Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Spring 1886

There is an island.

A day's journey from the cape through rough black water would allow a ship to moor off the rocky shallows of its windswept coast.

Held in the jagged, wave-broken fingers of rock is the small, stalwart village of Eldensmouth, soaked in mist from the bedrock foundations to the tips of the tattered snapping flags. It's an old place and so reverently treaded by its sparse population chained back in generations to the original settlers themselves, with just the occasional glint of newcomers in the midst.

Lounging comfortably in the throne room of the Buried Church, Royce King tips the coagulated remnants of the goblet down his scarred throat. From the corner of his eye, he catches the turn of the powerful lighthouse beam. With a clatter and drag of metal, the cast goblet skitters across the hard floor and is pinned to a stop beneath the foot of his second in command, Marcus.

"I believe it's time, Mr. King."

The priest rises as the doors blow open with the wind. He takes in the view and likes what he sees.

Here stands an island neglected by maps, operating smoothly without the touch of a mainland hierarchy. The Brotherhood provides, it always has. It endures.

Through the sanctuary, the priest is joined in peals by the Brothers, their black cloaks whispering over the dampened streets. A familiar chorus of slamming doors and thrown deadbolts rings out from both sides of the street as they press forward to the docks.

The priest lifts his hand, and without word, a half-dozen men break formation and disappear into the dark forest to retrieve it.

Marcus works a lump of tallow in his hands, dubious. "You're certain?"

The priest grins and leaves him with his doubts. It's his duty after all. A counterbalance that has allowed them Eldensmouth for as long as they've had it. And they're about to have so much more.

Far below, metal crashes into stone. The sound echoes violently throughout the underground cavern. A young girl lurches awake, shrieking into the iron clamped around her. Pain blooms from the exertion as she cowers into a damp corner.

The cage from the sky. The very one that lowered her down here so many months ago. The door swings open with a creak. Get in, they goad her. The black cloaks, the coldbloods. The chain attached to the top of the cage rattles. Get in.

…

…

1.

Isabella Swan trips quite spectacularly down the back steps of the tavern. Her gangly arms windmill out from her sides as she stumbles well out into the street before finally losing all hope of balance and landing in a messy heap on the dew-damp cobblestone.

"Bella the Great and Terrible!" a familiar voice booms from the front of the general store.

From her sprawled position in the middle of the street, she lifts a scraped palm in a wave. "Morning, Mr. Newton," she mumbles, trying to find her feet again. "Have you seen my dad?"

"Not since this morning at the docks. He was cooking up something with old Waylon for the Angel, though." The shop owner nods out toward the woods. "He might be out that way."

Bella brushes her stinging hands off on her trousers. "Thanks!" she calls over her shoulder as she breaks into a run for the treeline.

"You be careful now, little lady!"

.

Lightning flashes over Eldensmouth as Bella cuts through the trees, tripping on ivy and overgrown brakenferns. The soft dirt caves beneath her shoes, damp always from the mist and dribbling rain showers that never seem to let up completely.

Waylon's house is on the storm-torn far side of the island. He's a ship captain and an old friend of her father's. And a great teller of tall tales. Sea monsters and gold chests and pirates on the horizon. Horrible, child-eating monsters sleeping in this very forest. Maybe she believed him when she was little, but she's twelve now, and not so easily tricked. Not by old Waylon anyway.

Raindrops begin to beat down through the dense leaves of the forest and sprinkle on her head as she stops to catch her breath against a mossy trunk. The wind picks up and howls around the sharp rocks in the distance. The old trees around her sway and groan as their leaves are pulled in a violent hiss.

Bella pays nature's aggression little mind as she tries to orient herself. Maybe she should have taken the long way on the beaten path, but there's almost no fun in that. And on a rainy rock this small, she'll take all the adventure she can get. Besides, she grew up playing in these woods with Mr. Newton's rotten kids and Angela from the library. She knows every inch of this place, just about.

The direction she chooses takes her to a small glade tangled with wild grass and pale bluets. Through a gap in the trees, she can glimpse the black high tide barrelling into the rocks, though she can't imagine how she got so close to the cliffs. She wasn't that turned around, was she?

Lost in her own forest. Mike Newton was right, her internal compass really is busted.

She picks a few leaves out of her hair as she crosses the glade to the steep trail. What she needed to ask her father can wait. She's always liked the view from Levin's Point. The birds nesting on the rocks, the dark water that betrays no secrets of its depths, the fog that whites out everything else. And the lighthouse.

