Chapter One
Parties and Giraffe's

The night was going, after the Panda had been (finally) escorted from Keenan Thompson's house, fortunately very well and swimmingly. It was nearing midnight by now, the large mansion upon the hill shielded from neighbors and most importantly, cops, and the alcohol had made its sudden, but not unexpected, appearance quarter past eleven. He couldn't say he was exactly happy with the amount of drug abusers within the house but he did nothing to stop it; what could he? This "small" party was edging out of control rather quickly, but he, sober, knew just how to handle it if it had gotten too bad. Well, he had hoped he did; he knew he could rely on Tori, the only one that was not drowning herself in alcohol as far as he was concerned, to come to his aid if he had needed it. She always did, and it was one of those great traits he always looked for in a girl.

Beck and Jade had disappeared upstairs sometime ago, each so drunk and out of their minds that they stumbled over their own feet, and nearly fell up the stairwell. Andre Harris had shaken his head whilst watching the two with his own cup of gin within his palms, though untouched except for a small sip or two – he didn't exactly want to know what was happening wherever they were, but he was sure, knowing Beck, he was going to hear about it sometime later on; whether it be the next day, or after that. Robbie had gone home, alongside a complaining Rex about the Northridge girls, claiming that the party was severely out of hand and also, though he had hoped he heard wrong, that it was far passed his bed time and he needed to get home straight away before "mother stops packing me Cream of Mushroom soup" for lunch.

Andre had of course, glanced at the scrawny, outlandish boy before making his way to find Tori, whom he had later discovered was still soberly talking with the ICarly crew he was honored to have here, in a room that was not occupied by any drunken party-goers. They all seemed to be animatedly talking about something he wasn't aware of (he swore he heard the name "Stephan" in there once or twice), and he hadn't wanted to interrupt them, especially since he was still angry about the entire incident himself.

So that, out of his entire group of friends, left Cat.

Of course, once or twice he had gotten to talk to the once mute girl, but the last time he had seen her was when they had all sung the mash up song with the ICarly web show gang, and he had figured she had gone home before the alcoholism around the large house in which the party was residing had gotten a little too crazy for her own good, just like Robbie had. But regardless, just in case she hadn't, he decided to look around for her, glad that if he had indeed found her he wouldn't have to listen to that god forsaken robotic voice of a headband she had worn around her head; he didn't think he had the patience to wait that long for a response, spoken by a Speechy Keen App upon the PearPhone.

If he was being quite honest with himself, he hadn't spent much time around Cat as he used to; all things considered, they were close friends with a strong bond between them, but it had seemed that ever since Tori had come to Hollywood Arts (nothing against her; he always did have the slightest crush on the skinny Latina) they had drifted apart. Sure, they had had their times around each other outside of school grounds, but there was nothing too it anymore, and still being honest with himself as he searched the perimeter of the large house, turning corners and looking into separate rooms, he had missed that.

Finally, after what had seemed like hours but in reality was only five minutes, he had found the girl he was searching for upon the balcony, by herself with one leg crossed slightly over the other. He damned the short shorts she had been wearing; it made it extremely hard not to stare at her legs like any other man would surely do, and he didn't exactly like thinking those types of things about his friend, who happened to be a girl, and was extremely attractive in multiple ways.

"Hey, why aren't you inside Little Red?" Andre asked cautiously as he neared the fragile, petite girl leaning against the railing of the balcony with a red, opaque cup within her hand. He stepped towards her as though he was walking on glass or stepping upon scattered egg shells, like most people had when the approached the emotionally vulnerable and out-of-control girl who happened to be too short for the average teenager – he liked that about her though, how she was so tiny; he couldn't imagine her any taller, otherwise her personality, he concluded, would not fit her as well as it had now.

"Oh, hey Andre!" She squeaked, and he automatically furrowed his brow; her voice, just an hour after they had all sung the mash up of Leave It All to Me and Make It Shine with the iCarly trio within the house, had sounded just as bad as it had when Sikowitz announced she had vocal nodules during class not even two days ago, and, he decided, it seemed even worse. Cat frowned at him and slumped her shoulders, rapidly turning away as if she was embarrassed by her illness, as if it was a sin. He could only wonder what had happened; perhaps because she had sung the song her voice had gotten worse, to the point where he could barely hear a word she had said, otherwise he could not come up with a possible conclusion as to why it had gone from normal and back again.

