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radioactivepeasant · 1 year

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Halloween Fic Special Preview!

(A little chunk of Jus Sanguinis for the week while I try to scrape together enough brain cells to finish the last major scenes)

The coastal city of Spargus had lived with the storms for generations, watching the once broad oases narrow and dwindle as the winds displaced topsoil at devastating rates. The sands had swallowed many of their warriors before the Spargans created The Crawler. The massive armored vehicle, replete with emergency supplies and enough armor to give even a metalpede pause, undoubtedly saved lives. But it was slow moving, and Wastelanders on foot often did not have enough time to get to the mobile shelter before the damage to their skin and lungs was beyond the power of an eco pack to heal. And being the only vehicle of its kind meant that if one part broke -- say, a blown head gasket -- the behemoth was stranded until a replacement could be located and driven to its location...after the storm had ended.

"Piece of crap-!" Jak aimed a vicious kick at the front end of the cab and slammed the door behind him.

"This never happens when Daxter is here."

"I don't know whether that is meant to compliment Daxter, or to insult me," his companion said dryly.

King Damas pulled his scarf further up over his mouth and nose and gestured grimly to the massive tank on the Crawler's back.

"The wind is picking up. We need to get inside."

Jak shook sand out of his goggles and dropped to the ground to join him.

"What about the rest of the raiding party?" he snapped, "We can't just leave them!"

Damas’s hand twitched -- the only visible indication that he had any opinions on Jak’s tone.

"Getting angry is counterproductive," he said sharply. "They are all experienced survivors. They will know their best bet is to make it to Broken Sandal Canyon."

You're tense, too! Jak wanted to shout.

But fighting with Damas, he had long since learned, was a very poor life choice. Besides, this man had all but pried him out of the jaws of death before he even knew what Jak was capable of, binding their lives together despite the doubts of his subjects. Jak knew he didn't deserve to be lashed out at. But he just couldn't help it!

Without Daxter he was on-edge. Unsettled.

It couldn't be helped: Daxter was very unwillingly resting at home with some variation of a local childhood disease. As it turned out, being born hundreds of years earlier did not make one immune to The Gripes. Jak, curiously, had yet to manifest the allegedly contagious disease, despite having been in close quarters with Daxter until leaving with the raiding party that morning. Perhaps it was his generally eco-saturated nature that made him resistant to some germs?

Speaking of eco, were you paying attention to your dark intake during the ambush?

Jak shoved the thought away and trudged through the worsening winds to the back of the Crawler.

His eco levels were a little high, sure, but nothing he couldn't handle. He'd gone days without exploding before.

Liar. You exploded every single day in Haven, or near enough to it.

At least the engine failure didn't prevent anything else in the Crawler from working. The closing of the back hatch left them both stranded in a little island of flickering overhead light, while the sounds of the storm faded to a muffled hiss. Damas lowered himself to one of the benches anchored against the wall and stretched his legs out, using the net of medical supplies hanging from the overhead rack as a kind of backrest. He seemed far more comfortable with the situation than Jak was. He watched Jak pace in front of the hatch, noting with some interest that Jak was far more on-edge than usual. He wasn't just frustrated, he was rattled.

"It's just a storm, kid."

Damas leaned back and closed his eyes.

"You've driven in them before."

"Yeah," Jak grunted, "with Daxter."

"Hm." The king raised his brows, but did not open his eyes. "You're not often apart, are you?"

"Not if I can help it," Jak answered shortly. "Not looking to repeat two years of involuntary separation."

The hiss of the sand against the hull rose for a moment in the quiet that followed Jak's words. Then, half to himself, Damas murmured, "Ah. The prison."

Jak's stomach turned a flip.

He still didn't know what had possessed him to confess to his erstwhile conservator why he could transform. What had been done to him in the pits of the Fortress. Damas had taken it well at the time -- no disgust, or condescension- or worse, pity. But the fear nagged at Jak regardless with each following day, whispering in the back of his mind that Damas was looking at him different now. That if Jak strayed too far out of line, his past might be held up in front of him in an attempt to make sense of his actions.

The second he told people something was wrong with him, it became their go-to explanation every time he did something they didn't like. Even Dax did it once in a while- though he at least made conscious efforts to be less careless with his words. Honestly, Jak was shocked Damas hadn't brought it up after his moment of defiance in the Arena.

