Part 1 - Broken Promises

Isabel Cooper's least favorite way of being woken up in the morning is by being kicked in the stomach.

Unfortunately, that's the way she's been woken up every morning for awhile now.

"Get up, Izzy," and she pries open her swollen eyelids to the harsh, uncaring face of her only living relative. "If you don't get your fuckin lazy arse up you won't get to King's in time for the morning rush," Jordan tells her with hate in his voice.

Isabel winces from the kick that follows, partly from the pain, but mostly from the physical contact, "Don't touch me, Jordy. I'm goin."

The little girl of ten with the skeletal frame slowly uncurls from the pile of rags in the corner where she sleeps and stands on legs that are unsteady and weak from cold, hunger, and abuse.

SMACK "I can touch whoever the fuck I want you little bitch, and I told you NOT to call me Jordy!!" And Isabel is on the ground again, biting back tears and once again wondering where her sweet and caring older brother Jordy went, why he chooses to be Jordan, this brute that hits her and wakes her up with sharp kicks, and, especially, when Jordy will be coming back.

"Sorry, Jordan," She gives in weakly as she makes another attempt at standing. Her brother sneers at her and turns his back. Shirtless, he walks to the couch that Isabel is not allowed to sit on at the other end of the room, and flops down calmly, folding his massive, combat boot clad feet over each other on the arm rest and tucking his thick, tanned arms behind his head of scraggly chestnut hair. The way he's sitting, Isabel can just barely see the strange marks her brother always has on the crooks of his elbows, the ones that make him hit her whenever she's stupid enough to ask about them. He calls over at her with his eyes shut lazily, "Damn right you're sorry. Don't even bother coming back with anything less than a hundred-fifty."

She stands awkwardly in her corner, wanting to ask, but knowing she shouldn't. Jordan cracks one eye and peers over at her, "Why are you still here?"

"Is there anything to eat?" She asks quietly, softly, apprehensively. Twenty-year-old Jordan Cooper laughs cruelly at his baby sister, "Not for you fatso. Get your fuckin arse outta here."

xxXxx

"COOP!! YOUR BITCHY LITTLE WHORE OF A SISTER IS IN MY ROOM!!!" The burly boy with the shaved head and tattoo that scares little eight-year-old Isabel screams loudly as he grabs her arm, crushing and bruising her soft, pale flesh.

"OW!! Don't touch me!" She cries softly, weakly, "Jordy! Help!" Lately, it's been getting harder and harder to get her eighteen-year-old brother to help her keep his scary friends away from her, but she hopes against her past experiences that he will come to her rescue and make this scary boy stop touching her.

"Let her go, Craig. She doesn't like to be touched," The deep voice Isabel called for drawls from the doorway. She is dropped ungracefully onto her back and cries softly as she pulls herself up quickly and scrambles away to shield herself behind Jordy.

But Jordy smells funny. She looks up. He's smoking and has a glazed look on his face. "J-Jordy?" She asks hesitantly. He looks down at her, "Quit calling me that. My name's Jordan."

She cries harder because his name is Jordy. Always has been since for as long as she can remember. "Stop crying you little baby," he scolds as he strolls out of the doorway, "Come on, I gave Craig this room and there's none left. You'll hafta share with me."

He leads her past the hoards of scary people who are smoking, talking, laughing, and sleeping in various parts of their house, only stopping when he reaches his own room.

Jordan gestures toward the corner, "There. Go to sleep and quit bothering us." She tries hard to listen to her brother, because he always seems to know what's best for her, but it's hard to sleep on the floor, that might as well have been a sheet of ice, and she shivers and cries softly to herself for hours.

When she wakes up, Jordy is back and she's no longer on the floor. She's curled in a ball on Jordy's couch and he's gently draping his own blankets over her, whispering soft apologies and promises. She wants to believe him, and so she lets herself, lets his soft voice guide her back into sleep.

xxXxx

"Jordy! Look at this one!" Isabel calls happily to her older brother as she gestures at a dilapidated, but charming old abandoned building, "The sign says condemned, but we should check it out!"

