Title: Nothing Ends (1/?)

Rating: G

Spoilers: All Waverly Place episodes, excluding Future Harper. And all Last Unicorn, excluding, of course the ending.

Disclaimer: I own nothing.

It starts when she's sixteen, the memories washed over her like light. Her grandmother's voice, the way it had been before the silence, the drooping eyes, the collapsing of her back till she shriveled like a flower in shade. Harper felt as if she was collecting to many old things behind her eyes. But still she remembers that it had been something about the sea, and green grass. Amelia's voice whispered in her head, the way it was soft, wide, delicate and fierce, had unfolded stories of things that were. Had talked about a great relative that had done something, and she doesn't quite recall beyond the imagined dream of a forest that never fell to autumn.

There were other things she doesn't like to think of, the constant sound of her parents voices low and frozen.

(Maybe, Amy, you shouldn't have married me.)

The glares that pass over white china and her grandmother's vacant eyes.

(No I shouldn't have. You never do anything right.)

The things she's not suppose to see. The things that lurk above water glasses and leak through walls.

(It wasn't always like this Nana. But her Grandmother's fingers are still. And she doesn't flinch at the hushed anger dripping through the walls.)

She doesn't think of her Grandmother as she was. But sometimes, when the dreams and the cold become to much she'll sit by her Grandmother's bed and hold her papery hands.

(The Unicorn lived in a lilac wood, and she lived all alone.)

She doesn't remember the stories completely. They're lost between her tongue and her teeth.

It's all haze in her sleep. She wakes to the ache of knowing but the emptiness of forgetting.

(They passed down the road long ago, the Red Bull ran close behind him.)

Red becomes her least favorite color.

(There's no such things as happy endings...)

The night of her sixteenth birthday, she dreams of a pool of water, clear enough to see herself in.

(because nothing ever ends.)

She is beautiful.

PPPPPPPPPP

He doesn't mean to. Not really, but he does. He notices the dark shade under her eyes. The way her fingers sweep over her own hands, as if she were afraid.

She isn't hyper.

Oh she laughs, she moves but something feels as if it were a dream. As if all the moves she's making are shadows.

He wishes he didn't see, wishes for the hundredth time in as many days, that he could go back to the blindness, the dark of life before Harper became someone beyond a passing thought.

But she's there, and she's moving in the world as if it were new to her and he notices.

Because they love the silence and the black and white. Because somewhere between her annoying giddiness and the glow of her in darkened theater rooms, he started to care. Not love, not want. But care if she was having a bad day, or if her feelings were hurt.

So the fret of her nails bitting in her hand. The stretch of her eyes as she looks widely around her, creep into his mind.

It won't let him go.

Alex doesn't see. It isn't in her nature to notice others, not till it becomes to obvious. And it's not because she doesn't care, Alex, he knows, despite her selfishness, her love of mirrors and images, cares. Cares about the old hippie and him and Max and Harper. Would break herself open for others, but she can not see.

He swallows and looks down the hall to his math class.

But he does.

PPPPPPPPPPP

The world feels new around her. As if she were born all over again. Only.

Only, she remembers. She remembers the harshness of all the things that had happened. The warmth of things too.

She was part of things she couldn't name and she was part of the only thing she knew.

(You're in the story with the rest of us now...)

Magic.

Beasts.

Immortality.

She knew them.

She had them in her.

She started side long at Alex. Magic.

Truth.

She should tell Alex the truth.

But she wasn't sure of it.

Couldn't pin it down with words, that didn't sound odd.

My hundred years great grandmother was a unicorn once. I might have some of her in me. The Red Bull will kill me. I am a part of it. I am all of it.

Unicorns were not something she could look at her friend and say.

Long ago, before her parents fighting. Before her Grandmother withered. She had loved them, loved the idea of unicorns dearly. Her Grandmother had grew it in her, had told her stories (truth), had brought to life all the little parts of history.

Then her brother died.

And her parents fought.

Her grandmother shrunk into wrinkles and age.

And Alex had told her that unicorns were for babies. Just like communication was for twenty year olds.

She kept the dreams of them to herself. Kept the glass figurines and the charm in a locked box.

She was far to old for make believe.

She sighed and looked at the curve of Alex's face again.

Truth.

Magic.

It seemed too silly to say. Even if it was true.

Justin plopped into the space between them.

Magic.

To old to make believe.

(She was even older than she looked.)