My Favourite Review So Far...Chapter 52.

dear koko,

i have properly prepared myself for this chapter over the past week by rereading from chapter...10? to chapter 30. just when i had a moment and i was hanging around on the internet, i'd read some here or there. annnd so i'm very refreshed on what's been going on pre-hospital days. and i just wanted to mention something before i review ch 52:

"Jazz, you know everything's going to be alright, don't you? In the end?" ch 12. alice.

okay, so, traditionally, alice just KNOWS things. she might not be able to see the future in tmh, but she's had feelings every time jasper has been close to feeling worse than usual. she knew something was up when she left for london and she knew something was up recently because she went to carlisle. which, i discovered in another earlier chapter, jasper telling her to just 'tell him the truth' regarding why jasper hadn't been around when he had gone to pete's memorial service. so i felt a bit more connected to her then, realizing that she might have found the courage to go to carlisle with that thought in mind... that jasper hadn't wanted her to lie for him back then and he wouldn't want her to, now, if she suspected something was up.

...anyway. what i'm getting at is in chapter 12 AND in another chapter back there when things were a little better [amazingly], alice reassures jasper that things will be okay in the end. i forget where it was mentioned a second time, but it WAS. it was there two whole times. she reassures him that in the end, things will be okay. now, i understand that can be interpreted in more than one way. i mean, let's be real, maybe the only way he can be okay in the end is to die and go be with peter and finally be at peace...

but that doesn't leave alice 'okay' and jasper wouldn't ever do anything that would hurt alice. i think that he'll hold on for her. even if she tells him it's okay to do what he needs to do, even if it means dying, i really really don't think that he would do that to her. he knows it'd kill her, too, and he wouldn't DO that. he wouldn't just die, even if she said he could. and she wouldn't give up on him, just as he won't give up on her. so... yeah. i am throwing chapter 12 at you and saying that that quote by alice gives me hope that even though times are dark and getting darker, things WILL be okay in the end! because alice said so and alice knows these things.

so while that is my optimistic side, believing that those two are too full of good and hope and love to deserve such a fate where they are separated, i won't lie: i'm so worried and upset and scared.

i don't really know where to start with reviewing. like, i'm too shaken and disturbed by this chapter to really form a coherent thought and to read between the lines and interpret and shit so... i think i'm going to pick out parts that stood out to me and try to go from there!

"...there had been something different about him when he'd said goodbye..I couldn't quite decipher..the look in his eyes had been heartbreaking..so utterly lost, as though he couldn't understand what he was feeling either." -this kills me. if i were alice, i would've connected that back to when she was leaving for london. same type of disconnect and lost-ness..he's so..just..not well. i don't know! i wish i could say something more interesting about it, but i think it speaks for itself.

"Jasper had been far from fine the previous evening. He'd barely strung a sentence together before he'd passed out on me." -it's weird how we know something isn't right, but we're just hoping so much that we're wrong, so we don't really do anything about it until it becomes very apparent that we're right or until it's too late.

"The room was empty. jasper's things were still there but the bed was gone, and so was he." -she wasn't freaking out enough already, but now to go to his room and see that he's not there..my first thought would be that he had died. we don't get to hear alice's thoughts right then and i liked that because it was like she was too shocked to think ANYthing at all.

i love that she takes the stairs..waiting for the elevator is way too long of a wait. and it puts too much faith into machinery when she could just walk herself up the stairs to him with her own two feet. i'm pretending that that's symbolic of what's going to happen and that in the end, though the machines/medicine helped jasper, it'll be the 'real'-ness of alice and of their love that saves him. magically, of course. [you should probably know now that if this does have a sad ending, i'll be in CRAZY denial for quite some time...fair warning ;)]

i think what really stands out throughout this chapter is just ALICE and how much dread she's feeling. the whole chapter is so full of descriptions of how utterly terrified and worried she is. she realizes at the end that she's behaving a lot like jasper does and she wonders if this is how he feels mostly all the time... which is heartbreaking in and of itself, but it's also a testament to the way that the two of them really are PART of each other.

but yes, i think you did an amazing job conveying how scared she is, but she also comes across as very strong. she wants to know what's going on with him and she wants to be strong for him and that keeps her going. even though she's probably way past a breaking point, she still does her best to just BE there for him and we can clearly see how hard all of this is on her, but she is definitely NOT weak. i just hope she can be strong enough for both of them..like i said above, they're part of each other and if alice is hurting, jasper knows it, just as alice is in pain by how much pain jasper is in. such a strong connection to one another..and you do such a good job showing it...

and i'm with alice..i have no clue what's going on with the medical jargon, but we can all sense it's bad.

"Despite the prior warning, the dim, unfamiliar room still took me by surprise. Jasper never closed his blinds. Even at home, he could never relax if he couldn't see the outside...an eerie darkness. It felt foreboding to me and it made feel dizzy."-it IS foreboding. i see it as the darkness in jasper's life. kind of like she's physically entering his mind. while before, he always had a window open to see outside and have some escape, now he's closed off and literally 'in a dark place' but it's more than that. it's like this is what the haunted part of him is like and right now, with all of his defenses down, it's creeping in and taking over. he has no escape from it because he's not strong enough to fight it. i know that the lights are off because it hurts him because he's sensitive to light right now, with his headache and fever and everything, but i definitely see this set up as so much more than just a dark room. it's a really dark side of HIM and i hope that now that there's no natural light coming from the window, no 'escape' into something else... that alice can be that 'light' and ground him when he starts to get really lost inside of himself and in the pain of it all.

hmm. they're trying to keep jasper from going into shock, but i think rachel is right to watch alice, too, and try to make sure she had food and some water to steady her. it's a LOT for alice to take in. i'm glad that rachel tried to help her a bit, at least.

when she goes back in, jasper has moved and is on his back with his arms at his side. which is a creepy image to me because it makes me think of lying in a coffin and i HATE that image of him there. so i'm ignoring that connection. but alsooo he's lying in a way that is less defensive. it's almost like he senses alice is there and wants to be more open to her, subconsciously. but that could also be my wishful thinking stretching things to be more optimistic than they really are. he might've just been uncomfortable the other way and happened to shift. i read way into things sometimes, as you know!

