Hi there! This is an AU fic where Sheldon's family don't come from Texas, but Sapling, West Virginia. He only has one older sister called Claire, and his father died when he was seven. Enjoy!

Beauty IS Terror

In Sapling, West Virginia, 'popular' was a forbidden word. If you moved to the small forest town with 'popular' as your social status, it was instantly removed, and you were placed at the bottom of the social ladder. Claire 'Poison' Cooper made sure of that. She was the reining Queen of Sapling High School, considered by all of the male population, and most of the female population, to be the most beautiful person in town. By western standards, her clear complexion and rich chestnut hair would have made this so, but it was not for this that she was held in such high regard.

Claire was beautiful for the way she had cropped her hair short, the way she had gone to the nearest city, Lewisburg, to get her lower lip pierced, and the way she had helped her best friend train to become a tattoo artist by offering her own right arm. And it was the river of ink flowing down that arm that was a constant reminder to everyone to why she was their Queen.

One smouldering day in August before her first year in Junior High, Claire went outside to check on her little brother, Sheldon. He had just learnt how to ride a bike, but was very uncoordinated at the best of times. Claire stepped outside and had just enough time to shield her eyes from the sun to see Sheldon fall off his bike and into a thorn bush. She ran over to him and pulled him out, before helping him limp back into the house. It played out that his ankle was sprained, and that he would need crutches for a few weeks. He was so upset that their mother brought him home something from work- a puppy.

He was the cutest thing she had ever seen. His eyes were barely cracked open, his ears flat against his tiny head as he sniffed his new surroundings. Mrs. Cooper placed him in Sheldon's arms, and Claire went over to stroke his gleaming tan coat. Sheldon looked up at his older sister, before motioning for her to hold the puppy. She took the puppy into her arms and Sheldon surprised them all by telling Claire that she could keep the pup, and that he had to work on keeping himself alive before he could look after a puppy. She was overwhelmed, and promised to pay her brother back in some way.

Six years later to the day, a close friend of Claire's called Cobra knocked on the door, setting everything into motion. Claire opened the door sleepily and was shocked into attention when greeted with "Poison." and a curt nod from Cobra. She stood up straight and invited him in.

"Well..." is how Cobra chose to start the conversation, which told Claire almost everything she needed to know. Their plan had failed, and those in the neighbouring town were definitely suspicious of their organization. The only hope she had was that they had not yet decided to call their police. She raised an eyebrow.

"Poison... I'm so sorry..." was all Cobra could say before Claire shot up and began to pace the living room. It was six thirty two, and Claire would just be rousing from her bed anyway. But this was different. The Police were involved. They couldn't continue to hide all this from the world.

"We have to tell him." Claire finally said at six thirty eight. Cobra sat up straight and looked her in the eye, silently posing a question. She nodded. Cobra got up and left, closing the front door of the two storey detached house behind him. Claire looked around at the room she was in, thinking half nostalgically, half practically. That was the only family photo they had where someone was not missing or blinking, but it was too big to bring with them. The small clock on the mantelpiece was maybe small enough to fit in the duffel bag, but why bring it? It had no specific memories associated to it.

Sheldon wandered sleepily into the room, probably woken by the sound of the door. Claire turned to him and sighed before stating the six words she never wanted to utter to her baby brother. "They know. We have to leave."

Sheldon looked up at her in shock, before catching on to her meaning. His brain kicked in as he asked "How much time do we have?" She stared him in the eye, seeing the fear begin to build. "Not enough." is all she said before the two parted ways to their separate bedrooms. Claire woke her mother and told her what was going on, and the three of them packed their duffel bags with the necessities. They met at the front door to say goodbye to their home and review the plan. Claire got into the driver's seat of the black pick up truck as Sheldon threw the duffel bags into the bed of the pick-up, while Dog (as he had been affectionately named) jumped in after the bags. He knew his assignment- to bark if a cop car started following them.

Mrs. Cooper watched her daughter take the keys as her son clambered into the cab. She was nervous, but this was unavoidable, and they had all seen it coming. But unfortunately, they were all women tied to train tracks- the train was on time, they could see it coming, but no hero was going to swoop in and untie them in time. And now it was too late.

"If I can get enough speed, it might only take an hour, not the hour 22 minutes it usually takes in test runs. Are you opposed to some off-roading to save time, Mom?" Claire asked as she pulled out of the driveway. Mrs. Cooper looked into her daughter's terrified eyes and said "Step on it." Sheldon just sat there, shaking.

It was all his fault. If he hadn't... If he had maybe instead... Sheldon looked out the window at the trees and shrubs that were flying by his window, guilt wrapped around him like his favorite blanket that the twelve year old had had to leave behind.

The tricky part was near the start, before they could go off road. They had to pass the Dollar Store and the Food Lion at the corner of the 92 North, and do so without raising suspicion. If there was a check point set up by the police from Sue and Alvon, they would have to think of something to pacify them long enough to get the car rolling away before placing pedal upon metal, but a chase would follow, and Mrs. Cooper couldn't handle that, Sheldon couldn't handle that, and for all her swagger, 'Poison' definitely couldn't handle that.

