A/N- so this fic here is for Lindsey, or LostInASeaOfSilence, who was the "winner" of my little contest for my story "the ballad of mona lisa"…she was the first one to guess the song :) so here's a little Bade for you, Lindsey, and a little Jandre thrown in as well. I hope you like it! and this is my first time writing anything but Bade, so please tell me how I did and if there's something that you guys would like me to write. thanks, hope you like it! xxx- Savanna
Six years, he thinks.
It's been six years since Andre Harris set foot on the streets of Los Angeles.
"Wow," he says to Cat when she calls to tell him how long it's been.
"The time really has flown," he chuckles.
He's never really been a good liar.
So when she tells him, "Why don't you come visit us, Andre," he pretends to mull it over and tells her, "I'll check my schedule and get back to you."
Inside, though, his heart is doing jumping jacks and he swears he'll explode if he doesn't get his feelings out, soon.
So he writes a song.
And when he's done writing a song, he writes another one.
And another.
And another.
He strums his guitar and scrawls down lyrics and taps his chin and plays his keyboard until his hands can't take it anymore and he falls asleep with his head on his desk and a dull pencil in his hand.
He calls Cat back the following day and tells her he's taking the next flight to Los Angeles and staying in a hotel dangerously close to the freeway, but it's the cheapest one he could find near the houses of the people he truly considers friends.
Later, he'll wish he knew what he was getting himself into.
He's greeted at the airport by a surprisingly mature-looking Robbie (minus Rex) and the ever-beautiful Tori, both with huge, genuine smiles plastered on their faces.
"You two…uh…?" Andre asks on the silent car ride back home, to which Tori grins and nods her head. Robbie ducks his head shyly and says," I just proposed two months ago." Tori holds out her hand, and sure enough, there's a breathtakingly exquisite diamond ring on her fourth finger.
Who would've thought…
He settles into his hotel after he's dropped off by Robbie and Tori, unpacks his messy suitcases, showers, puts on fresh clothes.
He goes to see Cat first, who opens the door and immediately throws her arms around him.
"Woah, easy there, Lil' Red!" he exclaims, laughing.
Except for Lil' Red isn't so red anymore. Instead, her hair is an elegant shade of chestnut, and he chides himself for not noticing.
Her smile doesn't falter.
"I missed you, Andre," she says, her eyes softening.
Inside her one-bedroom flat, he asks how everyone is.
"Well…Robbie and Tori are-""Getting married, I know, I heard."
She smiles widely.
"Isn't it great? And she even picked me to be a bridesmaid!"
"What about everyone else? How've you been doing?" he asks her.
"Oh! Well, I live here alone with my cat, and I work as a screenplay director for indie films, and I'm a part time actress in small extra roles." She dimples.
"Hey, good job, Lil' Red!" he enthuses.
"Not too bad. I'm thinking about going back to college, maybe getting a degree in medicine?"
He nods thoughtfully. "So…basically, you're a lonely cat lady." He chuckles.
She doesn't smile.
"Hey, I'm sorry. I shouldn't have said that." Cat shrugs.
"It's okay. Anyway, I don't really feel like I want to get into a relationship right now. I mean, I'm perfectly happy here, just me and Muppy!" she gestures toward a fat white kitten snoozing on top of the refrigerator.
Andre laughs. "So…what about Beck? Jade? They still together?"
And that's when she stops smiling abruptly and averts her eyes.
"Lil' Red? Hey, what's wrong?" A small tear slips out of her eye and rolls down her cheek.
"Andre…" she trails off, sniffles, wipes her eyes with the back of her hand.
"What? What's wrong?" he presses urgently. "Cat, what aren't you telling me?"
He suddenly wants to go back in time, when Robbie had Rex, and Tori was an aspiring singer, and Cat was the bubbly redhead, not the brown-haired, sobbing girl in front of him now.
"Cat, Cat, Cat…" he moves over next to her on the couch and rubs her back consolingly.
"Shh…it's alright. You can tell me, it's okay," he tells her. She keeps her face buried in the pillow, sobbing softly.
When she finally looks up, her face is swollen, cheeks lined with running makeup.
"Andre…Andre…"
He takes her by the shoulders.
"Cat…Cat, tell me. Tell me what happened, tell me what's wrong, Cat, tell me!"
She hiccups. "Beck…"
"What? What happened to Beck?" A new and horrible thought dawns upon him.
"Cat… he's not…"
"No!" she says loudly, her eyes red and puffy. "No, don't say that!" she cries, covering her ears with her hands, shaking her head vigorously. "Stop!"
Andre stays silent.
"Andre…Beck, oh, Beck…Beck's so sick, Andre, so, so, so sick, Andre!" Cat's sobbing, heaving, pressing her face into his shoulder.
His heart plummets.
"What do you mean, he's so, so sick? What's wrong with him? Cat! Cat, stop crying and tell me!"
She shuts up, wiping her nose on her hand.
"Andre, Beck…Beck…Beck has…oh, God, Andre, Beck has cancer! Andre, Beck has cancer!" Cat starts crying again, harder than before.
