title: as small as a world and as large as alone
pairing: beck/jade
pov: past-tense/present-tense third, jade-centric
rating: t (mostly cursing, because i think i'm actually incapable of not using the word fuck, or some variation of it, in my stories. plus i might have killed someone again. oops?)
note: it's 5:41 am and i just finished this, so there's no way in hell i'm proofreading this more than once, so i apologize for any mistakes. oh, p.s. i'm pretty sure and is my favorite word at this point, so beware. also, i wrote this because i didn't feel like writing tori's chapter in wamh and i needed to write some angst to keep my awful mind from taking over and making me even more numb than i already am, so. (poor jade just got caught up in all of this, i should've just wrote more peddie angst and made the hoa fandom upset, so, um oops and sorry because this turned out a whole lot different than i planned and i once again hate the ending, but what else is new?)
"her philosophy of life was that she might die at any moment. the tragedy, she said, was that she didn't."
Jade West is not happy.
But anyone could tell you that.
If you were to ask someone, "Hey, you know Jade West? What's she like?", they could give you a whole list of adjectives - ranging from bitter and malicious to dangerous and chilling, possibly even disconsolate. The word happy though, never seemed to find its way in there.
Ever since the one constant in her life - the one thing that actually caused her to be elated - was ripped away from her, she hasn't felt much of anything except for the awful aching of her heart. It's like an anchor in her chest, weighing her down and stationing her mind somewhere far, far from reality. Now, she searches deep within her, just to try and find something that she truly cares about. But every time she comes up empty-handed.
She often thinks, as she walks down the hallway (so completely and very alone), how she's finally really become that cold-hearted bitch everyone already thinks she is.
She keeps picking at her brain to try and figure out how she ended up like this; how she finally got to that breaking point that she promised herself a long time ago that she would never succumb to.
Nothing is what it used to be, and she has no more tears to shed over it all anymore.
Somewhere deep down, she knows that she's better than this. But she's just grown far too tired of waiting for something to change.
/
Thoughts of just not existing anymore used to plague her mind, terrifying her, as she laid in bed late at night with the darkness suffocating her.
Back then, all she'd have to do was call Beck (and it didn't matter what the time was because he would always, always answer for her), and he'd just whisper soothing, sweet nothings to her through the phone. And she would be okay.
She doesn't fear death though - not anymore.
As much as people liked to gossip about her and call her names and think she was either cutting herself or suicidal because of her fascination with scissors and pain and all things dark, she never was.
And she still isn't.
Jade doesn't want to kill herself.
She doesn't want to drag a blade across her wrists and watch blood the same color as Cat's hair bubble out.
She doesn't want to blow her brains out with a .44, she doesn't want to pop a whole bottle of pills and wash them down with a full bottle of Vodka, she doesn't want to wrap a rope or a cord around her pale throat and kick that chair out from underneath herself.
She doesn't want to kill herself, but she does want to die.
She just, simply, doesn't care anymore - she's ready for death.
Sometimes, as she lays wrapped up in her sheets with her comforter over the top of her head in an attempt to just block everything out, she prays to a God she isn't even completely sure exists, and asks Him to just take her away. She asks Him to be done with whatever plan He has for her because it just hurts too much and she can't do it anymore, so to please make it her time to go now.
But either He's too busy with more important problems to listen to her pleading cries or He isn't done with her yet and thinks she can get through it.
Or, as she likes to choose to believe now, He doesn't exist.
/
She was born on a Wednesday, full of woe, and wouldn't go to sleep.
Her mom and dad neglected her for the majority of her childhood, and because they didn't give a shit about her, she returned the favor.
She used to break all the toys with a hammer (which in turn, became her favorite thing to play with), and she made awful noises in attempt to get some attention from her parents.
Her parents were never in love, not really. They just pretended they were, until it became too much.
They divorced when she was ten. Her mom took off to Santa Monica, where she married some rich lawyer and had another kid - her oh, so precious and perfect little brother - and only came to see Jade maybe once or twice a year, and her dad was stuck with her, much to his dismay, and he got remarried to some bottle-blonde who was five times dumber than Cat and liked to act like she had some sort of control over Jade.
She pierced her nose and her eyebrow just simply because her parents told her she wasn't allowed to, and got tattoos because she knew how much her father despised them (just like he detested her).
