Archive of Our Own ^beta

Jack Dawkins may have only been ten years old, but he already knew the word fucked-up. Or was it two words? Either way, he knew that’s what he was.

…

Belle Fox was not fucked-up, thank you very much, regardless of what the doctors told her sobbing parents in private. At least she hoped she wasn’t. She wasn’t entirely sure what fucked-up was, she just knew she didn’t want to be it.

…

It was just a modern-day orphanage, something to read about in Oliver Twist and widen your eyes at before closing the book and leaving the whole sad world behind.

Except now that was her world, too. Belle Fox, supposedly descended from the Conqueror—whoever that was. She was ten, how the hell was she supposed to know?

…

Fagin tried to make it sound nice. As nice as a glorified pity party of a school could be.

Just because he had no parents and couldn’t read didn’t mean he had to be separated from the only people in this world he did have just to be poked and prodded like some posh bastard’s guinea pig.

…

Her parents explained it to her like she was stupid.

“Dearest, it’s for your own good. You’ll be able to socialize there, meet other children like you.”

“What does that mean?” she asked, probably only confirming their assumptions of her intellect.

They ignored her question and shipped her off.

…

The way they met was simple, so simple no one could have guessed what would come from it. Lord knows they didn’t.

They were sat next to each other, no rhyme or reason to it. Just letters. Jack’s favorite.

“Dawkins, next to…Fox.”

He took a look at the tall girl sitting next to him. She blinked her big brown eyes and stuck out her hand. What kind of ten-year-old shakes hands? Jack laughed, and she cried.

“Um, sorry.”

She scowled. “You made me cry.”

“You seem fine now.”

She scowled even harder, turning away from him and crossing her spindly arms.

“Fine.” He stuck out his hand in return. She perked up immediately. Faker, Jack spotted. “What’s your name?”

“Isabelle,” she said with an air of self-importance that made her seem seven feet tall. Someone had clearly made the conscious decision to call her only by her full name.

“That’s a big name.”

“Really?” The girl reacted like no one had ever told her that in her whole life. Which makes sense, as, judging from her posh accent, probably no one had. “Then what’s yours?”

“Jack.”

“Well, isn’t that short for something?”

“I don’t know.” This time, he crossed his arms.

“What do you mean?” She blinked again and looked away from him. Jack imagined she was thinking really really hard. “Didn’t your parents ever tell you?”

He knew he had to say something, or else she’d keep asking. He had no proof, he could just tell. “I haven’t got any.”

“Oh.” She froze and turned away again.

Jack sighed. It was always like this. He picked up a pen and fiddled with it, tapping his knee, his desk, anything to eat away at the silence. Her silence.

He heard her clear her throat. “Is Isabelle a big name?” Her voice was quiet, but clear.

“I just said it was.”

“But did you mean it?”

“Yes.”

She paused. He looked over at her. She was thinking again.

“Then you can call me Belle.”

“Okay.” He wasn’t quite sure how to respond. But he knew she was being nice, so he had to say something. “You can call me Jack.”

“Yes, I was planning on that.”

…

She was in the girls’ dorm and he was in the boys’, but Belle quickly discovered that she could see Jack’s room through her window. The dorms faced each other.

She smiled. Her parents had paid for a private room—no roommate—so she was lonely. Maybe this way she’d have some company, without having to endure actually talking to anyone. She deemed this perfection.

…

Belle was so interesting. Not good or bad necessarily, just interesting.

For someone who couldn’t read, her love of books, the fact that she took them everywhere, even meals, made Jack happy and lonely at the same time.

From time to time, when they weren’t seated next to each other, he spotted her looking over, and he would wave. She always waved back—but never came over. Just put her nose back in her book.

Yes, he had friends, but he considered her his first. Again, not good, not bad, just friendship. Which, in his world, was akin to family. She had family, though. Which didn’t explain why she was here.

And he wanted to find out.

“Belle?” He walked over and sat down.

“Yes, Jack?” She smiled, and put down her book, which Jack considered a minor miracle.

“Why are you here?”

“What?” Her big brown eyes got dark, just a little bit, and Jack couldn’t tell what that meant.

“Why are you here?” he repeated, as if maybe she just hadn’t heard the question.

