#we don't get much of a look in at mary-alice's scars in this

[goldeneyedgirl]

Ficmas22: Day 2: Deaf Mary-Alice

Why is December always so busy and short? I feel like I haven't stopped today - The Baking Has Begun.

Today's offering is Deaf Mary-Alice. We hear so much about how perfect vampires are, and how the venom makes people perfect but I like the idea better that the venom repairs what it can, but life leaves its mark on you. It was supposed to be Alice but somehow turned into Mary-Alice; it was also supposed to be an exploration of the scars for all family members, but became kind of this romantic little piece about Jasper being reunited with his true love.

I don't have any urgent plans to finish it. I have other fics that I want done sooner. But it's a fun one to play around.

And no, this has 0 to do with STL. I hope you enjoy!

deaf mary-alice.

Perfection is in the eye of the beholder. 

It’s easy to wave away small things (the starburst of scars down Esme’s chest where her ribs tore through; a matching one on her thigh for her femur; the missing hank of hair from Rosalie’s head, leaving behind a coin-sized patch of bald flesh behind her right ear and three broken nails gnawed short and smooth) or even the larger (the scars bisect Emmett’s chest, like overripe fruit that has split wide open; the inside of the scar is the same bloodless pale colour as the rest of him, and he laughs about his ‘war wounds’) and call themselves ‘perfect’. 

Why bother mentioning that both Carlisle and Edward are at least ten pounds underweight - Edward closer to fifteen. They are rendered in porcelain, with glossy hair and pink lips; unblemished skin and symmetrical features. They belong in the pages of high-end magazines or art gallery catalogues.

//

It takes him less than a day to realise something about the gangly newborn he finds in the mud just outside of Mississippi. 

She’s five foot nothing by his guess, with the biggest red eyes and black hair that curls around her cheeks and a filthy hospital gown with the name ‘009 MARY-ALICE SMITH’ written on it in bleeding ink.

And she does not say a word to him, just beams at him and scurries after him.

She has little concept of quiet and seems to ignore everything he says to her, transfixed by wildflowers and birds, by the night sky and the grass underfoot. It’s not until she flinches back from a swooping owl that it hits him. 

She’s deaf. 

She cannot hear a word. 

//

He expects Maria to send her into battle and let her be cannon fodder because Mary-Alice is nigh on useless to them. 

Except Maria doesn’t. She studies Mary-Alice and shrugs. 

“Work out some way to communicate with her so you can train her.”

It is surprisingly intimate, cloistered in his quarters during the day, with chalk and some scraps of paper and Mary-Alice. She’s a fast learner when it comes to writing, 

Lip-reading is harder, even with her heightened senses; he enunciates his name and hers, and she presses her fingers against his throat to feel the sound in something that makes him feel warm for a moment, her brow furrowed in concentration. 

(He feels like a fool, using ‘Jasper’ and not ‘Major’.) 

The signs start small - yes, no, north, south, east, west, Major, Maria (he places his left hand over his heart for lack of a better way to describe Maria as their leader and overlord and queen and god). One of the others finds an old manual for Lengua de Señas Mexicana, and that helps fill in a few gaps but mostly it becomes a blueprint for their own language, cobbled together from English and Spanish and their own short form over the first year of her life. 

They are lucky she is quick on her feet, lighting-fast, and determined to please the Major. Maria is amused by her and calls her Sunshine in an almost mocking way, but allows her to stay, allows her to trot obediently after the Major in a too-long dress. Whilst the entire army are taught a set of signs to communicate with her, and Maria learns enough to converse with her, it is the Major who carries the responsibility of communicating with her, of translating everything - a habit that is ultimately so ingrained that he finds himself signing conversations Mary-Alice isn’t present for. 

//

The day the Major leaves with Peter, she knows it’s coming. She knows he will leave her behind, and she is glad to see him go. He deserves only good things and the army is eating him alive. 

But her heart is broken and her world is quiet and she is alone. 

//

It takes him a moment to realise what - who - he is seeing trotting along behind Peter and Charlotte. She’s looking around curiously, without a hint of shame - a new green world for her to investigate. She’s wearing a dirty dress with a cardigan that has too-long sleeves, her knees and feet filthy.

Just like he remembers. 

He cannot believe she’s alive. He always thought she’d be better in her home, safer in that world. That Maria would look after her and do right by her. To see her here and now, the familiar warmth of her anticipation and appreciation, is more than he can truly tolerate. 

“You brought…” he half-croaks, and the family is looking at him bewildered, and Peter grins at him, and it’s then Charlotte gets Mary-Alice’s attention with snapping fingers (he wants to tell Charlotte she hates that, prefers waving or clapping, but he doesn’t. It’s not important.)

His eyes meet hers, and there is something absolutely humbling at the sheer delight and joy that she feels when she sees him. That suddenly she’s in his arms, her arms tight around his waist, burying her face in his chest. 

He can’t hold her tight enough, not really. He tried to justify his choice to leave her, but the guilt was still so heavy upon him. There’s a new scar by her eye, and her wrist was snapped clean off at some point. She still smells the same, like the damp woods he found her in, and salt air. 

