Author's Note: Jed's death at the end of the first series was, in my opinion, heartbreaking, but also sort of lame since it just came out of nowhere. I haven't seen the second series of Bedlam and probably never will because of the lack of Jed, but I felt the need to post this anyway.
"I'll tell you what real love is. It is blind devotion, unquestioning self humiliation, utter submission, trust and belief against yourself and against the whole world, giving up your whole heart and soul to the smiter."
— Miss Havisham, Great Expectations, Charles Dickens
There is Kate and there is Jed and for the longest time they are both sure that is all there'll ever be, because there is Kate and there is Jed and for them that is enough.
When they turn five Molly moves in down the street and soon it's not just Kate&Jed anymore, it becomes Kate&Jed and Molly, and for that, Molly is sure, Kate will never quite forgive her.
Kate has always been protective of what is hers; when they were little it was dolls and Jed, now that they're older it's boys and Jed. At school, once girls started to notice Jed, she made six of of his admirers cry before they left him alone; he might as well of had 'Property of Kate Bettany' stamped across his forehead. What was oddest for Molly was that it never seemed to bother Jed in the slightest. What was oddest for the rest of the school was that, except for those little incidents, Kate rarely spoke to Jed, she was popular and had friends that weren't Jed, but that was the thing about Kate, she didn't care what happened to a toy until somebody wanted it, and then it was her favourite. (Molly wonders if this is why Kate hates Sadie so much, not because they're similar, though they are, but because she can't simply scare Sadie away with a sneer, a few cutting words, and a hand curled around Jed's bicep. Or maybe it's because Jed won't sit back and let her.)
Sometimes, when Kate didn't need them in her elaborate productions, Jed would take Molly to the movies; the theatre he liked was an old one with faded velvet seats, peeling gold trim, and a flickering projector that played black and white movies. He liked dark and scary, old Hitchcocks and horror movies, whereas Molly liked the comedies, ones with bubbly dialogue and a wedding at the end; they mostly just watched whatever the theatre was playing though (Molly liked to cast Kate and Jed as Scarlet and Rhett, but she knew in her heart that they would never be able to walk away from each other.). They both liked to play pretend on these little outings; Molly pretended it was something more and Jed pretended she was someone else. Sometimes, Molly felt as if within the walls of the theatre Kate and ties that bound her to Jed didn't exist. No matter what though, once the credits rolled she remembered he was Kate's again. (What Molly always forgets is just as Jed is Kate's, she is also his.)
When Mr Bettany had Jed committed for the first time when they were ten Kate didn't leave her room for a month. Molly's sure she would have stayed longer, except that was when they allowed family to start visiting him. It was the longest they'd ever been apart before and Molly remembers Kate emerging from her room on the day she was set to visit Jed in her pretty blue dress with her hair brushed back into pigtails and red puffy eyes, sipping a cup of tea and staring off into space.
When they visited Jed all Molly can think about show very small he is under the fluorescent lights. Kate's face is like porcelain and the mask that Molly will become so familiar with starts to slide into place. (Bettany Hospital closed six years ago, and for that small mercy Molly is thankful.)
'How is everything?' What they all know he means but is not quite brave enough to ask is 'how are you'. Jed leans forward hungrily, wanting details of life outside this sterile box.
'Fine, I'm fine. We're fine, aren't we Mol?' Even as she launches into an enthusiastic monologue about life outside, Kate's smile is brittle and another piece of her mask slides into place.
During the summer hols, before Jed got sent away for the first time, when Molly's parents were working, Mr Bettany would take the three of them with him when he went to visit the hospital to check that the property was unmolested by the public. Jed and Kate would run hand in hand through the halls and across the grounds, always with Molly trailing a few feet behind. Jed would tell stories about the people who used to live in the rooms and sometimes Molly was sure he was leaving pieces of the stories out. Kate would scoff nervously and retaliate with stories of her own, about the inmates, things she'd heard whispered at family gatherings, things the tamer residents had told her when she was little and Daddy had taken her to the hospital with him.
Once, as they were wandering down the hall, looking for what Jed and Kate both swore was where they used to keep a serial killer, Kate stopped dead and stared at a blank patch of wall.
'This is wrong.' She ran her hand over the wall, probing for something that wasn't there. Jed stares at Kate and the wall with a furrowed brow before Kate grabs his hand and pulls him away, shaking herself out of whatever she had felt. (Molly notices they don't venture near that wing of the hospital anymore.)
After the third time Jed gets committed, when they're fourteen and just finding their wings, Mr Bettany won't let Kate visit so she makes Molly go as often as possible until Mr Bettany finds out and makes her stop. (Molly's almost glad he does it, just so that she doesn't have to see Jed's careful attempts to hide his disappointment every time it's her, not Kate, who visits him, or the hungry look in Kate's eyes when Molly comes back from a visit.)
At some point, between Warren committing Jed two weeks from the end of term when they're sixteen and getting her first proper boyfriend (the kind you went on proper dates with and brought home to meet your family), Kate starts to pretend there's no Kate&Jed, that it was just a fancy of childhood and not a soul shared between two people. When Jed comes back he fights for them, but Kate pushes him away, pushes and pushes until the bits of her that are Jed have been locked away in some tiny corner of her mind (except that was all of her) and so Kate fights and fucks in an attempt to fill the empty hole and Jed watches and breaks. Jed gets sent back to the hospital and Kate starts working for Warren and it hurts Molly just to watch her friend be so empty all the time.
Molly doesn't go to see Jed when he's in hospital, partly because she's not sure she can stand another memory of him trapped in some sterile prison, memories that are slowly replacing happier ones, when they were young and didn't know what it meant to be broken.
When he comes back, in a flurry of limbs and rage and fear, Molly breaths. She can't remember the last time she did, the last time she looked at Kate and didn't see half of a whole, and she doesn't see Kate now, not exactly, but she doesn't see broken either.
Ryan never saw broken when he looked at Kate, he'd never seen whole and so never thought broken. Broken was for other people, mere mortals, not goddesses like Kate Bettany. Bettanys have always been proud creatures, prone to caprice and cruelty, obsession and dominance when it suits them but otherwise a casual disinterest. And yet, despite this, they were magnetic, like planets drawing the common people into their destructive orbit.