"Andre…Andre, he has cancer! He can't! I won't let him! He…he wasn't supposed to get cancer!" She's blabbering now, sobbing, her nose streaming, eyes leaking, mouth blubbering.
He's pretty sure his heart just snapped into two, maybe four, probably six.
Jade is emotionless. She lets him wordlessly into her and Beck's apartment, hands him a cup of coffee, and sits down on the couch, and crosses her arms over her chest, looking pointedly out the window.
She hasn't changed much since he last saw her. Her hair is back to brown, though, the streaks are still there too, but they're black today.
He sips in silence, occasionally clearing his throat, until she speaks.
"If you came back here to sympathize and pretend like I'm this weak, powerless idiot, then you can just leave right now."
He thanks her internally for staying the same while everything else around him has changed so much.
"Jade."
She breaks.
"Get the fuck out of here, Harris," she spits, standing up, pointing at him. "Right now. I want you to fucking get your ass out this door right now and never come back. Am I clear?"
He stands up, bewildered. "It doesn't matter, does it?" Jade asks bitterly, almost to herself. She lowers her hand. "It doesn't matter to anyone, no one. Nobody feels it like I do, Harris. Not even you." She kicks the coffee table. "Fuck. Fuck my life, fuck this whole fucking place!" She gestures wildly around her. "See this? See this fucking mess? It's called my life. And it's going to suck even more when he's-"
She stops.
"Jade," he says again.
Her face crumples.
"What am I gonna do, Andre? What am I going to do when he needs me? What am I going to when he's dying, and dammit, I'm not a fucking idiot, so don't tell me he's gonna be okay, because he's not, Andre! He's not gonna be fucking okay!"
Her eyes are leaking uncontrollably.
"How do I take care of…of this when I can't even take care of myself, Andre? How do I be the strong one when all I've ever known is to be weak?"
Andre feels a surge of anger.
"Jade, you're not weak. Are you listening to me? You're not weak, Jade. You're the strongest person I've ever known, and you need to be strong now. Especially now. Because I know him, Jade, I do. And it's going to hurt him more than anything else if he sees what he's done to you."
He leaves.
Beckett Oliver, room 247.
When Andre cautiously walks into the hospital room, Beck is lying on the bed, staring at the wall. He's bald.
Andre's heart shatters again when he sees Beck Oliver, the ladies' man, the boy with the beautiful head of hair, bald. It kills him. He tries not to let it show,
"Hey, man," says Andre softly, sitting down on the edge of one of the chairs beside Beck's bed.
"Andre?" Beck asks disbelievingly, voice cracking. His lips are chapped, the top one starts to bleed when he attempts to smile.
Andre feels a tear slide down his cheek.
"Is it you? You came back?"
"Yeah, it's me. What happened to you, man?"
"Life." The one word is enough.
There's a pause.
"I went to see Jade yesterday."
Beck's eyes flutter, briefly close, and then open. The raw emotion, the worry, the pain, everything Andre sees in those chocolaty brown eyes is so honest, so real. It makes him wonder what happened to everything that once existed. It makes him want to run away and pretend he never saw this. It makes him want to go back and live through all of this with all of his closest friends, to share the pain instead of living obliviously thousands of miles away, across the country.
"I hate myself." Beck's hoarse voice breaks the silence.
"I hate myself, Andre. I really, really do."
Another pause. Andre can feel the molecules shift, the atmosphere tense.
"For doing this to her, I mean. You have no idea how much it kills me to be here, Andre. I'm hurting her so much, man. So much."
Beck takes a deep breath.
"I really love her, man. Really. I wish…" he pauses. "I wish she didn't love me. I wish it wasn't killing her as much as it is. And she's trying to pretend like she's not affected by it, you know? But I can tell how much it hurts her."
"What's it gonna be like for her when I'm gone, Andre?" Beck wonders sadly.
"How's she gonna live without me when I'm all she's really ever had? How? Why am I doing this to her?"
Oh, the questions, the questions, the questions.
Andre wishes he knew the answers.
All of a sudden, it's been four months, and the whole crowd is in the hospital.
Beck Oliver is on his deathbed.
One by one, they file into the small room where death awaits the boy who was once so strong.
"Beck," Andre whispers. The two of them are the only ones in the room.
"Keep her happy, Andre. Please. For me-"
"Don't talk like that, man, you'll be fine-"
"I'm not gonna be fucking fine, okay, so just listen to me, Andre!" Beck's voice cracks.
"Protect her, Andre, please. Don't let her do anything that she's not supposed to, don't let her get depressed, or get into any crazy shit, okay?"
Solemnly, Andre nods. "Stay strong, man."
Those are the last words Andre Harris ever says to Beck Oliver.
She holds his hand as he's taking his last breaths.
"Jade?
"Shh…" she places a finger on his lips.
"I want you to know that I love you." A tear escapes her eyes.
"I love you too, Beck."
His breathing becomes rapid.
