#my fic: jessamine and alice
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TwiFicMas23 Day 1: lead & follow (Jessamine/Mary-Alice)
Another year, another round of Ficmas!
We'll open this year with a fic that I started for Pride and just couldn't get right - I think the end section will be reworked before it's archived on AO3.
So this was kind of a thought experiment about how STL would have gone for Jessamine and Alice; how things went differently, how different choices were made, and what that looked like.
I hope you enjoy it!
lead & follow.
Open my chest and colour my spine
I'm giving you all
Swallow my breath
And take what is mine
(Of Monsters & Men)
---
Like everything that has ever happened to one Miss Jessamine Whitlock, formerly of San Antonio, everything changes because of one small detail. One details that is so easily dismissed and forgotten, never something that seems like it’s meant to become something bigger or even slightly important in the long run.
And that's how it begins.
Jessamine finds her in a swampy clearing somewhere in Mississippi - it’s not important where, and Jessamine doesn’t care. She’s just standing there, staring off into space; with bright red eyes, and the kind of glow to her that only newborns have, half-covered in mud.
Experience has told her that no good comes from a solitary newborn - and there are no others around them, not that Jessamine can sense.
So she goes to take the newborn’s head off.
At least, that’s the plan.
Instead, the first blow has the newborn cowering, not even trying to fight back; her terrified face bisected by a crack, her thin hands holding it together as it heals. When Jessamine gets closer, the newborn lets out a whine and shuffles backward to nestle at the foot of a tree, surrounded by bushes and undergrowth.
(Her eyes are so big, it almost looks like they take up her entire face. The kind of eyes someone could drown in. Her black hair, uneven and wild, is pasted down to her face with a mixture of dried blood - her own - and mud. She is astoundingly pretty - if uncomfortably thin - which is probably the reason she was turned… if her change was intentional.)
She doesn’t look like much more than a child. But Jessamine’s known Immortal Children, and their aggression, their lure, is something that this girl doesn’t have. She’s small, but she’s above the legal age.
So she decides to take one Mary-Alice (the name scrawled on the back of her garment, the surname blurred out and indecipherable) back to Maria.
If she’s a spy, she’ll be tortured for information and destroyed. If she’s a foundling, she’s another body on the battlefield. Either way, Maria gets something out of Jessamine bringing her back to Monterrey.
So she does.
—
Forks is turning out to be memorable.
That sounds stupid. Vampire memories are good enough that, by definition, all places are memorable. Except after decades of moving every five years from one large, remote house in a small town to another large, remote house in a small town, it all blurs together. Carlisle works in a hospital, Esme does charity work, and the rest of them go to school - dented lockers, the old-soup smell of the cafeteria, and computers that only work fifty percent of the time.
The more things change, the more they stay the same. It was like statis, in some ways, because it was always the same. Hell, in some of those underfunded shithole public schools, they were even the same textbooks a decade apart.
That’s why they were allowed to stay in Alaska for the full decade - after a round in Juneau playing the part. They had to earn their retreat into the lodge outside of the Denali National Park.
(Well, the screaming argument that she had with Rosalie might have indicated to Carlisle and Esme that they were all burnt out with keeping up the act. It hadn’t been one of her finest moments, but Rosalie had insisted on using her actual full name at their last three schools and Jess had put her foot down in Juneau. They were inviting trouble with the internet becoming more and more accessible. She’d won that argument, which was rare enough that it was notable, and they’d attended school as Rose and Jess Platt. It was more than fifteen years ago, and she wasn’t entirely certain Rosalie had forgiven her yet.)
It had been nice. Nice to exist as who she was, and not have to remember all the details that went along with their cover story; not to have to second guess everything she said or did or wore because she was supposed to be an ordinary teenage girl. Nice to be able to venture into the woods for days on end and not have to be anywhere. Nice to run bare foot through the snow, because that was a feeling she still savoured as a novelty more than sixty years later.
And then Carlisle had taken them to Forks, and pushed them back onto centre stage; the maladjusted Cullens (and Hales, again. She is fighting a losing battle over that.)
(She’s getting too old for this.)
She wasn’t expecting Forks to be anything. Just another black pin on the map in her study of all the places they’ve found themselves in - there’s a red pin in Monterrey for obvious reasons. There’s a silver one in Nebraska, the place where the Cullens found her (not her most dignified moment, honestly.)
There’s a silver one in Mississippi too. One that she worries at, takes out and puts back in, because she hates that she’s so damn obvious. That she’s giving away her secrets - especially the secrets that she refuses to confess to herself half of the time. But she’s on a new kick, a new lifestyle of being honest with herself and with others. That rewriting history does no one any favours, so it’s better just to be straight forward and tell the truth.
(Eventually she’ll feel at home as this new person, this honest girl who owns her failures and her weaknesses. It’s been sixty years, it’ll stick soon.)
She digresses.
Forks… well, Edward and Bella certainly made it distinctive.
She wasn’t going to lie and say that it didn’t feel good to fight again, to destroy. That James went down realising he made a terrible mistake and picked the wrong fight on the wrong day, and that she was very thorough, and took great pride in her work. That Jessamine Whitlock had a reputation to uphold. She likens it to stretching out muscles that have been in recline too long - a runner getting back into training after sitting out of the race.
(She might have been too enthusiastic, because Emmett was kind of slack jawed when James was finally ash. But it’s good to know that she’s still got it - that sixty years of domesticity hasn’t dulled her too much.)
Jess has zero idea of where Edward and Bella are going to end up - probably with Bella dead, if she’s honest. (If Esme hadn’t intervened, she and Rose would have already dealt with Bella and probably Chief Swan at the same time. But she just cannot go against Esme’s politely-worded requests. No one is murdering the Chief of Police and his daughter. She just made it sound so reasonable.) With all the moving parts, with Edward and his hang-ups, and Bella’s impressive ability to attract trouble, she cannot see this having a happy ending. And really, however this pans out, Bella is going to lose her life.
But she keeps her thoughts to herself.
Victoria is still in the wind and, despite Carlisle’s faith in the goodness of people, Jess knows that without sufficient motivation - like having a debilitating gift that cripples you emotionally to the point of physical pain if you hunt humans - there is no meaningful chance that Laurent will remain a vegetarian with the Denali clan. They’re living on borrowed time.
But for all her bitching, at least Bella and Edward had made this more interesting than another mediocre high school eduction.
Speaking of which, her current class is coming to an end, and she has the overwhelming urge to stretch. The others don’t get that urge like she does, and Carlisle blames it on their human lifestyle. That Jess had the opportunity to run and fight and move on a scale none of the Cullens have really ever had. The others find it odd that she paces, stretches, twists and turns when they are content simply sitting or standing.
Some days she just runs loops up to Canada and back down to Forks, to burn the energy and the itch. Edward might join her for a couple, Emmett too, but no one likes to run as much as she does. No one else feels like instinct to move like Jess.
The bell rings, and she’s quick to sweep her books into her bag. Maybe she’ll ask Rose to do her homework for her, and go running tonight. Go running and hunting, and tell Carlisle she’s keeping an eye for Victoria so no one looks at her like she’s going feral again. Maybe even wear shoes and one of those fancy outdoor jackets that Esme buys her, to help her look the part even when she’s running faster than the human eye in the depths of the wilderness, with blood on her face.
“Jess?”
She jerks to the side - not surprised, really, but having anyone address her is unexpected. She and Rose are not known for their warm personalities.
But Angela Weber is one of the few classmates that she tolerates. Mostly because Angela is polite, respects boundaries, and doesn’t ask stupid questions. Jessica Stanley, who is hovering nearby, is lower on Jess’s list of ‘people she should tolerate’, mostly because of the sheer amount of questions Jessica likes to ask.
Which is possibly why she’s keeping her distance.
(She blames Rose, honestly, that they’re approaching her at all - she’d been practicing braids in Jess’s hair that morning and she’d left them in for school. Apparently it made her look friendly enough to talk to.)
“Hmm?”
“It’s about Rosalie’s car…”
Angela has her full attention immediately; nothing causes a Rosalie Hale meltdown quite like the great-unwashed interfering with one of her cars. There had been an incident about a month after they started at Forks High, and whilst Rosalie had been contained quickly, it wasn’t forgotten by the student body.
“There's some junkie girl sitting on it,” Jessica announces and Angela winces at her friend’s bluntness.
Jess groans, and shoulders her bag, pushing past both girls without acknowledging them. This was going to be bad, and she was sure Angela would overlook her rudeness if it meant beating Rosalie out to the parking lot and removing whatever poor soul had a death wish by touching the BMW.
Fuck, fuck, fuck.
—
Mary-Alice is an enigma.
Maria is equal parts exasperated and fascinated by her.
She claims to have no memories before waking up in the woods.
She doesn’t know her maker. She doesn’t remember being human or how old she is or where she is from. The only reason she knows her name is because it was written on her garment and Jessamine gave it back to her. She tells them all of that the second they get back to camp.
Maria doesn’t believe her. Not that it matters, because whatever her answer was, Maria has a very specific process for foundlings brought to her in Monterrey.
Maybe Jessamine should have warned the poor girl.
She’s mostly confused by the torture; it’s light, for Maria - the cracking and removal of a limb or two has the girl telling them everything. She sobs enough that venom gathers under her eyes and clings to her eyelashes. When Maria finally decides to release her, Mary-Alice doesn’t lash out like others before her have; instead, she goes over to the corner of the room to reattach her arm, to realign the joints in her legs, and shakes like a leaf when Jessamine approaches her, flinching away.
But Jessamine has to put her away, and nothing stops her from hauling Mary-Alice to her feet, her hand clamped around her good arm so she doesn’t try to run. She wouldn’t be the first.
The rolling horror of her emotions twists Jessamine’s stomach and makes her tighten her grip out of resentment as she escorts her to the barn with the rest of the newborns. She almost pities the little creature, still healing - her ankle is still knitting back to her leg, her limp like a little skip - and being thrown into the barn. But what goes on in there after dawn is a law unto itself, and something that Maria has never gotten involved in.
(Mary-Alice isn’t the first to be fed into the maw of the south, and she won’t be the last.)
Which is why it’s so fucking annoying that Jessamine can’t get the memory of her wide, venom-streaked eyes out of her head, even once she and Maria have retired to the house.
The next evening, Mary-Alice is quiet. She feels distant - that will become her trademark. That her emotions are as slight and ephemeral as her build. That for a long time, Jessamine will have to touch her to get a decent read on what she feels.
And after a while, even that yields nothing.
It doesn’t matter, though, because she settles well into training. Maria had named her as canon fodder - someone they’d lose early on, since she was evidently prone to hysterics and seemed too confused and innocent to really grasp what she was now a part of.
