A/N: Thank you to Mariagoner for supplying this nice, long chapter! I really love this letter formatting since it's a great way to give two POV's at the same time. Hope you all enjoy! :)

1.

Dear Jo:

(--I would call you dearest except I quite feel you would almost definitely and quite painfully hit me--)

How goes the weather in Josephineland? I feel as though it seems loathe to reach into Laurenceville recently, leaving the place's unguarded borders very much wilted as of late. Letters have gone unanswered, notes have gone unreturned, bird-calls have brought forth nothing but feathered vengeance from above, and even the occasional pebble thrown against a window seems to bring nothing forth clearly. Have I, in the terrible, clumsy, ludicrous way I excel at so well, somehow offended you? Do leave word for your boy that this is not the case. The nights are [dark splotches of ink paint the note, before smoothing back to regular words] decidedly less interesting now that I have no friend to relay my entirely artistic agonies to!

Knowing that I may or may suffer your displeasure makes me decidedly cross, dear friend. Please at least let me know if I don't or do!

[dark, crossed out word]

Sincerely,

Laurie

P. S. Will I at least get a response if I climb back into your attic in another fancy dress, husband Beth by my side? Because Jo, I swear, if you don't respond soon, I'll resort to desperate measures. And you know how I get when I really want something. I swear, I'll do it too! With even more facial rouge!

---

2.

Dear Teddy:

(--And it's a good thing you didn't use dearest-- at the least, you can try and be a bit more creative. I think the appellation 'most queerest' fits me far in excess.)

Oh, I've been a brute to neglect you, haven't I? Forgive me, my boy, for being such a foolish boor. I swear, I've become as neglectful as any given father within a romance-- simply plunk a half-empty cask of ale down by my hand and I'll do. I feel terrible for not reaching to you. Only... oh, Teddy, I'm sorry but it feels as though my world has been turned topsy and turvy as of late. It's all gone so top-heavy that everything I thought was panning out seems to be on the verge of flying out of my arms and making a mess or-- or splattering about or possibly--

You see how ridiculous and scatter-brained I've gotten recently? I can't even come up with a decent metaphor for a cooking disaster, which is ridiculous given how much experience I've already had with those. I am absolutely ludicrous as of now because there seems to be so much going on and I simply have not found a way of how to deal with it without absolutely--

Teddy, you would laugh if you could see me but I swear, I am on the verge of losing my mind entirely! Please, please if you care for me at all, as a friend or [further words covered up furiously with quill], please give me a few more days of contemplation. I will speak to you again, I swear it, only just not now.

Please Teddy. I'm not angry at you, not at all. And I will soon speak to you.

Only. I'm sorry, dear, this has nothing to do with you but it's only that for now, I need some room to think about the mess I've recently gotten myself into.

So please give me a little bit of time to think about what's going on. Please. As your friend, confidant and future colleague, I really do beg of you!

Your Friend,

Jo

P. S. You would get a response but it might well be an ungodly shriek up to the rafters and then my father rushing in with his old bayonet. You'd likely end up hurt or-- even worse-- catered to afterward. I thought you looked altogether much too lovely in a dress for your own good!

---

3.

Dear Jo:

All right then. It's been a few days. In fact, it's been more than that-- it's been almost another full week. And I don't want to be, and I don't meant to be, a brute to you, forcing answers from you, taking anything you don't wish to give so soon. No, I don't meant to follow that path. I would never, Jo, force you to do anything you didn't want to. If you want to stop replying at any time, if you need more time--

Only I miss you, Jo. I miss you and I worry. You've never been so silent before and every day, I see your silhouette and nothing more and I worry, surely stupidly, maybe desperately, as to what keeps you from me. If there is anything you need to tell me, Jo, you must know that you can say so honestly. I know that the past few days have not been easy and surely that basilisk of an aunt of yours must have told on the two of us and your parents must be worried about what sort of wicked enticements I may have given you previously. At the least, I know they must be watching you closely and that you may not even have much time to write anymore, may even be too afraid to see me.

