#some implied violence

[goldeneyedgirl]

whumptober 2022: day 15: unimaginable things (jasper/alice, AU)

Title: Unimaginable Things

Prompt: day 15: lies

Rating: M (body horror)

He joined the Olympia seven years ago now, still on probation from everything that happened with Maria and the Monterrey... Everything about these people, he cares about fiercely. But they also scare the shit out of him just by existing. 

Viltri is a graveyard. It’s a place of death and dying. 

He used to like the story of Viltri. An old planet, a small one, riddled with volcanic activity that was slowly dissolving it. The Federation reinforced the surface with an alloy frame, one that reminded him of the old-fashioned models - an orrery, that’s right - from Earth. But shit happens, and slowly the planet dissolved and took more than half the frame with it and then Viltri was just a curve of alloy flowing in space, a docking station with slums surrounding it, carving out some kind of living with booze, weapons, sex, and scavenging. A real shithole. 

That was the Viltri he knew as a kid. A place to get totally shitfaced and gamble a month’s wages in a few hours, and wake up in a shitty box of a room with some stranger who was just a little too gaunt and a little too worn down to be beautiful. 

But five years ago, the Federation acknowledged that it was over. The remnants of the frame were decaying, crumbling away. Entire buildings on the fringe were quickly collapsing, and the deaths were becoming noticeable. And because of the docks, because of the risk to ships passing through, Viltri had to be evacuated and abandoned, no questions asked. Third-generation criminals had been delighted they had finally found a way off without Federation paperwork, whilst the handful of native descendants had staged ceremonies of passing for the remnants of their home. 

And now it was empty. No vermin underfoot, no smell of cheap food cooked and fried and replicated. No music or shouting or rumble from the dock station. No cloud of smoke that was. some kind of miasma of fuel and smoke and shit. Nothing. 

The lights are off, the buildings are empty, and Viltri is just waiting for its slow descent into nothing. 

They shouldn’t even be there; Carlisle is back on the ship, fielding numerous messages about why they passed the safety barrier against Federation decree. Promising that they have enough fuel and rations to last them. 

“We received an SOS, and whilst the origins and timestamp were corrupted, we’re doing a sweep of the area.”

Such an easy explanation, an act of a good Samaritan. Edward’s probably already created the false message in the system for proof when some bureaucrat demands it - they’ve already demanded fuel and ration records. Rosalie’s signed off on more documents in the last hour than all month, and she’s still pissy that they came at all. 

Glass and debris crunch under his boots, and he wonders if they were wrong, if the message was old. There had been no response to the reply messages that they had sent through and that’s… well, it was the I.D. chip in their wrist (her left one) that ran the messaging system and it was powered by their bodies. The lack of reply implied…

He doesn’t think about that. Instead, he focuses on the groan of the alloy frame, a death rattle. Viltri’s got only weeks left, if Edward’s analysis is correct. 

That its final orbit was always destined to be very slow and then fast and then over.

(That hits a little too close to home. Or it will, when he looks back.)

—

His story isn’t an interesting one, like Charlotte’s. Or an adventure, like Peter’s. Born on Earth to a pair of young parents who were dazzled by the promise of space, they set off with nothing but what they could carry. 

And it was everything they hoped for. Until it wasn’t. 

He remembers how his father died far more clearly than he wants to. 

(People are always visibly disappointed that his mom lives over in Panai with his stepfather and his three half-siblings. Things aren’t exactly warm and fuzzy between them - she insists she doesn’t understand him anymore - but he talks to her sometimes. She’s happy and safe. Apparently, his story would be better if she had become a vigilante or a villain or gone and died as well.) 

He’s the least interesting of the Olympia crew; Carlisle, the heavily augmented doctor, scientist, and engineer who was one of the early pioneers in space, and was right there when Earth signed on as honorary Federation members. The owner and leader of their little clan, he’s at least a hundred years old, and his augmentations are the oldest, hydraulic-powered type that he refuses to upgrade. 

Then there’s Esme, the Atargatian female. Something about her features - the slope of her nose and the tilt of her eyes - remind him of Earth deer from his childhood picture books. In all the documentation, she’s a personal care assistant for Carlisle. That’s not really his story to tell, though. But she’s the heart of them all, the one that never flinches back from the bad, the disgusting, the grotesque. 

There’s sad, arrogant Edward who is a monument to Carlisle’s grief more than anything else.

Sharp, vain Rosalie who captains the ship, a refugee in her own right, and smarter than all of them put together. 

And then Emmett, the one-man deck crew. Emmett had never met an order he wouldn’t take - especially if it came from Rose. The man had been mooning over Rosalie ever since he’d joined the ship according to Edward, and Jasper had to admire Emmett’s commitment. 

There wasn’t really enough for a ship the size of the Olympia - there were more than a few spaces that sat empty and forgotten - but they all tend to think of it as a luxury. They all appreciate the space to be alone, to not have to fight for water and food, and peace. And sometimes Carlisle would call up the Denali or any one of his old friends who freelance if they needed an extra body or some fresh blood for a season. 

A leader, a ghost, a nurse, a captain slash engineer, an… Emmett (whose job is everything and nothing; one day he might be co-piloting with Rose, but the next he’s running the comms. He’s too good to be on a ship like the Olympia, too reasonable and proactive. A jack of all trades, and a good one.) 

And him, security. 

No analyst, not anymore. 

He and Emmett cover the tech side of things, with Edward’s input. That position has been open for more than five years. Long-term dispatch under her name in the system, like the computer won’t archive her profile in a few months and the Federation won’t send them paperwork to confirm her permanent departure from their crew. 

(And it’s his fault she left.)

—

He picks his way north and pretends the only thing crunching underfoot is glass and rubble. A few candles are still burning, jammed into nooks of walls, and spilling the red and yellowy wax down the bricks, like a burst wound. He leaves them to burn because they were lit by the descendants, the ones who watched their planet dying, only to be saved, and then lost again. The ones who finally realized that the Federation, despite their promises, didn’t really care that much about a remote planet with no long-term resources they could lay claim to. 

Maybe he’s getting bitter in his old age.

Their farewell had been poignant, piecing together the reports from the final departure - candles and prayers and ancient dirt saved in jars for decades flung out in memory of where they had begun. 

There’s an old sign, dull and broken, and when he kicks the rubble off it, he recognizes it. Not the language - no one can read Viltrian, a language with more than 900 characters across five alphabets - but the English speakers (it’s fuckin’ ridiculous they still call themselves ‘English’ speakers, but it’s been over a century and Earth is still refusing to name its official language, and there’s still a furious battle between English, Mandarin, and - inexplicably - French. The next argument will be whether Earth changes its designation to Terra or Sol or something because ‘Earth’ does not translate well to a lot of Federation languages) called it Rocco’s, due to some complex series of events long before Jasper’s time. 

Either way, he’d spent more than a few nights there - drinking and smoking and ending up in a shitty cot above the bar with a glassy-eyed companion. It had been the safest bar in Viltri for humans, the one place they wouldn’t risk being beaten or skinned or molested or just killed. The one place where the food was guaranteed not to be poisonous, the drink wouldn’t burn a literal hole in your stomach, and most of the barmaids knew enough human first aid to be useful. 

The sign is too big to drag with him, and that’s regrettable. The loss of that little safe place, that sanctuary, reminds him of things he’d rather forget. Reminds him of people he’ll never see again, and a person he’ll never be again. 

If he reaches down to snap off the end of one character, brace-laser cutting through it clean, then no one is around to see it. 

He feels like a vulture, like a carrion bird, picking over a body. 

They shouldn’t have come, there’s nothing here. 

That’s when his radio crackles to life, Rosalie’s voice sharp and serious, summoning them west - and he turns on a dime, both reluctant and anticipatory. 

—

He joined the Olympia seven years ago now, still on probation from everything that happened with Maria and the Monterrey, and tired and used up by the scavenging ships. Even the legit ones were the kind of place that wore everyone right down to nothing. The Olympia seemed like a cushy job; security for some soft-hearted millionaire running a traveling medic ship. There was nothing special about the pay or the brief, but he’d applied and gotten the job in two days. 

It had been surprising, how small the crew was. There were three empty rooms on his deck alone - one used for overflow storage. But it was… nice. Nice to have his own room and not just a bunk. A private washroom. Requisitions that were more of a formality than a process or game of roulette. 

Meeting everyone was done over dinner, a communal meal that resembled the family meals at his mother’s home more than any he’d taken aboard a ship - second and third helpings were taken without a blink, and it was mostly fresh food and not the typical stock rations most ships fed their crew. Emmett is boisterous and fun, Edward is seated and irritable, with no food or drink in front of him (it’ll be a week before Esme clues him in to Edward and the perfect tragedy of his existence, and a couple of months before his presence at dinner isn’t uncomfortable. But he’ll never be comfortable with Edward’s complete and utter access to every corner of the Olympia, to every security camera and microphone and file.) 

And then she had breezed into dinner late, and he had frozen for a moment. 