But… she’s fast and she’s a quick learner; a talented fighter. She catches on faster than Jessamine’s seen before; absolutely ruthless and precise. Her size is an asset, and does not reflect her strength. It’s been a while since Jessamine has been surprised by a newborn in training; she and Maria can measure up a soldier well enough by now. Mary-Alice, however, surprises both of them.
She’ll do nicely.
And she lives. One battle, two, six, twelve. She comes back from them all with insignificant injuries and nothing to report. Another success story for the Lady of Monterrey, and her unbeatable army.
Jessamine just tries to not to notice how haunted those big eyes have become, so quickly. How quiet and small she makes herself.
It's just how things are in the south.
She’d best get used to it.
—
With the imminent arrival of another patented Rosalie meltdown, Jess is cursing a lot of things - of course her class today is in H block at the back of the school. Of course today is the day the goddamn middle schoolers are using the library, and one of the sports teams is packing for a game. There are too many people crammed into the hallway, and Rosalie’s temper is the only thing distracting Jess from how good everyone smells.
She manages to intercept Edward, helping Bella navigate the corridors in that unwieldy cast, to warn him of their predicament and to hopefully distract Rose long enough for Jess to intervene and banish whomever thought it was a good idea to touch Rosalie Hale’s car. Edward looks irritated - mostly at Rose, but that’s just an ordinary Wednesday - and agrees that this needs to be handled fast and efficiently. Leave Emmett to be the one to manage Rose.
But of course, as they push through the crowds, her bag - the beat-up army-surplus messenger bag that Emmett gave her back in the 90s as a punchline to a joke, dotted with anti-war patches Emmett hunts for on eBay - decides to break, the buckle snapping up to hit her in the head and sending her shit tumbling to the floor.
She’s going to murder someone, but at least Carlisle will be pleased it wasn’t because she was thirsty, but because she was continually inconvenienced. Waving Edward and Bella on, she stops to scoop up her detritus - pens and pencils, her notes, her phone, all scattered along the floor - as other students ignore her and keep moving forward.
“You think they’ll call the cops?”
“She’s definitely a junkie. Mom says there’s a real problem out at the Res, and that Swan won’t do anything about it because he’s all buddy-buddy with a bunch of them.”
“She’s pretty obviously white, Ashley.”
“They’re probably selling shit to her.”
“Don’t be such a fucking racist."
“Banner went out to talk to her, and she says she’s waiting for someone. Said she knows the Cullens.”
“She looks like a middle-schooler.”
The gossip around her, as she shovels papers and books and pens back into her bag - fixable, but irritating - seems to prick at her, and she sets it aside long enough to tie the broken strap together. She’s probably lost her chance at beating Ro…
Said she knows the Cullens.
She looks like a middle-schooler.
That makes her pause. It shouldn’t, but it does.
Immortal Children don’t live very long, with the Laws. And most people won’t change anyone who isn’t definitively and absolutely old enough. No one wants to be the one that creates an ambiguously young newborn in case it all goes to shit.
Maybe there’s always been a little shard of hope tucked behind her heart.
There’s only been one girl she’s known, of all the newborns and nomads and friends of Carlisle’s over the years, that could pass for being a ‘junkie middle-schooler.’
One girl who made her a promise a long time ago.
(It might have been sixty years, but she never stopped having faith in those parting words.)
—
Time passes, newborns fall in battle, or they live to see the year pass by until summer comes and the pyres are built. And slowly but steadily, Jessamine feeds each piece and part of those newborns into the fire whether they are body parts left behind on the battlefield, or Jessamine takes off their heads herself.
Mary-Alice isn’t amongst that number. No, she survives each battle, and is lucky and fast enough that Maria shrugs and leaves it up to Jessamine whether Mary-Alice gets to live or die.
So, she lives.
Jessamine tells herself that it’s because no one expects much from her on the battlefield, so she’s the perfect cuckoo in the nest. The skinny kid with the big eyes that can take down men three times her size before they even realise they’ve lost.
She convinces herself of that for a long time. That her interest in Mary-Alice is merely academic, strategic, and nothing more. Even when she’s unceremoniously ejected from Maria’s bed - a long time coming, and not something she’s that unhappy about - she’s still convinced Mary-Alice is just another warm body for the army. One of the few that gets to live past their newborn year - like Dante and Lily and Javier. She has a purpose. Jessamine Whitlock is not one for sentiment, and not one for indulgences. If Mary-Alice wasn’t useful, she wouldn’t have been given a stay of execution.
And for a while, that’s how they stay. A soldier and a major. Training and hunting and recruiting. Mary-Alice proves useful at map-drawing and recruiting, even if she is entirely illiterate and far too sympathetic to potential recruits. Her answers to Jessamine are always short, deeply respectful, and unemotional - she’s never told a lie, even fumbled the details, in the entire time that Jessamine’s known her.
Maria likes that Mary-Alice has no human memories; thinks it makes her more efficient and effective. She wonders about ways to wipe memories of the newborns as a blanket policy; sever them from their humanity entirely. Peter and Jessamine manage to talk her out of that; there’s already a roughly thirty percent chance of a newborn changing wrong and having to be destroyed on the spot. It’s just making their jobs harder, to try and find that sweet spot between utility and amnesia every single time. It leaves them weak, without a full army, if it all goes wrong at the same time.
(And maybe Jessamine sees the confused, sad look on Mary-Alice's face when she’s listening to a conversation the most recent batch of newborns have - about weddings and families and birthdays and all those little things that make up humans and newborns often want to hold tight to, at least for a little while. But all it tells her is that Mary-Alice might be useful the way she is, but she’s hardly content with her lot in life.)
It takes over a decade for Jessamine to admit to herself that Mary-Alice isn’t there just for utility - that she wants more. Those big red eyes that feel like they see too much; the odd little spells she has where she stares off into space. The very few but almost charmingly unexpected questions. The shape and movement of her thin body underneath oversized clothes…
She wants more. She wants Mary-Alice.
(It’s been a while. There were a couple of newborns after Maria, easily caught and easily forgotten - Peter’s fine with being the one that ends Jessamine’s lovers during the summer, because it’s too much for her to deal with and they learned that the hard way. She kept to herself after that, bored and irritable with the last few batches.)
The realisation is one that feels like she’s always known it but also like she’s been struck by lightning. It’s no easier to admit to herself in the privacy of her own mind than it is to put the words into the world, but it’s always been there, simmering: that Mary-Alice was something, a moment of potential that she just had to be ready to take.
Jessamine has never been patient when she makes a decision; and it’s not like Mary-Alice is going anywhere.
It’s as simple as cornering her in the house before dawn; of a hand on Mary-Alice’s cheek and a kiss that is taken more than offered. An understanding that is exchanged in a glance.
The room Maria gave Jessamine is narrow, with an ancient, rotting day bed and a hay mattress. The mattress is sunken in the middle, and she snapped the legs off the bed years ago, to make it more useable. There’s a desk that barely stands, piled with her books and ragged maps and a few bits of discarded clothing.
It’s not a room she’s spent a lot of time in - a space used for killing time more than as a sanctuary.
Mary-Alice pauses to consider the room for a second; that’s all Jessamine gives her before there is another kiss, deep and lingering, and she can taste Mary-Alice’s venom - a lemon-sugar tang that makes her groan.
(Jessamine makes it clear what she wants from Mary-Alice that first night. Both of them stripped and on that daybed; Mary-Alice has less scars, just a dusting. She’s still young. She’s just as tiny as Jessamine envisaged, her ribs leaving shadows on her skin, the soft swell of her breasts, the jutting bones of her hips… Jessamine doesn’t want to admit that she’s a daydream, a doll wrought just for her, because that makes this a complete disaster. She’s already ragged with emotion in this place, the last thing she needs to do is add in her own goddamn feelings.)
Mary-Alice has always been a good learner, a quick one, and Jessamine would be pleased with how willing she is if life didn’t feel like she was being hollowed out and left to rot most days. But there is some satisfaction in what they have, in being able to sink into each other. She knows every scar and freckle on Mary-Alice’s body, knows exactly how she moves, how she’s put together. It’s a feast and some days she wonders if those days lying sprawled naked on the hay mattress are what truly sustains her.
(Maria catches them together one afternoon and lets out a bark of laughter. “You really are trying to destroy that girl,” she informs Jessamine, clearly entertained by what she’s found. That comment, what Maria saw in them that day, eats away at Jessamine slowly but surely. She does nothing with it, but it just sits in her mind to rot and it makes her worse. It makes everything worse.)
But somehow, she keeps her. Mary-Alice doesn’t leave, Jessamine doesn’t send her away, and they both ignore the rot.
And maybe Jessamine feels safe enough to talk to Mary-Alice - to Alice. Really talk, like she hasn’t been able to in… a very long time. She whispers little things in her ear, asks her what she thinks, tells her things she’d rather never speak aloud.
Alice is a good listener, but not much of a talker. She makes reassuring sounds, plays with Jessamine’s hair, and never really has a definitive opinion about complicated things. She doesn’t confide in Jessamine the same; there are no whispered confessions, no hushed fears or worries. It hurts because Jessamine is cracking herself wide open for Alice, and getting nothing in return.
(It hurts because Jessamine knows she doesn’t deserve any part of what she expects, and Alice is right not to tell her a damn thing.)
“It must be nice not to have secrets,” Jessamine says pointedly to her one day, lying together; fucking came before dealing with the bites and wounds from the last battle and Alice’s mouth is on the bite around her bony arm, licking away foreign venom so it will knit again. She lets out a garbled noise when Jessamine says that.
“What makes you think that?” Alice asks, looking curious. Blank, curious, pissed off - those were the sole emotions Alice was capable of demonstrating. Her physical emotions were no more telling, and sometimes Jessamine wondered if that’s just who Miss Mary-Alice was, or if that’s what the South had done to her.
“You never have anything to tell me,” Jessamine replied, almost sulkily. Alice shrugs and lies straight, looking at her frankly.
“I’ve never known anything but you and life here,” Alice says in that even, flat voice she always uses. “That’s all I have; any hopes or dreams or beliefs or regrets I ever had, I left behind when I was changed. I think you really need those things to have secrets, Jessamine.”
She’s not wrong, but Jessamine is admittedly jealous that Alice won’t entrust some kind of something to her; to tuck a secret into Jessamine’s greedy palms. But it also must be nice not to feel like you’re on the edge of a knife, about to fall into the abyss. Most of the time, Jessamine feels like she’s about to implode from everything. That she’s stretched taunt, and something has to give.
And Alice is just there, steady as she goes.
It must be nice.
(It’ll be much, much later - too late - when Jessamine finally realises how grotesque and nightmarish Alice’s life was. Is. How she had handed Jessamine what she truly wanted, that intimacy of her truth - completely hopeless, with no expectation or knowledge of anything better than what she had. And Jessamine had missed it entirely.)
