Disclaimer: The original Bridge to Terabithia characters do not belong to me. I'm just taking them and twisting their story.

Long Way Down

Chapter One:

Lonely Night

The night was quiet, the house still. Late May air poured in through the open windows, the silver light of the full moon illuminating the bare rooms of the lower floor. Somewhere in the distance, a dog howled, his bay low and lonely, as if he was giving up on what he had been howling for.

Up the short flight of stairs and a right down the hallway lead to a small bedroom, the peeling brown door wide open. In one corner a nightlight was lit, the warm glow of the bulb lighting up a small corner of the purple wall. Sleeping closest to the bulb was a young girl, maybe four or five years of age, wrapped up in a pink and lavender quilt that had obviously seen many owners and better days. She slept deeply, oblivious, a small smile on her face and her reddish brown ringlets spread out on the faded pillowcase. Next to her, in a bed just as long and narrow laid an eleven year old girl, with stark straight brown hair and a troubled grimace gracing her lips as she dozed. Even in her state of half-sleep she listened, waiting for something out of the ordinary to rouse her from her rest. On the teetering edge of consciousness she was aware of the dull pulsating of blood in her temples, no doubt a result of her genuine exhaustion. Letting out a pitiful, sleepy sigh in resignation she at last allowed her mind to rest fully, sending out a silent prayer that when dawn broke over the horizon the entirety of her family would be sleeping soundly in their beds. Before she slipped into a complete slumber she thought she saw an unfamiliar shadow pass in front of her eyes and then quickly fade away. She thought for a moment that she really should open her eyes and look, but she was so very tired, for by now it must be the early hours of the morning, at least. Her imagination would be playing tricks on her. Still, she fought the fatigue and forced her eyelashes to part from the skin of her face. She called out feebly, her voice husky with sleepiness.

"Jess?"

She thought she was the shadow move again, somewhere near the door. But before she had time to process what was happening, the shadow became her beloved older brother, hovering protectively over her bed, his hair, eyes and clothes nearly invisible in the blackness of the night.

"Shh, May." He whispered. "You'll wake Joycie. Go back to bed, okay?"

She defied the order, wiggling around under the covers to try and free herself from the sheets imprisoning her legs. Giving up, she stuck her arms behind her back and tried to push herself upright. That also failed, she tumbled backwards against the pillows with a frustrated sigh. "Why don't you go back to bed?" She countered. "Why are you awake, anyway?" She meant to sound angry, bossy, determined, like she knew with absolute certainty what he was doing up at this Godforsaken hour but wanted a confession, like their mother did when one of them failed a quiz and the teacher had already called, but she spent half of dinner hedging around it to make them suffer. Instead, she sounded whiney and exhausted, exhibiting no strength whatsoever.

Despite this, however, she could've sworn she saw him start; pause for a fraction of a second too long before answering her, like he had been caught in some devious act by someone who didn't even have the power to punish him for it.

"Uh…homework…"

"It's Friday, Jess. You don't get homework on Friday."

"Maybe you don't. But high school's different from grade school, okay? I have homework. Lots of it. And a test. Tomorrow," He was babbling now, trying to cover messy trails and tracks. Even in her state of delirious lassitude, she sensed his fear.

"Tomorrow's Saturday, dummy. How can you have a test on a Saturday? And the homework thing isn't true either, unless you lied to Momma last week when you told her you never have homework on Fridays, so you could go for a run before dinner, and stay after church instead of writing a paper that's due on Tuesday, and…"

"May Belle!" His voice was sharp and irritated, rising two or three octaves. She gave a little jump in response to his sudden change of mood. In the bed beside hers, Joyce Ann stirred in her sleep, moaning softly before tugging the quilt over her head and becoming an indiscernible lump in a mound of plush.

Jess sighed, visibly stressed. May Belle thought she saw him press the bridge to his nose between this thumb and forefinger, like he always did when he was upset. He knelt down on the floor beside her head, instantly morphing from an almost six foot tall dark blob to the brother she had always known and loved, at her eye level so that she could make out the shadowy features of his face.

"Look, everything's fine, okay? Just please go back to sleep. Please, May Belle. I'm begging you."