Five feet nothing, easily, and with the biggest brown eyes he’s ever seen; the tell-tale gold disc fitted over her left iris revealing some kind of augmentation, mirrored in the slim vein of alloy outlining the left side of her jaw. Barefoot and in loose pants and a tank top, her hair piled messily on top of her head, she’s just the most beautiful thing he’s seen in a long time.  

“Jasper, this is Alice - our analyst tech,” Carlisle said, smiling brightly as the girl snagged the remaining plate on the counter. “Alice, Jasper is our new security officer.”

“Hi Jasper, the new security officer,” she replies with a smile that feels brighter than anything he’s seen in a long time. “Nice to meet you.”

(Her left arm has the silvery plates of alloy peaking through the skin, especially around her elbow and wrist; it’ll be several months later when he finds the plating runs all the way down her left side, and she’s gone through and etched flowers on all the surface plating, like tattooing over a scar. There are a million different reasons for augmentation and the invisible kind is outrageously expensive. Later, when he’s going over all the onboarding paperwork, he examines the crew profiles and is secretly pleased that there are no android disclaimers on Alice’s. Some people would say he’s discriminating, but he’s not fucking anything without a soul.

That’s crude and unfair. He just … doesn’t want to get his hopes up if Alice isn’t real, if she’s just a tool to help them get their jobs done. If nothing else, he wants the Olympia and all of its unexpected promises to be real.)

—

Rosalie is already with her when he and Emmett make it to the old docking station. 

And for a moment, he doesn’t recognize her. The tiny figure in the black hood, sitting on the ground with Rosalie crouched beside her, slapping some med-patches onto her, is not one he associates with Alice. 

“What a shithole,” Emmett says cheerfully. “No idea why you’d camp out here, Alice.”

Rosalie tugs the hood off Alice’s face to add a med-patch to her temple and jugular, and he’s surprised at how much she’s changed. Her hair is cut harshly to her chin, uneven on one side. She looks smaller, beaten, in layers of worn pro-tex that doesn’t seem to fit right. And clutching a worn-out duffle. She glances at him, and then immediately away. 

“I don’t even want you to fucking look at me, you understand?” His hand was fisted so tightly in her hair that when he lets go, the strands are tangled in his watch and he doesn’t give a shit when he rips the hair from her lying head. He pretends her terror, the tears rolling down her cheeks didn’t cut into him sharply. Pretends he’s in control of his rage and fear and trauma, and that this isn’t just him wildly lashing out like a feral animal. He just storms away and leaves her there, without looking back. 

“Ready to go?” Is all he says, as Rosalie checks something on the med-screen and nods. 

“I…” Alice begins, but the look Rose shoots her stops her. “Ready.”

She’s unsteady on her feet, but she doesn’t relinquish the bag. Instead, she trails after them, limping and fragile to watch. He can see how worn her clothing is, and pro-tex is compromised when it wears. And when it’s as ill-fitted as Alice’s set is. She might as well be walking around in pajamas. 

They had to dock on the opposite side, and it’s a slow walk back. Rosalie makes them stop a few times, offering Alice pouches of rehydration fluids, and checking her vitals with a blank look on her face. 

The luminous blue mesh of the med-patches on her face draws his eyes and he tries to remember his own first-aid training. He’s not qualified to use the blue ones, but the green ones need to be placed directly over the injury and she has them everywhere, and the worry is tight in his chest, and he hates himself for caring even a little. 

Emmett finds an old Viltri flag amongst the wreckage and ties it to a broken pole and carries it like they’re on some kind of adventure mission and not just an SOS call from an old crew member on a dead planet. 

What would have happened if they hadn’t come? 

How did she get here?

How could she have gotten off Viltri before it collapsed? 

She walks in silence, her head bowed, blue mesh glowing on her skin, and he wonders what he’s going to say to her when they get back. What can he say? Nothing has really changed; they’re both just five years older. 

The shudder and groan of Viltri’s death underscores their silence as they pick their way through the wreckage. There are a handful of bodies, and it’s not hard to imagine residents choosing suicide over evacuation in the face of everything… or even for career criminals to hide and choose to die free than risk being discovered. 

He breathes a sight of relief as the Olympia comes into view. It’s become home, somehow. 

But Alice’s head ducks further, and one hand shoots up to tug her hood up, and the fresh wave of guilt settles in nicely.

Why does he still care so damn much?

—

The first few weeks on the ship are weird, he decides. And then it becomes… not quite home, he hasn’t had one of those in a very long time. But a place he’s okay being in. 

Rosalie is one of the Faceless from Velea, and he is quickly warned to never ask about her life before the Olympia; she’s whip-smart, with an engineering background and Carlisle training her as a ship-level medic. Emmett had been working on ships since he was a kid, piecing together a living to help out his family and maybe save for his own small ship one day. Esme was a runaway, and he’s surprised that someone so kind and steady could do something as spontaneous as fleeing home and joining a med support ship as a barely-qualified nurse. 

Edward was an enigma until Jasper catches him walk through a fucking wall and Esme kindly takes him aside and explains that Edward is a hologram AI designed off of Carlisle’s missing son. The whole story is horrible, and there’s something morbid about sitting down with what is essentially a memory. But despite everything, Edward is smart and occasionally witty. 

Alice is a delight, and he hasn’t enjoyed someone’s company so much in a long time. She’s always smiling, always happy to pause for a conversation. She seems to have an easy back-and-forth with everyone on the ship. She’s terribly vague about her past - the most he gets out of her is that she doesn’t have any memories of her family, and was on her own until Carlisle was willing to offer her a place on the Olympia. 

He finds himself drawn to her, seeking her out when she’s on break. He tries to justify it to himself, that it’s just been a long time since Maria; it’s been a while since he’s spent time with friends, with people who aren’t as miserable as he is. It’s a good thing that he’s making normal friends.

(If he sticks close to her side when they dock, fetches the drinks, and turns down smoking, ignores the pointed looks of the willing around the bar… well, it would be fucking rude to abandon her.)

They are a sight to behold, he knows, about more than one person whispers about them when they are docked on a new planet. Two humans together? A rare sight on the more rural planets. And they are an interesting contrast; he towers over her, with blond hair and sharp grey eyes. She’s so slender, with black hair that she changes on a whim - sometimes it’s long and pin straight, or short and curly, or braided with bright purple streaks. 

It’s… nice to be normal. Ordinary. Emmett’s quick to show him how to hide the parole anklet in the style of boots they’re issued on the Olympia (nicer than anything else he’s ever gotten on any other job), and Rosalie is quick to pay the bill if she suspects he’s short on cash. No one judges him too hard when he wants to smoke; Rosalie huffs and rolls her eyes, Emmett jokes about it but very, very rarely joins him. Alice does, but she’s tiny enough that she’s a lightweight, and Emmett ends up carrying her back to the dock dorms more than once. 

It’s especially nice when those outings somehow turn into just him and Alice. Sometimes they bum around in the crew bars, the ones where the food is greasy, the music is loud, and the booze is cheap. Sometimes they end up in nicer places, where the lighting is low and the food is good, and they have to sit too close to each other. 

It starts with a drink and a kiss, a dance, and an awkward night bunking together at the dock dorms because they checked in too late and there was only one bed. 

Alice feels like a fresh start, like something good and happy and safe. Like maybe he’s been looking for a place where he could be happy when he should have been looking for a person. He never thought he’d meet someone he’d be okay with being stuck out in the middle of space for weeks on end.

Then he met Alice and, well, he’d get lost with her any time. 

(Too goddamn good to be true.)

—

Carlisle is delighted by their return, only a flicker in his expression when he glimpses Alice. 

“Food and then med bay,” Rosalie orders, pushing past to head to the cockpit, dumping the stash bags in the alcove. “Then rest. Anything else can wait.”

“Thanks Captain,” Edward says snottily and Rose just flips her fingers rudely at him, ignoring Emmett’s chortle, the flag still in his grip. 

“I’ve got food waiting,” Esme beams at Alice, and Alice nods silently, accepting the gentle squeeze on the shoulder that Esme offers as she takes them all to the galley, to plate up the food and settle around the table.

For a moment, Alice is wolfing down the food in the kind of way that indicates she hasn’t eaten in a while. Esme’s a good cook, even with the shelf-stable shit they have to keep between docking. 

But just as suddenly as she starts, she stops before bolting to the flush sink, hurling before she’s even still. Esme is there with water and comfort and Carlisle shakes his head. 

“A little too much too fast,” he says as Alice wipes her mouth. 

“Sorry,” she mutters, keeping her gaze on the ground as she sits back at the table, not bothering to reach for her plate again. 

It’s an odd reunion of the crew, Alice fidgeting for a while. He doesn’t know what to say to her because he doesn’t know how he feels about her. Five years is a long time, but nothing has changed. 

Or maybe he has. Maybe five years apart, knowing he was the reason she left, has shamed him and softened him. Maybe all of those lessons he was supposed to learn from the debacle with Maria, he really learned from Alice. 

She should have told him the truth. But he should never have been that angry, that cruel and terrible to her. 

He still hasn’t worked out what to say to her when Esme escorts her to the guest suite, with Carlisle promising to look over her med report, and Alice still clutching her duffle bag. 