—
“I don’t care who the fuck she is, I’m going to kill her,” Rosalie announces through clenched teeth, sending a few horrified freshman skittering out of her way like rabbits as Jess finally finds her family. She’d given up beating Rosalie to the car park thanks to the fucking ridiculous layout of this stupid school and opted to just try and diffuse the situation at the source.
“How did she find us here?” Emmett wonders, looking downright confused. “Why not go straight to the house? Esme would love having someone show up to visit.”
“Scent, probably. No other way to track us down if they were coming from the South-East,” Edward says under his breath, so no passersby can hear anything odd. “Do we have any idea of who it is?”
“Jessica was saying she had dark hair,” Bella says meekly, withering under Rose’s scornful glance.
“That doesn’t narrow it much,” Emmett has his arm over Rosalie’s shoulders, probably holding her in place. Even with Jess’s gift, Rose’s rage is hot and wild, and Emmett is probably the only thing keeping her in check. “Mary, maybe?”
“Mary hasn’t left California in forty years; and she’s taller than Jess,” Edward corrects. “Everyone’s focusing on how small this girl is.”
“At least it isn’t Jane,” Emmett shrugs. “We’d have known about that pretty fast.”
It’s been decades since they met with the Volturi as ‘honored guests’ of Aro, and none of them held that visit fondly. Esme had quietly admitted later that the visit to Volterra had taken the shine off Italy entirely.
Jess nods along, trying to focus on muting Rosalie’s anger, and not to think too much. She feels oddly sick at the possibilities in front of them. She feels stupid for putting the pieces together in her mind in a very-certain way. (She promised.) She’s… hopeful, but sick with the possibility she’s wrong and she’s got her hopes up for nothing.
“It’s not Maria, Jess.” Edward sounds like he’s trying very hard to be reassuring. “You know Maria, and she wouldn’t be this brazen.”
It’s both reassuring and embarrassing that Edward would jump to that conclusion: that Maria’s sudden appearance would be at the front of Jess’s mind when it didn’t even occur to her that Maria might be the sitting pretty on Rose’s BMW (fuck, she really does have a type).
(Also, Maria would not be sitting on the BMW looking homeless. The last time Charlotte and Peter ran into Maria, she was apparently wearing Versace and driving a Lexus - a stolen Lexus, without any kind of license, but the woman had very particular taste.)
Jess can’t think of other possibilities at that moment. She doesn’t want Edward to know because… whatever the outcome is, she doesn’t want Edward to look at her in sympathy. She might be trying out this whole ‘honest and transparent’ lifestyle but there are some things that are too raw, too much of a condemnation of her, to think about.
So she just nods, hands tight on the strap of her bag and wondering what she’s really hoping for.
(It’s been more than sixty fucking years. Hope is a dead thing that’s rotted back into the ground, brittle bones ground to dust. Some promises are made to be broken, and it’s about time that she made peace with that.)
—
In the end, she goes with Peter.
Or rather, Peter shows up and grabs her arm and tells her to fucking run.
(The long story is that for a very long time, she hates Peter. More than she hates Charlotte, even. She hates him for leaving her to the never-ending abyss of the wars, for taking away the steadiest and kindest thing she ever had. She doesn’t want to kill him so much as she wants to beat the shit out of him and scream at him for letting her down. She tells Alice that once, her voice shaking, and Alice had stroked her cheek. “I think Peter will surprise you. And I think when he does, you should take what he offers.” Jessamine scoffed because she doesn’t expect to see him again - he’s already probably dead, Charlotte too.)
So she turns and runs. She doesn’t even look behind her, doesn’t think about the stuff she’s leaving behind, doesn’t think about how he’s still alive, where Charlotte is, or even where they are going.
They just run. It’s a blur of dust and haze and terror trapped inside her that they will be caught and she’ll get the one person she’s always trusted, always relied upon to fix things, killed.
At the Arizona border, they slow down and maybe Jess grabs Peter and hugs him so tight she probably cracks something and she sobs so hard she’s wheezing. Her great escape from the Southern Wars and from Maria of Monterrey ends not with a celebration, of laughter and joy, but with both of them sitting in the dirt, Jess shaking and crying, with Peter trying to soothe her, his arms tight around her.
That’s how Charlotte finds them, and later Jess is embarrassed and humbled by Charlotte’s compassion, her acceptance, and her keen relief that they both made it out in one piece. Charlotte’s a better person than Jessamine, but they already knew that.
For a while, she feels like spun glass - impossibly fragile and distant from all that goes on around her. Time lacks meaning, and she’s not sure how many days pass after Arizona. Peter and Charlotte are gentle with her, and Charlotte is quick to remind her that it takes all of them a while to realize that there is something outside of that ugly bubble of the Wars; that what they lived through is just the smallest view of the world.
Jess just needs to take a breathe and let time work its magic, Charlotte promises. It will be okay.
Except, it’s six states and two months later that she feels enough like herself again that her brain starts working, that she starts having thoughts beyond the moment, and she immediately thinks of Alice.
Alice. Alice whom she left behind and never thought of. Alice who probably waited for Jess in her room - their room - in the mansion, and Jess never showed up.
Alice, who is still in Monterrey with Maria alone to pay the price of Jess’s abandonment. That’s the realization that makes her vomit up the meal she ate only a few hours earlier. Alice alone, paying for Jessamine’s sins and selfishness.
(Maria was right. She really did want to destroy Alice.)
Peter is kind but unflinching when he deciphers her distress. If Jessamine was that close to Alice, Maria probably tortured the shit out of her for answers, and then destroyed her. If going back was a possibility - and it really, really isn’t - she wouldn’t be alive to save.
It says a lot about the place they’ve all come from that the idea Alice is dead and gone is immensely reassuring, that Alice is somewhere soft and quiet now, where nothing can get her.
Except…
The last night, the last battle, lingers in her head and she remembers giving Alice and the others their orders and Alice meeting her gaze and replying, “I’ll follow where you lead.”
Those words are probably meaningless; Alice always followed orders and acknowledged them to set a standard for the newborns. Her confidence and certainty in Jessamine and Maria’s leadership set a tone that made the newborns fall into line with relative ease.
Except they aren’t; they’re ominous and heavy and loaded… maybe even something to hold tight to, something to tuck away and hope for.
Alice is fast and she’s a quick learner; a talented fighter. She catches on faster than Jessamine’s seen before; absolutely ruthless and precise. Her size is an asset and does not reflect her strength. She’s been a reliable fighter for Maria for decades, and she’s never told a lie. Without Jessamine, Maria’s ability to wield a newborn army is crippled; it would be foolish to destroy one of her longest-serving soldiers when she’s already lost Jessamine. And Maria is no fool…
…Maybe.
(A little bit of hope is a powerful thing.)
—
The journey to the parking lot feels like the path to execution, and Jess is intimately aware of the fact that either way, her family is probably going to know more than she wants them to.
There are students clustered around the parking lot, talking and whispering, and enjoying the Cullens being a spectacle again. Perhaps even hoping for a Rosalie smack-down because in small towns, the good gossip is treasured.
(Emmett might look like he’s casually walking with Rosalie, but she’s clamped at his side, and he’s whispering sweet nothings in her ear to diffuse the situation. Cars can be fixed and some people are stupid, babe. Don’t let anyone know they got to you.)
And then they are there, staring at Rose’s pristine car, and it takes Jess a moment to realise what she’s seeing.
She sits on the top of the SUV cross-legged, and she probably looks bored to everyone else. Just waiting for the Cullens to show up.
(Hope is a wild thing in her chest, somehow a million times more alive and wild now that Jess is faced with what she was secretly holding on for, that tiny flickering flame that she’s protected but never acknowledged since the day Peter declared her most likely dead finally burning free.)
To Jess, she looks exhausted. Wrung out and brittle, like she’s waiting for her execution.
But she’s here. And she’s alive.
Her hair is pulled into two very small pigtails on the top of her head with plastic clips, and somewhere she’s gotten ahold of glitter eyeshadow that is smeared liberally over both her eyelids. She’s wearing a frankly rancid cat-ear hoodie that looks like it was once a child’s, and some ragged capris, with a beat-up messenger bag beside her. Both of her skinny wrists are layered with beaded bracelets that definitely once belonged to a child.
The effect is jarring - childish and garish - but it is also somehow the most Alice. That this is exactly who she is - worn out, beaten-up, but still very much herself. It feels like the first time Jess has actually seen her for herself and it’s exactly how Jess always assumed Alice looked.
“Jess?” Edward’s looking at her with a confused expression, but she’s not listening anymore. It’s like sixty years of trauma all knotted and tangled up inside of her has come loose and she can finally relax. That she’s finally putting everything together and maybe it will be okay now.
She strides over to the car, past the whispering students wondering how the Cullens know this weird barefoot girl and what Jess Hale is going to do, and right up to the SUV. For a second, they stare at each other before Jess drops her bag to the ground and climbs up onto the roof, their gazes never breaking.
Alice stares back at her, her expression not changing at all; her eyes just tracking her movement. There’s nothing there, no emotion or reaction. Just the flat gaze of someone used to being hunted.
And Jess kisses her.
She clasps Alice’s face in her hands and kisses her for the first time in more than sixty years, an apology and a celebration that Alice is here and she’s alive and they found each other.
Jess knows that behind her, the population of Forks High is gaping and whispering and judging - she can hear a few wolf-whistles, she’s sure that admin is already calling Carlisle and Esme to come in for a meeting with the guidance counselor, and that there will be a slur written on the front of her locker in the morning.
Small towns are all the same.
She knows that the penny finally dropped for Emmett and Rose (though she suspects that Emmett already guessed, after that weird speech he gave her back in ’79 about how it’s cool that he likes bears and she likes bears too and that everyone can like what they like, and it doesn’t have to be a big deal. She originally assumed it was because Carlisle and Esme were paying closer attention to the local wildlife and sustainability, but apparently it was really about her being gay. Metaphor was never his strong suit.)
Rosalie will be rolling her eyes that Jess had to be so dramatic and couldn’t do this privately.
She knows that Edward is going to have another spiritual crisis that involves too many dirges on the piano, a lot of whining at Carlisle, and somehow making the fact that Jess is gay all about his perpetual teenage-boy pain and hypocritical beliefs.
She doesn’t care that everyone is going to talk about her right up until the Cullens move away; that she’s going to be the ‘gay Cullen girl’ now, and made a whole lot of trouble for the family. She doesn’t care that Esme’s probably going to give her a sweet but awkward speech about how loved and accepted she is, and how she could have told them at any time.
It’s honestly going to suck for a few weeks, after this stunt.
But she doesn’t regret it. She doesn’t regret it because Alice is there and the familiar lemon-sugar tang of her venom hasn’t changed, and Alice doesn’t shove her away. And that’s halfway to everything being perfect.
