CALL OF THE NIGHT

SUMMARY: In a world where vampires live alongside humans in society, elite covens of the immortals are located all over the world. They are liaisons between the humans and the vampires, representing and upholding their good name as they protect and serve under their jurisdiction. Alice, a meek and mysterious vampire with a shaky past, is suddenly pulled into a world of fighting and darkness; where secrets are plentiful and every choice she makes leads her closer to death.

Alternate universe. Canon couples. Alice-centric. Rated T for strong language in certain chapters.

Letting a light breeze filter in through the window, Carlisle had to keep one hand planted firmly on the edge of the stack of documents he was currently pouring over. Across the room, a potted plant fluttered slightly, it's leaves catching the tail-end of the wind before it dissipated against the walls in his study.

There was a cold front blowing in, promising a chill to fall over not just Northern Pennsylvania, but the entirety of the Northeast region.

It wasn't unusual for the weather to drop in temperature at this time of year. After all, Spring wouldn't yet begin for another week, so the fluctuating temperatures were quite common. And if anyone would ask, Carlisle preferred it that way. Winter always had been his favorite of the seasons. Something about nature shutting down for a period, stripping itself bare to preserve itself through the harsh conditions of the freezing cold, fascinated him.

And the mountains always looked more beautiful when it snowed.

Although it had been a relatively dry winter, he was still holding onto a slight hope that they'd get another snow before the warm weather would come and stay for a time.

Tearing his eyes away from his notes, he leaned back in his chair and closed his eyes, inhaling deeply and letting the fresh scents wash over him. The smell of winter was always preferable to him, too. Scents were sharper, the cool air stifling any overbearing odor. Nearby, a small group of deer were passing through a creek. Idly, he considered taking a small recess and going on a quick hunt. It had been quite some time since he'd gone-and a few days since he'd left his office.

"Carlisle."

Esme's soft call flitted upward and through the window into Carlisle's study.

Well, he mused, it was time for a break anyways.

Dropping his work, a smile creeping onto his face, he made sure to close his window before making his way down the long hallway, down the stairs, and out the back double doors. He found her sitting, cross-legged in the backyard, under a tree. The cherry blossoms wouldn't bloom for a few weeks, it seemed.

As he approached he smiled and took in the peaceful sight before him. The sun was just beginning to set in the west as the wind blew a light breeze through the tree, causing Esme's hair to dance carelessly around her.

Carlisle's smile softened as he sat next to his peaceful wife, taking her hand and kissing her palm. Esme simply closed her eyes and smiled.

"Isn't it beautiful?" She laid her head on his shoulder, her eyes on the tiny daffodil blossom that had just begun to sprout at the tree line.

"Truly, it is." Carlisle wrapped an arm around her and pulled her close. Where Carlisle had always been a winter man, spring belonged to Esme. Nothing overjoyed her more than when her garden was in bloom, warmth breathing life back into her precious blossoms and plants.

They sat in silence for a few minutes, allowing the sun to glitter off of their skin until it disappeared behind the towering trees, the blues and purples of night presenting themselves before the couple's eyes.

Suddenly, Esme giggled softly; the noise barely contained. Carlisle raised an eyebrow.

"What's so funny?" Her laugh transformed into a grin, bright and happy. She leaned forward, kissing him on the nose before leaning in closer to him, resting her head on his shoulder.

"I'm making a trip into town early tomorrow morning," she informed him, grinning.

Carlisle simply stared at her, "Any particular reason?"

"The room besides Jasper's is awfully bare. Needs some furnishing."

The reality was that lots of rooms in the house were bare. When they'd had it built nearly forty years ago Esme had gone a bit overboard with designing the blueprints, making sure there were an adequate number of rooms. There were seven of them at the time, and between them they'd only needed four rooms, but Esme had insisted.

And it was so hard to say no to Esme. So they ended up with four more than necessary.

Carlisle inhaled deeply, resting his head on top of hers. "Are you going to fill up the whole house then?" The rooms had been left bare for decades since there had been no need to fill them. Although the one at the very end of the hall was being halfway used as a giant storage closet.

"No," she shook her head before pulling back and smiling at him, a knowing look in her eye, "Just that one room."

"Why just..." but at her overjoyed expression, his question died on his tongue. He hadn't seen that look in years.

"I know where our next Protector is," she sang, the smile in her words obvious to all who could hear. It was just as he'd suspected.

