A Night with Saxonite
"…You're not special."
The hallway was twisting in odd ways, warping around her as Alice pushed her hand against the wall to steady herself. She could not be sure who was speaking, wondering if it was a collective group that was calling her names.
"Orphan Alice!"
"Where are your parents…?"
"Deranged!"
"…Too quiet."
"Freak…"
Alice's eyes fluttered as the hollow feeling in her chest expanded. In her half-conscious state, the voices of her dream mixed with the blurry image before her.
"Orphan. Freak." She could see his lips moving, formulating words. "All alone," is what she could see him saying. "All alone…All-"
"Alice?"
She heaved in a deep breath as her eyes opened further. She rubbed away the moisture that had accumulated there as she stared up at him, her breaths coming out in heaves. He had a gentle hand on her shoulder to wake her and Alice immediately felt vulnerable and humiliated. She parted her dry lips attempting to sit up while she waded from sleep as if escaping a heavy fog.
"Are we supposed to get up yet?" Alice asked him, her surroundings coming into focus now. Behind Jim were the crew's quarters, but nobody else appeared to be awake. Jim was staring down at her from where he knelt beside her hammock. His face was partly hidden in the shadows cast by the grate on the ceiling.
"No, um, sorry," Jim coughed, rubbing the back of his neck as Alice sat up, careful not to give herself a head rush. "I just wanted to show you something." She looked at him, curious now as to what was so important he had to draw her out of a heavy sleep. Not that it had been much rest. Her dreams were no better than her lonely reality. When she didn't answer, Jim looked uncomfortable with a hint of disheartenment. "Sorry, it was a really stupid idea. I shouldn't have woken you up," he mumbled, getting ready to stand when Alice grabbed his hand to pull him back.
"Wait, it's alright. What did you want to show me?" she pleaded, slackening her grip on his palm when Jim tightened his hold to keep it there. His blue eyes shown with mischief and a boyish delight as he helped her out of her hammock.
"Follow me," he whispered, squeezing her hand causing Alice to feel light headed. No. Her reality was far better than her dreams now. She scolded herself for feeling such an intimate connection with this young man, but it could hardly be helped. She wasn't sure what about him enticed her so. Perhaps it was the way he smiled: it was always a half smile, not full, the corner of his lips twitching upward in a dangerous smirk. Then there were his eyes, full of bursting expression and blue beauty. Maybe it was because Alice's favorite color was blue. It didn't hurt she found him handsome, and she had never very much looked this closely at a boy before.
Yet, Alice cocked her head deep in thought, it could not be altogether his looks. There were many attractive young men at her boarding school. None of them had ever drawn her gaze like Jim.
It was his disposition, his personality of being so strong willed and adventurous even rebellious, but when Jim was comfortable enough to let someone in, they could see the courage reflected on his heart, the breathtaking emotion he kept bottled up inside. That night was no different. Alice allowed him to lead her up the steps from the bunk house and onto the main deck. The stars glittered from their corners where they lay suspended amidst the dark royal blues and blacks of the Etherium. Something in the distance drew Alice's eye as Jim led her to the rail of the ship.
There was a planet on the horizon, blotting out half the sky due to its mass and close proximity. Farther off was that solar system's sun, its rays just reaching this planet's surface casting a yellow glow which clashed with the starlit background. The faraway light managed to illuminate the asteroid belts woven all around due to the planet's gravity field. The rocks of different shape and size floated about lazily in their prospective orbit leaving a most mesmerizing sight.
Alice gasped as she listened to the empty sounds of space, feeling the cool ethereal winds gust through her hair. Despite the atmosphere's chill she felt inexplicably warm. The sight was magnificent to gaze upon, another quiet wonder of the universe.
"That's Planet Saxonite," Jim said, breaking the silence, still keeping her hand clasped in his as they rested them on the rail. Alice was hyper aware of the way his thumb ghosted over the back of her palm. She couldn't help the grin that blossomed upon her face.
"Jim, it's beautiful," she exclaimed, afraid to move lest she break the moment.
"I thought you would like it," he smiled. "Man, would I like to surf the rings around that planet!"
"Maybe someday you will," Alice laughed, feeling the tension from her dream leave her. This place was better. With Jim it was always better. Her face felt hot when his eyes caught hers and then the fear latched onto her heart. Her lips turned down at the corners unconsciously. What if he didn't like her the way she liked him? For the first time in Alice's life she understood what it meant to feel heartbreak. All the stories had spoken as if it were as painful as an open wound, but it was much worse than that. It was a wound that was internal and could not be healed with any easy stitching or medicine.
Alice felt silly then for assuming she was suffering from heartbreak. Heartbreak was serious business. She was just disappointed – no. She was afraid of losing this moment. After all that she had seen, after all she had felt and experienced, after all the people she had met, after all the quiet minutes spent in Jim's company, they would mean nothing in a year or two. She thought of returning to her Boarding School, thought about what it would be like to go back to having no friends.
Because, although she thought of Jim in ways she was sure he didn't think of her, he was still her first friend, and more than anything Alice did not want to lose that.
