Hi guys! Gosh, it's been a long time since I've posted a fanfic on here. Sorry to any of you who've read my other stories and are awaiting updates; hopefully this fic will help cure me of my writers' block and get me back to writing regularly :)

Speaking of this fic, this is my first foray into the relatively new and brilliant pairing of Karley! I confess that as Glee hasn't aired here in the UK yet, I haven't seen much of this season, but these two have captured my interest & have tried to keep up with all their interactions via clips :) I know that some people have described Kitty and Marley as Faberry 2.0 and while I see the similarities, it's worth noting that there are significant differences which set them apart as characters in their own right and make them great :)

The fanfiction community for these two is slowly growing and I have to appluad you guys, some of the stories on here so far are fantastic! I even ended up making a community for the pairing to collect it all together, though that's relatively easy to do anyway seeing as almost all fics about Kitty are Karley-related lol. Great job to all!

Anyway, I'll stop with my rambling now lol and let you guys get on with the story. I hope that you like it! :)

[UPDATE 11/01/13 - having now seen the first few episodes of season four, I've realised that the timing in these early chapters is a bit out of sync because this is set several weeks after New Directions hitting rock bottom due to the lip-sync drama, but nothing's happened between Jake & Marley yet. Therefore I guess the best explanation is that I've shifted the beginnings of Jarley to a few weeks later than when they actually happened in the show. Sorry about that!]


Not for the first time in her life, Marley Rose was exceptionally confused.

Everything about William McKinley High School strained her mind; she was sure that half of the teachers shouldn't be allowed to be within ten feet of children, let alone work with them (Coach Sylvester and Ms Castle being just two examples, though the former seemed perfectly docile when it came to her own child), while most of the students looked like they'd all been lifted from some national register of teenage stereotypes. The hallway culture of slushie warfare was ruthless to the extreme, something Marley had already garnered considerable experience of considering that she'd only been at the school for a couple of months.

Being unpopular was something that Marley was largely familiar with from her last school, but at McKinley everything was made so much more personal. The usual bullying for simply being a 'loser' was bad enough, but the taunts about her mother made it difficult to bear. Coupled with the fact that Marley had always been insecure about her own weight, she was struggling to maintain the positive, optimistic outlook on life which had always got her through bad times before.

In fact, the way that the bullying was personally affecting Marley was another thing that confused her. Because when she really thought hard about it, she'd come to the conclusion that while the jeers and insults from the jocks and cheerleaders were hurtful, she'd always been able to turn the other cheek. Her mom had many a time assured her that bullies only lashed out at her as they did because they were lacking in the maturity to do otherwise; at the end of the day if they didn't 'get' her then it was their loss, and she needn't let them get to her because she knew one day, when she was a radio singer warbling her way to success, none of what they'd said to tear her down would count for anything. She'd even admitted to herself that she felt more able to be herself here than she ever had anywhere else, where she'd always fought so hard to be what people wanted her to be.

Why, then, was it affecting her so much this time? Why was she feeling so insecure and crying herself to sleep more often than she'd like to admit, even to her mom? After much pondering on the subject, Marley had identified one person who, despite all the slushies and the name-calling, she for some reason still valued the opinion of; someone she wanted to impress despite the vicious nature of the girl's verbal attacks on her confidence.

Like nearly everything else in this town, Kitty Wilde confused her. Because for some inexplicable reason, Marley wanted to know the other girl; she listened carefully to the blonde and took every harsh word to heart. She knew that she should be resenting Kitty for the way she treated her and be shutting out the comments about her weight, but instead she valued them. Once again, this confused her, but that wasn't the only thing that she'd noticed about the HBIC cheerleader.

Is it weird to feel worse for Kitty than I do for myself? Marley wondered. She hated the fact that the other girl felt the need to be mean to be popular; the possibility that Kitty was simply a nasty person had never crossed her mind, she was so sure that there was something else influencing the other girl's behaviour. She saw it in Kitty's eyes every time she slushied or insulted her; a mask of cold indifference which, to Marley, screamed that there must be a much less confident or otherwise more human Kitty underneath. She'd glimpsed looks of regret or sadness when the cheerleader thought no-one was looking, and apart from herself Marley was sure that no-one was. Kitty was surrounded by a hierarchy of bitchy cheerleaders and Neanderthal jocks who couldn't be bothered to spot the angel flailing desperately for help in their midst.

Every cruel word that Kitty said still hurt her, but more because it put yet another boundary down between them – one she would have to struggle to overcome if she were ever to achieve friendship with the other girl – than because of the words themselves. And yet Marley still believed every jibe Kitty offered at her weight or her looks; she still took them as something she must change about herself to be good enough for Kitty. That was something she'd never done for anyone else before and had always been told vehemently by her mother to never do – Never change, pumpkin, not for anyone had been the woman's kind, consoling words – and the fact that she was willing to do so for Kitty confused her even more.


"Okay, suggestions for morning slushie targets – go!" Kitty's pencil was poised above the paper, ready to scribble down the names of the doomed victims.

One of the brattier freshman Cheerios started talking straight away.

"That stoner kid was perving on me as I left the locker rooms. He's a freak, anyway."

Kitty made a note of the name Brett, before a blonde Cheerio sat beside the first piqued up,

"If we're talking of freaks, that Unique kid should go down too. I just don't get how the hell he thinks he looks cool in that get-up? I mean like, seriously, cross-dressing is soooooooo eighties. He needs to get with the times."

