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goldeneyedgirl · 4 months

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TwiFicmas23 Day 8: Mary-Alice & Feral Jasper

Good evening!

Tonight we're opting for some Mary-Alice & Feral Jasper because @sonyawix deserves nice things, and these two are so cute to write. It's a soft and gentle little fic where they get to be cute and awkward together.

This is a bit of a patchwork of bits and pieces from throughout the fic, and kind of establishes some of the dynamic.

I am off to sleep for eight hours and procrastinate over tomorrow's post! I hope you enjoy this!

She watches him from the bower of the tree, as he picks his path away from his coven. She’s lucky she’s downwind; her visions show her that they won’t scent her from this perch.

And she finally gets to see him in person.

He’s very tall and lean, but he walks slightly stooped and she wonders why. He looks like he’s waiting for a blow to fall, and she doesn’t like that at all. His hair looks clean and is pulled back from his face, and his clothes are … better than hers, at least. She had to rip up a shirt into strips and knot them tightly into a belt to make her dress sit a little better, and it was filthy and torn. His are ill-fitting and worn, but they aren’t dirty.

His eyes are still black, and that worries her. She cannot think of any vampire whose eyes have remained black for so long, not even when Maria was holding hostages to get more information.

But she doesn’t know how long he was locked away, and she knows nothing about torpor. Mary-Alice has never been around a vampire that wasn’t healed up in a day or two. Or rather, they’d never kept any soldier that wasn’t healed that fast unless they had a special reason to keep them. This kind of injury is entirely foreign to her.

The girl appears from the trees in a split second, as if she’s materialised from thin air, and there’s enormous relief that he’s not imagining her, like the Cullens think, and he’s not going mad. There was someone watching him

He stares at her with unbridled fascination.

She’s so … beautiful. Wide red eyes, a pale face framed in uneven black hair with hopeful little curls. She’s tiny, she doesn’t come up to the middle of his chest, and as thin as a dancer. Her clothing is shredded and filthy, there’s blood and mud on her dress indiscriminately. She’s a new kind of vampire, not like the Cullens, and not like the kinds that he can vaguely remember from his past. There’s something wild about her, like she’s just been formed out of the trees and dirt around them, and he likes that.

The scars take a moment for him to notice. They are littering her bare arms and legs, some of them faded and worn into the fabric of her skin, some of them fresher. There’s a nasty one over her eye, and he’s suddenly intensely aware of his own scars. He remembers the pain that came with them, the suffering, and he hopes this girl hasn’t fallen victim to the same misery he only remembers in fragments of agony and rage and fear.

“Hello?” His voice is still more of a rasp; his healing is slow, and it’s embarrassing to show such weakness to her. He’s also not the one who usually speaks first, and he wonders if he should have waited. He doesn’t know. Usually, the Cullens correct him if he makes a mistake, but they aren’t here.

It took him weeks to convince them that he was well enough to go on walks alone. He’s grateful that Emmett took his side. He’s got nowhere to run to; he doesn’t understand this world and how it works, and he knows that until he heals, he probably wouldn’t survive long.

But Esme worried so much, as if the foxes and deer in the woods might be the thing that carried him off.

He’s rather tickled that only his second time out alone, and he’s found… her. Except, she just studies him with a blank look; not anger but no pleasure or joy. Just quiet consideration, and he wonders too late if she’s planning to attack him.

He looks better.

She likes that.

He’s clean and wearing new clothing, and not stooping any longer. His eyes are a funny gold-tinted colour but he’s been feeding - they’re lighter and they’re clearer now, no longer clouded over. Good, that’s good; she’s oddly grateful that the Cullens know how to help him because she had asked Maria casually about some of the injuries he’d bore, and Maria had not had the faintest clue about what she spoke of. It had made her suspicious, which had slowed down her escape exponentially.

She might still be annoyed about that. She could have been here weeks ago if Maria hadn’t decided to be difficult.

Jasper seems calm and curious as he moves closer to her; but he’s still limping. And it does frustrate her that the Cullens have let him out to roam the forest without warnings that he shouldn’t be approaching strange vampires. Anyone else might have taken his head before he realised they were even there.

Something else she’ll have to explain to him then. She’s got a mental list of things already, and she wasn’t expecting to stay that long, truly - just long enough to make sure that he was okay and safe. Then she was going to go and see what snow was like.

It looked nice in the pictures she’d seen.

He’s getting worried now, at the silence since he greeted her, and that’s her fault. She’s not used to having people to talk to - unless she was fucking them or they had a particular gift (well, at least, one that was common knowledge), Maria liked her soldiers silent.

“They’re taking good care of you,” she says abruptly and wonders when she lost the ability to converse with others normally, and not like a soldier.

“Who? The Cullens?” He stops and gives her a strange look. “Do you… know the Cullens?” The words rasp and catch in his throat, and he struggles to form the entire sentence, as if he’s trying to find and catch each word. Definitely still healing, and it sounds painful and dry when he speaks.

Perhaps she can convince him to hunt more often to try and speed up the process. There’s a town less than an hour’s run from this place, it wouldn’t be hard for him to slip away and return before the family even knew.

“Mmm. I wanted to … I wanted to make sure you were safe.” Her words are flat and short, and she can see his uncertainty.

Emmett recognises the longing in Jasper’s eyes as he stares after the small girl wading in the lake. It’s pretty much the same look that Emmett had on his own face when he woke up and saw Rosalie - properly saw her - for the first time.

Mary-Alice is really strange, but it doesn’t take rocket science to realize she’s had a bad time - even just the overlapping scars on her arms tell a story of violence and fear, but it’s in every part of her - by the way she moves, the way that she watches and stares, the way she speaks in the flat, even voice devoid of emotion, in short sentences. Wherever she came from, it wasn’t a good place, and Emmett’s oddly pleased that she’d found them - even if she was only hanging around because of Jasper like a stray cat, a thought that made him chuckle to himself - and had looked vaguely disgusted with the idea of spending time with the rest of the family.

Of course, the rest of the family still thought Mary-Alice was some kind of imaginary coping-mechanism for Jasper that they were tentatively ignoring, so maybe she was offended.

He should be grateful, actually. It’s taken a few weeks for Mary-Alice to stop glaring at him, to stop prowling around like some kind of jungle cat and freeze up, the second he appears. She’s still distant and rigid whenever Emmett appears, but she doesn’t treat him like he’s a danger anymore. And maybe he’d believe that this was trust and the path to friendship, except he’s seen her with Jasper.

When she’s focused on Jasper, there’s a gentleness in every aspect of her. She’s softer with him, patient and sweet. And she revolves around him like she’s his bodyguard against the world. She almost fusses over him, demanding to know when he’s hunted and how he’s healing. Emmett’s nearly certain he’s caught her smelling Jasper’s hair and clothing - perhaps to make sure he’s clean? Mary-Alice doesn’t seem to give much thought to her own state of cleanliness or her clothing, but Jasper’s are clearly important to her. And the way she stares up at Jasper - Mary-Alice has to be the tiniest vampire that Emmett’s ever seen, and Jasper’s only a few centimetres shorter than him - with this look that he suspects might have human feelings behind them.

Jasper would know better than him, though. But on the few attempts Emmett’s made to ask about that, Jasper’s given him a flat, stubborn look and refused to speak.

So the longing is probably reciprocated - maybe. Alice just hides it better, behind a wall of protectiveness and anti-social personality traits. Emmett honestly can’t work out why she’d be caring and smelling and fussing over his brother if she didn’t care.

But Emmett also worries; Jasper was walled up alone for so long that they’ve practically had to resocialize him. He remembered so little of human interaction that it had been a war zone at home for a while. Even now, he still had so many behaviours that Esme politely referred to as ‘quirks’ that they had to correct every day (and now Emmett’s wondering how many of the newer ‘quirks’ had been introduced or encouraged by Mary-Alice, who is practically a wild animal). The idea that Jasper is pining for a girl and all that a relationship entails…

Emmett really, really doesn’t want to have to give his new brother the sex talk. And he knows if he tries to convince either Edward or Carlisle to step in and have the world’s most uncomfortable conversation, they’re going to want toknow why and then remind Emmett that they aren’t encouraging the idea that Mary-Alice is real. And if Mary-Alice isn’t real, then Jasper doesn’t need to suffer through the indignity of a sex-talk.

It’s a mess. And Emmett’s relieved that Carlisle has decided not to introduce Jasper to the cousins yet because they all know that the sisters are incorrigible flirts, and he’s got a fifty on Jasper (and Mary-Alice) being utterly humourless about that kind of behaviour.

Emmett also knows that if he tries to push Jasper into introducing Mary-Alice to the rest of the family, it will be a complete disaster. She’ll refuse point blank and then he will be persona non grata around her and … he doesn’t want to piss her off, and he doesn’t want to piss Jasper off.

He also doesn’t want to have to refresh his brother’s memory on the mechanics of sex and why waiting to be fully healed might be the best choice …

He’s overthinking this. He should really stay out of it entirely. The thing is, he really wants this to work out for Jasper. He’s a good guy, if weird as fuck, and he deserves to have a nice home and a girlfriend that he’s madly in love with - even if the girl happens to be some scary little traumatized gremlin who Emmett can’t imagine smiling let alone being in love with someone.

He really hopes this works out.

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#alice cullen #jasper hale #jalice #the twilight saga #ficmas #ficmas23 #my fic: shadow to light #my fic: feral jasper & mary alice #two dorks in love #when jasper is healed he's going to be the most doting and overprotective nightmare ever

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peace-love-and-french-toast · 4 months

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Merry Merry Ficmas!!!!

Happy holidays to y'all! I'm currently celebrating Christmas, so yay :)

Anyway, I was thinking about all the wonderful fanfic writers in the PJO and Marvel fandoms who have made holiday-themed stuff and how much I want to read them, and I realized something.

I made something Ficmas?

And then completely forgot, cause life do be like that sometimes. It was like made in July or something because I really wanted some Christmas spirit, so here ya go!

Just fluff in an Avengers/PJO crossover, with two ocs dropped in there, by the way. You don't need context to understand the plot, though.

Enjoy :)

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lingeringmirth · 5 months

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FICMAS 2023 - DAY 5 - all she'd ever wanted

Prompt: blushing heavily when they realise what's happening from this list. Featuring: rule 63 bilbo and thorin, fluff, established relationship.

Bilbo hadn’t taken Thorin as a blusher when they’d first met, but she is blushing now and she can’t hide her smile at the sight of it, because it’s simply too adorable.

She had maneuvered her lady-love under the mistletoe to pay her allegiance with a kiss of adoration. Thorin had been so focused on her that she hadn’t noticed where Bilbo had been moving her towards, but when she’d noticed that most becoming blush had spread to her cheeks and then down her neck and down the neck-line of her blouse. She didn’t need to see it to know it spread under there all the way down her navel, going between her…

Bilbo decided she needed to kiss Thorin before she made herself flustered by just thinking about her betrothed’s similar state.

‘Come, dearest, it’s tradition,’ she looked up at Thorin’s face, which looked down at her fondly despite the blush, as always.

Bilbo knew Thorin wasn’t one for public displays of affection like this, saving all her affection for when they were behind closed doors, when they could indulge, where Thorin was bold and assertive.

She herself would have liked nothing more than to kiss in public as much as she liked, but as Thorin got so flustered about it, she rarely pushed the issue. Kissing under the mistletoe was just the kind of situation where Thorin would do it, unless there was a big crowd. Thankfully no such thing was in sight this time and the mistletoe had been hung in a somewhat out-of-the-way place within the house where the Yule party was held.

One of Thorin’s big lovely hands cupped the side of Bilbo’s face as she leaned in, eyes twinkling even when the blush hadn’t receded even a quarter inch. ‘And tradition must be upheld… ghivashel.’

Then she kissed her and it was everything Bilbo had wanted.

#ficmas23 #ficmas #bagginshield #fembagginshield #thorin x bilbo #bilbo baggins #thorin oakenshield #fluffy bagginshield

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12daysficmas · 5 months

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It's time for prompt picking!

If you’d like, you can fill this short form out before midnight 11/30 CST!

I’ll then look over the results and post the prompt list on December 5th at 11pm CST!

More info about the event is below the cut.

Okay so this event is basically a fun little countdown to Christmas via prompt fills, but feel free to use it as a happy winter celebration!

With the name of the event being called Ficmas, it sounds like it’s just a writer-focused event, but you can do whatever you want to fill the prompts (I’m mainly a writer and the title is catchy)!

You can join in as little or as much as you’d like. If you want to just vote on the prompts and see what gets made, or if you want to try to make something for every day, or something in between, it’s all up to you!

I’ve got some links with more info:

FAQ

AO3 collection

2021 calendar

2022 calendar

If you have any questions feel free to shoot an ask to the blog and I’ll answer them as soon as I can as best as I can!

#12daysficmas #prompt ideas #event prep #danny phantom #ficmas23 #ficmas2023

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goldeneyedgirl · 4 months

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TwiFicmas23 Day 10: Hybrid AU

Good evening! I had my first drink in a hot minute tonight and it has hit me like a battering ram, so we're doing this fast because I am definitely feeling the effects.

Tonight's is some old Hybrid; it'll be pretty obvious why this ended up being archived (and I honestly don't know if this counts as Hybrid or Hybrid baby-verse).

Thank you for reading and I hope you enjoy it!

tw: mention of miscarriage

After the Cullens left, I was kind of at a loss. I know they hoped Bella and I would stick together, but that didn’t happen.

Simon and Dad were sympathetic and let me mope around the house a bit. But I was exhausted. I was sleeping sixteen hours a day when I had the opportunity and still felt like I had pulled an all-nighter. My schoolwork was fairly average but enough that no one called Dad. I managed to scrape enough energy together to help plan Cynthia’s fifteenth birthday party, and then Thanksgiving.

It was Christmas Day when I figured out what was wrong with me. I was exhausted all the time, and eating ridiculous amounts of food but still looked like a prisoner of war. I got out of bed and went into the bathroom, getting on the scales to find out that I’d lost another two pounds. Simon would notice soon, and I had no idea what to tell him.

And then I spied Cynthia’s box of tampons on the shelf, and I had to brace myself on the counter for a moment. My period was a rare and unwelcome visitor, and hardly a trustworthy indicator of anything but... it made sense.

“Oh, Alice, honey, this arrived for you a couple of days ago,” Simon said, plucking a small box from under the tree. It was still in its mailing box, with my name and address typed on the label but no return address or indication of who it was from.

Inside was a small black jewelry box, and for a second, I thought perhaps Jasper had sent me something. I hoped he’d sent me something. Even just a letter would have fixed everything.

I ripped into it, and the contents spilled into my lap, and it took me a moment to understand what I was looking at. It was a silver sun charm on a black ribbon, with smaller stars dotted along the band, though one was missing.

It had been my mother’s. I remembered her wearing it; she'd never taken it off. I could see the stain of blood on the ribbon, the frayed edge where the knife bit into her, and for a moment, the room swam.

“Who is it from?” Dad asked curiously.

I put the necklace down with shaking hands, trying hard to act normal, and plucked the card up. It was black too, with a white crest – the shield, candle, and compass of the Benoits, the Latin motto running along the bottom – Ex Deus Veritas. Truth in God, coined by the Order.

On the back of the card, the message was short.

Our best wishes of the season to you and your family, Mary-Alice.

Meaning: we know where you and your family are.

The bag I packed was like so many others. Basic, warm clothing; my first aid kit, a new phone I had bought in Port Angeles, money. I had ordered a ton of gift cards over the internet, since they weren’t traceable. Nothing sentimental was meant to come with me, but in the end, I saved a photograph of Jasper and I to my new phone.

And then I left Forks.

it sounds all fun and luxurious to say I ran off to Hawaii.

The truth was, Mexico would have been way better but with the vampire and Order problem down there, I chose the one place in America you are least likely to get cornered by a vampire: Hawaii.

Specifically Paukaa, which was home to less than 600 people. I was nothing more than another post-high school traveler who decided to stay. I rented a tiny one-room place from a family and got a job at a café. It was quiet and safe and I settled into a mind-numbing existence.

I hadn’t contacted anyone back in Forks or even checked my email. As far as everyone was concerned, Mary-Alice Brandon had disappeared for the last time – I half-hoped they’d declare me dead.

I was Mary Hale here.

It was a little embarrassing, yes, taking Jasper’s fake surname, but it kept me hidden because I doubted anyone would think to run a search on that name. And none of the Cullens called me ‘Mary’ anyway.

It had been a few months. The hardest. When the test came back positive, I had tried to find the Denali clan in Alaska, to pass on a message to the Cullens. To find help.

I got close - so close. I made it to Anchorage after almost two weeks of traveling; I didn't have a lot of money, I didn't want my fake I.D. questioned too much, and I was terrified I was being followed and kept double-backing and waiting to throw any stalkers off my trail. I was pretty sick by then, but I was certain I would make it. Hell, I'd broken into the Cullens' before I'd left and found a map in Carlisle's study that had helped me narrow down the Denali home a lot.

Then I woke up in the Anchorage ER with the news I’d collapsed on the street and miscarried.

I didn’t know what to do with that information.

I probably should have gone home to Forks and my Dad and pretended it had never happened. Or actually tracked down the Denali clan and demanded they get me in contact with the Cullens anyway. But the Benoits knew where my family was, and I just couldn’t. I didn’t want to see anyone I knew before ever again. I didn’t want to look them in the eyes and have to explain everything. I didn’t want to be Alice Brandon anymore.

So I didn’t. As soon as they released me from the hospital, I bought the first plane ticket to Hawaii. Actually, it was the next scheduled flight. They could have flown me to the moon, and I didn’t care.

