Chapter 1
Late winter, early spring, she's not sure the exact time frame since the sickness's begun to recede. But breathing becomes a little easier now, each morning she wakes up in a familiar room filled with vibrant blues and greens, not the sterile, icy-cold white of a hospital bed.
The sky outside is still cast low, gray, heavy with the promise of snow, but here and there, glimmers of sunlight shine through a parting of clouds. Warm light upon her pale, disease-flushed skin, upon a weary smile and eyes heavily lidded with medication and the residual dreams of another world. Another world on the tips of her fingers, words woven by a pair of bony hands and a continuously spinning, whirling mind desperate to put those thoughts onto a computer screen.
After all, she prides herself on being a dedicated author who hates to disappoint her fans.
Despite the fog of days spent lying in bed, despite feeling so weak and nauseous she can barely rise, she finds herself itching to meet her self-imposed deadline, with dozens, hundreds, of strangers waiting for her return. Perhaps it's ego, delusion, or both, but the obligation to stick strictly to the schedule she had promised them - and herself - sets her fingers alight, deep into a quiet night and far into a yawning morning.
5k words turned into 10k words, turned into a maddening rush exceeding 15k... 25k words... and beyond. There are moments when she blinks, eyes hazed over and mouth dry, head slumped over her shoulder and the neon glow of the screen illuminating an incredible string of numbers back at her: a collective 580k words in one total work. All written within the span of only 6-8 months.
She'll call it pride, an immense, overwhelming satisfaction for a personal goal she had set for herself. A goal she'll one day see to its end, no matter the toll it'll undoubtedly take on her body--the amount of pain and sacrifice needed for such a monumental, mental task.
After all, this is one of the few things she has control over in her life.
That night, Jordan Tagion sighs from where she lies in bed, a late, late winter chill creeping through the walls of her room, seeping straight into her veins. The steady whirl of the laptop soothes her gradually worsening headache, heat dispersing from her body to rival the heat expelled from an overclocked, overheated fan.
It's nearly 19:00 and she can make out her parents moving around in the kitchen downstairs, but she knows they won't disturb her any time soon--she'd left the dinner table earlier complaining she needed some rest, although that had simply been an excuse to finish up the last chapter of her current ongoing fanfic. And give herself some reprieve from their well-meaning, yet way-too overbearing presence. But after crawling under the covers and booting up her laptop, she'd found herself stuck staring at an empty Google Doc page - page 79 to be exact - wondering why the words which normally came so easy to her... just wouldn't this time around.
The room grows hotter, clumps of her short brown hair pressing sickly against her forehead as she leans back against the bed headboard. Her vision blurs and she closes her eyes. When she opens them again, she decides to take a small break, clicking over to another tab and opening up Ao3. She's greeted by her usual home page and over a dozen unread messages, or rather, read messages she just hasn't had the energy to reply to properly.
It's a bad habit that's become more and more common now, ever since she was admitted back to the hospital a few months ago and discharged only a week ago. Still, she's determined this time around to get to at least half of them, so they don't pile up, and so no one is left waiting too long. Her readers - her fans - must surely be anticipating her replies, no matter how short or artificially fine-tuned they may be.
Jordan skims through the later comments, smiling slightly at the occasional overzealous ones--
'*punches through the fucking door omw to this chapter* WAKING UP AND SEEING A NEW UPDATE SRSLY MADE MY DAY FDJKSUFLADJMFL'
And tilting her head in bewilderment at the occasional off-the-mark theories--
'wait, so does this mean █████ was actually hiding his true colors from █████??? does that mean he was manipulating him all along and didn't actually give a shit about him in the first place??? 😭😭'
And suddenly, as she nears the top, finishing up the latest comment and clicking refresh on her browser, one more comment pops up, flooding her screen with its sheer amount of un-spaced text.
Previously hazy green eyes widen with renewed clarity as Jordan jolts up in bed and leans forward, practically absorbing the strangest message she's ever received on any one of her fics.
'I'm really, really sorry in advance for how weird this comment is going to be, but...'