Author's Notes: Hell everyone! I bet you weren't expecting to see this next chapter before April, eh!?

Well, given the cliffhanger last time, it only felt right to give you what came next quickly. Plus a fair chuck of this was already written up before the last chapter was uploaded. Lol

Kenju would like to say a few things before we get started. Take it away, partner!

"Okay, first of all I'm sure everyone here has noticed the shiny new cover for this story. I would like to ask that each and every one of you please give "CMR Rosa" a big round of applause for the generous donations that have been made towards this story getting such high quality fan art from "qmargot" over on DA.

"The second thing I'd like to bring to everyone's attention is a previous comment we made way back in the opening chapters Author Note. Remember when we warned that this story was going to be very dark but in a realistic way? Now, I'm betting that you thought that warning pertained to Heather's shitty home life back with her parents. If so, you would be partly right. But not completely. From here on out is where and when things are going to get serious. There is still going to be plenty of naughty fun, but it's going to take a back seat for a while. I'll even toss out this juicy little spoiler, there are more people in this story with problems than just Heather, Cody and Gwen.

"Lastly, there is going to be a VERY important AN at the end of this chapter, PLEASE READ IT as it contains important information."

With that out of the way, we hope that you enjoy the twelfth chapter of "Unbreakable Red Silken Thread": Chance: Demons of the Past


Sunday, October 26th, 2014 (11:20 PM)

Everything went dead still, almost as though the moment had been captured as a painting. The only hint that time hadn't been frozen was the lightning flashing and booming thunder overhead, filling the otherwise pitch black and silent room with momentary light and sound.

The emotions brought up by the sight of Dawn supporting a girl much taller than herself who seemed clearly out of it at this late an hour were many. The first one voiced was a banal one.

"Uh…what's going on here? Did I miss something?" Cody asked, not having a clue as to just who the person being held up by the Aura Whisperer was.

Heather, knowing that this was Gwen, fired off a string of obscenities under her breath as she looked at her confused boyfriend. Then her grey eyes gaze shifted back to Dawn. When Heather's eyes focused on the small pale hippie chick, their stare hardened even further. The number of people who could survive the glare the Queen Bee was sending Dawn's way was less than five.

Sadly for Heather, Dawn was one of them. Unfazed by the pure hatred coming from the other woman, Dawn looked over at Cody and asked, "Can I come in?"

Still confused but wishing to help whoever this girl with Dawn was, Cody allowed them entry. As the pair's four rain drenched feet plopped on the floor, he closed and locked the door behind them.

Heather's hands clenched into fists with her feeling a wetness against the pointed finger nails driving into the flesh of her palms she couldn't tell if it was sweat or blood. She was oblivious to this or anything else outside of the towering (and according to her nose) drunk draped over Dawn. The normally unshakeable Queen Bee's mind was still reeling from what had just happened. For once in her life, Heather was at a complete and total loss for what she could do. Every rapid-fire attempt to come up with a good solution resulted in an impossible plan for how much time she had left before the cat was out of the bag. If she had been a lesser person, she would have started crying at this point.

Totally ignorant of his girlfriend's emotional tsunami, Cody asked the Moonchild while pointing to the other figure, "So…uh, Dawn…who is that?"

"This is Gwen Fahlenbock."

With that, with nothing more than a verbal snap of the fingers from a neutral mouth, the very universe itself seemed to tightening and stagger at the revelation. But that was nothing compared to how Cody reacted. The words, as few as they were, were like atom bombs, like fists from an angry, invisible Jasmine. His mind had been cracked up like an egg, as his synapse fired off a million thoughts to try and process this information.

When his brain finally was able to do so, The Tech Geek all but stumbled and fell on his ass at seeing the Goth for the first time since they fled the erupting volcano after the botched finale of Total Drama World Tour. Mere words would fail to convey the expression plastered over the boy's face, a look akin to what one would show when staring into bowels of Hell. Every single artery, vein, and blood cell evaded the laws of physics and didn't budge a millimeter.

"Why did you bring her here, Dawn?" Heather asked, her voice brimming with hatred. Ignoring the questioning look on Cody's face she continued, "Why the fuck did you bring her here!?"

Shouldering the inebriated Gwen as best she could, Dawn responded, "I brought Gwen here because she needs help, and the last time she needed it, you were there for her."

Turning to his girlfriend, Cody asked, "W-What is Dawn talking about?"

At her wit's end, still processing that this was actually happening, Heather barely managed, "I-I-I'll explain later…"

Cody was not happy with that and demanded, "Heather, tell me what is going on, now!"

"I came across Gwen outside when I was returning to my dorm," Dawn verbally (and physically) stepped in. Seeing the confused looks on Cody and Heather's faces, and after hiking up Gwen so that she wouldn't fall she continued with, "I have a project for my photography class that requires a display of the wonders of the Great Earth Mother. So I decided to get some pictures of the spectacular displays of lightning from around campus when the storm started." Now with the couple following her, Dawn finished with, "On my way back, I found Gwen outside on the dorms front lawn. I believe she's under the influence of alcohol."

"Why do you think that?" Cody asked.

"Would you please note the green chucks of vomit that I have on my white hoodie, Cody?" Dawn asked in a slightly deadpan manner. "Gwen has thrown up on me, twice. And on the way up here and to your dorm, she threw up all over my potted plants." Following the pale lime green mess that covered the Moonchild's stained hoodie, both Cody and Heather noticed that Dawn wasn't wearing shoes, and that her pants were covered up to her ankles. "She got me pretty good, both times," Dawn said to the unasked question, "And I highly doubt that I'll be able to save my shoes."

"Why the fuck did you bring her here!?" Heather asked, repeating her earlier question.

Dawn ignored her question for a moment, and instead asked one of her own, "Could one of you please give me a hand? Gwen isn't necessary heavy, but she is bigger than me."

Cody rushed to take Gwen's other arm over his shoulder without a moment's hesitation and was able to make supporting the Goth much easier for the smaller Moonchild.

"Thank you," Dawn said with a soft, thankful tone. Then she looked at the Tech Geek for a few moments, with her gaze suddenly becoming far more intense than before. She was silently taking note of the changes that Gwen's mere presence had on his aura. After seeing enough to form a opinion about it, Dawn added, "I didn't think that Heather would want to see Gwen getting into trouble, and based on how your own aura just reacted, I think the same applies to you, Cody." The couple had their usual reactions to such words. Dawn patiently allowed a little time to pass before continuing, "Gwen needs help. I believed that here would be the best place for her. I would have gladly brought her to my own dorm, Zoey wouldn't mind, but we lack much in the way of furniture. There's so little space that we only have a bunk bed, and from what I've heard, you have a sleeper sofa. Is that true?"