Something smacked against the Crawler's armor -- likely a rock -- and Jak jumped and cursed. It was too quiet in the shelter. He didn't like the quiet, or the lack of windows showing him what was going on outside. It was like being in a storage crate, or a garage.

Or a cell.

Feeling an electric twinge of weirdwrongbad crawling along the nerves surrounding his scar tissue, Jak began to pace quicker. He focused on breathing as much as he could, and let his gaze sweep across the hold. Any detail that could set this place apart from the cells was noted and clung to.

"Settle, boy."

Damas still hadn't opened his eyes. He folded his arms across his chest and shifted his weight slightly.

"We'll need our strength once the storm has passed. Don't waste your energy on restless nerves."

"Easy for you to say!" Jak retorted.

Watch it, Jak. Eco's boiling up. Get it under control before you really start mouthing off.*

"We've both seen what a storm like this can do to a person. To a broken down vehicle. How are you so calm right now?!"

The older warrior's lips quirked up with a soft chuckle.

"I've been around, kid," he answered wryly, "I've waited out my share of storms in the Crawler. This is no larger or smaller than any other sandstorm I've faced before."

#fic prompts #writing prompts #my fics #my aus #jus sanguinis #halloween fic #jak and daxter #dadmas #king damas #bottle episode #when you're stuck in a box during a sandstorm with a teenager who shapeshifts into a small demon when angered #snippet monday #wip previews #Dark Jak's idea of bonding time does not match anyone else's

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flowerslut · 1 year

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Roots | Chapter 1 - Silence

A/N: SURPRISE! Here's the first chapter of Roots, two weeks early, for you tumblr besties only. 😎 This, and more bonus content, will be posted later this month to AO3 and FF.net. Updates will be weekly, on Mondays. Rating: M for graphic descriptions of violence and more Words: 3.9k

Jasper was annoyed.

Not at the high-pitched whine of the overworked Mac or the fact that he could hear Renesmee loudly complaining to Esme on the level below. It wasn’t the pungent odor of whatever Esme was using to clean the oven that drifted through the vents, nor was it the fact that his chair had started squeaking this morning and they were conveniently out of WD-40. He wasn’t even bothered by the fact that Carlisle had ignored three consecutive calls from his cell while he talked on his work phone, and hadn’t muted any of the calls, letting the rhythmic buzzing on top of his desk echo throughout the second floor.

No. He was annoyed because Rosalie hadn’t answered his texts before their flight.

Jasper’s eyes moved from his phone, to his desktop, and then back to his phone again.

He could hear the other occupants of the house moving about as the day finally ended and the night picked up where it left off. None of them were heading in his direction yet, but he knew that being interrupted tonight was guaranteed.

His last conversation with his wife flickered through his head and he frowned.

Jasper looked back toward his phone.

Then back toward his computer screen.

Eventually the annoying ‘SMS NOT DELIVERED’ notification flickered across his phone screen, mocking him with its stubbornness. He tapped the ‘resend’ button without another thought.

It wasn’t his main focus tonight. His fingers clicked away on his keyboard, his attention focused more on the internet browser in front of him.

They were undecided between two different towns now. “Someplace new,” their youngest family member had begged. Renesmee had been begging for years now, pretending to be tired of the old homes they’d been shuffling between for over a century now (barely thirty years for her), and it looked like she was finally going to get her way.

It wasn’t for anyone’s sake other than Renesmee’s. They all knew that. It had been almost ten years since his niece had gotten the idea in her head that it would be fun to live somewhere “separate, but close.” Those had been the peculiar words she’d chosen while trying to explain the hypothetical tunnels that they could use to travel between the hypothetical three houses that would be built all “close together but far enough away that any neighbors wouldn’t see”.

They’d never had neighbors close enough to see what was going on in any of their residences, but even so, ‘separate, but close’ had turned into a running joke. A ridiculous joke that was inching closer and closer to becoming a true project they’d be taking on soon.

Bella still blamed her daughter’s idea on some urban exploration video she’d watched one too many times during, what she’d called, Renesmee’s ‘breaking-and-entering phase.’

That particular phrasing still made Jasper laugh.