That had been in January. It was now August, and it seemed surreal to me now. It felt like a movie I’d watched. Sad, but distant. It was easier to pretend it had happened to someone else, and just focus on each day. I had enough problems to deal with - I still hadn't managed to gain back any weight, probably because I was a shitty cook living on a diet of orange juice and minute-ramen; I barely made enough to cover my cost of living and had no particular way of getting a better job; and I barely slept, plagued with nightmares.

And now I was dreaming again, the truth had slammed into my head. Bella was in so much danger. Victoria was coming for her with a newborn army, and the Cullens were long gone.

I couldn't stay away and let Bella die - let that newborn army descend upon Forks without warning.

If nothing else, I had to protect Bella. And my family. Worst-case scenario, I could trade myself for the safety of others. I could try and take Victoria, though she would most likely win, especially when I was so weak and out of shape. Death sounded very peaceful.

Maybe I’d see my baby there. And Mom.

I didn’t tell anyone I was coming home. I told the café I had a ‘sick family member’, and I didn’t know if I’d be back. I gave the same story to the family I rented my place from. And then I packed up, bought the cheapest airline ticket I could get, and went home again.

When I slept on the plane, I realized the Cullens had come back to Forks. Bella was better protected than I anticipated, but they still didn’t know what was coming for them. Not to mention the danger that Simon, Dad, and Cynthia were in.

I didn’t look like much. My hair was shorter than I had ever worn it, and I was the thinnest I had ever been - that was including the years I spent in the hospital and on the street. Dark circles had set up residence underneath my eyes. I was wearing the only pair of jeans that I fitted me, and they were wearing thin. My sweater had shrunk, leaving a bare panel of skin between my waistband and the frayed hemline. And my sneakers were held together with hope and super glue.

Rather than go home and deal with Simon and Dad, I went straight to the Cullens.

It was Esme who opened the door, blinked and gasped, pulling me into a hug I couldn’t return.

“Oh, Alice, where have you been?” Esme pulled away, smoothing my hair back from my face. “We’ve all be so worried! Come in, Jasper is going to be over the moon to see you.”

I managed a quivering smile as Esme drew me into the house, into the living room where everyone was gathered, everyone’s eyes on me.

“Alice…” Jasper went from standing in the corner to at my side, pulling me into his arms, my body stiff as I reluctantly curled against him, breathing in his scent of forest and books and something indistinguishably him. “Darlin’, where have you been?”

I just shook my head. If I spoke, I’d start crying and I’d never stop. When Jasper pulled away, he must have seen that in my face and reached up to cradle my cheek. “Are you alright?” he murmured and I let out a shuddering breath.

“You’re in danger,” I managed, pulling away from Jasper reluctantly. “Victoria is returning, she’s in the area and she has her eye on Bella. And the Benoits are coming – to destroy you, the Quiluetes, and my family.”

An hour later, Esme had put a plate of food in front of me, looking worried. I was eating, my stomach twisting at the invasion of food that wasn't bought at a convenience store.

The pasta was good, but I couldn’t enjoy it.

Dad and Simon had been so grateful that I was home, there were no questions or accusations. Just more food, a shower, and bed. Simon had checked on me half a dozen times, looking so worried.

I slept badly, shallowly, my dreams twisted around the baby, the hospital. Terror and pain that I didn’t know were memories or imagined suffering. I dreamt of blood and misery, and woke up screaming twice – the first time, I wasn’t even awake when Dad came in to try and sooth me; I woke up with him half-rocking me, smoothing my hair back and trying to calm my sobs and screams.

“It’s going to be okay, sweetheart,” he murmured.

“I wish I had died,” I sobbed, half-asleep.

“Oh, honey, don’t ever say that,” Dad said.

He managed to get me back to sleep, my hair sticking to my clammy face, before I woke up screaming again, and Simon managed to get me to take something, leaving me in a soupy state that at least kept me quiet so everyone else could sleep.

I didn’t stir again til nearly dawn, my dreams blood-splattered and full of desperation. The drugs left me boneless and vulnerable, and when I finally opened my eyes, I couldn’t scream or call for help or do anything but lie there, staring at the ceiling. My hand lay on the pillow beside me, but I stared at it as if it wasn’t even mine.

I ended up dozing a little; clearly enough that my visions kicked in – I could see Carlisle, Esme, and Jasper arriving at the house, Dad and Simon looking grim. Well, Dad looked miserable and old. Simon had this professional nurse ‘this is bad’ face on.

“How is she?” Carlisle asked, after they were invited in.

“Broken,” Dad murmured, looking worn out and distressed.

“Screaming night terrors,” Simon clarified, putting his arms around my father’s shoulders. “I ended up giving her some Valium – we’d get her back to sleep, and minutes later, the screaming would start again.”

“You drugged her?” Jasper demanded, a dangerous look in his eyes.

“We didn’t have a choice. It was Valium or I called 911,” Simon said gently. “I couldn’t treat someone for trauma in my own house at midnight. Hell, I couldn’t treat someone for trauma without a doctor present. The Valium prescription was one of Alice’s when she arrived. And she needed sleep.”

“She kept telling us she wished she had died,” Dad added. “Over and over again. It’s all she would say.”

Esme and Carlisle looked shaken, but Jasper had just shut down entirely.

I managed to drag myself out of bed, and into the shower, but eschewed clothing for a clean pair of pajama bottoms and tee, running my fingers through my hair. It needed to be washed.

My chest felt tight as I sat down in front of the food Simon had made for me. Simon was still cooking, with Dad, Carlisle, Esme, and Jasper gathered around the island with me.

I felt hollow and exhausted as I considered the plate of fruit and yogurt, along with two slices of toast. I managed a small bite and felt the cool cloud of Jasper’s gift seeping into myself, not bothering to resist.

“Where have you been, Alice?” Dad asked gently.

I flinched, and then rearranged my expression again, poking some melon with my fork. “Away,” I said softly. “Somewhere safe.”

“You weren’t safe here?” Simon asked.

I brought another bite of food to my mouth to avoid answering the question; I didn’t want to say it, but they were all watching me.

“Not anymore. Not after Christmas,” I mumbled into my fruit.

Finally, I gave up. I got up and left the table, padding up to my bedroom, where my backpack was. The folded piece of paper was filthy and crumpled, but still legible, thankfully.

No one was expecting me to return to the kitchen, clearly. I slid the folded paper across to Simon and Carlisle.

Jasper would be disgusted with me. That I’d only gotten sick because he’d left me and I had been trying to find them when they didn’t want to be found. I always knew I was twisted up and ruined inside, thanks to Mommy Dearest, but this was the proof. I had had an opportunity to give Jasper the one impossible thing, and I had fucking failed.

I missed him, I needed him. He was my other half, the lost fragment. And in two short steps, I was curled in his rather startled arms, my face half-buried in his shirt.

It took Simon and Carlisle only a moment to decipher the medical shorthand, and Simon looked up at me in horror. Carlisle just looked so sad. I let out a shuddering breath, breathing in Jasper’s scent, and waited.

“Oh, kiddo,” Simon said, looking heartbroken. “Alice, why didn’t you tell us?”

“What?” Dad said, squinting at the paper.

“Alice, have you seen a doctor since?” Carlisle asked kindly. I shook my head.

“Okay, you need to be checked out, as soon as possible,” he said.

I didn’t have any energy left, and went back upstairs. It felt like cheating, to have Carlisle and Simon to tell everyone, to do my dirty work. But the idea of voicing those thoughts, those words, made my stomach twist tightly.

My bed was cool and smelt like home. It was good to be here, to be back. That was what I was telling myself.

#alice cullen #jasper hale #jalice #ficmas #ficmas23 #my fic: hybrid #my fic: hybrid baby-verse #no more drinking before ficmas posts - my newest rule #angst

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goldeneyedgirl · 5 months

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The 2023 Ficmas Masterlist

day one: lead & follow (jessamine/alice, canon-AU)

day two: in the eye of the storm (jasper/alice, AU)

day three: the party (vampire jasper/human alice)

day four: anathema (vampire jasper/hybrid alice)

day five: smoke & mirrors (alice/jasper, canon AU)

day six: three deaths (jasper/alice/jessamine, canon AU)

day seven: atbt: all the truth that's in me (alice/jasper, canon AU)

day eight: feral jasper & mary-alice (jasper/alice, canon AU)

#ficmas #ficmas23 #jalice #alice cullen #jasper hale #twilight fic #twificmas23 #masterlist #a new age of organisation begins today #it might be updated

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goldeneyedgirl · 4 months

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TwiFicmas23 Day 9: to ground (jasper/archie)

Good evening! An early post tonight because I am fueled by chocolate frogs, the potential for some amateur surgery tonight (doctor approved, it's fine), and the promise that the holiday season is nearly upon us and I'll stop waking up in a terrified haze that I've forgotten to order something that Amazon doesn't stock locally.

It's been a weird day.

Tonight I bring you what at least three people have requested: an Attempt at Jasper/Archie. This was started for Pride and I've continued working on it. This is the first draft, so it'll undergo some polishing and edits before it hits AO3, not to mention a ream of author's notes for context.

This is my first time writing m/m, so I'm oddly fascinated with how this turned out. I think it's okay? I think my biggest issue is characterizing Archie right and making sure I capture what we know about him with what we know about Alice.

I probably need to do more world/lore building for the boys like I have with Jess and Alice, but c'est la vie. I tried and I hope for all the people that wanted this, you enjoy it!

going to ground. The motel is dim and smells damp, some rundown place halfway to Olympia that was never more than half full, used by truckers and seasonal workers on their way to Peninsula and back home again. The bedspreads were shiny, discoloured polyester; the smell of mould and stale air permeating every crevice.

Archie isn’t happy. But it’s easier to be pissed at the state of this motel to distract himself.

Jasper’s stripped to his waist in the bathroom, prolonging the inevitable. Hot water will alleviate the pain for a short time, but he’s damn well pushing it. He’s not even treating the wounds anymore; he’s just hiding.

It’s always been Jasper’s habit to go to ground when he’s injured. In Calgary, in New Hampshire, and now in Forks. He won’t - can’t - even be around the Cullens when he’s that physically vulnerable. Archie always privately wondered if Jasper brought him alone so that someone had his back, or if he knew Archie would follow him to the ends of the Earth no matter what, or maybe so that he knew that Archie was protected.

His boy was wretchedly overprotective.

Which was, frankly, the reason that they were in this mess in the first place.

Scowling, Archie nudged the bed ruffle with his toe and nodded to himself when it crinkled like plastic. This place really was a dump. Normally, Jasper would take them out in the middle of the forest somewhere, carefully chosen for their inability to be tracked. After Calgary, it had taken Archie weeks to convince Jasper to go home, that it was safe. That they were safe, Maria was gone, and the Cullens were their family - they were no danger to them, they weren’t angry or upset with them for what Maria did (though Esme had been nigh hysterical at their sudden disappearance) - and they needed to go back.

New Hampshire had been somewhat easier; it had only taken a week to get Jasper home, and that hadn’t been an emotionally loaded incident, just some territorial nomads.

And now Forks.

Jasper had driven them here, and it was an unexpected that he hadn’t simply insisted on plunging into the Olympic National Park for days on end. But maybe that was more strategy - the woods were the first place the Cullens would look. A shitty motel halfway to Olympia wouldn’t be a place anyone would come looking for them for days - especially with both Bella and Jacob wounded.

Archie scowls again, and decided he’s been patient enough. He’s not one to sulk over big things - he wants the air cleared and everything resolved. But Jasper hates arguing so much that he’ll cloister himself rather than face Archie. It doesn’t matter where, as long as he can hide - in his study, in the garage with Rose, or - apparently - in a motel bathroom only a few steps above a truck stop.

The pain would be excruciating.

He’s been in there long enough.

“Jas.” He knocks on the door, and hears nothing besides the running tap. He waits a beat before he tries the knob - surprisingly, it’s unlocked and Archie wonders if he missed Jasper unlatching it, or if he just assumed it was locked.

Jasper’s slumped against the wall, his eyes pitch-black. There’s something about them that when they’re thirsty; vampires look gaunt and slightly grey-er than usual. A little closer to dead. Probably not noticeable to humans but to him, who looks at Jasper every single day, he looks miserable.

Archie moves closer, crouching down. Jasper’s eyes are tracking him, but he says nothing.

“Show me,” Archie says gently, but Jasper’s eyes have dropped to Archie’s right arm, covered by his sweatshirt.

“Jasper, you need to let me help you.” He can smell the venom - mostly Jasper’s, but there’s a sharp, foreign note that makes Archie worry. The scent is strong enough that the wound is still open, and it’s been hours. “Please.”

“Let me see it,” Jasper says hoarsely; speaking sounds painful. He needs to hunt, on top of everything, and he can’t. Not yet. Not til they take care of this.

“You first,” Archie replies firmly, but Jasper doesn’t move, his eyes fixed on Archie’s arm.

Sighing, Archie shoves the sleeve of his sweatshirt up; there’s an old ace bandage wrapped around it whilst the skin repaired. But after he removes it, the wound is obvious - the angry purpling of the bite has faded, now that it has been cleaned of foreign venom, it’s only slightly darker and will fade completely in a few hours, especially if Archie goes hunting. It’s a shallow wound, will barely scar. Frankly, Jasper’s given him more impressive marks in bed.

But Jasper doesn’t even stop the horror from rolling off him at the sight of it.

“Your turn,” Archie says in a voice that brooks no arguments, trying to squash the irritation down. It’s been a long time since Jasper’s been this… shaken up over anything, and it’s easier to pretend that it’s him being dramatic over Archie’s bite mark right now.

Jasper nods, and gets on his knees to lean forward.

It looks exactly like Archie’s visions showed him. Worse, actually, because this is real life.

The fissure runs down his back, parallel to his spine, from where his neck and shoulder meet, to his waist. The flesh has split like a geode, and Archie can see all the petrified fat and muscle right down to the bone, with an eerie golden sheen over it all. The edges are purple-black from the foreign venom, almost blistered. In contrast, the bite mark on the back of his neck looks benign, even though it should scare him more.

The whole thing makes him feel sick and frankly, Archie doesn’t feel even a tiny bit capable of dealing with this. He would give anything to have Rose or Carlisle here to patch Jasper up, whilst he flirted and made jokes to distract him.

But Jasper wouldn’t trust them. He might respect Carlisle, and love Rose, but when it comes down to the meat of it, he doesn’t trust them like he trusts Archie.

“Don’t be mad,” Jasper says in that same hoarse, flat voice. “Please don’t be mad.”

“I’m not mad,” Archie replies, and it’s not totally a lie. He’s panicking internally, he’s still annoyed and frustrated, but he’s not angry.

Jasper lets out a sound that’s somewhere between a groan and a whine, and that pushes Archie into action - Jasper’s in pain and he’s sitting here navel-gazing.

“Come and lie on the bed, and we’ll clean this up. I promise I won’t make any moves on you,” Archie tugs him to his feet, his lame attempt at a joke falling flat. Jasper limps after him, looking miserable.

The groan Jasper lets out as he lies face-down on the bed is made uglier by the way the wound pulls and shifts as he moves. Archie’s not one with a weak stomach, but knowing that mess is attached to the person he loves most in the world… it’s hard to look at.

He almost understands why Edward’s so fixated on keeping Bella safe. If Jasper were as vulnerable as Bella…

There’s no one else to help them, so it has to be Archie.

The bag from the convenience store is on the nightstand; salt, a bottle of cheap vodka, and a tube of aloe vera. It was a goddamn crude kit; Carlisle would be horrified at the use of vodka. Actually, he’d be horrified by this whole set-up. In a perfect world, they’d be back at the Cullens and Archie would be allowed to do this properly.

But they aren’t and he can’t.

Archie had honestly never asked Jasper how they discovered flammable fluids could purge out foreign venom, and he wasn’t sure he wanted to know -the vodka would draw out any venom that stuck to the open wound, since foreign venom gained a nearly honey-like stickiness to it after a short time. The inability to purge it successfully was nearly always what caused scarring. Salt worked to purge the rest of the foreign material out of it, and aloe vera kick-started their cells healing again.

It’s not human blood; human blood would do the heavy lifting if they used that, but both of them know that it’s a slippery slope, and one that is best left alone for many reasons. The least of all is the fragile alliance they’ve formed with the Pack. Archie feels like they wouldn’t take kindly to them stealing blood from the hospital, even for injury treatment, so he didn’t even suggest it.

Carlisle would adore to discuss all of this in great detail - he’s been fixated on vampire healing principles for years. Archie should suggest it to Jasper as a holiday gift for next year. Hell, one page of notes would keep Carlisle and Eleazer occupied for days.

The worst part of treating Jasper, Archie decides as he very quickly douses Jasper’s back in salt and alcohol, is the fact that Jasper stays silent. Protesting the pain, even the smallest noise, is a sign of weakness. The only indication of the agony that he’s in is the tightening of his back and arm muscles.

So Archie talks. Everything spills out, all the inane shit that goes through his head - that he’s still disappointed that Bella didn't want to go to senior prom because the dress he had in mind would have been a showstopper, and no he wasn’t going to use it for her wedding dress because that dress has been drawn and cut for a while now.

He complains about the fight, that the wolves blocked his visions and there were one or two half-visions that looked like they spelt doom but nothing came to pass so now he’s reconsidering the accuracy. Or was the fact the wolves are unknowable affecting the outcome?

He’ll have fun debating that one with Edward at some point.

Archie isn’t sure when he runs out of easy words to say, but it does happen as he watches the foreign venom burn out of the fissure, and the room is silent. The only real communication they have is Archie’s hand rubbing Jasper’s shoulder soothingly; the only form of reassurance that he can offer right now. Too many things need to be said. Even more need to not be said.