Cody, ignoring the second part, asked, "Why would Gwen have gotten into trouble?"

"While campus security is a bit lax on some things, like parties and only inspecting dorms when there is a complaint, public drunkenness is illegal. If they found her like this, I fear that she would be in a lot of trouble, maybe even the start of a criminal record," Dawn explained before pausing. "It is also possible that Gwen might have hurt herself in her current state. She could have been hit by a car, or fallen down the stairs if I hadn't helped her climb them."

Barely hearing Dawn, Cody instead looked at Gwen intently. Though he'd never have admitted to Heather, he did still often think of his first crush, and how she could have changed. His imagination would run wild with how she had only become more beautiful and dignified as she entered her early twenties. He would conjure up images of a healthy young woman with pale skin, a flawless figure, a massive chest, and all of her obvious wit. But when he stared at the Goth before him, covered in rain and puke, her hair wet and plastered against her skin as it covered a large portion of her face, the only feature of his vision that turned out to be a reality was the massive chest, which was puke stained.

'What the hell happened to you, Gwen?' Cody thought to himself as she stared at her.

Trembling slightly, at seeing Cody focusing so intently on Gwen, Heather tried to keep her breathing under control. She was fighting with herself to not completely lose it. But it was so difficult; at any moment she thought it would crack beyond repair. Shockingly, she held herself together enough to say with strain, "T-take her to the li-living r-room."

Cody led the way as he and Dawn helped carry Gwen deeper into their home.

Following a few steps behind them was Heather, whose arms were trembling. Literally the worst thing she could have imagined, her ultimate nightmare scenario was playing itself out before her.

Once they reached the living room, Heather slipped between Cody and Gwen, and took her boyfriend's burden from his shoulder, as much as she didn't want to it was necessary. Gwen was heavier than she would have guessed, and Heather had only a fraction of the upper body strength he did. Regardless, between the two of them he was the only one that actually knew how to unfold the sleeper sofa. "Could you please fold out the sofa? I can't hold her up all night," Heather managed without snapping, but only just.

The Tech Geek did so without question. As he did, Dawn found her bluish-grey eyes unblinking and focused on Heather.

'Uh? That's peculiar? There's fear and dread…but it's mingled with anger and worry. An unusual blend, especially for Heather's aura.'

Not paying attention to Dawn, Heather was inspecting Gwen, giving her the once over. As she did so, her scowl grew as she noticed from the short distance that the Goth's clothes positively reeked of alcohol.

'Was she swimming in cheap booze!?' The Queen Bee asked herself as she continued her inspection. When her eyes dropped to the Goth's neckline her scowl grew even more. 'Is that vomit on her shirt and in her cleavage!?' When she realized that the answer to her second mental question was a yes, her scowl had turned into a frown.

Cody finished pulling out the sofa at last and returned Heather's attention to him, and what needed to be done next. "Cody," she began being civil and accommodating despite some strain, "could you please get some extra blankets and pillows, one of my shirts, a wash rag, and two large mixing bowls, one half filled with warm water and the other empty?"

The Tech Geek remained where he stood and simply looked at Heather questioningly.

"Damn it, Cody!" Heather snapped, breaking her boyfriend out of a kind of daze, "I'm trying to help but my hands are full of overgrown boozed up Weird Goth Girl right now and I need you to do what I say!"

With that, Cody left the room. But the moment he did so, Gwen started to groan and her mouth started to gargle as she started to sluggishly move around.

Heather's eyes widened before she shouted, "Forget everything but the empty bowl! Get it! Get the empty bowl and bring it in here…NOW!" As hard as it was, the smaller girl tried to push the taller girl up straight before sternly ordering, "You are not allowed to puke until the bowl is here! Do you hear me!?"

Within seconds, Cody returned with the empty bowl in question. He was holding it underneath Gwen's head, with his own so close to hers that they could have kissed. Just as Cody was about to move his head, he was dealt a stroke of horrifically bad luck. Without any warning, Gwen threw up, more vigorously than if she were firing a machine gun. Coming out as a thick fire hydrant spray of green chucky bile, everything that was inside of the Goth's stomach, all of it, hit the compassionate Tech Geek right in the face! [1]

"Mother of God!" Cody shouted in instinctual horror as he reeled backwards, with his face now a dripping mask of mucky jade globs that were at one time food of some sort. 'And here I never thought I'd have to go through this shit again after Total Drama!'

With it having been years since he was puked on, during Total Drama no less, Cody himself almost blew chucks as well. It was only through steel resolve (and Heather's glare) that he stopped himself.

Still more unconscious than conscious, Gwen weakly attempted to apologize in her daze, with her being about as aware of her current situation as a worm would be on a rainy day.

Somehow finding the strength to ignore his new…covering, Cody asked, "Are you okay?"

Gwen, with her teal eyes possessing a thick glaze over them, turned towards Cody. Her jet-black lips, now stained by her own puke, curled into the weakest of smiles imaginable. After focusing on Cody for a few seconds with her stare just as weakly and blearily, Gwen's body started to slump, nearly pulling down the smaller and thinner girls to the ground. Only Heather and Dawn's full efforts kept the three of them standing.

Heather, now straining to hold Gwen up, shouted, "Goddamn it Cody! Go take a fucking shower! Me and Dawn will take care of the rest!"

"But Heather-"

"No buts!" Heather snapped as sharply as she could, starting to feel her arms buckle under the Goth's weight, "The shot-filled slut here needs to get cleaned up, and as much as I'm sure you'd love to see that, it's something that a girl needs to take care of!"

Cody offered no direct resistance but he nodded numbly, looking worried and upset.

Even under the current circumstances, Heather felt her heart melt a little, so she added softly, "I promise that I'll fill you on what you missed when you get back, okay?"

Feeling just a tiny bit better, Cody nodded more lively before leaving the room.

As soon as Cody was gone, Heather and Dawn lead the barely conscious Goth over to the sofa. Gwen's steps, in high heels that were at least six inches high, were shaky and weak. Despite it being a short distance, Gwen had unknowingly almost brought herself and those trying to help her to the floor with her clumsy, booze-trigged swaying three times. Guided to the couch by the two women who just barely came up to her nearly exposed breasts, Gwen was sat down on the comfortable fabric.

Without missing a beat, Heather peeled off the jacket and shirt with practiced ease before laying Gwen onto her back, not wanting to get any vomit on her new and rather expensive leather sofa. Puke covered shirt in hand, Heather asked Dawn, "Could you help me turn her over on her side, and then get a empty mixer bowl?" The Moonchild fulfilled both actions, with the second one's completion confusing Heather since she was quite sure that she never saw Dawn walk out of the room. Regardless, after taking the bowl, the Queen Bee asked, "You think we need to call an ambulance?"