Jordan puts his hand softly onto her shoulder, having to remind himself that her flinch at his touch is involuntary and the fact that she didn't shrink away from him shows that she is trying hard to get over it. He tells her, "I don't know Iz. It doesn't look very safe and it's gotta be condemned for a reason. What if it caves in on you?"

"Ah, you worry too much, Jor. It looks cool," She states softly, the child-like awe in her voice making her brother smile. It's not often that he hears her voice sound like it matches her six-year-old body and it's enough to make him agree to enter the building with her. "Just be careful Iz," He warns sternly, "Or I won't give you any lessons tomorrow."

She sticks out her tongue at him and they scale the chain link fence that surrounds the graffiti-ed structure.

"Holy WOW! This place is humungous! And it doesn't look like there's anything wrong with it besides being dirty," Isabel remarks as she looks around the building in wide-eyed amazement. Jordan laughs, "I think you're right. We've finally found a place of our own." They exchange a quick glance and then both bolt in opposite directions, each trying to be the first to find and claim the best room for his or her own.

They both know that no matter what, Jordy will give his baby sister the best room, the one that's cleanest and least drafty, the one that she likes best, but their game is fun and it's not often that they can just let themselves have fun. The reality of being a pair of underage runaways with no one but each other just doesn't allow it.

"Alright Iz, that one," sixteen-year-old Jordan Cooper instructs his sister over the bustle of voices in King's Cross Station the morning after they found their home, "And remember, be quick, and be gentle, and don't get caught. Any trouble at all, and you just run."

She smiles, "I can do it. I've been practicing! Just like you said!" Jordy smiles back, pride swelling his muscular, but far too lean chest as his sister triumphantly hands him his own wallet.

"Cheeky little brat," He chuckles, bending to give her a kiss on the forehead, "Didn't teach you so that you could rob me."

The girl answers with a bright grin, and her brother commands, "Alright, go on. Let's see what you can do with people that don't trust you as much as I do."

Izzy shoots him one more smirk, then walks casually toward a stocky man in a trench coat. She effortlessly brushes by him, darting her small nimble hand into his pocket while continuing to remain completely unnoticed.

Jordy meets her on the other side of the station to trap her in a hug as she proudly hands over a brown leather wallet to her brother, teasing, "Told ya."

He smiles at her as he pulls the bills out of the wallet and counts them, "I didn't doubt you. Now come on, let's go get some food and some blankets. You were shivering last night, Izzy-baby."

She grins crookedly as she remembers waking up wrapped in Jordy's jacket. Fighting her urge to shrink back when she feels his skin touch hers, she lets him encircle her tiny hand with his own, and replies, "Well, it was cold. Can we get ice cream?"

"You goofy little git," Jordan teases lightly as he drags his sister along beside him, smiling down at her affectionately, "You were just complaining about being cold and now you want ice cream?" He takes a moment to stop and drop the wallet into the lost and found box.

Isabel looks contemplative and then responds, "Oh ya. Well, can we get Chinese food then? I like the fried rice with the carrots that we got from that place by the cinema." Jordan smiles down at his baby sister, "Sure Izzy, whatever you want. You're way too skinny."

xxXxx

"Izzy, what's wrong, baby?" Jordan asks as he crouches down under the hanging coats in the closet under the stairs to find that he was not mistaken when he thought he heard his four-year-old sister's sobs. She has her knees pulled to her chest and is crying into them, her long amber curls encasing her head and doing a bad job at muffling her tiny, pathetic weeping. He crawls in, positioning himself beside Isabel and making an attempt to comfort his baby sister by resting his hand on her back.

She flinches and cries and backs away from him. Fourteen-year-old Jordan Cooper knows that there's something wrong, he's known it for some time. He's known it ever since his normally happy and affectionate sister began acting sullen and stopped allowing him to touch her in any way. That was almost two years ago, when they were taken in by Uncle Richard. At first he thought it was just her way of mourning their parents' deaths, but now he knows better.

"Iz," He coos softly as he moves himself toward the cowering child in the corner. She looks up at him, the tears spilling from her soft brown eyes sparkling in the hall light as they snake their way down her china doll face. "Jordy?" She whispers softly as she sniffles back her tears, "Hi, Jordy."