She pulls back, half bouncing in her joy of seeing him, her hands already signing. 

“Maria sent me, said I could come be with you now. You went north and I was lonely. No one spoke to me like you.” They never had a sign for ‘love’; he’d mouth the words against her skin and hope she understood it on some level. And he hates that they have an audience when she grabs his hand and presses it to her lips, her mouth making the shape of his name, and there is something exquisite and undeserved about that being her way of telling him she loved him. 

“What is she doing?”

Emmett’s voice breaks the moment, the reunion, and when he looks up, she looks towards his family too. He knows they are seeing her red eyes first, noting her silence. 

“Mary-Alice is deaf,” Peter says, grinning at Jasper in that knowing way. 

You can say you were in love with her, Major. Everyone knew it. Hell, it was obvious she felt the same way. 

“Deaf?” Carlisle is staring at her in a way that makes Mary-Alice frown and tuck herself against him. Like something to be investigated. 

“Sign-language!” Esme is happy then; most of the family speak at least a small amount of ASL, and Esme is quick to introduce herself to Mary-Alice. 

Except…

Charlotte snorts and Peter shakes his head, and Mary-Alice just looks bewildered. 

“We didn’t…” he begins, wanting to explain the hurdles of having a deaf, illiterate vampire in camp. LSM was the foundation that propped up the language she speaks, but it is purely theirs. There is no manual for decades of shorthand, for their slang and shortcuts. For words their old manual did not have, for things that humans didn’t need to translate. 

“Wasn’t any American Sign Language in Monterrey in the 1920s,” Peter says pointedly. “She learned from that old book, right?”

“We made it up,” he admits as Mary-Alice signs that he looks worried, is everything okay? “Most of it.”

“Maria said that,” Charlotte admits. “That she was the only one left that knew how to talk to her, and the new generations weren’t interested in learning. Mary-Alice deserved better.”

“How do we talk to her, then?” Emmett sounds indignant, that the greatest affront is that he cannot greet Mary-Alice properly. 

“I’m sure it will take her no time at all to learn ASL,” Carlisle saids encouragingly, and that makes him frown more. She doesn’t need to learn a damn thing, they can learn… but it’s unfair of him to stop her from talking with other people, to keep her to himself. It was cruel of him to abandon her the first time, with no one to talk to. 

“She lips reads a little,” Peter says. “Don’t you, squirt?” She flips Peter the finger.

//

They get to finish their moment later that night, in his darkened study. She climbs into his lap, perched like a queen and comfortable to boot, to finish her spiel of how much she missed him, and how pleased she was to see him in person, to see how happy and good he looked. 

His hands fall into apologies, into half-spoken excuses for not grabbing her hand. But she shakes her head and silences those words, her hands cool against his before she speaks. 

“I was safe. You were not. I missed you but I am glad you went north to heal.” It’s then she plants a kiss on him, one that is in no way tentative or subtle; answering another question. That time and distance has not eaten away at what they had, at the spark and flame of all they were to each other. Of the way she tastes and the way she feels against him, and he missed her so much. Neither of them are loud (if he tries hard enough, he can make her scream, and he loves that sound. It won’t be tonight, that is for his ears only.) He doesn’t want them to be on display, for the Cullens to make assumptions and accusations (how could he have left her behind? He asks himself that regularly, and has never found an answer beyond depression being acidic, eating away at logic and reason and priorities. But to hear the accusation from another would be too much, would condemn him irreversibly.)

She hums in joy as they lie sprawled together on the couch in his office, her eyes bright and adoring, and its times like this that he knows why she has survived, why she was tolerated by Maria and protected, instead of being cast out or killed. She’s perfect, she’s enchanting. A beguiling little creature that has somehow chosen him as hers. 

Even the idea of what she faced alone is enough to make him feel sick, to hold her tighter. 

She curls against him, and turns his head so they can speak. 

It’s okay, I’m here with you now. 

It’s going to take time to realise that this is really happening. 

//

When the wolf lunges at him, over the boundary, she screams his name. He’s heard her say it only once before, and she pronounces the ‘J’ more like a ‘Y’ but it’s enough to freeze the rest of the family, the sound of her voice. 

She’s scrambling down the banks of the river to him, crouched opposite and slightly below the wolf, and the thing is that everyone sees the tiny deaf girl in lavender activewear running to his side when she is far, far more dangerous than anything or anyone present. She can take the head off the wolf - Paul, he thinks - before anyone has negotiated anything. Especially if she is afraid and threatened. So he grabs her and pulls her closer, to hold her down, even if it looks like him comforting a scared girl. 

“Don’t move,” he signs. “They are allies, just volatile. Young.”

She frowns again, but agrees, her eyes still tracking the wolf. 

Sam emerges from the forest, human again. 

“Who is she?” he demands, unamused by the addition. 

“An old friend of Jasper’s,” Carlisle placates. “She’s young and deaf, and joined our family for sanctuary.”

He wants to laugh and correct them. I knew her for decades and loved her more than anything on this planet. She is the sunshine, and I revolve around her willingly. My mate, my other half. She came to me because I am a coward, ashamed of leaving her behind.