“I-I need to talk to you, Carlisle,” Alice says in a small voice, and something passes between the pair when she says that. 

“Of course. After dinner - you need some rest,” Carlisle says and everything feels a little off-centre, so he skips the rest of lunch and spends the day locked in the old analyst office doing ship paperwork because somehow that’s more appealing than being alone with his thoughts right now. 

—

Every year, Carlisle gives them ten days off. They dock on one of the capital Federation planets so that the Olympia can be serviced and maintain its accreditation, and they get a break. 

They usually choose late summer-early autumn - or what passes for it - for Emmett’s benefit, so he can spend time with his family. This year, he’s loaded up with gifts and dragging Rose along with him; Carlisle (and Edward) are headed to the University of Namen; Esme and Alice are going off with the crew from the Denali, and he’s headed off to see his mother. 

Panai is one of the planets most like Earth’s visions of the future, of alien cities. A futuristic white city with abundant green-space, clean air, and children playing in the street. His mother lives on the hill, with her new family, a bit of a local oddity being the only humanoid living in the Panai equivalent of suburbia.

Cass Whitlock lights up when she sees him, her smile genuine as she embraces him and brings him inside the house, but he still feels the words they exchanged right before he left with Maria sitting between them. With every argument and disagreement and look of frustrated disappointment on her face. 

His half-siblings peer around the corner of the meal-room; two giggling girls and a toddler boy - Cat, Nori, and Baby Lo. Cat’s the one that looks most like him and his mom; the blonde hair, her nose. But all three of them strongly resemble their father with the mottled blue skin, the extra digits on each hand, and the two smaller eyes under each humanoid eye. Nori has sinuous blue strands in place of hair, and both she and Lo have the flat, serpentine nose of their father, Najo. 

Jasper’s never gotten along with Najo, whose strict religious leanings made him distant and cold to outsiders. The few times Jasper had been to the house, had chosen to stay there instead of at the dock dorms, it had been uncomfortable at best. But the man keeps the space for Jasper’s father in the shrine wall out of respect for Cass, and his mom is happy with her life. That’s all he wanted for her. He’s just hurt that her happiness never seemed to have a space for him when he was younger, and now that she has made a space, it’s not a shape that he fits into anymore. 

“How are you, Jas?” Cass is already preparing snacks, and he pretends not to hear Cat hush the others. He’s got gifts for them - Najo had been seething with offence the first time he’d arrived without traditional offerings, even as Cass tried to explain that human culture didn’t involve the guest - especially family - making an ‘offering’ to allow their presence.

“I’m good. I brought stuff,” he says, and there’s a whoop of delight as Nori darts out, visibly sniffing the air. He piles the boxes on the table - wine and tea and the candy Nori ferrets out. The books make Cass smile and kiss his head, and it’s times like this he misses the outpost he was raised, the quasi-human compound that was just familiar enough to give his parents confidence. 

“You don’t have to, you know,” she says as she scoops up Lo, handing him a piece of the candy. “Najo understands.”

“Najo was genuinely disappointed I wasn’t executed or sentenced off-planet,” Jasper says and regrets it when Cat’s smile disappears. Old enough to understand, then. “I don’t want to cause trouble.”

“I appreciate that.” 

The visit goes surprisingly well, and when Najo gets home, he is polite - warm to his children and Cass, so Jasper doesn’t really care how he’s treated. 

Unexpectedly, Nori seems taken with him, staring at him as they eat, but he really doesn’t know how to talk to kids, especially these children that share his mother. 

It’s late when he goes to the shrine-wall; dozens of little alcoves with photocells of the dead. Cass only has five alcoves - Jack Whitlock, her parents, a brother who died as a kid, and a friend who died at the same time as Jack. The rest are Najo’s family and friends. 

He leaves a stone, from Yavanna, at his father’s memorial. Najo hates it, hates the symbol of an Earth faith in his home. And Jasper himself was not raised in any faith, but his father had been and it was just … one thing he could do for him. 

“You seem lighter.” He turns to see Cass. The children are asleep, and Najo is in the sanctuary, so it’s finally just them. 

“Easier work,” he shrugs. And it’s true, the salvage ships are hellish; he lost fifteen pounds his first stint, and it had only been a half-time job.

Cass shook her head. “You’re less angry,” she clarified. “I’m glad you’ve found a better place.” She moves towards the opposite wall, the one that bears the photocells of the living with incense and coins to ensure a good life. His photo hasn't been there in years - probably destroyed when he was arrested - and he hasn’t been bitter about it in a while.

“Tell me about your new crew.” Cass begins to tidy up the shrine, picking up bits of dried fruit and candy that the children have left there, and he finds himself talking, explaining, and trying to gloss over the stranger or more personal details of the people he works with. He finds himself talking about Rosalie and Alice, about their educations and how goddamn smart they are, before musing about Alice’s fascination with all things Earth and how much more celebrated someone as skilled as she was would be back there. 

“Alice, huh? Are you close? She sounds like she likes you,” Cass has a knowing look on her face as she watches him, and he looks away. Alice is a lot of things, but they aren’t anything serious. A teasing kiss in the tech room, a drink at a bar wherever they’ve docked, a soft conversation when everyone else is asleep over coffee about everything and anything… it’s becoming something, but slowly. And he’s cautious. After everything that Maria did, promised him, and everything that she ruined… he never told Cass any of that, and he doesn’t want to confirm that it was worse than she already assumed.

He lets out a huff of breath and Cass beams at him, reaching out to squeeze his hand. 

“I only ever wanted you to be happy, Jas. To let go of that anger and fear and let yourself be happy. I know it’s hard, but that’s all I’ve ever wanted for you. Sometimes it feels like I lost you and Jack at the same time, even when I had you by my side.”

He nods, but the old anger flares; the one that let her move on so easily. That she was sad for a while and she packed it away after a while. Met Najo and picked him over Jasper; build herself a brand new perfect little family.

“Do you even remember that day?” he asks, after she’s turned to leave, and when she looks around again, she just looks frustrated. 

“Of course I do, Jasper. I still have nightmares. But being angry after twelve years… it doesn’t fix a thing.”

“Maybe not for you.” Because you weren’t there. You only showed up when it was too late, when it was all over. The words he spat at her as a traumatized fifteen-year-old hover in the air. 

“I’m not having this conversation again. I’m glad you’re happy, and I’m glad you’ve made friends. Good night, Jasper.”

(Cass always thought it was like magic, the idea that a few chemicals in a petri-dish could create a fetus; he knows she was enchanted that she could go to the equivalent of a 711 and buy a baby, a child, another whole person, in a test tube. He wondered why she had never done it, grabbed the green and purple tubes of Synth, and taken it home to build the second child she and Jack could never manage. Afterward, well, she had always just been sad. Never angry.)

They don’t talk alone again before he leaves after breakfast, and he finds himself mulling over his mother’s words. Not about being happy - that ship sailed when he realised how deep he was in it with Maria. But about Alice. About that maybe being something. 

He still hugs Cass when he leaves and she wishes him well. As usual, he makes no promises when he’ll be back, and she doesn’t invite him. 

—

Edward shimmers as he strides irritably across the galley, and Jasper idly wonders what it’s like to be eternally seventeen. To have all the thoughts and feelings and memories of an ordinary kid, to think you are that kid but in reality, you aren’t. Just a database of code. 

(There’s a panel in the hall outside of Carlisle’s room and everyone hates it. Of a redheaded girl at a piano, smiling as she plays; then she looks over her shoulder and laughs. Miss Edythe Cullen, frozen forever at her piano; an eternal shrine that is a little too lifelike, a little too convincing.)

Rose strides into the kitchen and for a second, she’s faceless before her usual, perfected facade drops into place. He winces because Rose hates it when she lets her facades drop, when others see her in those moments. 

“She still in there with him?” She asks grumpily. 

“Yes,” Edward scowls. “Carlisle turned off the projection in there. Wanted privacy.”

“Esme’s retired for the night,” he adds in casually, and they all exchange looks. Esme is privy to so much of the crew’s … mess that it feels notable that she’s not included in whatever Carlisle and Alice are discussing in his quarters. 

He wants to not care, honestly. Not to desperately want to know how the fuck she ended up on Viltri after the evacuation. Why she had waited five goddamn years to call them. 

“Well, I’m not waiting up,” Rosalie said, turning on her heel and leaving. “Whatever she wants or has or knows is just going to be more drama.”

Edward huffs and continues pacing and Jasper slumps at the table and wonders again what its like to be eternally seventeen, and not being able to sleep or eat or fuck or do anything but wait. 

Everything about these people, he cares about fiercely. But they also scare the shit out of him just by existing. 

—

When he walks into the galley the next morning, he expects a crisis. He expects Rosalie to be percolating with irritation, Emmett to be shoveling in breakfast so that he can get on with whatever plans they need to put into action, Carlisle arguing with Edward and trying to talk Rosalie out of her snit, and Alice and Esme to be trying not to trigger an argument. 

He’s not expecting silence, of Rose and Emmett drinking coffee alone. 