Although no person would suspect it, Esme Cullen was, without a doubt, perhaps the most talented of all the Protectors. Carlisle was certain that her uncanny sense of simplyknowing things was part of the reason that Aro had tasked her with taking up duty over the entire continent a couple hundred years ago.

A living oracle, he'd called her, eyes wide and full of wonder. After one glance into her mind a few hundred years before, Aro had almost dropped everything—pride included—while asking that she remain in Volterra. Esme had been demure about the entire thing, of course, too humble for her own good, and had turned his offer down to join his guard with grace and tact that Carlisle couldn't help but admire.

But what had been incredible was that she insisted that she was anything but gifted, and even Eleazar had reluctantly agreed. He'd been unable to pinpoint anything special about her, expressing the same shock Carlisle felt when Aro had pleaded with her to stay, insisting that he sensed no extra-ordinary power from her.

Apparently the evidence was there, locked away in her brain for Aro to find. It wasn't foresight, he would always dismiss, even years after Esme left for the Americas, but a remarkable sort of intuition that made her utterly one-of-a-kind.

She had an odd quirk about her. Pieces of information that she couldn't have possibly previously known about or learned of in the traditional way would simply materialize in her head. It wasn't a skill that could be used at will, and it didn't appear often—information only came to her in pieces every few years.

Seemingly, the only consistency with her skill was that she had confidently known the location and identity of the first five original Protectors.

Not even Edward, the literal mind-reader amongst the group, could give Carlisle an explanation for it.

"It's just impossible, impeccable, uncanny knowledge," he had told Carlisle sometime after Rosalie had been recruited. "As if these are things she's always known, but just uncovers at random points."

Aro had thought of her the way a man of belief holds their opinion of a deity. Where she had never commanded respect, she'd been given it anyways. She was no god, but Aro had been prepared to offer up anything to her.

Carlisle had been young, but not as young as Emse had been, when he watched as she'd smiled at the ancient vampire, kind and courteous as always, and instead informed him of her plans to travel to the New World. That had been almost one hundred years before he himself boarded a boat for the Americas with a hope in his heart that she would remember him.

As if a vampire could forget.

Now, the smile dropped from his face completely. "What?" Carlisle was on alert now, pulling back to look her in the eye. "Where?"

Esme laughed again and stood, holding her hands out for him and pulling him easily to his feet.

"A small town in southern Mississippi."

"What's their name? Do they have any abilities? How old-?"

Esme silenced him with a quick peck on the lips.

"Patience dear," she smiled contentedly as she leaned back against the tree, folding her arms. "This one's different."

He laughed, his words dismissive. "Aren't they all?"

Her features hardened and suddenly she was serious. "No. I mean there's something different about this whole thing," she looked away then, frowning. "I can't pinpoint what, but it unnerves me."

"Hey". Carlisle kissed her softly then, running a hand over the side of her face, wordlessly begging her to relax. "You have a bad feeling about this then?" It wouldn't be the first time they'd have difficulty with a recruitment.

"Not about her," Esme shook her head. "I feel good about her. There's something else though. Something I'm not…" she waved a hand in the air, letting her frustrations fly out of her in one calm breath. "That's why I'm saying it's different. Just," another breath of air left her lungs and then suddenly Esme was smiling again, "trust me."

"I trusted you with Bella didn't I? Not to mention Jasper. I'm sure it will be fine."

She rolled her eyes, smile still on her face, "Like I said, she's different." With a final kiss, she stood and turned back toward the house.

"Esme," He watched her retreat, likely to go check on the room that wouldn't be empty for long. "What's her name?"

She turned toward him as she stepped in the doorway.

"Alice." Her smile was wide. "Alice Brandon."

Not wanting to waste any time, Carlisle booked a red eye flight down South, eager to meet the vampire that would become their eighth Protector. As he walked through the small Mississippi airport he tried, as always, to ignore the stares, but it came with the territory. For him, the scrutiny by the watching eyes of the humans was doubled.

Being a vampire did, by default, draw attention; the uneasy feeling that humans had around them was only natural. Most tried to ignore it—it was, after all, simply age-old survival instincts acting up. Though despite the progress that had been made in the past hundred years, there were always the few who kept their distance and stared.

Only now, people weren't staring because of the fact he was a vampire. It was because he was a Protector . One of the few vampires tasked with upholding the good name of their kind in society.