So, they sit in silence. When the wounds look clear, Archie carefully helps Jasper lie back on the bed. It’ll take a while for them to heal, and it’s draining - Jasper told him that years ago. He’ll need to hunt immediately after this. Jasper lies back with a sigh, a breath released now that the worst of the pain has been dealt with, and closes his eyes. Archie takes up his spot in the rancid-looking armchair, hugging his knees to his chest, and waits.

Jasper breaks the silence after a couple of hours.

“Do you want to talk about it?” He sounds clearer, better, and it’s a tangible relief. Archie immediately crawls onto the bed, motioning for Jasper to lean forward so he can check his back. The fissure already looks so much better; the bite too has lightened, but both are going to leave a nasty scar.

“You still need to hunt,” Archie informs him, absently pressing a kiss to Jasper’s shoulder blade before settling Jasper back against the pillows.

He’s delicious and it doesn’t matter how many years pass, Archie still gets butterflies looking at him. Shirtless and in worn out jeans really is his very best look. If this were any other moment, just a quick getaway for some privacy…

But it isn’t.

“Talk to me,” Jasper said insistently, his hand reaching up to cup Archie’s cheek. “I know you’re still mad.”

“It was a stupid fucking risk,” Archie says precisely, but without the vehemence he had earlier. “I had everything under control. One bite is not the end of the world.”

“It is to me,” Jasper said simply. “When it’s you.”

Archie closed his eyes to drag up some patience. “Jasper. One bite verses this,” he waved his hand over him. “You were mauled. It was opportunistic and you could have gotten killed.” His voice rises and he has to stop himself, keep his temper. It’s the fear of what could have happened that makes him angry, he knows that. “I have seen you get hurt so many times over the years… so many near misses, so many times you’ve been so close to not coming back, not being there, that the fact you take those risks…”

He closes his eyes for a moment to compose himself, and instinctively lies next to Jasper, curled to rest his head on Jasper’s shoulder. It brings back memories, the scent of Jasper’s skin (the same leather-sun-wood he’s known for decades, but tinged with the venom and alcohol that leaves him uneasy) not quite soothing Archie’s anxiety. He remembers the visions where Jasper was too far gone to fight but he still went into battle. How many times did he nearly lose his head, did he nearly get overrun by enemy soldiers desperate to prove themselves by bringing down the Major of Monterrey?

How many times did Archie watch everything he ever wanted fade away for a second, because Jasper took a stupid fucking risk? And he was certain those days were over so many times - when they met; Ohio in ’49; Calgary is ’76; New Hampshire in ’81, and now Forks. It just never stops; it’s always going to linger, that idea that Jasper is never going to be safe, never going to be protected.

“If you’d been able to see it, would you have stopped me?” Jasper asks softly, one arm wrapping around Archie.

“Duh.” He’s tracing the scars on Jasper’s chest now, scars he knows so well he could draw them with his eyes closed - an absent gesture that calms him. “You never would have noticed.”

“Exactly.” Jasper waits for Archie to acknowledge his point, but he doesn’t look up. “I saw what was happening and I stopped it. The same way you would have for me.”

“But you were…” Archie scrunches his eyes up and turns away. “I would have been okay. One bite is nothing compared to all of this!”

Maybe this will turn into a proper argument. They haven’t had one since Calgary. Maybe they’re due for one.

“Come back,” Jasper says, and he sounds so tired that Archie rolls back over reflexively, but sprawled half-across Jasper’s chest this time, staring up into Jasper’s black eyes.

“I’ve seen arm bites go terribly, terribly wrong,” Jasper said in that low voice that he used just for Archie’s ears; intimate and almost dark. “You’ve seen Peter’s scars; that’s one of the better outcomes from a bad bite. And there is no part of me I wouldn’t sacrifice to make sure you aren’t the one with a mutilated arm - if we managed to save your arm at all. That newborn wasn’t going to just bite you; he was prepared to take his pound of flesh, and I…

“The injuries I’ve seen on the battlefield… Arch, I know what our venom can do to vampire skin. I’ve seen it go half necrotic, I’ve seen it eat through flesh until you just have to amputate at the shoulder. Neither Maria or I ever figured out why that happened to some bites. Only that it did and there was nothing we could do. It might just be a bite, but I couldn’t risk it. I wouldn’t risk anything about you, ever.”

Archie leads out a huff of breath and Jasper chuckles, brushing his hair from his face.

“I’m not gonna lie to you, it got away from me for a moment,” Jasper continued, his hand cupping Archie’s face again. “But I knew you were there and you had my back and that everything was going to be okay as long as you were.”

“You know that it’s the same for me, right? That it’s only going to be okay for me if you are?” Archie’s contemplating kissing him right now, but not if that’s going to interrupt this talk so that they have to finish it later. “I need you to… I need you to be selfish and be safe. Every time I think it’s gonna be okay and we don’t have to worry about dying any more, something changes and I’m tired, Jas. I’m so, so tired.”

Jasper ghosts a kiss over Archie’s cheek, and it’s not enough. “I’m never going to apologise for protecting you, and I’m never going to stop making sure you’re okay,” Jasper murmured, frowning as he shifted on the bed to redistribute their weight. “But I swear I will always come back to you, okay? When it’s our time, we’ll go together.”

Archie nods, and that’s when Jasper surprises him by pulling him flush and kissing him hard. It’s the kind of kiss that is always a precursor for more, especially if Jasper’s hand on his belt is any indication of how the rest of the night is going to go.

And he’s okay with that, as long as Jasper doesn’t mess up his back any worse.

Tomorrow, he’s going to have to check in with their family, reassure them that everything is okay, and drag Jasper home and pretend they just ran off to fuck in the woods and everything is fine. There were no grievous bodily wounds tended to in a rank little highway motel, there were no meltdowns.

But right now, he’s going to take this kiss, and the next one, and just be here and now, with the battle over and won and everyone in one piece. He’s going to get his boy naked and have one of those nights they don’t get to have very often in a family of seven where they don’t have to be quiet or subtle or keep one ear out for potential interruptions.

And he’s going to turn those words over in his mind - “When it’s our time, we’ll go together” - warm and safe, until he can trust and believe that they aren’t just a promise, but their future.

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goldeneyedgirl · 4 months

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TwiFicmas Redux: Shadow To Light

Happy New Year to everyone, and I hope 2024 is a beautiful and positive year for everyone - I think we've all earned it.

As promised, as an auspicious offering, the first 1000 words of the STL Ch 13 draft. Mary-Alice is being profoundly difficult about this chapter, but she's allowed to be a little bit messy.

Here's to a great year with more regular updates and more of my self indulgent nonsense ;)

Fourteen. Starved for so long of beauty

Once upon a time, a lifetime ago, she made a choice. It was an easy choice to make, because it was the right one. Because she didn’t truly know what came next; her certainty in her own visions, her certainty in who she was going to be - who the Major was going to be - had made her confident.

(She doesn’t regret it, she would never wish to go back and make a different decision. She just wishes… she just wishes that she knew better what was to come. What it was like to be stripped right down to the bone, layer by layer, from loneliness and violence and hopelessness. She wishes she’d read the contract she was signing in blood and tears and time, just so she could look fate in dead in the eye and make the same choice without a second thought.)

The Major smells like… he smells like something she doesn’t want to acknowledge.

(He smells like home.)

—

She feels silly after the worst of her panic attack is over, and the Major is there next to her with his arm around her. She feels utterly ridiculous, actually - the stolen t-shirt in her arms, curled against him so tightly… She almost feels ashamed.

(Except… she’s frustrated. She wants to demand answers - when is she allowed to fall down? When is she allowed to break apart and have someone else put together the pieces? In more than eighty years, it’s always been up to her to maintain control, to be the thing that bends but does not break and she’s so tired. But she’s also supposed to be better than this. Isn’t that what the Major always said? Why Peter always resented her? Even Maria noticed. Mary-Alice is sturdy, reliable, consistent. If she falls, she gets back up. It… it would just be nice not to, just once.)

“How are you feeling?”

The Major’s voice is warm and kind and it almost makes her feel less pitiful.

Almost.

“Present.” Her voice is quiet but her tone is clipped and distant, and she regrets it when she feels him withdraw slightly. She’s wrecking this, like she wrecks everything. It’s all she ever does.

(Maybe that’s why she was such a good soldier; she knows exactly how to ruin things.)

But the Major doesn’t leave. He just shifts so he’s not pressed quite so close, his cheek no longer resting against her hair. But his arm is still around her.

“Do you need to hunt?” He asks, and she doesn’t know. Everything feels odd and off balance and maybe she’s not as back as she originally thought.

So she doesn’t answer. She just rests her head back against the wall and closes her eyes.

The Major watches her for a moment before looking away. “When I met the Cullens,” he begins in a gentle voice, “I swear Esme only made Carlisle approach me because I resembled a drowned cat. Hadn’t stopped raining on the East Coast for weeks, and I’d been roaming the woods the entire time. I was disgusting. Maria would have thrown a bucket of water at my head weeks before if we’d been back home.

“And Esme took one look at me and whisper-bullied Carlisle into approaching me, like I couldn’t hear every single word. She kept saying that I looked cold.” The Major chuckles and she’s close enough that she feels the vibrations through his chest and it’s… it’s not unpleasant.

It’s strange being this close to another person and not being on edge. Not waiting for the killing blow, trying to figure out how to get to their throat first. Making sure that she knows exactly where their hands and teeth are, that she’s prepared for their next movement, for the tightening of their muscles before they lunge…

(It’s very strange being this close to someone, at all. She prefers to keep her distance normally. But this… it’s not the bad kind of strange, she doesn’t think. She’s just so intensely aware of him.)

“Just imagine it, will you - Esme wearing a tweed coat and riding boots and a hat to go hunting, and I look like a monster who spent a week sleeping in a swamp,” the Major continued, “And she was worried about me, like I was a soggy kitten.”

She can imagine it, honestly; his hair sticking to his face, and that gaunt, murderous look he got on his face when he was thirsty. Weeks of grime pressed into his clothing, his skin, looking like the monster from an old story or some mythological horror rising from the riverbed. Nothing sympathetic or pitiable about him for most people.

Right now, she feels oddly grateful to Esme for looking past all of that and seeing the Major as he could be.

“And you followed them home?” She tries to make the words sound light-hearted, but they fall flat and ugly, and she wants to take them back.

That makes the Major laugh out loud, a rumble against her side that is startling and she jumps a little.

“No. I told them to fuck off and leave me be; I had to tell them that a few times over the years until I gave in and talked to them. Let Esme convince me that taking a shower and accepting new clothing was a right and not charity. Let Carlisle remind me that I owed them nothing by ‘visiting’ with them. It took a long time for them to lure me over the threshold.” The Major takes her hand in his; his thumb smooths over a patch of scar tissue, a repetitive motion that feels… soft. Nice. “I think in the end, I hinted that I was ready for them to ask me to stay with them. I don’t think I was subtle about it either.”

“They didn’t ask you before then?” Mary-Alice feels the frustration boil for a second. She watched as much as she could bring herself to, for many years, and there are pieces that she’s missing. They just weren’t important enough for her to see, or something changed and recalling what she’d politely dismissed was too difficult.

(She had entrusted the Major to the Cullens. It didn’t matter that they had had no idea, all those years ago, her visions had made the contract. And even now, knowing that it all came together the way it was supposed to, it upsets her that he had to wait for so long to be taken home to his family.)

#alice cullen #jasper hale #twilight fic #jalice #my fic: shadow to light #ficmas23 #ficmas #mary-alice getting frustrated with the cullens for not immediately housing and clothing jasper on the spot #despite the fact that jasper had the house manners of a feral bobcat at the time #esme looking at a half-feral nomad and turning to carlisle - “can i keep him? i'll take good care of him. rose needs a new brother.”#meanwhile carlisle is nervous - does he approach peacefully or flee the state with his family? southern veterans are rare but dangerous #jasper's telling this story and wondering if anyone will notice if he just moves into the closet with mary-alice for the next few days #it's a sacrifice he's willing to make

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goldeneyedgirl · 5 months

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TwiFicmas23 Day 2: In the Dark of the Night 2 (Eye of the Storm)

Good evening everyone! I hope your December is going well and slightly more organized than mine! I am also exhausted, so please excuse any ridiculous errors.

Tonight, we have a section from the sequel to In the Dark of the Night; Cryptid Alice-verse is a favorite of mine - the world is bonkers, Alice is nuts, and Jasper is just here for a good time. This was requested by an anon early in the year, and I was happy to add it to the list. (Heads up, for 2024, I am changing how ficmas requests work for my own sanity.)

This is a very early first draft of this fic, so everything and anything is liable to be retconned but we're here for vibes above all else. I highly recommend reading the first story or this is going to be extra weird.

tw: allusions to rape & abuse; generalized descriptions of body horror.

eye of the storm.

The coloured lights flash over the room at random - hundreds of sweaty, reeking human bodies and the kind of music that rattles its way through your bones. It’s loud and dark and has become one of Alice’s favourite places in a very long time. The raves in Berlin - and most of Europe - are the easiest places to hunt.

The music is good, too. And she loves to dance.

She blends in well enough, with the skin-tight skirt and the top that only covers up the bare minimum, and the artfully smudged makeup. Enticing enough to catch attention, but not memorable enough that she’s at risk. Not that it would matter that much, but she prefers to be just another face in the crowd.

It allows her to hunt for longer in one place, when she’s utterly forgettable.

She orders a drink, and then another, because human alcohol makes her feel warm and her limbs feel looser. It makes dancing better, and the people easier with her - some of them can sense that she is not like them, that she is something old and complex and terrible. The alcohol makes her more likeable, more human, even when it’s her imbibing it.

But her head is still clear when she finds a mark, when he sidles up to her with undeserved confidence. He’s the kind of smug that comes from money and a lack of consequences. She doesn’t miss the pill in her next drink or the way his smile widens when she tosses the drink back like water. The effect of the pill is minimal on her; it manifests several moments later, when they’re sneaking upstairs to the store rooms, past the velvet rope blocking the narrow steps. She stumbles on her high heels and he chuckles low; unfriendly and the kind of laugh that would chill anyone else.

And then her dizziness passes, and she almost pities him.

It goes the same way as always - he thinks he’s got the upper hand; she acts enthusiastic to his ministrations and she knows he almost feels bad - mostly that he wasted whatever tranquilliser he slipped into her drink, not about the harm he planned for her.

Her venom tingles on his lips and tongue, and he blames the drink or five he’s had and settles in.

She thinks about asking him some questions once her venom addles him, questions she shouldn’t know to ask. About girls and pills, about hurting and pain, about the haunted little sister he’s not allowed to see anymore.

But that’s not why she’s here, and would just agitate him. It always gets messy when they get agitated; she hates it when they panic.

Luckily, he’s easily subdued because she’s absolutely starving. Probably the alcohol. Her venom does funny things when alcohol is in the mix.

She’s not in the mood to take her time and be neat about this; she tears into him like an animal - first is that ephemeral part of him that humans have no word for him. The sacred part, similar to a soul. The pain of that defies understanding; she remembers hers being flayed from her being, once. Punishment for poor judgement. Humans’ are delicious and she savours it.

It’s all over too quickly, and she leaves him behind without looking back - lying in the middle of that dark, dirty room with the music ponding through the floor. His throat ripped out and ragged, and his chest cavity open, gleaming wet and red but hollowed out for her hunger. His left femur is broken; a rather pitiful attempt at a protest.

The blood on her skin and in her hair sinks in, pulled through to other hungry parts of her in different points of time and space. She’s nothing and nobody, and no one pays attention as she slips back to the bar for one last drink; sugar sweet enough to make her teeth ache but with that hot dry burn she enjoys more than she should.

It’ll be at least a day, if not two, before they find him. A horrific death, the work of a psychopath. A little sister will hide in her bed to muffle her relief that he’s gone and never, ever coming home. Almost a dozen girls will smile at the knowledge that he might not face a judge and jury, but something took their pound of flesh.

But her messiness means that she’ll only have another night or two before she has to move on. She’ll eat again, and that should last her for a while.

A pity. She liked Berlin.

—

The next night - her grand finale before she leaves for Norway - is a grown-ass man who shouldn’t be offering her the things he whispers in her ear, shouldn’t be sliding his hands up her stocking-clad leg - shouldn’t have even approached her and brazenly taken a seat at her booth.

This time, it’s in an all-night coffee shop with dim lighting and a faint haze that comes from carelessly bold patrons lighting up at the late hour. She demurs and gives the old pervert every opportunity to leave, but he laughs at her and boxes her into the booth, and the look in his eyes is hard and absolute.

She’s never been fixed in time and space, so she can see exactly the path that this old bastard has planned for her - either she consents or he takes it by force. He will hurt her if he needs to, like he has to other young girls before, some of them his students.

The shadow he casts has his wife, his daughter, his mother cowering from rage and violence. He won’t be missed. So she pretends to be afraid, to be cowed by his aggression, allows him to drag her out of the booth by her elbow. She lets the flesh mottle and bruise, lets him feel like the predator.

She lets it last as long as it takes for him to find a place where no one will hear her scream. She even lets him push her out of her shoes, but that’s no loss - she wishes she’d gotten the purple.

And then when he’s staring down at her, his eyes greedy and violent, she smiles and she takes her prize.

He dies in that alley, his eyes wide in terror as he faces down the kind of demon that are only meant to be found in books. Disappointingly, the honour of the killing blow goes to the dumpster he fell again, slamming his neck against the edge hard enough to break bones. She always likes the sound and the flavour when their deaths are her own.

He’s gone before she even tastes him; she’d wish him a speedy trip to hell, but some say that’s where she was born. And the parts of his essence and soul she’s going to tear into… there won’t be anything but shreds of him left to dissolve into the air.

“Alice.”

The call is soft and so far away and blows away the dust of an open path in her mind, a singing thread, that she had not forgotten but had long since made peace with its silence. It had been a shrine to something sacred, and she almost gasps out loud at its echo in her mind. She wants to call back, to holler down that open path, but she pauses, blood running down her face, as she listens.