"Hi, Izzy-baby," he coos softly back as he moves closer, "What s'matter? Why are you crying?" She furiously rubs her enormous eyes with tiny balled fists as she replies in a soft, broken voice, "I'm not crying."

He scoops her miniscule body up from the ground in one fluid movement and holds her on his lap, wrapping his long, lanky arms around her tightly when she begins to struggle and cry softly. Stroking her hair and kissing her head, Jordan asks a question that he already knows the answer to but has been hoping against all the signs that he was imagining it, "Isabel, is somebody hurting you?"

She stops fighting and lays limp as a rag doll in his arms. She takes a few deep, shuddering breaths, and then, with a sharp, heart-wrenching sob, buries her head against his collarbone, and reaches up to encircle his sinewy neck in her tiny arms. Jordan holds her as she cries, hugs her tightly for the first time in a long time, and vows that he will make the one responsible for doing this to his innocent little sister pay. "I'm sorry Izzy," he whispers softly against her neck, "I'm sorry I couldn't protect you, but I promise that no one will ever hurt you again."

He holds her, cradling her against his body and cursing himself for not seeing it sooner, and, after her sobs die down into shallow, trembling breaths, he asks, "Who did it Iz? Tell me and I'll make it all better, I promise."

Isabel's eyes are heavy and for once she doesn't feel the urge to pull away from the touch of another person. She knows that Jordy loves her, he tells her all the time, but he tells her in the good way. Not the way that Uncle Richie tells her, the way that makes her feel bad and dirty all over, the way that means he's about to hurt her and make her do things that she knows are wrong and make her cry.

"U-U-Unc-Unc-HIC-Uncle Ri-Richie," she chokes quietly against her brother and immediately feels his arms tense around her. She starts to cry again. She thinks that Jordy is mad at her. Uncle Richie said that Jordy would be mad at her if he ever found out about their special game, told her that he would think she was a bad little girl for telling. "J-Jordy?" She asks sheepishly as she looks up to search her brother's kind green eyes. He smiles, "Shhh, everything is gonna be ok. Never again. He'll never be able to hurt you ever again. I'll always keep you safe."

Isabel curls tighter to him and asks sleepily, "Promise?" Jordan lazily strokes her hair as he stares out of the closet, resolving at that exact moment what he is going to do, "I promise, Iz. Go to sleep. Everything will be better when you wake up."

Her eyes flutter closed, long lashes coming to a rest on her tear-stained cheeks, and she asks softly, "Will you tell me a story, Jordy? The one about Mommy and Daddy and the fish?"

He smiles softly against her as his own eyes begin to prick with tears, "Sure, baby. Mommy and Daddy took us fishing one day in a little yellow boat called 'Mary-Lou.'" Isabel giggles sleepily, "That's a funny name for a boat."

A tear slips down Jordan's cheek and he has to force himself to keep his voice from hitching as he lets out a sad laugh, and answers, "It sure is. We took Mary-Lou out on a big lake by our house, and we stayed out there all day. We went swimming after we got bored of trying to fish-"

"Was I there?" Isabel cuts him off with the question she always asks whenever he tells a story about their parents, and he tells her softly, "Ya. You were just a little baby, and you had on a pretty green dress that Mommy sewed for you. Daddy liked it best because his favorite color was green. He told you that you looked like a little mermaid in it." She smiles against him.

"We were swimming," Jordy says, "And all of a sudden, Daddy started making funny noises and jumped back in the boat. We all got in after him, but he started jumping around and doing a funny dance. He nearly knocked us all out."

Isabel yawns and comments sleepily, "Oh no." Jordy holds her tighter, "He started wiggling his foot out in front of him and a big, fat fish fell out of his pants." Isabel giggles softly, already starting to slip off to sleep, but Jordy knows that without the last part of her story she won't.

So he continues, "And Mommy picked up the fish and said, 'Well Dan, thanks for putting dinner down your pants.'" Jordy looks down at his sister just in time to watch her quietly sigh herself into sleep with a slight smile playing across her tiny pink lips.