But Edward had rolled his eyes before going off on another tangent about ‘ethical responsibility’ that they’d all heard some variation of before. He’d never been entertained by his daughter’s adventures across North America as she journeyed into every rusted, grown-over abandoned building she could find, and even less thrilled with the way she’d been enabled by her built-in best friend.

When Edward told Renesmee no, Jacob usually told her yes. Vice versa. Rinse and repeat.

Jasper’s eyes flickered toward the door across from him, then toward the screen of his phone. The red flickered right after he fixed his gaze back on his computer and without looking, he reached out and pressed ‘resend’ again.

Jasper knew that thirty-six thousand feet above the Pacific Ocean didn’t make for a great place to receive text messages, even if the plane’s wifi worked. Knowing Rosalie, she would enforce her and Emmett’s ridiculous ‘no phone’ rule until they landed at LAX. The only person who had ever protested that limitation on family vacations had been Alice, and then later, Renesmee had joined in.

Nowadays it was only enforced on trips where Rosalie was around.

Of course Rose and Emmett both checked in every few days for a handful of minutes. They sent pictures, asked how everyone was (Renesmee, mainly) and shared a quick anecdote or two from their trip across south Asia. It was one of the places they hadn’t explored yet, and because they didn’t seem to want to be careful or do more than the basest amount of research into their travels, someone had to.

Jasper brought up another browser. It had only been minimized, and he was trying not to watch it too closely. (He was barely even watching it at all.) It only took a few seconds to refresh the tabs in the window. Their flight coordinates updated, their plane’s flight progress trip refreshed, and finally the rental car shop around the corner from the airport in Manila updated their systems, confirming the prompt return of their coupe several hours before.

They were still a few hundred miles from the coast and out of radar range. Until their flight was back in line-of-sight range from a tracking station and off of satellite tracing he would continue to refresh the page periodically.

It was something to do while he clicked between ‘for sale’ advertisements in Elkins, West Virginia and in towns around the outskirts of Erie, Pennsylvania. The two towns weren’t similar in many regards, except for more cloud cover than the average small town. The hundreds of acres of affordable land was what had become most appealing to Esme, who had already begun to draw up ideas as to what their new home—or homes—would look like.

Of course Esme had also been far too willing to indulge Renesmee with her planning. It provided her with two things: the ability to keep her entire family close, and the challenge of designing and constructing multiple homes.

The upstairs loft area was covered end to end with sketches and blueprints and fabric samples. Alice had been forced to utilize her smaller sewing machine as of late, even moving it into his study so she could work “with some god-forsaken space to think” while fixing up a few of her current projects.

Jasper laughed when she first complained under her breath that the power of suggestion was useless in the face of Esme with a project underway. She’d ranted more than once to him over the past few months about how she’d have to restitch every hem she’d applied to the family’s winter wardrobe once Renesmee’s curtain-and upholstery-designing lessons were done with. When Jasper had suggested she use the area when Renesmee and Esme weren’t around, she just whined more about “the principle of it all!” and had since then refused any alternative ideas.

The power of suggestion, he noted, was also useless when it came to his wife.

Jasper sighed quietly and regretted it. The footsteps that had been halfway toward the stairs at the end of the hall paused, and with a turn and a skip, he knew his peace was as good as over.

He minimized his pages of tracking details and pulled up the real estate website on his browser. Two seconds later, a peculiar knock that lasted several seconds and included a variety of multi-finger taps and scratches, echoed through his study.

“Is that The Prophet’s Song?” he asked, without needing to. They both knew that was the beat that had just been rapped against the wood.

A frustrated groan carried through the door before it was flung open. Renesmee’s exasperation was as clear in her tone as it was in her aura. “What the hell!” She flung her hands up dramatically before letting them fall to her thighs with a slap. “You’re too good at that,” she complained. “It’s so annoying.”

“If you keep picking songs from popular bands it’s going to be easy.” He fixed his eyes back onto his screen as she strode in. She didn’t bother closing the door behind her; anything they said would be heard throughout most of the house whether the door was open or not. “That’s also the third Queen song you’ve chosen this month.”

“I’m on a Freddie Mercury kick.”

“Is that so?”

“An 80s kick, really.”

“That song came out in ’75.”