"Are you okay? What's wrong?" Jim asked, his brow crinkling when he realized Alice's expression was one of dismay.
"Nothing," she cleared her throat, embarrassed she was so obvious about her anxieties.
"It's not nothing," Jim pressed, his blue eyes searching her green ones. He couldn't imagine what he had done to upset her. A moment later he didn't have to wonder. Alice ignored her better judgment and stepped forward, wrapping her arms around his stomach to give him a loose hug. She crushed her face into his chest, smelling his spicy soap and the scent of dinner that had latched onto his jacket when they'd prepared it earlier that evening.
Jim was taken aback and wasn't sure what to do. For an entire minute he stood there, his arms raised above her body, afraid to touch her. Then, slowly, carefully, he brought them down and shifted his weight so that his arms could easily rest around her shoulders. He didn't say anything, he wasn't entirely sure what to say or what was happening for that matter, but he was in no way complaining. She was warm and comfortable against him and Jim felt his stomach clench and flutter when she tightened her hold on him. He rubbed careful circles across her back, his exhausted eyes finally slipping closed as he rested his chin on top of her head and breathed deep. This is nice, he thought. This is real nice.
And for the first time in a long time Jim felt completely at ease with his surroundings. He could have fallen asleep right then and there despite the oddity of their situation. She relaxed him, and Jim hadn't realized this before but she made him well and truly happy. She brought about the best in him. He had been trying to suppress these thoughts, but they could no longer be ignored. He wanted to be better for Silver…for her.
He was disappointed when she shifted to pull away first. He wasn't entirely sure what this could mean; his feelings that is. He had found other girls at his school attractive, found other girls funny and cute and boy he had always wondered what it would be like to kiss them, but it was nothing like her. Nothing like Alice.
Touching her, holding her, felt like the most natural thing in the universe, and he didn't want to let go.
But he did let her go, because he was being silly, wasn't he? He felt so young and inexperienced, then, so self-conscious and worried about what this could mean. She was his friend, and he was afraid that if he tried to cross the boundary between them it would scare her away and he'd lose that precious relationship.
"I'm sorry," Alice whispered, her hands falling away from him as Jim recoiled his as well.
"S'okay," he muttered, before clearing his throat, trying to realign his thoughts. He wasn't sure what to say, what he could say. It was clear she was troubled, but he had never been very good with formulating words, with straightening them into a sentence that was coherent.
"I just…had a bad dream earlier," she stammered, using her hands to twirl a part of her long brown hair. She was chewing her lower lip, something Jim had begun to notice quite recently when she was nervous.
"Do you want to talk about it?" he asked, testing the waters. His hands hung limp at his sides as if he wasn't sure if he should keep them there or reach out to touch her again.
"It was just…" she trailed off, seeming frustrated she couldn't get the words out. "Just that…I don't want to go back."
Jim blinked.
"What?"
"I don't want to go back, after the voyage is over. I just – I –" she stuttered, giving him a look as if she was trying to communicate some deeper emotion.
"Go back to your boarding school?" Jim frowned, deciding to slip his hands back into his jacket pockets.
"Yes. I don't want to go back," she sighed and pushed her hair behind her ear. "I'm sorry, I don't mean to –"
"No, no it's okay," Jim interrupted, taking a step closer. His hands were clenched into fists in his jacket, but they slowly began to uncurl. "It's...that's okay to be worried about that. I mean," he struggled to find the right words. He couldn't offer her anything, really, and false words about everything turning out alright seemed rather trivial. "I mean, I'm not so sure I want to go back either."
"But why? You have a mom and a home," Alice said, her eyebrows raised.
"Yeah, but, but not a lot of friends," he added in a rush, the words suddenly spilling out now and he couldn't stop them. "Just because I'll have money to buy new things, doesn't mean I'll still have friends. I want people to see me different. I want people to see me like you see me."
"How do I see you?" Alice whispered, as she watched his face turn a rosy hue. He ducked his head to let his bangs shade his eyes. "What do you mean?"
I like you, his mind whispered so Jim had to clench his jaw to keep that from blurting out too. Standing with her, on the deck of the Legacy when the rest of the ship was asleep, felt like a dream. Jim almost laughed at that thought. He was treating this all like a romantic storybook, and he had never been fond of gallant knight figures. They were too perfect and he was anything but.
Yet, he thought of Alice as a princess.
She was pretty, her green eyes reflecting the rings of Saxonite. He wanted to kiss her. He swallowed hard when that thought crossed his mind. He had never had more of an urge to kiss someone than in that moment. His eyes found her lips, but he looked quickly away.
"You see me like I'm better than how people back on Montressor treated me," he choked out at last, internally cringing at his sentence construction. He hadn't meant for it to come out like he desired her pity, but it was the truth. Folk back home were always whispering about him going to Juvie, about him being a troublemaker, a rabble-rouser. Here he could be someone else. He could be Jim, just Jim. Alice looked taken aback by this sentence.
