Disclaimer: Descendants does not belong to me.

Jane cannot remember when she decided that she was broken. It is just something that she has always sort of known. She can remember being very little (back when her mother genuinely believed that what she was experiencing were nightmares) and thinking that there must be something wrong with her because Chad never had the same troubles when he went to sleep that always happened to her. Later, after her mother understood better and explained it to her, she knew that it was more than something being wrong with her. It was worse than that. She just wasn't what she was supposed to be - she was broken. She was supposed to be a fairy. She was supposed to be helping the children of the Isle through their problems, but she was too human (and too without magic) to be of any use to them. As she was also too fairy in what she was experiencing to make much sense to other children, she felt that she had little choice but to be stuck in the in between of never being anything that she ought.

That, at least, was what she had thought back when she was five and six and every new experience in her life seemed to turn into a reminder that nothing she did ever fixed any of her broken, lacking in betweeness.

She and her mother gave up the cottage that had been their home since she was a baby in order to move to a little house just outside the gardens of the castle where Chad and Aunt Ella and Uncle Henry lived the year that she was five. There had always been visits and staying overnight and the like, but her mother had always said that they needed their space when Aunt Ella lamented them not being closer.

She hears things. She knows the way the staff in the castle hovers makes her mother feel like she is doing being a mother wrong. She knows that letting them depend on Aunt and Uncle for things makes her mother feel like she isn't good enough - that she is failing. She knows her mother gave up being away from that for her. Jane hates that. It isn't her mother that is failing; it is her. It's always her. If she weren't broken, then none of this would be a problem. She does the best she can - she smiles and is helpful and doesn't cause any extra trouble when she is awake, but the crying and the screaming still ends with her mother's worried face hovering over her when she wakes at night.

She tries being quieter, but that does not always work. She tries to be a "normal" child for the experiment that is attending an actual school even as she fails miserably each and every time that it is attempted. It is this that causes the move. She just cannot seem to function in a group of regular children in a classroom. She tried being friendly, but she is too well read and too "older in maturity" according to the first teacher for conversations with her own age bracket to be initially smooth (and small children do not readily give second chances to those they have already determined to be too strange to be worth the effort). She tried letting others lead, but she is too experienced in darker things to have simple answers to what should be simple questions come easily. (It's hard to talk about coloring pages and songs which she has never heard when her head is full of memories that are not even hers of missed meals and slaps across the face and shivering outside of locked doors that will not open even if you plead.) The pauses while she gets her thoughts together are too long and too noticed and she is written off as "too unfocused" by teacher number two. Sometimes, the answers she does give make the adults look at her funny and watch her in a way that makes her want to hide. She tried being silent, and the third teacher complained of her "sullenness" and "functioning below expectations" while the children wrote her off as "snobby."

So, her mother packed them up and there were no more attempts at school - just walks across the garden to join Chad for lessons with his tutors.

She likes Chad better than other children anyway. It's not that she doesn't believe that she could like them under other circumstances, but Chad is safe (and she has enough of not safe when she sleeps). Chad doesn't call her names or whisper behind her back. Chad doesn't want anything from her but for her to be her. He doesn't even mind when his tutors have them do the same work even though she is younger.

They are both happy about that actually. It saves time when they are doing the same work because she can just read it out loud once instead of reading hers and then reading his. His eyes hurt more the more work they do, and he will not tell the tutors or his parents that. Chad isn't as good at being invisible as she is, but he hears things sometimes just like she does. They both know that Chad's mom does most of the reading of official paperwork for Chad's dad because his eyes hurt and he gets headaches just like Chad does. If Aunt Ella can do the reading for Uncle Henry, then why shouldn't Jane do Chad's for him?

He is older and taller and stronger and there are not a lot of things that she can do for him, but she can help with the reading and the schoolwork. She can keep his secrets. He, after all, keeps hers. Chad is her hero. They just never tell their parents how much of one he is.

It's not long after they first move when her mother has to go on one of her trips to the council that are becoming more and more frequent, so she spends the night in the castle instead of in her little bedroom in their little house. Her room (because Aunt Ella says no other guests are allowed to stay in it) is right across the hall from Chad's. He always hears her when she walks in her sleep (he's been steering her back to her bed in the night since she first learned to climb out of a crib). This is their normal, and it has never occurred to either of them to involve the adults in their lives because her sleepwalking has always caused them worry (and why add to that when it makes Chad happy to know he can handle it on his own).

Sometimes, when the nights are really bad, she sort of loses herself in all the things in her head that are not her. This is one of those nights. She knows that she isn't really the little boy that is running, but she cannot seem to separate herself from it all the same. In the back of her mind, she knows that it will be okay because Chad will stop her before she wanders too far and wake her so that she can shake herself loose. In the forefront of it all, she is running because he is terrified so so is she and the only thought that really makes sense in her head is that they have to get away. The man is so angry (angrier than the boy has ever seen him - angrier even than the time that he kicked him so hard that something in his chest snapped and he struggled with his breathing for weeks and weeks).

When she does wake at long last (after running and running and being cornered and pleading and jumping at last because it was the only way out and nothing was as scary as the unhinged look in the man's eyes), she is sopping wet and shivering. She is coughing up water, and Chad is patting her back a little harder than comfortable. Her friend is just as dripping as she is, and he looks a mix of scared to death and angry that hurts her heart because Chad is her best friend (maybe her only friend unless you count Ben who she only sees when she goes with her mother when she travels for the meetings with the council) and he should not have to be scared because of her. She knows he isn't angry at her (Chad never gets angry at her even when she accidently spilled her grape juice on the new tennis shoes that he got for his birthday), but he gets angry about what she sees sometimes. And since he just, apparently, pulled her out of the pool, she figures that he is allowed.

They don't talk about it. They never do. He just helps her up and pulls her back inside. She notes that the light is already on in the bathroom and determines that that is how she got so far ahead of him (it is very rare that she makes it all the way outside). He pulls down towels that are too high up for her to reach and helps her rub one over her hair before going to change his clothes and bringing her a t-shirt since she only had the one pair of pajamas with her.

He usually puts her back to bed and retreats to his room, but he doesn't leave her tonight. He pulls a chair between her bed and the door like he plans on guarding her - which she understands that he is. She scared him tonight. She scared herself now that she has time to think about it. They don't say anything, but neither one of them goes back to sleep.

They act like nothing is wrong in the morning (the same way they always do), but the first words that Chad says at breakfast are a statement to his mother that he thinks it is about time that Jane has some swimming lessons. He thinks he might want a pool party for his next birthday, and it won't be any fun if Jane can't swim with him.

Chad keeps her secrets. Chad is her hero.

She just wonders if the boy (the angry man had called him Gil when he wasn't calling him other more hateful words) knows how to swim - if he had his own hero to pull him out of the water he had plunged into last night.

She's scared to find out - she's scared of a lot of things. She doesn't like making Chad worry. She doesn't like making anyone worry. She's scared of what she might find out if she falls back to sleep. She's scared that she is getting worse - that someone is going to notice that she isn't always her when she sleeps anymore. She's scared of things she had heard - things the adults whispered at that second school about children that weren't right in the head and needed to be locked up for their own protection.

She is too broken to be normal and too broken to be not normal enough to do anything about it. If she can only watch the children on the Isle and not fix anything, then she is not going to do it anymore. She won't have to see. The people that love her won't have to worry. She just has to not go to sleep.

She just won't go to sleep ever again.