Not offering an answer, Dawn climbed onto the bed behind Gwen. Once making enough space for her small and thin legs behind the unconscious girl, the Moonchild lowered her head and put an ear to the Goth's back. After listening to Gwen's breathing for a minute she shook her head. "No, I don't think that will be necessary," Dawn finally answered to the lingering question. "Her breathing is strong, and I don't hear any fluid in her lungs. We should be able handle this by ourselves."

'I'm not so sure…' Heather thought to herself grimly, but she wasn't referring to the distinct possibility of alcohol poisoning.

Instead, the Queen Bee was referring to what was painfully obvious thanks to Gwen's pale skin. Bruises. They were barely noticeable before because her clothing covered them, but now in her half undressed state, Heather could see a few small outer rims of mauve that she knew to be a telltale sign.

All she could do was curse under her breath in disturbed awe by the sight before her.

"Her aura is very weak, but it's not fading or flickering like people I've seen with alcohol poisoning in the past," Dawn commented. "Even so, I think it would be a good idea to help purge her system of alcohol if possible, and to keep an eye on her for the night."

"What do you mean by 'purging her system'?"

Ignoring that question, Dawn asked, "How many EpiPen's does Cody have on hand?"

"There are always at least four in our dorm, one in every room, just in case."

"If you could, could you please give her one of them? The adrenaline would help her system, and it will nicely compliment the manual purging about to be administered."

"And just what do you mean by manual purging? Or is this going to be another unanswered question?"

That appeared to be the case as Dawn got up and moved around to kneel in front of Gwen. But then the cryptic Moonchild started to speak, once again cryptically as ever by saying; "You don't spend three years living on a college campus without picking up a few things." She placed the bowl under Gwen's mouth, and then used two of her fingers to open the orifice. Without a moment's hesitation, she forced two more fingers into Gwen's mouth.

The Goth reacted instantly, her body jumping slightly in mild revolt despite being almost comatose. Her pale skin gently writhed as the muscles heaved. Then without any forewarning, another spray of partially digested chunky, chalk green food came blasting out of the withered jet-black lips into the bowl.

Heather gagged at the sight and was forced to look away.

Dawn looked completely unfazed, so much so that as the puke was still pouring out of Gwen she looked at Heather and said, "We still need those blankets, and some pillows. And I'm sure Gwen would be most grateful if she had something dry and clean to wear." Still not taking her eyes off of the Queen Bee, the Moonchild made Gwen throw up again. The Goth's disturbing bodily noises filled the air chocked silent by sheer disgust. "Oh, and that EpiPen would also be most beneficial, please."

Heather's normally perfect olive tone face was rendered a little green by the sickening sounds. Finding her iron-will weakened, the Queen Bee nodded her head and did as Dawn asked. She was actually thankful for having an excuse to leave so she didn't start vomiting herself.

The Queen Bee brought Gwen's puke stained shirt to their dirty clothes hamper, and after a moments' deliberation, dropped it onto the floor beside it rather than in it. After that, she retrieved an extra pillow and some blankets from the closet. Heather brought them into the other room, making sure to set them down on the couch as far away from the still puking Gwen and Dawn as she could. Next she went to the kitchen, got a second mixing bowl, filled it with warm water, and then placed two wash rags inside it. When she returned to the other room, she was pleased to see that Dawn seemed to be done making Gwen vomit. Heather handed one of the rags to Dawn to clean herself with. As the Moonchild nodded her head in thanks and took the rag, Heather placed the bowl down and retrieved one of Cody's EpiPen's from the side table next to the couch.

While cleaning her hand, Dawn looked at Heather, noticing that she had brought herself into a position that would allow her to inject the EpiPen into Gwen's upper thigh. As the EpiPen was raised as high as Heather's arms would allow, the Moonchild saw something shimmer. Heather's aura, which had before this been in an emotional stalemate, had changed. The bodily energy of the Queen Bee was spiking in surges of anger and hate, with vivid flashes of dark red so intense that they almost blinded the aura-sensitive Aura Whisperer. For the briefest of moments Dawn believed she was trapped in a hurricane of fire. Her hand gripped the EpiPen tighter, acting as if the injector system was a dagger, appearing to be poised to strike the source of her woes with a savage, biblical wrath. In the flashes of the storm still ranging outside, Heather's grey eyes shined with raw malice.

The Moonchild was about to speak up out of concern for Gwen when Heather's aura changed again. A coolness washed off the burning fury, which numbed the seething rage. It was not completely banished, but instead it was balanced off by more vague yet positive emotions. Dawn felt a surge of relief as Heather's aura appeared to get itself under control before she carefully administered the device with practiced precision. Leaving to dispose of the used EpiPen, she soon returned, and sitting near the bowl filled with warm water she soaked the second rag and started to wash Gwen off.

Naturally, Heather started with her face. But as the drenched rag lightly slapped clean water onto the pale girl's skin, the Queen Bee started to do more staring than washing. She hadn't noticed it before, but Gwen's face was even more robbed of its obvious beauty than it had been the first time she had seen her since Total Drama. Unlike the last time, it wasn't indifference that changed Gwen's appearance. Now it was injuries.

Though they weren't as extensive as the hinting of harm she saw elsewhere, Gwen's face still had too many unnatural distortions to it for Heather to feel comfortable looking at it. She noticed that Gwen was sporting a faded black eye, looking almost like an overzealous application of dark eye shadow. Otherwise her face was free of bruising. But then Heather had a thought, and acting on it she moved the hair blocking part of the Goth's face aside. And just as the Queen Bee had dreaded, doing so revealed more horrors. There was a fresh bruise on her cheek. It was a terrain of bumpy burgundy and pummeled purple, quite vivid against the ghost white of Gwen's skin. The coloring was so bright that it couldn't have been more than an hour old. Seeing that made Heather subtly frown.

She resumed washing Gwen's face, looking closer, and found even more that was wrong. Gwen's lips being cracked and dry were minor, but the condition of her nose wasn't. The Goth's nose had just a slight bend to it, barely noticeable unless up close but still present and unsettling.

The formerly ice-cold Queen Bee feared what would happen if Cody saw those injuries.

Preferring to push those kinds of thoughts out of her mind, Heather continued her self appointed duty. She dragged the rag up and down Gwen's neck before re-soaking and ringing it out. After her neck was clean, the Queen Bee turned nurse moved down to the Goth's chest. She went no further than the taller girl's collarbone until she saw her bra covered breasts. Heather remembered how she reacted when she saw those nearly exposed mountains, how she thought they either weren't real or they were aided by a push-up bra. Seeing that some of the puke had gotten into their vast cleavage and stained the night black material, Heather removed it with a single twist of her wrist.

