Author: thecivilunrest
Fandom: Young Justice
Story Title: "Symphonies Without a Sound"
Summary: And maybe I could call this home tonight.
Character/Relationship(s): Roy Harper/Jade Crock, Lian Harper, Paula Crock, Artemis Crock, Lawrence Crock
Rating: T
Warning(s): Implied sexual content, language.
Word Count: 3000+
Disclaimer: I don't own the lyrics I've borrowed from Thriving Ivory or the characters I've borrowed from Young Justice.
Notes: For Annica, who I have been friends with for A YEAR. I honestly can't believe it. ILU5EVA. And kind of also for Morgan, but mostly for Annica. Because she likes me all the time, when Morgan only likes me part of the time. This is also a prequel to A Single Step, which you don't have to read to understand this. This is just Jade's side of the story aka why she left Lian the way that she did. And I wrote this because I was pissed off about some wank over on a group and this is my passive aggressive way of getting back at that. And, um, reviews would be greatly appreciated! (:
Symphonies Without a Sound
Jade isn't sure why she's bothering to linger. The fingers of dawn are gracing the sky with their presence, but she's still around. She told herself that she'd be gone by now. Jade had told herself that she would leave as soon as they were done.
But she feel asleep. Not in his arms, because that lovey dovey crap is not what she came here for, but still. She stayed.
But now she has to leave. Really, it's better this way.
And besides, it's not like she loves him anyway, and he certainly doesn't love her. For most people sex is at the very end of a long equation, one that often included love and holding hands and dating, but she and Roy had always just canceled out the middle to get the end result.
It doesn't escape Jade that she's always the one that leaves, but she doesn't know what she'd do if she would stay. So she puts on her clothes, glances at him, and disappears.
(He won't miss her. No one will.)
.x.
Jade decides that she's done with the States, and pretends not to know why she's tired of the continent that she was born on. She asks the Shadows for some time off, which they allow. Every once in a while one of their assassins will do this, and the Shadows never ask questions. They'll leave her alone for a while, not ask her to do anything. But when she does get asked to come back she'd better come back, or she'll die.
That's just in the fine print of her contract, really.
She goes to Europe and travels to the places that she's already been. Jade's been to all of these places before, but she's never been able to really see them. Normally she just goes in clean and comes out with blood on her hands.
But now she stays and she becomes what she loathes: a tourist.
London, Paris, Milan, the cities of love and no one to share them with.
She thinks about writing Roy. Jade gets about as far as putting a pen to one of those pads of paper that hotels leave for guests. Sometimes she even writes his name, but crumples the letters up. What would she say?
Dear Roy,
Thanks for all the great sex. It was fun.
Love,
Jade
That's what he'd expect, anyway.
She doesn't think so. So she doesn't, she just travels and wastes her money and wonders what exactly she's doing with her life. Nothing, apparently.
(Roy,
I wish you were here.
I used to think that saying sounded stupid. In fact, I still think that it sounds stupid. And it does. Really stupid.
But I do.
Every city that I visit here I turn around, expecting to see you. What it is I'm looking for I'm not sure. Your reaction, maybe. A sharp comment. Just something. But I never get anything, because you aren't here and I'm probably going crazy.
And then I remember, even if you were here with me, I wouldn't know how you'd react. Because I never knew you well enough to know what your reaction would be after all. You're just an outline in my peripheral vision.
Sure I know that your lips grow white when you have an orgasm, the way your muscles tense and relax in a never changing pattern when you dream. But that's nothing substantial, nothing that I can think about late at night when I'm alone. It's not something that I would want to think about.
Because that's not something those things aren't the only things that you know about someone when you know them.
I've seen you naked. A lot. But I don't know the story behind every scar, don't know how many times a day you work out to keep yourself in shape, the way your arms feel when they come around me as I sleep.
Ours was a relationship of the night, of shadowy corners and unlit candles. And honestly, I liked it like that.
But that doesn't mean that sometimes, when I'm trying to sleep and can't get you out of my head, I wish that there was more.
I know I come off as heartless, and sometimes I think that I am. It's easier that way, really. To cut off all feeling. Not to care. But there's one somewhere in this black hole of mine, and it's got you in it. You and Artemis; I just can't seem to stay away from archers.
I know I won't send this. I know you won't get this, and even if you did what could you do with it? Nothing. If I sent it, if it got to your apartment in a reasonable amount of time, if you figured out where I was, if you came for me, I would have already disappeared. So it's not worth it. Nothing is.
You'll hate me soon. I know you will. And that's for the best, really.
Just remember, this was all for the best.
-Jade)
.x.
Jade finds out that she's three months pregnant in Scandinavia, which would be kind of funny if it wasn't so horrifying.