“Where is everyone?” He asks. Esme prides herself on cooking for them regularly, but this morning is pre-packaged rations that Emmett is attempting to reanimate with gels and the precious bottle of honey they snagged during the last supply run. 

“Edward and Alice haven’t come to breakfast,” Rosalie said, her stern look masking her worry. “Esme is tending to Carlisle.”

That’s bad. ‘Tending’ means she’s there in a professional sense, as Carlisle’s nurse. ‘Tending’ means that something is wrong. He can’t even begin to understand Carlisle’s health or medical status, but the few incidents he’s seen are clear reasons that Esme is employed on the ship, her relationship with Carlisle notwithstanding. 

“Rose thinks she’s handing out a nice relaxing sedative,” Emmett says, taking an experimental bite out of his breakfast and looking satisfied with the results. “Eddie hasn’t told us anything.”

“Probably just a long night,” he says, snapping off a chunk of the breakfast bar and popping it in his mouth. He regrets it immediately; it’s the same brand and flavor the Monterrey used to stock and it takes him back to a place he’d rather not be, mentally. “Or his hydraulics fucked up again. You know how he gets.”

“Maybe.” Rose pushes her untouched breakfast toward Emmett and stands up. “If you see Alice, tell her I want to see her in the med bay. You two are on dinner duty - no reheats or rations. I’ll take lunch.”

That’s when the sense of dread really settles into his bones. Rosalie offering to cook. 

It’s nothing. What could it be? They’re all here, the ship is fine, they have supplies. 

Anything that has happened, they can fix.

He tries to convince himself of that as he throws away his breakfast bar, but the bad taste continues to linger.

—

Of all the secrets he kept - the ones that kept Peter and Charlotte out of prison, the ones that let him still see his mom, the ones that mean the difference between life and death - the dumbest is the one that has always weighed the heaviest on him, has gnawed at him over the last five years. 

They got married on Xevis, drunk and high and happy. It was a fucking cliche, and when they had sobered up, she had laughed until tears rolled down her cheeks and he was just embarrassed that he didn’t do it properly. 

(Grandma Whitlock was still alive down there in Texas, and he’d always promised himself that he’d take himself back to see her one last time. With a bride in tow… well, that would have made her so happy.)

The paperwork sat in the inbox for nine weeks before everything went to hell, and then she left the ship, and he didn’t bother doing anything with it. Just an ugly, sour memory split between fear and resentment of everything that she hid from him, and regret for how he had driven her out of her home. 

(The marriage was legal and binding on Xevis, but never filed with the Federation. Meaningless unless they wanted to work or live on Xevis, and that would never fucking happen. He’d be more likely to set up shop on Viltri.) 

But it was still a vow. A moment where consequences and rationality had been damned, and he - they - had just done what they wanted. And then, when everything had gone wrong, he’d become the person everyone feared he always would end up being. 

Sometimes he wondered what would have happened if he’d never found out. If she’d just been another pretty augmented human girl to him, and his wife. He’d never wanted kids, and she’d never be able to have them, so that wouldn’t have revealed her. 

(He’d been shitfaced when Emmett dragged him back to the ship that last night, and loudly slurred if he ever saw the fuckin’ Synth again, he’d shoot her between the eyes. Esme and Rosalie had been horrified, and Emmett had blamed the drink. She’d already left by then, but it would take him another two days to notice her absence, those words echoing in his head.)

—

The compound he was raised on was one of two that Earth had contributed funding to, for expats. He remembered a scarlet sky with two suns, and lush grass that was more blue than green. He remembered their bungalow of straw and mottled wood. 

He remembers most of the residents at the compound being humans; the adults had grand plans of raising earth animals and selling them to alien worlds and making millions.

(He was only young. He didn’t know everything. He didn’t know anything. He knew three languages, and that watermelon, corn, and blueberries became poisonous when grown in alien soil, and that the half-alien girl in the house down by the northeast corner was the most beautiful creature he’d ever seen. He didn’t know the price on human bodies, on human tissue. He was a white boy from Texas; he could never have dreamed up how dangerous and unfair and cruel life could be.)

He was nearly twelve, by Earth-time, when it all went to hell. 

They were supposed to be safe. 

That’s why when the compound bought the Synths as support workers, they included security. It was probably more expensive than necessary but it was important 

Back then, Synths were not really special, not to him. Humans made in Petri dishes and grown in labs weren’t all that interesting when he might see something blue and gelatinous or with five legs or sixteen eyes at the docking station. They were just neighbours to all the kids in the community. 

And the Synths ones in the compound weren’t fancy; they looked like regular people. They were treated like regular people, mostly. The only real difference was the tattooed serial number on the inside of their middle finger, a shade darker than their skin. Something you had to look for, designed to be subtle.

No one knew they were unhappy; they were good at hiding it. Or rather, they were upset as the Federation began the Synth restrictions - tougher than androids because Synths could blend in so much easier. But no one noticed their rage. 

(The trigger was when Earth refused them passports, refused their entry, and made them stateless. He remembers his father promising his mother that it would be okay, they would look after their own.)

He remembers it being a hot day, helping his father with the precious few chickens they were attempting to acclimatize in a corner of the barn.

He remembers being confused when the barn doors closed.

He remembers his teacher, her gaze hard and cold against him, holding him back as the others cut Jack’s throat. 

As they laid Jasper’s father down next to the other men, the older teenagers (nine of them died that day), and stripped them down.

When they began to cut and slice and peel, as they bagged and boxed each piece, they didn’t need to hold him back anymore. He just stared, blood sticky on his face and hands. Too young to be worth a dime. 

Sixteen hours in that building, before they packed up their bounty and bid him farewell, and left him there with nine splayed out bodies, cut down to the bone and hollowed out for profit. 

(The one with the dark hair blew him a kiss and promised they’d come back for him when he was older. He still has that nightmare where he’s just another body on the floor, eyes and tongue and organs scooped out.)

Cass had howled when she saw Jack, screamed when she saw Jasper, and grabbed him in her arms so tightly when he reached for her that there were bruises on his arms. He shook but he didn’t cry, didn’t make a sound. 

Not even when the community lined up the other Synths, the ones that were just as confused and afraid as the humans were, and executed them on the spot.

Monsters were real and they wore human skin. 

—

Carlisle comes to dinner with red, tired eyes. 

Edward appears not at all. Neither does Alice. 

The meal is eaten in silence, Carlisle looking exhausted and worn and utterly hopeless and nothing is said until the plates are cleared and Rosalie is pouring cups of coffee. 

“Rosalie, please run co-ordinates for Noctuae, Small Island,” Carlisle finally says, deflated. “They should be in the system.”

“Of course,” Rosalie says cautiously; she’s been quiet all day - like the rest of them, she’s been waiting for whatever bomb is about to be dropped.

“Emmett, send a message through to Masen House that we will be docking for three in nine,” Carlisle adds, staring down at the translucent slices of fruit remaining on his plate with the sort of hopelessness Jasper is familiar with. 

“Masen House?” Rosalie asks, and Jasper surreptitiously runs a search for the name in with his Lens, the name ringing some faint bell. Edward Masen Cullen. “What’s going on, Carlisle?”

There is a terrible, hollow pause as they watch Carlisle try to gather himself. 

“Alice brought me Edward,” Carlisle says simply, staring into his mug. “She found him being used as a tissue farm and…” His head bows and Esme’s gone pale in horror, and Emmett looks vaguely ill. 

Tissue farming had popped up before the Synths and continued on after them; it wasn’t something they could be blamed for. It just… wasn’t taboo in some quarters of space. DNA splicing, transplants, blood, and organ donation… it was all legal. The problem was in that there was always a demand for more variety, more choices, especially exotic ones. Like humans. And where there was demand, there was always going to be someone willing to provide. 

He imagines what Alice found when she saw Edward. If it was a nice place, probably a man kept alive on life-support, harvested at the whim of wealthy clients. Probably brain-dead from the chemical coma. 

If it wasn’t a nice place… he didn’t want to imagine that. Edward’s just a kid.

Or he was. He always has been. Always will be, now. 

Carlisle sets the metal box down, a rough label slapped on the front, along with a blood-stained microchip. 

“She had no way of traveling with him,” Carlisle began, and he can already see the sobs building. “And he couldn’t have anyway, he was gone.” The sobs break through and Jasper wonders what that level of love felt like when turned to grief. If he’d sob if any of his half-ling siblings were found too far gone to help. 

“We’ll take him to Small Island,” Esme rushes to comfort Carlisle, her own face streaked with tears. “With Edythe and Elizabeth.”

“Yes. The end of a chapter,” Carlisle manages with a shuddering breath. “A father without his children…” He shakes his head. 

“You’ve still got a child,” Rosalie says softly, and looks down the hallway and for a second, Jasper expects to see Edward’s mopey visage, trying to compute the idea that he’s a hologram and AI of a dead person and how exactly he needs to mourn himself. 

Instead, he sees a flash of black hair and worn pro-tex, and he just feels pity for them both.

—

It starts - or ends, really, with Alice flipping Emmett off.

