So, I re-uploaded this because I wasn't happy with the original version. I feel like something's still missing, but I'm much happier with this version.
Once upon a time, there was a girl with hair has red as velvet and eyes as big as chocolate coated moons. This velvet-haired girl, however, was not a princess. She would not have a happy ending.
She would just be Cat Valentine.
While she was the kind of girl everyone wished they could be—beautiful, full of life, living without a care in the world—she wasn't very smart. Then again, she didn't need to be smart if she was always happy.
Cat Valentine was one of the best girls in the world that no one knew, and maybe that's why Beck Oliver fell in love with her.
Beck Oliver was undoubtedly the prince of Hollywood Arts, and every maiden in the land—including lands far away—wanted to be his queen. The prince, however, had his eyes on the beautiful, red-haired not-princess.
Every day, the prince would speak to the not-princess in ways he'd never spoken to her before. He spoke to her as if he were courting her, the way he courted the evil witch. The witch, with her charming eyes that were blue and other times strikingly green, had grown tired of toying with the prince, ready to move on to bigger and better kingdoms. But though the witch had released the prince, no maiden dared go after him for fear of her wrath.
The not-princess saw something in the witch that no one else did, and she had hope that there was something good inside the witch; she considered herself the witch's friend and that prevented her from believing the prince's attempted courtship. The not-princess lived by the highest law of the land and would not let herself succumb to the prince's charms.
As the long year progressed, as King Sikowitz drove the not-princess and her friends insane, as the evil witch's cold heart began to melt, as the prince kept pursuing the not-princess, she began to fall in love with him. She couldn't tell anyone, but she gave Tori Vega—her fairy godmother of sorts—subtle hints of her feelings.
Meanwhile, the prince would give his trusted advisor notions of his love for approval. His advisor, however, did not approve; he believed that the fair maiden belonged to the jester whose puppet spoke more than he did. The not-princess completed the jester and was not suited for the prince.
"Beck and Cat."
The title sounded beautiful, but could never be reality. Their clandestine romance would never survive. For one, he feared the stab of rejection. For another, she feared the stab of the witch's scissors.
But much to his advisor's protests, the prince would sneak cards, flowers, and chocolates into the not-princess's locker. At one point, he'd even put so many stuffed animals in her locker that she couldn't even get to her books!
Those small signs of affection weren't good enough for the prince, though. He was tired of hiding his love. He wanted to make the not-princess his, to profess his love to the world. One night, he planned out everything he wanted to do to make the next day special. He had trouble sleeping that night, excitement overwhelming him.
The next day, the prince entered his kingdom with the finest guitar he could find. When he spotted his fair maiden at her locker, he smiled and ran up to her. As he held the guitar in his hands, his palms grew sweaty. His heart began to race in his ears and he almost dropped the guitar. Acting and singing on stage came easy to the prince, but singing to her was going to get the best of him. Lip quivering, he swallowed his fear and knelt down in front of her waiting, chocolate eyes.
The sound of the guitar filled the halls of the kingdom, and everyone stopped to hear. Taking in a deep breath, he sang the words from his heart.
"And I breathe disaster, Ever After," he sang with all his soul. "Don't pull away from me now. Don't you move. Can't you stay where you are just for now? I could be your perfect disaster…you could be my ever after…"
As he continued to sing, the words filled Cat's ears and she cried tears of joy. This…this act of love…it was her gateway. All the pressure, all the fear, all the longing kept inside her had been tossed away with the melody in his voice.
When his song was done, the not-princess wrapped her arms tightly around the prince's neck and kissed him passionately. His lips felt warm against hers, and there was a thunder of applause to give them approval for their romance.
And in that moment, the prince had found his princess.
They were perfect for each other, Cat and Beck. Whichever way you wanted to put it, Beck and Cat were perfect. Out of him, she made a king. Out of her, he produced a queen. They ruled the school with the power of their love, and even the disapproving witch couldn't stop them.
But the world wasn't ready for their love.
