This was just a random idea I had and needed to get out before I exploded. I have no idea how often I'll be able to update, because I have two other stories going that I need to try and keep up with too. (I've been bad- it's been weeks for both of them.) Really, I was just inspired, and decided to just take the plunge and give an old idea my own little spin. Also, I really wanted to try something different from what I've been writing.

In the beginning, this story is going to skip over some pretty long periods of time (months, usually) because I don't want to just start with this strange character already chummy with the characters you know and love. That feels like starting in the middle of a movie to me. I want to show where it started, and why the characters react to her they way they do. I hope you'll forgive the time lapses. I'm trying to make it flow as smoothly as possible.

That being said, read at your own risk.

Chapter One: Freckles

The first time Jack Mercer met Jianna Love he was fourteen and climbing through his bedroom window onto the roof for a smoke. Halfway out he looked up to see a girl about his age watching him with casual disinterest from atop the similar outcropping of roof directly across from his. She said nothing while he pulled himself the rest of the way out with a barely audible grunt, and again remained silent as he pulled an old Altoids tin from his pocket and retrieved the already rolled joint from within. His first impression of the unfamiliar girl was that she was plain. He watched her with an equal air of indifference as he held the flame from his lighter to the tip of the joint.

Jianna returned his stare from behind the messy auburn waves of her hair. She was sitting with her legs pulled up to her chest and a half smoked cigarette hung from between her short fingers. There was just enough moonlight for Jack to make out the spattering of freckles that went across her nose from one cheek to the other and the black shorts and tank top he assumed were her pajamas.

Shoving his lighter into his pocket and taking a long drag, he said, "Hey." Just one word of greeting. Jack wasn't sure why he bothered. Maybe it was the awkward intimacy of suddenly sharing his space with another person. He'd lived in that house for almost six years, and that rooftop had been the strangest kind of sanctuary ever since he moved in. It was disconcerting to stumble upon someone while seeking time to himself.

Jianna nodded to him, a curt acknowledgment of his halfhearted attempt at pleasantries, and cocked her head to the side. She brought the cigarette to her lips and Jack watched the end of it light up with the sudden rush of oxygen. She stretched out her legs casually and took one more drag before flicking the filter over the side into the darkness. It spun through the air and gave off tiny sparks that made it look like some sort of cancerous firework. She was quiet for another moment, emitting a jet of smoke from between her chapped lips before finally speaking. "That weed?"

Jack took another drag, savoring the tingling sensation of the smoke forced down his throat, and nodded. Jianna shifted slightly, surveying him with a curiosity that intrigued him. She pursed her lips, scanning his hunched figure from his mop of light brown hair to his bare feet. Vaguely, she recognized the Iron Maiden t-shirt he wore and black sweatpants.

Folding her legs together, Jianna leaned forward onto her knees and smiled teasingly. "You know that's pretty stupid, right?"

Stalling, Jack brought the drug to his lips again and wondered who this girl was, encroaching on his space and poking fun at his bad habits. After a moment of contemplation, he replied, "Yup." A tendril of smoke passed his lips along with the word. Jianna's smile widened, and Jack could see a perfect white row of teeth peak out from under her upper lip. It was probably the only attention-grabbing thing about her.

"Can I try?" she asked, surprising him.

Jack considered her for a moment, and then broke into a grin. "Sure." With an ease that didn't coincide with his awkward frame, he stood and stepped over the two-foot gap between the roofs. He settled down next to Jianna and passed the joint into her pale fingers. "Take a hit, hold it in 'til you're almost outta air, then take another breath." Jianna nodded, placed the joint between her lips, and did as directed. The coughing was almost immediate, and Jack had to hold in a laugh. "Burns, huh?"

"Fuckin'…yes!" Jianna gasped between her fits of coughing. "Shit. Take that away from me…take it away!" She shoved the offending substance into Jack's waiting fingers and covered her mouth to cough some more.

Jack had to laugh at that. "It always burns the first few times." They sat in silence for a few minutes, Jack smiling and shaking his head as he continued to smoke and Jianna making a rather unattractive face to express her displeasure.

Looking up at the sky, and then at Jack, she said, "I don't feel any different."

"You only took one hit. You don't get a buzz off one hit. 'Least not the first time." Jack shrugged and held the blunt out. "Wanna try again?"

Jianna made a face and shook her head. "Maybe another time. After the flesh in my throat heals."

Jack grimaced. "Gross." She grinned and they both leaned back to rest on the shingles. After a beat, Jack turned his head. "So who the fuck are you, anyway?" Jianna couldn't help but laugh at the way he asked. Her giggles, like bells, were surprisingly enchanting. Finally, she managed to calm herself, but then his irritated expression just made her laugh again.