However, we are still engaged-- perhaps not formally but as far as they know. Surely you can use this as an excuse to meet me again, even if you have to tell your parents that you are only doing so to [dark blot of ink] to break things off with me. I know we didn't begin this under the best of circumstances, Jo, and if you need a clean break, then I am willing to help you in any way necessary. Even if

[another paragraph begin and is aborted, a shaky hand filling in all the letters until nothing can be seen]

Jo, please don't leave me in the dark as to what is going on now. I need to know. I need to see you. Make whatever excuses you must. I will forgive you entirely.

[an ink blot decorates a past word, and then]

Sincerely,

Laurie

P. S. I've always loved your metaphors and even mixed ones are better than none at all. Fling them with as much wild abandon as you can-- you do so much better when you pay no attention to convention than when you let them paralyze you completely.

---

4.

Dear Teddy:

You shouldn't blame yourself. You are not at fault here. I know I have been the worst and falsest friend in the world as of late, but none of this reflects you. I will try and do better in the future and I swear, should you ever need a friend, a helping hand, a welcoming ear, a confidant, I am here. I am still that girl you met before, no matter what else happens or what different courses we follow, and I swear, whatever else I am, I am not fickle. For you, I can forever be that ridiculous girl who burnt all her dresses and wore only one glove and swore she would be an acting sensation on the stages of New York. For you, I will be constant and I will forever be sincere.

Whatever happens, I am still your friend. And indeed, the same is true for you with me. Outside of my own family, I've never had a better companion, or one who helped me so faithfully!

Only. Only I don't know if we should meet again in person. At least not for a while. Teddy, please, this is no slight. I don't mean to accuse you of anything. Only, every time we do see each other recently, something always happens. Something between my lips and your hands happen and

[a furious obliteration of words begins, trailing out into the next few, barely visible inkings]

And it is because of our friendship that I think it might be better for us to forget of what happened on the day we met Aunt March-- to pretend, even, that it had never occurred. It's too strange otherwise and I don't want you to feel [dark patch of ink, redacted text.]

It complicates too much for us if we keep holding onto that fiction of being engaged, Teddy. I don't want you to feel obligated to me. You deserve better. Neither you nor I-- and especially not you, given what you've already been through-- deserve to be pushed into anything for which we are not ready!

I will see you again, Teddy, I swear. Only I think it might be better if we spend some time apart and let things between us-- cool previously.

Your Friend,

Jo

P. S. Even if I was upset at you, I would have forgotten it when it came to your praise of my metaphors. No compliment on earth could make me so happy!And with that kindness, it's fair, I imagine, you tell you something of what about you I've always [word redacted, crossed out shakily] liked as well. So let me try and be fair here.

Even despite all the ways we differ and flare and grapple with each other furiously, I've never had a better friend in all the world, Teddy. And even if you were to one day turn away from me and to someone better, I doubt I would not be able to find anyone else who could make me laugh so hard or [words crossed out with furious lines.]

You are the finest friend I've ever had. Please don't lose your faith in me entirely.

---

5.

JO:

If ever you've cared for me, if ever you've [word crossed out harshly] been my friend sincerely, keep me in the dark no longer. These few days have been agony and I need to know why you've been keeping us apart, yourself in purdah and myself in purgatory. I cannot stop thinking of you and whatever mad schemes you may be up to, and how you may be tying yourself in ridiculous knots presently. I feel under no obligation to you and if I am tied to you in any way, I am wholly willing. There is no one else in the world who knows me the way you do-- no grandfather, no college chum, no flowery mademoiselle, no maid in waiting-- and certainly no one else who can drive me to distraction so easily! I have told you what I would never had told others in a million years and it is only fair for you to be honest with me now. Your word for mine, your hand in mine-- it's only fair to your boy here.

If you are my friend, if you care for me as much as you say you do, you will be honest with me. Tell me why you keep away from me. Tell me why you have not even let me come to you. Tell me why you've held yourself apart and not even left the house recently. Tell me why you have been sending little Beth to deliver your letters, of all strange and convoluted things!