The massive gothic globes hung there freely as if nothing had changed despite them no longer being bound and held in place by the bra. A little miffed at seeing that but thinking nothing of it, Heather began to wipe the rag around and between both of the breasts. In her mindset, this seemed no different from cleaning off the rest of the puke on the Goth's body. But as she cleaned the other girl's chest, with a lot of puke having gotten there, her eyes widened as her horror became a special kind thanks to one of her and Cody's previous trysts.

The girl had had exceptionally large breasts, but Heather had noticed something off about the way they felt that night as she helped herself to the massive mammaries. It was only afterwards that she learned the girl in question had breast implants.

The globes of flesh Heather was currently washing felt nothing like them.

'You mean not only was she not wearing a push up, but they're REAL!? Oh, you gotta be fucking kidding! How the fucking hell is it I'm stuck with the teen-boobs I've had since I was sixteen but this slut has D-cup knockers!?'

After cleaning the puke-covered breasts, Heather cleaned the puke-covered bra with the same rag. Normally she would have dried it afterwards but she wasn't in the best of moods, liking the idea of Gwen being a little uncomfortable out of petty revenge. Plus, and more importantly, she didn't want to risk Cody seeing those titanic tits. With that in mind, she returned the dampened but (mostly) cleaned cloth to its owner's body.

As hard as it was, Heather eventually shifted her attention away from the fourth largest pair of real breasts she had seen in her nineteen years of life (with the only three sets of chest twins beating them belonging to Lindsay, Jasmine and Jessica (in that order)) and wiped down Gwen's arms before putting the rag back into the bowl and setting it aside.

"We should probably get the rest of her clothes off since they are wet from the rain. And she could use something to wear," Dawn reminded.

For whatever reason, those words snapped Heather back to the situation, and how absolutely pissed she was. The Queen Bee turned to snap at Dawn but she was already removing Gwen's shoes. Taking a shaky breath, with anger and rage boiling within her like a festering stew, Heather asked her again, "Why the fuck did you bring her into our fucking dorm!? You can play innocent all you want but I know when someone is setting me up. This drunken hoe's booze soaked clothes aren't the only thing reeking in here!"

Without pausing as she continued her work, Dawn reaffirmed, "I brought Gwen here because she needs help, and you had no problems in helping her out before." She set the first high-heeled shoe aside and already began working on removing the second shoe.

"I didn't know it was Gwen at the time!" Heather countered with a snapping hiss.

"Yes, that seems to be true," Dawn accepted, before asking in neutrally curious manner, "But if that was the case, then why did you kick Duncan again after you realized it was her? Or better yet, why did you bring Gwen into your home after realizing who she was?"

Heather wanted to shout so many vulgar things but she couldn't compel herself to speak. So she remained quiet.

In the silence, Dawn's squeaky voice once again filled the air reeking of booze and puke, "Your aura is in a terrible state of flux, one that I have never seen before," she pointed out. "It's so full of contradictions and strife, it's like a ranging storm battling with itself. Never before have I seen someone display both concern and hatred in equal parts at such intense volumes for the same person." The Moonchild, with her eyes barely moving towards the occupied bathroom even as her head didn't budge, paused for a briefest of moments before adding, "And it's not just you either. Cody's aura has shifted in a way I've only seen a few times in my life when he learned who she was. Just who is this girl, anyway? And why does her mere presence have such a powerful effect on both of you?"

The Queen Bee scoffed at that before asking, "How the hell could you not know, Dawn!? I know that you've seen all three seasons of Total Drama!?"

Dawn paused, before narrowing her blue-grey eyes in concentration as she stared at the face of the towering pale one. As difficult as it was for her, she focused on the face and not the aura. After doing so, Heather saw a look on Dawn's usually calm and knowing face that the Queen Bee had never seen before. Dawn looked honestly surprised. With her mystical eyes still wide from the rarely felt emotion, Dawn turned towards Heather, who was pinching the bridge of her nose, and asked, "Do you mean that this was the Gwen, the same one that Cody was head over heels for during his teenage years?"

Heather heavily nodded. As she looked on the sad, mangled young woman before her, the Asian girl pointed out, "Was isn't the right word though. Is would be more accurate."

The Moonchild absorbed that information as she thought for a long moment. While in thought, she was also searching through the auras of both of the other conscious parties in the dorm. As was always the case, searching through auras was a challenging matter, being somewhat akin to exploring a honeycomb of emotions and motives, both those that the person was aware of and those that they weren't, for that one section of honey that was the honest reason for why they felt the way they did or for the actions they made. Eventually, Dawn, thanks to years of practice and an extraordinary talent for the art form, believed that she had found the answers to several of the unspoken questions at work here. Then she spoke, by asking, "So that's why you helped out Gwen even after you knew who she was…because you knew that Cody still cared about her…for her?"

Not expecting Heather to answer a loaded question like that, Dawn set the second drenched boot and sock aside before adding, "And the reason why you didn't turn me away at the door just now was because you were afraid of Cody finding out who she was later, and how that would make him blame you if anything happened to her, isn't?"

Heather nodded, as her head felt like it was full of lead from the weight of those truths. Then the Queen Bee sighed, before complaining with almost hushed breath, "The whole fucking universe is so fucking fucked up. Just when things started to get good in my life, and I mean really, really good, the forces of the entire fucking cosmos step in to personally make sure that things remain at the same shitty equilibrium as always!"

Hearing that made Dawn frown and caused her to ask, "Do you really believe that?"

"My entire life has been one big proclamation of that," Heather told the Moonchild, "I'm not allowed to be happy or have nice things that actually matter. And when I do somehow stumble upon some happiness, it's never for very long," the raven-haired goddess then looked at Gwen, barely awake and currently more alive than she would have preferred, and her eyes hardened until they were orbs of iron ready to break the Goth into pieces. "Out of everything that could have happened, out of every possible fucking rock that the powers that be could have thrown in my way, it had to be the only one that I'm absolutely fucking powerless to deal with! The only one that my wealth can't make disappear! The only one that I can't outsmart with a clever plan! The only fucking one that might have more of a stake in Cody than my own feelings for him," Heather seethed.

"Things do seem to be…oddly balanced," Dawn agreed, ignoring the majority of the rant, "Almost to the point of being contrived. But, in my admittedly limited experience with the ways of the world, all things happen for a reason. Never with cruel intentions or cold calculations. Nature and existence is a passive thing, not an active one. It is billions upon billions of potential river paths that all lead to the same end eventually. But when there is pain, it's because of humans making their own choices and going against its flow."