She huffed. “You know what I mean.” Jasper knew he wasn’t getting out of this conversation easily when she didn’t sit herself down on the couch or the chaise beneath the window. Renesmee perched herself on the edge of his desk and grinned at him. “Dad doesn’t think I should get to have a room in Rose’s house and their house so I’m digging deep into his favorite music eras.”

Jasper snorted. He kept his eyes trained on the screen as he clicked through photos of a few decrepit farmhouses on one of the properties he was looking at. “Very mature.”

“Thank you, I think so, too.” She crossed her arms over her chest and sighed. “At least I’m not campaigning for my own house. Which I totally could, by the way. Grandma said she’d help me design one and I know Mom wouldn’t fight me on it. Dad’s just stubborn.”

“He can also probably hear you.”

“No, he and Mom went ‘hunting’,” she stage-gagged and shuddered with all the dramatics Jasper had grown to expect from her over the years. He’d only met Bella’s mother twice, but sometimes he swore that Renesmee took after her more than she did either of her parents.

It was a theory that annoyed Edward, so naturally Jasper had adopted it into his belief system and brought it up at regular intervals.

He performed a quick sweep of the remaining auras in the house. Alice was down in the den with Esme, both of them highly amused by some conversation they were having or TV show they were watching. Carlisle was in his office, expelling a fragile exasperation that Jasper knew wouldn’t last, as he explained over the phone to a member of the hospital staff that yes, while he did want his patients to have a direct link to him for emergencies, a baby with repeated bouts of hiccups did not constitute as an emergency.

Jasper silently noted Bella and Edward’s absence. “Time to plot then, I suppose,” he hummed as he opened a new tab and prepared to research machinery rentals in Elkins. After they priced out how much it would cost to start construction there, they could get the ball rolling. The minimized window at the bottom of his screen was tempting him, but he pointedly ignored it. He could wait for Renesmee to leave before refreshing it.

Renesmee groaned and then laughed. “Alice is right!”

Jasper quirked an eyebrow but didn’t avert his gaze. He knew that, but— “About what?”

“You’re such a worrywart.”

He lifted his eyes to see her leaning overtop of two of his monitors to glance at the screen of his phone. The red words declaring ‘SMS NOT DELIVERED’ had flickered once more across the screen without him noticing. His unsent text message was still green where it sat in his phone.

He reached out for the device and turned the screen off before he pocketed it.

“Instead of sending them Zillow links you could just, I don’t know, ask them for updates probably. Not that Rose will reply to either.” Jasper ignored her. Since she couldn’t see the screen he was looking at, he quickly closed down the browser that had held all of Emmett and Rosalie’s flight tracking information and trip details. It would take him a few minutes to hack back into the ARTCC but it would give him something to do after Renesmee left. “Alice told me Rose hadn’t replied to you in like, four days. I bet she blocked your number.”

He finally met her expression. Her shit-eating grin was the same one Edward wore sometimes.

Jasper rolled his eyes. “To what do I owe the harassment from my favorite niece?”

“And don’t you forget it!” She hopped up off of the desk and walked over to the couch, flipping through some discarded mail. “You really ought to open this you know,” she told him as she lifted up a letter from their new forger. “If Mom finds out you haven’t replied she’s going to steal this.”

Jasper stood and walked around his desk, taking both the unmarked letter and the rest of the mail from her hands. “Renesmee.”

“Jasper.” She tried to school her expression into something more serious as she saluted him, but the smile was still there on the corners of her lips.

He ruffled her hair before she could smack his hand away, then turned toward his file cabinets. “What do you want?”

“I want to go hunting!”

“No.”

“Oh, come on—”

“Why do you want your dad mad at me, too?”

A deal had been made last year when Renesmee got her way and they’d all agreed to do something different and start from scratch in their next town. She would have to turn her diet back to mainly human food before the new year, limiting her hunts to once a month and then, eventually, once every other month.

Something about theories surrounding her nutritional intake and the fact she needed to diversify her diet. Jasper hadn’t been paying too much attention to everyone’s renewed interest in Renesmee’s health. There’d been one incident in the past few years where her health had been taken into question—a flu that had made her bed bound for four days—but even that being a singular isolated incident hadn’t prevented it from turning into Carlisle and Rosalie’s main hobby.