The words are faint, but heartfelt and it hurts her own head to widen that path. It’s been a while and, unlike her others, she’s only ever opened one path to one soul. One person. She’s out of practice, and it’s like untrained muscles screaming at a sudden lurch into a run.

“Alice, I always hoped we’d cross paths again.”

The regret is heavy in his thoughts, and she presses closer, trying to see through his eyes. It’s blurry and white and green.

“I’m sorry.”

Oh, he tastes like forest and sunshine and leather on the back of her tongue, and she missed him. He was supposed to call for her decades ago.

But why now?

“You could have helped us. Hell, you probably could have saved us.”

That’s when he touches the ribbon in his pocket. Her ribbon, the one she left him with. A talisman, a physical anchor, a key that reinforces the path; she’s relieved he kept it. Oddly touched that he’s carrying it, but it makes everything easier for her. Clever boy; his hand on the ribbon is enough for her to grasp onto, to pull a fragment of herself into the scene in his mind.

“I wish you were here.”

The scene sharpens as if she is standing there in the snow, barefoot, facing…

Facing down the thrice-cursed Volturi and their entire court.

What has happened?

Aro’s smile is wide and that of a crocodile about to close its maw around the thing it wants the most. And that thing includes Jasper.

The entire city of Berlin shudders for a moment, something that will later be uneasily explained away as an earthquake, but is her rage that shakes the city at its core because she can reel it back inside of herself.

A shiver, not a storm.

Not yet, at least.

Aro, who has made himself untouchable over the centuries, and still manages to strike wildly at them, her and her kin. His blows rarely kill but they do cut and wound; her own scars are still fresh enough in her mind. One of the downsides of being outside of time; the memories never age right.

The Old Ones have warned them all not to go after Aro; they are allowed only defence, never offence. They say that creatures like the Volturi, full of avarice and wrath, will pave their own downfall. They have seen it so many times before; Aro and his kin will burn themselves out, and another will take their place.

The Old Ones and the Eternal Sleeping will not rise for anything short of war, and it will not be a war of their own making. That is the first law, and one she has obeyed.

But this… Jasper is hers. Marked and strung together, crudely but holding fast. He is hers to defend above all else, and no one can do anything about that. She just wants to know why Aro has come after Jasper and the Cullens. What she knows about the Cullens is vague; mostly gleaned from other fragments of herself, other lives they lived. They are peaceful people with too much money and little concern for those outside themselves, no matter what they tell themselves. They are human, it is their nature. But she is certain that they are not a danger. Not to Aro, not to the human population, not to anyone. What flimsy excuse is Aro using now? A desire for more gifted bodyguards? More power and land and wealth?

Whatever he wants, it’s nothing good.

The words are muffled, and she takes a moment to look over at Jasper. He’s standing there beside her, stoic and staring, not flinching. The anger streaming off him is palpable and she wishes she’d seen him before now.

You could have called me at any time, Jasper. Just to talk, just to see how I am. I would have come in a second. I wondered if you’d forgot about me, truly. I supposed I am flattered by the fact I am your last regret, your longing thought, though.

She shudders and looks around, her senses stretching. He’s right where he’s supposed to be, and that’s a long, long way from Berlin. It’s been a long time since she had to take herself apart this way, and there’s a risk. A price that has to be paid, and she’s not unwilling to pay it, if he’s amendable.

“Jasper?”

Of all the ways that Jasper thought he would die, this is not it. Not standing shoulder-to-shoulder with his closest people, staring down the army - there is no other word for what Aro has brought, larger than the biggest Southern army Jasper both faced and wielded - of Volterra, trying to defend the life of a half-breed child with ribbons in her hair and pompoms on her coat.

This is not a trial. This is an execution, a public one as a reminder that they were here by the grace of Aro’s will and that no one is safe if the King of Volterra is displeased.

He’s sorry he brought Peter and Charlotte into this mess. He should have known better than to trust that the Volturi would play by the rules, especially when the Volturi wrote the rulebook.

No, this is not how he thought his death would go.

But to be fair, he thought that once back in Texas when he was faced with three red-eyed women with smiles full of promises. So perhaps he should be more surprised that he didn’t see this coming.

Edward gives him a pinched smile that is more of a grimace. Aro is still talking, still taking this opportunity to remind everyone who he is, that he should be considered a wise and compassionate leader.

He wonders if Marcus considers him that; the man looks like a shadow, like the death of all things. Jasper has heard rumours about Didyme’s demise; some of them are farfetched, ridiculous even. But others… the way Aro smiles at the Cullens and their friends, Jasper cannot doubt that he is capable of terrible things.

“Of course, there is the hidden crime, one that I’m not even certain that you yourself are aware of, dear Carlisle,” Aro smiles benevolently, but there is no kindness in his emotions. He’s angry and jealous and greedy; his gaze is flickering over all that have gathered here, for the Cullens, as if

“You have seen my thoughts, you know of all our doings,” Carlisle intoned stoically.

“Of course, my friend! And I am delighted to discover the joy and miracle that is young Renesmee,” Aro beamed at the child, clutching tightly to Bella. “I trust that you have no comprehension about what is going on, and that loyalty to our long friendship is cherished, Carlisle.

“However, the crimes that are occurring under your nose are ones that risk not only our world, but the human one also - they are toying with things that should never be disturbed. It is an act of violence, of terrorism, unspeakable evil…

“The oldest creatures that roamed this earth, they were dangerous. Monstrous in a way that we cannot comprehend. Ungovernable. Very, very powerful in ways that have been lost to us before the first vampire walked the earth,” Aro spread his arms out, as if he is performing for a crowd. And perhaps he is. “Many of those creatures are long gone, but there are a small few that still exist amongst us. We have tried to protect our kind from them, to exterminate them to protect our secret and to protect our kind from them. They cannot be reasoned with. They are dangerous to everything we hold dear.”

Aro has everyone’s attention with that little speak, but all he can think of is a kiss that stole his mind and his will. Of limbs snapping and cracking around too-many joints, and those big eyes, with that knowing smirk. Of blood that was too hot, and the puff of a heartbeat in the back of his mind.

Of something that lasted a night, however warped and strange it turned out, that marked his memories indelibly.

The ribbons twists through his fingers.

“…And yet, as I stand here, one of your friends, Carlisle, has summoned one, called one here. Is that not an act of war in itself, dear Carlisle?”

Carlisle splutters, the denial genuine and frustrated. “Aro, you’re being ridiculous!”

“I’ve been tracking this particular one for many years. She possesses a skillset that is very… dangerous if left unmonitored. Her anchor lies here, we’ve traced it. And, dear Carlisle, I believe you when you say you are ignorant of all of this. But someone here has betrayed you, and they alone should pay the price."

Aro stares at them, all good humour gone, and not a single one of them understands what he asks. Except him.

He knows exactly what - exactly who - Aro is searching for.

Alice.

It’s been a long time. Since he saw her. Not since he thought of her - she is one of those people who lingers in the memory; it seems impossible that it was just one night, all those years ago. Her presence always lingered; like she fundamentally changed him, changed everything, the second she hitched a ride in that truck.

“I was… in hiding. Then I was exposed. Then I made a choice.”

“There are so many names for us, Jasper. I’d prefer if you just used mine.”

And he doesn’t understand this at all. That Aro has dragged the entire court here, across the fucking world, under the guise of a trial because of Renesmee’s existence and now, suddenly, Renesmee doesn’t matter.

It was no secret that Aro was looking for an excuse. Of course she doesn’t matter. He knows that there are much more terrible, unseen things out there than a little half-breed girl.

(He had been prepared for that, had waited curiously to see if Renesmee came out a monstrosity, an abomination that had too long limbs and a void where her eyes should be. He had been oddly disappointed how utterly mundane she was, as if she was the key to something, to better understanding of things that were probably best left alone. Edward have been confused but annoyed at his reaction and Jasper hadn’t bothered to explain.)

Aro knows as well as Jasper himself that Carlisle would never allow Renesmee to become something dangerous. He would sooner build her a gilded cage somewhere far away than allow Renesmee to do harm to human beings.

Carlisle knows it as well as Jasper; that it wouldn’t be Jasper’s hands left to break Renesmee if she’s too strong, too dangerous, too unreasonable. It will be Carlisle’s, with a tender kiss and a prayer for her redemption. Aro sees Carlisle as weak and easily manipulated, and the rest of the family sees Carlisle as a pacifist, as a champion of life beyond all else.

And Jasper sees him as a father who will protect his family from anything, even their own poor choices. As a doctor who recognises that to save a life, sometimes you must amputate, and Jasper is surprised no one else sees that in him. That they call him ‘doctor’, but they only see the man of faith.

But he digresses. Aro has come here and it is not solely for Bella or Edward or Renesmee. It is for Alice, and she isn’t here. The Cullens have never met her, and he’s never told them about her. What would he say - “I met a demon-god-monster on a highway, and she was beautiful? We talked and argued and fucked, and then we parted ways. And I’ve never forgotten her”? They’d think he was crazier than ever.

He’s always tasted arsenic on everything, since that terrible kiss. Always heard that faint heartbeat in his mind. Kept a ragged ribbon to worry at, looped around his keys, in his pocket for fifty something years.

Alice…

They are going to fight and they are going to die because no one else here has the answers Aro wants, and Jasper is never going to breathe a word. The Volturi numbers into the forties, with the entire court and their witnesses. There just aren’t enough of them to win this.

He should have fetched Maria, should have rounded up every stray, every nomad, every disenfranchised asshole this side of Monterrey for this debacle.

Alice, I always hoped we’d cross paths again. I’m sorry.

“...Jasper?”

“Alice…”

The heartbeat in his head is beating louder, and the taste of her venom is strong on the back of his tongue.

Alice.

—

If only a reunion could have been one of a time-stopping kiss, of being able to look the other in the eyes and say, “I’m so glad you’re safe, that you’re well. I missed you.”

Instead, it is this.

#alice cullen #jasper hale #jalice #alice/jasper #twilight fic #ficmas23 #ficmas #my fic: in the dark of the night #cryptid alice #jasper will absolutely simp for alice as long as it doesn't involve mind-control #i have so many notes on this world and how alice works #wips #someone buy aro a puppy so he stops collecting people #and i use 'people' in the loosest possible way considering alice is most definitely not considered 'people' in this fic #alice is going to look at ness and go “oh a dhampir. they've mostly died out but you can use an ordinary bug spray to get rid of it.”

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goldeneyedgirl · 4 months

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TwiFicmas23 Day 7: ATBT (all the truth that's in me)

Good evening! Tonight I've got All These Broken Things, with a brand new portion from the second draft. I'm really excited about how this fits into the fic because it really sets up the 'healing' character arc and the part it replaces wasn't nearly as interesting or character-driven.

I hope everyone is well and having a nice holiday period, whatever that looks like.

all the truth that's in me.

five years post-breaking dawn.

The notes start showing up late spring, in dirty and crumpled envelopes with the address written in unsteady letters. There is no pattern to their arrival - three might arrive one week, and then it might be months until another appears. All of them are addressed to him, and they have no return address with postmarks from all over the country. Several of them arrive postage-due, and it’s all very strange, but no one says anything.

They know who they’re from, and so does he.

And it’s always a postcard-sized page torn from a sketchbook with a simple pencil drawing. No letters or signature. Just the drawing.

(He’s not sure what they are supposed to mean, at first - a cloudy night sky framed in treetops; hand prints sunk into the mud. His face sketched smiling warmly at something off the page. They are oddly unsettling, and he’s not sure what to make of them, or why she’s sending them. But he keeps them in his desk drawer, away from prying eyes.)

They keep coming. A dead body with the neck snapped. Blood on thin hands. Jumping into the river and being dragged by the current. A dress that doesn’t quite fit. All sketched out, devoid of colour, but so vivid and detailed that it doesn’t matter. He can see it all as if it’s a still photograph; she’s talented even beyond the skills of a vampire.

But he doesn’t know what Alice is trying to tell him. Is she showing him where she’s going? What she’s doing? It’s all disjointed and strange and he wishes he could ask her.

(He doesn't care if she's stopped hunting animals. It's not going to shock or disgust him if she has. He hopes she knows that.)

The pile of pages keeps on growing and it takes more than a dozen for him to realise Alice never draws herself. He sees her hands and feet, but there are no drawings of her face. No real reassurance in the images that she’s okay.

It still doesn’t feel like the reason she’s sending them.

(The rest of the family want to know exactly what she’s sending him, but they know better than to ask. Perhaps they are imagining short letters full of pleasantries that at least makes him feel confident in her path forward. Or marks on a map so that he knows where to find her. Both things that he would prefer so at least he knows that she’s not out there miserable and suffering - which is what he assumes is the truth. She never asked them for help before.)

He doesn’t understand.

The next four arrive in a row, one after the other from Tuesday to Friday.

The first one is of a diner. People hunched over soup bowls and coffee, the checkerboard floors, the waitresses doling out coffee.

He doesn’t recognize the place until the second card and it’s like being thrown back in time, into his most shameful memory. He knows that diner, he remembers that night and what he did there. It weighs as heavily on him as a lot of the things he did in the South.

He feels sick looking at the drawing, at the rendering of his rain-soaked self walking through the door. He doesn’t need another card, he wants to tear this one up. He hates it, hates the fact that Alice saw this, hates the fact that she found a red pencil just for his eyes. And he hates that the next card that he gets will show him exactly what he’s capable of, damning evidence of one of the most terrible things he’s ever done. A page scrawled over in red, letting him know that she knows his past, knows what kind of man he chose to be.

The shame is stifling, and it takes hours for him to calm down enough to venture out of his study. He’s confused and oddly hurt that she felt the need to send him this, even as the calmer, more rational voice in his head reminds him that she is most likely still upset and hurt by him and his actions in Forks. That if lashing out with the truth, with his truth, hurts so badly then that is his fault for being such a monster in the first place.

Esme notices how unsettled he is, but she doesn’t ask. Of the whole family, she and Jasper are the two who took Alice’s departure the hardest. The rest of the family were confused and hurt - but Carlisle was very much the kind of person who believed that the door was always open to Alice as a daughter, a sister, or as a friend, and that sometimes paths divert. Rosalie and Edward saw it as a betrayal, that Alice had rejected their offering of family, and weren’t interested or invested in her return. Emmett just shrugged and said that he hoped she was doing better. And Bella just admitted that Alice had scared her when she was a human because of everything that happened with James.

He doesn’t want to talk to Esme about the drawings. Alice addressed them to him and to him alone. And he’s still not sure what the message is, beyond the diner. He doesn’t want Esme speculating, inspecting them for clues. They’re his, and his alone, to riddle out for a reason.

It’s less than a day before the next one arrives, and he practically snatches it from Esme’s hand, tension in every movement - obvious enough that Rosalie gives him a funny look but he doesn’t want to explain.

He sits in his study with the door locked, and it still takes time to convince himself to open it, to see her beautiful rendering of the diner awash in the blood of twelve innocent people. A place he set fire to as soon as he could stand. It had been in all the papers, the gas-line explosion in Philadelphia that killed everyone inside.

Jasper never returned to that city, and has refused to live there ever since.

He finally opens the envelope and flips over the paper.

It’s not…

It’s wrong. It’s not what happened.

The page she has sent has him sitting in the window of the diner, across from her; the angle is such that her hands are reaching out to him, wearing gloves with tiny buttons. The closest thing he has to a drawing of her face is her fuzzy reflection in the rain-flecked glass.

The look on his face in the drawing is unfamiliar. It’s suspicious and incredulous but so very tired. He’s forgotten how gaunt he looked in those days, the strain of everything written across his face.

(He understands even less than he did before, but if she means it as some kind of comfort to him, he appreciates the clumsy attempt. He murdered twelve people that night, a hysterical panic attack that was over in less than twenty seconds, and left him shaking in the corner of the diner. Ten minutes after he walked in, the building was on fire, and he was half a city away.)

It still feels like he’s missing something about all of the cards. He could ask the others, but he doesn’t want to. He doesn’t want his siblings to look at him like he’s crazy or a fool, and explain them so simply and obviously. He couldn’t stand it if they understood immediately and he hadn’t, when she entrusted them to him.

And then the next one arrives, and he’s absolutely bewildered. No faces, just bodies, his hand hiking up her skirt with her legs wrapped around him, pressed against dark brickwork of an alley. Even with only a fragment of the scene, it’s abundantly obvious that this is what happened after the diner and he’s oddly ashamed that this version of him that she’s made up didn’t have the grace to get a room for the night. But he’s also the one that was fucking her in the woods, so maybe he’s a hypocrite.

He’s also oddly relieved to see the return of the red pencil in the trim of her shift, and nothing else.

And that’s it for months. No more grubby envelopes with his name written neater every single time. No more postmarks darting all over the country. No more picture-riddles that he doesn’t understand. And somehow, that makes it worse. He spreads them out on the floor of his study once, in order, and tries to figure them out. There are exactly forty-eight of them, and he wonders if that’s a coincidence.

Emmett brings him the next one, nearly six months later. Marked from Washington State, and Jasper wonders with horror if she tried to go home again and they weren’t there. But it’s been years, surely… no, surely she was just passing through. She knows they aren’t there, because she sends mail to him. Just a coincidence.

There’s more than one in the envelope this time. And they’ve all been destroyed; scrunched up and torn and scribbled through. It takes him over an hour to piece together what she’s sent, to try and erase the angry lines bisecting the drawing without erasing something important.

And they’re beautiful. Vaguer and looser than the drawings before, scattered scenes across four pages of them. Her face is always obscured but the way she stands next to him, the way she’s portrayed beside him - always close, always touching - is so different to what he expected. It’s a kind of gentleness he never thought himself capable of.