The Queen Bee, had she been in a more talkative mindset, could have challenged that notion, being able to draw from several examples of that thinking being total bullshit from things that everyone past a certain age knew of world history and human nature. But entering thorny philosophical debates was the furthest thing from her mind. Instead, Heather scoffed before bitterly saying to the only person she currently was trying not to kick out as much as the drunk draped out over her couch, "As fascinating as your New Age mumbo jumbo is, I must return my attentions to worldly matters and get something for the whore to wear."

With that, the Queen Bee walked out of the room, her wrath following like a shadow.

As Heather left the room, she saw a sight that filled her with absolute mortal terror. Cody was standing outside in the space between the living room and the bedroom, with a hardened and glaring scowl on his face. No words needed to be said for Heather to get the message.

Cody had heard everything.

With the difficulty of it being something she couldn't have imagined before this point, Heather walked past the quietly wrathful Tech Geek without sparing so much as a sideways glance. She dreaded whatever kind of talk was sure to follow this development.

Pushing that aside while she still could, Heather entered their bedroom to look through her clothes. But shortly after doing so, she had a realization.

"Fuck!" Heather softly muttered under her breath, "I don't think anything I own will fit her. She's so much bigger than me, in every possible way! What am I suppose to get for her to wear!?"

But then she saw the long mirror that hung on the inside of their bedroom door. She stared at the doppelgänger that reflected in flickering flares of the lightning outside. More specifically, she stared at what she was wearing, Cody's jersey, which was hanging off her shoulder.

Heather groaned at the thought of giving that liquored up home-wrecker Cody's jersey, the same one that she had first worn as her parents engaged the first of many fights that would lead to their divorce, and her almost being without a home until she graduated. Despite her love of clothing and desire for the best, it was her favorite piece. She didn't want to part with it, but then she imagined having Gwen in her home, in just her underwear.

Groaning some more, the Queen Bee slipped off the jersey then held it to her. Not knowing why, she hugged the slightly worn oversized shirt to her naked chest. She savored the rough fabric pressing against her nipples and the familiar smell lingering on it. Heather knew it was silly but in this nightmare that was likely only to get worse, she needed some anchor, some reminder of better times and that the present could be overcome. She wished and wished with all her might that she could go back to the first night she wore this rather than deal with the here and now.

But the raven-haired beauty knew that all the wishing in the world wouldn't change anything. So she steeled herself for whatever was to come, and slipped on her bathrobe.

Currently having the wrathful side of her holding sway, Heather stormed back into the living room with Dawn and Gwen. Without saying a word, the Queen Bee tossed the jersey to Dawn, who caught it. After catching it, the Moonchild moved aside and motioned with her head towards Gwen, who thanks to Dawn's efforts had been stripped down to her black lacy bra and panties. But that wasn't why she gestured to her.

Heather's grey eyes followed Dawn's head, and she saw why the blonde had gestured rather than say anything out loud. Now without the majority of her clothing on her, the full results of Gwen's being with Duncan were exposed.

There were more bruises. The few along her arms and against her back she remembered, but they were nothing compared to what was on her waist, thighs and legs.

They were yet more terrains of bumpy burgundy and pummeled purple, vivid against the ghost white of Gwen's skin. They could not be ignored or shunned from memory now that they were exposed. Though most of the markings were old, some weren't. And haphazardly among the fresh bruises were some that were a sickly yellow (well, more a pale yellow), which meant that they were in the process of healing. Oddly, aside from the ones that appeared to be the newest ones, the bruises were all in the same spots. Sections of arm, back, and leg had been transformed into mauve discolorations. The constancy of the welts' dwelling places showed a pattern, all places easily covered by clothes, and were consistent with extremely rough sex. Unable to help herself, Heather studied them, as if they could reveal more information, hoping that somehow this could be made less horrible through cold logical deduction.

She wanted to stay angry, to keep the fire within her belly churning for its strength. But Heather couldn't. She shook her head, feeling so many emotions she didn't want to feel.

Without speaking a word, Heather signaled to Dawn to help her put the jersey onto Gwen. The Queen Bee grabbed the Goth's upper body and pulled her up. She was heavy, and it took all of Heather's effort to hold the upper half of Gwen up long enough for the Moonchild to slide the jersey onto her, and for her to work both of her arms through the sleeves. By the time it was fully on, the jersey came to just partly over her waist, fully exposing her panties. Similar to Heather all of those years ago, Gwen's breasts had made the bottom ride up, only to a much greater degree. Heather quickly noticed this and acted according by covering Gwen with a blanket, before putting a pillow underneath her head.

Once that was done, Heather left the room with the two bowls in hand. She went to the sink and the "filled" bowl was filled once again, but this time with water and detergent. Then she emptied out the bowl that just had water in it before returning to the living room, with the newly emptied bowl, and noticed that Dawn turned Gwen onto her stomach with her face near the edge. Heather placed the bowl underneath, just in case.

Dawn glanced at the clock in the room, and then turned to Heather before saying, "I'm sorry Heather, but I must be going. I didn't realize that it was so late. Normally, I would stay, but I have classes tomorrow morning that I cannot afford to miss. Plus I need to take a shower before going to bed, to get all of the vomit off of me."

"Fine," Heather grumbled, more than a little pissed that Dawn could leave after causing this mess but happy to get her out of her sight and home. Regardless, she than called out, "Cody! It's okay; you can come in here now! Please watch Gwen while I walk Dawn out!"

Silently, Cody entered the room. His scowl had hardened since Heather had last seen it. But he walked over towards Gwen and did as he was asked. But the Queen Bee wasn't a fan of the look being sent her way, a look saying, 'We're so going to talk about this!'

Heather silently sighed at having her prediction confirmed, she wasn't looking forward to what would likely happen when the Aura Whisperer was out of their home.

As she was leading Dawn out, Heather was pulled aside when they reached the door, with Dawn pulling her very, very close so that her lips were just brushing the Asian's ear. She whispered, "Listen to me, Heather. I wasn't sure when I brought Gwen here what your connection to her was, so I didn't tell you everything when I first brought her inside."

Heather pulled back and looked at the Moonchild oddly, even more so than usual, then asked quietly, "And what do you mean by that?"

Dawn looked over Heather's shoulder to make sure Cody wasn't there, before whispering the full story.

"On the good name of all that is beautiful about creation, everything I've told you is true. It all did happen. But there is one piece of information that I haven't shared with you yet. When I got back to the dorms, I saw Duncan pull up and jump out of his car, cursing and yelling loudly. As he kept shouting and cursing, he pulled Gwen out. His yelling became focused, only on how Gwen had thrown up in his car. And that quickly led to a fight. Luckily, both were quite inebriated so the fight in question was very…limited. But Duncan still did hit her again before going in and up to his room, leaving her covered in puke in the rain. Once I was sure he would not be returning, I closed the car door he left open so the running lights wouldn't drain his battery, before I helped Gwen up and struggled to think of what to do. But then I remembered the last time that I had seen her, when she was with you," pausing to catch her breath, she once again checked to see if Cody was in the hall.