"Sorry. You just asked that so casually." Jianna turned away and closed her eyes, trying to gather up enough composure to quit laughing. When she had, she looked at him again. "I'm Jianna." Jack's face darkened and he stared at her. "What?"

"Jianna? You rich or something?" he asked.

"If I were rich, would I be living here?"

Jack looked back at the stars. "No."

"Then there's your answer."

"But, seriously, Jianna?" He turned to look at her again.

Jianna glared. "Fuck you. It's a family name."

Jack smirked and laughed. "Jee-aw-naw," he said, purposely lowering his voice and drawing the vowels out. "Care for some champagne, Jee-aw-naw? Perhaps some caviar?"

"Shut up!" Jianna snapped, shoving him. But he saw that she was smiling and her shoulders were shaking with a few silent giggles. Jack laughed and then lapsed into silence as she did. He sat up suddenly, and with a sigh ground out the last useless embers of the joint on the shingles and dropped it over the edge. Jianna sat up as well and watched him grind the butt out with the heal of his hand and dispose of it before speaking. "So who the fuck are you, anyway?"

Jack laughed and wiped his hand on his pants. "I'm Jack."

"And you're making fun of my name?"

"Jack is a perfectly respectable name."

"Not worn by you it isn't."

Jack's frown could have easily been misconstrued as a pout. "What's that s'posed to mean?"

Jianna grinned. "Face it, Jackie. You 'n me, we're just two more poor souls making up the corrupted youth of America."

"I ain't no corrupted nothin'."

"You sound like a hillbilly, Jack."

"If I do, it's my brothers' fault."

"Irregardless," Jianna said, waving his words away, "by society's standards, you're corrupted."

Jack narrowed his eyes at her. "Where the hell did you come from?"

Jianna sighed. "Jackson."

"The fuck you doin' here, Miss Jackson?"

She laughed. "My mom got remarried to a really great guy. Problem is, he's got this deadbeat son already and our apartment in Jackson barely fit two."

"So you moved to Detroit?"

"So we moved in with him and his deadbeat son," Jianna specified. She paused, turning her ear towards the window behind them. "Speaking of, sounds like he finally passed out."

"Who, the nice guy or the mooching son?" Jack asked with a smirk.

Jianna smiled. "The mooching son. The nice guy hit the sack hours ago." She listened for another moment. "Yup, stereo's off. That's my cue." With a sigh, she turned and crawled back through the open window, turning around only when she'd made it onto the bed beneath it. Jack had already stood up and stepped back over onto his own roof, but he turned when she spoke again. "Nice talking to ya, Jackie."

Jack raised his eyebrows, but didn't comment on her casual manipulation of his name. "Yeah, uh, you too Jia."

"That ain't my name," Jianna replied.

Jack didn't answer. He'd turned back around and was in the middle of lowering his feet to the floor and maneuvering the rest of his body through the small opening. When he finally looked at her again, he simply said, "You sound like a hillbilly," and shut the window. Jianna laughed quietly to herself and pulled her own window shut. She considered the curtains for a moment before deciding it wasn't worth the effort of closing them. It wasn't like she was changing.

He didn't see her again until almost two weeks later. It was the middle of August at that point, and Jack was trying to beat the heat with his window open all the way and a swivel fan turned on high across the room. He was sprawled out on his bed, messing with that year's birthday present (a used acoustic guitar, though it was better than gold in his eyes) to distract himself from the weather when three hard knocks on the window frame demanded his attention. Jack stared at the figure crouching in his window for at least thirty seconds before he realized who it was. She looked different. For one, her hair was pulled back in a messy bun so he could see the oval of her face more clearly. She was also wearing everyday clothes- a pair of jeans cut off at the knee and a gray tank top. But neither of these things were what really surprised him. No, what shocked Jack the most were her eyes. It was the first time he actually saw them in proper light, and the eerily pale green was disconcerting. Jack had been wrong. Her most pronounced feature was not her teeth. It was her eyes.

After a long silence, Jianna sighed. "You just gonna stare, Jackie, or are ya gonna invite me in? It's awful hot out here."

Jack blinked and shook his head. "Uh, yeah, sure. If you want." She grinned and sat down on the sill, lowering her flip-flop clad feet to the carpet and pulling the rest of her body inside with considerably more grace than Jack had. She padded across the room as if she popped in through his window all the time and grabbed the chair from his desk. Without bothering to turn it around, Jianna just straddled it, rested her arms on the back and offered Jack a smile that almost made up for the homeliness of her other features. Almost. Jack sat up and set his guitar aside, responding to her smile with a calculating look. "To what do I owe the pleasure of your company?"