“I thought you were the fun uncle.”

He cracked half of a smile at that. “We both know that’s not true.”

“If I go alone Dad will really have a bitch fit. You and Alice are like, the only two willing to let me do whatever without having an aneurysm.” She paused. “Well, Mom sometimes, too.”

“Great. Talk to her when she gets back.”

Jasper almost felt bad about the wave of genuine frustration and acute disappointment that filled the room as Renesmee made a silent exit, not bothering to close the door behind her. If he weren’t currently occupied he’d probably consider her offer more. After all, she was right about one thing.

He loved his niece, but he didn’t give a damn what she did. If she wanted to test out whether hybrids could get tetanus or how much blood she could really ingest before getting ill, who was he to stop her?

He sat himself back down in his chair and quickly reopened his browsers. While he waited for one of his codes to break the encryption key to the ATCSCC, he brought up another window that had remained minimized for most of the night.

After twenty-two seconds of rapid typing, he was able to flip through a few windows on the monitor to his left. It wasn’t easy to track these people, but it was something that Jasper had become good at over the years.

Every day he thanked his lucky stars that he and Rosalie had gotten a head start on learning everything there was to learn about cyber-security back in the internet’s infancy. Since the 70s and 80s nearly everything had changed, but their constantly growing skills put them a few steps ahead when it came to tracking people who very much didn’t want to be tracked.

Despite all the resources the Volturi had at their disposal, Rosalie could still crack through any walls they put up.

Their underground fortress in Volterra itself was still impenetrable to them (there were no cameras or wifi—this measure of security was ancient and effective), but the surrounding buildings and villages and routes were absolutely not.

Unless they figured out how to be physically invisible, Jasper would always be able to track them through the eyes of every camera and GPS he could break into.

“She’s right, you know.”

Jasper didn’t jump at the sound of Alice’s voice, but he did look up in surprise at her sudden appearance.

“And that right there proves it,” she pointed at him sternly as she moved around his desk and climbed into his lap. Jasper quickly wrapped his arms around her waist as she draped an arm over the back of his neck. “You’re focused on the wrong things tonight.”

“What is Renesmee right about?” He pressed a kiss to Alice’s temple as he spoke. He didn’t really want to know, but he knew Alice would tell him anyway, so the words came naturally to him.

“You are a worrywart.” She turned her head up and pressed her lips against his. He almost rolled his eyes as she kissed him. Alice was the one who had dubbed him that, and Renesmee was just parroting the title. At this point, Alice was just calling herself right in a round-about way. “They’re in the home stretch, Jazz. A forty-nine minute wait for their checked bags is the only thing that’s going to go wrong for them tonight.” When Alice turned her head toward his screens, Jasper frowned, knowing what she was going to say now.

“I said I’d tell you next time I saw one of them move,” the disappointment was more in her aura than it was in her words.

He smoothed the feeling over as an apology. “I know, but…”

“You worry.” It wasn’t an accusation now, just an observation. Alice nodded to herself and Jasper didn’t even have it in him to tell her she was wrong.

He didn’t like to call it worrying. He liked to think of it as being careful.

And no matter how many years that passed, Jasper would never let his guard down again. Ever since he’d learned the possibilities that had once awaited them back in Forks after the turn of the century, he’d vowed to be careful. To keep watch and to remain ready.

Emmett had complained to him once, a few years after they’d finally left Forks. “You’re always acting like you’re preparing for war.”

“As long as Aro wants Alice,” Jasper had given Emmett a stern look, all the joking from their hunting trip dead and gone, “aren’t we?”

They hadn’t discussed it much after that.

He didn’t worry. He was just careful. If anyone was going to make it their duty to keep their family safe, Jasper would gladly do it.

Alice hummed, as if replying to his train of thought somehow. Sometimes Jasper thought Edward and Alice were too alike. That thought usually made Edward snicker and Alice quirk her head in curiosity. “I’m watching, too, y’know?”

He tightened his embrace, pulling her closer and resting his chin on her head. Even despite her words, his eyes were still planted on the left-hand screen. “I know.”

“It’s a little offensive you think you’d see anything I might miss.”

It was his turn to make an amused sound. “Forgive the offense. It’s just another measure. A safety net.”