During that brief pause, Heather realized that Dawn's actions would have had the secondary effect of trapping the smell of vomit in Duncan's car, most likely the reason he had left it open. Idly she wondered if Dawn was quite as innocent as she seemed after all.

Once she was sure that Cody was still in the other room, Dawn finished with, "That's why I brought Gwen to you, not because she was drunk, but because I thought Gwen was a close friend of yours and you would be worried."

"Why would you think that?" Heather asked, still angry but also curious at Dawn's reasoning.

"When you pulled Gwen past my dorm to yours, I saw only worry and concern in your aura. Outside of Cody and seldom Jasmine, those are emotions that I haven't felt you express for anyone. Given that, I knew they had to be strong for her, but I had not considered the possibility they were third party emotions brought upon by your love for Cody. It never occurred to me that she could be the same Gwen that he pined over during Total Drama." Dawn explained before pausing, having a look of regret flashing in her big blue-grey eyes. "I'm truly sorry for this, Heather. Your current feelings of hatred towards me are justified. I swear to the Great Earth Mother Herself that I thought Gwen was a friend of yours."

Heather was silent, processing what Dawn told her. She didn't even respond when the Moonchild bid her farewell and left. There was too much on her mind for her to notice.


Every step into her own home, the happiest home she had ever known, felt like crossing a pathway of burning coals barefoot. The air was so tense that the slightest noise might have caused the whole building to explode. A part of Heather would have liked that. The instant death of a vivid inferno would have been preferable to the lingering knife-like impalements of nervousness and dread bombarding her like arrows.

That opinion was proven when she crossed the opened threshold to the living room. She saw Cody, kneeling next to Gwen, brushing aside the black hair that covered her face. His eyes widened the moment he noticed the now more noticeable bruise forming there.

For so long, Cody's eyes didn't leave Gwen's face, Gwen's bruise. After what surely had to be many minutes, he finally looked away and stared at Heather, who found herself unable to advance beyond the open doorway. It was a look of deep, searing anger and rage, a look that Heather had only seen one other time, when she told him about her fling.

Still staring, not even blinking, Cody allowed the air to remain quiet for a bit longer. Finally, when the wrath appeared to be breaking over the shores of his voice box, the Tech Geek asked, "How long have you known that she was here?"

"A-a little over a month," Heather answered, fearing the explosion that she knew was coming.

"Was she the one you helped out before? The one who's boyfriend you maced?" Cody then asked, his voice soft and normal in general tone despite starting to sound tense.

"Yes. How did you figure it out?"

Cody looked at her and his disappointment was obvious. "How dumb do you think I am?" he asked, deadpanned. "Dawn said you helped Gwen the last time she was in trouble. And I know damn well you haven't seen her once throughout the last three years. Plus the timing is pretty suspect. About a month after you mace someone's boyfriend for slapping her around, just out of the blue a girl is brought to our door with bruises!" The Tech Geek added a non-verbal exclamation point to his argument by pointing to the visible discolorations on the Goth's face.

Both members of the couple were once again quiet after that, being unable to think of anything to say. Somehow, the air had become even more choked, even more explosive.

"Was it Duncan?" Cody asked, finally saying the question that Heather had feared most.

The Queen Bee's grey eyes widened against her will but her lips remained shut. "Yes." Heather finally said reluctantly, knowing she had just dropped the verbal H-bomb.

With no words spoken, Cody stood and began to walk towards the open doorway. But before he could cross the threshold, Heather grabbed his arm and stopped him. Thrashing a little, the Tech Geek tried to pull out of her grip. It didn't work. Heather, still holding his arm, followed him down the hallway. Straining her muscles, she pushed him into their bedroom. As Cody stumbled in, Heather closed the door and stood between him and it.

"What exactly are you thinking of doing, Cody?"

"I'm going to go find Duncan, and kick his ass," her boyfriend said flatly.

In spite of, or maybe because of, her fears being realized, Heather released a scoff. She then turned herself into a barricade before the closed doorway. "Do you really think that you could beat Duncan in a fight, Cody? You might not have known it was him but I know you've seen him around once or twice. He's the gutter-punk hulk almost as tall as Jasmine, you know, the one with more muscles than Geoff, Justin, and Alejandro combined! Even drunk off his ass, he's still got at least eighty pounds and over half a foot on you!"

Cody didn't even flinch, confirming how far gone he was to the worried Asian. Instead of reflecting on what he had just heard, he became livid as he bitterly asked, "So what are you telling? That I'm just suppose to sit on my hands here and do nothing for Gwen!?"

"Yes."

At that, Cody saw pure red, tried to force his way through the doorway, and his girlfriend. He imagined that it wouldn't be hard thanks to his height and size advantages over Heather. But what the Queen Bee lacked in inches and brawn, she made up for with drive and resolve. Though it was the hardest thing she ever had to do for more reasons than one, Heather stopped Cody from leaving. With a single, strained mighty push, she forced him back into the bedroom.

"Listen, Cody, I know your angry but-"

"Damn right I'm angry!" Cody shouted, "You've known that she was here all this time, that she was with that piece of crap who's been hurting her, and you didn't do anything!"

The enraged Tech Geek attempted to force his way through the door again, but also in repetition was Heather shoving him out of the way, with it being harder for her this time. "This is exactly why I didn't tell you anything, Cody!" Heather shouted back, matching Cody's fury intensity for intensity. "I fucking knew that you'd react like this! That despite everything we've been through together that you'd rush off at the drop of a hat to be Gwen's knight in shining armor, even though it's a fight you can't win!" Cody attempted to reply, but Heather didn't allow it. She was far too pissed to allow it. "I know you won't listen to me but it's too fucking late for Gwen! She doesn't want any help! She'll reject anything you try! I know because I've already tried to help her…twice!"

As Heather had been shouting, Cody had been ready to counter it, no matter what it was. But after hearing that, he was rendered mute. His anger, though not vanished, weakened.

Seeing this, Heather knew she had to come completely clean, that only the absolute truth would cut through and make him see what she already knew. "It wasn't until I already maced Duncan that I figured out that it was him, and that he was hitting Gwen. It took me so long to recognize her...but after I knew it was her, I brought her here, to talk. I'll admit I didn't know what I would do but I really did want to try and help her out. I tried to talk to her, to find out exactly what's been going on with her since Total Drama, but she avoided the issue and clamed up. She was so withdrawn that it made her loner teenage self look as bubbly and sociable as Lindsay by comparison, if you can even believe that. I didn't get any reaction out of her until I told her whom I was, and that I was with you. After that, she bolted like Owen at an all you can eat buffet."