When Jess pulls back, Alice squeezes her eyes shut. “I-I didn’t have anywhere else to go,” are the first words Alice speaks to her, quiet and nervous, and Jess hates so much that Alice seems so resigned, so small and tired.
Their good times might have been brief, a little flash in their fucked up, messy history, but that’s how Jess remembers her the clearest. That’s when Alice was the brightest.
Not this girl who seemed as substantial as mist, halfway dead and mostly lost; this girl that Jess feels is slipping away from her faster than she can save her. This is the version of Alice that terrifies the fuck out of Jess, frankly. A blank slate of emotion, no way to determine what she’s thinking or feeling, but she can see that all joy and hope has drained from her. The walking dead, in every way that matters.
And the idea that Alice would go anywhere else before coming to Jess, that Alice assumes Jess would not want her here makes Jess feel vaguely sick. That Alice is waiting for a reprimand, retribution, and punishment for coming to find her.
(What happened to her? This isn’t the steady girl that she left behind. This version of her is so very shattered. Of all the ways Jess had imagined Alice after she left, this one was never even a shadow of a possibility.)
“This is the only place you need to be,” Jess says in a low voice, reaching out to cradle Alice’s cheek. “I am so … fucking happy to see you. I missed you so much.” There are a million other questions she has - Are you okay? How did you get away? What do you need? - but she saves them, tucks them away for later when they are cloistered in a corner of the Cullens’ enormous house, and there is time for mess and raw pain and the opportunity to breathe.
Alice bites her lip and nods, and that’s when Jess’s siblings gather around the car, obviously having walked slowly to give Jess and Alice a moment alone. Or as alone as they could be with several hundred high school students watching and commentating.
“We need to take this back to the house,” Rose says stiffly; she’s not happy at the spectacle in front of the school, but she’s not particularly upset with Jess or Alice; Jess wonders how long Rose’s tolerance will last. “Edward’s taking Bella home.”
Somehow, reality is separate from whatever is happening right now, like she and Alice are in some kind of bubble, away from Forks and humans and all the day to day monotony. Right now, she’s just intensely aware of Alice’s body so close to hers; to that sweet lemon-sunshine scent that Alice has always had. Of the new scars on Alice’s hands and face that Jess doesn’t know; and the way she holds her right arm closer to her body. She is so intensely aware of the way Alice’s eyelashes brush her cheeks as she blinks, perfectly still and perfectly unhappy.
None of it feels real, not even with Alice’s hand in hers.
“Let’s go,” she manages to tell Alice, who nods. She always follows orders.
Jess slides off the roof of the car to land next to it, reaching out a hand to help Alice down.
“I’ve got you,” she says, brushing some of Alice’s hair off of her face.
Alice stares at her for a moment, those big dark eyes that Jess has been in love with for longer than she can remember.
“You always have,” Is all she says, as they climb into the car, but she doesn’t take her hand out of Jess’s.
I’ve got you.
—
alice.
The Cullen house smells clean and like the woods at the back of the garden. It’s full of light, it’s dry, it’s a hundred different things that Monterrey never was and could never aspire to be. Like so many things she’s known lately, it feels like something she’s allowed to see, but it’s not for her to keep. A stolen glimpse before she keeps moving.
Her feet stick to the wooden floors, and she’s intensely aware that the lake bath she had before she got to Forks is not enough for these people. They wear shoes and jewelry, and they’ve got their clothing in the right order. They aren’t like her.
Right now, everything feels very far away, like she’s watching herself from a great distance.
She knows that Jessamine is waiting for her to speak, to say something small. To offer her a truth, a reason, for why she came to her. To finally share that cursed secret Jessamine demanded all those years ago, when keeping it was the only thing that kept them both alive.
Maybe the thing she wants more than anything is to scream and scream until it all spills out of her. That she’s all knotted up inside, that aren’t so much secrets as the whole, messy truth.
The truth is that she was raised back up with no memory of love or affection or family, just a vague promise of it that was ruined before she even began, and she’s not really sure how love is supposed to feel anymore.
So she’s spent eighty years clinging to a half-glimpsed possibility of her and Jessamine meeting in a human establishment, of that soft and perfect promise because she had nothing else, and now she’s not who she was when Jessamine left her, and she’s never going to be who she was supposed to be, not for herself or for Jessamine or for both of them.
She knows if she could sleep, there would be nothing but nightmares and horrors. Of all the things she’s seen and done, all the things that have been done to her. That just to survive, to save them both, she had to let herself be swallowed up, bite by bite, by the wars and the propaganda and so many lies.
And now she doesn’t know if there’s anything left of her to salvage, let alone piece back together.
Jessamine’s hand is in hers, and it isn’t letting go.
That’s something.
All the words that are being spoken, they sound like they are muffled, underwater somehow. They look at her, waiting, and the words still don’t come.
The urge to scream is fading. Jessamine’s hand is still in hers; maybe she’s holding on too tight. She feels like if she lets go, everything will disappear.
So she holds on tighter and steadies herself and even manages to walk further into the house. Maybe she finds just enough words to explain that it’s all new and fresh and when she ran, it was like the flat of a knife against a human throat - a flash of a chance, more likely death than freedom, but somehow she made it work.
That the idea of hunting turns her stomach, and the whole world seemed so big and bright that the only place to go was to Jessamine.
“I’ve never known anything but you and life here.”
(Later, cloistered in Jessamine’s study wearing borrowed clothing, she’ll start to weep and she won’t be able to stop. Jessamine will hold her and stroke her hair and try to reassure her of things that Alice has never confided in her. They won’t be the last tearless tears she will cry, but they will be the rawest and the truest. She still doesn’t know what love or hope or dreams feel like, but whatever this is, it’s more than she’s ever had before.)
--
AN:
Yeah, this version of Mary-Alice somehow got the worst welcome to Monterrey; a vision of her True Love interrupted by said True Love deciding to attack her; taken back to Maria to be tortured for information for a couple of nights before being tossed into the barn with a bunch of fresh and vicious newborns who don’t recognise her as One of Them. She really opted to get all flavors of trauma packed into that very first week of life.
Mary-Alice never told Jessamine or Maria about her gift at all. According to them, she was giftless, just skilled. That first week really fucked with her head.
This version has Mary-Alice leave the South and head straight to Forks. There’s about a week between Mary-Alice fleeing Maria and turning up on the Cullens’ car, so there’s a lot of fresh hurt and a lot of terror at being in a brave new world where she doesn’t know the rules. So, she’s been with Maria from 1919 right up until the 2000s.
Jess, to me, has always had a more hair-trigger temper and spontaneous personality compared to Jasper. This is because of the period-typical emotional repression that men aspired to during the Civil War; Jessamine is a little freer with expressing herself because, frankly, it would take balls to run away and pose as a boy to join the army, and even more to achieve the rank of Major. Jessamine is definitely a wildcard.
I spit on Life and Death’s version of Jessamine being kidnapped into the wars.
It was intentional that Jess only shortened her name after she met the Cullens, and that whilst she calls Mary-Alice ‘Alice’, Mary-Alice never calls her ‘Jess’. How this is significant is up to you.
Yes, the relationship between Jess and Alice feels darker than in OG STL, but this is Jessamine's side of the story. She's always painted all of her choices and actions before the Cullens with the same brush - that she was toxic and monstrous.
#jessamine hale#alice cullen#jalice#gay twilight#lgbtq twilight#ficmas23#ficmas#my fic: lead & follow#i feel like jess lasts three days and then calls peter for reinforcements because she has no idea what to do#alice just wants to curl up somewhere dark and cool and breakdown for a while#the gossip in forks is WILD after this#it took me ages to try and format this properly and it didn't work thanks so much tumblr
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One Word Prompts
I suppose this was an inevitability, after being tagged and/or encouraged by @tsunderewatermelon, @alpaca-clouds, @udaberriwrites, @0nelittlebirdtoldme, and @axolotlsupremacyowo. I'm also tagging @lena-hills, @kayedium-writes, @mrsmungus, @sliebman10, @oceangirl24, @aislinnstanaka, @writingpotato07, @danceswithdarkspawn, and anyone else who is interested, just so I have enough prompts on hand to work through. I know it'll take me a while, but it usually takes some time before the pieces click in my head anyways. Besides, I keep a running Google Doc for ideas.
(Note: this is subject to change - last edited on Jan 29, 2023)
Here's the deal. I'm completely new to prompts (as of 23/01/29), I don't work well with too many specifications, my brain is stuck in the Winter Light verse, *and* I'm placing a max word count on myself.
All of this to say:
Send me a one-word prompt (I'm open to anything, tbh)
I will write something within the Winter Light verse (either the 'canon' timeline or an AU/divergence with the same dynamics)
There is a 2.5k word maximum, but no minimum
I'm not sure how open my brain is to specific character or dynamic requests, but I'll do what I can. If there are any other topic/style-related requests, feel free to leave them and I'll try my best.
I'm a slow writer and have my long-fics and real life to deal with, so I can't promise a timeline. However, I will get to all the prompts.
I am cool writing over all ratings, dynamics (romantic and platonic), and characters. However, I will only write romantic dynamics 'canon' to the Winter Light verse (below list is subject to additions).
Carlisle Cullen / Beau Swan
Edward Cullen / Mike Newton
Rosalie Hale / Elle (Eleanor) Cullen
Alice Cullen / Mina (Jessamine) Hale
If you are unfamiliar, the Winter Light verse is a world I created from near-scratch for my Twilight/Life and Death rewrite. I changed a lot of things - including backstories, magic system, vampire biology, dynamics, lore, history, etc. You can check out my pinned post, as well as the chapter 1 A/N in Apricity on AO3, for more information.
That's all for now. This post is subject to change in the future, as I get more comfortable with prompts and (hopefully) become more able to write specific character/dynamic/genre requests.
-Mizuka
#one word prompts#winter light#carlisle x beau#bellisle#edward x mike#rosalie x eleanor#alice x jessamine#twilight#gay twilight#life and death#carlisle x bella#bella x carlisle#twilight fanfiction#fanfiction prompts#fanfic prompts#writing prompts#my tag games#tag game#mizuka's prompts#prompts wanted
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What are your thoughts on the Life and Death counterparts of the Cullens?
Oh boy, can of worms.
In short, my canon-friendly blog draws a hard line of NOPE when it comes to Life and Death. The Cullens are very reliant on their genders, swap it up and there wouldn’t be a coven in the first place. Not as we know it, anyhow. To swap things up without anything changing is to erase the experiences of men and women through history.
Disclaimer - I haven’t actually read the book, but I’ve gathered enough from the Twilight wiki. And since you’re not asking me about the plot, I think we’re good.