Kitty duly noted down Unique's name, but her knuckles were white as she gripped her pencil in frustration. Some of these girls were just so small-minded, it was ridiculous. They didn't have an ounce of cunning about them whatsoever, and their insults would have made Kitty laugh rather than cry if she'd been in the losers' positions.

Not that she ever planned to be, of course; Kitty was top dog at McKinley at the moment, and her intent was for it to stay that way. While her time as head cheerleader had been short-lived before the re-installation of Brittany, her leadership had proved popular with many of the new girls on the squad (a considerable number had graduated last year) and Brittany's lack of authority made it easy for Kitty to keep her power when it came to being HBIC – that's 'Head Bitch In Charge, thank you very much' with a slushie on top. Brittany was a great dancer, but these girls were like sheep which needed to be led, and Kitty knew that she was the girl to stamp the team's dominance back on McKinley's social map after a year dominated by the puckhead hockey players rather than the footballers and cheerleaders.

"Ugh," said the Cheerio who had spoken first, "and don't forget the whale's daughter. I'm pretty sure she got today's clothes out of the dumpster – there's what looks like a bloodstain stain down the front of her top and it makes her look even more ugly than normal."

Now, Kitty may have been Marley's main tormentor when it came to directing insults at her face, but she hated hearing the other girls making snarky remarks about the lunchlady's daughter – and she had no idea why. Kitty, having already seen Marley from across the parking lot when she drove into school that morning, knew perfectly well that the red stain on the front of Marley's plain but once nice-looking blouse was the result of a cherry slushie thrown, on Kitty's orders, by the same girl who was now pronouncing it as a bloodstain – which just showed how little attention Marley's aggravators paid her.

Kitty, on the other hand, found herself unintentionally picking up on every heartbroken glance, every terrified look and every slouch of the shoulders as they tried to break Marley's spirit again and again. And yet, after every slushie attack and every namecalling session, Marley would pick herself up, hold her head high and be just as infuriatingly happy and friendly the next morning.

It fascinated and frustrated Kitty at the same time. She'd almost, for a split second, been disappointed when she'd found out that the girl's mother was the lunchlady, because it automatically toppled Marley from her precarious position of moderate popularity secured by last year's glee club Nationals success to the bottom of the social ladder, where no-one of a standing such as Kitty's could ever talk to her to do anything other than hurl an offensive or degradatory remark. Well, that had certainly been the case after the whole lip-sync fiasco, anyway.

Which was your fault again, she reminded herself, remembering as she'd been the only person in the auditorium with the balls to call the club out on its pathetic performance, excising their reputation (including Marley's) in just a few seconds.

Why this bothered Kitty she wasn't entirely sure, but she'd taking a sort of interest in the girl which she couldn't shake. What made the situation even more unusual was that Marley had proceeded to take Kitty's almost-boyfriend (though to be fair, Kitty had been the one to snatch him from under her nose in the first place… hang on, why was she being fair to Marley!?), yet still the almost defensive attitude which had taken an unwelcome root inside of her for the taller girl continued to grow. She had to bite her tongue to stop herself from telling the silly girls in front of her to shut their stupid little mouths; their banter was always simple-minded and trivial but it never really bothered Kitty unless it concerned Marley. She made a mental note to make sure that Coach Sylvester set the offending Cheerios extra laps at the end of this practice.

Why are you doing that? asked the quiet but piercing voice in her head. Why should they be punished for talking about Marley in that way? Unless…

As always, Kitty stifled the voice before it began to question her too much; she couldn't afford to take her eyes off the prize in an environment as ruthless and hostile as an Ohio high school, and Marley Rose the lunchlady's daughter sure as hell wasn't going to make her drop the baton.

What gave Marley the right to be so damned happy all of the time, anyway? She was like a blazing ray of sunshine and positivity that Kitty couldn't extinguish, no matter how hard she tried; it irked her, because in the positions there were in she should be the one happy with her life and Marley should be wishing to be like her.

And yet, despite her second-hand clothes and her overweight mother, Kitty sometimes caught herself wishing she could have a life more like Marley's. It was a ridiculous thing to wish for, because she had everything; yet being on the top of the social pyramid was surprisingly unsatisfying. She countered this by making the person she was most jealous of suffer as much as possible, no matter how much resistance a small part of her put up – the part that wanted to chase after Marley following every slushie to help her clean up and console her.

So yes, it's true – Kitty Wilde was jealous of the poorer, less popular girl. She wasn't happy about it, but that was just how the facts stood. She worked extra hard to punish Marley for being happier than her when it should be she, Kitty,that got the satisfaction that came with her perfect life, but however much she covered up her guilt with even more brutality, Kitty couldn't hide from herself at least that she didn't feel at all like Marley deserved the attacks. And that bothered her.

Why did that bother her? She wasn't particularly concerned about anyone else, or at least if she was, she hid it much better. The way that Marley began to dismantle her walls without even knowing it infuriated Kitty almost as much as the fact that no matter how hard she tried, she just couldn't manage to bring the other girl down from her optimistic heights.

Angry at herself for wasting her time thinking about Marley rather than pondering who else she was going to need to socially destroy next to keep her precious but precarious position atop the social pyramid, Kitty swung her locker shut with a firm clang and stormed angrily out of the locker room, leaving the other Cheerios to giggle amongst themselves about who knows what.


So, what do you guys think? Should I continue? Please read and review! It means a lot :) x