A/N: Hi there! So, it's AudreyMetalMouth again, and since I didn't get any complaints or "No! Don't you dare post such a hideous idea!" when I mentioned this in Snake in the Grass, I decided to go ahead and start. Since this is a compilation of what some might call one-shots, I don't have to feel any pressure about uploading! Yay! That also means it's got a more relaxed update status, aka so sporadic that I may or may not forget about it myself, which means more time for focusing on Decline (which, if you haven't noticed, is practically my baby because I pet it so much. Lol. Not seriously petting, but...oh, never mind). So! Let us begin!
I do not own this song or any part of Scooby Doo.
Song: Perfect by Flyleaf
Main Focus: Daphne
Sick
Of circling
The same road
Daphne drummed her fingers on the dashboard. How long had they been driving now? It seemed like years. She couldn't stand the summer heat here. They were going to deal with a special request; someone had emailed the gang's official address, asking for help with a rampaging monster of some sort or another.
Yeah, right.
And sick
Of bearing
The guilt
It was so hot in the Mystery Machine. Why was it so hot? She shifted uncomfortably as she thought of the last time they were on a mystery. She hadn't meant to screw up Freddy's plan, but she did when she tripped and fell into it. He'd gotten so mad, called her a danger-prone damsel in distress. She hated making him mad. It was awful to see him seething and beating himself up for not being a good enough leader. It wasn't his fault she was a klutz.
So open
The windows
To cool off
She groaned. "It's so hot in here," she complained, stretching. The others didn't react. "It feels like an oven," she continued.
Velma didn't even look up from her book to answer. "Then roll down the window. Simple solution. The air is on, you know."
"I know." She reached over and rolled down the window.
And heat
Pours in
Instead
A blast of hot air from the outdoors hit her full in the face. "Ugh! It's going to make my hair go all frizzy!" She rolled it back up as fast as she could. Glancing over at Freddy, she wondered if he was going to say something cute and witty in response to her hair comment.
He didn't.
She slid down in her seat. She felt so crummy. Hot days always did this to her. She blew her hair out of her face and tuned the radio out, listening to the conversation happening in the backseat instead.
"Hey, like, that's my sandwich!"
"Shaggy, let him have it. You stole his last one."
"Ree, rhe's on ry ride." Scooby must have stuck his tongue out and done a raspberry – or that was a very strange sound to make while eating a sandwich, even a super-double-decker Shaggy special.
"Come on, I made it, I should get to eat it, right?"
"Come on, Scooby made his, he should have gotten to eat it, right?" Oh, Velma. Always the arbitrator.
"Ri ret rhe rand-rich! Ri ret rhe rand-rich!" Scooby sing-songed. Ohp, there he ate it.
In the front seat, she smiled to herself. They had it so easy. Think about your next meal, be scared at the appropriate times (all the time) and that was it.
Her smile slipped off her face when she thought of Freddy again. "You're always so perfect," he had told her, "until we need to catch the monster!"
Perfect
In weakness
I'm only
Perfect
In just your strength alone
But she wasn't perfect, she had wanted to say. Unless you counted being a perfect-ly lame and clumsy target for kidnapping. The only reason she could be remotely 'perfect' was because she was in the gang. And why was she in the gang? Because she was pretty. People preferred to listen to the pretty face. They could trust a pretty face. And prettiness was good publicity. Come to think of it, she didn't know what she even contributed.
Fred finally pulled up in the driveway of their employer's house. She jumped out, eager to get out of the heat – and promptly fell into a puddle. Of mud.
All
My efforts
To clean me
The sound that escaped her mouth was somewhere between a whimper and a moan. This was not her day. Grr. She slowly stood, and saw the rest of the gang staring at her. Velma smiled sympathetically and handed her spare purple dress to her. "Thanks," she mumbled, taking the bag. She almost slipped again but caught herself in time, thankfully. She brushed herself off, a pitiful attempt at cleaning herself but an attempt nonetheless.
Leave me
Putrid
And filthy
Fred swallowed. "I'll see if they'll let you use their shower. Try to keep away from the carpet, okay?"
"I know," she snapped. "I'm not stupid, Freddy."
He just looked at her with a sad expression on his face.
And how
Can you
Look at me
She followed him up to the porch, not meeting his eyes. She hoped whoever had hired them didn't see her like this. Such a disgusting mess. "Hi," Freddy said. "Can she use your shower? She slipped and fell into your giant mud pit outside."