//

[sofoulandfairaday]

I actually do tend to put most of the Order we see in the photos around the same years, but my headcanon is that there were other older members but they all died by the time that photo was taken because they were trying to protect the younger kids. I like to imagine that Moody is the only surviving older Order member and he had to watch his peers die one by one and then had to watch as so many of those kids they died trying to protect were killed themselves

Soooo. I can see this working if well justified. There is a line that does justify it in canon, actually- "[...] look, I can’t promise no one’s going to get hurt, nobody can promise that, but we’re much better off than we were last time, you weren’t in the Order then, you don’t understand, last time we were outnumbered twenty to one by the Death Eaters and they were picking us off one by one...”

Voldemort would most likely send his Death Eaters after the best and strongest Order members first, even though they were more likely to take down many of his followers- it's not like he didn't have the numbers. BUT I'm afraid it's a little unrealistic. The weakest fighters in a fight to the death are those who get killed first even with protection.

Just for funsies, though, I'll give you my personal headcanon of the Order members' rough ages. I'm usually flexible if they're changed by a couple of years, but the generations should be kept.

This is the list of confirmed Order of the Phoenix members in the First Wizarding War:

Albus Dumbledore

Aberforth Dumbledore

Alastor Moody

Arabella Figg

Dedalus Diggle

Elphias Doge

Emmeline Vance

Mundungus Fletcher

Rubeus Hagrid

Sturgis Podmore

Severus Snape

Sirius Black

Remus Lupin

Peter Pettigrew (who turns spy for the Death Eaters in 1980)

All these people survive the war. Then we also have:

James Potter

Lily Evans Potter

Fabian Prewett

Gideon Prewett

Frank Longbottom

Alice Longbottom

Edgar Bones

Benji Fenwick

Caradoc Dearborn

Dorcas Meadowes

Marlene McKinnon

Now. The only girl confirmed to be one of Lily's classmates is Mary McDonald and she's not part of the Order (and I choose to believe that she wasn't; she sympathised, maybe, but I like the headcanon that she's so scarred by Mulciber and Avery's bullying - and that the event that Lily references to Severus is not the only time they use Dark Magic on her - that she wants nothing to do with the fight). I am maybe one of the two (2) people with a mild appreciation for BlackKinnon, and I don't mind Marlene as someone in the same age bracket as them (but I can also see her being older). She is murdered along her entire family, though, and it's unclear whether she was a mother, a sister, or a daughter. I will say that some of their Hogwarts years overlapped.

Dorcas I find way less likely. She was killed by Voldemort himself - the man wouldn't have bothered if she wasn't an Amelia Bones-level witch at least, which means she was mighty, which means she most likely wasn't twenty-one. I like to think that she was an Auror, or a Ministry high-ranking employee with sound principles that just would not bend to the infiltration of the DEs in the Ministry or to Barty Crouch Snr's ruthlessness.

Frank and Alice Longbottom are the same, to me. They're older than the Marauders, I would make them (just like Dorcas) around Bellatrix's age, maybe even older. That makes them around 30yrs old in 1981. Which means they would have had a full decade or more to become the most respected Aurors in the Wizarding World, so well known that what happened to them sparked major outrage, the kind that led to a manhunt for their torturers, and the sentencing of a pleading nineteen-year-old boy. (Of course, Barty jr was guilty, but they didn't know that, didn't know just how loyal to Voldemort he truly was. The Lestranges sentencing - an old wizarding family, a Lestrange had even been Minister for Magic - was clearly one sparked by public outrage. People were crying out for their blood.)

The Prewetts were Molly's older brothers, so they were way older than the Marauders. They were also killed by a group of Death Eaters led by Antonin Dolohov after what appears to have been a truly brutal fight, so nope. They weren't the Fred and George types of the Marauders Era (also. the Marauders were that!)

Edgar Bones had a wife and children and was considered to be one of the best of the era, so I doubt he was as young as the Fantastic Four. We really don't know enough about Caradoc Dearborn or Benji Fenwick to say, but I somehow doubt it.

Of those who survived.

We know that Albus, Aberforth, Moody, Elphias Doge, Mundungus, and Arabella Figg are all way older than the Marauders, and I've always pictured Dedalus Diggle as a middle aged man (but we only know he's tiny and excitable, so it could go either way). Sturgis Podmore's description fits someone that could have been in the Marauder's year or maybe slightly older, but still one of their peers.

So, really, the green-faced youths that fought with the Order were: the four Marauders, Lily, maybe Marlene and Emmeline Vance (who isn't even listed as fighting with them in the First War, only the second), and maybe Sturgis Podmore. On the side of the Death Eaters: Avery, Mulciber, Barty Crouch jr (who was two/three years younger than the Marauders!!!), Regulus Black and of course Severus Snape.

And, no. Evan Rosier's age is never disclosed, and since he brutally maims fucking Alastor Moody - possibly the greatest Auror ever - I'm inclined to believe that he was at least Bellatrix's age (so 8-9 years older than the Marauders). In my personal headcanon he's even a tad older - but no less cuntier for it. My boy serves as much cunt at 27 as he did at 17 (<3).