Before all of this, when he considered marriage, he figured he’d be exactly as he would have been as a human husband - polite, respectful, and protective. That he was incapable of that easy back-and-forth that Esme and Carlisle shared; or that relaxed affection and camaraderie of Rosalie and Emmett. Or even the absolute devotion that Bella and Edward held together. That invisible way anyone who walked into a room could tell that they were together and in love. No, he wouldn’t have that. If there was any hope for a partner for him, they would have to accept separate rooms and that polite but firm distance between them. He would take care of them to his full ability, but that kind of intimacy would never be part of any of his relationships. He accepted that a long time ago.

And now he’s seeing that Alice, at least, believes he is capable of more. He sees that in the lines of his illustrated self, the way his body leans towards her and her to him. Touching her cheek, clasping her hand tightly, hands lacing or buttoning up a dress along a bony spine. The kind of affection and gentleness that feels alien to him, and he is bewildered and oddly frustrated and angry that Alice has imposed this possibility onto him. She’s delusional if this is what she hopes for, what she expects from him. She’s destined to be disappointed if that’s the kind of thing she wants specifically from him.

Those postcards get tossed in the drawer out of order from the others, and his mood is foul for days. He’d rather she’d sent him a portrait of his kills than this fantasy.

He ignores the next two envelopes on his desk for two weeks before he opens them. The first one he wants to burn, because it’s just him again, facing her with a totally foreign expression on his face. His own face looks like a stranger to him in that picture.

But the second one…

It’s identical to the very first one she ever sent. The night sky framed in trees. Perhaps they’ve reached the end of her fairy tale, and he can be left in peace.

The next ones take weeks to arrive, one every three days, and he’s not really sure why she’s still sending them until he opens the first one up and recoils.

James’ face fills the frame, his smile too wide, and his eyes cold. The red pencil has returned in his irises, in the corners of his mouth, and a swipe at his hairline. In all the careful renderings of his own face, Jasper had wondered if Alice was even capable of drawing the violent, monstrous truth in people. But now… the pencil has dug into the paper, and some of the lines are unsteady. There is terror and hate in every stroke, and James in that picture is the most terrible thing that can be conceived.

The rest of them are abstract, with no faces or details, but it doesn’t take much to decipher the violence and fear and misery in each one.

In the spirals within the internals of her severed wrist, the petrified flesh and muscle rippled like the rings in the stump of a tree.

In the portrait of rats, of squirrels, of scavenged meals so beneath her nature that he can see the shame in each line. In a collection of lines that he doesn’t do more than glimpse at, but the meaning and intent and occurrence are already burnt into his mind.

This is how he tortured me, degraded me, raped me. He can hear her say it, in her soft, flat voice.

And he wonders, again, why he is being shown this. Why she has gone to so much trouble, to draw and send him each page like this.

The final one arrives in spring, more than three years after they started. They’ve stopped being a curiosity in the house; Esme very occasionally asks him how Alice is, and he’s noncommittal because he truly has no idea. He knows nothing more than when they started, honestly.

There are over one hundred of them now, bound together in his desk, and he’s given up trying to understand Alice’s motive in sending them and is just compiling them for her. They are some kind of diary, and he is merely the archivist. He can do that. It makes them easier to handle, in many ways.

He doesn’t even realise the last one is the end, honestly. He’s become numb to the horror of the most recent ones, looking at them briefly before adding them to the stack - in order, of course. The previous one had them running in the forest - the red of their eyes and of Victoria’s hair bright and eye-catching amongst the black of the pencil. The drawings have gotten looser, lazier, and he wonders if she’s losing interest in the project.

The last one slides out of the envelope, and… it’s him. It’s him, in beautiful detail, the baseball bat mid-spin in his hand. He’s grinning at someone off-page, and she’s found a golden pencil for his eyes. There’s the gesture of Bella and Esme behind him, but he is the focus - soft and realistic and rendered so very carefully, right down to the scar next to his right eye.

And in the bottom left corner, in tiny letters, there is a heart with ‘Alice’ carefully signed. That’s how he knows she’s done. And that’s how he knows that it’s taken him too long to understand and that he needs… he needs someone else to look at what she’s given him and explain to him how he’s supposed to put this all together.

#alice cullen #jasper hale #jalice #the twilight saga #twilight fic #ficmas #ficmas23 #my fic: all these broken things #when jasper realises they're going to have to hold him back from finding her #alice spending hours drawing jasper just the way she sees him in her head #and ending up in tears drawing all the good times they were supposed to have after the diner #as soon as stl is complete atbt gets posted i'm very excited

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goldeneyedgirl · 4 months

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TwiFicmas23 Day 7: Hybrid Jasper

Good evening! Tonight, we have something experimental. I was trying to put together a one-shot that focused on Jasper as a hybrid because I'm equal-opportunity with my nonsense.

It's still in parts, and I'm not sure that I've captured the vibes that I'm aiming for, but we persevere. I kind of love the idea of Jasper being the vulnerable one and Alice being the protective one and wanted to riff on that concept. Some of the 'rules' and world-building are a little iffy at the moment, but first drafts always need a little work.

Thank you to everyone who has read, liked, tagged, and messaged me. Those tags and messages absolutely make my day and I love every single one of them.

I'm off to sleep off this cold, in the hopes that I can recover fast enough to finish off a couple of planned entires <3

on the edge of dawn.

His past is knotted up in secrets and lies.

And blood, he can’t forget that.

(It starts and ends in rivers of blood, in so many lives worth of blood, that it would be disingenuous not to acknowledge it.)

When he meets the eyes of the recruitment officer and tells him that he’s of-age, he’s not lying. He’s been a grown-ass man for a decade now; just because he’s sixteen in human terms is meaningless. He is more than capable of fighting a war.

(He fights to protect the people that raised him, the cousins who were really his little sisters. He goes to war to make sure that he can send money home, enough to keep them fed and warm and safe. He doesn’t need much, and it’s nothing compared to what they gave him.)

When he runs afoul of Maria, he expects it to be his death. One that is surprisingly appropriate considering his own origins. Instead, it is a fever that cooks him from the inside out, one that he stays lucid throughout, begging for answers, to explain what is happening for water, to know what has become of his poor horse. He sees a lot of people, strange people, that feel like they are all wrong but he doesn’t know why.

He thinks of his little sisters, and hopes that they’ll be okay. He saved a lot of his pay, sent it home, so maybe they will. Maybe they won’t go hungry or get sick.

Maria is exceptionally intrigued by him. This man who doesn’t die, who rambles at her, begs her. And even when the fever ebbs, his eyes are still a piercing hazel. He still bleeds and sleeps and breathes. But he feeds on blood, he can move at least as fast as the slowest newborn, and has a gift that he almost effortlessly weaponising.

He is a marvel, a miracle, a prize.

So she keeps him, and Jasper is mostly reminded of stories about hell from the Bible.

(He can never go home again.)

—

Her visions have shown him since she awoke, but he’s always been very strange in them - like he’s made of smoke and memory, faded and halfway gone. She doesn’t understand it, and it scares her - that very first vision, where he tucks a flower behind her ear and says her name - is her north star, and her touchstone. She doesn’t know who she is without him, and the idea that he could disappear terrifies her to the bone. No one else does that in her visions, and she can’t work it out.

Then she realises his eyes are hazel. Somehow she missed that little detail as she watched him fight and feed and rule Mexico in Maria’s name. They are such a beautiful shade, impossible for a vampire.

And then she sees him sleeping, and it terrifies her that he is so vulnerable and unguarded in such a terrible place. She feels sick at it.

He’s still an enigma, she still has questions, but it’s a clue. It’s something. It helps her shape and frame their future in her mind, knowing that he is not entirely the same as her.

It makes her feel useful, and that’s a nice feeling.

—

He remembers his mother a little too well. She had sharp hazel eyes and hair so light it was almost white. She’s already dead by then, washed out and still, and it’s a single frame in his memory. Something he should never be able to remember. But he does.

(Jasper remembers her best when faced with the bodies. The ones who were taken as a meal, and the ones that don’t survive the change. Bloodless and broken in every way that counts. Her face is always clearest in his mind as he gathers up those dead people, and maybe he remembers his upbringing and says a quick prayer for them. But it doesn’t take long for those prayers to be meaningless mutterings under his breath, part of the routine without any of the meaning.)

Sometimes he wonders what would have become of him in another life, with his mother perfectly dead. His grandmother had no love for him, not in those earliest days; a pious woman, she would have cast him out young if it hadn’t been for his mother’s brother.

For a long time, he’s raised by his Uncle Jed. Jed looks at him and seems to see past all the things that shouldn’t be and the things that make him strange, right down to the lost boy he is.

Jed gives him the family name - Whitlock - and puts him to work on the ranch. It’s a good life, and he likes working with animals, likes that the things that make him different make him useful on the ranch. He likes that he never has to see the old bitch of a grandmother that never let Jasper forget that he was the reason his momma was dead.

(His momma named him. She picked the name out herself and started embroidering it on a blanket because she became too ill. That’s something he tucks in the back of his mind, that possibility that maybe she didn’t hate him, maybe she even loved him.)

Then Jed meets Gracie Wainwright and Jasper is terrified that he’ll have to leave; that being reclusive and unseen is the only way he can stay there, outside San Antonio. Jed doesn’t even let him go to church except at Christmas; for Jasper to grown up, he must be invisible and it’s the one family law they all obey.

Except… Aunt Grace is his greatest champion, the mother he never had before. She is quick to teach him, bringing him books and teaching him his sums, how to sew on a button and darn a sock, and cook a hot meal - “Everyone needs to know these things Jasper, no matter where you go in life.”

And then there are the girls, he beloved cousin-sisters who climb over him and cling to him and are nothing but laughter and soft, kind things. Jed and Grace produce five of them, one after the other, all golden-eyed and blue-eyed and his favourite people in the world. Girls he would die for.

So he does. He goes and signs up for the army because he’s been grown for years, because he’s faster and stronger and doesn’t need food or water. Disease never seems to touch him, and there’s little-to-no chance that they won’t have to leave the ranch. They’ll need to eat and travel, and his stipend will help with that. It’s the least he can do.

(In her letters, Aunt Grace worries about him incessantly, tells him that Little Emma wanders around calling for him, not understanding that he’s not coming home any time soon; that his stipend has been useful in keeping them fed and well. Jed writes him and scolds him for running off and for sending them his money, but always ends his letters speaking of his pride in Jasper, and wishes to come home safely. Jasper’s always felt guilty he never made it back.)

Maria is oddly fascinated by the concept of his family, by how dearly he holds them, and how he still remembers them, still adores them. Vampire memories are supposed to decay; it’s considered a rebirth for a reason. He doesn’t know why his memories stay so vivid, but he treasures them. In the end, it’s easier and safer to stop mentioning them, to pretend the memories are starting to decay, so that Maria stops interrogating him, so that she thinks he’s finally behaving how he should.

The first time Alice sees Jasper bleed, she nearly screams. It trickles into his eyes and he swears, and she’s frozen in a vision that she cannot escape from. He swipes it off his forehead and sucks on his fingers a moment to swipe over the shallow wound.

And it’s sealed. Does he have a healing gift?

She doesn’t know.

But the visions start showing her the things that are to come. The Cullens are still a possibility, but Jasper will be more skittish about joining them, about letting others know about what he is. About having to live with more vampires after South. He’s terrified of Carlisle on so many levels, and the idea of school goes against everything his uncle taught him.

But she’s gratified that he seems happy when they’re together. That he sees something in her, the lost girl, that maybe he recognises.

I love you Jasper, and I know that we’re going to be so happy together.

And she does. She loves that he can walk in the sunlight without notice, but he still hates doing it. She loves that he has no special talent for languages, but has still managed to learn Spanish and French fluently. That he’s never learnt to dance, but he’ll dance with her. That at some point she’s going to try to cook for him, and it’ll be a messy disaster and he’ll just laugh until there are tears in his eyes and tell her that he loves her for trying.

Sometimes she wishes that she could share visions, pass them from her head to another’s because she wants to be able to save all of this for him, to show him that everything is going to be okay. Better than okay; perfect.

Peter is a blessing in disguise. At first, he’s only there to make trouble, only there to test the boundaries and question authority. He hears Jasper’s sluggish heart, sees the way Maria watches over him, and decides that Jasper is the weak link, and he just needs to exert the right amount of pressure to break him.

It goes about as well as expected, and something about the fact that Jasper is the one that returns Peter’s arm instead of throwing it on the pyre cements something between them. Loyalty, understanding, and a sense of fairness.

Friendship and brotherhood comes in time. But that evening, as Jasper realigns the joint and explains to Peter that Maria has tried to rip off Jasper’s arm before but the joints are weird because he was already venomous before being bitten, that it didn’t work. Did fuck up his shoulder for a while though.

Peter is fascinated. That he can be cut and bruised and broken, but they can’t do something as simple as tear him into pieces. That Jasper takes days to heal, and on the long sunny days they stay inside for, Jasper sleeps.

She finds him in Philadelphia and, oh, her heart breaks. In her well-loved dress and too-big shoes with the creases deep across the toes, she looks like a real lady compared to him.

He’s outside in the alley, trying to convince himself to go inside. She’s seen it happen both ways, and that’s why she was late. To make sure that either way, he’s going to find her. She refuses to risk it any other way.

In the flesh, he’s a lot further gone than she expected. Enough that she discards her coat and her shoes as she enters the alley, moving quietly towards him. He’s so thin, and his hair is a tangled mess around his face, and he bares more than one bruise. His clothes are woeful, filthy and too thin for the cool weather. He’s not going to survive another winter like this.

“Hello,” she says, and when he looks at her, his eyes almost pass as hazel, with the ring of fading red around the pupil. But he also looks hunted and haunted, like an animal backed into a corner. “I’ve been looking for you.”

She smiles at him, and he stares back for a moment before he relaxes a little. “I didn’t realise I had an appointment,” he manages, his voice cracking with disuse. He lets her get a little closer, looking at her bare feet, her green dress that has seen better days, the less-than-clean gloves, and the ribbon in her hair. Oh, and her purse.

“That’s okay, because I’m here now,” she decides to brazen it out, and goes closer to sit beside him except he stops her.

“You’ll spoil your clothing,” he says, getting to his feet and he’s so very tall. He has to look down at her, and she feels very delicate and precious as he does so.

“I have a lot of clothing to spoil,” she says honestly, and he still looks uncomfortable. “I’m Alice.”

“Hello Miss Alice.” He sounds uncertain but for her, it’s the most beautiful sound because it’s the very first time that she’s ever heard him speak her name out loud.

—

#jasper hale #alice cullen #jalice #my fic: hybrid jasper #ficmas #ficmas23 #twificmas23 #jasper being 'special' would make maria even more posessive #and peter more protective #and alice going 'oh no i have to look after both of us' when jasper picks a fight and ends up with a bloody nose #poor alice trying to make pancakes and it going so so wrong #alice and jasper trying to work out how to conceal his condition so the cullens don't find out #i will have so uch fun finishing this

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goldeneyedgirl · 5 months

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TwiFicmas23 Day 3: Hybrid (The Party)

Good evening! I might have spent today reading a very old draft and realizing that as bad as the draft is, there is potential there. I'm pretty excited, and hoping I can salvage some of it for a future day.

But today I humbly offer a new scene from the OG Hybrid. This particular scene comes from earlier in the fic - after Jasper tried to feed on Alice and the Cullens begrudgingly welcome Alice to join their lunch table, but you wouldn't call them friends yet. Plus Alice is still set on being a normal high schooler with normal experiences.

Thank you for reading, and I hope you enjoy!

---

The party is exactly what I expected - eighty teenagers in a log house unsupervised. There’s a good mix of Res kids and town kids; and from the conversation that I overhear, it's not just Forks High students from town either - at least a few are from the hippie school which might explain the distinctive smell wafting from the den - and a few people who have definitely graduated.

I feel awkward from the moment I arrive; after all, other than Angela and the Cullens, I don’t really hang out with many kids from school. I was so determined to have a normal experience and go to a high school party without vampires, I hadn’t really considered the reality of the situation. And the sheer amount of complete strangers here puts me on edge - it’s one thing to try and hang out like a normal teenager with my classmates and schoolmates. It’s an entirely different thing to be faced with a house full of random people when I don’t have anyone here to watch my back. The few parties I had attended in Chicago, I had gone to with one of my foster siblings, and no matter how much we disliked each other or what arguments we had, we always had each other’s back.

And Cynthia was way too young to be dragged to a high school party - no matter how enthusiastically she would have attended this with me - so I was on my own. I could do this, I had been to parties before. Hell, I’d been a homeless middle schooler when I went to my first party, a rave in an abandoned warehouse. A house party was nothing to be nervous about.

It’s easy enough to get a slice of pizza and a cup of what I know isn’t just a sugary sweet concoction of soda and juice. I smile and I talk - compliments for a girl in a bedazzled mini-dress, and another one with long pink and white hair; a couple of jokes for the guys manning the pizza boxes. I feel like I’m playing the part of a teenage girl at a party more than I feel like myself, but it’s something. I even manage to smile prettily and take a puff of a cigarette that I know isn’t tobacco and maybe have another drink and another until I’ve made party-friends with a group from Port Angeles who know a guy who knows a girl who got an invite or something. I feel a little more at ease with the alcohol in my system, and when the conversation turns to something I’m more familiar with.

In fact, I’m in the middle of explaining how we used to do our nails at my last foster home, when I’m rescued by a group of Forks High classmates; Mike Newtown is clearly their spokesperson as he unwelcomely grabs my arm.

“Hey, we didn’t know you were here,” he says loudly; I can tell from the flush on his cheeks, he’s either helped himself to the beers piled into the bathtub down the hall or he’s been drinking the same punch as I have.