Alphabetically:
Archie. Both men and women were admitted to mental asylums at the turn of the century, but it was largely women. Mary Alice Brandon was forcibly institutionalized by her abusive father, which in turn was allowed to happen because no one believed her stories and thought she was mad. The story screams “Hysterical woman”. Could the same thing have happened if she were a boy? Sure. But I find it reductive.
Carine. Hoo boy, this one had me so exasperated I have a fic on it. That one gets slightly AU as her father survives the vampire, whereas in canon he was killed, but I say it goes. Anyway, Carine.
You can’t take a 17th century man, make him a woman, and expect the same character to come out the other end. You just can’t. Carine and Carlisle are not going to be the same person.
I think if Carine was anything like her male counterpart, she would stay in Volterra far longer than he did, if she ever left, as Volterra would be the one place in the world she could pursue knowledge, where she could educate herself and become an academic, the same as any man. It’d be her equality oasis, and she’d be leaving behind more than friendships if she left.
If she went into the human world, or even tried to become a doctor, she’d have to crossdress. And I imagine she’d still be crossdressing in 2005, because misogyny and sexism isn’t going away anytime soon and it’s just what she’s used to by now. Carine puts on trousers and a fake beard before she leaves the house, it’s just how she lives her life.
Earnest. This guy is just... lackluster. Esme was turned because her husband was shitty and her son died, so she jumped off a cliff. Alright, let’s give Earnest a shitty wife and a dead kid, now he’ll jump off a cliff too.
It’s just so uninspired, and I question the fact that Esme was abused, while Earnest’s wife was an alcoholic. Why can’t the woman be abusive?
Edythe. Edward’s character is strongly informed by his gender, yet I can’t imagine girl Edward being any less creepy. In case any of my readers have read @theoriginalcarnivorousmuffin‘s fic Lily and the Art of Being Sisyphus, I picture Edythe as the character Tequila. Which is to say girl!Edward gives strong vibes of an intense and creepy (it’s Edward) lesbian.
Given Edward’s backstory, Edythe would still be turned, though. So, that still happens.
Eleanor. Mauled by a bear. Alright. I have no thoughts on that.
I lied, I do.
Eleanor’s uninspiredness is one of the reasons why this book is redundant. There’s nothing to do with this character, and so nothing is done. Nothing changes. Which, if we’re changing everyone’s gender, then the meaningful way to do that is to look at how that would change things. How has male and female socialization affected Edward and Bella? Who would Jessamine, Carine, Royal be? These questions are unfortunately rhetorical because Life and Death sure isn’t answering them.
Jessamine. It’s nice that Jasper isn’t a confederate in this AU, but I just find the story of Jessamine contrived. Besides, Jasper wasn’t supposed to be in the army, he lied about his age. If gender changes nothing, wouldn’t Jessamine crossdress her way into the army? Not that I’d want her to, glad she didn’t, but...
Like the other Cullens, Jessamine’s backstory becomes a thought exercise of “How can I make the Cullens still happen, and as close to their original backstories as possible?”, one in which the answer is apparently to treat their backstories like check points. Jessamine gets turned by Maria, check, becomes warrior, check.
It just feels so lazy to me.
Royal. Easily the worst. Well, Carine is the worst in terms of making no sense, but Royal... don’t genderbend Rosalie, people. And if you insist then don’t take out the rape. It’s just insensitive and uncalled for all around.
Then we have the fact that Aro and Caius were killed off-screen in a ridiculous manner. Let’s say that they were caught killing Didyme. So what? There’s no vampire cops. They were the leaders of their coven. If they’re caught killing Didyme it would mean Aro is sad because Marcus will leave, and he just killed his sister for nothing. What won’t happen is that they’re executed.
Mele’s power is another thing I take issue with. If a power like hers existed in canon... well, Caius would have a gift, for starters. More, the Volturi guard would be a repository of loyalists who were bequeathed gifts as rewards. The vampire world would be combed for new gifts, as it would only be prudent for Aro to have as many as possible and his potential enemies none. It’d be a different world, period.
The Volturi debacee seems to me like a misguided shot at girlpower on Meyer’s end, that this time around Sulpicia and Athenodora come out on top while Aro and Caius get their just desserts. Like everything else in Life and Death, it fell flat.
EDIT: Apparently I mixed up my Royces and my Royals. Yikes. Praise be to @toquesreveladores for the catch
#my idea of girlpower would be that marcus dies and now a paranoid didyme keeps her brother in the tower#no one keeps caius in the tower though who cares about caius#look i got through the whole meta without bringing up carine's rack once#life and death#carine cullen#edythe cullen#earnest cullen#royce hale#jessamine hale#eleanor cullen#aro#didyme#volturi#Anonymous#ask#twilight meta#twilight#twilight renaissance
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have you ever thought about archie x jasper relationship? do you think it would be different from the whole alice and jasper thing? i don't really see anyone talking about them what happened to gay vampire rights????
oof. I gotta say, anon, I personally am a jessamine/alice person, not a jasper/archie person.
which I realize makes me sound kinda like a t*rf and I SWEAR I'M NOT, I PROMISE
for me it's a personal hangup—for whatever reason, I have just never been able to get into an m/m ship. I need at least one lady in there somewhere or I will be immediately bored. (I haven't tested this out with all genders—it's possible I could be into dude/agender person or something, idk.)
it's also that archie as a character doesn't appeal to me in that fannish way at all. a lot of my enjoyment of alice is rooted in the Female Gothic and how she's shaped by patriarchy and chooses to perform femininity and stuff. make her a dude, and I lose interest ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
whereas jessamine still retains all the stuff that appeals to me about jasper's character, if that makes sense.
anyway the tl;dr version I think I used when I was explaining to someone why I think fans find edythe so much more likable than edward is "why would you Boy when you could Girl"
(but again I absolutely do not mean this to sound t*rfy or offensive to trans people in any way, this is specifically about my individual shipping preferences in this one silly little fandom ok. you guys can Boy all day if that's what sparks joy and I will support you 100%)
in conclusion, I very much agree with your larger point—we need more queer twilight fic in this fandom. smeyer literally made it SO EASY for us. as usual, y'all can feel free to send recs my way anytime!
#asks#anonymous#archie cullen#jasper hale#alice cullen#jessamine hale#I think any queer relationship is necessarily gonna be different from a het relationship in some ways#especially if the story is set in the past
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character asks: Alice
Sexuality Headcanon: Either bi or ace
Gender Headcanon: I can see Alice using either exclusively she/her pronouns or she/they pronouns tbh
A ship I have with said character: Book!Jalice doesn’t really make sense to me like they are kinda flat chemistry wise and come across more as best friends (on Alice’s part anyway) in my opinion; I feel like Alice has the energy of a cool fashionista wine aunt who is hyper career-focused, values her independence and doesn’t care about marriage or kids lol. I keep joking that Jasper is the Jorah Mormont to Alice’s Daenerys Targaryen bc of that absolutely iconic “I know you love me. Thanks” line from Midnight Sun dhisshshskdhsos
But I do think Ashley and Jackson’s chemistry made them seem much more believable as a couple than they were in the books. I think Jasper in general is only really redeemed by Jackson’s portrayal of him though bc Smeyer wrote him in such a gross way. I can’t really picture Alice with anyone else so ship-wise I would say Movie!Jalice or single Alice or girl Alice with girl Jasper aka Jessamine?
A BROTP I have with said character: Alice x Bella (wish we got more of their book relationship in the movies), Alice x Edward, Alice x Emmett, Alice x Rosalie (for the love of god give me sister content or give me death), I even loved the Alice x Jacob companionship of Breaking Dawn, a book that offered very little to like!
A NOTP I have with said character: Alice x Aro, Alice x Jane or Alec (they are CHILDREN!!!!!!) I am not kidding when I was 13 I used to see people write romance fics for them
A random headcanon: Like I’ve joked about before, I think Alice would be the worst with Resume bc she doesn’t remember being a kid and hasn’t been around children as a vampire prior to Resume. I’ve also word-vomited some human/early-Cullen Alice headcanons here and some things I headcanon about Alice’s relationship with her adoptive family here 💞
General Opinion over said character: 13-year-old me based my entire identity on her during my first Twilight phase dhdhskskv so she will always hold a special place in my heart. I love her as much as I can love a Smeyer-written character and one thing that struck me about Midnight Sun was that I had forgotten just how major a character she is in the books because she doesn’t get much screen time in the movies. Books wise she’s arguably the most developed/fleshed-out character outside of the main love triangle but again I wish she could have been developed beyond purposes that mostly serve the love triangle characters. Where’s her trauma/fear over not remembering her human life? How did she adjust to a family dynamic when she doesn’t remember what it’s like to be part of a human family unit? How does she have such a strong personality/connection to and care for others/interest in typically “human” things (as opposed to living a fairly feral existence reliant on instinct) when she has never known anything but vampirism? There is so much about her that’s interesting and could be further developed/explored. But anyway forever my psychic fashion heux queen 3627291926820292820/10 would recommend 💕💓💘💖💞
#alice cullen#character tag#twilight#twilight renaissance#the twilight saga#the twilight series#the cullens#twilight revival#jasper hale#jalice#bella x alice#new moon#eclipse#breaking dawn#midnight sun#asks#anon
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Okay what about something where it’s Carine/esme Eleanor/Rosalie jessamine/Alice and Bella/edythe???
Basically they are all happy little lesbians 🥺🥺🥺🥺
conceptually... sickening! i’ll have to write something longer in this universe at some point because. aha Scream, but for now, i wrote you a little Valentine’s Day fic!!!
the paths of my nerves which are yours
hope you like it!!! and thanks for the request!!
#made myself into an edythe stan writing this#pathsfic#fics#mine#ask#anonymous#requested#twilight fanfiction#twilight fics#bella swan x edythe cullen#alice cullen x jessamine hale#rosalie hale x eleanor cullen
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I’ve taken it upon myself to rename some of the L&D counterparts bc smeyer flew off the handle while renaming some of these people
This is probably gonna get long, so I’ll add a cut
Carlisle/Carine: I kind of like Carine and I couldn’t find anything better, so I’m leaving it.
Esme/Earnest: I fucking hate that name (mainly bc i know someone with that name and he’s a fucking bastard), so I’m changing that one. I chose Ellis. I feel like it fits better with the character and is the name I use for him when I write l&d based fics.
Edward/Edythe: this name change wasn’t awful either, but why did she spell it like that?? So, Edith
Rosalie/Royal: so, fuck smeyer for giving him a name so close that of Rosalie’s r*pist. I wanted to keep the “Ro” and decided to call him Robert.
Emmett/Eleanor: I didn’t hate “Eleanor” but I like Emma better for Emmett’s counterpart
Alice/Archie: I really didn’t like the name “Archie” at first but it’s grown on me. Even so, I’d like to suggest “Andrew” as an alternate
Jasper/Jessamine: I’ve never seen that name before in my life and, while I don’t despise it, I prefer Jeanette, maybe Nette for short?