Jo, if you care in the least, I want you to tell me why I am suddenly such a danger to you. I refuse to believe it's all up to your Aunt-- there must be something of the rebellious girl I [word furiously blotted out] knew in you still. You ought not bend to mere pressure so easily!

--Laurie

P. S.-- I couldn't lose my faith in you even if I wanted to, Jo. By now, it's more than second nature. It's on my skin and in my bones and free flowing in my body. You've infiltrated me now and there's no letting go. There's no medicine that could even hope to possibly uproot you from me.

---

6.

Dear Teddy:

I'm sorry I didn't write back sooner. I've done enough disappointing already and I seem only to be compounding my errors when it comes to your company. It's simply that I wanted to spend some time thinking about this before I replied back to you, and thinking very, very hard. I hardly had the choice to do otherwise when it comes to matters this strange and thorny. And I will try to be as honest and good and sincere as I can, Teddy, I swear I will. I know you want answers from me, just as well as I know that you deserve them completely. And I will try, with every fiber of my being, to give them to you as soon as I can figure out what they are myself.

But that's the difficult part. Because-- and you must forgive me if I'm wrong about this, if I have let my ego and nerve drive me to the point of being self-aggrandizing and ridiculous, if I am being irrepressibly vain and let my own pride in myself take full sway--

I am being an idiot in thinking this and surely you will agree the next time you see my blushing, ridiculous, absolutely mortified face.

Only.

Somehow I don't think I am wrong about this.

Because Teddy-- even if I am wrong-- even if my Aunt's words meant nothing and even dear Bethy's confirmation had been nothing more than a fit of temporary madness--

I think you mean to marry me.

And I'm not sure why that is, exactly.

And even though I hope to God that I'm wrong and everyone around me is as well--

It's between us every time we meet. It's been there for the longest time, and I feel as though all of a sudden, I've discovered it unexpectedly. It's suddenly become something I can't ignore-- not when I have my whole life riding on it because of an offer, not when everyone around me says the same, not when I have all the incentive in the world to run away and none at all to stride forward, to confirm in absolutely.

I think it's been there for a very long time, only you've never told me. I think it's always been there in the way you look at me, the way the light catches your eyes when you smile, and the way you curve your lips toward me. It's there in the way you touch me, in the way you run your fingers through my hair and let me hold your arm when we walk and press your hands to my back, as though to keep me steady. And certainly it was there in your mouth when we met last and you ended up

[The last few words of the sentence are inked out furiously.]

Forgive me. I am a novelist through and through and when I am at a loss for words, I simply pile them on all the more eagerly.

It all points to one thing even though reality-- everything about our reality-- should point to another and Teddy, I'm just-- I am so hopelessly confused as to what's going on that I could practically collapse into a fainting couch hard enough to make you laugh at me endlessly!

So if-- especially if-- you think I'm a hopeless, naive, ridiculous dolt who's merely succumbed to some sort of cabin fever and made up a mad love story to star in despite the fact that she's doomed to be a spinster-- you ought to tell me. Because for the last few weeks, I've been tearing my hair out with the most outlandish fantasies possible and I need you to be the friend that you are and bring me back down to earth. Teddy, I need you to tell me that I'm wrong and everyone else is wrong and that what I thought I saw was just a mirage, just a half-done fantasy. And even though I'm so ashamed about my own thoughts that I don't even know if I'll eventually leave this note in our usual spot for you to see, I need your honest as I've never had before, over and above anything.

Teddy, please tell me I'm simply being an idiot with all my preposterous suppositions about claiming you, heart and hand. Please tell me I'm merely imagining something grand where you were only having a spot of fun, kissing an old friend merely to make sure that she didn't die without a boy having pecked her lips once in yesteryear.

I know I've made a ridiculous and unnecessary mess of things due to my own cowardice and nothing more, dear friend, but I know you can help me clean up the mess as quickly as you please.

Surely we could go back to rearranging the world in a way that makes sense currently?

Your Friend,

Jo

P. S. You make me sound like a venereal disease! That is not exactly the most polite comparison to make currently!

---

7.