“Why do you want to know that?” she asked softly, staring away from him, as if, again, she was thinking.

Jack began to regret he’d even asked. He was also getting mad. Why did she want to tell him? Maybe she didn’t want to be friends after all. “Why do I need a reason?”

“I asked you first.”

“No, I did.”

She recoiled, as if he’d slapped her. “Fine. I’m dying, and my parents don’t want to deal with me. So they sent me here.”

He couldn’t have heard right. His ears were ringing. “What?”

She shrugged, but there were tears in her eyes. Dammit. He’d made her cry—again. “You asked.”

“I’m so sorry, Belle.”

“What?” She stared at him, face full of disbelief.

“I’m sorry,” he repeated simply. He didn’t quite know what else he could say. He went to leave, to put poor Belle out of her misery.

“Stay, please.”

They sat in silence for a while, Jack and Belle. Shoulder to shoulder, neither moving a muscle.

He heard a rustle, as Belle turned to him. She faced him, staring into his eyes like a human lie detector. “Don’t you want to know more?”

Yes. Desperately.

“No.” He shook his head, meeting her eyes. “I’ve asked you enough questions you don’t want to answer for one day.”

She smiled. But he knew she’d seen the truth. “One lifetime.”

“Absolutely.”

Without warning, Belle reached over. And hugged him. She was warm, and her shirt was soft against his arms.

“Thank you, Jack.” She sniffled. “You’re the first person I’ve told.”

He didn’t say anything. Just hugged her back as tight as he could.

It’s safe to say they were friends after that.

…

From then on, they were constant companions, Belle Fox and Jack Dawkins.

They grew up together, spending year after year side by side, in their refuge for unwanted children. She helped him pass spelling tests, he held her when she was too homesick to breathe. Fagin knew to bring them both treats, little trinkets whenever he visited, because wherever Jack went, there was Belle.

They spent years like this, until Jack learned his tricks to fool teachers into thinking he could read, and Belle admitted to herself that maybe, just maybe, she was homesick for a place that was no longer her home.

And Jack found his own friends, and Belle found some as well, but they always came back.

“Am I your best friend?” She was twelve and realized that she now had doubts. Belle Fox had always longed to be chosen, accepted, and if Jack wasn’t the one to do that, then she needed to find a new best friend, she reasoned, trying to hide the way her heart squeezed at the thought of not being his.

“Of course I am,” he answered without a beat, not even looking up. Then he seemed to think better of his nonchalance and fixed his gaze to hers. “Why do you ask?”

She blushed. It seemed silly now. “No reason.”

“Are you jealous?”

“Jealous? Of what?” She challenged him to recant his earlier statement. But he was too smart for that.

“Of my other friends.”

“No!” Belle scoffed, trying and failing to be convincing. He raised a dark blond eyebrow. Only a preteen and already capable of sussing out a liar. “Besides,” she shrugged delicately, “you’re not jealous of my friends, so why should I be jealous of yours?”

He crossed his arms. “Who says I’m not jealous of your friends?”

That put her in a pause. When had Jack of all people become more emotionally vulnerable than she? Belle didn’t like it one bit. She scooched in next to him at the dinner table. “Well, you shouldn’t be. You’re my best friend.”

He nodded firmly. “Just like you’re mine.”

She grinned. Finally, the answer she had hoped for. “You’re one of a kind, Jack Dawkins.” She squeezed his hands.

He squeezed back. “And there’s no one like you, Belle Fox.”

…

“Jack, I think I want to be a doctor,” Belle announced. She was fourteen, and, finally, she had some answers. Not about her ever-decaying body, no that would remain a mystery forever, if she didn’t do something about it herself. No—now she knew what she wanted to do. Like, with her life.

“Okay,” he answered simply. He had never doubted her; now didn’t seem the time to start.

His stillness perturbed her. Was she boring him? She could feel her irritation boiling up. “Well, don’t you want to know why?”

“I know why.” He kept his gaze fixed on his latest English homework. An essay she would be helping him with later, she could feel it.

“How can you know why? You can’t know for certain,” she insisted.

“Well, I know you fairly well,” he responded dryly. He’d begun doing that recently: sarcasm. She wasn’t yet sure how she felt about it.