The air around her hums curiously and the little stray hairs that have pulled loose from her braid float upward on their own hidden current. Strange, she thinks, doesn't that mean-

A bright bolt of lightning strikes a tree immediately to her left, raining sparks down around her. Bella yelps and topples over backward, arms flailing helplessly like broken compass needles. She hits the ground so hard, all her air leaves her.

Perhaps if she were more observant, she would have noticed the disruption in the soft soil beneath her, the growing fractures, the funneling. Though it hardly matters. She hears the echoing crack. Her stomach drops as she tries to scramble to her feet. But it's too late. The ground crumbles away beneath her and she's falling. Again.

Not weightless at all, but very surely leaden and fated for impact.

She closes her eyes.

.

She…opens her eyes.

Pain floods her right shoulder as she comes to. She sits up and clutches it with a reedy groan. She must have hit it pretty hard on the way down.

The way down.

Bella blinks a few times and tries to see anything beyond the dull haze of pain. It's dark where she's landed and heavy with the scent of wet rocks and the salt-tang of the sea. She tips her head back and gasps at the weak light streaming in through a small hole. Just big enough for a girl to fall through.

The caves. Beneath the Point. She read about them in the library, but they've been closed off since her father was a kid. They're supposed to be dangerous. They flood with the tides. She can't stay here. There's got to be a way out.

A pebble drops a handful of feet away, and Bella's head snaps up. "Hello?" she calls, feeling a bit silly. "Is someone there?"

Of course, there's nobody down here thirty feet underground in this strange cavern. She climbs to her feet and winces with every little movement. Another glance up tells her she's lucky to be alive right now. That was one hell of a drop.

"Yeah," she mutters to herself. "Bella the Great and Terrible." Her words reverberate through the chamber.

A breath of laughter echoes back.

Bella's heart goes still.

.

There is a girl.

Pressed into the darkest corner of the stone cavern, eyeing her carefully. Her arms are braced against the stone walls.

"Hey," Bella says. She takes a step toward the girl but stops dead when the girl hisses at her like an animal, fingers scratching at the wall as if trying to back farther into it.

Bella holds both her hands up, ignoring the hot pain spreading down from her shoulder. "Hey, it's okay. Did you fall too?"

Her blank stare is accentuated when her wide eyes catch the faint light from the surface and reflect it right back. It reminds Bella of the quick white arrows the lighthouse beam throws against the mirror in her bedroom.

She squints, taking in the cavern now that her vision is adjusting. It's smaller than she first assumed. Less of a sprawling system of sea caves and more a single deep pocket in the rock about twice the size of her bedroom in the back of the tavern and braced on all sides with heavy wooden beams.

Looking up again, she notices another hole in the ceiling, this one bigger but obscured by something large and swaying in the still air of the cave. Some metal shines and an old chain creaks.

Bella rolls her good shoulder, dropping her gaze back to the corner. "Where should-"

The girl looks up at something over Bella's shoulder and rushes at her without warning. Bella's nerves ignite with white panic as the girl knocks her back onto the ground and pulls a dirty blanket over her.

A strained snarl rips from the girl's throat as the heavy metal door Bella hadn't noticed on the far wall flies open. Bella holds her breath and peers through the worn material of the blanket, just barely able to see what's going on.

A man walks inside and pulls the door shut behind him. "Get back, now," he warns as if talking to an untrained dog.

The girl leans over Bella, shielding her from him as he passes. She hisses again, and from her spot beneath the protective cage of her body, Bella can see that there's something on her face, a bulky metal contraption over her mouth and down around her throat.

The man sets his lantern on a crate and surveys the hole in the ceiling and the mess of dirt and leaves that made the fall with her. The bottom of his black cloak rustles over the stone and Bella's blood turns to ice. The Brotherhood. She never sees them far from the church unless it's Collection Day. Just what did she fall into?

"What was it?" another voice asks through the small grate in the door.

"Just a little cave-in," the man says, sweeping his eyes over the rest of the small chamber.

"Must've ruffled its feathers, though. Hah, get it?"

"Just shut up, Felix," the man says as he waits for his partner to unlock the door to let him out. "Go report it to Marcus anyway. I'll check again in a few minutes just to be sure."

Bella waits a few seconds before she slips from beneath the blanket. Her heart is stuttering in her chest, and her nerves are so jangled she can barely feel the pain in her shoulder anymore. Possibly the only good thing going for her at the moment.

When she looks up, the girl is stalking back and forth on the other side of the room, shooting occasional glares toward the door he disappeared through.

