Title: Baby Teeth
Fandom: The Autobiography of Jane Eyre
Rating: PG
Length: 539 words
Content notes: None.
Author notes: under the cut.
Summary: Jane after "The Truth," and before "Departure."

“God’s most deep decree bitter would have me taste: my taste was me.”
Jane covered her eyes, having pulled the car over. She couldn’t breathe from crying.
The betrayal was too deep, a stabbing in her heart, the guilt was a burden, hunching her shoulders, the sadness a blanket tightly wrapped around her.
She was back to feeling so lonely, so unloved, she was, again, just a silly little girl who had not lived the world, who nobody saw kept for long, or saw any worth in - she thought maybe he did, but then why would he have hurt her? How could she expect to be treated better? She was uncreative and lonely and in pain and worth nothing, and that was her daily existence before him. He’s been an illusion, a story of first love and instant families.
She was a little girl, with comforting tea, trinkets, flowers, photos, books and dreams as her only company.
And leaving Adele. "Oh, God, please don’t let her suffer like I have," she prayed. To hurt that little girl more than she already was, to confuse her, was something Jane couldn’t forgive herself for. Adele was just a child, too innocent to understand, too smart and too… alone.
And her, Adele’s mother, his wife, she and her pain. She couldn’t even fathom it. And to feel compassion for her in this moment, and to feel inadequate against her at the same time, was merely one of the conflicting feelings she had.
Jane was back to being nothing. A scared girl who couldn’t understand the world. Who couldn’t tame her heart and her stupidity.
Him, he’d been a mistake, she’s loved an idea. No. She’d loved what she knew. She’d finally felt wanted, she’d felt less alone. Less like a child.
And he’d destroyed her. She loved him now, too. The charm, the acerbic wit, his coldness towards the women in his life all made sense now. It wasn’t right and it wasn't fair. But all of them were in pain. His heart was as broken as hers, she knew. No, his pain was deeper. He’d lost the love of his life. She’d merely lost an idea, a hope.
Had he loved her for that innocence?
She’d wanted to believe so wholeheartedly, she’d shared it with all her viewers, she’d wanted this, she’d wanted it to be real.
She knew she was supposed to be leaving because she was strong, because she deserved better, to fearlessly venture out and learn about the world, but...
The tendrils of longing wrapped around her and burned.
She wanted his touch, his eyes, his love, his company, the tenderness and attention and safety. The trust. To be tied and bound to him. To not be hurting him.
To not be hurting Adele.
She was breaking her heart either way. Staying or leaving, she was betraying herself.
But now she relied on God. He would have wanted her to leave.
But what was God’s lesson here? And in everything? In her entire life? To show her pain and beauty and pain again? To make her inflict it on herself and others? Why? “Bitter would have me taste: my taste was me.”
She stopped. She looked up. There was the bus station.

Author notes: Well, tonight, I betrayed my own heart, and I felt wildly uncreative (I haven't written in so long). And so this piece came out, at 2 a.m., throwing my heart on the slab and ripping it to pieces, forcing me to tear it apart to explore my feelings and Jane's.
Wye Oak's "Civilian" was a big part of it.
Poem by Gerard Manley Hopkins, which starts like this: "I wake and feel the fell of dark, not day. What hours, O what black hours we have spent this night! What sights you, heart, saw; ways you went! And more must, in yet longer light’s delay. With witness I speak this. But where I say hours, I mean years, mean life."