Really the job had changed quite a bit over the years. It had been a much more hands-on duty back when they were new and the world was still adjusting to vampires living out and openly. Things had still been quite… savage back then. But overall it all boiled down to the same thing, despite the age: they were enforcers of the laws and kept peace between both vampires and humans.

They were treated almost like celebrities out in public, though they were more like politicians than anything. Politicians with the ability to stand against an army, if needed. And sometimes, that was needed.

It wasn't an easy job, to say the least.

He walked through the airport with only his small suitcase in hand. When Carlisle had asked Esme how long it would take to retrieve the girl, she only smirked and shrugged. Edwards recruitment had taken ten minutes. Emmett's recruitment had lasted a week.

He just packed the essentials.

"A Protector?" he heard a young man whisper as he passed by.

"Carlisle Cullen," a young woman confirmed.

As he continued walking, he tried to block out all the whispers and comments being made by both the humans and the vampires alike. But as more people began to identify him, the hushed whispers turned to curious comments.

"Why do you think he's here?" a man asked.

"Is that really Carlisle Cullen?" he heard a male vampire ask. The difference between human voices and vampire voices were very easy to pick up on by clarity alone.

He sighed as the flash of someone's camera went off. He knew that within the hour, the whole country would know he was there.

Maybe the entirety of the Americas.

Specifically, their jurisdiction was over both the US as well as Canada. Quite a bit of land area but still a far smaller area than what they'd started out with. When the power was divided up over 200 years ago, the entire continents of North America and South America had been placed under Esme's jurisdiction.

After his first ten years as a Protector, in the late 1800s he and Esme had happily surrendered their authority over Mexico to a coven that resided in Monterrey, and over the years Protectors from dozens of nations took up responsibility for their fellow vampires.

It wasn't simply Carlisle and Esme ensuring the peace amongst their kind; they certainly weren't the only group of Protectors to delegate responsibilities.

Aro and the members of the Volturi took charge over a large portion of Europe. Their approach to the job as liaisons between the human and vampire world was a bit… different , but as peacekeepers they took the job very seriously.

Walking out the doors of the airport before anyone else could snap another picture, Carlisle began to worry again as he recalled his previous call to the Council.

The Council of the Americas, located in Denali, Alaska, was where all the information on every vampire in both North and South America was stored. Dates of birth, dates of change, criminal records, hair color-it was all documented and stored away. Every piece of information on any and every existing vampire this side of the world.

What was now causing Carlisle so much discomfort was his previous conversation with one of the Council members.

Eleazar had left Europe a couple decades after Carlisle, excited and eager to help out his old friend with his new mate, Carmen, but hadn't quite been eager enough to accept his offer to work alongside himself and Esme as a Protector. The Council job had suited him just fine though, and he'd been enjoying a peaceful life up North ever since.

"I don't know, Carlisle," he had said, "maybe she lives in some other part of the country. But not in Mississippi."

Carlisle was skeptical, "Are you sure?"

Eleazar laughed, "I've already checked twice, and there is no record of an Alice Brandon anywhere near there. If I can't find anything I'll have Tanya contact the council of the Austricas though. Maybe you're looking for someone who's gone international."

"Thank you," Carlisle sighed.

An hour after that initial conversation, Eleazar called back and assured Carlisle that no vampire under the name of Alice Brandon existed. Not just in Mississippi or in the Americas, but anywhere in the world.

So now Carlisle knew he was looking for an 'inexistent' vampire in this small Mississippi town. Clenching his teeth he desperately hoped that he wasn't looking for a human; again . They'd already gone through hell, so to speak, after they'd found Bella decades before and realized that she wasn't even a vampire.

That had certainly thrown everyone for a loop—the public outrage against having her turned had been legendary . But ultimately, Bella had decided her own fate and she'd been with them for almost sixty years now. If it came down to it, and this Alice he was to find was still a human, he was sure they'd go through much of the same, but a part of him hoped that it would be easier for them if that were the case.

Esme had made it a point to mention that she was different though, so hopefully that meant different from all of their current counterparts.

He truly didn't think his dead heart could handle another ex-soldier.

Raising his glittering hand to hail a cab, he figured if there were an Alice Brandon in Biloxi, he'd find her.

"Alice!"

A head of short black hair shot up at the sound of her name on her adoptive mother's lips.