In the light from the left-behind lantern, Bella can see her completely. She's young, like Bella but pale and gaunt and dressed in what looks like an old tablecloth with holes cut for her head and arms. Her blond hair is tangled and unkempt. Like… Like she's been down here for a long time. The strange lock on her jaw glints as she paces, and Bella swallows as her brain begins to catch up.

And there's one more thing.

She has wings.

.

"He's coming back," Bella says.

The girl nods and turns slightly, her large silvery-brown wings dragging heavily behind her. They're tied together with rope and appear to be broken in places. Stray feathers litter the edges of the cave.

"What do we do?"

A pale finger points toward the only door.

"What about you?"

She shakes her head, a solemn and scared flash in her light-trap eyes.

"Are you okay? You look hurt." Bella lifts a tentative hand to touch the curve of her wing. The girl turns quickly, and Bella's hand lands on the cool skin of her shoulder instead. At the touch, her strange eyes well with tears, and Bella yanks her hand back. "I'm sorry. I didn't mean-"

The girl jerks her head away and flinches with the movement. She touches the rough metal over her mouth and shuts her eyes against the pain as it curls her spine. A mangled sob breaks through her teeth and rasps through the tracks in the lock.

With stinging eyes, Bella rests her hands lightly on the back of her tangled blond head as the girl bows forward, whimpering quietly into Bella's patch-softened shirt. "It's okay," she whispers. "It's all alright."

Behind them, the metal door clangs open again.

.

Bella is barely aware of the hand around her upper arm and the winding path they take through the caves and back to the surface. She hardly even registers the cobblestone beneath her feet half an hour later or the familiar sight of her father's tavern back in town.

The man releases her arm and bends to look her in the teary eyes. "Not a word of what you saw," he says sternly. "To anyone."

"I-" She comes back to herself then in a rush of fury and fallen tears. Her hands ball into fists at her sides. "You have her trapped-

"Not a word," he repeats in a harsh voice, but his eyes are blue pleading things like he doesn't understand it either. "For your safety-"

"But-"

"-and hers."

Bella shuts her mouth and nods, glaring without sight as he takes off briskly down the street.

Inside the tavern, it's warm and hazy with cigar smoke. The thick scent of cooling stew makes her stomach growl. She's somehow home on time. It's almost absurd. No one would even know to ask where she's been.

Charlie is pouring old Waylon a drink behind the bar. He smiles when he sees her. "There she is."

Mr. Newton raises his stein clear across the room. "Bella the Great and Terrible!"

.

.

Three days later, a heavy knock wakes Bella before the sun. She isn't stupid. Charlie taught her to never open the door when he isn't there. But when she peeks through the curtain, a bead of scattered emotion has her tearing the door open.

It's him.

The guard who led her by the arm through the maze-like cave system to the surface and delivered her to The Roaming Angel. He never breathed a word about the girl in the cavern the whole trip out.

"Morning, Miss Swan," he says, taking a few steps back toward the street.

"What are you doing here?" she asks, half-hiding behind the door. "I- I didn't tell anyone."

"I know that. It's just…" He looks over his shoulder at the empty street for a moment. "Would you… like to see her again?"

Bella's heart jumps in her chest, but it smacks into her father's careful warnings of the men in black cloaks. Don't trust a single one of them. They'd rather see your blood than your smile any day. She narrows her eyes at the guard, paying attention for the first time. He's maybe only a few years older than her. A kid himself, really, and drowning in his hand-me-down robe. Probably, his only job is to watch that metal door.

Her hand tightens around the doorknob. "Explain," she says in her best gruff imitation of her father.

"Well," he says, shifting on his feet. He shakes his head, blond curls falling over his forehead. "I guess you've seen her, so I can just come right out with it. She's been ill. She won't eat even when I- uh, unlock her." He gestures to his jaw. "And it's not like I can bring her a doctor because- Well, you know. And I shouldn't care at all except she's real important, it seems like. So wouldn't they want me to do whatever I can to help her?"

Bella stares at him, a little lost. "What am I supposed to do about it?"

"See, I think she liked you when you fell in like you did. At least, I never saw her so close to someone without clawing their eyes out. So maybe if you brought her the food, she'd actually eat something." He holds his hands up and quickly adds, "It'd be like a job, of course. I'll pay you out of my pocket for the trouble."