Hours later, Jordy hears the door open from where he sits in the living room with Isabel asleep next to him, their bags on the floor by his feet. He kisses her softly, and strokes her hair one more time as he gets up, just in time to hear Uncle Richard call, "KIDS! I'm home! I've got pizza! And I rented 'The Little Mermaid' for my little Izzy!" Jordy's stomach churns as he turns to face the burly blonde man who's house he's lived in for the past two years.

Uncle Richard sees the bags, "What's going on Jordan?" Jordy glares, "We're leaving."

"You're what?" His uncle asks confusedly as he moves to drop the pizza on the kitchen table. Jordy grits his teeth and conceals the knife behind his arm, "Izzy told me everything." He stops in his track and his shoulders tense visibly.

"Told you what?" He tries to pretend that he doesn't know what Jordy is talking about. It only makes Jordy surer of what he's about to do.

In a few strides, he crosses the room and stands in front of his Uncle Richard. The lanky teenager is tall for his age, but the top of his head still barely even reaches to the man's chest.

"Burn in hell you sick son of a bitch," and, in a twisted way, Jordy feels good as the knife plunges into Uncle Richard's heart, as the crimson hot spray of blood spurts against his face when he pulls it out. So good in fact that he does it again. And again. And again. And again...

xxXxx

"MOM!!!" Twelve-year-old Jordan Cooper screams as he grasps his shaggy chestnut hair in his hands and pulls, "You can't DO this to me!! Why do I have to watch her? Can't you get a babysitter?"

Celeste Cooper finishes putting on her earring, places one final pin in her honey blonde hair, and turns away from the mirror to chastise her son. "Jordy, honey, this isn't a discussion. You have to watch Isabel because Dad and I have to go to this dinner," She says shortly, but still without losing her temper, "Trust me, I would much rather stay home and play with my baby, but I promised your father I'd go this year."

Jordan scowls and stomps his foot, "But Denis' party is tonight! I already said I would go!" Daniel Cooper walks out from the bathroom, trying and failing to tie the bow-tie on his tuxedo as he chuckles, "Well that wasn't too bright, now was it? Celeste, help me out here. I hate these bloody things."

She smiles warmly at her husband, "Honestly, Daniel, a grown man who can't tie his own tie? It's pathetic." Her hands dart up, and gracefully reveal a neat bow seconds later, then dart up just as quickly to make a small adjustment to the lock of dark brown hair that always falls across his forehead and into his warm brown eyes. Dan leans down and kisses his wife softly, "Love you too, Heaven. Jordy, quit being difficult. You're gonna watch Iz for the night and that's it. Maybe if you stop complaining I'll pay you for it. And maybe if you do a good job, we'll even let you throw your own party."

Jordan's face brightens slightly, "Really? You swear?" His father laughs as he crosses the room to scoop his tiny, two-year-old Isabel up from where she had been laid in the midst of the fluffy quilt on the big bed in the master bedroom. "All the time, but never in front of your mother and Iz. It's not polite to swear in front of ladies," Dan remarks as he holds his pretty amber-haired daughter high above his head, smiling despite himself when he hears her bright giggles. He brings her down slowly and kisses her forehead, deeply breathing in the wonderful scent of his baby girl.

"Dan," Celeste calls from the doorway, "You can impart your belief in chivalry later. We have to go or we'll hit traffic." He tucks the little girl under his arm and surveys his wife, nodding approvingly at her very flattering red evening gown as he asks flirtatiously, "Have I mentioned yet that you look simply ravishing, my dear? An absolute vision of loveliness? Quite possibly the most beautiful thing I have ever laid eyes upon? An angel sent from above that I am unworthy of? My own little slice of heaven? A-"

She places her hands on her hips and gives him a look he knows all too well as, 'Shut up, you overly-romantic weirdo,' and he cuts himself off. Grinning impishly, he clears his throat, and says, "Yes, well, um, off we go then."

"Daaaan," Celeste drawls lazily. He answers, "Yes, dear? Are we forgetting anything?" She rolls her eyes, "Yes. You've forgotten to put Iz down."

