Disclaimer: I do not own Degrassi. And, actually, that's probably a good thing.
Author's Notes: This story deals with dark themes, such as strongly implied self mutilation (cutting, burning, etc.), rape, mild insanity, some child abuse, suicide – all that happy stuff. This story also has a grand apperance from darkly obsessive!Paige and an equally darkly obsessive!Ellie. If you are not comfortable with any of this, then I doubt this story is for you. If you're fine with that, and just want to get to some semi-disturbing Pellie, then go right ahead! Reviews are love, and I appreciate them greatly.
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I'll send to you these posion kisses
The only one who will receive them
Once upon a time, there was a girl who had the world at the very tip of her fire cracker fingernails. There was a girl who was a princess, royalty in common skin, too perfect for the world that shook off its axis. There was girl who had sun kissed hair, light as tears and the heat hissed, white washed beaches that stretched out into raging seas, oceans that swallowed the unclean in their punishing currents, waters just as blue as the princess's eyes, and certainly as deadly. There was girl who had lips that shone in midday black, with mascara caked lashes that fluttered like near death wings, with cheeks lightly dusted in rose and sweat, with fabric that clung to beauty and accented paper cut curves.
Once upon a time, there was a girl who meant nothing. There was a girl who was a nothing one, whose hair was just a shade too bright, just a thick line below what was beautiful. There was a girl who didn't know what it meant to be held above the rest, because she was always so knee deep in the gutter filth so intricately laced around her air, that she could never reach anything that hovered too close to the surface. There was a girl with dead flesh, and as every calcium scorched day passed, it began to rot, it festered and clung to her fragile bones, and even when she clawed with the ferocity of caged animal sickness, it was always there, taunting, never allowing her to escape. There was a girl with lips so blood red, so thick, that it hid all the self made scars.
And if it was all a fairy tale, the princess and the nothing one might have saved each other. If life followed the story books, the ones whose covers were cut out pink construction paper hearts and glue glitter declarations of innocence and the bows and ribbons of childhood, they would have crossed paths, would have met each others on edge desperate gaze. Oh, if this were just a beauty dream, filled with hope and pretty things, the princess and the nothing girl would have loved each other - would have kissed and held and breathed each other, until all they had were tight sealed wounds and hands that couldn't leave each other.
But of course, this is not a story.
This is not a fairy tale world.
This is real.
So the princess, the leader, the Queen To Be, the girl with everything and everyone, the girl with all the perfectly planned and silver smeared control, took the steps she wanted and the made the smiles she could. The princess kissed the boys and every night the memory of hands still shook her, and she never slept. The princess had nightmares of blood and torn and 'no, no, no' until it was all she could do to not let her mind cave in. She kept her eyes open just a little too wide, sunk in claws and blades and candle light much too deep, and in the end, she was more unknown than the nothing one ever meant to be.
So the nothing one, the forgotten girl, the walking human plague, the girl who could never lose what she never had, tried and hoped and died each day, with nothing but insecurity and burning red in her peripheral vision. The nothing one hid herself and slit down arms and watched with rapt fascination as zombie skin became that much more pastel. The nothing one ran from flesh on flesh, from contact of mind or mouth or heart, and dreamt about the shine. The nothing one kept searching, hunting down and cutting up, and sooner or later, she found her end, the problem to all her answers, the words to make all the whispers stop.
Because the princess saw the nothing one but ran away for fear of reality. Never gave a second glance, never tried, not once, to speak a word or touch the hurt or break it all away. Oh, how the princess saw the nothing one, in red and gold and everything she could not be. The princess loved the nothing one, the kind of love rooted in obsession and hate and envy, in something that is too dark for living souls to breathe. But princesses aren't human, really - they are the dolls, she recalls. A porcelain princess, she smiles to herself when the nightmares are too much and she is alone behind a locked closet door. Dolls do not touch, do not love, and do not slip under the torrid of this sick want. She is an ornament, and ornaments can not claim the nothingness as their own. And the princess, draining and cracking in her own little way, wonders what the world would say if they all knew that she already had.
