first one she'd given him, was ripping in half, coming apart by the threads. He had it cupped in the palm of his hand.

"Uh oh," Kiara said. She'd grown in skill exponentially since making that bracelet, but it would always hold a special place in her heart as one of her favorites that she'd made. She'd gotten really used to seeing JJ wear it, but given how much of a wreck he was, she was shocked the bracelet had made it this long.

"I can make you another one?" she offered. "Do you want the same color?"

"No." JJ looked at her like she'd forgotten her way around the island, or grown two heads. His frown remained. "This one's good, but can you fix it?"

Kiara looked over the bracelet, brows lilted. The string was frayed, coming completely apart in one area, and it wasn't like she could just magic it back together.

"Sorry, but I think that one's kind of a lost cause."

"Oh." JJ paused. His fingers clenched around the bracelet, and then opened again. "Well, you can try, right?"

His expression was so oddly earnest she couldn't say no. "Um. Sure."

Later that afternoon, JJ proudly displayed the dingy bracelet around his wrist, the weaving tied together with the biggest, ugliest knots Kiara had ever seen. She made him promise not to tell anyone she made it, even though his attachment to it made her feel something entirely too fluttery for her own good.

You don't know what it's like to have the person closest to you vanish. You don't know what it's like to have the person closest to you vanish. You don't know what it's like to have the person closest to you vanish.

Kie replayed John B's words in her head like a mantra, wishing more than anything that they were still true.

It was an endless cycle. One minute, she was pissed. Pissed at the cops, at Ward, at life. Then there was her denial phase: if anyone in this world would survive a storm in the Phantom, wouldn't it be John B? Didn't it mean something that there were no bodies?

But mostly, she cried. For John B, and his soft eyes and heart and the way she'd never get to laugh with him again. For Sarah and her electric smile and the lost year of friendship they'd so stupidly let waste away into the void. For herself and the Pogues, the ones left behind.

It was the second night since the storm, the one that should've been calmer, but was really even more difficult because the reality of the situation was sinking in. Kiara was wrapped up in her bed in the dark, trying in vein to weave calmness into her veins with the makings of a new bracelet. It wasn't working.

Tap. Tap. Tap.

She dragged herself out of bed, limbs leaded with the weight of John B's demise. She didn't even consider that there might be danger out her window when she pulled it open, because her life last week was not the same as her life this week. Actual murders chased her now.

It was JJ, decked out in his favorite red cap and an oil-stained t-shirt.

Kiara didn't say anything, tried not to let on about the portion of worry that lifted off her shoulders at the sight of him still breathing. Apparently, that was also a thing she had to worry about now.

She inched out of the way so he could maneuver into her second story window, using the nearby oak tree for leverage. She'd used that tree many a time herself, but JJ's gaze roved around her room once his boots hit the plush carpet. It was a first time trip for him, because the boys had never been particularly welcome at her house.

There was some comment on his lips that clearly wanted to escape, probably something mocking how Kook her curtains were, but he couldn't seem to go through the motions. A waft of alcohol crept throughout the room, slowly, and Kiara got her answer.

She knew it was bad for him to come to her house. It was doubtful he'd have even come at all if he wasn't drunk.

"Hey," Kiara said, hesitantly, like she was speaking to a spooked animal. Her voice came out a croak, and her face was still sticky from leftover tear tracks.

She wanted to reach out and hug him, to cry together. But JJ's muscles were rigid, and she knew touching him before he was ready was only asking for trouble. He was a stick of dynamite waiting to explode at the best of times, and this? This was rock bottom.

Instead Kiara summoned all her patience and retreated to her bed, leaving a pointed space open at her side. She'd woven two more layers into her bracelet before she felt JJ's weight land softly next to her on the mattress.

His hands balled into fists on his knees. She could see the little veins popping out, like spider-webs, and she reigned in the urge to smooth them away. She wished she could do anything, anything at all to take any of their pain away.