...i'm so glad edward is staying there too. he can be there if jasper needs him medically, but can also support alice, too. which she needs right now.

jasper is physically trembling because he's in so much pain and he tells edward to PLEASE give him the morphine. that's probably the most scary part of all of this because we're so familiar with how against medicine he is-especially morphine. so he's willing to risk losing a bit of his mind-his self-which is the scariest thing for him..just to stop feeling the physical pain. that is BAD. and really, really scary. i mean, i'm glad he's letting them give him medicine and help him and kind of think for him at the moment, but..it's really bad :-\

and it broke me when he talked to her and told her he didn't want her to drive in the rain, but knew he shouldn't be thinking that. i know high fever can mess with your brain..i'm wondering if the last thing he really remembers, other than the pain and being sick, is worrying about her coming home in the rain. which is adorable, because it's about her, but..when that was happening, he knew then that something was seriously wrong. and i guess we were kind of being led into thinking that it would be something happening to alice, because his worry was projecting onto her being away, but it was really him maybe feeling that something was seriously wrong with him. again, they're so connected that he couldn't determine if what he was feeling was something wrong with him or with her. they're just like..two parts of the same soul. so deeply connected. i'm not sure alice can exist without jasper being alive in the world and vice versa, so..he needs to get better some day =(.

love how alice takes control at the end. says to let rose in and then the two who probably love him the most sit together with him.

"..I knew this time, it wouldn't be enough." alice canNOT give up hope on him though!

i'm out of space. thanks for the gloom. you're too good at this!


Many Thanks to Lucy Alyce for the awesome review. She makes my day every time I post.


صديقي الحلو

Teaser... Chapter 52.

Alice POV

After stopping briefly at the house to get changed, I made my way to the gallery. Despite Jasper’s request, I tended to spend as little time at home as possible. The house was unbearably lonely without his presence and I avoided it as much as I could.

There were some things I needed to get done before he came home, though. Nothing major, just things I knew would bug him. Like the light bulb in the living room. It had been out for a few weeks but I knew if I didn’t change it before he got home, I’d find him doing it himself before long.

Carlisle’s main worry about releasing Jasper was him behaving himself, and I understood his concerns. Jasper and I had lived together long enough for me to know he couldn’t be stopped if he wanted to do something and I didn’t want to be the one trying to stop him. I wanted to take care of him...I needed to do that, but I didn’t want to police him. All I could do was ask him to look after himself and hope that he did.

It was the same tussle we’d been having since we met and it wasn’t something I could ever see changing. The thought made me smile as I opened the door to my office. It was just Jasper, and I wouldn’t change him for the world.

Resisting the urge to return to the hospital too early, I buried myself in long overdue paperwork. The gallery had been so far down my list of priorities over the last few weeks, the mountain of admin I had was overwhelming. It took me the best part of the afternoon to wade through it. 

It was past four o’clock when Brady appeared, the cordless phone from reception clutched tightly in his hand.

I glanced around the office when I saw it, wondering why I hadn’t heard the phone on my desk ring. The mystery was solved when I finally located it, unplugged and broken on the shelf above me. When had that happened? Exhaling crossly, I turned back to Brady.

My whole body froze when I saw his expression. “Brady? What’s the matter?”

Brady swallowed and held out the phone to me. “I’m not sure, it’s the hospital, they want to talk to you.”

Snatching the phone quickly, I pressed it to my ear. “Hello?” 

Happy Friday, Take My Hand Readers...

Hey, guys.

I've received an unprecedented number of death threats since Saturday's update. I wish I could say this blog post was to reassure you nothing bad is going to happen to Jasper...but it's not.

Instead, I'm just announcing the arrival of two new characters in the foreseeable future of Take My Hand. As ever, they are two undeveloped characters from the saga. Like Jasper, these two characters have so much scope for me to make them my own.

I'm not going to give them away, I'll let their arrival speak for itself, but I am open to guesses...

Who do you think is coming?

Koko.

Just some information.

Just to let you all know, all my work is now licensed under the http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/

Please click this link for further details, but, basically, it means don't go pinching my shit...it belongs to me so write your own!

That means no translating, reposting or anything without my permission. If you do post my work on your websites, blogs etc...you must link the story to me, not yourselves.

I don't think I know anyone who would actually want to claim credit for my rambling rubbish but there are some strange people out there!

Koko.

Ben Howard - Keep Your Head Up

Hey, guys.

It's been a while since I blogged. Mainly because I was too busy drooling over the All Roads banner and too absorbed by it to want to replace it at the top of my blog. However, we are about to enter a new phase of Take My Hand and I wanted you all to have this song ready for when it began.

This song always makes me think of Jasper...especially TMH Jasper. As the next few chapters unfold you'll see why.

The next...9 or so chapters are going to be really hard and as I've not finished writing the story yet, I can't guarantee a happy ending. In moments of doubt, sing Jasper this song and hope he listens.

Until next time...

Koko.