Belle huffed.

“Fine,” Jack grinned. “Why do you want to be a doctor, Belle Fox?”

She rolled her eyes. He definitely knew. “Because…I want to know what’s going on with me. And help other people who don’t know what’s going on with them.”

“Knew it!”

She laughed, but tried to cover it up with a cough into her sleeve. He didn’t need to be more full of himself than he already was. Jack Dawkins, boy wonder. “God, you’re so annoying.”

“You love it.”

“Fair point.” Belle blushed slightly. Maybe she would come around to this sarcasm thing after all.

…

When they were fifteen, something changed. Well, more like things had been changing for a while. And it was only when they were fifteen that they noticed.

Belle was talking less, Jack was seeking her out more. Jack was avoiding their normal close contact movie nights—purely platonic, of course—and Belle was starting to get looks from older boys.

Neither of them were stupid, they knew what everyone thought of them. It was just, for so long, neither of them fathomed that it could be true.

They weren’t stupid, but, maybe, just maybe, they were a little bit dense.

The school had decided to try something new, something normal, for once: a school dance. Just for the older kids, of course, and Jack and Belle just made the cut.

Belle was ecstatic. She’d heard about these magical dances from her cousins, who diligently wrote her letters miles long about their normal schools and normal dances. Over time, Belle had become less reliant on these letters as sources of comfort, but she still memorized every word on their pages.

“Jack, don’t you see what this means?” Belle was jumping up and down in his dorm room, she couldn’t contain her excitement. She grabbed his arm and mimed dancing the waltz, which he was absolutely horrible at. She made a mental note to give him some lessons.

Jack spun her out and laughed loudly. They hadn’t laughed together in a while. “What?”

“We get to dress up!” She squealed and squeezed his arms even tighter. Belle had long possessed fantasies of wearing princess dresses and dancing with her very own prince—not that she had any idea who that prince would be, of course, she would often think, blushing to herself.

Jack rolled his eyes and tilted his head, clearly judging her. “Oh god.”

Belle shook her head. She refused to let him rain on her parade. “Come on! It’s fun. I swear.”

“Somehow I doubt that,” he responded dryly. Jack crossed his arms and sat down on his bed, still watching her make a fool of herself from joy, but now from afar. She smiled. Secretly, she didn’t mind acting like a fool when it was in front of him.

“Okay, well, how about this? I’ll make it fun.” Belle pulled him up and spun him around and somehow, between their laughs, he ended up tripping into her. They jumped away from each other, instinctively, and he sat back down, not looking at her. They never used to act like this, Belle mused.

“Jack.”

“What?” He still wasn’t looking at her. Apparently, his shoes were more interesting than his best friend.

Belle sighed and sat down next to him. She couldn’t prove it, but she swore she could feel him moving away. “Why are we like this?”

“Like what?”

“Like…spending less time together, not spending movie nights together anymore.” She laid her head on his shoulder—like she always did—and his shoulder tensed. Were they always going to be like this? Belle felt close to tears. “We’re so awkward lately, what’s happening?”

Jack froze and looked at her with a frustration that surprised her. “Are you being serious?”

Belle never liked when someone asked her that. “Yes, deadly. Why?”

Jack stood up, and now their situations were reversed: she was watching him make a fool of himself. “Are you…wait, what?”

“What, Jack?” Belle shouted at him, running her hands through her hair and shaking her hands repeatedly, something she did only when she was particularly stressed. She knew he didn’t like her to watch her do that, but she couldn’t help it. Besides, she wasn’t feeling particularly inclined to care what Jack Dawkins thought in that particular moment. Not when he was being so…vague. “What is going on with you?”

“Do you not see it?” He just kept looking at her. With those sad eyes she remembered from when they were a lot younger.

Belle sighed. “Jesus, what am I supposed to be seeing? Just spit it out, or I’m going to get mad.” Belle Fox could never truly be mad at Jack Dawkins; she seemed to be physically incapable of it. Not that he needed to know that.

“I…well, I…” Jack literally put his head in his hands. Belle was certain there was something she was missing, something right in front of her, but what?

“What—”

“God, Belle, I love you!” He practically yelled it, but Belle was still confused. They’d loved each other for a long time, this wasn’t news.