Queerest Jo:

You imagine nothing. You've always had the clearest eyes in all the world and if I could, I would see everything through them, see all the hidden prisms and metaphors and poetry that have already eluded me in all that I've pass through already.

Tomorrow night, I'll wait for you by our old oak. Please come and see me in person.

Yours,

Laurie

---

8.

Teddy:

I can't. I couldn't. I'm sorry. I know I am the basest and cruelest coward but I'm sorry. I couldn't see you and say no directly so even if it is the height of cruelty to refuse through this medium, I must. I can't. Not now and not ever again. I'm sorry.

You deserve better and one day, I'm sure, you will realize it and even thank me for it completely.

And even if I am cruel, I will never cease to be:

Your Friend,

Jo

---

9.

Jo:

I waited for you. I'll keep waiting for you. Every night by our old oak tree, the one you let me chase you around a thousand times before. I haven't caught you yet but who knows? Perhaps one day you'll catch me.

I don't deserve any better and even if I did, I would reject it in your favor with every breath in my being. I may only be barely past my own adolescent years but if there's one thing I've learned about love from my own heritage, it is that it's always less about what you deserve than what you win and what you fight for.

And I'll fight for you, here and now. I'll fight for you because I think that if you truly understood why I love you, you'd fight for me too. All I want now is the chance to see you again, to explain the how and the why of my affection directly to you. And if afterward you would tell me no from those very same lips, Jo, then I would forever abandon my pursuit and let all the world fall away from me.

If you don't love me, if you want nothing of me, then I at least want you to say so directly. It's the least you can do.

Your Faithfully,

Laurie

P. S. It's not a change. It's a continuation of what was long happening.

---

10.

Dear Teddy:

You are being absolutely ludicrous, did you know that? Absolutely ludicrous and out of your mind with the most bewildering of all possible planning! How can you want to do this? What on earth are you planning? Can you imagine us, years into the future, actually being married? I suppose my absolute lack of any sort of domestic skills will be the toast of your future social circle and all that time spent entertaining and worrying about fitting in will make me a brilliant novelist eventually.

We would be miserable together and I know you realize it as well as I do. You need someone polished in your life-- someone beautiful and refined and calm and charming, someone who wouldn't make you a laughing stock in front of your grand circle in later years. And I want-- I need-- room to grow as a writer, my independence, some experience, some time

[the rest of the paragraph is left blank, as though abandoned hastily]

What can you be thinking? How can you ask me turn you down knowing that [words inked out darkly, with the rest of the script proceeding shakily] this is for the best, that I don't want to hurt you, only show you that if we were together, maybe we could be happy for awhile but after that, Teddy--

Afterwards, we would be miserable. And a few years of loving each other, of being in each other's lives completely, wouldn't be worth it. We are far better as friends than anything else, Teddy.

No matter what else you might say. And no matter what else I may feel.

Your Friend,

Jo

P. S. You don't mean that. You can't mean that. Everything would alter completely.

---

11.

Dearest Jo:

I've praised your vision before, haven't I? In which case, I take it back because as wonderful as you are and as keen as you can be, sometimes you can be the blindest person I've ever had the pleasure to meet.

What in the world made you think in the first place that something as boring as mere domestic skills could come to enchant me and make me happy in my later years? I won't not even deign to speak of the topic of physical beauty-- I've never found good looks very interesting and I don't care whether or not other people think you are pretty-- but I'm nearly offended that you thought some rudimentary ability to plan proper dinner parties would be enough to recommend a wife to me. You seem to believe that I want nothing more than the life my grandfather led: to be trapped in an inert marriage to a woman other people would approve of, to waste my life away laboring over numbers that say so much less than musical notation, to wake up every day knowing that everything shall be all the same and all the wonder has already drained away and I will be a gray man with gray hair and a gray face, wondering where my youth went and if anything of interest shall happen to me.

I don't want to be the man my grandfather is, although I know now that it would kill him if I was another disappointment. When my father ran away with my mother, it nearly brought about his death; I can't hurt the old man any further knowing this.

But that doesn't mean I want to be him, Jo. That doesn't mean I want to follow exactly in his rigid footsteps.