"Is there something wrong with your voice again? I thought it was better" He inquired as he finally came to a halt beside her, resting his elbows upon the railing and leaning against it, her shoulder barely brushing his lower bicep. There was a strong aurora of smoke about her, and he couldn't help but wonder why. It's probably just someone else's, he thought, knowing for a fact that he himself had saw smokers come to the balcony for a drag – and if there was smokers, there was alcohol, which was undoubtedly in her cup as much as it was in his own, only, she had barely taken a sip of hers, probably because it hurt her throat too much, or she really was as innocent as she had seemed.

"Just scratchy I guess; maybe I shouldn't have sang that song…phooey." Cat frowned over at him, the expression rather foreign and a very uncharacteristic thing for her to do, but he shrugged it off; it must have been nothing, after all, her voice had just gone out because of singing such long and high notes that she had, after suffering from Vocal Nodules.

"Maybe it'll get better after you've had something to drink" He suggested with a light shrug, and with a giggle, she gesticulated to the red, cliché plastic cup within her hand, "something not spiked"

"Andre!" She gasped in her hoarse voice, almost dramatically as she looked over at him, glossy lips parted though tugged into a smile, "this isn't spiked! It's water!" Almost as to somehow prove her point she tilted the cup at her mouth, taking a large swig of the crystalline beverage. She flashed a beaming smile in his direction once she had swallowed her drink, slightly cocking her head to the side. "I have to drive home, silly. Jadey and Beck are probably already out of it and I'll need to drive them back" She added with a clear of her throat, which was gradually returning back to its normal, soprano octave that was harmony to anybody's ears in whom have encountered it.

"You can drink if you want to though," He said with a shrug, this time gesturing to his own cup, in which rested the beverage he had only taken a few, idle sips of, "but you'd have to get someone sober to give you a ride home so you don't get in trouble."

"Trouble? What kind of trouble?" She asked with wide, doe brown eyes, naivety crystal clear within each iris.

"Like drunk driving, hitting somebody else or getting pulled over by a cop and arrested for underage drinking" Andre answered with each eyebrow arched, figuring she would already know this. Perhaps she had, but chose to ask him just because she assumed that he known she didn't. "Wouldn't want you to get into another car accident, huh, Little Red?"

Cat snuck an arm around her waist, as if hugging herself with her one free arm, and stared up at him with a horrified expression etching across pretty features and creamy white skin, as if remembering the calamity that had happened when Jade was picking her up from the Mental Ward, "no! No, no, no!"

Andre couldn't help but chuckle at her frantic, worried response and his lips curled upward in a smile. "Exactly," he told her, his gaze turning toward the clear glass doors behind them; conveniently enough, standing upon one of the coffee tables behind the blurring teenagers, knocked off of its feet and laying sideways, was the giraffe that Keenan had given him earlier on during the beginning of the party. He didn't know what else to do with it and so he said "I'll be right back, stay here" to the smiling girl in front of him and made his way through the crowd, dancing and hollering within the hallway. He felt a little lame doing so, but he had grabbed the stuffed animal and gradually made his way back over to her, holding it out as if it was hers to take. And really, he thought, it was. Now.

"Here, you can have this. I don't really want it." He told her with a grin, watching as her eyes lit up and a beaming, Cheshire smile broke out across her face, revealing the dimple within her cheek. She placed her beverage upon the ledge of the balcony, fixed a small box within her pocket, before taking it from his hands.

"Aww, it's so cute!" She squealed with a giggle, hugging it close to her chest. "Thank you Andre! Oh hey, remember when you got me Mr. Longneck at the fair last year?"

"Yeah, I do." Andre replied, still grinning broadly at her reaction; it had seemed eerily similar then, too.

"One time, my brother and I were at the zoo and we were looking at the giraffes and all of the sudden, he decides to climb all the way over the ledge thingy and then climb on its back to try and get all the way up to its neck!" Cat rambled suddenly, still smiling as she hugged the larger giraffe within her arms.

"So…what happened?" He asked her with a furrowed brow; at least, he figured, this Crazy-Older-Brother story was relevant to the situation, unlike the many times before.

"Well the zoo keeper people found out and they started chasing after him! And he fell off of the giraffe and we had to take him to the hospital because he shattered every bone in his right leg!" She pointed at her own in her frantic, occasionally high-pitched toned, incongruous. "And then we were banned from the zoo and we could never go back. It was kind of sad, but you know what's weird? I was –"

"Cat! Cat!" Came a deep voice from behind them, and the two, the shorter girl frowning at the interruption, whirled around, only to find Beck stumbling onto the terrace with Jade literally hanging over his shoulder; his balance unsteady.