"That's not funny," Cody said bitterly with a frown.

"I know it's not, but it's the truth," Heather replied, "I didn't even see or hear her leave. I turned my back for a minute to let out your perverted fur accessories, who heaven forbid couldn't miss out meeting someone new who they could feel up, and she was gone."

At hearing that, Cody's posture and stare lost quite a bit of the steam that had been fueling them. Given what he knew about Heather and the habits of his pets, that all sounded possible. Defying all expectations, Heather appeared to be getting through to Cody. And words could not express the full weight of how much this pleased and surprised her.

"That was the first time I tried to help her," Heather said, hoping to capitalize on this, "and here's the second. Just like I told you before, the next morning I had a talk with Jo. I talked with her about Gwen and asked if there was anything that could be done to help her. And she made it quite clear that Gwen is the only one who can do anything about her situation, and that if she doesn't help herself, no one can do anything to help her." The Raven Haired Girl paused, noticing the look on Cody's face; it was one of deep sorrow. As much as Heather didn't like seeing that look on her boyfriend's face, it was hopeful. It was a sign that maybe he would actually listen to her next point, her biggest point.

"Listen, I'm not going to sugarcoat this for you. Gwen's in a horrible situation. I get that. As a woman and a human being, I don't like it at all. And I also get that it bothers you. But…there's nothing either of us can do for her. It sucks but this is just how things are."

Cody once again lost his temper and shouted, "Are you fucking serious, Heather!? Are you really telling me to just shrug my shoulders and go, 'Oh I'm sorry, but Gwen's piece of shit boyfriend beats her like a dog and there's nothing I can do about it so I'll just accept it and move on like nothing's happening'!?"

"YES! That's exactly what I'm saying!" Heather shouted, her nerves at their limit. "Like or not, Gwen's shit the bed, and she has to lay in it! People make their own choices, their own decisions, and they have to live with them! I've made mine! Gwen's made hers!"

Finding his own nerves pushed to their limit, Cody stormed towards the door and Heather before shouting right in her angry face, "If that's the case, then I'm going to make mine!"

With no more words, the enraged young man pushed his smaller girlfriend out of the way. The strength that had allowed her to stop him twice before had been drained by the argument. She remained where she was when she heard the door next to her opened then closed.

Heather stood there, remaining absolutely still as she-

SNAP

"WAAAAUUUUUGH!"

The Queen Bee shouted as loudly as she could, no doubt straining her voice box as she attempted to articulate into sound the sheer fury flowing in her veins like molten lava. For once, all thoughts of composure and restraint were thrown out the window. She was positively livid and fuming, and she needed to release her anger on something.

Her grey eyes, now like smoldering ashen infernos, focused on the first thing within their gaze. The red silk bed sheets.

Her fingers now acting like claws, Heather grabbed hold of the coverings of the bed she and Cody had made love in countless times and tore them from the bed as fiercely as she could. It took several wrathful tugs but she got them off. Once they were in her grasp, she lifted them until they were held it in front of her glaring face. At first, her grip was careful, gentle, but then she began to squeeze tightly around the sheets' non-existent neck.

She held it there, strangling the throat-less object. Their grip became so tight that she didn't see sheets. Instead, she saw throats, several throats. Throats that she wanted to crush. Her only regret at this moment was that she had only one pair of hands to strangle three throats. The red silken sheets were stand-ins for Dawn, Gwen, and Cody. She would have given anything to murder the three of them with her bare hands just to vent her growing fury.

The Queen Bee stood there for several seconds, strangling the red silk coverings before throwing them to the ground and began stomping them. Again and again she lifted her legs up and brought her feet down on the beaten but undamaged sheets. As a final insult to the blameless bedding, Heather hurled it across the room and onto their dresser.

Still fuming and beyond angry, Heather brought her clenched fists upon the naked mattress. Rage backing every punch, every blow that rained down on the memory foam was a desired strike against all of creation; Dawn, Gwen, Cody, her past, her parents, her former friends, her present, he current friends, her future, God, life itself.

"WHAT DO YOU WANT FROM ME!? WHY CAN'T I BE HAPPY!? WHY DAMN IT!?"

As her blows came down harder and harder and her shouting became louder and louder in a act of raw catharsis (ironically mirroring Gwen's own after she saw Heather kissing Trent during Total Drama Island), the Queen Bee heard a voice slithering in the back of her mind. It was a voice she hadn't heard in three years, one she had been able to ignore until now. And it was laughing at her.

'You're such, an idiot. I warned you that letting Cody get close would just hurt you. He's stabbed you in the back, just like everyone else has and always will.'

'S-shut up! I'm not the same person I use to be. I'M NOT YOU ANYMORE!'

'Oh, that's just cute! Hahahahaha. Give me, you, a break! A leopard can't change its spots and neither can you. You can't change who you are. Let me know when you realize the truth, I'll still be here. Hahahahaha!'

The other voice departed from the Queen Bee's mind with its horrible laugh she had come to loath. It's sharp bitter barking trying to remind her of all the times she had been hurt in her life, of all the pain she had suffered through over the years, all at the hands of others, people who claimed and professed to love her, care for her.

As the voice left, Heather returned to how she had been before snapping, standing silently in the room. Her gaze was distant, as if looking off at some indefinable object off over the horizon. Then her legs gave out and she found herself on her knees next to her naked mattress. Her grey eyes had lost all of their fire, and now moisture that was glazing them took its place.

The first few droplets fell from Heather's eyes. They eked out from under her eyelids, lazily rolling down her cheeks. Trailblazers, they were the first true tears she had cried in quite some time. Many, many more clear crystals of anguish followed behind them down her face.

But even as her vision was starting to become blurry, a shining beacon stood above the murk. Reflecting the light of the bedside lamp was a cerulean twinkling that managed to shine even as the rest of the world faded into blocky and running amorphous blobs.

Wiping her eyes, Heather saw what it was that caused the azure sparkling. It was her ring. The white gold band with its not so modest princess cut sapphire. Cody's promise ring.

Seeing the shining sapphire made a small, shaking smile spread across Heather's lips. That tiny ring was a flotsam, a lifesaver, amid a violent sea of doubt and despair. More than simply metal and a gemstone, it was physical proof of Cody's answer to Heather's greatest fear. Clutching it and her hand to her chest, she curled into a tight upright ball.

It was proof that she was the only girl he needed or wanted.

