Disclaimer: Descendants does not belong to me.
She has always been a little on the absent minded side. She knows that she gets distracted and forgets things sometimes. She does not know why. That does not seem to be a helpful trait for a fairy to have when they are created, but some things simply are whether they make sense or not. For this reason, she assumes that she must have forgotten to put things on the grocery list or even not recalled that she used the last of something. She has, after all, had other more important things on her mind than whether or not they had no more crackers in the pantry.
When it keeps happening, she chides herself that she will have to do a better job of paying attention. Then, the cereal goes missing. She knows she bought cereal. She distinctly remembers pulling the box from the bag and placing it on the second shelf yesterday evening. There is no possible way that an entire box of cereal has simply disappeared over night. When she asks Jane, she expects to hear that it has been hidden in her room somewhere for midnight snacking (because she has heard from others about the grazing phases little ones can go through even if Jane has never done such a thing before). Jane won't meet her eyes, and that worries her. She assures her that she isn't mad; she just wants the cereal to be put away properly in the pantry so that they don't end up with bugs where they should not be.
Jane bites her lip and starts whispering that she is sorry even as she goes to the trashcan and shifts things to the side to show the cereal box still sealed and sitting at the bottom.
"Jane?" She asks not understanding what in the world it is that her daughter is doing.
"Please," there are tears slipping out of her eyes. "He's so hungry."
It sounds strange to say that she found herself married, but there are times when it truly feels as if that is the way in which it happened. There had been what felt like so much empty time with nothing constructive to fill it - there had been a strange empty sort of feeling that she to this day could not name for certain as lack of magic or lack of purpose. There had been the dark haired and kind eyed doctor - James - who had seemed to linger longer and stretch out conversations further with the passing days.
She had not realized . . . that is to say that her interactions with humans had been for very specific purposes up until that point. She had always been very purpose driven; there had never been an inclination to mingle with those outside of her charge. He had interesting things to say (and she had been going slowly mad with all the enforced for her own good rest that was not in the least bit restful); he seemed to be interested in listening to the things she had to say in response. It was a new experience for her, and she had found that she liked it. She looked forward to him coming around. She found herself storing up things to mention or questions to ask that might prolong their talks just a tad bit longer.
She had been in over her head before she had even understood what she was about. He was a helper and a fixer of things. She understood that - that had been her entire purpose from the start. He used medicine where she had used magic, but the intention and the drive had been the same. It was like that saying she had seen in one of the books that seemed to pour in from the exchanges between the kingdoms (that Ella was forever dropping off in an attempt at keeping her still) about falling asleep. It had happened slowly and then all at once.
She had found herself married.
There was no fanfare or pomp - just promises and sincerity. She had never dreamed of such a thing. Fairies did not have lives like humans did - at least she had always thought that they did not. She could not speak to fairies in general she had decided. She could only speak for herself. The untethering of her magic might have been a factor, but she was not going to dwell on the ins and outs and whys and hows.
She and James were married. She was very happy. He assured her that he was as well. After what she had chosen to give up for the sake of the United Kingdoms, could she not just have that (even if it was something that it had never before occurred to her that she might care to have)? The Blue Fairy certainly did not think so - had made her position perfectly and bluntly clear in the flying visit to express disapproval that she had made.
"You will never be one of them," she had hissed at her. "No matter how much damage you inflict upon yourself." She had not lingered, and her words had only served as a catalyst for digging in her heels (she had, quite frankly, had doubts of her own that were overcome by the sense of rebellion she felt in that moment). She was certainly not going to accept a lecture about proper interactions with humans from a fairy who had once animated into life a block of wood and sent it on a quest to earn the right to become a "real boy." Flora and Fauna had kept their opinions to themselves (or, at least, they had not come to visit to make them known to her). Merryweather had only inquired if she was "quite sure" about what she was doing.
She would always be Ella's fairy godmother, but she had retired from Fairy Godmother in her day to day life. She had done so so well that she was certain that more than three quarters of the acquaintances she and James had made since moving to one of the smaller burgs so he could set up his own practice had no idea what she had been. She was simply Hope the doctor's wife who aided in the clinic and helped to organize the new library that was being constructed just off the town square. She liked doing both. She liked being Hope.
She had fiddled around with the possibility of several names in those early days - trying them out in her head and writing them across scraps of paper. It was not, however, until James had read off one of the lists and called her Hope that she had decided. She liked the sound of the way it rolled off his tongue, and she knew that she could be quite happy hearing him call her that day in and day out. Hope she became (but really that was what she had been all along, wasn't it?).