Setting the dress she had been working on down-taking extra care not to ruffle the fabric up as she lay it gently on her table-she silently flitted out the room, down the staircase, and behind the counter of the shop.

Two customers stood on the opposite side of the counter; a mother and her son. The woman stood nervously, gripping the straps of the purse slung over her shoulder tightly, eyes flickering around the shop. The moment her hazel eyes fell upon Alice, she flinched, averting her eyes back to the child standing at her side.

Even after all these years, the reactions still made her feel a bit lousy. It wasn't as if Alice could help that she was one of the only vampires in the neighborhood. Or that the human population of this tiny town still silently disapproved of their existence among them.

Quietly, the woman scolded the boy, removing his hand from where he had been fiddling with some hats on a display by the counter.

Josie then emerged out from the back room, a small black suit in one hand, the other wrapped around the black handle of a cane as she hobbled forward.

"There you are, dear," she handed Alice the outfit. "We need this hemmed."

Alice nodded, she had seen the two coming. They were attending a relative's wedding. The suit had finally arrived early this morning, though the pant legs and sleeves had been tailored too long.

"It's a big of an emergency," the woman said uneasily, "we need it by nine-thirty." Alice nodded, she knew this too.

She also knew that in all actuality, they didn't need it until eleven. But she was smart enough not to let them find out she knew. The mother just wanted to be sure the adjustments would be made as early as possible.

Alice glanced at the clock. 7:13 AM.

Josie put a hand on Alice's shoulder. "Two off the jacket sleeves, four off the pant legs," The old woman winked, "work your magic dear."

Alice responded with a soft smile before shooting up the stairs and back into the work room. She quickly began removing the old stitching as she heard the downstairs conversation.

"It'll be done in five minutes." Josie informed them.

"Five minutes?" The woman was skeptical but Josie stood her ground.

"My Alice works faster than any bulking machine out there."

Alice smiled as she finished removing the last of the stitches. Four seconds later, a needle and thread were already prepared.

Alice never fully understood why Josie decided to take her under her wing four decades ago. Yet she was endlessly grateful.

Forty years ago, Alice had been wandering the streets of downtown Biloxi in nothing but an oversized t-shirt in the wee hours of the morning. A vision had carried her there, finally pulling herself out of hiding for the first time in her seven years, all for a reason she hadn't even comprehended.

Josie, not caring that Alice was a dirty nomadic vampire with an alarmingly limited vocabulary, quickly took Alice by the hand and ushered her off of the streets and into her home-turned-business.

Later, when Alice asked why Josie did it, she would always respond with the same answer.

"You were a lost child in desperate need of a home, a mother, and a shower." She always joked. "Who cares that you just so happened to be a vamp?"

The other people in town regarded Alice as an outcast. A vampire being cared for by an elderly human was absolutely unheard of. Not that Josie ever let anything that anyone said about her bother her. She'd already been a bit of an oddball herself: over forty, no husband, no children. "People already talk," she'd told Alice a couple years into her stay, "so let them."

Adding the last couple stitches to her work, she held it up. The mother would be impressed. The boy wouldn't care. He'd slip in the mud on the way to the wedding anyways.

Alice neatly folded the suit yet froze suddenly as a vision clouded her mind:

"The name Alice does ring a bell 'er two," a man smiled, "I don't recall the human's name. Never learn't it. Loud old thing. The vamp though-that's Alice. Doesn't speak much. Seen her once and thought she was a boy 'til someone corrected me a few years later."

"The vamp who lives with the seamstress offa' Spring Way?" Another man inquired.

"Yeah, that's the one. Weird pair, those two. How often you seen an elderly hue take care of a vamp?" He shrugged, "Always struck me as odd but maybe Brandon's her last name."

She then noted a third man, a most recognizable man. A Protector. He shook the other man's hands. "Thank you very much, gentlemen."

Her attention now back where it belonged, Alice stared blankly at the wall while her dead heart sank into her stomach.

Forcing herself to swallow her almost nauseating unease, she stood quickly, the newly hemmed suit still in her grasp. Slowly, even for a human, she began her descent back down to the ground level of the shop.

She knew she shouldn't be so shocked; the Protectors were bound to discover her illegal life one day. And if her first vision had been anything to go by—a scarred face, the smell of burning, an encouragement to kill —she knew that she wasn't going to be able to idly sit by and play with clothes forever.

