Official Description: I’ve plucked the line “You’re my brand of heroin” and applied it to an all human universe. No drug use.
Word Count: 49,299
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So I found Mutually Assured Destruction the same way that many people did; I love all of Jandco’s work and was extremely excited to see that she had a new story she was posting. It was something that was going to be very different from her other work but I was still anxious to jump right in.
From the beginning we see that the characters in this story are not necessarily extraordinary. They are average and yet not. There is something that draws them to each other with such a force that they can’t be apart. Not that they don’t want to be, but that it is not a possibility. They are addicted. Anyone that has ever had an addiction or known someone with one, you know that need, that compulsion to have what you are addicted to. For MAD Bella and Edward this addiction is each other. Jandco has managed to translate something that everyone can relate to into something that everyone craves, the desire to have someone so much that it is all you can think about.
As the story progresses, we see Bella and Edward neglecting everything that is not the two of them. Their work suffers, their friends are forgotten, even simple things like taking care of their living space and themselves no longer matter. They have truly become the worst form of addicts and like any addict, they don’t care.
When Edward finally musters the courage to leave, he does so in the hopes that this will be better for them both. He thinks in doing this that they will return to their lives and that they can break this addiction. All it does is break them down. Again it is not that they don’t want to be apart, it is that they CAN’T.
While this story is a bit darker than we are used to seeing from Jandco, it is still the amazing writing and imagery that we have come to love from her. There is something so beautiful in the need these two have for each other. Underneath the addiction theme there is still a basic love story. A story about two people so in love with each other that they cannot and most simply won’t be apart and they don’t care what their friends, family, or society thinks about it. The only thing that matters to them is each other and we can all only hope to find that kind of need and desire of another person.
The title describes itself perfectly. What I love about this story is how Jandco has taken one of the most overused and cliched lines in the Saga and turned it into a story that defies every cliche known. This is the tale of when someone craves the other like literal heroin.
I had this story on my “to read” list for the longest time and when I was told this was on the list, I threw in the towel. I’m not normally one for super angst but this has become of my absolute favorite stories and I can see why it has been deemed one of the classics.
The struggle between Bella trying to maintain her life before Edward, during her relationship and after all tell-tale signs of what an addict goes through at the start of an addiction and the withdrawals. But on some level, isn’t being in a powerful relationship like being on drugs? It’s easy to see the correlations. When we first get into a relationship, don’t we blow off our friends for the new person? Then we try to mix the two together and the person we’re seeing wins out? If your partner ends the relationship, don’t you go through a period of sadness and depression, a withdrawal if you will?
I never thought of relationships this way until reading this story. It’s heartbreaking and beautiful at the same time. I wish I could select passages to illustrate my points but it would be fruitless. I would just have to highlight the entire story. I couldn’t imagine reading this once a week, and I’m so thankful it’s complete because I’ve read this at least three times in the past week and each time I notice something new. She’s got me addicted to this story, but I refuse to say it’s like a drug. Well fuck. I guess I just did.
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