I love you. Now that you know it, I find I can confess it without needing to blank it out any more in my letters, hoping not to scare. I love you. And I love you. And I love you. So much so that my hand trembles as I finally pen these words without needing to resort to ruse. I want to live with you and I want to die with you and I want to everything with you-- and this is not despite but because of the fact that you have absolutely nothing conventional in or about you.

I will do some of the things my grandfather wants me to do. I will graduate from his choice of school. I will go to Europe and I will settle in London for a time and I will learn about his business, as he has begged me to. I will be a proper Mr. Laurence and at least until I know I have no more chances at disappointing him, I will do my best to play a part that suits me ill.

But I want what my parents had as well, Jo. I want their love and their laughter and their way of going on in a world that had little or no use for them.

I've never really spoken to you about them, I know. I've never trusted myself to. There are some days when I feel as though they've become little more than a blur to me, little more than a ghostly pair of faces in my memory, backed up by my grandfather's assertions that my Italian mother-- the woman who stole my father away, the woman who convinced him to stray from the ancestral home and the age-old destiny-- was also the death of his only son, the boy he had loved and who had left him. And I doubt you know any more of the story than the blurred outlines: the couple in love, the man who ran away, the child that was reclaimed after they wasted away artistically.

There was so much more to them than that, though. They were young and ridiculous and feckless and impudent and wanted nothing to do with polite society.

More than anything, they taught me to look beyond the circumscribed boundaries of the world for much better things.

I wish you could have met my mother. She would have loved you completely. She had the most curled hair in the world, and refused to powder her face or put on rouge and always held me by the hand, even when I protesting at being too much a man for such things. She was an indifferent cook and an even worse house-keeper and if I play the piano now, it is partly for the sake of her memory. She would have hated to know that I had given up on what made me happy merely for the sake of the rest of the world. She would have thought it a betrayal of everything she had been teaching me.

I wish you could have met my father. He would have adored you as well, and just as ferociously. He hated mathematics and thought business was rubbish and taught me how to put on a proper tie, and how to make the perfect escape if I needed to leave someone's thoroughly irritating side, and you would have been the daughter he had never had. He would have loved to help you put our your plays and been happy to be drunkard, pirate or even maid. He thought the world put too many divisions between the proper and the pure. Your writing would have delighted him completely.

You thought I was a captive when you first met me and you weren't wrong. My chains are with me now but they are invisible; I think only you can set me free.

I love you, Jo, and I want to marry you. I know I cannot except a yes now-- not when you have so much else in the world to confront already. But tell me, at least, if I have a glimmer of hope in the future; tell me if I truly do deceive myself into believe you could, someday far from now, love me in a way that goes beyond mere friendship and into the spirit of matrimony. Because if you do not care-- if you are indifferent rather than afraid-- then let me know.

I love you and I always will. But I can accept the inevitable, if that is as you will to me.

Yours,

Laurie

---

12.

Dearest Teddy:

I'm sorry for not seeing you, and for not writing. I'm sorry for neglecting you for another week. It's strange to know that even though I am meant to be the writer between the two of us, your words seem to currently outstrip mine in length, eloquence and honesty. I have been reading and re-reading your last letter for the past few days, mining it for words of wisdom, looking desperately for understanding. I don't know if I can reach it just yet but at the least, I can do my best to be the friend you need me to be.

A few weeks back, Teddy, my Aunt March asked me to come to Europe with her as a companion, at least as much because she wants the two of us to part as anything. She told me that she will pay for my passage, and that Amy will come as well so I wil not always be tied to her beck and heel. She told me she would take me to England and Italy and France and Spain, all the countries I wanted to see. She told me she would let me write up a storm as much as I liked, as long as I obeyed her by coming down to a few society functions and 'trying (these are her words) not to disgrace myself constantly.'

She told me she loved me as the irascible, temperamental, irritating daughter that she had never had, and that she wanted me to avoid all the mistakes she had made previously.

She told me that after her death, she wanted to leave me Plumfield, so I could be my own woman even if no one else wanted me to.

She told me she wanted me to see more of the world before I tied myself to anything-- or anybody.

