The Many
- The word was huskily.
- This is the Alice that appeared in season 2 for the first time.
- Thank you to MaidenofSunlight and guest1234 for the reviews.
2.
The figure looking back at Alice in the mirror pleased her. She was slowly pulling a brush through her dark blue hair. Her wavy hair was partly hanging over her shoulder so she could brush it more easily. Cool gray eyes looked back at her from the mirror, her delicate face framed by two curly bangs. Her mother had always said she had the looks of a princess. Her father still called her his little princess, though she was sure that many fathers called their daughters that. It was still nice though. Her looks were always something she was very proud of. Perhaps that made her vain.
She put the brush down on the dresser next to the mirror. With bare feet and in her night gown she padded to the window. The sky had already turned dark, ready for the night. With longing she looked outside onto the courtyard. Various students were walking around. As it was weekend, Friday night, their curfew was later than during the week. Many of the other girls were out in Magix, meeting with specialists or dancing in a club. It was why she was alone in her dorm room.
This she had chosen herself. The other girls had invited her but she had not felt like going. What was the point? It was not like he would be there. The girls she saw daily anyway. Not him. She had been lucky to have seen him briefly once a week in the last few weeks.
Thinking about it angered her a little and she pulled the curtains close with more force than was necessary. One should not be feeling angered when thinking about their boyfriend she felt. Yet she could not shut this feeling of anger and even disappointment out. She wanted to understand and the logical part of her did. Of course she knew that he had to study and train hard to be able to pass this year at Red Fountain. The emotional needy part of her wanted him by her side every second of every day whether this was realistic or not. It wasn't that she didn't trust him or thought he was out meeting other girls. She knew Jared well enough to know he would never do that. She just missed him.
She did know that she had seen too little of him these past few weeks. Even their contact through phone and texting was scarce. When you barely saw one another, were you truly in a relationship then? She didn't think so. It was so frustrating that yesterday she had yelled at him through the phone when he had said he had to hang up. Part of her regretted that now. He had never raised his voice to her. Though it had yielded the result that he had promised they would call every night now.
In fact she was planning on calling him now.
With a sigh she dropped herself on her back onto her bed. Her covers felt warm and soothing. She reached for her phone on her nightstand. By touch the baby blue phone activated. With her thumb she scrolled through her contacts list until she found his name. Jared. She supposed she should have him on speed dial, but she had never used that before and she felt no inclination to start using it.
She pressed call and waited for Jared to answer. This took him a little while.
"Hi." Jared answered huskily.
A smile played on her lips. He must be pleased she called if he sounded like that. "Hi sweetie." She pulled up her knees. "How are you?"
"Okay," he answered. "Training hard. You?"
"Poor you," she commented. "I'm good. I think I failed my test this morning though," she said with a frown.
"I'm sorry," he said, his voice sounding raspier every word he spoke.
"I should have studied harder," Alice pursed her lips. Maybe if they hadn't fought on the phone last night she might have been more prepared but she decided against saying that. Which reminded her; "I'm sorry about yesterday. I shouldn't have yelled."
"….fine," He responded, a cough at the end.
Alice couldn't understand what he said before fine though she imagined him saying it's fine. "What is with your voice? I can hardly understand you."
Jared coughed again. "Cold," he rasped. "We were… the swamp ..terday," he pushed, clearing his troath when he stopped speaking. Talking was clearly very hard on him.
"I don't think you should talk anymore," Alice said worried. What if he couldn't talk at all anymore because of their phone call? She would feel bad about that.
"…ou tal-k. I …ill liste.." His voice started to fall away more.
"What did you say, sweetie?" Alice winced a little as she said it.
She heard him take in a deep breath before speaking. "Talk. …listen." Again he cleared his troath, a little harder this time
Unsure she asked; "I talk, you listen?" There was an affirmative grunt from the other side. "Uh, that is okay I guess." She replied hesitantly.
Alice started chatting away into the phone about her last few days. The exam she had taken that had gone bad, the compliments she had received in etiquette, the drama surrounding Stella with Brandon. Jared gave her a few grunts in response, an odd jumbled hardly understandable sentence there. The more she talked, the more she wanted to ask him about his day, the more she wanted a response from him on what she was telling him. Telling him about her things from this week was nice but it was not the conversation she wanted. She needed his response, his calm view on things, his reassuring tone of voice.
Mid story she let out a big sigh and changed the subject she had been talking about. "Maybe we should hang up. I don't want your voice to get any worse."
"O-okay," he rasped. To Alice's ears he sounded tired. He had been working so hard to keep up with the intense training and to do extra assignments to get his grades back up that this cold was something he really did not need.
An idea came to her mind. "Maybe tomorrow I can sneak into Red Fountain and take care of you while you study." Now that would be nice. She could make sure he took enough rest in between, keep him hydrated and such things. She would be able to spend time with him while he could still study for as long as this cold would let him. For herself she would bring a book to read. While at Alfea she had not had so much time to keep up with her recreational reading.
She had never before pondered on sneaking into Red Fountain. As at Alfea, the opposite gender was not allowed up to the dorms. Contrary to Alfea though, Red Fountain controlled this very strictly. Peer control was higher there than it was in Alfea, where only Griselda seemed to care much about this rule. Despite that Jared had never been in her room before. He was used to keeping to the rules as was Alice normally. Sneaking into Red Fountain would certainly be a challenge. She would have to ask Katy, one of her dorm mates, about how she could best do this.
"B-but…" Jared started.
"No arguments. I'm coming! I miss you and someone needs to make sure you take care of yourself," she spoke resolutely.
He fell silent at the other end, likely not having the energy to protest too much.
"I'm going to hang up now, sweetie. Go to sleep and get some rest," she said. There was an inaudible raspy response back before he hung up.
Alice was used to letting guys make the most effort. This was something her mother had taught her when younger. You always make the guy come to you. The guy should make the most effort. She had always gone by that teaching as mother knows best. Even in her relationship with Jared she had followed it, letting him make most the effort. For the most part he didn't seem to mind, having said he did love to cater to his girl. She was starting to realize though that if she did want to make this work maybe she would have to make more of an effort to cater to his needs.
Her phone beeped, pulling her out of her thoughts. Glancing at it she saw she received a text from Jared. 'Text me tomorrow for the plans to sneak in. I'll figure things out here with Bishop. I miss and love you.' A huge smile spread over her face as butterflies started darting around her stomach, clutching the phone to her chest. She couldn't wait for the girls to come back and figure out a way to sneak in with them.