“I’ve been here a while,” I say, and decide that I’m not going to make a fuss that he’s glanced down at my chest right now. He can look twice, and then I start getting bitchy.

“We’re about… about to play a game. Connor’s setting up, come join us.”

There’s something about the way that Mike is pulling on my arm, and two of the girls he’s with are looking at me that makes me agree, quickly bidding the group I was talking to farewell.

“You’re Alice, right?” One of the girls sidles up to me, sloshing her drink a little. “First party, huh? I’m Jennifer. A lot of these people crashed tonight. You gotta look out for each other.”

“Mrs Sawyer is gonna lose her shit when she sees this,” chortled the other girl, shoving a full cup at me. “Rob isn’t going to see the light of day until he’s like thirty after this.”

A boy I recognise from English - Austin - sidled up to us. “Rob’s in the den and he’s out. He’s not gonna have a clue what happened here. Told him to pace himself, but he never fuckin’ listens. Conner’s set up, let’s go.”

I take my seat at whatever dumb drinking game this is, and everyone seems eager to play. Jennifer and Samantha sit with me, but it doesn’t stop Mike Newton - who seems somewhat out of place here, without his usual group of friends - from clumsily flirting with me. I’ve had too much of the soda to appropriately call him out and make him stop, and my lukewarm disinterest seems to actually encourage him, though Jennifer swats at his hand when he attempts to casually touch my leg.

It’s not the worst night or party I’ve been to. It’s hot and loud, but there aren’t any fights breaking out, and most of the illicit substances seem to be kept in the back rooms of the house. It’s amazing how time locked up in a mental hospital cured me of any interest in anything stronger than weed and whatever was in my drink; plus the last thing I wanted was to get that kind of reputation.

But by midnight, I feel… sticky. I’m sweaty and my mouth tastes sour and sickly; my head is spinning and I’m too hot and I need to get out of this shitty house and away from these people who don’t even know who I am. Samatha and Jennifer have clearly decided to keep track of me, and there’s some obligation because I’m one of them, but they aren’t my friends and we probably won’t acknowledge this night ever again. Plus, a few of the hippie school guys have been watching me from the corner, and even through the haze of alcohol and weed, alarm bells are ringing - I can sense animosity from a mile away.

I need to get out of here.

It’s easy enough to excuse myself to the bathroom and then just leave through the laundry room door without anyone noticing. My head feels syrupy as I make it down the deck stairs and out into the night.

It’s colder outside than I remember and the air is such a relief, I want to press my face to the ground. I wish I had some water, but I need to get home - I was supposed to get a ride from someone here, but I didn’t trust myself to ask the right person right now, and I don’t really want to wait around any longer.

Plus, it was only a ten minute drive from town to this house, I could easily walk it. I’d made Simon drop me off at the crossroad half a mile away, I knew the way home.

Stumbling down the driveway, I let the noise and light of the party fade away behind me. The house was right up against the lake, and the drive wove through the forest from the main road - leaving me in the dark. But it was nice; a relief.

It was a beautiful night, and I was enjoying the walk - it was even helping sober me up.

At least, I was right up until about halfway, when I tripped over something and landed flat on my face in the gravel. That also indicated to me that I was… not quite as sobered up as I thought, because the pain felt very distant in that moment, like I was filing it away for later.

I shouldn’t have had so much to drink when I knew it was spiked.

Getting up was not a possibility. My ankle was sore, the world was spinning, my knees were burning, and the ground was nice and cool. The best I could manage was to half crawl to the side of the driveway and collapse in the long grass to wait for it to pass. I wasn’t sure if that was the night, my drunken state, or my inability to stand up, but I figured I could wait it out. I was comfy.

It was a pretty night, with the clouds drifting across the sky. It’s pleasant enough that I just lie there, staring up at the moon and the stars, with my head swimming. It’s not as bad as the feeling I used to get in the hospital when they’d give us the drugs to make us sleep. That made me feel like I didn’t have control over my arms and legs, like I was stuck and trapped and at the whim of someone else. This is warmer, and I’m still in control; kind of like I’m dreaming but awake. It was nicer. I kind of understood why some kids had preferred alcohol to meds now.

It’s just so peaceful, even if the damp is seeping through my top, that I lose track of the time. Dad had been worried letting me go, and made me swear I’d be home by one but I was nearly certain that I was going to miss that deadline. It was weird having a curfew - unless I was homeless, curfews at the hospital and in my foster homes had been more of the ‘in bed by nine, don’t even consider an alternative’ flavour.

At a certain point, though, reality began to break through the peaceful little haze I had going on, and I remembered my phone in the little sling bag that had gallantly survived the entire night without getting lost.

There were no cabs in Forks to my knowledge - and from what I had seen at school, there was a fifty-fifty chance they’d refuse to pick me up for one of three reasons: I was the daughter of the gay guys, I was the mysterious newcomer, or that I had been drinking at a high school party. After a few weeks in Forks, I’d found that the small-town judgment and prejudice were quieter than expected but it ran deep.

Cynthia had programmed a bunch of useful numbers into my phone for me, so maybe that included a solution to the fact I was lying in the mud next to the driveway of a classmate’s house.

Scrolling through my phone contacts, I wondered if I should just bite the bullet and call Dad or Simon, and own the fact that I was still a little bit high and still a little… okay, a lot drunk. I wouldn’t be the first ex-foster kid to come home drunk, and I wouldn’t be the last. But I also dreaded the look on my Dad’s face; that tired and disappointed one that looked like he had failed me and not the other way around. I wanted so much to be able to say that yeah, the party was fine, and have that been the end of it. I didn’t want the lecture, I didn’t want the embarrassment and I didn’t want…

I froze as I looked at my list of contacts. Five new numbers that I had certainly not programmed into my phone, and Cynthia certainly hadn’t added because if she knew and had these numbers, I was nearly positive that she would have sold them off to the highest bidder in the middle school cafeteria.

How the fuck had the Cullens’ collective numbers ended up in my phone? Had I done it at one of our awkward lunches? That seemed unlikely, but my brain couldn’t completely rule that out as a possibility, especially when I was sleep-deprived or bogged down with homework. And why would Dr Cullen’s number be included if we’d exchanged numbers during lunch? As shitty as their high school act was, they at least knew that offering me Dr Cullen’s number would be fucking weird.

Scowling, I selected the one member of the Cullens I would actually willingly talk to - well, the one member of the Cullens that I was quasi-certain wouldn’t immediately pass the phone off to any of the three members of the family I refused to speak to on principle.

Emmett seemed cool, but I sensed weakness in him when it came to the will of Rosalie and tonight was not the night to test that theory out.

If I hadn’t had so much punch, this would seem like a terrible idea. But if I hadn’t had so much punch, I’d be cheerfully walking myself home. Well, not cheerfully. But I’d be home in bed already, willing tonight to just go down in my personal history as mediocre and not worth repeating.

“Hello?” The sound of Jasper’s voice sent a shiver down my spine and a spike of … reassurance? Like everything was okay or would be okay because he was so good at putting things… putting me… back together.

Or he would be, in the future. I had seen it.

“Why is your number in my phone?” In my head, it sounded indignant but even I could hear my words run together. Fuck. “I didn’t put it there.”

“…Alice?” The way he said my name… I thought I’d known what it would sound like after years of visions. But it was different in real life, better. He sounded confused and slightly startled, which was new. Normally when he said my name it was a polite greeting. In my visions, it was warmer and more intimate.

“Yes, it’s Alice - do you and your family regularly inflict your phone numbers on unsus… unsusp… teenage girls that don’t know you stole their phones? You’re getting us all confused?”

“Alice are you… intoxicated?” He sounds incredulous.

“Why does that matter?” I demanded. Jasper might be the love of my life, but he had not yet earned the privilege of commenting on my chosen activities, let alone get to police me. “For your information, there was a party at Rob Sawyer’s tonight and all the real teenagers went. You and your family need to be more convincing.”

“I can attest that not everyone went, because Bella is downstairs with Edward,” Jasper replied.

“Well, her high school priorities are clearly different to mine,” I retorted; I was irritated that he was so calm and I couldn’t work out why. “I prefer to enjoy my youth. It’s fleeting, you know. One day she’ll look back and wonder why she spent so… so much time listening to her old man boyfriend play the piano when she could have been doing something fun… like going to a rave.” What was I saying? I hated raves. I liked getting dressed for them, because it was fun, but I hated how sweaty and crowded and smothering they were.

“Where are you, Alice?” Jasper sounds far too amused for my liking, and if he were here, I’d have smacked him.

“I’m fine.” My back was actively wet now, and I was certain I was covered in mud.

“Uh huh. Are you alone?”

“Yes.” There was a nearby frog I could hear, but nothing else. I was surprised - no one had left yet. Was it normal for Forks High parties to go on this long or did people stay over or what?

“You should call your parents, Alice. Get them to pick you up. Or Carlisle can if you’re worried,” Jasper says so kindly that all my indignation deflates like a balloon, and a ball of panic wells up in my chest.

“No. You cannot tell my father about this,” I said. “You have to swear.”

“Alice, I think your parents would prefer you were home safe rather than alone and intoxicated,” Jasper said soothingly.

“No. I don’t… they aren’t allowed to see this. I’m already too much trouble and messed up their lives, and I don’t want to disappoint them again,” I said, and felt tears well up in my eyes. “I must be costing them so much and they have to take me a bunch of places and watch me and every time I mess up or say something wrong, they get this look on their faces like they screwed up. It’s not. They didn’t have to take me into their home, not really, and I… I want to make it worth it for them.” I sniffled.

There was silence on the other end of the phone.

“Tell me where you are, Alice. I’ll drive you home.”

“Rob Sawyer’s house party. It’s on a dirt road.”

“That’s not… Don’t hang up, okay? I’m going to track your phone.”

“That sounds illegal, Jasper,” I said, wriggling around on the grass to get more comfortable. “How do you even do that?”

“It’s a long story. And yes, it is. But desperate times call for desperate measures.”

“I’m fine.” Kind of cold and muddy, and my knees and ankle were hurting in kind of a distant way, but the sweaty nausea had passed. I could easily fall asleep here. It wouldn’t even make the top ten worst places I’d slept in my life.

“We’ll agree to disagree, Alice.” I could listen to Jasper say my name forever. “But I do have a question for you while we wait.”

“Okay?”

“Why did you call me? I put all the numbers in your phone. Why me?”

I froze. He didn’t sound like he resented that I had chosen him; there was a note of something in his voice, something raw and real and even a little bit… not eager. But something. Maybe curiosity?

“Who else would I call? I hate doctors. Rosalie hates me. Edward doesn’t trust me and he reads minds. Emmett was a possibility, but he looks easily broken,” I said.

“And Esme?” Jasper sounded disappointed.

“I have a lot of mommy issues, let’s not unpack that box. I didn’t see her number there anyway.” I propped myself up on one arm. “You weren’t the last resort, Jasper. You were my first and only choice.”

“…Why?” Now I could hear the self-loathing in the boy’s voice.

“Because I trust you,” I replied. “You’re the person I trust the most in the world. Or you will be one day.”

Silence again. “I don’t understand.”

“I’ve known about you for a long time,” I said, watching the clouds move across the sky. “You’re a protector, a planner. You love to read and learn but you loathe high school. You have a wicked sense of humour, and you just… fix everything. There’s nothing too terrible or silly or chaotic that you don’t make better. Just by being there, you’re making things perfect…” He was. I had years of dreams of laughing and talking together, of the way he would stroke my hair and wrap his arms around me. The way we’d lie together, him reading and me drawing or messing around on my phone. We were meant to be so happy.

And it had to be said that he was… goddamn magnificent in bed. And like, I wasn’t entirely sure when he had died, but it was definitely in a ‘lie back and think of England’ era for women, so I felt like I should send a fruit basket or something to whichever ex-girlfriend had intervened because he was… outstanding. I’d only seen stuff like that over the last few years and it had been very enlightening on multiple levels. It had also been comforting that after every single thing that I’d lived through, I’d still be able to have that kind of intimacy with another person without all that fear and grief looming over me, and even enjoy it.

If he gave me one single chance to be something, whatever he wanted, I’d be his ride-or-die forever. I knew how fiercely and completely we’d love each other, and I wanted that so badly. He’d been my best friend long before either of us had set foot in Forks, and I just needed him to take that leap of faith and trust me, the weird girl who knew too much, to capture that future that we both desperately wanted and needed.

And I had no idea how I would convince Jasper of that. That I wouldn’t ask for this if it wasn’t something that I was so very certain we both wanted…

The phone had gone quiet.

“…What was I saying?” I yawned.

“I hope I can live up to your expectations.” Jasper’s voice was softer now. “I’ve got your location, Alice, I’ll be there soon.”

“I’ll be waiting,” I said, as the phone line went dead. Awkwardly jamming my phone back into my sling bag, I closed my eyes for just a moment. Jasper was coming to get me and I’d go home, and everything would be okay.

#alice cullen #jasper hale #jalice #ficmas #ficmas23 #my fic: hybrid #alcohol is bad kids #jasper just at home reading on a friday night and alice drunk calls him and he's bewildered #ma'am this is a wendys #alice staring emmett down and going 'it's no use. you're a wife guy. you'll fold faster than superman on laundry day.'#jasper being oddly touched and humbled that alice picked him #jasper being intrigued and then terribly embarrassed about drunken alice's rambling #the image of cynthia standing in the middle school cafeteria taking cash offers for each of the cullens' cellphone numbers #“*five* dollars for edward cullen's number? please. five dollars won't even get you *my* number. try again. i know you have birthday money”#mike newton tries and fails again #for comedy purposes we need a fic where mike is leah's imprint and is the best damn stay at home boyfriend ever #justice for mike newton

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goldeneyedgirl · 5 months

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TwiFicMas23 Day 1: lead & follow (Jessamine/Mary-Alice)

Another year, another round of Ficmas!

We'll open this year with a fic that I started for Pride and just couldn't get right - I think the end section will be reworked before it's archived on AO3.

So this was kind of a thought experiment about how STL would have gone for Jessamine and Alice; how things went differently, how different choices were made, and what that looked like.

I hope you enjoy it!

lead & follow.

Open my chest and colour my spine I'm giving you all Swallow my breath And take what is mine

(Of Monsters & Men)

---

Like everything that has ever happened to one Miss Jessamine Whitlock, formerly of San Antonio, everything changes because of one small detail. One details that is so easily dismissed and forgotten, never something that seems like it’s meant to become something bigger or even slightly important in the long run.

And that's how it begins.

Jessamine finds her in a swampy clearing somewhere in Mississippi - it’s not important where, and Jessamine doesn’t care. She’s just standing there, staring off into space; with bright red eyes, and the kind of glow to her that only newborns have, half-covered in mud.

Experience has told her that no good comes from a solitary newborn - and there are no others around them, not that Jessamine can sense.

So she goes to take the newborn’s head off.

At least, that’s the plan.

Instead, the first blow has the newborn cowering, not even trying to fight back; her terrified face bisected by a crack, her thin hands holding it together as it heals. When Jessamine gets closer, the newborn lets out a whine and shuffles backward to nestle at the foot of a tree, surrounded by bushes and undergrowth.

(Her eyes are so big, it almost looks like they take up her entire face. The kind of eyes someone could drown in. Her black hair, uneven and wild, is pasted down to her face with a mixture of dried blood - her own - and mud. She is astoundingly pretty - if uncomfortably thin - which is probably the reason she was turned… if her change was intentional.)

She doesn’t look like much more than a child. But Jessamine’s known Immortal Children, and their aggression, their lure, is something that this girl doesn’t have. She’s small, but she’s above the legal age.

So she decides to take one Mary-Alice (the name scrawled on the back of her garment, the surname blurred out and indecipherable) back to Maria.

If she’s a spy, she’ll be tortured for information and destroyed. If she’s a foundling, she’s another body on the battlefield. Either way, Maria gets something out of Jessamine bringing her back to Monterrey.

So she does.

—

Forks is turning out to be memorable.

That sounds stupid. Vampire memories are good enough that, by definition, all places are memorable. Except after decades of moving every five years from one large, remote house in a small town to another large, remote house in a small town, it all blurs together. Carlisle works in a hospital, Esme does charity work, and the rest of them go to school - dented lockers, the old-soup smell of the cafeteria, and computers that only work fifty percent of the time.

The more things change, the more they stay the same. It was like statis, in some ways, because it was always the same. Hell, in some of those underfunded shithole public schools, they were even the same textbooks a decade apart.

That’s why they were allowed to stay in Alaska for the full decade - after a round in Juneau playing the part. They had to earn their retreat into the lodge outside of the Denali National Park.

(Well, the screaming argument that she had with Rosalie might have indicated to Carlisle and Esme that they were all burnt out with keeping up the act. It hadn’t been one of her finest moments, but Rosalie had insisted on using her actual full name at their last three schools and Jess had put her foot down in Juneau. They were inviting trouble with the internet becoming more and more accessible. She’d won that argument, which was rare enough that it was notable, and they’d attended school as Rose and Jess Platt. It was more than fifteen years ago, and she wasn’t entirely certain Rosalie had forgiven her yet.)

It had been nice. Nice to exist as who she was, and not have to remember all the details that went along with their cover story; not to have to second guess everything she said or did or wore because she was supposed to be an ordinary teenage girl. Nice to be able to venture into the woods for days on end and not have to be anywhere. Nice to run bare foot through the snow, because that was a feeling she still savoured as a novelty more than sixty years later.

And then Carlisle had taken them to Forks, and pushed them back onto centre stage; the maladjusted Cullens (and Hales, again. She is fighting a losing battle over that.)

(She’s getting too old for this.)

