Inspiration: sixbillionsecrets.

This will be in a few parts, and I'll update periodically.


She's sitting at the edge of her seat in the doctor's office, texting away. She should probably be more nervous about what her test results are going to be like, but she can't bring herself to be anything but content.

"Victoria, put your phone away," Bustopher says, his brow cocked. Victoria can only see his nose and above over the newspaper, with a headline about some country – the name of which she can't pronounce – and a picture of a gray cat in a crisp suit addressing a large crowd. Victoria wonders if she should know who the cat is, and assumes he's the vice president or somebody else she doesn't really care about.

"Daddy, the doctor could come in and tell me I've got a year left – don't you want me to use the time I've got?" She's fully aware that this…joke is out of line, knows she's struck a very sensitive chord what with the way her father's face tenses and his newspaper crinkles. She decides to ignore the faint pink in his eyes.

Have u gotten your results back? a message from Jemima reads. She's about to send a simple text saying nope when the doctor enters the room with a grave look on her face.

Her stomach drops.

/

She doesn't register half of the words the doctor says. She can only think that she looks like an angel – her fur is white and tan and her eyes are yellow and her coat is white and she's not a good angel, she's an angel of death. She's an angel of death, telling Victoria the words she somehow expected in the back of her head, but never really wanted to hear. She glances from her father to the doctor, and their expressions are almost to same but daddy's got tears in his eyes (he hasn't shed a tear even since her diagnosis, and this is something she really can't handle now) and looks like he wants to kill himself.

"Did I jinx it, daddy?" Victoria says, the first words spoken after a silence that seemed to last an eternity. She had always been superstitious. She should've knocked on wood when she got into the hospital, should have said rabbit rabbit on the first day of the month – maybe if she'd done that sooner she would have never gotten whatever it is she has in the first place, and her father wouldn't be nodding into his hands and Victoria wouldn't feel like she's going to puke. "Let me see the papers. Please," she begs, reaching her hand out to the doctor. The queen gives her this pitiful look, and Victoria almost wants to punch her, like that will beat the announcement out of existence.

Victoria's hands tremble as she takes the tan folder from the doctor's hands and flips through the pages like a madwoman. She sees dreaded words like blood and bone marrow and relapse and terminal.

"How long do I have? Really?" Victoria asks. The doctor is silent until Victoria looks up at her, pleading.

"An estimated five months, honey." The queen clears her throat and looks away. Victoria glances at her father, who looks like he's going to vanish at any moment, by pure power of will.

It takes a minute to figure that means she'll be gone by September. She never quite realizes that, by gone, she means dead.

/

She chooses this moment to respond to Jemima's text, with eyes brimming with tears and mouth agape. Her breathing is awkward and shallow, and she feels a million eyes on her, and million hands within her hands –

the scans came out clear. see u monday.

/

The car ride home is as silent as it can be. Classical music plays faintly in the background, but Victoria changes it. She can see a protest on Bustopher's lips, but he draws the words back in as a high female voice fills the vehicle. Her phone buzzes, and the name Traintracks – Electra – comes on the screen, a cruel joke from a good year ago when Electra still had her braces.

Jemima told me you're all clear! Im so happy. Lets celebrate!

Victoria can't bring herself to respond at the moment, so she tucks her phone into her pocket and ignores the trembling of her lips. Bustopher reaches over, grabs her hand, and squeezes.

She begins to cry so hard that Bustopher pulls over on the highway to hold her.


a/n: Yes, that's the end of the first chapter. These won't be very long. At most around 1k.