She didn't plan for this. Doesn't want this. She's just happy that she's in Europe, where abortions aren't an endless source of controversy. No bible thumper will come up to her and ask her what the hell she's doing.
The only things in Jade's path will be herself, the language barrier, the doctor and the fetus.
But she comes to the clinic and notices how white everything is.
Jade hates white. She doesn't like to look at the world in black and white, doesn't like how clean and sterile it looks. The fact that, hey, at least it isn't blood red doesn't comfort her either.
The stupid plastic chairs that she sits on are white. The counter is white. The walls are white. The pages of the magazines that she's looking at are white. It's like she's in a mental institution.
So she gets the hell out of there, fucking disappears.
Jade can't do this. She can't get rid of this baby, who is one-half her and one-half Roy. So she doesn't.
(Eventually she'll think about what the baby is going to look like. Her genes will be dominant, of course. She got that much out of ninth-grade biology. But there's still a part of her that hopes that the baby looks like him.
Because she sure as hell isn't going to go back to him now.)
.x.
As soon as Jade gets to Gotham she remembers how much she hates the place.
The citizens all walk hunched over and fast, not lingering, especially in the neighborhood that her old apartment building is in.
This neighborhood has always been shitty, and things haven't exactly cleaned up. Batman might strike fear into the heart of any petty criminal, but Jade remembers a time without him. Honestly, not much has changed.
Everyone rushes past Jade as she faces the old building. It's dusk, and no one wants to be in the streets of Gotham after dark. That's when all the crazies come out to play, turning a whole city into their playground. Skyscrapers into slides, homes into seesaws. Oh Gotham, it never changes.
Most of the windows are shut, the ones that can shut anyway. The blinds are drawn tight, only the slightest hint of light escaping.
There are only a few exceptions, and though Jade can hardly tell, Mom and Artemis' is one of them.
From her standpoint on the sidewalk she can see Artemis smiling at someone that Jade couldn't see, occasionally looking down and fiddling with something.
There's a part of Jade, a small part, that's glad that she can't see her mother. Even now that she was going to be a mother herself and was wondering just how in the hell she was going to do it.
She hadn't seen Paula since she'd gone to prison.
She isn't even sure if she wants to. After all of the things Jade's seen and done, how will she even be able to look her mother in the eye?
Jade feels kind of like a creep standing out here, just watching her sister, the golden child. Mom always worked so hard to get her daughters to have better than she did. To do better things than she did. And Jade is her failure. Jade's just another Crock in a long family tradition of killing people for money.
Artemis is the one that will change things. Artemis is the one that will help people. Artemis is the one whose name will be remember in the history books.
And Jade's glad, because someone had to not be a total disappointment.
Their father might see it differently, because he's an asshole no question, but Artemis is going places and she's going to leave them all behind.
(And there's a part of Jade that just envies her.
She wishes that she'd had the chance.)
.x.
As though he's got a fatherly sense, Lawrence Crock finds Jade in New Mexico.
Jade isn't really sure where she's going, but it's not Gotham and she doesn't want to be anywhere familiar. The blue sky is often cloudless, or with wisps and hints of white fluff, and Jade likes that. Nothing can hide, here. It's all out in the open.
Which, she should have guessed would have been her downfall.
Dad's waiting for her in a diner, which would have been creepy if it wasn't kind of funny.
"What the hell are you doing here?" Jade asks, crossing her arms under her chest, and then wishing that she hadn't. She's showing now, and when she does that her belly shows even more.
"I'd heard the rumors. I can't believe that they're true. How can you be so stupid?" He's looking at the baby bump with a face that not even Jade can decipher. She hates her father. There was a time when she wished that he was dead, but that's not the case anymore. But that doesn't mean that she can't kill him right here right now with nothing more than the salt shaker that's sitting in front of him.
"I could ask you the same question, Dad! I went to enough school where I can do math, you know. I was an accident too. So how dare you-"
"It's not even the same thing! Your mother and I were married. At least we were together. Jade, you're twenty-one and you aren't even working right now. You can't be. And if you are then you're stupider than I thought."
Only her Lawrence can make Jade speechless with anger. Mom used to say that was because the two of them were so alike, but if she's this big of an asshole why is the universe still letting her roam around?
"Get out of my life. Again." There's no room in Jade's tone for argument.
"I can help you, Jade. I want to help you. That baby's not yours alone, you know. They're my grandchild."
"Like you give a shit. You didn't care about children when you have them." Jade bites down on her tongue so that she doesn't say anything else. She tastes blood. She knows that she's not telling the truth.