They’re in the galley, doing the quarterly reports on supplies. It’s boring as hell, documenting every mug and every spoon, with the knowledge that once the galley is done, they have to check over every other common or unoccupied room in the ship. 

(“It’s fucking stupid, but at one time any human goods fetched a good price on the black market,” Emmett informed him solemnly during his first year. “When I was a kid, a potato peeler was worth more than a new optical drive. So now we log every fuckin’ dish towel for the Federation to make sure Carlisle doesn’t make his dough hocking tube socks and chopsticks on the down-low.”) 

It’s a good night; Rose mixed drinks for them and they’ve bypassed Edward to pick the music themselves, and Emmett’s making salacious jokes at their expense because their last date-night at the Peremai dock involved too much liquor and not a whole lot of discretion, and Alice flips Emmett off and that’s when he sees the tattoo. 

The shiny glint of the genetic-tattoo a shade darker than her skin, running up the inside of her middle finger, and the bottom drops out of his stomach. The world tilts, and he hears static, and then he feels sick before he feels anything else. 

Maria reassured him, all those years ago, that the Federation had outlawed Synths after the attacks on the Earth compounds, and the small population of them were tagged and monitored - virtually the only forms of employment for a Synth were wet work and sex work. You had to go looking to find a Synth.

That was what she was good at - they were good at. 

And Alice is standing there, laughing with a drink in her hand, and he doesn’t know how to speak. 

(What happens next is that he grabs her by the arm and drags her out of the room, and Rosalie demands to know where they’re going and Emmett wolf-whistles, but really he takes her back to his quarters and he demands to know the truth. There is screaming and crying and words that he doesn’t remember saying. He remembers punching the wall over and over again, and when Esme is bandaging up his hands the next morning, he can’t convince himself that’s the only thing he hit. It’s all a messy blur in his mind, of terror and rage and betrayal and the kind of fear that never ever leaves him, that remembers the shape of him. He doesn’t remember a word she says in her defense, and for a long time, he doesn’t care.) 

Carlisle finds him three days later and invites him into his lab. He’s hungover and an open wound, ready to be fired and dumped at the next docking station. He wants to fucking yell every obscenity at the man for not disclosing Alice’s status anywhere at any time.

But he’s not fired. He’s given a cup of coffee, and Carlisle is serious but kind. Every human knows of the Earth Nine, knows their names. They’re in the history books, even in space. 

“Alice has been put on an alternative schedule for the foreseeable future,” is the first thing out of Carlisle’s mouth and he is petty enough to be pleased that she - it - will be on shift alone, maybe with Edward for company whilst the rest of them sleep. The rest of what Carlisle says is the usual - counseling, time off. Nothing he hasn’t heard before, and he doesn’t want to admit that he can’t afford extra leave because of all the fines and shit that were a part of his sentence. 

It’s late at night when he’s trying not to listen out for her moving about the ship and get some fucking sleep, that he allows himself to mourn what he thought he had. To let the great well of sadness swallow up the rage. And he blames himself for thinking that he could ever expect anything to be good, to be safe, to be happy. 

(Maybe, after she’s gone, he starts gathering two stones from the places he visits - one for his father’s shrine at his mother’s house and a spare, one that he lines along his port window and never acknowledges.)

—

It’s quiet after they find out about Edward. Carlisle spends a lot of time in the mostly-unused sanctuary of the ship, lighting cells and whispering prayers from one of the Earth religions over the box of ashes. 

Esme takes to cooking, and everyone pretends they don’t see her sniffle over cookie batter - another child lost to them. If the world was a perfect place, everyone on the ship would have their children, their siblings, and their parents. But it isn’t, and he’s the one that goes with Esme with her little bundle of things - a cookie, some strands of hair from an old hairbrush, writing he cannot read on a piece of paper - to throw into the airlock and release into the sky as Esme kneels and whispers the prayers of her childhood. 

Rosalie just looks sad in the few absent moments he catches her; she prefers to remain busy, moving between the cockpit and the med bay, to make sure everything is textbook-perfect. 

Emmett’s in the tech room and Jasper runs into him having a conversation with his siblings on the video-comm, and Emmett looks a little sheepish, but he understands - you want to hold a little tighter to what you have when there is a loss. 

Edward and Alice are both absent from public spaces, and he feels slightly pathetic when he leaves a hydration pouch and some snacks outside the guest room door - along with a spare pillow and a set of clean pyjamas - instead of knocking on the door and talking to her face to face. 

He wishes she’d chosen to stay in her old room, but he understands why she doesn’t. She emptied it before she left; he remembers Carlisle telling him she’d left the ship, and going straight to her room like she’d be waiting there for him. And it had been empty, smelling of antiseptic, the bunks folded up and the walls blank. The guest quarters are always made up and ready. He doesn’t even know where her stuff is - he assumes in storage but he doesn’t know. 

He finds himself wandering the ship under the guise of keeping an eye on things but really, he’s thinking about Edward, about tissue farms, about his father and eight others splayed on the barn floor, hollowed out for profit. It makes him feel old and tired and lost. It makes him hope that Edward’s death was soft and peaceful, that he just drifted off and eventually his brain gave out from the drugs. 

He hopes it wasn’t ugly and dirty and scary. No one deserved the death his father had, what he witnessed. He wouldn’t wish that on anyone. 

It’s quiet, but the weight of everyone’s grief is the loudest thing he’s heard for a long, long time. 

—

Alice’s quarters were always the smallest on the ship, and she’d joke that it was because she was too. Narrow and programmed to have purple walls with flowers that bloomed around doorframes, it held a pair of single bunks, a locker, and a small desk. She used the washroom across the hall and he was bewildered that an analyst with seniority was given worse quarters than he was. 

But there was the window. The one opposite her bed that took up the entire wall and offered an uninterrupted view of the sky. It was beautiful, and the entire reason she kept the room. 

The night he spends in her room, he keeps finding new things to look at - the moons and stars and suns she’s painted onto the underside of the top bunk; garlands from every planet she’s visited, each of them with a different meaning, strung across the ceiling. How she requisitioned as many blankets as she could and cut them all up to make a hideously ugly quilt of industrials greys and greens and blues, and then spent a fortune on inks and brushes to painstakingly paint each square in bright colours. How she’s piled half the bed with pillows like she’s trying to create some kind of nest. 

“It’s a mess,” she says shyly, as she begins gathering up her clothing to cram them into her locker. She has more clothes than any of them, picked up at markets all over space. It reminds him of some kind of home seeing her swan down to breakfast in a floral bathrobe and duck-print pajamas; to drag him off the ship when they dock clad in a white sundress and ballet slippers. 

“It’s perfect,” he says, and she beams at him, crawling onto the bed with him. 

“You know what?” She asked him shyly, her hair falling into her face. 

“What?” She’s so tiny in his arms, he worries he’s going to hurt her as he gathers her up. 

“I love you, Jasper. The most I’ve ever loved anyone in my entire life. I just wanted you to know that.” Her eyes are wide and she smiles at him before she kisses him, and that’s the moment that imprints itself on his brain; surrounded by stars with the scent of floral shampoo, and them wrapped up in each other. 

(Something in him breaks, months later, when he finds that room empty and grey, and smelling of antiseptic cleaner. It’s the kind of despair that cuts deep, and he knows that he deserves it, every ounce of pain. But it takes years for the rage to dull and let the shame and regret through.)

—

It’s Edward that finds her. 

Three days later - three days of Edward hiding away from everyone, three days of Carlisle shutting himself in his quarters to mourn. Three days of Alice emerging for meals she picked at in silence before returning to the guest quarters, never going near her old room.

He hears the alarm go off for med bay, and Rosalie and Carlisle dash through the ship to the guest quarters; he and Emmett follow and for a moment he wonders if she’s killed herself.

She’s on the floor in her sleep clothes, so pale she looks translucent, with Rosalie already slapping med-patches onto her and Carlisle checking her vitals. 

“I told her to go to the med bay,” Edward says waspishly, the first words he’s spoken since he found out, and it is comforting that he’s at least been confiding in Alice. 

“How long has she been sick?” Carlisle asks. 

“She wasn’t in great shape when she boarded, Carlisle,” Rosalie’s answer is short, and Carlisle looks away and he realizes that even though she arrived covered in med patches, Carlisle had been too distracted to look over the health report Rose had compiled. 

“Two nights ago,” Edward says quietly. “She said she found treatment before she left for Viltri, but she implied it wasn’t good.”

Carlisle nods, his whole demeanor changing. “Get her to the med bay,” he says, flicking the screens on the med-screen authoritatively. “I’ll stabilize her and pull up her records.”

Emmett is the one to carry her, with Rose and Carlisle hot on his heels. He stays back with Edward - he knows basic first aid, nothing useful at this moment and he’s seen enough dead bodies not to enjoy this part much. 

Edward’s looking at him, and he doesn’t know what he’s supposed to say. 

“How sick is she?” Is what he goes with, and he’s surprised how lost he sounds in that moment. 

“She’s been sick a long time,” is what Edward says. “Do you know how hard it is to find doctors that know human physiology and will see a Synth? Let alone treat one?”