Bella/Beau: personally, I like Beau, but I can see why some people don’t. So, how about Ben?
Jacob/Julie: I kind of like Jules, so I left it the same
Sam/Sam: with the rest of the pack, smeyer got lazy. like i know it’s Samantha with Sam for short, but really? I picked Savannah but “Sav” (or something similar)
Leah/Lee: again, really? I like Leland, with Lee for short maybe
Seth/Sarah: i feel like Stacy would’ve been alright maybe with people just calling her Stace
Paul/Paula: she just added an A. I liked Paige
OH! i almost forgot
James/Joss: i prefer Jessie over Joss tbh
Victoria/Victor: Valentine wasn’t a super popular name around the time Victoria/Victor was born, but it was in use. Vince also isn’t awful
Laurent/Lauren: Louise might have been a nice alternate
*BONUS NAMES THAT SHE DIDN’T ACTUALLY GIVE US* (i don’t think)
Jared = Jordan
Embry = Ellen
Quill = Quelle (i just searched “qu girl names”, found this and thought it sounded nice
Bree = Beck
Fred = Fay(or some other spelling of the name)
i’m open to suggestions and i know some people are really going to hate these lmao
#twilight#life and death#tts#the twilight saga#the cullens#bella swan#beau swan#wolf pack#bree tanner#fred#names#genderbent#genderswap#headcanon#twilight headcanons#feel free to roast me for this mess
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Uhhm was anybody gonna tell me that a canon genderswapped twilight book exists or did I have to find that through your reblog out on my own???? Uhhmm whaaatt? Is it any good? Did they only swap edward and bella because that would be cool between jacob and bella lol
LMAOOOO when it originally came out I thought it was a joke, and then avoided it like the plague until a few years ago when I read it over the course of like, two days. as for whether it’s good or not? um. well it’s different for sure! but no they didn’t swap edward and bella because that would have been a galaxy brained decision and let’s just say smeyer’s ideas certainly aren’t that galactic. (but could you imagine how sick that would’ve been?)
it’s literally what it says. edward is edyth. bella is beau. carlisle is carine and so on and so forth. the only two character who are the same are bella/beau’s parents. it’s definitely an interesting read (and highly disappointing when you realize it’s a book written in response to backlash saying that the original is sexist; so she writes this and just further emphasizes the fact, plus makes it worse here and there, so it’s uh, something alright!)
do I recommend reading it? I mean do as G says and go support your local library but it’s definitely not a necessity. although smeyer does gift us “canon” gender swapped characters so now people don’t need to g*nderbend people for their fic! imo alice and jessamine are the disaster lesbians we’ve always needed and now we have em!!! now making twilight gay is SO easy. so THATS the true gift, the spirit of christmas amongst this seasonal disaster, if you will. :’)
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I hate how work saps my energy for hobbies now ... maybe I don’t WANT to write my ‘Alice owes rent on her boutique and Jessamine is the muscleman/maintenance man that collects it’ fic jesus
#thoughts and whatnot#it's just that when I'm back from work I'm sat at my computer Decompressing in ways that isn't writing
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Twilight: Life and Death
I have many MANY feelings about this.
I want a crossover fic in which something happens and the Cullens/Hales are brought into each other’s universes, along with the Volturi.
You have Royal and Jessamine Hale. Royal lays eyes on Rosalie and his first thought is “Hot damn.” Jessamine, knowing full well who Rosalie is, asks, “Does it count as incest or masturbation if you have sex with another version of yourself?” Jasper, meanwhile, is trying his best to ignore the sexual tension he’s feeling while Jessamine is doing her best to fuel it.
Then you have Alice who glances between Jasper and Jessamine, her eyes positively glowing. She’s excited at the prospect of having not only one Southern beauty, but two. And she adores the way Jessamine and Jasper get along. Jessamine can help Jasper out of his shell in a way Alice never could and she’s forever grateful for that.
Archie and Jessamine were never really a thing in my mind. I just can’t see it. Archie and Emmett on the other hand: Archie is shy. He’s nothing like Alice. He’s quiet, introverted, and is not the social butterfly that Alice is. (If anything, Jessamine is the social butterfly in L&D.) Archie finds himself quietly attracted to the loud, obnoxious personality that is Emmett.
Rose is completely okay with whatever is going on with Emmett and Archie because she finds herself more drawn to Eleanor instead. She feels guilty at first and and completely draws away from Emmett and Eleanor. Instead she hangs around Jasper, Jessamine, and Alice more and more. She’d hang around with Royal too but he’s spending most of his time with Eleanor. When he’s not hanging out with Eleanor, he’s hanging out with Emmett and suping up his jeep.
Eventually, Emmett finds her curled up in their bed and he gently confronts her. He gently pushes her hair behind her ear and kisses her temple. He tells her that he’s been worrying about her because she’s been withdrawn. He thought maybe it was just her anxiety skyrocketing because of all the new arrivals. She gently takes his hand in hers and confesses that she has a massive crush on Eleanor and that her romantic feelings for him are disappating and she hates it and she doesn’t know what to do. He laughs and places another loving kiss on her temple and then tells her to go for it.
Turns out that Royal unashamedly has the hots for his female counterpart and Eleanor is becoming more and more drawn to her as well. So much so that she’s already asked if they could have a threesome of Rosalie was willing. Upon hearing this from Emmett, Rosalie turns a bright shade of red stutters and asks where she can find them. She also tells him that she gives him full permission to go after Archie. (She would have had to be blind not to see how attracted Archie is to Emmett.)
Edward and Edythe get along well, almost like they had grown up together. It turns out they both know what it’s like to have a sibling because it wasn’t just their mom who died way back when. They each also had a sibling of the opposite gender who were both almost 4 when they died. They bond over that and they bond over their respective human. It also turns out that they find themselves more attracted to each other’s human than their own.
Beau and Bella are both okay with that. Beau is taken with Edward’s beauty. He wasn’t aware that there was a chance he was bi but HOLY HELL here it is, staring him in the face. Bella laughs loudly because her male counterpart looks like a fish out of water with his wide eyes, gaping mouth, and inability to breath. She slaps him on the back and then grins at Edythe with bright eyes and a genuine, toothy smile.
This brings us to Charlie and his freak out of “When did we acquire two children?!” over the phone to Renee who has no idea what he’s talking about. “Are you drunk? You and I only have one child and her name is Isabella Swan.” He snaps a picture of both siblings and sends it off to Renee who is flabbergasted. Bella calmly explains to Charlie what happened and he and Renee agree to adopt him as their own.
Carlisle, Carine, Esme, and Earnest get along well, swapping stories about their children and the craziness they get themselves into. They talk the hijinx that they’re children have gotten up to in the past and they talk about the Denali clan. Carlisle and Carine exchange stories of their respective Volturi and the times they’ve had together. They become rather domestic and live in the giant mansion together with all of their children.
Ness does not exist in this AU because the setting for this is somewhere in Eclipse. Before they get married, before the honeymoon. I will make another post about the Volturi soon.
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tag games
so i’m just gonna catch up on all the tag games I’ve been tagged in that I haven’t done yet (and there’s a few, some from months ago whoops) and just dump it into one big post because why not
thanks to everyone who tagged me <3
Rules: Answer 21 questions and tag 21 people you want to know better
tagged by @incognitajones and @cats-and-metersticks
Nickname: Sissi
Zodiac: Sagittarius
Last Movie I saw: Venom
Favorite Musicians: I don’t really have favorites, only ones I really love, like Lana Del Rey, Marina & the Diamonds, Adele, Britney Spears, etc
Song stuck in my head: actually nothing right now
Other blogs: not ones I’m active on anymore
Do I get asks: not that often
Amount of sleep: around 8 hours I get
Lucky number: I don’t really have one
What I’m wearing: black sweats, a black shirt, and a black sweater
Dream Job: author
Dream Trip: France, Italy, England
Favorite food: FRIED CHEESE
Play any instruments: I used to play the flute in elementary school
Favorite song: I don’t know if I have one, it always changes, but right now I’m really into Supercut by Lorde and Shallow by Lady Gaga
Random fact: I love zombie movies even though I’m terrified of zombies
Describe yourself as aesthetic things: Purple candles, red lipstick, dark chocolate, a cup of coffee, book shelves, old castles, rainy weather
Name your top 10 favourite characters from 10 different fandoms and then tag 10 people!
tagged by @lovethyblakes
in no particular order:
Cassian Andor - Rogue One
Wynonna Earp - Wynonna Earp
Yennefer of Vengerberg - The Witcher
Hürrem Sultan - Magnificent Century
Alice Cooper - Riverdale
Richard Gansey - The Raven Cycle
Rose Calloway - Addicted Series
Anne Boleyn - The Tudors
Katherine Pierce - The Vampire Diaries
Ron Weasley - Harry Potter
Fanfic questionnaire
tagged by @thestarbirdfromtheashes
1. What was the first fandom you ever wrote fic for? Tragically enough, it was Twilight yikes
2. What was your very first ship? It was either Ron & Hermione or Piper & Leo from Charmed. I’m not sure because it was around the same time
3. What fandoms have you written for, and what were your ships in the fics? Twilight - Alice & Jasper (listen, at least I hated Edward & Bella a LOT) Supernatural - Dean & Ruby 1.0 (because the second Ruby sucked) The Vampire Diaries - Stefan & Katherine (and one Damon & Elena fic which I deny now), American Horror Story - Tate & Violet (this is one I regret now because yikes, they were problematic AF and I was a stupid teen) Reign - Mary & Francis and Kenna & Bash, Pretty Little Liars - Spencer & Toby, The Raven Cycle - Blue & Gansey (and one Ronan & Adam fic), Dishonored - Corvo & Jessamine, Magnificent Century - Nurbanu & Selim, Magnificent Century: Kösem - Kösem & Halime, The Witcher - Yennefer & Triss & Geralt, Game of Thrones - Arya & Gendry, and now Rogue One - Jyn & Cassian
I also wrote a fic for my friend’s OCs once
and wow, I wrote for a lot more fandoms than I would have thought
4. What ships do you tend to gravitate to? I definitely have a few tropes I’m weak for, like: partners in crime, power couple, forbidden love, tragic love, enemies to friends to lovers, couples who make a great team, couples who are opposites but also similar, couples who challenge each other, exes who still love each other
5. Current OTP(s)? Rebelcaptain is the biggest and most important <3 Other than them, Dean & Cas, FP & Alice, and Wynonna & Doc
6. Former OTP(s)? Blue & Gansey - The Raven Cycle, Mara & Noah - Mara Dyer, Spencer & Toby - Pretty Little Liars, Daisy & Ryke - Addicted Series, Violet & Tate - American Horror Story, Katherine & Stefan - The Vampire Diaries, Alice & Jasper - Twilight, Ron & Hermione - Harry Potter
7. What are the ships you will always love? Rebelcaptain, Triss & Yen & Geralt, Dean & Cas, Blue & Gansey, Roy & Riza, Bonnie & Damon
8. What do you think have been some of your best fic ideas? I really like that one fic I wrote where Jyn and Cassian agree to get married if they survive the war, it would be cool to actually write a follow-up to that one day lmao. I’m sure there were others but I can’t remember right now, especially because my ideas tend to be not very huge or groundbreaking. I usually just want to focus on character and relationship exploration in fics, with no fancy plot.