His eyes are lit up a little, his master plan. Hiring a twelve-year-old to do half his work. But Bella feels the pull all the same. Her thoughts have neither slowed nor strayed from the strange girl for a moment since she crashed through that ceiling. And with every ache of her bruised limbs, she remembers the girl's sad, metallic gaze; her tangled blond hair; her wings, tattered and bound together, forced to drag after her when she walks.

"No one will know where I am," she says. "How do I trust you?"

He seems to wither at that. Embarrassed in some way. He pats his pockets and pulls out a thin and wickedly serrated dagger. "Um. You can have this."

She takes it from him and holds the blade up in the sunlight. "And what? I'm supposed to fight you off with this?" She stabs the air experimentally, not really hating the feeling of the knife in her hand.

The boy shrugs. "I think the idea is that you won't have to. And it's just me keeping watch from now on. Felix got a new assignment."

Bella considers that. "What do I call you?"

"Jasper. But my friends call me Jas."

She turns the small dagger in her hands. It bears the mark of the church on the hilt. She swallows. "What is she?"

Jasper's face turns somber. His blue eyes dart from hers. "I don't know."

.

Jasper presses a lump of wax into her hand. They're just outside the heavy metal door, and Bella almost can't believe the chill in the unmoving air down here. It's wet too. And slippery. She had to frantically grab onto Jasper's arm about a dozen times on the way down here.

"What's this for?" she asks, squeezing the wax.

"Your ears. Trust me. Once I unlock her jaw- You'll see."

"You?"

"Well, yeah."

Bella shakes her head. "Give me the key."

"I don't think that's-"

"The key," she repeats with her hand outstretched, palm up. "I saw her last time. She's scared of you."

"You think that was scared? She almost attacked me when I tried to get you out."

"That is scared, Jasper."

A slow frown moves across his face. "I guess you're right." He pulls the key's chain from his neck and hands it over. "Just be careful, okay?"

She nods once and tightens her grip around the handle of the bucket of water she stopped to fill outside of Mr. Newton's shop and carried all the way down here. The wax squishes into the key in her other sweaty hand.

She pushes the door open.

.

A shadow moves in the darkest corner as Bella steps foot inside the chamber, and an automatic warning hiss cuts through the silence.

Uncertain what to do, Bella stands perfectly still in the light from the oil lamps. Just scrawny, non-threatening schoolkid Bella Swan.

"Remember me?" she tries when she sees some movement out from the corner.

Recognition stiffens her long limbs. Mercury-silver eyes blink at her, unbelieving. And then she bolts across the room, wings dragging behind her with a hollow rustle. She throws her arms around Bella's sore shoulders, leaning fully into a hug that staggers Bella back a few feet trying to keep them upright.

"Hello, again," Bella says, smiling through her surprise and the unexpected tightness of the embrace. "I came in through the door this time."

The girl wraps her hands around Bella's biceps and leans back to look at her face, trembling with something Bella can't quite name. Then she smothers her in another hug, refusing all of Bella's attempts to pull free and show her what she brought with her.

Bella laughs and lets the water bucket drop to the ground with a thud and a small splash. She hugs the girl back, the cold metal of the lock burning against her cheek, but for the first time in three days, her chest feels light.

"I have the key," she whispers.

The hug slowly loosens as the girl pulls away, light eyes curious. When Bella holds up the little key, they flash with interest. She touches the metal over her face and trembles once more when Bella nods.

"Can you show me?"

She gathers her ratty hair away from the back of her neck and leans down a bit so Bella can reach the keyhole.

Bella's fingers shake a little, but she manages the lock with a simple, solid turn. The contraption loosens and falls into the girl's waiting hands. She sets it gingerly on one of the crates by the door and coughs a few times with a hand to her throat. When she looks up, she smiles brilliantly, jaw blue with bruises.

"Are you okay?"

The girl nods, still silent it seems.

Bella gestures to the bag at her side. "Well, I brought you some-"

She squeaks. The most heartrendingly happy noise Bella has ever heard, she can't remember what she was saying or thinking or doing, really. And as the sound echoes endlessly through the small cavern, it layers and lengthens, a note stolen straight from heaven's gates. It drills into her head, that sound, playing even as the cavern quiets, building on itself in the chamber of her skull.

She rocks forward on her feet, lulled. And then it sours and decays as it rocks around her head. Red hazes Bella's vision and fire shoots down the paths of her nerves. Pain becomes the weather. Dizzied, she doubles over, a thin drip of blood from her nose.

Distantly, she hears the clatter of metal. She wrenches her gaze up and glimpses the girl through her narrowing vision. Her heart stutters at the sight of her desperately fumbling with the jaw lock, trying to put it back on. She grabs Bella's hand with the key and nods vigorously at her. Her strange eyes are watery and panicked.

