So the movie was called In Your Eyes and it was an independent film written by Joss Whedon that wasn't actually all that great, because language and inappropriate stuffs, but the premise was too good to pass up. Telepathic connection between two ordinary folks in America. From when they were kids.
I know, right?!
The circumstances were too similar to Jandy and Dech's for me to pass it up. Watched it, mulled on it, sat down to write "inspired by" scribbles.
It should be mostly self-explanatory. I'm guessing it's in America, but I fudged with cities a bit, so maybe an alternate USA? Dunno. Settings aren't my thing. Just go with it.
Um. Yeah. It's not done. (Surprise, surprise.) But it's a good start. So. Enjoy?
Oh, and content warning for near assault. Dech comes to save the day, of course, but just as a head's up.
Eight years old and—
--bracing for the impact, ready to take the blow for her sister, willing to add another bruise to her colorful collection if only so Jane would be safe. She wasn’t surprised, but felt that way anyways.
--freezing mid-step; foreign, uninitiated pain lancing through him, sheer shock overwhelming him, while Gage turned to question why he’d stopped walking.
Shared triumph, blood singing—
--he was gone. Gone, gone, gone. Mom cried but Jandy hugged Jane tight and buried her face in her sister’s shoulder to hide her smile. He’d skipped town and now Jane was safe from him. The pride shouldn’t have been there, but she was too glad to care.
--Father’s friend, telling him that he had a place in the academy waiting for him, when he was old enough. The pride on his remaining parent’s face made him want to grin and never stop. It was easy to brush off the mind-numbing relief that flooded him in the wake of Father’s approval.
Running, heart pounding, lungs burning—
--because Mom was dead, Mom was dead, she was so cold, so, so cold and now they were alone, alone, alone and crap, she was just fifteen, not even close to being through school, how was she supposed to protect Jane like this?
--pushing himself to the limit, desperate to go faster, farther, beat the clock every time. You want to be the best, you have to work for it, and then faltering, pace stuttering, feet stumbling over air. He went to his hands and knees, panting with a wave of panic that didn’t make sense.
Seventeen, worked to the bone, and realizing—
--she wasn’t scared of the lighting that ripped the sky in half, nor the thunder that shook the walls, because Jane was out cold behind her, tucked between her back and the wall and there was no reason to fear and yet. Her hands trembled. Her eyes smarted. She shouldn’t have been afraid and yet she was, so she pushed back.
--lying in bed in his cold room, listening to the rain pound against the glass, trying not to imagine that night from his childhood years, so blurred in his memories but still having such a hold over him, when foreign warmth crept through him, gentle fingertips against his fear. Safety. Contentment. A good sort of tired. He grasped at it and didn’t let go.
A legal adult in their own right—
--Emancipated, freed, done with the system, done with being a ward of the state. Getting to take custody of her sister and walk away. Getting that job they lined up for her. Putting down the money she’d earned before leaving to get them that shoebox-sized closet. And laying on the floor that night, listening to Jane breathe, while she closed her eyes and searched for that taut nerve within her that had been drawing tighter all day.
--Receiving his orders and having to come to terms with leaving his home and his father. His lifelines in his darkness and confusion. Packing his things to leave at dawn then crawling between the sheets for the last time, and finding that feeling already waiting to ease the tension from his shoulders. He didn’t understand it, where it was coming from, why it was there, but it made it easier to sleep and he wasn’t going to protest.
Tired, angry, frustrated—
--Slamming the fridge door, shoving her backpack across the rickety wooden table to the floor. Jane, Jane, Jane. Her sister, hiding in the bathroom where she thought her tears wouldn’t be overheard. Too long a day at work, too bad of news waiting. And then, a breath of air.
--Winding up, wanting to hit something, almost letting the hatred glaze over him before stopping. Thinking. Not his own. Like that pain from when he was eight, coming out of nowhere. Except, somewhere. Because it changed, it felt different from day-to-day, and it was always strongest at night. He closed his eyes and reached.
Neither of them accepted the reality of their situation until Jandy turned twenty and something happened that they couldn’t ignore the meaning behind.
She’d been recruited to work as a waitress at a halfway decent club downtown, and the pay was twice as good as her diner gig—she’d been through four jobs in the last two and a half years, always seeking something that paid more. Because Jane talked about college with a dreamy look in her eyes, talked about making the system better, and she knew what she wanted to do with her future.
Jandy’s future was giving Jane a chance, so she did what she had to to keep the rent paid, the fridge full, clothes on their back, and a steady stream of income to their savings account. They’d agreed that Jane would work too, for a few years, so that they could put enough money aside to get her through a few years of college.
(That doesn’t mean Jandy doesn’t pull a few extra shifts one year, to get her sister into a class at a community college, just a few weeks of Introductory Psychology, as a Christmas present.)
The club is full of pounding lights and booming music and appreciative eyes, everything that she had never had a chance to explore but is now learning too much about. But her salary is good, because the owner likes her because his patrons like her—something about being told no—so she stays.
Jane has a job in a much better part of town, in Upper New Sanno, working as a nanny after Jandy had pulled some major strings through some of her old acquaintances in the social services office. She brings even more money home, but all of that goes into savings. Jandy refuses to let her field even a dime of their daily expenses.
This is my job. This is why I’m here. So stop arguing with me, Jane.
It’s going well. She becomes a creature of the night, sleeping during the day and staying awake through the night because of work, and this means she barely sees her sister, but she pushes through the exhaustion every Sunday so she can spend at least the afternoon with Jane.