"Oh, yes, that's in case the monster tries to get in," replied the older woman pleasantly. "The bathroom is down that hallway, third door to the left."
"Thank you, ma'am."
The bathroom was very small. She half-wondered if it was supposed to be a closet.
When I
Can't stand
Myself?
As the warm water poured over her, rinsing away the mud, she closed her eyes. Why didn't they all recoil when she fell? She would have. It was gross; who knew what was in that mess of gunk? Ew, no, don't think about it. Freddy hadn't looked repulsed. He'd looked…about to laugh or like he wished he could help, his facial expressions weren't very eloquent either way.
She wrung out her hair and stepped out of the shower, wrapping a towel around herself and drying off. If she hurried she could hear the details of the monster, maybe even figure out something nobody else would think of.
Well, 'nobody else' being the guys. She could at least blurt it out before Velms pointed it out. If she thought of it in time.
Dressing quickly, she rushed through reapplying her makeup and redoing her hair. Normally she would never rush such important things, but desperate times called for desperate measures. A smile leapt onto her face as she darted to the living room.
The woman, their employer, was already almost finished talking. "…and its head looks like a human's, but with a lion's mane. It's been going after the mansions recently."
"It probably wants money," she said suddenly. Oops. Better think next time. They were looking at her strangely now.
"Daph," Freddy said, "we know that. We're trying to figure out who it is now."
She could feel her face heating up. "Right," she mumbled. "I knew that." She only listened with half an ear to the rest of the conversation. This would end the way it always did: with her being abducted by the monster, briefly hit on, and then the gang would show up to save the day and solve the mystery. Fred would come up with an overly complex trap, Shaggy and Scooby would screw it up and somehow still manage to catch the monster, and Velma would unmask it and outline the motives for them. She followed them, trudging along behind the rest as they set out to explore the grounds.
They were all perfect in their own ways. But what was she?
I'm tired
To be honest,
I'm nobody
Nothing. That's what.
"Daphne, behind you!" She turned, too late, at Fred's warning to see a great, hulking beast snarling down at her, saliva dripping from its yellowed fangs.
"Ew," she wrinkled her nose, "somebody has morning breath." It grunted at her and looked from one to the next, all the way around the gang. "What, did you not read the script? I thought all monsters got a script when they were told we were coming to solve a mystery. This is the part where you kidnap me and chase them, then we trap you and take off your big ugly mask and you say," – she deepened her voice in mockery – "'and I would've gotten away with it too, if it weren't for you meddling kids and your dumb dog!' Got all that?" She was breathing hard from her outburst, and surprised to find her face wet with involuntary tears.
Everyone stared at her, including the monster. Finally it said in a gravelly voice, "I think so…do I get a paycheck if I do it right?"
"Shaggy, Scooby, distract it," Fred ordered. "Velma and I will help Daphne."
"Like, why us?" Shaggy complained as he and Scooby pulled out their own boxes of Scooby Snax. "Come on, Scoob, let's go. YAAHHHHH!"
"Reah, RAHHHHH!" Then they were off.
Perfect
In weakness
I'm only
Perfect
In just your strength alone
"Daphne – " Fred started, and to her embarrassment she burst into tears. He took a step back, alarmed. "What am I supposed to do in the event of female breakdowns?" he hissed to Velma.
Looking slightly insulted, Velma shook her head. "Just go plan out the trap."
He almost said something, she could tell. In the end he nodded and walked a short distance away, pulling out his set of blank blueprints and a white pen. She sniffled and sat down hard on the ground. "What's wrong with me?"
"Nothing." Velma sat down beside her. "You're just having a bad day."
She wiped her nose with the back of her hand, grimacing at the texture. Gross. "You never have bad days," she accused, feeling a bit childish. "Because you're smart. You can look at everything logically. Well, not all of us are entirely rational!"
"I know that. And believe me, I'm not entirely rational all the time either," she admitted. "Granted, I do try to keep logic in the picture, but sometimes I have bad days too. Do you want to talk about it?"
She was silent for a moment. "You'd make a good therapist."
This made Velma laugh. "No way, I'd kill the patients first – can you see it? They'd start using slang grammar, like 'try and' or 'inside of' or the all-atrocious 'ain't' and wouldn't live to see the next day."
She giggled a little at the mental image. "I guess so." Taking a deep breath, she said in a small voice, "I think Freddy hates me."