“Yes, I love you too, obviously—”

“No, not like that.” He paused and paced in circles for nearly a minute. Belle counted the seconds and everything, before he stopped and burst out: “Like, I want to kiss you and be your boyfriend love you.”

And, all of a sudden, Belle’s heart melted. Her ears rang, and her vision became genuinely rose-tinted. She had to check that her heart wasn’t flaring up before she replied, very intelligently, “Oh.”

Jack’s face—his beautiful, beautiful face—fell. “I knew you didn’t feel the same way.” He started to walk off, but Belle couldn’t have that. Jack Dawkins was her prince, he was the one she dreamed about dancing with. He needed to know that, especially since he felt the same way.

So, Belle Fox, the prim and proper young lady she was, placed herself between Jack Dawkins and his bedroom door and kissed him. Hard. It was an astounding first kiss, if she said so herself.

When they finally pulled away from each other, Jack couldn’t resist, and he pecked her on the lips, adoring the way her face flushed and her pupils dilated. His Belle.

She grinned and laid her head on his chest, still leaned up against the door. “How many times have I told you not to assume what I’m thinking?”

Jack leaned his head back and laughed. “I’ll never do that again.”

Belle batted her eyelashes, and he practically swooned. “Do you promise?”

He held out his pinky, and she took it with her own. “Promise.”

…

“What?”

“Isabelle—”

“How could you?” she yelled, and she cringed at the volume coming out of her own mouth. She didn’t think herself capable of such a thing at sixteen. But they were taking her, removing her—again. They’d done it before, and she cried. They were doing it now, and she was ready to burn something down.

“Why now?” she continued at a more reasonable volume, and she could see Fanny relax. She couldn’t forgive them for involving small, bright-eyed Fanny in her mess.

“Why do you have to do it now? Why couldn’t you have done it five years ago? Why now that I’ve finally found my place, my people? Why now?”

She was nearing an unreasonable volume, in her mother’s words, and she knew that was the only reason they cared. But they didn’t care when they brought her here, and she bit and scratched trying to get away from the place that had now become her home. They didn’t care now, when she was fighting, clawing to stay.

It was an all-too familiar story, and she remembered what had happened before. And so she went. Reluctantly, but she went. She couldn’t bear to tell Jack, so, like a coward, she silently nodded her head when Hetty offered to do the deed.

He had other friends, she reasoned, other girls who could take her place. But she knew: none like her. Lord knows he’d told her himself enough times. She’d finally come to believe him.

So, really, it shouldn’t have been a surprise when he showed up at her door. Well, actually her window.

It was three in the morning, and she couldn’t sleep. She could set her watch by it: she would wake up in a cold sweat, heart pounding so loud she could hear it, and she would toss and turn for hours.

(Before, at school, he would stay over and hold her, and she never had this problem, but that was beside the point.)

It began with a knock on her window, then a slow creak as he swung the window open. How the hell had he learned to pick locks like that?

“Jack!” she hissed. “What are you doing?”

“Fanny let me in.” He shrugged, as if home invasion was entirely casual as long as a thirteen-year-old consented to it.

She sat up and crossed her arms. “That’s not what I asked.”

“I had to see you.” Jack shuffled his feet, looking at the floor. “I just had to.”

Jack’s pure sincerity reminded her why, at sixteen, when she really should be focused on her studies, she’d spent the past three weeks moping at the loss of him.

“At three in the morning?”

“I know you can’t sleep.” He gave her a look implying he wouldn’t believe her even if she contradicted him. But she wasn’t planning on it. “Plus, I need to be back before breakfast.”

Belle giggled. That made more sense. And it was very him. Her Jack.

“Alright, you can stay.” She laid back down into her sheets, utterly exhausted. “But you have to go.”

“Well, that doesn’t make any sense.”

“It’s three in the morning, what did you expect?”

“Fair enough.” And so Jack curled into her side, hand on her neck, right on her pulse, she’d discovered. It was a nervous habit of his. His cold hands made her shiver, but she just squeezed in tighter.

It wasn’t until Belle felt him stirring against her that she realized she’d fallen asleep. She looked at the clock: nine thirty. Shit.

“Isabelle, darling—”

Her mother.