She told me she had a price for all that she was willing to do, and that I must listen carefully.

She told me that I wasn't to marry you yet, and that I ought to give you leave to see other women before we ended up together out of general impetuousness and made each other unhappy. And I think she was right to tell me so, even though I know you would never consciously lie to me.

I think I want to take her up on her offer. I think I ought to do as she tells me.

But this isn't because I don't-- care for you. To be honest, Teddy, I don't know precisely what I feel toward you. I don't know what moves in me when I think of your smile or your laugh or your solemn sighs, the way you kissed me and tumbled me in your arms before my aunt interfered. Whatever I feel, it's not indifference. It's not and I don't think it could ever be.

It's just that I'm not ready for what you're ready for, and I don't want to break your heart or give you false hope. I don't know when I'll be ready to say yes to you. I may never be. I don't know if I'll ever even want to marry. I don't know if I'll be happier being my own woman rather than anyone else's. I don't know if I could ever fit into the glittering world you'll enter sooner or later, even if you don't mean to here.

I need you to give me time, Teddy, and some space. To understand who I am and to understand who I need to be.

But even given all that-- one day, in Europe or in Massachusetts or in New York or the wilds of Egypt-- one day, I hope we'll find each other again and come to a conclusion about what ought to happen.

And who knows? Perhaps I shall shock you completely by one day-- when I am a famous, important, even iconic writer of many upon many upon many classics-- getting down on my knee to do all the proposing.

But until then-- the next move is yours. Given all that I've just confessed, do you even still wish to see me?

Your Friend Forever,

Jo

---

13.

Dearest Josephine:

Forgive me if I hands tremble as I write this-- it's either from nerves or from the certain knowledge that the next time we meet might well find me in physical agony from using this greeting. I know you've warned me before but I cannot repress it, any more than I can repress the idiot smile that takes over my face very time I think of you.

Of course I want to see you, just as much as I will follow every wish you ever so much as whisper to me. If you want to go to Europe, if you want to become a better writer, if you want to take your aunt's challenge on and find yourself in another land--

Of course I would be happy to see you do all of the above and more, you adorable, ludicrous, magnificent little thing! Of course I would-- not just because I love you but because I want to see you happy as well. Wanting to be with you, and measuring my life through you, doesn't also mean that I want to own you, or keep you chained, or lock you into something purely because you feel you have no alternative not to.

I want you to do what makes you happy and if keeping my distance for a few months would accomplish that, I would be happy to. But if I am to do precisely as you want me to, I have my price as well. I want to see you one last time before you leave on your grand European adventure, before I see you again and find some way to make you chase me, as you already promised to.

I want to see you so that I can tell you that no wife of mine would ever be one without a good and honest livelihood, so you had better sharpen your literary skills before the masses before I even think of properly saying a yes to you.

I want to see you so I can tell you to go to Europe and to meet me there and to have all the experiences you need so that when we meet again, you'll know enough of the world to know whether to propose straight off, or dither a bit like you usually do.

So for the next week, I'll be waiting every day from eight to nine by moonlight at our old oak.

Come see me so I can shake some sense into you.

Come see me so I can tell you in person that I love you.

Come see me so I can hold you one last time, and kiss good luck into you.

Come see me so that you know that I'll be waiting, and I have all the patience in the world when it comes to a girl like you.

Love,

Completely,

Absolutely,

Utterly,

And Ridiculously,

(I may as well write all my endearments while I still have the chance),

Your Forever Faithful Laurie

P. S. I'm giving you a deadline of a week. Otherwise, come hell or high water, I shall storm the battalions of Josephineland with more than a gallon of rouge!

---

14.

Dear Laurie:

(Be prepared to duck during our next meeting!)

Tomorrow night, by moon-light, at the old oak. You may be hopelessly presumptuous, my boy, but you deserve at least a throttle in person for waiting for me so long. You are either the most patient or most blinkered person I have ever met, I swear to you.

Yours,

Jo

P. S. Go ahead with the application. You look fair enough with some color that it couldn't hurt your chances much, to tell the truth.

---