When Josephine had taken Alice in, she was shocked, albeit confused, when she had no knowledge of any sort of vampire law. Terms such as 'Self-Control Training', 'the Containers', and 'the Protectors' were foreign terms to her mind.

Among the wide array of books that Josie purchased for Alice in her first year, one carried some of the most vital yet terrifying information. The History of Vampires from 1901 til Now . It told Alice of everything she should've known as well as simple facts that were common sense to any normal vampire. But Alice wasn't a normal vampire.

According to The Council, she wasn't even a vampire at all. Being inexistent, she supposed, it came with the territory.

Alice approached the counter, where Josie stood waiting, and quickly handed over the suit. Not wanting to alert Josie of any panic, she pasted a pleasant look and a kind smile on her face.

After their customers paid and departed, the elderly woman huffed an overly-dramatic sigh.

"Well, that's about all the customers we'll see all day, right?" she asked. Alice nodded knowingly.

"Today's going to be a lazy Sunday," she confirmed, deciding that Josie didn't need to know about the other visitor they'd be getting. At least not just yet. If this was truly their last day together, she didn't want it spent with her worrying herself half-to-death.

"In that case," Josie yawned, "I'll be sitting in front of the television if you need me!"

Alice let out a genuine laugh, a slight pulse of pain echoing through her chest, knowing that it was possibly her last. "You always are."

Watching the woman walk away she became overwhelmed with grief. Soon, a Protector would be there, ready to have Alice sent off to be executed due to her illegal existence. She couldn't help but feel guilty as well. How was Josie going to bring in money when she was gone? The shop was her main source of income and she wouldn't be able to run it by herself once Alice was gone. Her arthritis had gotten so bad in the past ten years.

Returning to the upstairs workroom, Alice knew there was nothing that could be done. Picking up the dress she'd been working on previously, she was suddenly determined to live her final day as normally as possible. She knew that sometimes certain visions couldn't be avoided. This was her fate.

Another vision then crept its way into Alice's mind.

Josie gripped the man's hand fearfully with all her might. She was begging him.

"Please, don't take her," her voice was stubborn and weary, "she's done nothing wrong." The Protector stared at her, wide-eyed. "I'm the one that ought to be punished. I—I hid her from you. Take me. Not her."

Returning to the present, Alice continued sewing. She bit her lip and squeezed her eyes shut, holding back the tears she knew would never fall.

Carlisle had been walking around downtown Biloxi for only twenty minutes, yet the word was already out: a Protector was in town.

Humans and vampires alike were taking pictures from afar, trying—yet failing—to be subtle about it. People chatted excitedly over their cell phones to friends and relatives about their proximity to the man.

Before it started to really get out of hand, he knew he needed to bow out, ducking into a shop where he knew at least the humans would stop bugging him. After all, most humans found the vampire-designated 'blood bars' to be highly unappealing.

Entering the shop, Carlisle sighed as he noted the slight vacancy of the small place.

Only two solitary vampires lingered around the booths and tables due to the early morning time. Though vampire blood shops were often open 24-hours, vampires tended to go along with the human feeding times in order to blend more into society.

Trying to stay undetected, Carlisle sat himself in a vacant booth. But as his phone rang, the heads of the other vampires in sight shot toward him.

He frowned. So much for going undetected.

Answering the call, he spoke in a hushed tone.

"Hello?"

"Tuck in your shirt tail, you look messy."

Carlisle bit back a laugh in spite of himself.

"Yes, Rosalie," he couldn't help but grin. "I take it my pictures on TV?"

"Not yet," she admitted. "Just on Twitter. You'll be trending soon."

"What a joy," he said sarcastically. He was glad she wasn't there to watch him roll his eyes. As if he understood what that really meant.

"So what are you doing down there?" She asked, not wasting any time. "The paparazzi aren't the only curious ones," she snipped.

As he realized Esme hadn't told any of them-it was likely she was down in Scranton, shopping to furnish Alice's room-a waiter made his way up to the booth.

"I'll talk to you later, Rosalie." Ending the call he tried not to dwell on the fact that there would be hell to pay for that. No one hung up on Rosalie Lillian Hale-McCarty.

The man approached Carlisle and held out his hand eagerly. "Mr. Carlisle Cullen, sir. It is an honor to have you here," He shook his hand and his grin grew wider, his words graced with a soft southern twinge, "what may I get for you? It's on the house."