Belle scrambled and tried to shove Jack behind her, but it didn’t do anything. He was still in her bed, hand on her waist, body pressed into her back.

“What. The hell. Are you doing in bed with my daughter?” Jane Fox was somehow more formidable as her daughter, which would have made Jack smile if her ire hadn’t been geared towards him.

Jack could feel Belle trembling against him. She said, in a quiet voice, “Mum, this is Jack.”

“Get the hell out.” Jane practically growled. Then, she wheeled on her daughter. “Is he from the school? I’m calling and sending him back, right this minute. You are a minor. He is assaulting a minor!”

“He is a minor,” Belle couldn’t look her mother in the eyes.

“I don’t care. Get the fuck away from him, Isabelle,” she spat.

And so it ended. As quickly as it began. Belle yelled and screamed, but, again, no one listened. She might as well have been screaming into the abyss.

Jack nearly made it back to her three times after that, Hetty sent her letters to tell her. But someone always found him, guarding her window or the front door.

Some part of Belle Fox broke that day. Her whole life, and Jack was the only person with whom she felt any sense of agency. She started sleeping all day, taking meals in her room, anything to avoid her parents. Fanny was her only companion, entertaining her with stories from school, the outside world, with normal kids, while Belle fitfully napped. She pretended that she couldn’t hear her bright-eyed sister’s chirpy voice, but, secretly, she appreciated the effort.

Until, one day, she heard another knock, this time at her door.

“Isabelle?” She heard her father’s gruff voice.

“Father?”

“May I come in?”

She hesitated for a moment, out of curiosity more than anything else. “Yes.”

“Isabelle,” he sat down stiffly at the edge of her bed, “I need to speak to you.”

“You are speaking to me, Father.”

“Yes, yes. Well, anyways.” He cleared his throat. “I know your mother is upset, both at you and for you. She feels you’ve been abused.”

“What?”

“By that fellow in your bed.”

Belle’s eyes widened. “Um, Father, I hope you know, I—we, never…”

“Yes, yes, my dear, that’s enough of that.” He patted her knee with an air of nervousness to it. “That’s what I told your mother. I said, ‘I know Isabelle Fox is smarter than that,’ and, lo and behold, you are. Good job, dear.”

“Um, thank you, Father.” Belle nodded slowly.

“Moving on.” He cleared his throat again. Under any other circumstances, seeing her father this uncomfortable would have made her laugh. “After watching you these past weeks, I feel we need to make a change. You are unhappy, my dear, don’t deny it.”

She crossed her arms. “I wasn’t planning on it.”

“In that case,” Her father moved closer, gaze inscrutable, and Belle tensed up. “I feel that it would be best for you to return.”

Her mind went blank. “Return?”

“To your school.” He cleared his throat once more. “To your…young gentleman.”

Belle stammered, and for a moment, she was scared she was dreaming. “I—are you serious?”

“Yes, my dear.”

“What about Mother?”

“She will be convinced,” her father replied, with a twinkle in his eye. “She remembers what it is to be young. And unhappy.”

“Thank you, Father. I will never forget this.”

Jack cried when she came back. In front of everyone. Belle Fox had never been more shocked in her life. Of course, that moment was beaten in the following five seconds when he kissed her. In front of everyone.

God, she was glad to be back.

…

Graduation. Always a certainty, never a reality.

But they were eighteen now, both of them. His birthday in November, hers in May. Just two weeks before she had to leave. They celebrated with a cake, perched on a half-full suitcase in her dorm room. There was an irony in that: celebrating the beginning of adulthood, when everything you know is coming to an end.

They both had plans. She would go to university, him off to an apprenticeship. Everything in its place.

They still hadn’t talked about what it would mean for their relationship. Every time one of them brought it up, the other would cry, and they’d put it off til next time, whatever that meant.

They never did end up talking about it. Just drifted apart and back together in equal measure, like sound waves, throughout university and young adulthood, seeing each other a few times a year, seeing other people in equal measure. They had boyfriends and girlfriends, casual and serious alike, but they always made time for each other, on nights and weekends, over summers and holidays.

And, when they ended up with jobs in the same city, well, it was fate, really, calling them back together.

They were married within the year.