Edward leaves without another word, and not for the first time, he wonders where she’s been and how she ended up here. 

—

Alice leaves them. 

There's not much else to say about that, really.

It's weeks after he found out the truth and she's been working second-shift the whole time. He barely sees her, and he's glad of it.

He goes with Emmett and Rose when they dock, and he walks past her on the ship, holding a cup of coffee and looking tired.

Edward tells them not to bother taking the projection cells, he's staying on the ship with Carlisle.

He walks out and goes and gets blackout drunk, and when his hangover passes, and they are two days out in the middle of nowhere, it finally registers that she's not on the schedule anywhere, that it's been Emmett in the tech office.

"Alice decided to take extended leave" is Carlisle's diplomatic answer when he asks. And that's it.

She's gone.

Alice left (and she never planned to come back.)

—

He’s not allowed to see her until the next day. 

Edward tells him everything, refusing to speak about anything but Alice when he appears - that she did regain consciousness but only long enough for Carlisle and Rose to question her. 

He selfishly wants to know if she asked for him, and the look Edward gives him implies that he knows what Jasper is thinking and that he really is a fuckwit to think that the girl he so fantastically terrorized out of her home wants anything to do with him anymore. 

“She was out of it,” Edward finally says. “Answered direct questions but didn’t realise she was here. Kept trying to give out our call-signal. Rose was pretty generous with the pain meds I think.”

Rosalie is never generous with pain medications; insisting on a stockpile in case they really needed them. Emmett needed laser-stitches up his back a few years ago, and even then Rosalie had been stingy. It makes his stomach twist, that Alice needed them bad enough that Rose was willing to give them. 

He waits for a while before decamping to the galley, where Esme is waiting with lunch and a sympathetic touch to his shoulder as he paces, uninterested in food. 

“She would hate seeing you so upset. Carlisle and Rosalie are beyond capable of handling this,” Esme says so gently, her words punctuated with a soft click-pop typical of her species. It’s comforting.

He shakes his head and keeps pacing, gets himself coffee just to give himself something to do. Esme sets the table and Edward slouches against the wall, scowling at the pair of them. 

“Do you think…” Jasper begins and Edward huffs. 

“Tell him Esme,” Edward says and Esme frowns before looking over at Jasper. 

“Alice corresponded with me a few times over the years. Very superficial messages,” Esme says, and he whirls around at the idea that there are clues and information that has led them to this moment. “There was nothing to tell, so I didn’t think it was worth mentioning.”

“What did she say?” He wants to yell. That any message was better than nothing. As if it is Esme’s fault she’s so sick she doesn’t know where she is. 

“She said she hoped we were all well and safe. She mentioned that she hoped you were happy once or twice. Edward seems to think that withholding this information from you was tantamount to betrayal, but they were nothing, Jasper. I write longer supply reports.” Esme looks so sad.

“You went to her room the other night and spoke with her,” Edward retorts, and he and Esme have always had an odd, sibling-like relationship where they both know best and both want the best for Carlisle. Normally, it is funnier. Now, it’s just irritating. 

Before Esme can respond, Rosalie emerges from the med bay, looking tired. She plucks the coffee out of Jasper’s hands without a word and takes a long draw from it. 

“Carlisle said you can see her if you want to,” is all she says to him, as she takes a seat at the table and pulls a plate towards herself, ignoring Esme and Edward’s bickering. “He’s put her under though - advanced systemic shock.”

Life-support. It sounds worse than it is; he knows this. Humans are put on life-support for bad fevers, infections, setting badly broken limbs - anything where the body needs to be stabilized and supported. It just makes him nervous. 

The med bay is quiet when he slips in the door, his eyes finding her immediately. She lies on the gurney like a dead body, wrapped in medical modesty garments and nothing else, staring blindly at the ceiling and seeing absolutely nothing. He sees the white tubing threaded through her nose and mouth, into both wrists, and he knows that it's the life-support system that will keep her sustained until the treatment is over. But the tubes are almost as thin as wire, enough to render them invisible in the bigger picture, and mostly she just looks like a corpse on a slab. He can see her skin now, blue and black mottling all over her right side, pink and scarlet lines of infection just under the skin. 

(Did he read everything he could on Synths after she left them? Yes, he did. He knows about systemic shock, and he knows about every single hellish detail about the long-term effects of lab-generated tissue. Somewhere, Maria is laughing at him and calling him a hypocrite and a traitor.) 

Carlisle looks at him with pity. “I haven’t prepared her yet. Taped her eyes and such,” the man says and that makes Jasper want to gag a little. 

“How long will she be under?” is what he manages. 

“It’s been a long time since I treated advanced systemic shock, let alone of this severity,” Carlisle admits. “She’ll be under for a while, at this rate. Alice knows the risks and accepted them.”

Ninety days. That’s the limit of life-support for Synths. They die quickly after that; and it takes at least twenty-one to grow new tissue if the infection on her side is too far gone. He knows that. 

That’s why she’s got so much plating down her side, he realizes suddenly. A previous infection. He never asked and she never told him. But it makes sense. If a tissue-graft hadn’t taken or had needed some kind of binding and reinforcement, plating would have been the most effective option.

And this is all assuming the infection hasn’t gone to her brain or heart, he swallows hard and drifts to the seat at her side. If it has, there’s nothing anyone can do for her. She’ll just die.

Maybe that’s why she chose Viltri to send an SOS. Planned to be quietly dead when they arrived, with Edward’s ashes in her bag. 

Or maybe she never planned on coming home, and planned to pass on her message, and stay behind to die with the planet they met on. 

(Carlisle lets him stay as he tapes her eyes close, draws blood, and links up with the chip in her wrist. At some point, he finds himself holding her hand and pressing his lips against her knuckles as Carlisle drills into the bone of her thigh for tissue. 

If he finds himself praying, saying the words a half-remembered grandmother once taught him, well, maybe that’s okay.)

I’m here and I’m so, so sorry. 

I’m sorry for hurting you, I’m sorry for forcing you to leave, I’m sorry for forgetting how much I love you.

And I do, I love you, and I’ll wait for you as long as it takes. 

—

She’ll be okay. 

He doesn’t believe in much, but he has to believe that. 

—

Notes

For those who don't dwell in the same media spaces as I do, 'wet work' is killing for hire.

I have detailed backstories for every single character. I just need you all the know the idea captured me and became a thing. Thanks for the inspo, Archer 1999.

Jasper’s father was raised by a Jewish mother, and whilst Cass and Jack Whitlock were more science over religion, they did teach Jasper as much about his origins as they could. Leaving a stone from his travels at his father’s memorial was the way that Jasper could honour his father that had multiple meanings. But I really wanted to mention that yes, Jack Whitlock was raised by a Jewish mother. 

Rosalie’s backstory here is somehow grimmer than her canon backstory, but I hope to explore that in an expansion of this fic. Basically in this fic, Rosalie’s parents were far more active in her downfall, that Rosalie is a 100% self-made alien. 

Edward as an AI hologram allows him to keep so many of his canon personality traits, as well as some of the hurdles his relationship with Bella faces. Edythe’s demise weighs heavily on both him and Carlisle. There is a story there, and if I get the opportunity to tell the full, multi-chapter version of this fic I don’t want to spoil it ahead of time. But Edward and Edythe were not Carlisle's bio-children.

The Lens is something that didn't get explored enough but is essentially a permanent contact lens that allows users to access their computing network - that's what the gold overlay over Alice's eye was. Alice chose one that was very visible over her eye, mostly people chose them to blend in with their eye colour.

Cass Whitlock's story is a lot more complex than gets touched on here - I have a whole backstory for her. I'm still undecided whether she's kind of an asshole to her eldest son, or if she was just totally unprepared to deal with his level of trauma.

[misc-obeyme]

Some random demons are talking shit about MC at RAD. They're unaware of the fact that Mammon & Satan are in the classroom.

Mammon: Yo, you hearin’ this?

Satan: *not looking up from his book* It's unfortunate we have such idiotic classmates, isn't it?

Mammon: *stands up, grinning* Let’s rumble.

Satan: *snaps his book shut* Fine, but please never say that again.

Destruction ensued. Satan & Mammon refused to tell MC why they were hanging from the ceiling later that day.

masterlist | Thank you for reading!

[worstloki]

there is a difference between being born to a throne, maliciously vying for a throne, stealing a throne, and having a throne thrust upon you when you are already in the midst of an identity crisis. And I fear Loki's place in the line of succession has people unable to differentiate between any of these

[teal-fiend]

there's a pred imprisoned, in solitary confinement permanently because of the danger they've caused to society.

after a long career of evading authorities, and eating very well, the pred had made a mistake, and ended up caught.

unfortunately, they are valuable due to the information that they have (either through their knowledge in their field, or because of a criminal situation they were involved with).

the pred is however, still social and charismatic, even after they've been found out. They will always make conversation with the guards, who were hostile at first, but after a year or two, they get used to him, and start to enjoy talking to the pred. However, both parties know what would happen if the glass between them were ever to disappear. If the pred jokes about them letting him out, the guards will assure them that there's no way in hell that will ever happen.

they are interviewed by a prey who isn't smart like the guards are, in that they have come to fully believe that the pred isn't really that bad of a person. It's in their nature to eat prey anyway, can you really blame them? and they're so nice! And smart - they aren't a criminal.