Because the nothing one saw the princess but never go too close. The nothing one was not stupid, had not been so long drowning in her weak induced, mindless fantasies to believe that tainted things could ever meddle with such a beautiful creation. Yes, the nothing one knew the princess, wanted those golden tresses through her fingertips, wanted to touch and whisper and pretend that every flaw was hers. The nothing one knew, more than what the others believed, and she saw the way the princess shattered, the way every piece disintegrated with every breath. It was a disturbing fascination, the nothing one had, while watching the princess crumble. But it was so very warming, so very comforting, to know that unreachable perfection was so close, inches away from becoming the outcast, the girl without the face. The dead, the heartless and the cold, are not allowed to feel such heat in the back of the mind, not the kind of fire the nothing one knew as she watched the princess - her princess - become more and more lost each day. And the nothing one felt tears for the first time in knowing that she was the only corpse to watch another die, sit back and never stop it.
But it was not a fairy tale.
The princess could scream and fight and beg, keep calling out for midnight until there was no more air to breathe, and it would not make a difference. A malfunctioning toy, a pretty girl in a pretty dress that could not fake a pretty smile, had no place in a two story home with a white picket fence. No, no - broken things go to broken places. Long lost royalty goes where superiority can once again be found. Crazy girls go to buildings with white walls and tight jackets and they get fixed. They don't get to be held in scared arms, and they don't get to feel that ghost of insanity bubbling laughter on their collarbones, and they don't get to finally, after so many years and days and hours of waiting to be fragmented enough to have the right to touch, receive the release they crave and need. Princesses who loose their minds don't get to kiss the nothing one and live brokenly ever after. They go to special castles, with zealous guards, and they are repaired, and they come back Queens.
The nothing one did not understand. If not stand in the shadows and watch the beautiful girl carve all those lovely thoughts of worthless loathing into the hollow of the right wrist, what could she do? What could she hold on to, if not the always resting, always surging knowledge that soon she would not be alone? If not pray for bladed lips and indigo stained fingertips, why allow her knees to become so hurt and scared on mommy's floor? What could she dream for, if not the once bubblegum flavored lips to kiss away the invisibility?
Life works in mysterious ways, and in the end, everyone is, still frame or a flash of flesh in history, better off.
In the grave, the princess had what she wanted. A fire starter, cold as ice love letter, written in razor blade kisses around her throat. She was exquisite, the little girl that had never failed to disappoint, the perfect one where the brother had failed, the baby the world had always wanted. While strong hands found their way over her skin, she could always tell herself, 'this is for my every one, my nothing girl', and she wouldn't feel quite so sick when her mother patted her on the back and kissed her cheek and wished her another sugar sweet congratulations on this weeks deed. In the end, of course, the princess soiled her tiara and never got her true hearts wish, but it was better than a silken lie. In end the end, six feet under was paradise compared to the agonizing, terrifying hours of waiting to become as drenched in sin and disfigured enough to be loveable, to be taken by the only one who mattered.
In the world, the nothing one could not bring herself to live without her fallen start princess. The nothing one could not bring herself a bitter sweet after glory, because she did not deserve the rising break down. Still, after all this mud, after all these season kissed and stained winds, she is and never will be worthy. It did not matter how much a princess rid herself of burden flesh or how many cries of desperation left those pink scarred lips - the nothing one was always, in the end, subhuman. Less than the curses strung across her own ink black sky, less than worthless, and could never have hoped for twisted infatuations to be purged. The nothing one still lives, if going through empty motions and throwing any chance of Heaven redemption to the Devil ridden can be considered 'living', and she does so with the a picture of her princess that still makes her skin sizzle.
And that's the way the story goes. The way their 'fairy tale' ends. A princess with clammy hands and maggot devoured skin and dirt bones, more beautiful than death and life and hurting, and a nothing one who will, for all her pleas and pain and horror bed time tricks, forever remain invisible.
Even now, with shaky hands and fading eyes and bitter imprinted velvet skin, the nothing one can remember those days, that time once upon. Where she and a princess, too focused on daggers and what was really inside, fell together, each with their callings too far away. So long ago, was that time once upon, and still, still, the nothing one sees her princess.
Because in the very end, when obsession and love and hate and insecurities are burnt to the core and ashes of blood and stench of pain is gone, it was never a fairy tale to being with.