"Don't go, Beck," she says softly, clasping his hand tightly. "Don't leave me all alone."
He smiles weakly, closing his eyes. "I'm sorry."
She turns away and gives a small sob.
"Don't cry, Jade," he says, raising a hand to turn her head to face him.
He wipes away her tears with his thumb.
"You know what I want to be the last thing I ever see?" he asks her after a moment of
silence.
Jade exhales, long and deep. Her breath is salty.
"What?"
"You."
She cries into his shoulder.
"Jade?"
"Hrm…" comes her muffled response.
"Look at the bright side, babe. At least there'll be one less Canadian for you to hate."
Jade looks up, hair mussed, face tear-stained.
"What the fuck?" she asks bewilderedly.
He grins, and she follows suit.
"Love you, Jade."
She knows right then.
There's a flat line, a long, high-pitched beep.
A pack of nurses rush in, followed by Andre, Cat, Tori, and Robbie.
The last thing Beck Oliver ever saw was the smiling face of his beloved Jade West.
Jade holes up in Beck's old RV for the next six days, refusing to eat, surviving on only water.
No matter how much anyone tries to get her out of there, she doesn't budge.
Andre's worried she might do something that could hurt her, and that his promise to Beck would be broken.
She doesn't.
Purely out of respect for Beck's wishes, she tells herself. That's the only thing keeping her away from death, and reconciliation with her lover.
She snaps on the day of Beck's funeral. Everybody watches silently as she thrashes and curses at his corpse, beating him ferociously.
"You told me you'd never leave me!" Slap.
"You said you loved me!" Slap.
On goes the heart-wrenching tirade until Andre can't take it anymore. He runs over to Jade and snatches her away from Beck's body, pulling her into his car while she screams and sobs.
He lets her cry into his chest for hours. Jadelyn West, the unbreakable, has been broken.
Andre can't help but hate Beck.
That day is the last that he sees of Jade for the next ten months.
His phone vibrates in his jeans pocket.
He pulls it out of his pocket to see a text message from Robbie, who's now with Cat, because Tori, apparently, cheated on Robbie with some Ryder Daniels whom he vaguely remembers from high school.
Have you heard the news yet?
Frowning, Andre types back:
No…what happened?
Almost immediately, Robbie has texted Andre back.
Jade West is a pornstar.
He finds her outside of an old, abandoned studio, leaning on the graffiti-stained brick wall. The air smells of dirt and rotting meat.
Jade's in a black lacy bra and panties, her hair streaming down her back, feet strapped in the most painful-looking red stiletto heels he's ever seen.
She takes a drag from her cigarette and blows the smoke in his face.
Andre cringes. Jade smiles crookedly.
"Good to see ya, darlin'," she drawls sarcastically, "long time no see."
He furrows his brow.
"What the hell is this, Jade?"
She fakes innocent. "Why, whatever do you mean, my dear friend?"
"I'm not here to play games, Jade. What the hell are you doing?"
She shakes her head with a sympathetic smile tugging at her lips.
"You don't get it, do you, Harris? This is the fucking life!"
"What the hell do you mean, this is the fucking life? This is crazy! You're crazy! You need to get out of here, Jade; you don't know what you're doing…" He's grabbed her arm now, and is pulling her away.
She digs her heels into the ground.
"Get away from me, Andre," she snarls.
He looks at her, wide-eyed. "Do you know what you're doing?"
"I'm having fun!"
"This is not what I call fun-"
"Well, that's because you don't know what you're missing. I mean, look at me! I have it all! This bitch has a new man every night, Andre! What more do I need?" she laughs.
Andre stares at her.
"What about love, Jade?" he questions gently.
Jade's face hardens. She smiles weakly.
"Well, I already loved once, Andre, and look how well that turned out."
She crushes her cigarette under her foot and turns on her heel, ready to leave.
Andre acts on impulse, emotion overtaking his brain.
He grabs her skinny arm, whips her around, and kisses her.
Before he knows it, they're in the bed inside of the ratty studio.
He knows right away why she's such a successful pornstar; she's damn good.
Later, when they're sitting outside, in the chilly air, she whispers into his ear," I think I know what it feels like to love again." His heart pounds. "Me too," he manages. She smiles suggestively, then leaves him alone by a pile of stinking garbage.
Two days later, Jade West is found dead in her late boyfriend's RV, killed by drug overuse.
She's with Beck now, they must be happy, everybody says.
Andre Harris just smiles sadly, and tells himself that Jade and Andre was a fairytale never meant to be.
A/N- yeah...I really didn't like this one...sorry Lindsey...hope you don't hate it as much as I do... and if you do, sorry. i know it sucks. :( sorry! okay, and for anyone else, review and tell me if you liked it. I do requests, as long as there's no Bori, so if you want a story written, feel free to review or PM and i'll try my best! please read my other stories, and Lindsey's too. her pen name is LostInASeaOfSilence, and her stories are great. thanks for reading...oh, and I don't own Victorious (probably a little late to be writing a disclaimer but whatever :)