The interviewer has never seen what the pred has done. They have never seen the pred eat, they've never seen the pred with a full stomach - in fact, for the months that the prey has known him, the pred has not been able to consume prey. He probably hasn't for as long as he's been in prison. poor thing.

because despite being friendly and gentle, the pred doesn't look good, they look starved. They hold their body stiffly and on some rare occasions their happy veneer drops and there is a desperate look in their eye.

the guards worry about the prey who has so obviously fallen for the pred's cover. Despite knowing the fact about who they are, the prey doesn't absorb the fact that the pred is a sadist and a monster. And if they weren't locked in a cage, the pred would definitely have the prey in their stomach by now.

[vivika-ka]

every time i look back on steve and billy’s fight, i can’t understand people who straight up will talk about it like billy was planning a murder. he was willing to get his sister back home and be done with it. that would’ve been the end of it. was he pissed? yeah, rightfully so. his little sister sneaks out and it’s doing god knows what in a new environment she and their family knows shit about. [i’m not even getting into the scene with neil because plenty of people have, and they are certainly more coherent than i am lol]

an 18-year-old lies to billy about where his little sister is and when confronted about the lie, responds with an insult (“were you dropped as a child” comment). steve offers no explanation as to why his sister is there, and has the audacity to expect that billy will just, what, leave his little sister with strangers? respond with “aw shucks, i guess you know better, harrington. you know my little sister already, even though she is a middle schooler and we’ve been in this town for a week…i suppose it’s normal for a person your age to be around 13-year-olds who aren’t related to you. i’ll just leave you to it.”

[i wonder if people who vilify billy in this moment have siblings. because if you think leaving a sibling behind in a clearly shady situation would’ve been reasonable and ok…i’m concerned for your siblings lmao i’m sorry but i am]

but anyway. the point of the post is: when it gets to the climax of the fight, he has the upper hand after being on equal footing (because hey, steve punched him first, remember? steve is not a saint in this situation, and many people [antis most of the time] talk about this fight as if steve wasn’t throwing punches).

i don’t know if anyone has ever been in a fight, i unfortunately have been in a handful, i have been where steve is, and let me tell you, this doesn’t look like someone who enjoys having the upper hand. dacre could’ve very well acted this part with billy’s ah ha ha ha laughter, maybe a hint of smug satisfaction, maybe continuous taunting.

but he didn’t for a reason. billy isn’t enjoying any of this. in this supposed triumphant moment for billy, anguish overcomes anger. this isn’t what he wanted. he didn’t go to the byers’ house looking for and planning a fight, he was looking for his god damn little sister.

i just…idk. dacre puts out this complex performance in a matter of seconds, accomplished the definition of “show don’t tell.” but i guess the audience needed to be told. (although, they love to ignore neil’s scenes. so at this point it’s just plain denial).

[marty--party]

admittedly, i am a little obsessed

+bonus lil fellas who love each other so much

[corevoid]

Art block grabbed me by the face and shook me like a rag doll, have some lovely au angst :)

Following the traumatic event that leads to Donnie running away, Mikey decides to join him to keep him company (and hopefully help him through his grief and convince him to come back home). Unfortunately, something in Donnie has snapped, and Mikey’s presence at his side just lets him witness Donnie’s violent revenge plan more than anything else.

[fancycroissantgothparty]

last time... for now

[itty-bitty-sunshine]

Hello. I am back. I am stressed, but under significantly less stress. Immortality on my brain, words are foggy rn. Buckle in.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

They hadn't noticed how bad it's gotten. It spread over their flesh now. Immortality comes with a cost of living indefinitely, at losing everything. Yet no one dares to think about how it does not necessarily mean immunity.

It had been a long time for Perkeo. Not even they knew when they first came to be. Time stretched and blended together when you have no use for counting it. Counting was for those who didn't have enough time after all.

But now Perkeo sits at home. Unable to do much else. Their skin had darkened significantly, changing dulling into a slightly greyish colour. The flesh sat heavily on their frame. It had gotten oh so bad. How could they have not realized?

They could feel it writhing under their skin. The sensation shooting shivers up their spine, only with the few nerves that were left undamaged. They groaned as they felt their abdominal muscles and organ walls give way, shifting out of place. It started from the inside out.

They couldn't even muster the strength to call in sick today. Well, they probably wouldn't have this position for much longer anyway. Oh, the boys will be so disappointed. You were really glad to have spent at least this much time with them. Heh, you were worried about finding someone who you wouldn't have to worry about 'having enough time'. The joy un finally discovering them must have distracted you.

You felt it years ago, but now? Now, there is no turning back. As your stomach acid pools in your gut, shredding the rest of your organs. Muscle tear with every slight movement you make. It hurts, so badly. No blade or arrow ever left you feeling like this. No other 'death' had ever left you trembling like this. But you knew death was waiting for you.

Bones snap and cartilage disintegrates, tendons ripping, blood pooling. You struggle to keep your eyes open now. It's all too much. Your vocal chords are torn from the pained whimpering you wanted to scream. Perkeos organs started failing one by one. None leading to their death, unfortunately. Liver, intestines, stomach, lungs, heart. They continued laying, with barely holding onto consciousness. Their brain had not become dysfunctional, yet. Without the incessant beating of their heart, they were left in silence. Their thoughts were a quiet buzz filling their brain. Slow, but still there nonetheless.

They need you.

You should try to get up.

Hhhnngggg owwww.

Maybe you shouldn't even bother, they'll move on!

It hurts so much.

Atleast I got to spend a bit of time with them.

You never got to say goodbye.

Your thoughts dissipate as the rot takes over. Oh? Yeah, the rot. Your body, although resilient, couldn't deal with repairing itself constantly. Especially after extreme deaths. Ones where it would have to pull together your disfigured and scattered remains. So it did a makeshift job. Just for the time being. You ignored it. Eventually, it would take over, decomposing your body from the inside out. You had essentially been a living corpse lately, worrying Sun and Moon to no end. Well, now they wouldn't need to worry, Perkeo thinks to themselves. Their body had been put through so much, this weakend state was only necessary. It would be impossible to remain in perfect condition, despite its distaste for staying dead. It would eat itself apart, until it collapsed and could rebuild from scratch. Ashes to ashes, dust to dust. Flesh and bone crumbled away, only to reunite, forming a "new body". A refurbished one, one that will have longer till it inevitably collapses. Before it rebuilds itself again. Thought this process takes a tremendous amount of time, as well as trial and error. Struggling to recuperate itself, Perkeos life being a test of viability. They could die hundreds, if not thousands of times before it is completely functional. This could take up to a millenium to fix. Surely, going to be terminated from their current position before the process is complete.

Their brain agonizingly started shutting down, consciousness leaving them for what will never be the last time. Their flesh begins corroding.

If only they could have found their boys sooner.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Basically Perkeos immortality doesn't mean immunity. They will pay the price with not only pain, death, and resurrection. But their body cannot physically take the strain of healing itself. So it found a way to cope. Rotting. Decomposition doesn't mean death, it's a cycle of life. They will make it back... unfortunately the dca may never see them again.

Imagine rotting from the inside out. Feeling your body collapse and corrode around you, as your mind screams for release. Your brain can't take it. But you can never submit to death. Feeling your flesh, thick with festering bacteria, sliding on your bones, feeling trapped in the skin falling off your body. Your insides dissolving into an acidic burning concoction, sloshing around with every slight shift. Your bones, ligaments, tendons, and muscles shredding. Loosing the pretty voice so many of your friends throught the ages held dear :)

(What's bolded is my main idea, the rest is filler. I dont think it was written very well though.)

Hope you like it sunsun, I'm tired and my words don't sound right. I can't express my thoughts, but I hope atleast some of my thoughts came across.

Take a study break honey. Drink something warm, eat something healthy, go to bed, ily.🧡

Wait did I just write gore???

WHAT A HELL OF A STUDY BREAK THAT WAS HOLY FAZBEAR SUKI

I FREAKING LOVE YOUR BRAIN DO YOU KNOW THAT

I HAND YOU SMALL SILLY THINGS AND YOU GRAB AND BREAK AND TWIST THEM INTO A BLOODY AGONIZING PATHETIC MESS AND I LIVE FOR IT

ALSO THAT'S SO GODDAMN SAD WHAT

NOOOOOOO GIVE MY BABY THEIR FRIENDS BACK THEY JUST GOT THEM 💀

I GIVE YOU AN UNBREAKABLE TOY AND YOU FIND EVERY WAY YOU COULD POSSIBLY USE TO BREAK THEM, STARS

God imagine if they came to find you somehow

[spiegelgestalt]

Arc 4 of Re:zero is a really great Vampire story

One of the most fascinating relationships dynamics in re:zero is the shit show between Echidna/Roswaal/Beatrice. (In the anime, I haven't read the light novel yet). Because it's just such a good example of a Gothic tragic vampire story. Spoilers for season 2 under the cut:

so what do I mean with vampire story? Except for Echidna none of these characters are vampires. And it's not confirmed with Echidna (though she has the same eyes as Elsa. AND Garfiel mentions that one of the witches was a vampire and since his faction is really closely related to Echidna it makes sense that it's her).