There’s no explanation to how it happens. She never accepts drinks, food, or favors from the club’s patrons, but it is halfway through the night and she gets dizzy, then nauseous, then her limbs are like lead. Jandy gets one of the other girls to cover for her while she stumbles out the back door to the rancid alley behind the club.
Night air only does so much, but it helps clear the cigarette smoke from her sinuses and eases the pounding in her head.
Then there is a low chuckle and her body will not listen to her and panic closes her throat—
--he has to excuse himself in the middle of their study group because his stomach threatens to upheave his dinner and something isn’t right—
Jandy wants to kick him hard, slash at his face with her tended nails, but it is all she can do to stay upright as he pins her against the brick of the building, her skin crawling as cold seeps through her shirt. He smells like cigarette smoke and hard liquor and dreadful promises.
--he gets his first image, transferred through sheer panic, as his fingers curl around the edges of the counter in the library bathroom, and sees dark eyes and a malicious, shadowed smile, and knows he has to do something—
And for a moment, she doesn’t see her attacker but another man altogether, illuminated in warm light that is not here, with short hair and a clean-shaven jaw and desperation in green eyes, and then--
There is no warning, no explanation, but anger and clarity tear through her and Jandy wants to sob with relief but her body starts responding despite the drugs in her system, because the control is coming from somewhere else and she is able to wrench herself loose. Her arm jars badly, but the crunch of his nose as she rams the heel of her hand into it is so, so satisfying and she follows it up with a brutal knee to the groin.
Jandy staggers away, back to the relative safety of the club, and there is no reason for the riled protectiveness trembling in her limbs, because she was the one in danger, not Jane—Jane is safe at home—, and she sinks to the ground once she’s inside, shaking. I’m okay. I’m okay. I’m okay.
--the danger is gone, he is gone, and Dechlan feels shuddering relief because they’re safe, they’re safe—
They’re safe—she cradles her head between her arms, accepting the embrace of warmth that surrounds her, and she should be freaking out because there is someone in her head and has been almost her whole life, but she can’t.
She gets the week off of work while the club owner investigates the situation and gets the authorities involved, because he can’t have people thinking it’s okay to go after his girls. The police show up on her doorstep, while she is buried in a pile of blankets, sleeping off the drugs and luxuriating in not having to go anywhere.
Their questions make her glad that Jane is not home.
The thing, their thing, whatever it is, gets stronger after that. Emotion doesn’t have to peak so strongly anymore, but it does help. It makes her feel safe, especially when she’s at work, because whoever it is, whoever he is—because she knows now that face superimposed over her attacker’s was his—is always there.
Jane notices something is off.
Because she is Jane, and she is Jandy’s twin sister, and they are very different, but still very, very similar in some ways.
Which means Jandy falls into their apartment—a different one from three years ago, a better one—at seven am, after a long night at work, and finds her sister sitting there, arms crossed with a mug of coffee waiting.
The look in her eyes means business and so the elder of the two just sighs, slings her backpack towards the couch, and slouching into one of the kitchen chairs. She is so past the help of coffee, but accepts it anyways, working to keep her tired mind from rabbiting after her mental buddy.
(This terminology amuses her because it can be taken two ways, and the fact that she has even begun to accept that this is the way things are means that she is totally off her rocker.)
“You’ve been acting weird.” Jane gets right to the point. They share that trait—a disdain for beating around the bush.
“Well, I am weird, so there is that.” Jandy muses, taking a long draught of the warm beverage in her hand before working on perfecting her dead cat sprawl across her creaky dining room chair.
Even though the angle of her head means she’s staring at the ceiling, the huff from her sister is impossible to miss. “You know what I mean. It started with that—that time, last year, at the club. I heard what the doctor said on the phone, Jandy. You shouldn’t have been able to fight back like you did. And ever since then, you’ve just been really weird. Like, you just get in these moods sometimes that have nothing to do with what’s going on.”
This surprises Jandy until she realizes that Jane is right. Of course, Jane is almost always right, but the point still stands. “Ah.”
A warm hand covers her, soft against her dry, almost rough skin due to too many washings and when she moves her gaze from the water stain in the corner to her sister’s eyes, Jandy is confronted with That Look.
That Look has been her weakness since they were little. In that moment, the elder of the duo knows she isn’t getting out of this conversation with her secret intact.
“I’m worried, Jandy. Please, tell me what’s going on.”
And just like that, she’s a goner.
Letting out a long breath, Jandy leaned forward to settle her elbows on the tabletop, clasping her twin’s fingers in her own. A weary smile pulled at the corner of her mouth as she murmured, “Okay, okay. Stop with the puppy eyes.”
Relief is clear in the shaky laugh that leaves Jane and she intertwines their fingers, holding on tight as she waits in expectant silence.
Jandy makes good on her word and leaves very little out. She starts at the beginning, from the first time she remembered that alien tendril of emotion when she was just eight years old, through the years since then, all the way to six months ago, when his presence had been the defining factor in her escape.
And there we go. Scribbles. It's actually really nice for Jane to still be around. She's an adorable character, even though fated to die. Pretty sure I still had plans to kill her in this AU. Though with less, ah, dramatic circumstances?
Which in turn would be the driving force that brings Jandy and Dechlan to meet in person. It was going to be very angsty. Mayhap I'll get inspired to finish at some point. We'll have to see.
Thoughts, comments, and critiques are always welcome! I promise I don't bite and am fairly timely in my responses.
Thanks for reading!
Ad astra per aspera.
To the stars, through difficulties.