“Not forgiven,” she leaned away and slid out of his lap. Before she could get too far, he reached out and grabbed her wrist, holding her in place.

“How can I earn your forgiveness?” He tried hard to fight the smile that was trying to twitch itself into existence as he pulled her back toward him.

“Hm,” Alice leaned forward, pretending to be thoughtful. She lifted her opposite arm and pushed his hair back and out of his face, letting her palm come to a rest against his cheek. Jasper let his eyes flutter closed as she closed the gap between them.

But before his lips could meet hers, she moved her cheek to the side, pressing it against his. When she spoke, her words were a stage-whisper. “Come hunting with me and Ness.”

Jasper leaned his head back and groaned, and when Alice finally swooped in to press a quick kiss to his face, he just barely missed grabbing her wrist again as she spun out of his reach.

“Only if you promise to run interference with Edward.”

“Oh, Edward we don’t have to worry about. The only person who’s going to be upset is Carlisle but he is currently still on the phone and we have,” she paused and focused for a split second, her emotions turning to static for an instant as she checked the future, “approximately one minute and thirty seconds before he hangs up the phone and comes to stop me.”

“What a coincidence, that’s the same amount of time it’s going to take me to find my shoes,” he joked, “I guess we’ll never make it out.”

The sound of shoes hitting his doorframe, bouncing against his door and knocking it open further was immediately followed by Esme shouting up the stairs.

“Please, Ness! Throwing shoes? Really?”

Renesmee called from the top of the stairs, just down the hall. “Sorry Gran! I’ll de-scuff the baseboards this week, I pinky promise!”

Jasper locked eyes with Alice. “How long was she waiting to do that?”

She ignored the question.“We’ll be back before Emmett and Rosalie land and before Edward and Bella get back.” Alice started walking backward as she spoke, smiling deviously toward him. Her confidence was so annoying sometimes.

He let his fingers fly across the keyboard for a few seconds. Then, he leaned forward and sighed as he shut the monitors off. “Worrywart,” he mocked the word as he stood up.

It wasn’t overkill. It was caution.

“C’mon,” Alice laughed, trying to be quieter now. Carlisle could absolutely hear them talking, and Jasper knew it was only his manners that prevented him from hanging up on the nurse on the phone and calling for their attention outright. “Hurry.”

Alice tossed him his shoes and then disappeared out of sight, down the stairwell where Ness was waiting in the foyer. The two laughed as he pulled his shoes on.

“Sorry, Carlisle,” Jasper spoke softly enough that Alice and Renesmee wouldn’t hear over their attempts at keeping their silly conversation subdued.

Jasper felt exasperated amusement as he made his way down the stairs and knew they’d be forgiven. It wasn’t his fault that Ness was spoiled rotten. Most of the people responsible for that weren’t even in the house.

They were barely across the yard when Alice spun, hopped lightly, and planted a quick kiss on his check, “You relax,” she commanded as if she could feel his reluctance from the brush of her lips against his skin alone. And honestly, maybe she could. Alice gave him a knowing look, her half-smile causing his own mirrored grin to form. “I’m always watching. You can have fun for a night.”

Then, she skipped ahead to catch up to where Renesmee was taking off into the darkness, directly away from town.

Renesmee hopped over an overturned log and spun to face Jasper and Alice. “What do you say you let me take down two elk?”

Jasper laughed in spite of himself. “Now you’re really trying to piss off your dad.”

She just shushed him and pushed her feet faster. Alice raced after her and Jasper trailed behind.

The moon was barely a slash in the sky tonight, the stars more visible than what the Cullens were used to in their more permanent residences. Boulder wasn’t a permanent home, but despite it being a transitory space, it left Jasper feeling more comfortable than usual.

Over a year away from a campus would do that for him.

Jasper closed his eyes, followed the footsteps running through the night ahead of him, and allowed himself to relax further as he did what came natural: giving himself over to his instincts.

As long as they were careful, smart, and always ready, they’d be alright.

#jalice #twilight fanfiction #alice cullen #jasper hale #even if you read the preview last week: this is the final ch1 draft so. maybe read this one #ive talked about this fic so much this summer that the word ROOTS doesnt even look like a real fucking word anymore. sos #happy bimbo monday bitches (affectionate)#roots

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