BUT they are all very very old and at the same time unable to grow and move on. Echidna is literally (un)dead. Her soul is trapped in an old tomb. Beatrice is at the same time a little girl who can never grow up (the most horrific of the vampire tropes imo) and an old woman who survived all her loved ones, trapped in a library while the world passed her by. Roswaal is an eternal young man, obsessed with getting the past back. Obsessed with having his lover back even if she will never love him back the way he wants. (And isn't it interesting that he mostly remembers the fun he had with Beatrice...) His relationship to Echidna feels incestuous (mother/son) to me even if they are not related by blood. Roswaal too can never grow up (Emilia correctly notes that he is a huge child like Betty) at the same time he literally steals the bodies of his descendants. He takes their future for himself in a desperate bit not to die. For me this is what good vampire stories are fundamentally about: beings who rather burn in eternal damnation than let go of the past. Beings who sacrifice the future for the past because for them the past is all there is.

The second important things about vampires is destructive love/desire. And because re:zero is smart it seperates those things from sex and can make a better statement than just sex is kinda evil. Because here is the thing: I truly believe that Echidna loves at least Beatrice in her own fucked up way. On paper she does a lot of things correctly: she wants Beatrice to grow up, she wants her to chose a person for herself, she gives her all the knowledge that she has, she doesn't dictate her future. But at the same time she binds Beatrice in a fucked up contract, she experiments what Beatrice might do, she sacrifices Beatrice's best friend without regard to her feelings at all. She is unable to let her go. She has to give her an empty book of wisdom. Even Beatrice's free decision must somehow be part of her web.

And Roswaal? Actually we don't see that much of Echidna/Roswaal but from what we see she makes him dependent on her and into a willing accomplice of her schemes. She uses his love which after a while turns into obsession because he knows it can never be returned.

But the most tragic part are Roswaal and Beatrice. Because Roswaal desperately desperately loves Beatrice and he is no idea how to relate to her except through manipulation. He tried to be her person (she refused him) but because he wasn't open, because he didn't share his grief there was no connection between them. Just two bitter siblings sniping at each other. And Roswaal knew that Beatrice was unhappy and that is probably part of the reason why he tries to kill her. She wanted to die the same way he wanted to die (and is that not delicious: he plans to revive Echidna but he doesn't plan to be with her because he hates himself so much. He plans to die and he wouldn't leave Betty behind...). BUT I think the other reason is that he really is jealous of Subaru. Because Subaru manages to talk to Beatrice, get her out of her shell, and if Beatrice starts growing what would that mean for him? And still he doesn't want to make Beatrice sad. It fucking enrages him when Puck implies that this might be the consequences of his actions

And at the end? They stand together next to the grave of their mother (yeah I'm saying it fuck you) and are finally able to connect about their grief. And I know Roswaal doesn't deserve it but I really hope his relationship to Beatrice gets better. Because Beatrice needs people who see her for the old woman she is. And just: Re:zero is about forgiveness and these siblings have been lonely for so long and I want them to reconnect.

[adhdheather]

following a bunch of spn blogs and sometimes seeing arguments get resurfaced, esp involving dean, does always make me remember the time i was like "so we all know dean is a terrible father" when talking abt how he treated jack, and i found out that we do not all know that

[whumpacabra]

Day 19: “Please don’t.”

Scar reveal, knife wound [minor], minor wound treatment, alcohol use, blood, implied past violence, bar fight mention

[Directly follows Barfight]

Drifting down from the adrenaline high, brushing off the praise and thanks of the other bar patrons…it was nostalgic. Warm. Familiar.

(He had done this before, during the Before.)

“I think you got us free drinks for the rest of the night East.” Tierney laughed, hand clapping East’s back. Alister smiled at him, gratitude in his eyes.

“Next time save some ass kicking for the rest of us, eh?“

East rolled his eyes, feeling Tierney’s hand slide away from his back.

“Next time I’m sure there’ll be more than one prick so you’ll have your pick - ”

“East you’re bleeding.” Tierney’s whisper was urgent, even if the smear of blood on his palm was relatively unconcerning. East knew the fucker’s knife had cut his jacket, he hadn’t felt it break the skin.

“I didn’t notice - probably just a scratch.”

“We should clean it up though.” Alister had him fixed with a concerned expression. “I don’t think Nate will take kindly to knowing we got into a bar fight. Best to hide the evidence best we can.”

“I’m fine, really - ” There was no arguing with both housemates. East swallowed back the rest of his drink and sighed. “Fine. It probably doesn’t even need stitches.”

The three made their way to the bar restroom, rowdy patrons slapping East’s arm and shouting thanks and congratulations to him as he passed. The repeated, unexpected, unwanted contact was making him sick. Safe behind the closed bathroom door, the reality of what he had agreed to sunk in. He glanced at his reflection in the dirty mirror, skin pale and clammy. East turned suddenly and grabbed Tierney and Alister by the shoulder.

“Don’t ask. Please don’t.” He hoped his reaching out, his purposeful eye contact drove home how serious he was. He hadn’t thought about his back - what was there - for months now.

And here he was letting another man’s hands touch his bared scars and bloodied skin.

(Jackson would be proud.)

(Smith would be jealous.)

Tierney stared up at him with wide shining eyes, glancing to Alister who nodded grimly, brow furrowed in cautious concern.

“We won’t say a word. And we’ll be quick - I know you don’t like touch.”

“Unless you’re knocking another guy’s lights out.” Tierney muttered with a weak chuckle, but East let a smile soften his own face to show that he appreciated the joke. He took a deep breath, removing his hands from their shoulders and nodded to Tierney.

“Get me some vodka. Let’s get this over with.” He turned back to the mirror, shrugging off his jacket - the rip in the back was almost invisible, and any blood blended too well with the dark material to see. He slowly unbuttoned his undershirt, hands growing shaky.

(He took comfort in the fact that the blood on his knuckles wasn’t his own.)

East glanced up at the mirror, the scars on his chest so small and faded with age he could hardly outline the patch of skin that had been replaced. He looked to Alister’s face, eyes gentle and encouraging. Safe.

He took a slow inhale as he pulled his shirt back off his shoulders, and exhaled as he shirked the sleeves from his arms. He grimaced down at the pale green plaid patterned shirt - blood stained a palm sized blotch just below the back of the collar. East didn’t look up to see Alister’s reaction. He didn’t need to.

His hearing caught the stutter of breath, the almost imperceptible shift in breathing before someone spoke. And Tierney’s pattering footsteps, before the door opened and closed.

“I got the - ” He cut himself off, swallowing his words. East took another measured breath, running the tap and holding his bloodstained shirt under the cold water.

“Could use that drink, Tierney.” He managed to mutter, listening to the footsteps approach and seeing the shimmering shot glass out of the corner of his eye.

“You good?”

“Yes. Hurry up.“ He didn’t mean to snap, to take the shot glass from Tierney so violently and swig it back to feel the liquor burn down his throat. A half decent distraction from the hands touching his back.

“It’s not too deep - you, you’re right it probably won’t need stitches.” Tierney was making a point of not looking at East’s back while Alister worked, practically jittering with nervous energy. Alister hummed to confirm Tierney’s observation.

“Just gonna clean it up and get a bandage over it. Don’t want Nate worrying where this blood came from.”

East focused on the gradually fading bloodstain on the shirt in his hands, red washed pink by the icy water. He would have to volunteer for wash duty this weekend - the last thing he needed was getting in trouble with Nate for getting into a bar fight, even if he didn’t start it. He turned off the tap, wringing blood tinged water from his shirt and straightening up as Alister finished.

(The fingers weren’t poking, weren’t prodding - so much like the featherlight touch of Jackson ghosting over those jagged letters when they bled fresh and raw.)

“All set?” He asked, rolling his shoulders to feel the itchy plastic and adhesive of a fresh bandage just below his neck.

“Yup. You really gonna wear a wet shirt for the walk home?”

East struggled back into his button down, the damp fabric fighting him. He responded to Tierney’s question with a shrug and a nod.

“It’s pissing down anyway out there. We’ll all be soaked to the bone before we get home.”

[Before Session #15]

(Part of my Freelancers: Changing Tides series)

[spadefish]

A human hound who was personally raised and trained by the prince of Helena and his sheriff. Viciously loyal to his prince to the point of self-detriment. Harbours a particular resentment towards the Brujah.

[en-chi-la-da]

idk about the otaku thing but i love the idea of his mother reading manga to him and that’s why he likes reading to his hamsters as well and oops, here’s my portrayal of what i think gundhams mother would look like :0

[lunar-years]

Is this a safe enough space for me to admit I remain an ardent royjamie s2 finale headbutt hater…

[bingobongobonko]

TAKEN SALVATION