Dan glances casually down at the little girl who's tucked underneath his arm, who's chewing on one of his cufflinks, and says, "Hmmm, so I have." He swings her out from under his arm, earning a small squeal of delight from the toddler, and hugs her fiercely against his chest as he kisses her wild mane of curls, "Tell me again why I can't take my baby with me?" Jordan laughs, "Because she chews on everything."

Celeste laughs, too, and adds, "And because when she gets bored during your speech, she'll scream instead of just smiling politely like everyone else." She walks over and kisses the baby as she takes her from his arms, "Jeez, Dan, the way you cling to her, you'd think you were the one who carried her for nine bloody months. Say goodbye to Daddy, Iz! Bye-bye!"

"Bye-bye, Daddy!" Isabel yells in her sweet, babyish voice, waving as her mother hands her off to Jordan, giving the both of them soft kisses on the forehead as she does so. "Bye-bye, Izzy-baby," both the parents call back into the room as they link arms and begin to step out. "Love ya, Jor, g'night," Dan tells his son. "Remember, Izzy has to be in bed by eight, and don't give her any candy," Celeste instructs lightly, "Love you, sweethearts!" The two of them disappear down the hall.

"Well, kid," Jordy remarks lazily as he holds the squirming toddler in front of himself, "Looks like it's just you and me for now." She makes a slight gurgling noise, and then starts glancing around the room.

"Daddy? Mommy?" She shrieks in a panic as she starts to cry quietly. Jordy rocks her gently against his chest, "Aw, don't cry, Izzy. They'll be back soon. I promise." It doesn't help soothe her cries and she clings to her brother's neck.

Jordy hugs her tightly back, "Hey Iz, if you stop crying I might let you have a piece of candy." Her disproportionately large head comes out of the crook of his neck, and she rubs her giant eyes as she informs him, "Mommy says no candy." He lightly butts foreheads with the little girl, and smirks as he teases, "But Mommy didn't say anything about ice cream, did she?" A light giggle comes from the girl and the twinkle in her eyes says, 'I love you for breaking rules for me.' The angle of Jordy's smirk changes, turning it from mischievous to affectionate as it replies 'I love you for being my baby sister.'

Jordy is giving Isabel a bath when the doorbell rings. He has to momentarily abandon his efforts of removing the chocolate-with-rainbow-sprinkles goo from the girl's thick, gold-brown curls to take her out of the water and answer it.

"Son," The man in the uniform on the doorstep begins gruffly, going for but not really pulling off 'caring authority figure', "You and your sister are going to have to come with us..."

And the next words change his life, and the life of the little girl wrapped in a Little Mermaid towel under his arm forever, "...There's been an accident..."

xxXxx

Shaking, skeletal Isabel Cooper draws the thin flannel shirt she had to steal from her brother tighter around herself as she wades her way through the unconscious bodies on the floor in the hallway outside Jordan's room. Her brother's friends, and, in some cases, the random strangers that just happened to wander in, sometimes scare Isabel, but mostly, they make her angry.

Jordy had still been Jordy before these people started hanging around and she knows that they're the ones who made him the way he is.

Careful not to wake any of the people, remembering with a shudder what happened the one time she had, the small girl of only ten sets out for a day of work. Nothing about her intention of returning to the condemned building later that night makes sense to anyone but her.

xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

I know what you guys are thinking: 'Another story? Dude, you don't put up enough updates for the ones you already have!' True, but there does happen to be a method to my madness.

A boy I know was killed awhile ago by a drunk driver and I'm really not feeling up to writing. I don't know when I'll feel up to it again but didn't want to leave you guys high and dry, hence the new story. It's one I've already written up to about 12 chapters, so I figure that'll give me plenty of time to deal with... stuff and you guys will still have something to read. I'm sorry but this is like the fifth kid from my valley who's been killed by a drunk and I'm having a hard time with it. I didn't even know him very well, but, for fuck's sake, we played teeball together...

So, anyways, sorry guys. I'll try to keep posting regularly until I can get back into some writing. Thanks for being understanding.

In case you were confused by the timeline, it starts off with her at 10, then goes to 8, 6, 4, 2, and then back to 10.