It seemed poetically appropriate (in a morbid, awful sort of way) that becoming a widow happened in precisely the opposite fashion - it happened all at once and then slowly. She had had a husband and then he was gone. It was practically instant - the time it took the car to swerve up on the sidewalk where it was never intended to be. The realization happened slowly - in the thousand tiny moments that brought a heart rending recognition of never again, never again, never again to each and every thing that became the first time without him.
She does not know whether it was the grief that kept her from realizing at first. The truth is that she had never considered the possibility. Fairies did not have babies. They just did not (of course, they also did not have relationships or get married or untether themselves from their inherent magic in order to create impenetrable barriers without erasing themselves from existence either, so what did she know?).
She had never been more frightened than she had in the moment when she realized that there was a little life growing within her - a life that was dependent and fragile and someone possible for her to lose. She did not think she could do any more losing. Ella's little one (the only one she would ever be able to have James had grudgingly confirmed back when she had come to them for a second opinion on what she had been told) had struggled with his breathing when he first arrived. The memory of that second hand terror haunted her every time she woke in the night with her hand clutched over the flutterings of movement that told her her dear one was well.
Adam had offered to come to her when Ella had intercepted his summons with a reply informing him of her condition, but she had been relieved at the excuse for the trip. She was pregnant not an invalid. She was a grieving widow not a china doll balanced too near the edge of a shelf. Ella's hovering got to be too much at times even in the midst of her gratitude that she was not spending her days in the home that she had shared with James that had somehow become merely a house with too many reminders for comfort. The trip would let her breathe a bit, and she might as well do a routine check on the barrier while she was in the vicinity as well. She was told her time would be severely curtailed when the baby decided to make her formal appearance (she could not wait for that - distractions were the most valuable commodity she could imagine in that time).
He wanted to discuss the fact that he had been informed that there was a growing population of children on the Isle. A part of her wanted to laugh at the look on his face when he brought it up - he looked so sincerely confused that such a thing could have occurred. She took note of the differences in the office since the last time she had had an audience in it years before. There was a tiny little copy of the desk and chair in a corner just the right size for a toddler and covered in paper and coloring books and crayons and pencils.
"Some of them chose the Isle for a chance at a new start," she reminded him. "Getting on with their lives was bound to have . . . natural consequences."
"Not everyone chose to go," he insisted. "There are some truly awful people on that Isle."
"What are you asking me exactly?"
"What do we do?"
"Do?"
"About the children," he sounded unsure in a way that she thought he had overcome in the time since the kingdoms first made their alliance. It reassured her, somehow, that they did choose the right person for this task that he still cared enough to have doubts about things when there was so much fawning going on in the general public.
"Must something be done?" She countered.
"It is still a prison."
"I am well aware."
"A prison is not a place for children." His temper was starting to fray. She could hear it in the undertones of his voice.
"It's not just a prison. It's also their home," she responded. She found herself sighing because she knew that he would not like what it was that she was going to say. In truth, she did not much care for what she was saying. "There is no answer that is going to be right in this, Adam," she told him as kindly as she could manage. "If you leave them, you will be leaving children to grow up in a prison with all the disadvantages therein," she conceded. "If you attempt to bring them off the Isle, you will be robbing children of their parents and parents of their children without any hearing or proof of cause. Maybe you will be taking away someone's reason to change for the better. Maybe you will be creating an entire generation with a grudge against Auradon. There is no one sure answer."
She noticed that he was no longer looking in her direction; he was staring at the little desk with the papers scattered across the top. She found her hands folding protectively over the bump under her dress as well.
"Even villains love their children?" His eyes met hers and there was no doubt that the words were a question rather than a statement. She would have liked to be able to give him a decided affirmative to that question. She could not do that.
"Sometimes, all of the answers are grey," is what she told him instead.
Jane proves to be an even tempered baby. Her eyes flick from place to place and item to item even before the books say she is supposed to be able to focus. She also seems very quiet, but the only other baby she has spent large amounts of time with is Ella's. Chad had been a little on the whiny side, but James had repeatedly told her that that was because Ella had hardly allowed him to be put down for the first three months after he had been cleared from the hospital post his early problems. He's a sturdy little boy now and rough and tumble enough that she doesn't think it hurt him too badly. She was worried he might be a little too rough and tumble (and not quite big enough at two to understand why he must be less so around the new baby), but he seemed strangely fascinated by her - at least until the first time she got a handful of his hair.