"Why would he hate you? He doesn't hate you."
"I mess everything up! I can't do anything right and I don't contribute anything to the team, and I'm…not perfect, like you guys."
Perfect
I'm only
Running
In just your strength alone
"We aren't perfect, Daphne," Velma told her. "Really, you think Fred losing the remote for a week is perfect? You think me finding out I put it in the washing machine is perfect? You think Shaggy and Scooby…I can't even say anything there."
She smiled a little. "Yes, but when it counts you all do exactly the right thing. I have no role."
"Of course you do. Who would have stopped Mr. Fong if you hadn't bought the mask in that store? Certainly not us. Who else can keep Fred sane when he's spent an entire night testing and retesting a trap? You can. Who knows when we all just need a break? You do. You help out a lot. You just don't know it."
She thought about it. Maybe – no. Velms was just trying to make her feel better. "I don't know. You could all get on fine without me, and you know it." She stood, signaling the end of the discussion. "I bet Shaggy and Scooby are getting tired of running from tall, drooling, and stupid. Asking for a salary – please." She walked over to where Freddy was finishing his trap design. "Freddy, I'm sorry," she began, but he cut her off.
"Daph, I should have tried harder to listen to you more. I'm the one who should be sorry. Don't say anything else." He acted so sincere, and then treated her like one of his trap experiments.
Anger boiled up in her, knotting in her throat and behind her newly-dried eyes. "What do you mean, should have tried harder? You don't try! You don't care; you never did! You're just so self-absorbed, stuck in your stupid little world of traps that never work anyway!"
He reeled back, stung. She bit her tongue but didn't care. He said something under his breath that sounded like "must be female hormones." Hormones? She was ready to tear his heart out and watch it bleed and he was blaming it on hormones?
I tried
To kill you
She was debating whether or not to smack him when his eyes widened suddenly. "Look out!" He dove and shoved her out of the way just as the monster flew over their heads and rammed into a tree.
"What did you do that for?" she cried, scrambling to her feet and running along beside him.
"He would have smashed you into a pulp," he shouted back. "I couldn't let you get pulverized, could I?"
You tried
To save me
She couldn't think straight. After that outburst…he still cared? About her? Why? She almost said it out loud, just to see if he'd say it.
Almost.
But she knew he wouldn't. He would give her that lame excuse that he'd do it for any of the gang. Sure, he would, but she wanted to believe he felt something different when he saved her than when he saved Scooby.
Really.
They ducked behind a tree and Fred yelled, "Now!"
The monster ran by, growling and swinging its massive head around, searching for them. "Where are you? Come out now," it intoned in a deep, oddly masculine voice.
"Dagnabit I said NOW!" Fred said under his breath, "Are they deaf or what?"
She tapped his shoulder. "Um, Fred, they can't enforce your trap."
"Why not?" He turned to look where she was indicating. "Oh, crap."
The monster was dangling Shaggy and Scooby upside down. "Like, he-he-elp!"
"Relp rus! Retty rease?"
"This is the last time we act as bait without a raise, Fred," Shaggy called, twisting frantically and trying to get free.
"Wait, where's Velma?" Daphne spun around, looking for her friend.
"Stuck," mumbled a familiar voice from above. She looked up to see Velma in what appeared to be a very uncomfortable position in the tree. "Hey, I told you I have bad days. Don't look so surprised."
Fred grabbed her arm and pulled her away from the tree. "He's coming after us again."
You save me
You save me
She growled, "Wonderful, I love it when this happens." Fred took off, turning his head every now and then to make sure she was still behind him. She tripped at the last minute and the creature lifted her by one foot into the air, sniffing and twitching its nostrils.
"Smell good," it said in its gravelly monotone.
Oh, crud. She'd forgotten she was wearing her new Avril Lavigne perfume. "Uh, it doesn't mean I taste good, actually quite the opposite, see, we humans smell bad if we taste good…that sounds weird…um…"
It blinked. "Keep."
"Not on my watch!" A brown shoe flew through the air, conking the monster in the head. Its yellow eyes looked blankly at Fred, who was now wearing only one shoe and breathing hard in anger. "Sorry, freak, but Daphne's off-limits." He threw the other shoe with vehemence.
Slowly the monster reeled back and forth, then crashed to the ground.
On top of her.
You save me
You save me!