She, in turn, became cold and bitter, and took it out on everyone around her so that nobody could get too close and realize what coated the insides of her brain. And if it meant that people were afraid of her then, oh well, that was how she liked it.
For the longest time, she searched for love in all the wrong places - parties in Northridge, shady clubs she could sneak into, dark alleys when she really got desperate - to replace the dullness within her that had occurred from the absence of love (and the abundance of malice) that was splattered everywhere throughout the place she was supposed to call home.
But then, then she met Beck and he was persistent, he liked a challenge and he wanted to change her views about love because he was fascinated by her. And he, much to her dismay at the time, broke down her shielded walls and made her give into his sincerity and adoration.
She's not irritated about it now, though. She misses the way he could read her and how he knew (knows? She's not even sure what tense to talk about him in anymore) every little thing about her - how she likes her coffee (two sugars), where she likes to be kissed (the inside of her wrists), what that time was when she was thirteen that makes her want to cry (Cat, who's severely allergic to walnuts, ate one accidentally at Jade's house and had to be taken away in an ambulance and was unconscious for a day, and the doctor's told Jade that if she had gotten to the hospital five minutes later, she would've died), what song she listens to when her thoughts keep her up at night (the acoustic version of Push by Matchbox 20), what she sees right before she falls asleep (him, always him).
That's what she misses most of all.
(But, not really, because she misses every fucking thing about him, and her heart drops into her stomach every time she passes him in the hallway or he tries to talk to her and act like nothing's changed when absolutely everything has.)
/
Everything passes by her in slow motion flashes now; she feels like she's not even a part of this world anymore and that if she tried to reach out and touch the bursts they'd disintegrate and scatter into the air.
She's watching life pass by her like she's watching a movie that she wasn't cast in.
The earth is shaking and Beck is grabbing Cat and holding her close, close, close, and she's hoping the ground will swallow her whole.
She's pretending to iron in that stupid play that she wishes she'd never wanted to take part in and Beck is touching her and she feels like she's burning but she can't break character and she's saying, "Don't touch mommy!" hysterically and pushing his arm away and she still feels like she's burning, even now.
She's arguing with him and she's not even sure why, especially because it's over something so trivial, over Trina and how she got into Hollywood Arts, but it feels like they're dating again so she doesn't care. And she's adding fuel to the fire, saying, "Oh, yes! Tell us, oh great Beck who knows everything except how to keep a girlfriend happy!" and she's hoping it stings, hoping to make him feel as bad as she does, but then he's snapping back, "You hate being happy!" and she has to stop herself from whispering, "Except for when I'm with you," because he knows that already and he's just being an asshole for the hell of it, because he's been angry and malicious ever since they started fighting so much and she walked out that stupid door.
She's at her locker and she glances up, for just a second, and Tori is jumping on Beck and he's catching her and then she's crying in the Janitor's Closet and she's sure she looks as pathetic as she feels.
Mason Thornesmith is asking her if she wants to sing at the Platinum Music Awards and she's only saying yes to spite Beck and she sees his face out of the corner of her eye as Mason leads her away, and it's ingrained in her memory - that look of utter disappointment in her that she'd never seen on him before, not even when he found out she'd faked Tori giving her a black eye - haunting her.
And then she's watching Beck move closer to Tori on her couch through Cat's computer screen and their lips are almost touching and her heart that she thought was already gone, turns itself into a black hole.
/
Cat is in front of her, and she feels like they're not even best friends anymore because all she does now is make the girl fucking afraid of her. All she does is ruin everything she touches and she's sure if she were to look at herself through Cat's eyes, she'd see a monster.
And Jade's counting down, and it feels too much like when she left Beck (or did he leave her?) and she gets to one and, "Tori and Beck are going out together!"
She sees fire, she is fire, and she's setting everything around her ablaze.
She's pulling into Pet Mergency, her tires squealing and kicking up gravel, and she slams her door and storms inside.
"And there they are!" It's not that she was expecting anything else, but now it feels real and her chest is constricting. Her eyes find his (they always do) and everything blurs around her. She vaguely hears Cat spewing out some bullshit and Tori trying to make dumb excuses but it sounds like static and she's lost all her steam. She's not angry, can't find the effort within herself to be, and she's really just kind of sad, and she's mostly numb.