"You been practicing, Jack? Impeccable use of diction." Jack didn't reply, opting instead to keep his eyes leveled on hers the way his Ma always did to get something out of her sons. Jianna tried staring back, but there was something about Jack's Ma's method that was irresistible. "Okay, okay. My step-brother's shooting up again."

Jack waited for her to elaborate, but when she didn't said, "Again?"

"Yeah. He does it, like, every day." Jianna waved her hand in the air like it was no big deal. "Anyway, he's not so nice when he does that stuff. I didn't feel like dealing with him today."

"So you decided to climb across a couple 'a roofs and bother me instead?" Jack asked with a smirk.

"Pretty much." Jianna shrugged. "I'd have gone out the front door and asked your mommy if you could come out and play, but then he would've seen me."

"So?"

She made a face. "So he's not a nice person when he's high."

Jack saw something in her expression that he recognized, maybe from the mirror. His brow furrowed. "What's he do that's so bad?" Jianna didn't seem to want to answer, so he set his eyes on her again the same way he had before. She looked away, and before he could ask her again the bedroom door flew open and slammed into the wall with a loud crack. Jack glared at the dark haired man leaning casually against the doorjamb. "Why you gotta break the damn wall every time you come in here, Bobby?"

"Shut up, Fairy. Ma told me to tell you that lunch is ready," Bobby replied, apparently unconcerned with the ever widening hole he was wearing into Jack's wall. A small movement caught his eye, and he turned to look at Jianna, who seemed to be suppressing a laugh. "Who the fuck-" He turned abruptly to glare at Jack. "Jackie, the hell are you doing sneaking girls into your room?"

"I didn't sneak her in!" Jack exclaimed. "She just showed up in the window! I didn't invite her over!"

"Bullshit." Bobby turned towards the hall. "Ma! Hey, Ma!"

"Don't fuckin' call her, Bobby!" Jack pleaded.

Bobby whirled around and pointed a finger in his brother's face. "Hey! Watch your mouth."

Jianna could no longer keep herself from laughing. She doubled over, crippled by her own joviality. Bobby stared at her, obviously just as entranced by her laugh as Jack had been. Even doubled over and tearing up, she still didn't sound obnoxious or even too loud. It was a nice sound. Sweet, almost, with an air of childishness that was almost charming. When her laughter finally died, Jianna sat back and wiped the moisture from her face with a wide grin. "I haven't laughed like that in forever. Thanks." Both boys just continued to stare at her.

"Damn, Jackie," Bobby said. "Where did you find her?"

"I live next door," Jianna offered. "And he is telling the truth. I did just show up in the window. I'm sorry." She fixed her face into a mockingly serious expression. "I should have called first." As Bobby opened his mouth to retort, a short, stout woman appeared in the doorway behind him. Her snow-white hair was held back at her neck by a ribbon and her kind face was crinkled with annoyance.

"What is it, Bobby?" she asked exasperatedly.

Bobby pointed at Jianna. "Jack's got a girl in his room," he stated.

"How old are you?" Jack snapped.

Jianna quickly stood up as the woman who was obviously Jack's mother stepped around Bobby and into the room. "It was my fault, ma'am," the young girl said sincerely. Her tone made Jack and Bobby cast each other a confused glance. Jianna's demeanor had changed so suddenly that it was almost eerie. "I didn't mean to get Jack in trouble or anything. We really weren't doing anything but talk."

The two boys remained silent as their mother studied Jianna with an expression they could both imagine, even though her back was to them. "You bullshittin' me, girl?" the woman asked.

"No, ma'am," Jianna replied without looking the least surprised at the harsh language. "We weren't even sitting on the same side of the room." Jack suddenly found himself grinning. She was good, and with her freckles and soft features, it was hard to doubt her, even with the ghostly green eyes. When Bobby gave him an accusing look, he toned down his smile but didn't drop it completely.

His mother scanned her face pensively for several more seconds before breaking into a smile. "You're that nice woman's daughter, just moved in next door, aren't you?"

Jianna returned the smile. "Yes ma'am. That'd be me."

"What's your name, sweetheart?"

"Jianna."

Bobby, realizing he wasn't going to witness any angry lectures, stalked out of the room. Jack's smile grew back to its original size. If Ma liked Jianna, well, hell, he had no excuse not to.

"What a lovely name. I'm Evelyn, Jackie's mother."

"Thank you, Miss Evelyn. I'm very glad to meet you."