9. What kind of fic do you most love to write? I love to write heavy angst with a sweet happy ending lmao. I also tend to gravitate towards “taboo” or “dark and fucked up” topics. Even though that’s something I haven’t yet explored with Rebelcaptain
10. What do you dread writing? Definitely action and descriptions lmao. I’m so bad at those. Also fluff, sometimes. That depends.
11. What is a fic you would love to write one day? Ugh so many. For example, I’d love to write a follow up to the marriage pact, and I have a soulmate au in mind but with a twist.
12. What’s a fic you wish someone else would write? I actually don’t know lmao
Get to know me better
tagged by @thestarbirdfromtheashes
Relationship status: single
Favorite colors: purple, red, black
Three favorite foods: FRIED CHEESE, tiramisu, carbanara
Song stuck in my head: nothing right now lmao
Last song I listened to: Halsey - Devil In Me
Last movie I watched: Venom
Time: 17:33
Top three shows: Wynonna Earp, Magnificent Century, The Good Place
Books that I’m currently reading: none right now, rip
Last thing I googled: bobcats
How many blankets do you sleep with: one
Dream trip: France, England, Italy
Anything you really want: to publish a book
rules: 15 questions, 15 mutuals ~
tagged by @incognitajones
are you named after anyone? nope
when was the last time you cried? I think last night at a fic lmao
do you have kids? no, and I don’t want any
do you use sarcasm a lot? too much
what’s the first thing you notice about people? I have no idea, their hair I guess
what’s your eye color? dark brown
scary movies or happy endings? can’t I have both? (though I don’t particularly like happy endings for scary movies lmao)
any special talents? idk what counts as that
where were you born? Serbia
what are your hobbies? writing, reading, video games
have you any pets? a cat <3
what sports do you / have you played? I hateeeee sports, I used to dance but I was terrible, and I used to go to the gym but we moved and now it’s far away. I do pilates though which is just enough for me
how tall are you? 169 cm
favorite subject in school? history and english (as a foreign language)
what’s your dream job? author
#there are so many here that im not gonna tag anyone but if you wanna do any or all of these#tag games
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Dharmachakra!
Heyo Alhaira! Thanks for the ask and sorry for the delay~
So... Dharmachakra is the last of three multichapter fics I have planned out in any way (alongside Apricity and Mahabhuta). My plan is to start on this, once I am done with Mahabhuta (to put that into perspective... Prithvi is chapter 1 of 6 in Mahabhuta, so RIP me lol).
As for how this happened... well, this is a longer one, so strap in~ XD
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I completely changed Carlisle's, Edward's, and Mina's backstories (of course, I wasn't going to keep canon Jasper/Jessamine's story). While the first two are the focus in Apricity, that doesn't hold for Mina, so I thought that it would be best if I just wrote her story.
(...and yes, I refused to use "Jessamine" and went with Mina instead~)
Dharmachakra is Sanskrit for "Wheel of Dharma". "Dharma" is a major concept in Eastern religions and philosophies, and can be roughly translated as "righteousness" or "duty" related to personal conduct.
The concept is the evolution of Mina's life and "duty" through the seven chakras (from a traditional perspective). And you know me... so yes, this one will have seven chapters named after the chakras. These are the seven chakras in order and how they relate to the fic:
Muladhara [red] - correlated with base instinct (fight/flight), confidence, trust, and self-esteem
Svadhisthana [orange] - correlated with sexual attraction and strong emotions like anger, fear, and hatred
Manipura [yellow] - correlated with instinctual emotions like determination, self-acceptance, and will-power
Anahata [green] - correlated with emotional security, forgiveness, compassion, love, and kindness
Vishuddha [blue] - correlated with communication, creativity, individuality, and the ability to express all of that.
Ajna [purple] - correlated with the Third Eye, the center of the mind, spirituality, awareness, and the general passing of time.
Sahasrara [white] - the crown that everything else is derived from. The pure consciousness, the ultimate and truest form of self, the center of contact with the gods, the heavens and the universe.
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Well, if it isn't already kind of clear, the chakras in order, represent a character evolution arc. Starting from Mina as a human, through her violent turning and experience with the vampire army, and her eventual escape and finding Carlisle and Edward to start a new life. Then it moves onto the softer, more domestic aspects, Mina coming into herself as a person, Alice's appearance and their courtship, through the passing of time... eventually ending in the modern day.
In fact, I already know what the final scene of Sahasrara will be - it'll be that same scene in Ivory Verglas (Apricity, Chapter 5), where Mina is relaxing at the school sauna and Beau comes in. They meet each other for the first time and fall in a peaceful silence the rest of that afternoon. It's especially poetic, because Ivory is the last chapter that Beau is relatively new and generally separate from Mina's world - the accident happens not long after this scene in Apricity.
You can find the original post and links to the other answers here!
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Fic Meme 2016
The obligatory end-of-year fic meme (spend, like, an hour hunting down the one I did for 2015, only to find it in my drafts folder, ugh.)
Twilight
The Brief History of Us
A Million Blinking Promises
The Ones We Left Behind
Memento Mori
Total number of completed stories: 3 posted, 1 ready to go, which is shocking.
Total word count: Completed, posted fic: 34,000, plus another 40k of unposted works current works, and numerous scribbles and bits.
Looking back, did you write more fic than you thought you would this year, less, or about what you’d predicted? Less, I was hoping on getting Hybrid ready to post, Memento Mori isnt posted because it enjoys being difficult, Aristeia’s next five chapters should absolutely have been posted. I am not a human, just a sentient pile of Writing To Dos posing as a human.
What pairing/genre/fandom did you write that you would never have predicted in January? I haven’t been particularly experimental this year, tbh. Sticking to the tried and true. I have dabbled with some Hawkeye Squared though, does that count?
What’s your own favorite story of the year? Not the most popular, but the one that makes you happiest? The Brief History of Us. That came together really well, and I got some shocker reviews for it. I think the word limit did stifle it a little, and I’m still iffy with the beta process it went through, but I like it. I still plan to one day write the entire opus.
Did you take any writing risks this year? What did you learn from them?Having the confidence to pitch a novel for my honours project, based on Ricochet. LOL, what the hell was I thinking?
Do you have any fanfic or profic goals for the New Year? Well, my honours project Bravura has to be written, edited, printed and bound by June LOL. I want Aristeia to continue, desperately, and I desperately want to get one of my Jan fics going, and hopefully get Hybrid off the ground.
My best story of this year:
My most popular story: A Million Blinking Promises. The fact that it was the longest multichapter allowed it to be more visible than the others, though.
Story of mine most under-appreciated by the universe, in my opinion: The Brief History of Us. Easily.
Most fun story to write: They were all about the same, tbh. I always enjoy writing.
Most Sexy Story: None of them are particularly sexual, tbh.
Story with the single sexiest moment: From The Brief History of Us
As perfect as the way she looks as he slides her gown from her shoulders—as he falls to his knees to press kisses to her, her fingers tangling in his hair. She is everything—a princess, a goddess, the axis upon which his world sits—as he sighs against the skin of her stomach, pausing only to look up at her, her eyes darkened in desire, her love wrapping around him with a new kind of certainty.
Most “holy crap, that’s wrong, even for you” story: None this year, shockingly enough. From the writer that brought you Aristeia and that strange ‘possessed Saturn and Uranus disembowel Neptune’ WIP, everything has been above board so far.
Story that shifted my own perceptions of the characters:
Hardest story to write: The Brief History of Us, definitely. Between the word count, and trying to piece together this kind of idea I hadn’t quite pinned down, it was a struggle.
Most disappointing: There are some glaring issues with The Ones We Left Behind that I have to fix.
Easiest story to write: Memento Mori, definitely. Which is why I’m so ticked off the editing process has been so abysmal.
Biggest surprise: The Brief History of Us, because this is the sort of story I write a lot of, but never ever post.
Most unintentionally telling story: I’m going to say The Brief History of Us, even though ten years on I still have no idea what this question means.
Story I’d like to revise: The Ones We Left Behind; I’d like to expand The Brief History of Us too.
Story I didn’t write but will at some point, I swear: For MCU, Miniature Disasters (Darcy) is due to be finished and posted, so help me god. I want to get Rebel Yell (Kate Bishop), Down but Never Out (my crazy Darcy Dark Angel/MCU xover), and perhaps Golden Girl (post CW Jan/Wanda fic) going in more than a few nebulous scenes. Elastic Hearts (Jan/Steve) needs to be finished, too.
For Sailor Moon, This is the Way a Heart Breaks and Elephant deserve to be finished up. I’m pretty sure I lost all of my Sailor Moon files when my last laptop died, so I’m still kind of mourning everything that was amongst that, tbh.
For Twilight, I want All These Broken Things fucking done and posted. A Thousand Years of Solitude, too, deserves to be finished up. I really want to get The Dark and the Unknown drafted, as well as the untitled Jessamine/Alice AU, the AUAH ‘tattoo’ fic finished, and get one of the large chapter fics ready to go - maybe Hybrid, but Runaway and Magnolia have equal potential there. I’m currently using The Long Way Around as the basis for some 31_days shorts, so I might leave that one for the moment.
And, obviously, I need to get Bravura done for uni so I can graduate. Honestly, after I finished Bravura and submit it, I plan to spend the second-half of 2017 trying to find a publisher for it, and just writing fic as a reward for finishing my degree.
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Apricity, Chapter 14 - Midnight Freefall
It just occurred to me that I never made a formal post for my fic *or* my fic chapters. I'm not too worried about the earlier chapters, but since I *did* release this chapter a week ago, I figured I'd start here, then make formal posts for everything going forward. I'll make the official fic post eventually...
Since this is the first Apricity chapter post, I'll note a few things about the fic and series as a whole. If you're familiar, you can jump to the end of the post. If you are new, I strongly suggest starting with Platinum Elysium (chapter 1) and working your way forward, after you've reviewed the notes below.
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The greater Winter Light series is a crossover between Twilight and Life and Death. From Life and Death, I pulled Beau, Jessamine (Mina), Eleanor (Elle), and Julie most notably, but others will show up. Most everyone else is sourced from Twilight.