She hears Tori say, "You have no right to be mad at us, 'cause Beck and I are only-" and she snaps out of her trance, tears her gaze away from his, and cuts her off. She doesn't want to hear Tori finish with, "just friends" because it's a lie (for the most part, anyway), because she knows Tori likes Beck, has known it since the first day she met her, and knows Beck wants to like Tori too, if only just a little bit.
She finds herself saying, "I'm not mad," and she gets it when they don't believe her, when Cat says it's a trick, because now she's the Big Bad Wolf even in her best friend's and ex-lover's eyes.
And she's saying shit about how she has nothing to be mad about and how they should hang out with whoever they want and Beck's talking now and she's suffocating.
"You're really okay?"
"Yeah." The word feels like bile in her mouth and she feels filthy because she's not, god, not even close, and it feels too much like she's letting go of the final piece of him that she had held on so tightly to when that's not what she wants at all, and fuck, she just wishes she didn't exist.
She wishes he would wrap his warm, tan hands around her neck and strangle her because it would feel better than pretending she's okay with him moving on and leaving her behind, choking on his dust.
And he's looking at her with this look, telling her, "That's... that's pretty cool," and it's almost enough and she smiles back at him (her eyes so, so bright because she's looking at him like he's the sun) but then she realizes she just admitted defeat and she's sick, sick, sick, and she keeps on smiling, but it's not sincere anymore, it's all teeth and despair.
/
Jade hates sleep, always has.
She likes to think that maybe if she stays up late enough, long enough, that things will get better with time (but she knows that they won't, she knows she's just pretending to be naive).
But she doesn't like waking up feeling like she's missing portions of her life; pieces that just passed by her, and the past turning into the present, without her actually experiencing it.
She rolls over again and again, looks at the glowing numbers on the alarm clock like maybe they're the answer to everything, to why she's so fucking sad, and the redness of them is the only light in her room, and it reminds her of her bloodshot eyes.
It's 1:34 AM and she misses him.
It's 2:48 AM and the only thing she wants is for Beck to come back.
It's 4:06 AM and it's so dark and the loneliness is choking her.
It's 5:59 AM and she feels like she's dying.
/
Sometimes Jade's mind nastily tricks her into thinking that he misses her back - when he brushes against her in a hallway so empty that it can't be accidental, or when she feels his gaze on her from across the room and she looks up and finds him and his eyes are sad and he looks like he's seen a ghost, or when she's out of control and he steps in and calms her because he's the only she'll listen to, even though they're not together anymore.
But then she'll see him laughing in a car full of Northridge girls with their hands all over him, or she'll see him desperately going after Tori, or she'll hear through hushed whispers in the hallway that he kissed Trina, and then she wants to throw up because when did she get so stupid?
She blames him for it, he made her this way.
That's what the heart is though, what love is - you let someone in, and they destroy you.
/
She's sitting in the graveyard that's down the road from her house - the same one she discovered and started going to before her parents got divorced and they would fight all the time, the one that became her hiding place from the world - with a bottle of Jack Daniels she stole from her dad's liquor cabinet, breathing in the blackness and despair that life is finite. She's always found comfort among the rotting deceased bodies below her there; knowing that someone from 1805 can be buried next to someone from 2011 and they'll still end up as the same bare skeleton either way, and any grudges or promises or broken hearts or overflowing love they had when they were alive won't matter and will amount to the same nothingness.
She likes to sit there with her back against a tombstone that's cracked with the upper half of it missing - the only thing left on it is an engraved SUICIDE JUNE 26, 1885. She thinks it has a certain beauty to it in a sad way, and it reminds of herself, especially now.
She's sitting in the graveyard that's down the road from her house, and with every swig of alcohol, she slowly wastes away into the night in the company of corpses, and with a sadistic smile, she thinks, I fit right in.
/
The next day Beck comes up to her at her locker and before he even opens his mouth, she growls out, "No."
He rolls his eyes, a trait she'd always told him was unflattering on him, and huffs out a sad laugh. "You look like shit."
She raises an eyebrow above her darkening eyes, steps forward, and snarls, "Oh."
Beck is unfazed though, just like she knew he would be because he's the only one in the entire fucking world that's not afraid of her, and she's suddenly furious.
He sighs and runs a hand through his hair and she wants to reach out and touch it so badly and she almost does and then he says, "You said you were okay."
