What if This Storm Ends?
Chapter 1: Autumn Leaves
A/N: I can't seem to let go of this idea. I am having a hard time planning some things for it, but I can't seem to get away from attempting to write it.
Disclaimer: Victorious and all of its brilliance belongs to Dan Schneider and Nickelodeon.
Summary: Happy, carefree Cat Valentine falls from grace after the loss of her brother. Her friends get pulled into her destructive behavior. Cabbie.
~!#$%^&*()_+
If only fall could happen normally in Hollywood, California. Hell, if only anything could happen normally in California.
Caterina Valentine wasn't exactly the girl anyone would look to for the ordinary, as she might have been more eccentric than the state she lived in. Hair as violently red as cold blood, a voice that could soothe the hardest of hearts and a disposition as childish as they come, normal wasn't a term often used to describe her.
Still, she had a nice life amongst her family (as insane as they were) and her friends and fellow classmates at Hollywood Arts High School.
As her father pulled up outside of said school, Cat gave him a peck on the cheek and made her exit, marveling at how green the trees still were even in the Autumn months. She would have given anything to see just one leaf change.
Ever since a trip to Denver when she was eight years old, Cat had fallen in love with autumn leaves. The wide range of colors and shapes, the intensity of the colors and watching them float from the trees as the bitter winds hit them in just the right way.
Hollywood was different, almost always hot and sunny. Cat loved her life here, but living in California could become tiring at times. People were out to get each other, interested only in propelling themselves to the top at the expense of everyone else. So much talent and variety, it was easy to get lost amongst the turmoil.
But she couldn't help but smile everyday, being surrounded by so much happiness. There were always kids dancing and singing on the front steps of the school, such harmony in the air. It was easy to forget all the bad things when she remembered that this was home.
Cat quickened her pace when she spotted her friend Tori Vega making her own way to the entrance.
"Hey, Cat," the brunette greeted her with a smile, before opening the door for her.
"Hi, Tori. What did you have for breakfast?" Cat asked her, a tad out of the blue.
"Uh...a bagel, why?" Tori replied, slightly put off by her friend's random question. Cat giggled, loving how people reacted to her zaniness. She never did answer Tori, who just walked slightly behind the redhead, still trying to figure out why Cat would have asked her that.
As they quietly made their way to their homeroom, Robbie Shapiro and his puppet Rex appeared from inside the room, his clothes and hair dripping wet.
"Robbie, what happened?" Cat inquired of him, as he removed his black-rimmed glasses from his face to wipe them off, before realizing there was no dry part of him. Cat graciously took them from his hands and dried them with her blouse, still awaiting his answer.
"Thanks. The pipes in the classroom burst and I was the unfortunate person standing near them," he stated, retrieving his glasses from Cat.
"Your stupidity is what's unfortunate," the deep voice of Rex piped up, as Robbie rolled his eyes at his puppet.
"That's terrible," Cat told Robbie, who was wringing out his shirt on the floor. Tori stepped back to avoid getting water on her shoes.
"Yeah and now I have to go back home to change into dry clothes and miss my first couple of classes. And even worse, there's nobody home to keep an eye on Rex while I change," Robbie ranted, leaning against the wall, paying no heed to the activity fliers he was dampening.
"I could go with you," Cat offered, figuring her morning classes were only Make-Up and Set Design, and she was doing very well in both. She could afford to miss one day.
"You'd do that?" Robbie asked her hopefully.
"You'd do that?" Tori echoed his question, confused. Evidently, she would have let Robbie go it alone.
"Sure, come on," Cat grabbing Robbie's arm and pulling him away from the doorframe.
"Hurry back!" Tori yelled after them. Cat nodded in her direction and continued on her way beside Robbie.
"I really appreciate this, Cat," Robbie thanked her, as he walked with her, and she smiled at him.
"Anytime," she said, as they were approaching the front entrance. Cat spotted Robbie's rundown station wagon in the parking lot and tried to stifle a laugh. After Robbie's convertible got stolen, he'd gotten stuck with even more dilapidated piece of junk.
Cat was praying inwardly that it would get them safely to Robbie's house and back. Robbie reassured her, almost as if he had read her mind.
"My uncle put a new engine in it, and it's been running a lot better," he informed her, and she breathed a sigh of relief.
She climbed into the passenger side after he unlocked it and noted the dusty interior. Robbie had hung a pair of puppet shoes from the rear view mirror, convinced that they were Rex's first pair until he had grown out of them.
Cat giggled at the memory of him telling her that, as she'd remembered it fondly. She thought the friendship between Robbie and Rex was very sweet, because Robbie always had someone to talk to. She understood why he seemed to be aloof to the fact that he was the one who controlled Rex. It made him less lonely. As sweet as it was, Cat also felt a bit sad for him.
On a spur of the moment, Cat leaned across the gearshift and wrapped an arm around his neck. She didn't care that he was wet or that the gearshift was poking her in the side, she felt like the hug was necessary. Robbie was caught off guard, but he reciprocated as best he could, being as nearly all of her weight was on him. When she pulled away, he looked rather dazed.
"What was that for?" He asked, sliding the key into the ignition and turning it properly.
Cat shrugged off his question, delighted by the fact that the car started the first time he turned the key. Robbie let her strange behavior go unquestioned any further. She was prone to doing things that didn't make sense, though unbeknownst to him, the very real logic was her own little secret.