Evelyn chuckled and shook her head. "Now, Jianna, you better quit that. No fourteen-year-old talks like a debutante because they mean it."

Jianna's smile shrank a tiny bit and Jack covered his mouth to muffle a laugh. "But I do mean it."

The elder woman sighed and focused her eyes on the teen in a way that Jianna recognized vaguely from Jack's expression earlier. Jianna's smile disappeared and she suddenly looked meek. Jack bit on his first knuckle to keep from laughing aloud. He knew all too well what it was like to be in Jianna's shoes. He was in them at least once a week. He also knew that his Ma was not your typical parent. "Don't you bullshit me no more, girl."

"Yes, Miss Evelyn," Jianna replied.

Evelyn broke into another smile. "Good girl. We're gonna get along just fine. Now, why don't you come on downstairs with me and I'll get you some lunch. Need to get some meat on those bones or you'll never live through the winter." She started to lead the girl out of the room.

"Oh, I don't want to impose," Jianna said. Evelyn stopped and fixed her with another stare. "I mean, okay. Thank you, Miss Evelyn."

"That's more like it," Evelyn stated, and continued to usher her into the hall. Jack followed behind, not bothering to hide his smile. His Ma was some kind of woman, and he could tell from the way she'd reacted to Jianna that she saw something real good in the girl. She didn't waste her time calling out every little friend her sons brought home; only the ones she really liked, because those were the ones she wanted to find out more about. "How do you feel about grilled cheese?"

"I love grilled cheese," Jianna's reply carried behind her to Jack, who chuckled.

"Well, good because that's what you're getting."

...

It didn't take long for Jianna to fall into place at the Mercer household. After the first week following the encounter with his mother, she found herself spending more time at Jack's house than her own. Not that her parents noticed. When they weren't working long day shifts (her mother as a dentist and her step-dad as a pediatrician), they were completely wrapped up in each other. Jianna tried not to let it bother her. That was the main reason she spent so much time at the Mercer's. Aside from spending time with Jack, who had easily become her first friend in the area, Jianna greatly enjoyed Evelyn's company. The woman was a character, certainly, but she was also very pleasant and grew to treat Jianna like an addition to her eclectic brood.

Jianna liked all of Jack's brothers. One of her favorite pastimes was arguing with Bobby. Angel, who she met later on that first afternoon, earned her affection the second he walked into the house. He'd taken one look at her and said, "What's up, Freckles?" Though she complained, she actually loved the nickname. As opposed to the one Bobby had given her, which she really did hate.

"Move over, JiJi, you're taking up the whole fuckin' couch," Bobby demanded one Saturday morning.

"Don't call me that!" Jianna whined. As she sat up to make room for him she muttered, "Makes me sound like a poodle."

Jack, flipping through the channels, just laughed. "Now you'll never get him to stop."

Jerry, the final Mercer brother, Jianna barely saw. He spent most of his time in an off-campus apartment trying not to flunk out of college while also dealing in a few illegal substances on the side. From the few times she'd been around him, at birthday dinners mostly, she liked his easygoing demeanor and the way he just shook his head at his brothers' antics and said, "Ya'all is crazy."

The other big reason why Jianna spent so much time at his house was also the only one that Jack could not get her to talk about: her stepbrother. Whenever he asked her about it, she only shrugged and said, "He's just mean when he's blazed. That's all." Jack knew there was more to it than that. He saw the familiar signs of verbal abuse in his friend. The way she sometimes flinched when Bobby yelled and looked around a lot like she expected her stepbrother to jump out of nowhere.

"Does he yell at you, Jia?" Jack finally asked after a month of silence on the subject.

Jianna sighed, bored with his questions, and replied, "I told you. It's nothing. I can handle it, so quit worrying and deal the cards, Jackie." Satisfied that he'd finally gotten some kind of answer, he dealt the cards and they started playing.

There was hardly a meal at the Mercer's that Jianna missed. On holidays, like Thanksgiving or Christmas, she ate with her family and stopped by for an hour or so just to bask in the family's affectionate atmosphere and maybe exchange gifts. But she never missed a birthday, which was why one day in late February Jack was so disappointed that she missed, of all the birthday dinners, his. He tried to shrug it off and enjoy the usual table banter with his brothers, but they were all very aware of the unused extra place setting between Jack and Angel.

It was after dinner, when Evelyn had disappeared into the kitchen, that Bobby looked over at Jack's failed attempt to appear indifferent, and called to their Ma to hold the cake. He stood up and squeezed his way around Jerry. Evelyn appeared in the dining room doorway and asked, "Where are you going?"