"It still doesn't feel real." His voice was a sad, broken slur, and Kiara blinked back a fresh wave of tears.

"I know."

She weaved in silence for a few more minutes before JJ reached out, hand hovering over her work. "Yellow and pink. Like that fucking stupid shirt he always wears."

Wore. It was wore now, but she didn't correct him. Couldn't bare to.

"Fuck," JJ swore, and then his shoulders were trembling and Kiara was reaching out, drawing him in. There was a nerve-wracking moment where he tensed in her arms, but then he was collapsing against her shoulder, his nose burrowing into the crook of her throat.

Kiara dropped her chin on his hair, hardly realizing she had succumbed to her own sobs.

It was funny how tears were never ending. Even when no moisture remained, there was still the heavy, dry sobs that made her feel like she was being carved from the inside out.

Somehow, some way, they remained tangled up in one another until exhaustion hit them. When dawn arrived, JJ was gone.

They went through two weeks of life that felt like slogging through a hazy, terrible dream before the postcard from the Bahamas arrived. John B and Sarah were alive.

JJ went from reckless to restless without his favorite partner in crime around to keep him entertained. Heyward was forcing Pope (God, Pope. Another can of worms she didn't want to open) to work ungodly hours at the store to keep him in line, so a lot of JJ's pent up energy fell on Kiara.

"Kie," JJ said, and it felt like the 30th time she'd heard her name in the last hour.

Kiara looked up from her bracelet materials, lips pursed. If JJ asked her to toss a Frisbee again, she might go insane. "What, JJ?"

He juggled a rock on his foot, watching its progress rather than her. "Wanna go surfing?"

"No." Before he could protest, Kiara had his elbow in a vice grip, pulling him down onto the hammock beside her. His leg lay flat against hers and he was really warm and maybe this was a bad idea, but it was too late.

"Goddamn Kie, you could've just asked."

"Hey, JJ, I'm going to teach you how to make bracelets. Sound good?" she mocked, passing him the thread she'd just started. JJ stared down at it, like he was afraid it might snap at him.

Kiara expected him to protest, but he fell into rhythm with her fingers guiding his through a beginner design with surprising enthusiasm. His face was etched with concentration, a fact that made her smile.

JJ was halfway through when she felt his leg start bouncing against hers. She could tell he was growing bored with the process, so she dared to throw her ankle over his to still his movements. Her face had already broken out in a cheeky grin when he turned to glare at her.

"We go surfing next. Please."

Kiara stretched out further in the hammock, trying not to get caught up in the way their legs were tangled together. "Fine."

JJ resumed his braiding. She hid her reaction when he accidentally mis-knotted something or selected another section of string from her box that stood out against the colors they'd started with like a sore thumb. With his feet trapped, he began to hum an obnoxious tune under his breath.

He paused once later, giving the bracelet she was working on the stink eye. "Why is yours so perfect?"

"Because I'm good." JJ snorted, and she shifted so her head was halfway leaning on his shoulder, hiding her grin. "I have had four years of practice."

When he was finished with his pattern, Kiara helped him close the opposite end with a braid. He held it into the light, and the dimple on his cheek flashed. "Hey, it's not bad."

Kiara nodded, lips twitching. "Mhm."

JJ's fingers wrapped around her arm, and she froze. "Here you go, since you've made me so many," he said, by way of explanation. He didn't quite meet her eye, and she watched in something like fascination as he clumsily looped the bracelet around her wrist.

Kiara stretched her arm out when she was done, admiring the newest addition to her collection. She felt JJ's eyes practically boring holes into the side of her face, so she said, "Nice." She didn't mention that the colors didn't match, or that he'd left some loose ends hanging out of the plait.

It also may have been her new favorite bracelet, but he didn't have to know that just yet, either.

AN: comments are super appreciated! If you would like to see me write more Jiara, that's the secret to getting it haha.