Approaching the familiar duplex that housed the Shapiro family, Cat heard the noisy hum of the engine die as Robbie cut the power.
Cat watched as Robbie unbuckled Rex from the backseat, and listened to them argue about Robbie not letting Rex sit in the front seat.
"Because Cat came with us!" Robbie struggled to explain to the puppet in his hands, and Cat grinned and shook her head.
"The nut would have been fine in the backseat! Safer too, probably," Rex retorted, and Cat frowned behind them, as Robbie turned around to apologize.
Cat often thought of Rex's supposed bad attitude towards her, and tried to deduce the meaning behind it. It was so strange, especially when Robbie seemed to hold her in relatively high esteem. Sometimes she wondered if he was harboring some secret resentment toward her, and for awhile it was the only explanation she could come up with. For that period of time she had distanced herself from him, thinking that he didn't want her around, but then she overheard him having a conversation with Rex.
"Cat doesn't want to be around me, all because you can't keep your mouth shut. Why are you so mean to her? I wish she would just talk to me..." He had said, and Cat realized that their friendship wasn't something he forced when she was around, he held onto it even when she wasn't.
She had though perhaps, Robbie and Rex had such different views of people and of life because it made Rex seem more and more like a separate entity. Robbie seemed so desperate to believe that Rex was his own person, and not just some character that Robbie had created. Because if Rex wasn't just a puppet, then Robbie was alone.
And again, as they climbed from the bottom apartment to the top, Cat felt overwhelming emotion for Robbie and resisted the urge to tackle him to the floor and hug him until he begged her to stop.
As they reached the hallway outside his bedroom, Robbie handed Rex to Cat and shot a warning look at his puppet.
"Be nice," he told him, before smiling at Cat and heading into his bedroom to change.
Cat absentmindedly clutched the puppet to her, almost as if projecting the hug that was meant for Robbie onto it.
Cat glanced around at the paintings on the wall, until her eyes landed on her favorite one. A swirl of autumn colors, and Robbie claimed it was simply random colors, but Cat swore she saw the leaves.
One of every shade of red, orange, yellow and brown one could imagine. It was so calming and beautiful, and Cat would stare at it every time she came her. She and Robbie studied together on a regular basis and she would always stop outside his bedroom door after every trip to the bathroom and kitchen and just lose herself in it. Robbie would eventually have to come looking for her and bring her back into his room.
And once again, she was startled by him opening his door in dry clothes, and he chuckled because he knew what she had been doing.
"You really love that painting, don't you?" Robbie asked gazing at it with her. She nodded, beaming.
"Well I wish we could stay and stare at it, but we should probably head back to school," Robbie advised, as she handed Rex back to him.
"All right," she sighed, sneaking one last lingering glance at the painting.
They were moving toward the stairs as Cat's cell phone began to ring. Seeing it was her mother, she braced herself for a scolding. The school must have called her being as Cat had missed classes.
"Mom? Look I know why-" Cat was trying to prepare a decent explanation in her head, before she was cut off by her mother's panicked voice.
"Cat! Cat I'm at the hospital!" She exclaimed, and Cat could hear frantic voices in the background, accompanied by sounds that indicated many people were rushing around.
"Why? What happened?" Cat had asked the question, but she dreaded the answer.
"Your brother was hit by a car, is there a way you can get here?" Her mother replied, speaking so fast that Cat wanted to believe she had misheard her.
"He was...what?" Cat was struggling to form words, as Robbie looked on, clearly alarmed by Cat's change in demeanor.
"He was hit by a car...honey, you need to get down here as soon as you can. It's very bad," her mother's voice broke and Cat almost dropped the phone.
"Um...okay, I'll get Robbie to drive me. I love you," Cat tried to maintain some sort of composure.
"All right, I love you. Try to hurry," her mother responded, and it was obvious that she was trying to get off the phone quickly as she was losing it.
Cat hung hit the 'end call' button, and her mouth went dry. They was this agonizing feeling that covered her, the likes of which she had never known.
She felt her legs losing feeling, and she collapsed to her knees. Robbie reached out and caught her as best he could.
"Cat!" He exclaimed, as she fell, and Rex lay on the floor at the edge of the steps, forgotten.
"I...I need you to drive me to the hospital..." Cat attempted to explain to him, but it was more intelligible mumbling than anything.
"Okay, it's okay. You're gonna be okay," Robbie assured her, out of breath, as he helped her stand back up and lifted her over to the stairs.
She swayed dangerously near the edge, but Robbie caught her before she went over. He glanced helplessly down them, and back at Cat who barely seemed to be coming to a bit.
"Cat, we need to get you downstairs, okay?" He told her, and she nodded as though she understood him.
She seemed to take a bit more control of her legs now, and the gripped the railing for dear life. On the other side, Robbie held her up and they made the perilous journey downstairs.
Reaching the landing safely, Robbie realized they were moving too slowly this way, so he scooped Cat up in his arms and rushed as fast as he could out to his station wagon.
As he sat her inside, he glanced back at the duplex, remembering that Rex was on the floor at the top of the stairs. He winced as he realized he'd have to leave him there, as Cat clearly needed to be taken to the hospital.
As Robbie climbed into the driver's seat, he looked worriedly at Cat, whose eyes stared lifelessly ahead at the dashboard. Turning the key, he wondered just what her mother had said in that phone call.