For two years, their story continued. They spent two glorious years wrapped around each other, happier than they had ever been before. But then, their story began to slow down and started to end with graduation. This was the time to put away childish things, to go out into the world on their own, the time to grow up.
On the night of graduation when High Queen Helen called Caterina Giselle Valentine up to claim her certificate of freedom, Alexander Beck Oliver dashed onto the stage and grabbed her hand. With dignity and grace, he knelt before her and offered her a ring that he spent a year and a half saving for. As he spoke, his voice broke for the first time in five years. She cried as she said yes and he picked her up, holding her tightly as he kissed her and spun her around.
The rest of the graduation ceremony was a blur.
In the three months leading up to their wedding, she had moved into his small palace and had started making it her home. However, they began to argue for the first time. But no matter what, the soon-to-be-princess would assure herself that she was happy.
Her parents, though less endowed than his, put on the wedding and made it exactly as their darling daughter had wanted. On that day, the prince was a real 'Dapper Dan' in his white tux—because she wanted him to wear a happier color—and the almost-princess became an angel in her satin wedding dress.
The wedding took place on the beach like her mother's, and the ceremony left everyone crying and clapping for joy. It seemed so easy to seal their fates, so simple to be forever. The wedding made their fairytale come alive.
But like all fairytales, there is always an obstacle.
They say the first year of marriage is the hardest.
With the money her parents had spent to make her a queen, Cat could not afford to go to college. That put a strain on their love, because he would be able to live his dream while she wasted away in their new palace his parents had bought. The arguments she chose to ignore before their marriage became more persistent and real. They began to shout at each other, and this quickly progressed into angered yelling. Their screaming carried on into their fifteenth month of marriage, and each fight broke them apart. By the fifteenth month, he'd nearly drank himself into a coma and she was losing her voice.
But one night, something changed.
Instead of retreating to her chambers to drown her tears in a hot bath, she chose to run. As she put her ear buds in and turned her phone as loud as it would go, she ran as fast as her legs would carry her. She needed to get away from the nightmare her fairytale had become. She hadn't smiled in three whole months, and she hadn't laughed in four. The world was closing in on her, and she needed to escape.
Before she knew it, the red-haired queen had ran to the Lover's Peak bridge. Sometimes, watching water flow freely would calm her down, and maybe that's why her mind made her go.
It started to rain as she looked over at the water, and the lights were growing darker around her. A car, driven by a mother of four, spun out of control in the rain. The woman honked her horn as she saw a figure standing on the bridge, but the unfortunate queen didn't hear it. The woman managed to keep her car from going over the bridge, but the bulbous hunk of metal grazed the pour queen and sent her over the bridge. She hit her head on the concrete below the bridge before she hit the water, but she never felt a thing.
An hour later, the police arrived at Beck's palace door. Officer Vega had been on call, and he would recognize the ill-fated girl from anywhere. He told the prince that her body had been fished from the river and that she had been carried to the morgue. He chose to ride with the police not into the sunset with his queen, but to the hospital to find the remains of the once beautiful queen.
Did he faint when he saw the sight of her cracked skull, pale skin, and blank expression, or did he throw up? Did he scream, or did he cry? He couldn't remember.
He did remember searching for a piece of paper and a red pen inside the cold room and scribbled down four words. He found a scalpel and snatched it into his hand. Without hesitation, he ran to the table where his queen lay and climbed up beside her cold, lifeless body. Clenching his eyes shut, he pressed the sharp, freezing metal against his throat and slowly pulled it across his skin. He bled out as he held her in his arms.
When he was found perhaps ten minutes later, they found the note beside the bloody scalpel with four words scribbled in the prince's handwriting.
Ever After was mine.
And so—once upon a time—there was a prince who fell in love with a not-princess. But this world wasn't ready for the love they had to give, so Beck and Cat had to die. But everyone who knew them, hoped they would find their peace in the next world. They hoped, in this new world, that they lived happily ever after.
The End