With considerable effort and harshly gritted teeth, Bella straightens herself out and reaches up, easing the lock away from the girl's face, now wet with tears.

"No," she says through the last few excruciating echoes. "I'm not going to do that. Not until I have to leave, I guess. I want to be honest."

The girl nods. She reaches up and wipes her thumb over Bella's lip to clear the blood.

"It's… your voice?" Bella asks, still trying to get her head back on right. There's still some kind of buzzing feeling in the back of her head. "But what about just air?"

A head tilt and puzzled silver eyes.

"You can whisper, right?"

"You can whisper, right?" she mimics with a proud kind of grin.

Bella waits for the pain, finds it lacking, and smiles to match.

.

She eats.

Jasper had thrown together her standard meal which is apparently a tough block of bread and whatever's left from the prior day's fish market. No wonder she wasn't eating. There hasn't been a decent catch in weeks. It's a good thing Bella had the good sense to bring her some vegetable stew from the tavern. And the last of her Christmas caramels.

Bella sits on the blanket with her as she slurps, pausing every few seconds to pluck out a chunk of carrot and place it into Bella's open palm.

"My dad says they're good for your eyes."

The girl makes a face but takes an orange circle back and chews it before diving back into the stew ravenously. Bella reaches a curious hand out and traces the air above the silver-brown curve of her wing. In the light from the oil lamps Jasper set up from them, she can really see the damage the ropes have caused to them. Her fingertips brush a frayed feather. The girl goes a bit stiff but doesn't seem to mind much.

Water drips from the rough ceiling, but aside from the steady plink into the dark pool collected in the sloped corner farthest from the door, it's silent down here.

"Do you have a name?" Bella asks, and the girl looks up, confused. "I'm Bella."

"Bella," she breathes out. "Bellllllllla."

Bella laughs.

She laughs too, but it's something so much more when she does it. Bella leans forward with it, pulled by the sweetness of the sound. The girl frowns and goes back to her food.

With a shake of her head, Bella comes back to herself, glad that she was able to at all. She understands now, the wax Jasper pressed into her hand. She glances over at it on top of the crate beside the jaw lock and swallows, forming then a resolve that she will stand by for many years to come.

.

Reluctantly, Bella realigns the brace of the lock to her blotted jawline, snaps the contraption closed around her neck, and turns the key.

"I'm sorry," she whispers.

The girl, the nameless girl, gives a short nod of understanding, but the sorrow in her eyes is heavy on them both.

"I'll see you soon. I promise."

Bella knocks three times on the solid metal door and waits for Jasper to open up.

"Have fun?" he asks as the door swings open. She really could poke him with his own knife. If she wanted to. But maybe she should be happy. He's obviously breaking about a hundred Brotherhood rules bringing her down here like this.

"Yes," she says, but stops when she feels a hand close on her shoulder.

She turns and the girl is staring at her, that same weighty sadness interrupted by a flash of something else. She reaches over her shoulder and plucks a long brown feather. A gift, Bella realizes.

Bella tucks it into her shirt pocket, all the while mentally scanning herself. She already left her with a handful of caramels (that made her eyes so wide when she tasted one), a hairbrush, and a thick pair of socks. But it's not quite right. None of this is or even could be, but…

She runs a hand through her hair and rips out a few strands, handing them over with a sheepish grin.

The girl takes them delicately, awed, perhaps more by the gesture, but the wonder in her eyes makes Bella feel warm inside like hot cider in the dead of winter. And as the girl disappears through the closing crack in the door, Bella knows deep in her heart that she will do everything in her power to make this right.

.

.

Waves slam the sharp rocks beyond Levin's Point, rain falls in heavy rivulets, and for Bella Swan, the grey dawn over sleepy Eldensmouth grows ever familiar.

By the end of the first week, Bella is already up and waiting for Jasper by the door when he comes to escort her. She fills a basket with leftovers from the tavern. Charlie thinks she's about to hit a growth spurt, she's taking so much to eat. The kids from the village try to find the place she hides from them having lost the weakest link of their Red Rover chains.

And every morning, she is greeted with the square force of the winged girl's hugs for a few seconds before she pulls away to poke through Bella's basket and her pockets for candies. Bella shares with her what joy she can before Jasper takes her back up to the surface long after the sun rises.

At night, she dreams of strong wings gliding across a powder blue sky. Shine with the sun, disappear over the horizon. Live on forever.