She struggled to get it off of her, but couldn't. She was panicking; why couldn't she move it? Fred and the others at last heaved it away. She could tell Velma was itching to unmask it already, but waited patiently for Fred to make sure Daphne was okay.
Of course she was, she told him, then to herself: aren't I always? Perfect Daphne. Perfect…she remembered something one of the boys had teased her about in eighth grade. "You're only perfect because you drown yourself in Maybelline," he had laughed, then squirted his water bottle in her face. "Not so perfect now, are you?" She had shrieked and burst into tears, running to the bathroom after snatching the pass off the wall without asking. Staring at her fourteen-year-old self in the mirror, she had told herself he was just being mean.
But wasn't it true?
She was too weak to move the beast away from herself, she was too slow to get away from it in the first place, she was too clumsy to keep Fred's traps working right, and she was too stupid to come up with any clues or traps of her own.
She was only perfect because she was pretty.
Perfect
In weakness
I'm only
Perfect
In just your strength alone
Tears started to well up in her eyes again, but she swallowed them. "Aren't we going to unmask him now?" she said, trying to sound composed.
At the cracking of her voice even Shaggy looked at her strangely – and she knew he wasn't the brightest firefly in the forest. "Daph," Fred said gently, "why don't you unmask him this time?"
She almost nodded. Then it moaned and began to get up. "I think we'd better run and, you know, come up with another trap? As in, now?" she suggested.
Scooby and Shaggy both nodded fiercely. "Great idea! Like, best idea I've heard all day! Running is our specialty, right, Scoob?"
"Roh reah! Ret's ro!"
Then they were all off. Fred hesitated though, and after Daphne stumbled yet again he scooped her up and sprinted.
She couldn't even run on her own.
Perfect
In weakness
I'm only
Running
In just your strength alone
Finally they stopped under cover of some hedges and Fred whipped out a rope. "We're going to try something simple this time," he told them, tying knots rapidly.
"Define simple," Velma said, raising an eyebrow skeptically.
"As in, a net because I don't have time to think." He finished his haphazard net and whistled. "Never seen prettier holes tied together! Who wants to throw it?" One by one they all looked to Scooby.
The Great Dane backed away. "Roh, ro! Ri'm rot roing it!"
This was her chance. She could prove she was perfect too, prove she belonged, prove she was worth something. "I will." Her voice sounded stronger than she had thought it would. In a good way…
Fred looked at her worriedly. "Are you sure, Daphne? I mean – "
"I'm not just a pretty face," she spit. "I can be just as perfect as you guys." Her eyes grew as she heard the words. That was her voice, but she hadn't meant to say that out loud!
Fred looked stung. "O-okay. I know you're more than a pretty face, Daph, and – "
This time Velma cut him off. "Fred, this is the part where you should probably shut up. Just give Daphne the net."
She shot her friend a grateful look and took the net. With a deep breath she slipped out of the hiding place. The monster was lifting rocks in search of them now. Stupid thing. This couldn't be so hard, could it? Not at all…
…only perfect because you drown yourself in Maybelline…
…can't even run on your own…
…tried harder to listen to you…
…not so perfect now, are you?
All these phrases darted through her head, filling her with a kind of feeling that can only be described as the shortening of breath, the tightening of one's throat, and the wrenching of one's stomach. She hurled the net with all of this feeling and all the self-doubt she had inside of her, unbottling the cannon within her at last.
It fell with a satisfying crunch to the ground.
A warm, luminescent sense of wholeness rushed over her. Finally. She was perfect.
The others tumbled out of the hedge, congratulating her with huge smiles. Fred looked so proud of her. He clapped her on the shoulder and kissed her cheek, quick enough to hide it from the others, but long enough that it still sent her heart spinning wildly. Velma crouched by the monster and pulled the mask away.
"The old lady?" they chorused in confusion.
Velma smiled knowingly. "The one who called us here, of course. What better way to cover up a scam then to hire amateur detectives to look into it? Of course, 'amateur' being a general term to say we don't take payment…" She let the rest of the sentence hang in the air and waved a hand dismissively. "You know how criminals are."
The police arrived to take away the old woman, and she glared at them. "And I would've gotten away with it, too, if – "
" – if it weren't for Daphne," Fred interrupted her with a wink. "What a way to end a mystery, don't you think?" he said, putting an arm around the redhead.
She smiled up at him, happy at last. "Just perfect."