They came to a point where the forest began to thin, and Claire slowed down. The forest suddenly was left behind, and they were exposed. They came to the turn onto the 92 North. Claire indicated and looked both ways. Everything was safe, everything was clear. She turned left, and they all let out the breath they were holding- and gasped it back in again. The police checkpoint was further up the road, not at the corner as expected. Claire looked to her little brother, and then to her mother, and then to her dog in the back, and back to her brother. "Math?" was all she said, but he understood.

"Get it up to seventy, ram through the check point and when I say, turn right. We can off-road to the safe point, cutting about sixteen miles off the journey." He stated matter-of-factly, before his face resumed its 'frightened Bambi' pose. Claire nodded. She floored it, getting it to fifty before turning to her mother and giving an order as Sapling High's Queen. "Get the shotgun."

Claire pressed her foot down more and suddenly the block was behind them, not in front of them, and there had been no impact. Suddenly, Sheldon yelled "RIGHT!" and Claire swerved into the trees. They travelled for fifteen seconds, Claire panic stricken, before they all heard the worst thing they could hear at that moment. Dog had started to bark.

Claire got a flash of blue and white light in the rear-view mirror, and pressed the accelerator as much as she dared. They sped up to eighty, still avoiding trees and posts, before suddenly coming out onto a dirt path. Claire put her foot down again, racing them up to 110 miles an hour. A fork came up in the road, and she turned again to Sheldon, who yelled "LEFT!" before beginning to sob into his mother's arm. The car careened left, the back kicking out, and they heard the slight scrape of paws in the back as Dog tried to get some grip on the metal sheeting in the back of the pick-up.

"Come on... Come ON!" Claire yelled at the car. The engine whined sinisterly when she tried to go over 110, and she glanced in the mirror. The blue and white lights were closer than she had thought. "Sheldon!" she barked. He glanced up at her. He cared for her, she was his sister for god's sake, but right now, her renowned beauty was scaring him. He knew what her newest tattoo scrawled across her lower abdomen meant now. Beauty was terror.

"ETA?" she yelled at him over the roar of the engine. "Two minutes forty nine seconds." He replied, but she shook her head. He re calculated. "If you get 120 from her, two minutes." He tried again, and she turned away to glance at the Speedometer. "COME ON!" she yelled, exerting as much force as she could on the pedal. The needle lifted to one hundred and twelve, 113, 115, 117... The whine was intense, but she didn't care, the lights were fading slightly, she was losing the police cars!

The next ninety seconds were the most tense of their lives. Mrs. Cooper put her arm around her little boy, and rubbed her daughter's shoulder, to make it seem like there was some comfort in the situation. There was none, but she would never stop trying to keep them calm in situations like this. If her children remembered one thing about her, she wanted it to be this.

They finally turned out onto the peninsula, and headed to the old sign they had erected depicting a stickman drowning. Claire stamped on the brake, and the pick-up skid to a halt. They jumped out, Mrs. Cooper with the shotgun, Claire fetching the bags and Sheldon stroking Dog, trying to calm down. But they then heard the sirens, which were too loud now that the engine was silent. The police raced towards them, and Claire took a hand gun from her belt. She shoved the bags into Sheldon's arms and told him and her mother to run. Mrs. Cooper was shocked, but 'Poison' nodded firmly, and she had no choice but to follow her son.

They got to the water's edge and found the large boulder that showed the start of the crossing. They clambered onto the boulder as the first car stopped. They had managed to get onto the second when the others came to rest. They turned around to look back when they reached the third boulder out from shore, to see the policemen draw their weapons and look cautiously at Claire. She was a Harpy to them- beautiful but deadly.

She saw each of them not as a threat to her- but a deadly threat to Sheldon. It was his business providing Sapling with electricity that her organization was trying to hide. He was using illegal materials to generate the electricity, and these policemen had found their supply. It was her job to take as many of them down with her as her two remaining family members escaped. Her father had died for this same purpose, and she wasn't going down without a fight either. "Listen, Girly, we don't wanna hurt you! We just need to talk to your brother! That's all!" yelled one of the cops.

Sheldon gasped. He didn't want his sister to be hurt! He just wanted everything to go back to normal, where his sister didn't rule half of the town, and he wasn't considered a mad genius, and his Dad would tuck him in at night instead of his Mom. He wriggled out of his mother's grasp and hopped back over the two boulders, flinging the bags onto the ground. Sheldon ran faster than he had ever run before, but as his sister turned to see what was going on, why her mother was yelling, one of the policemen decided to shoot the gun from her hands- only she turned, and it missed the gun.

Claire fell to the ground, clutching her chest. Sheldon reached her first, before skidding backwards, hands over his mouth. The next person to reach her was the policeman who had called out to her, kicking her gun away before reaching down to look at her. She pulled him by his collar and growled "I want whoever shot me fired, and my family let off all charges. Do you HEAR me?" He nodded and stepped back. Claire shuddered, feeling a cold seep through her, but it was too late. The nearest hospital was outside Lewisburg, fifty miles away. They all knew that she wouldn't make it, even Claire herself.

Sheldon always blamed himself for what had happened to his family, but he couldn't accept the truth. They had given themselves for their society, not him. They had just wanted the world to be beautiful. But Beauty is Terror, and terror sparks blood shed.

Well? I wrote this for an English competition in school and got a C for being 'too colloquial'... Damn teacher not getting that it was MEANT to be colloquial...

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