"What makes you think this is about you? I don't give a shit what you do." She takes another step closer and crosses her arms against her chest. Beck leans against the lockers with one arm and crosses one leg over the other but his nose flares and Jade knows he's trying to look calm and collected and confident when inside his temper is flaring.
He chuckles humorlessly and drawls, "Oh, so we're playing this game again?"
She's so close now that she can smell the spearmint gum in his mouth (and she feels a stab of satisfaction because she's the one who made him start chewing that kind, because she likes the taste of spearmint more than any of the other mints) and she's careful to not let her voice crack or waver when she snaps, "Have you ever stopped to think that maybe it's not a game? That maybe I really just don't care?"
She spins around, slams her locker shut, and walks as fast as she can to the bathroom before she can see his reaction.
A tiny part of her hopes that it stung; the rest of her keeps wishing that she had never said it.
/
Beck avoids her after that the way he did the first couple weeks after they broke up and their friends seem to constantly shoot them questioning glances.
Tori tries to get involved, tries to help and fix things like she always does, and Jade's too lethargic to even fight her on it.
She's almost grateful and almost a little bit proud when Beck puts his foot down one day at the lunch table and tells her to knock it off because it's not her problem, but then he looks over at Jade and his eyes are soft and he says, "We're okay, right?"
And she swallows hard and grimaces, and replies, "Right," but it comes out as more of a whisper, and she makes up some excuse about needing to take some kid's notes for a History test and hastily walks away.
She's sure Beck's eyes were boring holes into the back of her shirt the whole time and she's not sure if she's bothered anymore or not.
/
She still loves him, will always love him, will always think about all of her memories with him that she can recall.
(She had them all written down at one point in a journal, everything that felt important to her at some time, so that when she inevitably would forget them, she could look back and remember every last detail. But then, that night they broke up, she let her impulsiveness take the best of her, and she burned the journal - burned it all to try to obliterate any remembrance of him. But it didn't work, and it only made her feel worse.)
They're driving around LA with the windows down in Beck's old car, and there's shitty music playing, but she doesn't care because she's with him, and that's all that matters, because Beck is the greatest person Jade knows, even though she doesn't like to tell him that.
She's watching him pad around her kitchen barefoot on a Sunday morning, the glasses he only ever wears right after waking up perched on his nose, haphazardly flipping eggs and bacon and making coffee with one hand and reading the book he'd gotten at the Flea Market the day before in the other.
They're holding hands and walking along opposite sides of the old railroad bridge and they're almost at the end and Beck suddenly lets go and lightly shoves her, and she gasps and feels her heart drop into her stomach and starts to anticipate that feeling of falling, and then his strong arm is pulling her towards him again, and he laughs, "Saved ya life!" and she starts yelling at him, but then they reach the end and he jumps off and picks her up and kisses her, and whispers, "I love you, so much," and she forgets why she was so mad.
She's had an awful day and when they get back to her house, he kisses her nose because he knows she likes that, even though she'll scrunch it up when he does it and pretend she doesn't, and he runs a bath, and they get into the tub in the darkness, and he sits behind her and washes her hair, runs his fingers through it over and over, until the scowl disappears from her face.
She's beings to think that she's scared as hell that one day she won't be able to conjure up any of the small things in her mind, and that everything she has left of Beck will become muddy and distant, but then she becomes very aware of the fact that she's so deadened that the only thing left within her to cause her pain isn't even bothering to anymore; there's just a constant dull throb there that never goes away, and never gets any worse or any better.
/
The accident wasn't her fault.
She was at a four way intersection, and the light was green and she had the right of way, but then some self-entitled rich kid that didn't have the first clue how to drive flew through his red light and smashed into her at fifty miles per hour in his stupid, expensive black Audi.
Jade heard glass crunching and tires squealing and her car was spinning around and around and around, and she took her hands off the wheel and laughed.
She felt like she was on ride at a carnival - one of those ones that she despised, that threw you in circles until you were lightheaded and wanted to vomit - and it seemed endless. She thought, Is this how it ends?
And then it stopped, and everything was silent for a few seconds, and she was sure her adrenaline should've automatically kicked it and that her heart should've been beating wildly, but she realized that it wasn't at all, and that she had never been more unconcerned in her life.