Her heart panged at the desperation in his voice. He had taken that tone a lot lately, she realized, especially when talking to either of their parents. He begged them in almost the exact same words he had just used on her, pleading for them to know that he was fine, despite what they all believed, despite the obvious signs. He begged to be left alone, to rough it with his own devices as tools. Very strange behavior, May Belle thought, for a boy who had, not six months before, acted out in every which way to get attention from both their mother and father—but especially their father. Fights in school, excessive cursing at home, laziness, rudeness, and monumental drops in grades…the list went on, and it frightened her. The one who had fought with her beloved Daddy—and the Daddy who fought just as hard, if not harder—was not the Jesse she had grown up idolizing, and still idolized, from time to time. It broke her heart, watching her family be torn up like this, but at least Jess had still been a fighter, a protector, firm in what he believed in and willing to kill or die for it when there was screaming every night after—and sometimes even during—dinner, over grades or work and (very shockingly to all his sisters as well as his mother) occasionally even girls and cigarettes. Though it wasn't where she wanted her family to be, with her and Joyce hiding in their room every night, waiting for the blow, or their mother crying the bathroom and Daddy and Jess hating each other while Brenda and Ellie did whatever they pleased whenever they pleased because nobody seemed to care about the numerous bad things they did anymore, at least Jess's spirit, the essence of his will and mind and determination, was still there.

And now, everything was vacant in their home, emotionally. Sure, they were packed as close as sardines physically—and really, how could you not be, with five children living in a three bedroom house, with two girls in their twenties and a sixteen year old boy, plus two other rapidly growing daughters—but their hearts were more cut off from each other than they had ever been. Sure they were fighting, but they were alive. They were feeling, breathing, passionate, surging with emotion and the desperate desire to make the others understand what it was they wanted and needed.

But they had given up, all of them, May Belle knew for certain now. Their emotion and life had been extinguished, like the fuse of a firecracker cut with scissors just before it exploded. They were groveling now—asking not to communicate out of a desire for familial love and support, but silently pleading with one another, gripping onto the last fragments of plain human decency, asking not for safety and respect because they loved one another, but simply because they were another human being who had done nothing to deserve the pain they were receiving.

She saw it now in her brother's face, the evidence there in his physical features as well as his eyes. His normally olive skin was now almost alarmingly pale, and purple shadows graced the sagging skin beneath the bloodshot hazel eyes. His hair—only a few shades darker than her own chocolate and caramel locks—which was usually cropped a few strands shy of a buzz and always neatly combed, now blew and tangled every which way, coming down across his forehead and roughly met the bridge of his nose when wet. His eyes were tired almost constantly, he would often stare out an open window for fifteen minutes at a time and talk about how wonderful the world outside must be. He had given up too, she knew, though not completely. It was this life he was tired of—not life in general. Unlike the rest of their family, Jess knew that it was the way he was living now that was the problem, not him. He hungered to get away, she knew, to slip away in the dead of night and begin his life over again, starting with no strings attached, so that he might see the world he seemed to daydream about all the time. Her heart ached for him; how could no one else see the lust for freedom in his eyes? He was like an old dog in a cage, whining and pawing for somebody to let him out.

But nobody ever did.

Right now she was broken in ten thousand different ways. Nothing was as it should be. Her family was falling apart at the seams, and now it seemed she was going to lose the most important piece: Jess. She couldn't lose Jess. She needed him. He was the only thing constant in her life, now that she was border lining on being too old to be "Daddy's Little Girl". He was her best friend, other than Billy Jean, whom she had known since Kindergarten. But lately Billy Jean was more interested in training bras and lip gloss and laughing when a boy talked, even when they hadn't said anything funny, or anything at all. So he was really all she had right now, until Billy Jean came back down to Earth. Not only a friend, he was one of her best teachers: He taught her how to cook grilled cheese sandwiches and sneak cookies before dinner. He showed her how to use a Swiss Army Knife to take out a splinter and showed her which plants in the woods would give her a rash that would make Momma ban them from going in for at least half a year. He had even let her drive Daddy's old work truck once, when no one else was home, but after she took out several of the neighbor's various shrubs and garden gnomes he said driving would have to wait until she was taller and had better hand-eye coordination. He was good at some school subjects too, like math, history and art—especially art. He was very good at that. His talent mystified her; she could spend an hour staring at a blank sketchpad, trying to figure out how to draw a pony's head and the image would never take shape. And then he'd waltz in and do it without even looking at the paper. A flick of his wrist, a few simple lines and circles, and suddenly: there was the pony head. She loved it when he would draw for her, because he didn't do it often. Daddy was the reason, she knew.

Daddy never liked it when he caught Jess drawing, or stumbled upon a sketch or two in their room. He said it made him a sissy, that he should be out fixing the tractor or going with him to the hardware store on Saturdays to "learn the family business". After that, it was always the same: Jess would say something, then Daddy would say something, and then Jess would start yelling some bad words and Momma—if she hadn't already started dusting a dust free object in another room, that is—would put her head in her hands. Then Daddy would slam the screen door and go out to the greenhouse for an hour or two. Jess, in turn, would storm up the stairs to their bedroom and shove all of his art supplies and sketchbooks into a shoebox. He would sometimes say he had half a mind to toss the box into the creek that ran behind their house, but he never did. Usually he just shoved the box under his bed and swore off art for good. That never lasted either—a week or two would pass and he would be back at it again.

