Author's Note: I'm not in a great mood right now. And I'm sick of seeing suicide jokes on DeviantArt - not that I expect this will stop anyone from making them, but it helps me express the seriousness with which this topic should be taken. Anyway, I hope it's at least halfway interesting to read. At least it's not as much of a soap opera as my other fics - it's very straightforward. Despair, loneliness, end.
Whitney sat, cross legged, on the top of an apartment building, looking out at the city sky.
New York City, from afar, was a sea of buildings and lights, hopes and dreams wrapped in metal and glass. From across the Hudson or a few thousand feet in the air it was an inspiring sight. To people who didn't leave with it every day, it was careers, stores, activities, hustle and bustle, more excitement than could ever be imagined. It was The City That Never Sleeps. This place was the source of hundreds if not thousands of pieces of fiction, things with uplifting themes and morals like determination and overcoming circumstances. She stared out across the city at the sunset colored world. It was supposed to be inspirational. Cheerful. Beautiful. This world where old historic buildings and new utilitarian ones blended, where dreams came true from unexpected places, this was her hometown. It was supposed to make her feel better.
Instead, she idly thought that now might be as good a time to kill herself as any.
With Tony wrapped up in his own life, her father more busy than ever, and no sign of things ever changing, it wasn't as if she had a whole lot to look forward to. Her father could use the money from her life insurance policy for something, surely. She thought of the purse he'd gotten her and how he'd hit her when she stained it. Every good gift and beautiful thing came at a steep price with him. He loved money. He loved his power. At sixteen, she still couldn't say if he loved her or not, and it had worn her down over time like the ocean beating against a rock. Her family life had grown more and more unstable until she no longer knew her own father. She didn't know what went on his head anymore, nevermind his heart, if he still had one.
Tony had new friends now. He didn't need to bother with her. He'd get over it in a matter of days, if he noticed at all. His new friends were much more entertaining and unique than she was. Like everyone else, he had gotten over Whitney and thrown her away accordingly. That was what her life was like now, completely in shambles. She'd thought maybe that after her sickness her father would be better about paying attention to her. And he had, very briefly. It didn't last. Of course it didn't. The flowers he'd gotten her hadn't been wilted in the vase before he was back to his old ways. And Tony was oblivious as ever. He had other people he preferred over her. Everyone did. In the end, no matter how much make up she applied or how carefully she chose her outfits, the world would always reject her. She always ended up on the rooftop eventually.
That was what New York City really was. It was apathetic people, callous and angry, who if she jumped wouldn't even pick up their feet to walk over her. There would be no funeral with sobbing friends and shocked parents. There would be no school wide memorial service like in cheesy movies. New York City could thrive and go on with one less Whitney Stane. It wouldn't even feel the impact as she fell from her perch. Her desk would be filled with a new girl, some other rich person for the world to hate, someone to isolate and ignore. Not because people were bad, but because that was what New York City was for a lot of people - isolation and failure. Time would either make them callous to the world like her father, leave them alone and betrayed like Tony or kill them randomly like with her mother. New York was a place where a man could get stabbed and no one would call the cops for hours, even in the nicest of neighborhoods. It was a place where some people ate sundaes with edible gold in them while others had to dig through the trash for scraps. The people eating gold never thought to just go to Dairy Queen and give the monetary difference away. And the poor never thought of the rich as anything but monsters.
And maybe they were right. Maybe there wasn't anything good or redeemable in anyone. She had met a lot of people, smiled into a lot of faces, posed in a lot of pictures, but when the galas and events were done, they never tried to contact her again. She was disposable. She was useful. What she wasn't was a real human being, to anyone. She wasn't anyone's friend. After a while she'd learned to play pretend that she wanted it that way and was fine with it. The truth was, when she walked through the thick crowds of people that occupied every available space in New York, she longed to be one of those normal girls, with their small circle of friends and loving families waiting at home.
One way or another, they'd all become red blurs on the sidewalk. And life would go on. Because it was New York, where mutants attacked, aliens landed, murderers roamed, musicians thrived, poets were born and the mob ran certain parts of town. In their busy mindset most of them would never look beyond their own circle of activity. They lived their lives in oblivious apathy to their fellow citizens. And she was so tired.
She was tired of trying to pretend she was above it all. The truth was that if she did her best to earnestly fit in, she'd be rejected. The most she could hope for was a stylized persona, the careless outcast. It made her look like she didn't care. It hid the fact that she did care, a lot. But public approval was impossible, every friendship ending before it began when they realized she was rich. Rich equalled bad - she could either run with it or try to take it head on. She didn't have the strength to keep reaching out to a world that didn't want or need her, so she pretended to be fine. She knew one thing by heart, and that was how to fake things.
The problem was that she couldn't lie to herelf. Whitney was tired of putting on a brave face and getting through the day. That wasn't living. That wasn't life. It was existing. That was all she could manage. She'd hoped that if she kept playing the role of Ice Queen, it would be real and she wouldn't care about the world around her. She'd prayed for the frozen heart her father seemed to have. She didn't want to feel so lost in the crowd anymore. She didn't want to be alone every damn day anymore. Whitney Stane wasn't made of iron. She couldn't do this, this life, for one more second of on more day.
She contemplated this before. Regularly. She'd even tried. But the housemaid who found her hadn't been believed, and had been fired for the sin of saving Whitney's life. The blonde had slipped some money into the woman's hands as a silent, pathetic thank you afterwards. She hadn't deserved to be fired any more than Whitney deserved to be saved. That was life for you. Those who tried to do good would be rewarded with pain. Those who tried to seek happiness would be crushed. The best anyone could hope for was silence. Death. An end to the endless pretending and pain. It was too late to hope for contentment, but nothingness, the bliss of nonexistance, was still an option.
Sometimes she wished she'd been born into a normal family. Parents, moderate income, no name suburbia. Family, friends, stability. While her peers listened to music that called for death to suburb culture, she'd always looked at it like a snowglobe. Perfect, picturesque, unobtainable. Reality as it was meant to be. No one to pretend for, no one to be mocked by. She would be an equal. She would be free. It was a beautiful dream. She had actually dreamt of it a few times, her mother alive again, her father working a normal job, some siblings to make life less excrutiatingly empty. The problem with that was that she always had to wake up. Well, not anymore. She wasn't going to stay forever in this crowded city, unwanted and unneeded. There was nothing left for her here. She was useless as a daughter, a spy, a friend or a New Yorker. New Yorkers were supposed to be tough. She didn't feel tough, and never had. Right now, she wasn't sure if she felt anything at all but sheer, total exhaustion.
Her eyes didn't tear up like she thought they would. Why would they? This was no movie. There was no one here to talk her out of it. She always went up to this roof because the broken fire escapes were always down, and it was far from her home. No one she knew was here to make a dramatic last second save, to convince her things were going to get better. There was nothing sentimental about this. That was New York for you. No one saw and if they did, they didn't care. She was nothing; a replaceable blonde Barbie, an unwanted child, an annoying nag, a shallow girl. There was no value to her life. She wasn't hurting anyone by dying. Maybe herself, for a moment, but then things would be better. Then things would be over.
She stepped up onto the ledge, grateful she hadn't worn unwieldly heels today. She wanted to have perfect precision when she made the best choice she'd ever made. The wind whipped her pale blonde hair around her, and she looked out at the jungle of buildings around her. For all the love songs written about New York, for all the people who swore allegiance to it as if it were a religion, for all the good things it supposedly contained, all she saw was an overfilled city that could use one less inhabitant. One less person draining an overtaxed system. She directed her gaze downward and saw people below going about their lives. They didn't notice her.
They would when she landed.