She thought that maybe she should be more worried about the crimson liquid that seemed to be seeping out from everywhere on her, that she could feel dripping down her eyelids every time she blinked and that she could taste an abundance of in her mouth, and about the shards of her windshield scattered all around her, and about how she was trapped with no possible way to get out, but she wasn't. And she thought that maybe she should be thinking about Beck and how she wanted to see him just one more time before she was gone, but she wasn't.
She was just smiling blankly with red teeth and closed eyes as the screams of curious passersby and the wail of sirens filled her ears and the blackness overtook her.
/
Jade, she wasn't fortunate enough to die.
No, she just had to keep on living whether she felt like it or not, and was supposed to be ecstatic that she had been able to be rescued and saved.
She walks into Hollywood Arts for the first time in days, the first time since the accident, and people immediately swarm her, saying how lucky she is to be alive and how glad they are that she is. She just gives them a vacant look and barely takes notice of them because she feels like she has a film over her eyes and they're all blurred together and just look like photocopied idiots to her.
She halfheartedly pushes through the crowd, and looks away when she sees her friends (are they even her friends at all anymore?) gathered by Tori's locker. She knows all she'll see is sympathy in their gazes and that's the last thing she wants right now. Fuck, she doesn't even know what she wants. She just wants to somehow vanish.
Tori attempts to ask her how she's doing and Cat runs up to her and hugs her, but Jade winces and groans at the two arms wrapped tightly around her bruised torso, and the smaller girl lets go quickly and squeaks out, "Sorry Jadey!"
And then she sees Beck.
He rounds the corner, his eyes trained on the ground, and then he finally looks up and screeches to halt when he notices her, and he looks like he's about to cry.
And she stands there, her lip busted, her face and body littered with scratches and gashes, and traces of dried blood still evident in obscure places - her hairline, her eyelashes, her ears, her collarbones - and Beck realizes that she's gone. She's literally right in front of him, but she might as well be six feet under, because she's not talking to anyone (or rather, snapping at anyone) or glaring at them or poking fun at them in a way that makes them quiver with fear, and that's, god, that's just not Jade. And he can't find a trace of her emitting any sort of emotion and her eyes are dead and she just - she's nothing.
He breathes out, "Jade," and it's barely audible, but she hears it, and she sees a single tear fall down his cheek and plop onto the floor.
Six months ago, she would've given anything to hear that one syllable fall out of his mouth so desperately, so contritely, and she would've looked at him smugly and waited for him to come crawling back to her, because after that it would've only been a matter of time before he caved.
But now... now she sucks in a deep breath, and it's so hard and she thinks that her lungs might be collapsing, and she gives him a forlorn look and then turns, walks up the stairs, and continues on her way to class because she just can't bring herself to do anything more, and she has a tiny sliver of hope left that he'll run after her, but her life isn't an 80's movie and he doesn't, and she's sure she was designed to end up alone.
/
She used to pray to be empty and not have to feel anymore. God, she wishes she could take it back because now all she wants is to be able to feel fucking something. The life in her is gone and the loneliness is still choking her and she still wants Beck more than ever, but her mind, her thoughts, everything within her is poisoning and drowning her, and she's so exhausted.
She once heard that, "There will come a time when you believe everything is finished. That will be the beginning."
But that's a filthy fucking lie, she thinks, because everything's done and over, and the only thing it's the beginning of is her demise.
She feels herself sinking, but never quite enough for her to feel weightless, and she knows (hopes) it's only a matter of time until her insides twist into something ugly and take her over and make her bite into that poison apple, but until then she's fading, fading, fading away and detesting what she's become.
Jade West is nothing but dark, purple circles under her eyes and lungs that continually heave and never let her catch her breath and empty despair.
/
Later, when she finally got tired of waiting, and her mind succumbed to the nasty blackness within her, she laughs when she's buried in the same spot as SUICIDE JUNE 26, 1885 once was, and her gravestone looks the same, only it says, SUICIDE JUNE 26, 2016, and there's no name on it because her father didn't feel that she was dignified enough to have one.
Beck places dead flowers and a cup of coffee with two sugars on her grave every morning, and with a twisted half-smile whispers out things like, "I'm so sorry," and "You'll never guess what shit Tori pulled yesterday," and "I think Cat misses you almost as much as I do," and "I love you, so much," and "You fit right in."