May Belle wondered if the boys at Jess's high school thought he was a sissy because he did art, just like Daddy. He never brought any friends home from school like the rest of them did, and she thought it was a bit…strange. A few years before she had voiced her concerns to Momma, who had merely smiled at her weakly and told her that Jess would "come around".

"He's a late bloomer, honey." She had said, though May Belle really had no idea what that expression meant, at the time. "Jess will…grow out of it."

She was beginning to question that theory, and she knew that Jess was too.

She could feel it in her gut that tonight would be the night that her beloved brother would try to break free. No, actually, he wouldn't merely try. He would either do it or let Daddy kill him while he tried to get away. All week she had listened for him breaking out, but nothing had ever happened. Just as she was about to count her blessings and assume all was—somewhat—well for the time being, there he was. Fully dressed, in the middle of the night, wide awake. That had to be what the homework hooey was about—she had caught him trying to sneak downstairs so he could make a break for it.

Anger flared inside of her. How dare he leave her alone like this! He just couldn't—she wouldn't let him. Just as she opened her mouth to speak, to protest, to tell him she knew what he was doing and beg him to stay, the moon shone a bright beam of silver light behind her curtains and illuminated their corner of the room. The light fell across his face, and for the first time she saw the true depth of his hunger, the famine for freedom. She couldn't take that away.

Sighing in defeat, she snuggled back down under the coverlet. "Okay." She said simply, surprising him.

"What?" He replied, obviously confused.

"I'll go back to sleep."

"Oh," Clearly this had not been the answer he had been expecting, and in a way she was glad. "Alright then…" He rose awkwardly from the floor, staring down at her quizzically for a moment before sliding away from the beam of the moon, back into the shadows.

He cleared his throat a few times before speaking. "Well, uh…goodbye, I guess."

"Don't you mean goodnight?" She whispered, though they both knew the answer. Time for games had run out. She had solved the riddle—now she witnessed the aftermath. He was going—leaving—whether she liked it or not.

There was nothing dramatic about his response. It was simple, profound, just like always. He merely smiled softly at her before chuckling without humor. "Think about this, May." He told her, as he often had when they were children and she was always asking endless questions.

"What is it I should think about?" She responded—like she always had—her voice cracking a bit.

"Goodnight and goodbye. What is the difference, really?"

He stayed where he was for a brief moment longer and then shuffled towards his bed, lighting a small flame of hope in May Belle's heart. But he only picked up a backpack and jacket from the floor and walked towards the door again.

"What do you expect me to tell them?" She shrieked, her eyes filling to the brim with tears. "When they wake up tomorrow and you're not here?"

He looked at her briefly over his shoulder. "I don't expect you to tell them anything, May. I couldn't ask that of you. Just…do what you said you would. Go back to sleep, and maybe when you wake up tomorrow morning this will all feel like a dream, a premonition, and you won't be able to differentiate fact from fiction. You'll have nothing legitimate to tell them."

"I'll remember. I will. I'd have to tell them, Jess. You know that."

He sighed again, brokenly, and her heart stung with guilt for the additional pain she was causing him.

"I know. I know. I'm…sorry May, really I am. I never wanted to put you through this."

"So don't go." She snapped. "Stay. Hold out for the light at the end of the tunnel. Don't put me through this."

"I don't have choice, May Belle. I can't stay here with Dad anymore. I just can't stay here, period. I have…nothing. No friends. No sports, hobbies, good grades, which equals no escaping to a far away college in two years. No…family…"

"What about running?" She demanded. "What about art? You're good, Jess. No, you're better than good. You're fantastic. And the new music teacher who they're using to supervise the free period art classes…you like her, right?"

"I tell you way too much."

"And family…what about me?" Her voice broke once again, a few tears spilled over. "I don't want to stay here either, Jess! Not without you. Daddy and Momma fight all the time now…don't you notice? I can't be here to make Joyce Ann feel better all by myself. I don't know how!"

"I know all that, May…" He sighed again. "But it's me Dad has the problem with. Once I'm gone for a while, everything will go back to normal."

"You know that's not true."

"Well then, Miss Smarty Pants, what do you suggest I do about the damned situation?!"

She was stuck. He had her pinned in a corner. She had no way of talking him out of it, the only solution she could think of was…

"Take me with you,"

The lone dog in the distance gave one final call to the moon.

Author's Notes: Well, there's the first official chapter! I hope you all enjoyed it. I'm very open to feedback—this is my first time starting a story In Media Res, so I want to make sure things are flowing right. Also, I know this varies a bit from the prologue, but that may change. If it doesn't, I'll go back and edit. Last but not least, I hope the premise is (somewhat) clear: This is an AU where Jess hasn't met Leslie yet. This chapter is my take on how Jess and his family may have evolved without Leslie present in Jess's life. Fear not, though, we may meet Miss Burke in time. :) Please drop a review!