She wasn’t expecting Forks to be anything. Just another black pin on the map in her study of all the places they’ve found themselves in - there’s a red pin in Monterrey for obvious reasons. There’s a silver one in Nebraska, the place where the Cullens found her (not her most dignified moment, honestly.)

There’s a silver one in Mississippi too. One that she worries at, takes out and puts back in, because she hates that she’s so damn obvious. That she’s giving away her secrets - especially the secrets that she refuses to confess to herself half of the time. But she’s on a new kick, a new lifestyle of being honest with herself and with others. That rewriting history does no one any favours, so it’s better just to be straight forward and tell the truth.

(Eventually she’ll feel at home as this new person, this honest girl who owns her failures and her weaknesses. It’s been sixty years, it’ll stick soon.)

She digresses.

Forks… well, Edward and Bella certainly made it distinctive.

She wasn’t going to lie and say that it didn’t feel good to fight again, to destroy. That James went down realising he made a terrible mistake and picked the wrong fight on the wrong day, and that she was very thorough, and took great pride in her work. That Jessamine Whitlock had a reputation to uphold. She likens it to stretching out muscles that have been in recline too long - a runner getting back into training after sitting out of the race.

(She might have been too enthusiastic, because Emmett was kind of slack jawed when James was finally ash. But it’s good to know that she’s still got it - that sixty years of domesticity hasn’t dulled her too much.)

Jess has zero idea of where Edward and Bella are going to end up - probably with Bella dead, if she’s honest. (If Esme hadn’t intervened, she and Rose would have already dealt with Bella and probably Chief Swan at the same time. But she just cannot go against Esme’s politely-worded requests. No one is murdering the Chief of Police and his daughter. She just made it sound so reasonable.) With all the moving parts, with Edward and his hang-ups, and Bella’s impressive ability to attract trouble, she cannot see this having a happy ending. And really, however this pans out, Bella is going to lose her life.

But she keeps her thoughts to herself.

Victoria is still in the wind and, despite Carlisle’s faith in the goodness of people, Jess knows that without sufficient motivation - like having a debilitating gift that cripples you emotionally to the point of physical pain if you hunt humans - there is no meaningful chance that Laurent will remain a vegetarian with the Denali clan. They’re living on borrowed time.

But for all her bitching, at least Bella and Edward had made this more interesting than another mediocre high school eduction.

Speaking of which, her current class is coming to an end, and she has the overwhelming urge to stretch. The others don’t get that urge like she does, and Carlisle blames it on their human lifestyle. That Jess had the opportunity to run and fight and move on a scale none of the Cullens have really ever had. The others find it odd that she paces, stretches, twists and turns when they are content simply sitting or standing.

Some days she just runs loops up to Canada and back down to Forks, to burn the energy and the itch. Edward might join her for a couple, Emmett too, but no one likes to run as much as she does. No one else feels like instinct to move like Jess.

The bell rings, and she’s quick to sweep her books into her bag. Maybe she’ll ask Rose to do her homework for her, and go running tonight. Go running and hunting, and tell Carlisle she’s keeping an eye for Victoria so no one looks at her like she’s going feral again. Maybe even wear shoes and one of those fancy outdoor jackets that Esme buys her, to help her look the part even when she’s running faster than the human eye in the depths of the wilderness, with blood on her face.

“Jess?”

She jerks to the side - not surprised, really, but having anyone address her is unexpected. She and Rose are not known for their warm personalities.

But Angela Weber is one of the few classmates that she tolerates. Mostly because Angela is polite, respects boundaries, and doesn’t ask stupid questions. Jessica Stanley, who is hovering nearby, is lower on Jess’s list of ‘people she should tolerate’, mostly because of the sheer amount of questions Jessica likes to ask.

Which is possibly why she’s keeping her distance.

(She blames Rose, honestly, that they’re approaching her at all - she’d been practicing braids in Jess’s hair that morning and she’d left them in for school. Apparently it made her look friendly enough to talk to.)

“Hmm?”

“It’s about Rosalie’s car…”

Angela has her full attention immediately; nothing causes a Rosalie Hale meltdown quite like the great-unwashed interfering with one of her cars. There had been an incident about a month after they started at Forks High, and whilst Rosalie had been contained quickly, it wasn’t forgotten by the student body.

“There's some junkie girl sitting on it,” Jessica announces and Angela winces at her friend’s bluntness.

Jess groans, and shoulders her bag, pushing past both girls without acknowledging them. This was going to be bad, and she was sure Angela would overlook her rudeness if it meant beating Rosalie out to the parking lot and removing whatever poor soul had a death wish by touching the BMW.

Fuck, fuck, fuck.

—

Mary-Alice is an enigma.

Maria is equal parts exasperated and fascinated by her.

She claims to have no memories before waking up in the woods.

She doesn’t know her maker. She doesn’t remember being human or how old she is or where she is from. The only reason she knows her name is because it was written on her garment and Jessamine gave it back to her. She tells them all of that the second they get back to camp.

Maria doesn’t believe her. Not that it matters, because whatever her answer was, Maria has a very specific process for foundlings brought to her in Monterrey.

Maybe Jessamine should have warned the poor girl.

She’s mostly confused by the torture; it’s light, for Maria - the cracking and removal of a limb or two has the girl telling them everything. She sobs enough that venom gathers under her eyes and clings to her eyelashes. When Maria finally decides to release her, Mary-Alice doesn’t lash out like others before her have; instead, she goes over to the corner of the room to reattach her arm, to realign the joints in her legs, and shakes like a leaf when Jessamine approaches her, flinching away.

But Jessamine has to put her away, and nothing stops her from hauling Mary-Alice to her feet, her hand clamped around her good arm so she doesn’t try to run. She wouldn’t be the first.

The rolling horror of her emotions twists Jessamine’s stomach and makes her tighten her grip out of resentment as she escorts her to the barn with the rest of the newborns. She almost pities the little creature, still healing - her ankle is still knitting back to her leg, her limp like a little skip - and being thrown into the barn. But what goes on in there after dawn is a law unto itself, and something that Maria has never gotten involved in.

(Mary-Alice isn’t the first to be fed into the maw of the south, and she won’t be the last.)

Which is why it’s so fucking annoying that Jessamine can’t get the memory of her wide, venom-streaked eyes out of her head, even once she and Maria have retired to the house.

The next evening, Mary-Alice is quiet. She feels distant - that will become her trademark. That her emotions are as slight and ephemeral as her build. That for a long time, Jessamine will have to touch her to get a decent read on what she feels.

And after a while, even that yields nothing.

It doesn’t matter, though, because she settles well into training. Maria had named her as canon fodder - someone they’d lose early on, since she was evidently prone to hysterics and seemed too confused and innocent to really grasp what she was now a part of.

But… she’s fast and she’s a quick learner; a talented fighter. She catches on faster than Jessamine’s seen before; absolutely ruthless and precise. Her size is an asset, and does not reflect her strength. It’s been a while since Jessamine has been surprised by a newborn in training; she and Maria can measure up a soldier well enough by now. Mary-Alice, however, surprises both of them.

She’ll do nicely.

And she lives. One battle, two, six, twelve. She comes back from them all with insignificant injuries and nothing to report. Another success story for the Lady of Monterrey, and her unbeatable army.

Jessamine just tries to not to notice how haunted those big eyes have become, so quickly. How quiet and small she makes herself.

It's just how things are in the south.

She’d best get used to it.

—

With the imminent arrival of another patented Rosalie meltdown, Jess is cursing a lot of things - of course her class today is in H block at the back of the school. Of course today is the day the goddamn middle schoolers are using the library, and one of the sports teams is packing for a game. There are too many people crammed into the hallway, and Rosalie’s temper is the only thing distracting Jess from how good everyone smells.

She manages to intercept Edward, helping Bella navigate the corridors in that unwieldy cast, to warn him of their predicament and to hopefully distract Rose long enough for Jess to intervene and banish whomever thought it was a good idea to touch Rosalie Hale’s car. Edward looks irritated - mostly at Rose, but that’s just an ordinary Wednesday - and agrees that this needs to be handled fast and efficiently. Leave Emmett to be the one to manage Rose.

But of course, as they push through the crowds, her bag - the beat-up army-surplus messenger bag that Emmett gave her back in the 90s as a punchline to a joke, dotted with anti-war patches Emmett hunts for on eBay - decides to break, the buckle snapping up to hit her in the head and sending her shit tumbling to the floor.

She’s going to murder someone, but at least Carlisle will be pleased it wasn’t because she was thirsty, but because she was continually inconvenienced. Waving Edward and Bella on, she stops to scoop up her detritus - pens and pencils, her notes, her phone, all scattered along the floor - as other students ignore her and keep moving forward.

“You think they’ll call the cops?”

“She’s definitely a junkie. Mom says there’s a real problem out at the Res, and that Swan won’t do anything about it because he’s all buddy-buddy with a bunch of them.”

“She’s pretty obviously white, Ashley.”

“They’re probably selling shit to her.”

“Don’t be such a fucking racist."

“Banner went out to talk to her, and she says she’s waiting for someone. Said she knows the Cullens.”

“She looks like a middle-schooler.”

The gossip around her, as she shovels papers and books and pens back into her bag - fixable, but irritating - seems to prick at her, and she sets it aside long enough to tie the broken strap together. She’s probably lost her chance at beating Ro…

Said she knows the Cullens.

She looks like a middle-schooler.

That makes her pause. It shouldn’t, but it does.

Immortal Children don’t live very long, with the Laws. And most people won’t change anyone who isn’t definitively and absolutely old enough. No one wants to be the one that creates an ambiguously young newborn in case it all goes to shit.

Maybe there’s always been a little shard of hope tucked behind her heart.

There’s only been one girl she’s known, of all the newborns and nomads and friends of Carlisle’s over the years, that could pass for being a ‘junkie middle-schooler.’

One girl who made her a promise a long time ago.

(It might have been sixty years, but she never stopped having faith in those parting words.)

—

Time passes, newborns fall in battle, or they live to see the year pass by until summer comes and the pyres are built. And slowly but steadily, Jessamine feeds each piece and part of those newborns into the fire whether they are body parts left behind on the battlefield, or Jessamine takes off their heads herself.

Mary-Alice isn’t amongst that number. No, she survives each battle, and is lucky and fast enough that Maria shrugs and leaves it up to Jessamine whether Mary-Alice gets to live or die.

So, she lives.

Jessamine tells herself that it’s because no one expects much from her on the battlefield, so she’s the perfect cuckoo in the nest. The skinny kid with the big eyes that can take down men three times her size before they even realise they’ve lost.

She convinces herself of that for a long time. That her interest in Mary-Alice is merely academic, strategic, and nothing more. Even when she’s unceremoniously ejected from Maria’s bed - a long time coming, and not something she’s that unhappy about - she’s still convinced Mary-Alice is just another warm body for the army. One of the few that gets to live past their newborn year - like Dante and Lily and Javier. She has a purpose. Jessamine Whitlock is not one for sentiment, and not one for indulgences. If Mary-Alice wasn’t useful, she wouldn’t have been given a stay of execution.

And for a while, that’s how they stay. A soldier and a major. Training and hunting and recruiting. Mary-Alice proves useful at map-drawing and recruiting, even if she is entirely illiterate and far too sympathetic to potential recruits. Her answers to Jessamine are always short, deeply respectful, and unemotional - she’s never told a lie, even fumbled the details, in the entire time that Jessamine’s known her.

Maria likes that Mary-Alice has no human memories; thinks it makes her more efficient and effective. She wonders about ways to wipe memories of the newborns as a blanket policy; sever them from their humanity entirely. Peter and Jessamine manage to talk her out of that; there’s already a roughly thirty percent chance of a newborn changing wrong and having to be destroyed on the spot. It’s just making their jobs harder, to try and find that sweet spot between utility and amnesia every single time. It leaves them weak, without a full army, if it all goes wrong at the same time.

(And maybe Jessamine sees the confused, sad look on Mary-Alice's face when she’s listening to a conversation the most recent batch of newborns have - about weddings and families and birthdays and all those little things that make up humans and newborns often want to hold tight to, at least for a little while. But all it tells her is that Mary-Alice might be useful the way she is, but she’s hardly content with her lot in life.)

It takes over a decade for Jessamine to admit to herself that Mary-Alice isn’t there just for utility - that she wants more. Those big red eyes that feel like they see too much; the odd little spells she has where she stares off into space. The very few but almost charmingly unexpected questions. The shape and movement of her thin body underneath oversized clothes…

She wants more. She wants Mary-Alice.

(It’s been a while. There were a couple of newborns after Maria, easily caught and easily forgotten - Peter’s fine with being the one that ends Jessamine’s lovers during the summer, because it’s too much for her to deal with and they learned that the hard way. She kept to herself after that, bored and irritable with the last few batches.)

The realisation is one that feels like she’s always known it but also like she’s been struck by lightning. It’s no easier to admit to herself in the privacy of her own mind than it is to put the words into the world, but it’s always been there, simmering: that Mary-Alice was something, a moment of potential that she just had to be ready to take.

Jessamine has never been patient when she makes a decision; and it’s not like Mary-Alice is going anywhere.

It’s as simple as cornering her in the house before dawn; of a hand on Mary-Alice’s cheek and a kiss that is taken more than offered. An understanding that is exchanged in a glance.

The room Maria gave Jessamine is narrow, with an ancient, rotting day bed and a hay mattress. The mattress is sunken in the middle, and she snapped the legs off the bed years ago, to make it more useable. There’s a desk that barely stands, piled with her books and ragged maps and a few bits of discarded clothing.

It’s not a room she’s spent a lot of time in - a space used for killing time more than as a sanctuary.

Mary-Alice pauses to consider the room for a second; that’s all Jessamine gives her before there is another kiss, deep and lingering, and she can taste Mary-Alice’s venom - a lemon-sugar tang that makes her groan.

(Jessamine makes it clear what she wants from Mary-Alice that first night. Both of them stripped and on that daybed; Mary-Alice has less scars, just a dusting. She’s still young. She’s just as tiny as Jessamine envisaged, her ribs leaving shadows on her skin, the soft swell of her breasts, the jutting bones of her hips… Jessamine doesn’t want to admit that she’s a daydream, a doll wrought just for her, because that makes this a complete disaster. She’s already ragged with emotion in this place, the last thing she needs to do is add in her own goddamn feelings.)

Mary-Alice has always been a good learner, a quick one, and Jessamine would be pleased with how willing she is if life didn’t feel like she was being hollowed out and left to rot most days. But there is some satisfaction in what they have, in being able to sink into each other. She knows every scar and freckle on Mary-Alice’s body, knows exactly how she moves, how she’s put together. It’s a feast and some days she wonders if those days lying sprawled naked on the hay mattress are what truly sustains her.

(Maria catches them together one afternoon and lets out a bark of laughter. “You really are trying to destroy that girl,” she informs Jessamine, clearly entertained by what she’s found. That comment, what Maria saw in them that day, eats away at Jessamine slowly but surely. She does nothing with it, but it just sits in her mind to rot and it makes her worse. It makes everything worse.)

But somehow, she keeps her. Mary-Alice doesn’t leave, Jessamine doesn’t send her away, and they both ignore the rot.

And maybe Jessamine feels safe enough to talk to Mary-Alice - to Alice. Really talk, like she hasn’t been able to in… a very long time. She whispers little things in her ear, asks her what she thinks, tells her things she’d rather never speak aloud.

Alice is a good listener, but not much of a talker. She makes reassuring sounds, plays with Jessamine’s hair, and never really has a definitive opinion about complicated things. She doesn’t confide in Jessamine the same; there are no whispered confessions, no hushed fears or worries. It hurts because Jessamine is cracking herself wide open for Alice, and getting nothing in return.

(It hurts because Jessamine knows she doesn’t deserve any part of what she expects, and Alice is right not to tell her a damn thing.)

“It must be nice not to have secrets,” Jessamine says pointedly to her one day, lying together; fucking came before dealing with the bites and wounds from the last battle and Alice’s mouth is on the bite around her bony arm, licking away foreign venom so it will knit again. She lets out a garbled noise when Jessamine says that.

“What makes you think that?” Alice asks, looking curious. Blank, curious, pissed off - those were the sole emotions Alice was capable of demonstrating. Her physical emotions were no more telling, and sometimes Jessamine wondered if that’s just who Miss Mary-Alice was, or if that’s what the South had done to her.

“You never have anything to tell me,” Jessamine replied, almost sulkily. Alice shrugs and lies straight, looking at her frankly.

“I’ve never known anything but you and life here,” Alice says in that even, flat voice she always uses. “That’s all I have; any hopes or dreams or beliefs or regrets I ever had, I left behind when I was changed. I think you really need those things to have secrets, Jessamine.”

She’s not wrong, but Jessamine is admittedly jealous that Alice won’t entrust some kind of something to her; to tuck a secret into Jessamine’s greedy palms. But it also must be nice not to feel like you’re on the edge of a knife, about to fall into the abyss. Most of the time, Jessamine feels like she’s about to implode from everything. That she’s stretched taunt, and something has to give.

And Alice is just there, steady as she goes.

It must be nice.

(It’ll be much, much later - too late - when Jessamine finally realises how grotesque and nightmarish Alice’s life was. Is. How she had handed Jessamine what she truly wanted, that intimacy of her truth - completely hopeless, with no expectation or knowledge of anything better than what she had. And Jessamine had missed it entirely.)

—

“I don’t care who the fuck she is, I’m going to kill her,” Rosalie announces through clenched teeth, sending a few horrified freshman skittering out of her way like rabbits as Jess finally finds her family. She’d given up beating Rosalie to the car park thanks to the fucking ridiculous layout of this stupid school and opted to just try and diffuse the situation at the source.

“How did she find us here?” Emmett wonders, looking downright confused. “Why not go straight to the house? Esme would love having someone show up to visit.”