"Um…?"

"I thin-k we needta gho home" Beck answered her drunkenly, blinking hesitantly as he stumbled forth once more; Andre had to move over to steady his friend in case he had toppled over, and, if that had happened, so would have Jade – and she didn't chance much when she was intoxicated; an angry drunk and an angry, painfully truthful sober.

"Kay kay!" She called over to him with a partially strained smile; that was however, until she turned over to him. She put the giraffe down and with some difficulty due to her height, stood upon her toes and encircled his neck with her arms, hugging him closely, an embrace in which he wrapped his own arms around her tiny waist and just slightly lifting her up (she only weighed 90 pounds, he had done this many times before). She retracted and lowered herself, pressing her lips to his cheek, her own flushed, for whatever reason, a crimson red.

She was gone, with the giraffe, without another word.

2

One Year Earlier

"I've done a lot of bad things, Dre" Cat said quietly, her finely polished silver fingernails tapping rhythmically against the searing hot cup within her hands holding the liquid cocoa, brief tuffs of smoke fluttering from the cup. She refused to meet his gaze, something she had been doing a lot lately, and he could not help but wonder why. It was, if he was to say so himself, rather uncharacteristic about her – but maybe he was just learning new things, like that the Cat Valentine they had seen in school and when they were in large groups was not real, and just a hidden mask. "Thing's I'm really…ashamed of doing."

The two were sitting within his kitchen, in which both of his parents and his insane grandmother were not present and they were taking advantage of. As usual, as Jade was with Beck and the two didn't really have anybody else to hang around with at the time, the pair of sophomores had spent their lonely time with each other – in request of her they had just finished making a red velvet cake, painting the kitchen with flour and other necessities that they were going to have to clean up before his mother and father came home from settling his grandmother into her own home. And now, they were sitting across from each other with cups of cocoa in their hands, their conversation suddenly serious after he had subtly pointed that she was not acting like herself recently, and he wasn't sure of what to make of it. He had been scared of the answer before, and now, even more so.

"Like what?" Andre persisted, sipping unceremoniously upon his own beverage within his palms, elbows pressed into the counter top in which he was leaning on as he scooted closer.

"Things like wee-" She stopped herself suddenly, and cleared her hoarse throat, gnawing on her lower lip before beginning once more, "I-I'd rather not talk about that."

"Well, you know you can trust me, Little Red." Said he with a small, growing grin tugging upon his own lips.

"I-I'm…I think we should start cleaning up this kitchen!" Cat suddenly quipped, her voice far too high-pitched than normal and her forehead creased, eyebrows tugging downward as if she was either in deep thought or worried about something he could not put his finger on, no matter how hard he had tried. She hopped off of her stool, beverage nearly sloshing from the sides but one way or another, controlling itself as she steadied it upon the island counter. "Clean up, clean up, everybody clean up" she sang harmoniously to herself, and to the unfortunate predicament of Andre, who was so close to finding out what was wrong, the topic was changed entirely.

But it was not to be forgotten.

Welp, there is the first chapter! I've been working on this entire story for a couple weeks now (the plot and everything) and I wanted to get it up just to see if I'll get any positive feedback; if I do, I'll update the next chapter quicker! (: Cat may seem a bit OOC, it's hard to write such an optimistic, insane (but in a totally, good way? :P) character like her. Oh, and this story isn't going to have a lot of flashbacks – the one at the end of this chapter will probably be the only one – but I just felt like it was necessary to include it, regardless of how short it was. Don't ask me why, hehe.

Hope you guys liked it, and please review with your thoughts! :D

*Disclaimer that I should have added at the top*

I do not own Victorious in any way, shape or form. Until Dan Schneider mysteriously disappears. Just kidding. O.o

Preview!

"Cat? What are you doing here, it's nearly three in the morning?" He asked her groggily, though not taking in much of her appearance in his state of drowsiness and with a fist over his eye, rubbing the sleep from it.

"I-I di-didn't know where else to go!" She cried suddenly, her voice heart wrenchingly disturbed and terrified. Andre's attention was caught immediately, and his eyes opened round upon hearing such a sound and he glanced down at the small girl standing, drenched to the bone within his doorway and trembling greatly, at last fully observing her when he hadn't before.

Her clothes were ripped, and she was covered in blood.