Even though she doesn't want to, she remembers that after every single job that Dad had, whenever he got home he'd wake her, and then eventually Artemis, up. Then he'd make them pancakes, the only food that he could make without setting their apartment on fire whether it be four in the morning or ten. They'd both sit on his lap as they ate them.
She used to be excited when he got home, but eventually she found out what he was doing.
Even though she should thank him for training her the way that he did, because it saved her in the long run, there's a part of her that hates him for it too. If she didn't know how to kill people would she be doing it right now.
"Are you planning on keeping it?" That's another thing that infuriates Jade. She says things that get under other people's skin and stay there, infecting them, but her comments just bounce off him.
"She's a girl," Jade says, telling her dad what she found out at the doctor last week. She swore that she wouldn't tell anyone, but she couldn't stand her dad saying it and talking about her daughter.
"Are you planning on keeping her? Because you can't, you know. And you're an idiot if you think otherwise."
"If you came here to call me names you can leave," Jade says. "Or I will."
"You aren't as good at disappearing as you think you are," Dad says, a warning in his tone. "You always leave a trail. Sometimes I think that you want to be found."
She wants to slap him right then. Just slap the shit out of him and ask him why he let mom take the blame for it all, why he never wrote her, why, if she was so damn easy to find, that he never came looking for her.
Jade hates her father, but she also knows that he's right.
So she sits down and shuts up. Honestly she hadn't been thinking about the future because she didn't know what to do. "I don't know," Jade admits, tracing a picture on the table in front of her so that she doesn't look at the look that's on her father's face. He's like Artemis in that regard, everything that he thinks is always broadcasted on his face. That's the real reason that he wears a mask, Jade thinks.
"Is the father in the picture?"
"No."
"Could he be? Because you're not going to be able to take care of her. And could you give her up to strangers?"
Jade pictures white walls when Lawrence says this, and she knows that she could never. So that's it. Roy has, once again, become a solid figure in her life. But not for long.
Because she's not going to him. This isn't about her. It's about her daughter.
"What do you suggest?" Jade asks, and knows that she's going to regret this.
(That same day Jade names her daughter Lian.
She'd been toying with names for a while, and she'll never admit that she'd finally went with that one was because it started with an L just like her father's name.)
.x.
Now that Jade has a plan she knows what she's going to do.
First, she's going to go to Vietnam. That's where her daughter is going to be born.
The second, is that she's going to have to keep the Shadows off her back.
It's been six months since she went on 'vacation' and she knows that she can't keep this up forever. Yet another reason that it just makes since to give Lian to Roy in the most literal since of the word. She won't have her daughter stained with blood before she can even crawl.
Furthermore, if the Shadows find out that her daughter is the child of a hero they'd use her as a bargaining chip. And she just can't have that.
And the third is that she's going to have to lure Roy to her. It's only been nine months since she's seen him. This should be easy enough.
(She'd love to call him, to hear his voice one time.
But she's afraid that she'd come rushing to him and this would ruin everything.)
.x.
Lian's born on a Tuesday. She cries about being pushed into this fucked up world, and Jade can't blame her. If Jade was the crying kind she'd cry too.
After they're discharged from the hospital Jade rents an apartment. Her money is almost out, and if Dad wasn't helping pay for the medical bills she'd be rushing to get a job sooner rather than later. There's a Shadows HQ in Beijing. As soon Lian goes to Roy that's where she's headed.
Jade told her father that it'd take a month to get the men that she needed for the diversion to bring Roy to Vietnam, but really she needed less than two days.
She just wants the extra time to spend with Lian, since she'll have to spend the rest of Lian's life without her.
Jade's surprised by how much she cares for this tiny person, who doesn't do much except eat and sleep. She loves Lian. She'd die for her. And really, isn't that what really matters?
(Jade loves the fact that she's the only one that will know Lian's real birthday. She'll take that secret with her to the grave-it's one thing that Roy will never get to know.
And maybe it's selfish, but considering how selfless she's being about everything else Roy's lucky that this is all that she's taking. After all, he'll be getting all the rest.
Jade won't be around for all the other firsts. Her first birthday, her first day of school, her first marriage. She won't be able to keep those with her. So at least she'll know the exact day of the first time that Lian took a breath.)
.x.
Jade can't believe that it worked, but Roy's always been simple. And overpowering him was harder than she expected, but she did it.
So she leaves Lian in the basket, sleeping. There are diapers and a bag of bottles and God, Jade wishes that she could stay with her. That Lian didn't have to go. But she does.
Jade leaves a note for Roy, the only letter that she ever sends him and kisses her daughter's forehead.
She glances at Roy, and even though he's eventually going to have a knot on his head the size of Mount Everest he looks peaceful.
And then she disappears.
(This time she intentionally leaves a trail.
Lian never even comes looking.)