I uprooted almost everything and created a new framework from scratch, including worldbuilding, lore, world history, character traits and dynamics, various backstories, vampire biology/society, magic system, and general guiding principles. The most notable examples of this include human blood vampires (it is not possible to subsist on animal blood in the WL verse); many character backstories; making Carlisle an older brother (I never understood the paternal-figure thing, even in cishet canon); and certain character personalities (most notably Edward and Mike, but others are affected too).
In short... Apricity is a Twilight series rewrite, except I threw out ~98% of canon, opted out of the main canon pair (I kept Rose/Elle and Alice/Mina, but used Carlisle/Beau and Edward/Mike instead), leaned more into vampire and Eastern themes, and went full gay. Seriously. The entire WL series can be read fandom-blind, as a result of these changes.
This fic is the first of many to come, in the WL series. I strongly recommend you review the Platinum Elysium (Chapter 1) A/N for more info.
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Fic: Apricity
Chapter: Midnight Freefall (14)
Rating: M
Chapter Summary: Mike carefully navigates himself through a sticky situation, carries himself through an awkward conversation, holds his ground against a bizarre unknown, and will there ever be an end in sight to this no good, very bad, extremely weird day (and part of the night)???
Notes: The last part of that summary was coined by the wonderful @udaberriwrites (go check her out!), and she's also helped me quite a bit as a sounding board for my ramblings... so thanks for everything!
#twilight fanfiction#twilight rewrite#carlisle x beau#bellisle#my fic#winter light#twilight#life and death#gay twilight#apricity#mizuka's fics#mizuka's fic updates#twilight renaissance#twilight/life and death#carlisle x bella#bella x carlisle#beau x carlisle#my writing
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I love your Alice x Archie x Jasper & Alice x Jessamine x Jasper fics so much. I just wanted to let you know that. I love all of your fics, actually, but I love the 3some verse the most.
Anon, this message just makes me so goddamn happy, I wiggled. I know my threesome nonsense is Tolerated, but to know someone loves them? I'm so happy. It's so silly and I made it serious and I just love the dynamic and the idea that they can be weird and in love together.
If it helps, I have one Alice x Jasper x Archie fic half-done, and I've got bits and pieces of Jess x Jasper x Alice that I should do something with at some point. Oh and some fics literally written to make everyone cry that I don't think I ever posted.
(I do still have the Inexplicable Wedding Porn Fic unfinished and just sitting there, but mostly I look at it and am shocked that I wrote that. Full out-of-body experience.)
#anon#my fic: threesome-verse#my fic: dead hearts-verse#i was going to write a jess/jasper/alice long fic but other projects jumped the queue and the plot is flimsy at best#maybe one day#i also started alice and archie meeting maria and everyone is civil until alice is like “fuck this I'm gonna kill her”#and jasper and archie have simultaneous heart attacks
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hey! i just wanted to let you know that i adore your jess content :) you've done a great job characterising her, she's so fun to read about! of course also in conjunction with alice (and jasper!) eagerly awaiting more content if you decide to spoil us- until then i'll be rereading <3
Thank you so much anon <3 I love writing Jess so much, and I try really hard to make her distinctive from Jasper. The next fics I have planned that involve Jess are some scenes from the Eclipse battle training - I'm still kind of deciding how to post my Jess/Alice series because I don't want to rewrite the entire series because I'd get bored really fast (and we've heard it so. many. times) but some kind of linked scenes that show them throughout the series. I don't know. I'll probably post to tumblr as I go; I need to write more human Jess/vampire Alice because that one is just fun (Jess is honestly not sure what is more traumatic: coming out to her family, or Alice being a blood-sucking immortal.)
For 3some verse, there's the Five Fights fic, and the follow-up to Watching Not Seeing where Bella is awkward and Jasper is protective. And there’s the beginning of one where Edward makes his protest of Alice being friends with any of her classmates aside from Bella known. That verse has spun off into its own thing where the Cullens (with a focus on Alice, Jess, and Rose) actually make friends with their classmates.
And so I bring you another chunk of the OG Jess/Alice fic that will hopefully see the light of day at some point. I don’t *think* I’ve posted this before - I checked and couldn’t see it, but hit me with the link if I have, and I’ll find something else.
Since 1953, they have been formally expelled (or, as the fancier schools say, ‘requested to withdraw’) from six schools. That does not include the schools where they simply gave up out of frustration and rage; or the places they have had to leave behind because of an ‘incident’ (and not just Jess’s; Emmett has a rotten track record too. Alice’s isn’t clean, either, but she cannot really find it in her heart to feel shame about that hate-filled man in Minnesota), and does not include the places that barely tolerated them.
Not the entire family, just Alice and Jess. The rest of them are acceptable. And in a lot of those places, it is only respect for Carlisle that keep them in school, and fear of Emmett that keep the worst of hate away.
Up to a point, people assume they are close. Two girls, closer than sisters, in a patchwork family. Alice’s arm looped around Jess’s waist, fingers entwined in the hallways. They are permanently entangled; even when Jess is Rose’s fraternal twin and in a different set of classes, they are only apart as long as they are forced to. They simply return to each other, the gentlest and most persistent of magnets.
They are two sides of the same shield, really. Jess will rip anyone who makes Alice feel wrong, feel dirty or indecent to bloody ribbons (this is not an exaggeration. No one speaks of their time in Maine; the house was quietly sold once they left) and Alice will wrap herself around Jess before allowing any of the vicious accusations seep into her skin and turn into guilt. It is Jess that draws more attention, too – at six feet, she towers over almost everyone in the high school hallways (except for Emmett) and makes Alice appear even daintier, younger.
Jess is the obvious target for terrible things yelled across streets, from bars, and muttered across a locker room. Jess prefers to pretend not to hear those slurs, but Alice will not. She will meet the accusers’ gaze, and demand to know why, why they wanted to put so much hate and cruelty into the world. She wouldn’t deny anything, and it would be up to Jess to drag Alice away, trying to calm her down.
//
They aren’t married. This is something that is very loudly never mentioned by the rest of the family.
The truth is, marriage is a human institution. No one expects vampires to be married; the Cullens are an exception.
And for a good portion of their life together, it’s not possible. Human laws do not permit it, not in America. Oh, Carlisle can officiate or something, but Alice likens it to cotton candy – pretty to look at, sweet in the moment, but devoid of any sort of substance. And as much as she would adore the party, adore everything about it, it’s truly not necessary. Rose and Emmett get married every decade, and she lives vicariously through that.
And Jess hates being the center of attention.
Since she took Jess’s hand in that diner and Jess followed her out, they have been unbreakable. Of course, Jess gave Alice the only thing she had from her human life, the dented locket with the initials JMW still visible on the front, and that is more valuable to her than any diamond ring.
Jess gets irritated that every mention of gay marriage and gay rights in school means they are looked at pointedly as if they should stand up and profusely thank everyone for allowing them the basic rights of humanity. Jess doesn’t want to be called gay or lesbian or whatever terminology people are using. She just wants to be left alone. The only one allowed to comment or joke is Emmett, and only about Jess – Emmett has learned the lesson that any jokes at Alice’s expense will end with him missing an extremity.
Alice doesn’t care much for the labels either, but she gets it – the classmates, the neighbours, Carlisle’s co-workers, everybody they come in contact with, they use Alice and Jess to humanize the highs and the lows. They need poster children in their small towns, and no one is more photogenic than Jessamine Hale and Alice Cullen. They actually think about the concept, contemplate it, and that’s all Alice really wants. For people to think.
Rosalie asks, out of nowhere one day, if she ever liked boys.
Alice shrugs. “I don’t remember.”
And she doesn’t. There has never been someone who makes her stomach flutter like Jess, who makes everything okay just by being there. There had been one friend of Carlisle’s who had eyed her off, had made a rather vulgar offer to her on the quiet.
She’d never told Jess about that, mostly because it would be very antisocial to set fire to one of Carlisle’s friends. She had just stared at him, all wide-eyed, innocent and confused until he gave up trying to explain what he wanted.
She knows Edward’s poor little mind and Victorian sensibilities have been absolutely blown wide-open, having them in the house. There were two weeks in Vermont where he couldn’t look them in the eye, the time in Colorado when he fled to Denali for a month. He should be thanking them – unless he turns out to be gay (and Jess has fifty dollars on that), his future bride will be much, much happier thanks to his unwitting education.
But eventually, Rosalie – and Alice too, she supposes – get their answer. She likes watching movies and swooning over the actors with Rosalie, giggling and joking around. Jess scowls at her, and she grins and pounces on her, curling into Jess’s side. Emmett makes several comments about the actresses, and Rosalie throws the remote at him, and Alice joins in. Maybe it’s the fact that she remembers nothing of being human. Maybe it’s something to do with her gift. Or maybe she is exactly as she was back then – gender is irrelevant when it comes to Alice.
Or, more truthfully, everybody is irrelevant. They are not Jess.
And when Rose looks at Emmett, contemplates everything they are to each other, she understands a little.
//
The day Bella Swan arrives at Forks, Jess is having a bad day, and Alice is trying to distract her. That distraction turns into Jess putting her hand up Alice’s skirt – well, Alice twisted around to face her and Jess’s hand happened to be on Alice’s leg and slipped underneath her skirt, Alice had squealed in surprise, Jess had started to laugh, and Edward stormed off, sick of the pair of them.
She was wearing tights, anyway.
And that’s how Bella Swan is introduced to the Cullens. It’s not how Alice saw it happen originally, but at least they’re memorable, even if Edward was being a drama queen.
What Alice hadn’t seen was how uncomfortable her and Jess would make Bella. And that’s soul-crushing – they were meant to be best friends, but now they just aren’t.
They can’t be.
Rosalie might be all prickly, and prefer to old-fashioned euphemisms for Jess and Alice’s relationship, but she accepts them. She goes lingerie shopping with Alice, knowing full-well that it’s going to be Jess who rips them off with dark eyes, and willing hands. She watches Jess win play-fights with Emmett, and Alice teasingly calling out, ‘my hero’, and reminds herself that in this story, the princess slays the dragon for love of the other princess; there are no knights or princes in Jess and Alice’s story. And Rosalie took her time, but she understands that it is okay, now.
That neither of them ever went looking for a prince, or a knight.
Bella doesn’t ask outright, and Alice doesn’t offer any information. Jess is simply a shadow; albeit one who is trying to resist exsanguinating Bella.
It is the other students who whisper things to Bella, and Edward who confirms in with an air of superior despair. And so, Bella looks away from Alice; at a point just beyond her face, at her scuffed sneakers, or her school books.
//
#alice cullen#jessamine hale#twilight lesbians#diverse twilight#twilight fic#my fic: jessamine and alice#my fic: jess/alice#anon
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