Bobby didn't even look back as he answered, "To find out where the fuck JiJi is." It wasn't the first time that night that someone mentioned her absence out loud, but it was the first time since they'd started eating. The three brothers still sitting at the table looked to Evelyn, but she had no intention of stopping her eldest son.

Bobby had a soft spot for Jianna, not that he'd admit it if anyone asked him. He genuinely liked her, a first for him where Jack's friends were concerned. Though Bobby wouldn't call the other little demons his brother had brought home "friends." None of them had stuck around long enough to earn that title. Every time Jack tried to make friends, it only worked out up until a point- that point being, meeting Bobby Mercer. Some of them split at just the mention of his name. It hurt Bobby that his infamy forced his youngest brother to be a loner, but there wasn't much he could do about it short of threatening the little bastards, and he figured that would probably be counterproductive.

That was why, when Jianna came along, Bobby took to her immediately. Jianna, unlike the local kids who grew up in Detroit and had older brothers with bruises from Bobby Mercer, was not afraid of him. She had actually laughed at him the first time they met, and she stood up to him whenever he overstepped his bounds. Basically, she didn't take any of his crap. Sure, she didn't start an argument over every little teasing comment. If she did, they'd never stop fighting. Jianna chose instead to, more often than not, roll her eyes and flip him off. It was when he took his remarks about Jack a little too far that Jianna jumped to the offensive. She was strong in ways that Jack wasn't. The difference in their upbringing was probably why; but regardless, Jianna looked after his baby brother not only at home but at school as well and, truthfully, that was the real reason Bobby liked her so much.

This was what he was thinking about while crunching through the thin layer of rapidly melting snow to Jianna's front door. He had to knock twice before an obviously very high twenty-year-old opened the door and snapped, "What?"

Bobby had to resist the urge to hit him. He wasn't used to letting people talk to him like that, but he wasn't there to pick fights. He was there for Jack. "I'm looking for Jianna," he stated.

The stoner looked Bobby up and down, and for some reason his expression grew angry. "That little slut," he muttered. "I knew she was up to some kinda shit like this. I knew it." Before Bobby could respond (with his words or his fist, he hadn't yet decided), the man disappeared into the house, leaving the door wide open. Bobby was about to go in and find Jianna himself when the bastard reappeared, towing along the frightened and tearstained girl and yelling at her, "You said you wasn't sleepin' around you little liar!"

"I'm not, Vinny!" Jianna cried, trying to pull her arm out of his painful grip. "I'm not!"

"Yeah? Well then who the fuck is this?" Vinny swung her forward so she could see who was at the door. Her eyes widened in surprised and she lost track of words for a moment. Bobby was here- he was here- and now he knew. He knew, and now her problems were going to become someone else's problems too, exactly what she had been trying to avoid. Vinny shook his stepsister and repeated the question, demanding a response. She didn't have to react, though, because while she was trying to figure out what to do Bobby had already decided. His fist, decorated with a ring on every finger, met Vinny's face with a satisfying crack. The boy crumpled to the ground, and Bobby grabbed Jianna and planted himself between her and Vinny as the latter scrambled to his feet, cursing and cradling his broken nose. "Shit! You broke my fuckin' nose, man! I'm fuckin' bleeding!"

Bobby waited until Vinny was finished yelling and was looking at him again before saying, very slowly to be sure he was understood, "You fucking touch her again and I'll break every last bone in your body. Understand?"

Vinny, leaning heavily against the wall, stared in disbelief at this total stranger who was threatening him. "Who the fuck are you?"

Bobby rolled his eyes and grabbed the doorknob. "Her God damn guardian angel." He slammed the door shut and whirled around, grabbing Jianna's hand and pulling her across the snow and into his house. The rest of the Mercers were sitting at the table chatting idly when Bobby walked into the dining room, deposited Jianna in her usual seat and stood behind her with his hands gripping the back of her chair. Everyone fell silent when they saw her silently crying and looked to and obviously angry Bobby for an explanation. He opened his mouth to tell them what happened, peppered here and there with a colorful string of profanities, but was distracted when Jianna abruptly stood, pushed in her chair, and hugged him.

She really hugged him, too. Her arms were like a vice around his middle and she hid her face in the folds of his sweatshirt. After a beat, Jianna tilted her head so she could be heard and said, "Thank you."

Evelyn didn't even try to suppress her smile at Bobby's bewildered and uncomfortable expression. Jack and Angel both covered their mouths to stifle their laughter. Jerry just smiled, shook his head, and said, "Ya'all is crazy," as Bobby Mercer, for the first time since he was thirteen, returned an embrace.

...

Bring on the flames!

-Gina