"Oh, well I do," she shrugged, her cheeks beginning to burn. "You're my friend, you're –" She couldn't say what she wanted to, and resorted to biting her lip once again. The word friend felt all wrong in her mouth. He was more than that. She viewed him as more than that, but Jim didn't need to know.
The boy himself had hoped maybe her feelings were different; maybe she liked him better than that.
But he had been foolish to hope. At that moment he felt exhausted, his emotions drained from all the day's activities. He desired nothing more than to crawl into bed and wake up and pretend he didn't feel the way he did. He could bury his state of mind. He'd been practicing for seven years. His fingers curled back into fists in his pockets. He was about to turn away when Alice spoke again.
"You're lovely," she blurted out, a smile breaking out on her face before she raised her hands to her mouth in embarrassment. It had happened so fast she hadn't been sure how to stop herself from thinking it, let alone saying it.
"I'm – wait, what?" Jim asked, his own lips curved in such a way that he appeared almost comically surprised. "I'm lovely?"
Alice tried not to giggle, because by now the damage was done and as humiliating as it was, the way he looked at her made her think it wasn't such a bad thing to say.
"Oh. I'm not lovely," Jim released an awkward laugh.
"Yes you are," Alice said, seeing his hands slide out from his pockets at last. His shoulders relaxed, he looked almost…hopeful?
"I think," Jim began, taking a risk by reaching forward to hold her hands in the small space between them. "You're lovely too." His blue eyes found her green ones and for a while they both laughed quietly at how senseless they sounded, the two of them unable to articulate their thoughts. When their breathy snickers died down, the two of them stood there for a while longer just looking at the other. There was nothing to interrupt them, nothing to stop him from leaning in and kissing her. He knew in the back of his clouded mind that if he wanted to, this was the moment to do it.
But he didn't.
He couldn't.
Because standing there was better, because being lovely was better than any physical contact they might have shared beyond that of their hands. At last Jim cleared his throat.
"We should probably try to sleep a little longer."
"Okay," Alice nodded, but made no attempt to move. Jim didn't want to move either, but after a moment he realized they couldn't spend the whole night just grinning at each other and decided to take the initiative.
As much as the moment was broken, and Saxonite already behind them, he refused to release her fingers as they returned to the bunk house. When they reached the center of the cabin where the snores of their fellow crewmembers resounded around them, Jim knew he would have to let go of her hand in order to move to the opposite side of the room and toward his hammock.
"Are you going to be able to sleep?" he whispered, hesitating in pulling away.
"Yes," Alice replied in a small voice. "I'll be okay."
"Good. Well, see you tomorrow morning?" he grinned, unable to contain his goofy expression.
"Goodnight, Jim, sweet dreams," she smiled back, giving his hand one last squeeze before pulling away.
"Sweet dreams," Jim breathed, but she was already climbing into her hammock. He turned away to do the same, and as he nestled into the comfort of his makeshift bed, his mind repeated the night over and over again in his head like a mantra. He was determined to analyze every part of it, to keep it close, and remember it for many years.
Most of all, her words echoed away in his mind as his heavy eyes slipped closed at last.
"You're lovely."
Little did he know, but Alice was across the room sharing similar thoughts as her dreams took on an exciting turn.
"I think you're lovely too."
A/N: Well lookie who it is, back with more cheesy romance. I've been doing some writing for my fantasy book (not as much as I should like, but I am in college and it is busy!) when I had a sudden inspiration to once again write Treasure Planet things. I miss Jim and Alice, and perhaps the weather outside has made me nostalgic of a time when I would write about them quite a lot. Either way, this story began a couple of months ago, but I never truly got around to finishing it until today.
It's hard for me to write about Jim and Alice when they're fifteen. I have to get into their mindset and remember that both of them are at that awkward teenager stage where they're still somewhat uncomfortable around the opposite sex. Especially since they haven't had much practice beforehand.
Eh, I know Jim is very out of character. My interpretation of him will never be spot on, especially since I threw Alice into the mix. And yes, Alice is a Mary-Sue, or at least can be interpreted as one. As I've stated before, she is dear to me because she was my first ever created character, but she will never be one of my best. A love-hate relationship then. So why don't I take the time to improve her character? Because these are fan-fictions and will never be published. I feel no need to go out of my way to really refine her. These stories are important to me, of course, and I don't want to sound like a lazy writer, but I just feel like I either don't have the courage to change her, or I don't have the motivation.
With my fantasy book taking off, these stories are like my secret hobby.
Anyway! Onwards and upwards, friends!
Now, as usual, I've found that I am woefully unorganized when it comes to all the different reviews and notifications I receive for my fan fictions, therefore, I often lose track of who is still reading or who is interested. Although I cannot thank you personally (as I used to be able to do, until my life became busy and messy), I find it is important to let my readers know that I care deeply for the support they give me, and all the lovely comments, all the critiques, all the readers just reading the story in the first place.
I thank you all very much! Please know that it brings a smile to my face whenever I receive a notification that someone else has been kind enough to favorite, watch, or review one of my stories. Much appreciated! Thank you for the encouragement!