They moved into a cottage of their own just a few weeks after her daughter's birth. She had trespassed with Ella and Henry for long enough, and they needed to settle into a life of their own. Also, the fact was that as easy of a baby as Jane was, she didn't really sleep. She was not loud or prone to long stretches of crying, but the hovering of the servants and whatnot with their constant suggestions was wearing on her nerves and she needed to be in a space of their own.
Jane did not so much nap or sleep at night as seem to eventually pass out from exhaustion. Then, she twitched and jerked around and murmured vaguely uncomfortable sounding noises the entire time until she woke back up. She did not know what to make of it, and no one else seemed to have any helpful ideas either.
This became the constant pattern of their lives.
Awake Jane was a cheerful baby then toddler then child.
Bedtime Jane was subdued and wary as if she always believed that something bad was waiting for her in her sleep. There had been a time when she had gone through every variation of nightlight available believing that her child was afraid of the dark. Then, she had believed that she simply had a child that was prone to nightmares or even night terrors. The older she got, the louder the crying in her sleep became. She was often disorientated when she woke, and every once in a while she would sleepwalk to some random place in the house.
Then, there came the sleep strike when she was four.
It was less that Jane did not go to sleep and more that she seemed unable to stay asleep. Her daughter was truly terrified and only seemed to be able to tell her that she did not want the bad dreams to get her. All of her assurances that the things she was seeing and feeling were only dreams and could not really hurt her seemed to become less effective with every passing night.
She had tried everything she could think of except for one. When her child's eyes had become so sunken with the lack of rest that it looked like she had been beaten until they were blackened and bloodshot and she started to throw up her supper every evening because she was that scared of what she would see when she fell asleep, she did all of the groveling that she had to to get her last resort to make an appearance.
It was not pretty; it was not pleasant. She did it anyway because Jane mattered much more than her pride.
The Blue Fairy had been full of things to say at first. Then, she had been confused and wary. Somehow, she had not realized that Jane was actually hers. She had heard there was a child and assumed that she had adopted one. Curiosity had apparently overruled all else, and she had come. They had both thought that the spell would be simple. She had even known and accepted that she would owe the Blue Fairy a great deal for rendering her child free of her nightmares.
It was not simple.
They had not realized that something had gone wrong - not at first.
Then, the screaming had started - the screaming that had continued off and on day after day because the spell had rendered her child unable to wake up until she had regained all of her lost rest. The protection from nightmares might very well be in place, but it did not matter - because Jane was not having nightmares.
"What have you done?" The Blue Fairy had whispered in a tone that could only be described as utterly horrified. "The magic and the barrier and the involvement with the human," she had muttered. "This is all your doing - only yours," she had countered to the demands of explanation for what had gone wrong.
Fairies don't have babies, but humans do. Somehow, she had always assumed that since Jane had come to be that meant that she was human. There had never been any signs of magic to indicate otherwise, but Jane was not human (or at least not only human).
She was supposed to have magic, but she did not - because her mother had tied all of her magic into the Isle. Somehow, Jane was tied into the Isle as well - specifically the children that had come to be on the Isle. Fairies were meant to aid their charges, and those charges were chosen by the magic the fairies possessed. The magic that should have been Jane's belonged to the barrier. It had twisted or turned and decided that each child of the Isle became her charge the moment they were conceived.
Jane did not have access to magic or access to the children. She was a child herself (something that fairies never were). She could not take care of her charges; she had no means to intercede. She could only hear the pleading whenever the guards on her mind were lowered as she slept.
Her daughter is standing in front of her telling her that she has been raiding their pantry to hide food in the garbage can because she is convinced that it will help feed the children that she insists are going hungry. She wants to tell her daughter that this is silly. Throwing perfectly good food in the trash is not going to help a hungry child, but her daughter knows things. She knows things that she should not know (like a half a dozen words that her child had let slip at random moments that she had always blamed on the fact that no one in the palace monitored what Chad watched on television, but she now suspects she literally heard in her sleep at one point or another), but she knows them all the same.
Her daughter honestly believes that the children on the Isle will get food that she throws in the trash. She had wanted to keep this as secret as possible, but it is impossible to not have questions in the face of what she has just heard. Her daughter is still crying, and she looks desperate.
They will be taking a trip - just the two of them. They are going to be paying a visit to Adam, and they won't be leaving until she can make some sort of sense out of this.