Carlisle observed him, as he did with every vampire he came in contact with. The man seemed to be in his mid-thirties, appearance-wise. Dark brown hair fell to his shoulders. He had a prominent jaw and a very slight hinge on his nose.

Thankfully, being trained as a Protector improved your observation skills to help one understand even the most subtle changes in body language-going beyond what was already the standard for vampires' keen eyes-meaning that he knew immediately that the man was more apprehensive than pleased at his presence.

Carlisle smiled. "Thank you for your hospitality," he said politely, "but I'm afraid I'm not thirsty."

The man's smile faltered ever-so-slightly as he stared into Carlisle's bright-gold eyes. "Well," he began, "is there anything I can do y'for?" he spoke, his accent fully noticeable now.

"Well actually," Carlisle thought for barely half a second, "I am trying to locate someone. Do you think you could help?"

The waiters smile fell more as he fidgeted with his hands.

"I'm not too good at knowin' people around here," he shrugged, "I'm kinda new in town. But George might be able to help ya out."

"Whatdaya need, Steve?" he heard a younger male voice call from the kitchen.

"We need yer people-knowin' skills," he spoke back.

As the second man approached, he did so much more calmly than the man, Steve, had done.

George was around two inches taller, jet black hair cropped short, arched eyebrows, thin lips. He carried himself more confidently than Steve, yet when he stopped walking before Carlisle, his stance spoke volumes about his unease at his presence..

George greeted Carlisle with a curt nod of his head, his hands remaining in his pockets. He didn't have to wonder what this vampire was so defensive about; if Carlisle wasn't there for a meal, they likely thought he was there for job purposes.

And sometimes this job could be a bit brutal...

"What can I do ya for?" His accent carried heavily among his words.

"I'm trying to locate someone."

"Vamp er Hue?"

Vampire or Human.

"Vampire."

"Name?" he inquired simply.

"Brandon. Alice Brandon." He raised his eyebrows.

"The name Brandon don't ring no bells," he said as he thought. His face scrunched up in concentration.

"Oh, well. Thank you for your—"

"Well hold on," George held up a hand, "I ain't done." He smiled cockily. "The name Alice does ring a bell 'er two." George's smile fell as he thought harder. "I don't recall the human's name. Never learn't it. Loud old thing. The vamp though-that's Alice. Doesn't speak much. Seen her once and thought she was a boy 'til someone corrected me a few years later."

"The vamp who lives with the seamstress offa' Spring Way?" Steve asked, chiming in.

"Yeah, that's the one. Weird pair, those two," he frowned, "How often you seen an elderly hue take care of a vamp?" He asked Carlisle, almost conversationally, before shrugging. "Always struck me as odd but maybe Brandon's her last name."

Carlisle, now smiling widely, stood and firmly shook both the men's hands, pleased to pieces at how easy it ended up being to find this girl. One step closer.

"Thank you very much, gentlemen."

Grabbing his suitcase, he briskly walked out of the shop, swiftly making his way toward Spring Way, and hopefully closer to Alice Brandon.

Author's Note:

A Twilight fic? Yeah I know. I'm as surprised as you.

Alas. Welcome to the fanfiction that refuses to stay unwritten.

I wrote the first draft of this story-or about the first 40k words of it-back in 2009, nearly ten years ago. It was woefully unedited, poorly written, and explicitly obvious that it was something concocted by a bored sixteen year old, but rereading it last fall, as a grown-ass adult with jobs and bills and thousands of other priorities, I felt like it had to be finished.

I've never been so confident in a story of mine before. And despite not knowing whether an active Twilight fandom even exists online anywhere, I'm eager to start posting this. It's not done in it's entirety yet, but I'm nearly 170k words in, and I haven't slowed down much in the past six months. This thing is a monster-wild and uncontrollable in it's own right-but it's a good one.

*insert apology over the fact that I have multiple neglected WIPs here*

Yes, I know. I'm sorry. I've got a bad brain and it's putting this puppy first. Can't do much about that.

Regular updates won't be posted until later this month (June 2018) but I figured it was time to start now. Bear with me with the changes of details I took artistic liberty with, since there's a few, because everything will fall into place. It is, also, an AU, so no complaining too loudly. I'll just turn up the music on you.

Two more consecutive chapters to follow now, just to get the ball rolling.

Can't wait for y'all to read this.