A/N: Unbetaed. For LadyFest 2010.


Just because she's got high heels and fashion sense, everybody thinks she's got no brain. So she figures, why not, she's seventeen and letting someone else take the lead when they seem to stumble onto a haunted something-or-other every week isn't exactly a bad decision - say what you want but she's at least got survival instinct, and isn't that knowledge of another kind? Besides, she's used to being judged on what she looks like rather than what she says, so she tailors the latter to fit the former, and so what so what if that means that she gets stuck with Fred acting like a Boy Scout wherever they go, treating her like she's dead weight?

When she was six, her parents let her see The Wizard of Oz, and she remembers, the Scarecrow may have been the dumbest, but he was the one everyone loved the most, and well, she wonders if that's not an exchange she's willing to make. She's smart, sure, but what is smart in the long run if you end up - well, she doesn't like to let her mind wander down those paths.

Everyone else has forgotten Haunted Isle already - too many malts and Scooby-Doo's antics again but maybe it was something none of them really wanted to remember. She remembers, has trouble letting go of the memory, cloudy in her thoughts and hazy like cotton, hanging over her every movement. She fell down a trap door, you know - yes, yes, say what you will, danger prone daphne did it again is the catchphrase this week, but she has a hard time keeping track, Shaggy does like to change it up - and she remembers the feeling of the cold water as she slid down the chute, landing on hard moss-covered stone on her hands and knees, skin scraped from her palm and she just got up on her feet - her two-and-a-half-inch purple heels, thank you very much - and the cut bled and stung like a bitch, but she soldiered on, even in the dank place where she heard drips and ghoulish wails and she was alone, please remember, by herself, walking around without an escort and she didn't die. I know, it's hard to remember, but she didn't, and her heels didn't get stuck in the stone tiles once and isn't that quite an accomplishment?

Not something everyone recognizes to be sure.

So when Fred's driving the Mystery Machine again, and they're creaking over another wooden bridge on another one of his "shortcuts" - and shouldn't it be said, shouldn't it be said that he is the one who gets them into all this trouble? and it is never danger-prone fred, or fuck-us-up fred, since she supposes alliteration would be preferable, but her fault, always - she crosses and uncrosses her fingers, tightens her hand into a fist, pressing her neatly manicured fingernails against her palm until they leave little crescent-shaped indentations. It's going to be an adventure tonight, she can tell.

So she figures. Why not. Might as well satisfy the little expectations they have for her, maybe even get a little preliminary evidence. A legend, perhaps. It's always a fucking legend.

"Look!" she says. "Let's stop at the gypsy wagon, Fred? I want my fortune told!"

And Fred rolls his eyes, just like always, but she knows.

This is the entr'acte.

She double-knots the green silk scarf around her neck and opens the car door; her purple heel steps firmly out onto the dirt road. She tosses her hair over her shoulder.

"Five minutes, Daphne," Velma says.

Daphne knows better.