“Scent, probably. No other way to track us down if they were coming from the South-East,” Edward says under his breath, so no passersby can hear anything odd. “Do we have any idea of who it is?”

“Jessica was saying she had dark hair,” Bella says meekly, withering under Rose’s scornful glance.

“That doesn’t narrow it much,” Emmett has his arm over Rosalie’s shoulders, probably holding her in place. Even with Jess’s gift, Rose’s rage is hot and wild, and Emmett is probably the only thing keeping her in check. “Mary, maybe?”

“Mary hasn’t left California in forty years; and she’s taller than Jess,” Edward corrects. “Everyone’s focusing on how small this girl is.”

“At least it isn’t Jane,” Emmett shrugs. “We’d have known about that pretty fast.”

It’s been decades since they met with the Volturi as ‘honored guests’ of Aro, and none of them held that visit fondly. Esme had quietly admitted later that the visit to Volterra had taken the shine off Italy entirely.

Jess nods along, trying to focus on muting Rosalie’s anger, and not to think too much. She feels oddly sick at the possibilities in front of them. She feels stupid for putting the pieces together in her mind in a very-certain way. (She promised.) She’s… hopeful, but sick with the possibility she’s wrong and she’s got her hopes up for nothing.

“It’s not Maria, Jess.” Edward sounds like he’s trying very hard to be reassuring. “You know Maria, and she wouldn’t be this brazen.”

It’s both reassuring and embarrassing that Edward would jump to that conclusion: that Maria’s sudden appearance would be at the front of Jess’s mind when it didn’t even occur to her that Maria might be the sitting pretty on Rose’s BMW (fuck, she really does have a type).

(Also, Maria would not be sitting on the BMW looking homeless. The last time Charlotte and Peter ran into Maria, she was apparently wearing Versace and driving a Lexus - a stolen Lexus, without any kind of license, but the woman had very particular taste.)

Jess can’t think of other possibilities at that moment. She doesn’t want Edward to know because… whatever the outcome is, she doesn’t want Edward to look at her in sympathy. She might be trying out this whole ‘honest and transparent’ lifestyle but there are some things that are too raw, too much of a condemnation of her, to think about.

So she just nods, hands tight on the strap of her bag and wondering what she’s really hoping for.

(It’s been more than sixty fucking years. Hope is a dead thing that’s rotted back into the ground, brittle bones ground to dust. Some promises are made to be broken, and it’s about time that she made peace with that.)

—

In the end, she goes with Peter.

Or rather, Peter shows up and grabs her arm and tells her to fucking run.

(The long story is that for a very long time, she hates Peter. More than she hates Charlotte, even. She hates him for leaving her to the never-ending abyss of the wars, for taking away the steadiest and kindest thing she ever had. She doesn’t want to kill him so much as she wants to beat the shit out of him and scream at him for letting her down. She tells Alice that once, her voice shaking, and Alice had stroked her cheek. “I think Peter will surprise you. And I think when he does, you should take what he offers.” Jessamine scoffed because she doesn’t expect to see him again - he’s already probably dead, Charlotte too.)

So she turns and runs. She doesn’t even look behind her, doesn’t think about the stuff she’s leaving behind, doesn’t think about how he’s still alive, where Charlotte is, or even where they are going.

They just run. It’s a blur of dust and haze and terror trapped inside her that they will be caught and she’ll get the one person she’s always trusted, always relied upon to fix things, killed.

At the Arizona border, they slow down and maybe Jess grabs Peter and hugs him so tight she probably cracks something and she sobs so hard she’s wheezing. Her great escape from the Southern Wars and from Maria of Monterrey ends not with a celebration, of laughter and joy, but with both of them sitting in the dirt, Jess shaking and crying, with Peter trying to soothe her, his arms tight around her.

That’s how Charlotte finds them, and later Jess is embarrassed and humbled by Charlotte’s compassion, her acceptance, and her keen relief that they both made it out in one piece. Charlotte’s a better person than Jessamine, but they already knew that.

For a while, she feels like spun glass - impossibly fragile and distant from all that goes on around her. Time lacks meaning, and she’s not sure how many days pass after Arizona. Peter and Charlotte are gentle with her, and Charlotte is quick to remind her that it takes all of them a while to realize that there is something outside of that ugly bubble of the Wars; that what they lived through is just the smallest view of the world.

Jess just needs to take a breathe and let time work its magic, Charlotte promises. It will be okay.

Except, it’s six states and two months later that she feels enough like herself again that her brain starts working, that she starts having thoughts beyond the moment, and she immediately thinks of Alice.

Alice. Alice whom she left behind and never thought of. Alice who probably waited for Jess in her room - their room - in the mansion, and Jess never showed up.

Alice, who is still in Monterrey with Maria alone to pay the price of Jess’s abandonment. That’s the realization that makes her vomit up the meal she ate only a few hours earlier. Alice alone, paying for Jessamine’s sins and selfishness.

(Maria was right. She really did want to destroy Alice.)

Peter is kind but unflinching when he deciphers her distress. If Jessamine was that close to Alice, Maria probably tortured the shit out of her for answers, and then destroyed her. If going back was a possibility - and it really, really isn’t - she wouldn’t be alive to save.

It says a lot about the place they’ve all come from that the idea Alice is dead and gone is immensely reassuring, that Alice is somewhere soft and quiet now, where nothing can get her.

Except…

The last night, the last battle, lingers in her head and she remembers giving Alice and the others their orders and Alice meeting her gaze and replying, “I’ll follow where you lead.”

Those words are probably meaningless; Alice always followed orders and acknowledged them to set a standard for the newborns. Her confidence and certainty in Jessamine and Maria’s leadership set a tone that made the newborns fall into line with relative ease.

Except they aren’t; they’re ominous and heavy and loaded… maybe even something to hold tight to, something to tuck away and hope for.

Alice is fast and she’s a quick learner; a talented fighter. She catches on faster than Jessamine’s seen before; absolutely ruthless and precise. Her size is an asset and does not reflect her strength. She’s been a reliable fighter for Maria for decades, and she’s never told a lie. Without Jessamine, Maria’s ability to wield a newborn army is crippled; it would be foolish to destroy one of her longest-serving soldiers when she’s already lost Jessamine. And Maria is no fool…

…Maybe.

(A little bit of hope is a powerful thing.)

—

The journey to the parking lot feels like the path to execution, and Jess is intimately aware of the fact that either way, her family is probably going to know more than she wants them to.

There are students clustered around the parking lot, talking and whispering, and enjoying the Cullens being a spectacle again. Perhaps even hoping for a Rosalie smack-down because in small towns, the good gossip is treasured.

(Emmett might look like he’s casually walking with Rosalie, but she’s clamped at his side, and he’s whispering sweet nothings in her ear to diffuse the situation. Cars can be fixed and some people are stupid, babe. Don’t let anyone know they got to you.)

And then they are there, staring at Rose’s pristine car, and it takes Jess a moment to realise what she’s seeing.

She sits on the top of the SUV cross-legged, and she probably looks bored to everyone else. Just waiting for the Cullens to show up.

(Hope is a wild thing in her chest, somehow a million times more alive and wild now that Jess is faced with what she was secretly holding on for, that tiny flickering flame that she’s protected but never acknowledged since the day Peter declared her most likely dead finally burning free.)

To Jess, she looks exhausted. Wrung out and brittle, like she’s waiting for her execution.

But she’s here. And she’s alive.

Her hair is pulled into two very small pigtails on the top of her head with plastic clips, and somewhere she’s gotten ahold of glitter eyeshadow that is smeared liberally over both her eyelids. She’s wearing a frankly rancid cat-ear hoodie that looks like it was once a child’s, and some ragged capris, with a beat-up messenger bag beside her. Both of her skinny wrists are layered with beaded bracelets that definitely once belonged to a child.

The effect is jarring - childish and garish - but it is also somehow the most Alice. That this is exactly who she is - worn out, beaten-up, but still very much herself. It feels like the first time Jess has actually seen her for herself and it’s exactly how Jess always assumed Alice looked.

“Jess?” Edward’s looking at her with a confused expression, but she’s not listening anymore. It’s like sixty years of trauma all knotted and tangled up inside of her has come loose and she can finally relax. That she’s finally putting everything together and maybe it will be okay now.

She strides over to the car, past the whispering students wondering how the Cullens know this weird barefoot girl and what Jess Hale is going to do, and right up to the SUV. For a second, they stare at each other before Jess drops her bag to the ground and climbs up onto the roof, their gazes never breaking.

Alice stares back at her, her expression not changing at all; her eyes just tracking her movement. There’s nothing there, no emotion or reaction. Just the flat gaze of someone used to being hunted.

And Jess kisses her.

She clasps Alice’s face in her hands and kisses her for the first time in more than sixty years, an apology and a celebration that Alice is here and she’s alive and they found each other.

Jess knows that behind her, the population of Forks High is gaping and whispering and judging - she can hear a few wolf-whistles, she’s sure that admin is already calling Carlisle and Esme to come in for a meeting with the guidance counselor, and that there will be a slur written on the front of her locker in the morning.

Small towns are all the same.

She knows that the penny finally dropped for Emmett and Rose (though she suspects that Emmett already guessed, after that weird speech he gave her back in ’79 about how it’s cool that he likes bears and she likes bears too and that everyone can like what they like, and it doesn’t have to be a big deal. She originally assumed it was because Carlisle and Esme were paying closer attention to the local wildlife and sustainability, but apparently it was really about her being gay. Metaphor was never his strong suit.)

Rosalie will be rolling her eyes that Jess had to be so dramatic and couldn’t do this privately.

She knows that Edward is going to have another spiritual crisis that involves too many dirges on the piano, a lot of whining at Carlisle, and somehow making the fact that Jess is gay all about his perpetual teenage-boy pain and hypocritical beliefs.

She doesn’t care that everyone is going to talk about her right up until the Cullens move away; that she’s going to be the ‘gay Cullen girl’ now, and made a whole lot of trouble for the family. She doesn’t care that Esme’s probably going to give her a sweet but awkward speech about how loved and accepted she is, and how she could have told them at any time.

It’s honestly going to suck for a few weeks, after this stunt.

But she doesn’t regret it. She doesn’t regret it because Alice is there and the familiar lemon-sugar tang of her venom hasn’t changed, and Alice doesn’t shove her away. And that’s halfway to everything being perfect.

When Jess pulls back, Alice squeezes her eyes shut. “I-I didn’t have anywhere else to go,” are the first words Alice speaks to her, quiet and nervous, and Jess hates so much that Alice seems so resigned, so small and tired.

Their good times might have been brief, a little flash in their fucked up, messy history, but that’s how Jess remembers her the clearest. That’s when Alice was the brightest.

Not this girl who seemed as substantial as mist, halfway dead and mostly lost; this girl that Jess feels is slipping away from her faster than she can save her. This is the version of Alice that terrifies the fuck out of Jess, frankly. A blank slate of emotion, no way to determine what she’s thinking or feeling, but she can see that all joy and hope has drained from her. The walking dead, in every way that matters.

And the idea that Alice would go anywhere else before coming to Jess, that Alice assumes Jess would not want her here makes Jess feel vaguely sick. That Alice is waiting for a reprimand, retribution, and punishment for coming to find her.

(What happened to her? This isn’t the steady girl that she left behind. This version of her is so very shattered. Of all the ways Jess had imagined Alice after she left, this one was never even a shadow of a possibility.)

“This is the only place you need to be,” Jess says in a low voice, reaching out to cradle Alice’s cheek. “I am so … fucking happy to see you. I missed you so much.” There are a million other questions she has - Are you okay? How did you get away? What do you need? - but she saves them, tucks them away for later when they are cloistered in a corner of the Cullens’ enormous house, and there is time for mess and raw pain and the opportunity to breathe.

Alice bites her lip and nods, and that’s when Jess’s siblings gather around the car, obviously having walked slowly to give Jess and Alice a moment alone. Or as alone as they could be with several hundred high school students watching and commentating.

“We need to take this back to the house,” Rose says stiffly; she’s not happy at the spectacle in front of the school, but she’s not particularly upset with Jess or Alice; Jess wonders how long Rose’s tolerance will last. “Edward’s taking Bella home.”

Somehow, reality is separate from whatever is happening right now, like she and Alice are in some kind of bubble, away from Forks and humans and all the day to day monotony. Right now, she’s just intensely aware of Alice’s body so close to hers; to that sweet lemon-sunshine scent that Alice has always had. Of the new scars on Alice’s hands and face that Jess doesn’t know; and the way she holds her right arm closer to her body. She is so intensely aware of the way Alice’s eyelashes brush her cheeks as she blinks, perfectly still and perfectly unhappy.

None of it feels real, not even with Alice’s hand in hers.

“Let’s go,” she manages to tell Alice, who nods. She always follows orders.

Jess slides off the roof of the car to land next to it, reaching out a hand to help Alice down.

“I’ve got you,” she says, brushing some of Alice’s hair off of her face.

Alice stares at her for a moment, those big dark eyes that Jess has been in love with for longer than she can remember.

“You always have,” Is all she says, as they climb into the car, but she doesn’t take her hand out of Jess’s.

I’ve got you.

—

alice.

The Cullen house smells clean and like the woods at the back of the garden. It’s full of light, it’s dry, it’s a hundred different things that Monterrey never was and could never aspire to be. Like so many things she’s known lately, it feels like something she’s allowed to see, but it’s not for her to keep. A stolen glimpse before she keeps moving.

Her feet stick to the wooden floors, and she’s intensely aware that the lake bath she had before she got to Forks is not enough for these people. They wear shoes and jewelry, and they’ve got their clothing in the right order. They aren’t like her.

Right now, everything feels very far away, like she’s watching herself from a great distance.

She knows that Jessamine is waiting for her to speak, to say something small. To offer her a truth, a reason, for why she came to her. To finally share that cursed secret Jessamine demanded all those years ago, when keeping it was the only thing that kept them both alive.

Maybe the thing she wants more than anything is to scream and scream until it all spills out of her. That she’s all knotted up inside, that aren’t so much secrets as the whole, messy truth.

The truth is that she was raised back up with no memory of love or affection or family, just a vague promise of it that was ruined before she even began, and she’s not really sure how love is supposed to feel anymore.

So she’s spent eighty years clinging to a half-glimpsed possibility of her and Jessamine meeting in a human establishment, of that soft and perfect promise because she had nothing else, and now she’s not who she was when Jessamine left her, and she’s never going to be who she was supposed to be, not for herself or for Jessamine or for both of them.

She knows if she could sleep, there would be nothing but nightmares and horrors. Of all the things she’s seen and done, all the things that have been done to her. That just to survive, to save them both, she had to let herself be swallowed up, bite by bite, by the wars and the propaganda and so many lies.

And now she doesn’t know if there’s anything left of her to salvage, let alone piece back together.

Jessamine’s hand is in hers, and it isn’t letting go.

That’s something.

All the words that are being spoken, they sound like they are muffled, underwater somehow. They look at her, waiting, and the words still don’t come.

The urge to scream is fading. Jessamine’s hand is still in hers; maybe she’s holding on too tight. She feels like if she lets go, everything will disappear.

So she holds on tighter and steadies herself and even manages to walk further into the house. Maybe she finds just enough words to explain that it’s all new and fresh and when she ran, it was like the flat of a knife against a human throat - a flash of a chance, more likely death than freedom, but somehow she made it work.

That the idea of hunting turns her stomach, and the whole world seemed so big and bright that the only place to go was to Jessamine.

“I’ve never known anything but you and life here.”

(Later, cloistered in Jessamine’s study wearing borrowed clothing, she’ll start to weep and she won’t be able to stop. Jessamine will hold her and stroke her hair and try to reassure her of things that Alice has never confided in her. They won’t be the last tearless tears she will cry, but they will be the rawest and the truest. She still doesn’t know what love or hope or dreams feel like, but whatever this is, it’s more than she’s ever had before.)

AN:

Yeah, this version of Mary-Alice somehow got the worst welcome to Monterrey; a vision of her True Love interrupted by said True Love deciding to attack her; taken back to Maria to be tortured for information for a couple of nights before being tossed into the barn with a bunch of fresh and vicious newborns who don’t recognise her as One of Them. She really opted to get all flavors of trauma packed into that very first week of life.

Mary-Alice never told Jessamine or Maria about her gift at all. According to them, she was giftless, just skilled. That first week really fucked with her head.

This version has Mary-Alice leave the South and head straight to Forks. There’s about a week between Mary-Alice fleeing Maria and turning up on the Cullens’ car, so there’s a lot of fresh hurt and a lot of terror at being in a brave new world where she doesn’t know the rules. So, she’s been with Maria from 1919 right up until the 2000s.

Jess, to me, has always had a more hair-trigger temper and spontaneous personality compared to Jasper. This is because of the period-typical emotional repression that men aspired to during the Civil War; Jessamine is a little freer with expressing herself because, frankly, it would take balls to run away and pose as a boy to join the army, and even more to achieve the rank of Major. Jessamine is definitely a wildcard.

I spit on Life and Death’s version of Jessamine being kidnapped into the wars.

It was intentional that Jess only shortened her name after she met the Cullens, and that whilst she calls Mary-Alice ‘Alice’, Mary-Alice never calls her ‘Jess’. How this is significant is up to you.

Yes, the relationship between Jess and Alice feels darker than in OG STL, but this is Jessamine's side of the story. She's always painted all of her choices and actions before the Cullens with the same brush - that she was toxic and monstrous.

#jessamine hale #alice cullen #jalice #gay twilight #lgbtq twilight #ficmas23 #ficmas #my fic: lead & follow #i feel like jess lasts three days and then calls peter for reinforcements because she has no idea what to do #alice just wants to curl up somewhere dark and cool and breakdown for a while #the gossip in forks is WILD after this #it took me ages to try and format this properly and it didn't work thanks so much tumblr

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