As she repeated that thought over and over in her mind like a mantra, Heather took several deep breaths, summoning her weakened will to push everything down in a attempt to calm herself. It only partially worked, but it was a start.

Her mind wasn't faring well. A pounding headache had overtaken her, and thinking coherently took quite some effort; the drastic lows of the night had taken their toll.

Swallowing, the raven-haired girl started to think the situation over, and an old familiar feeling clawed its way back to the forefront.

'Hahahahaha! I knew it wouldn't take long for you to crawl back to me!'

The Queen Bee ignored her subconscious' other voice. Instead she just kept thinking. But this thinking had dug up what had been buried for a reason, what had been left to rot in the dark corners of her mind. Now devoid of the resistance that had been at least partially maintained even at her worst for three long years, a familiar horrifying cringe clawed up her spine and a swarm of inky tendrils began to conquer her sight of the bedroom.

Heather felt like her insides were mutinying and tying themselves in a knot. While her closed eyes were bursting like ruptured pipes, her heart was threatening to pound her ribcage into dust. All her strength was sapped. Rationality and sanity quickly spiraling down the drain, the once-proud young woman snapped like a twig under a mountain.

In wake of the psychological tension snapping, nightmares sprouted and tormented her, whispers of abandonment and ostracization muttered by smoky figures with amber eyes and voices that were dead-ringers for her own, hidden under a shroud of darkness. Pictures, voices, visions, things that had happened, things that could happen, and things that were to come swam before her sight.

Finally, the toil became too much, and Heather found herself slipping into unconsciousness. Her body was exhausted, and her mind was shot. Both needed time to recover and regroup.

In her mind, in the ebony void of her closed eyelids, Heather saw shapes forming.

Black and white squares lining in a one off pattern.


As she opened her eyes, Heather had imagined that she'd have seen a drastically different landscape. But she didn't. Instead, she saw the same black and white squares lining each other in a basic pattern of one color before the other. The monochrome ground upon which she now stood didn't feel like soil or stone, instead it felt like smooth tile. Looking upward, the Queen Bee was first struck by the sheer emptiness of the dark sky. It was the same darkness that constituted everything aside from the quadrangles of white. Looking over the edge of the massive surface she was on, the size of many football fields, exposed Heather to the fact that below her were the same stygian nightmare chasms. There was no white pillar holding up this amalgamation of dark and bleach.

Then, something out of the corner of Heather's eye caused her to look upward yet again. There was a bright flash. Lightning, jagged scars of pure white amid the pure blackness. These bolts were less like electricity than white tears through the sky, like the universe itself had been slashed open. Every flash illuminated the whole repeating sequential terrain in even starker white and shadow before vanishing as a floating afterimage.

With the sky surges of silvery offering it a brutal brilliance, the landscape morphed. Over some of the squares around her, the reality of the realm began to solidify. Due to the obvious concern of proxy to them, Heather found her attention more on the changes closest to her. Over sixteen of the shadowy squares before her, shining spires were arising. They were vast aggregations of night-black masonry embodying monstrous perversions of logical laws as they rose higher and higher into the blackness of the sky rivaling theirs.

Heather watched in awe as whatever was forming on those sixteen squares became over a hundred feet tall, casting their shadows over her, plunging her deeper into the darkness.

After what felt like eons to the Queen Bee, the objects had finished growing and forming. As she recognized the shapes of the figures that had formed, she had an epiphany as to what they reminded her of. Trying to shun the idea, she turned towards the other side. But when she did, she saw another set of sixteen spires that hadn't been there before. The only difference was that the objects on the other side were white. She had been correct.

Chess pieces. There were thirty-two giant, illogical, and impossible chess pieces.

Heather was standing on a giant chessboard floating in an otherwise featureless void.

Backing up as far as she could on the side she was currently near, Heather got a better look. Most of the pieces were blank white, but two of them had more to their shape. The King and Queen. The top of the King had the upper body of a young woman with a gigantic bust protruding far further than the rest of the top and engravings near the very top that gave the impression of a forlorn face half covered by hair. In contrast, the Queen's carved upper half was that of a young man who was finely chiseled by sharp muscle and whose face had the faint glittering of artificial metal pieces in the lightning.

Again, Heather realized exactly what it was that she was seeing. Gwen was the White King and Duncan was the White Queen!

A small part of the Queen Bee laughed at the gutter punk being in the Queen's role. But after her short lived jolly at his expense abated, she moved towards those very same pieces opposite. Now spurred by curiosity, she wondered what the black sides' pieces looked like.

It took her until she was out from under the shadow of the Gwen King's even larger carved bosom but eventually Heather was able to see what made up the chess pieces of darker coloring.

When she did, her two predictions about the character of the transformed shapes had been both right and wrong. The part that had been wrong was that the Black Queen and King were blank, and only one piece had any alternations that would fit along human lines. That one piece was one of the Knights, which had a smooth yet faintly lined figure and an exposed smile with a gap between its teeth. Seeing that puzzled and frightened her.

Cody, her love, was only a Knight? A piece that was only one of two? Not the unchallengeable highest? Not a King or Queen?

Heather's worrying was put on hold when she noticed that the Black King was changing. The previously featureless top was now developing characteristics and features. Near the bottom of the top two protruding circles that were small and not impressively developed. Below them, two bars appeared that overlapped, with the five-fingered ends of them curled into fists revealing them to be crossed arms. A section of the very top started to stretch downward until it reached the unchanged section, appearing to be long hair. And finally, the features of a face carved themselves; eyes, a mouth, ears, and a nose grew.

As Heather had already guessed, the Black King was herself. And the Queen Bee found herself unnerved by how massive and cold that blink-less black stare and shadowy scowl were. She wondered if that was how she appeared to others when being commanding.

'Such a strange turn of events, isn't, Heather? A cocktail of natural melodrama, an accrued sense of faux-correctness, multiple flashes from the past, and deep insecurities that you know to be true, all shaken up by the age-old delusion of love. Oh, how you even now sip from it but frown, because you do not know how to stop yourself.'

Heather reeled at hearing that voice again, that awful voice so much like hers, yet not.

'But enough of this, let's talk shall we? Let us talk face to face, Heather.'

There was another flash of white lightning, but as its radiance faded into non-existence Heather found that her perspective had changed. In a literal blink of an eye, Heather was no longer on the board but she was towering over it. Before, the chess pieces had appeared to be at least a hundred feet tall to her. But now, they were barely the size of her fingers. She wasn't sure if she grew or the board shrunk, but she preferred to imagine that she grew. Ever since she stopped growing, towering over others had been a fantasy of hers. She noticed that she was a goddess of the black pieces.

"So, Heather…are you ready to talk?" The Voice asked, but this time sounding closer.

Looking across the board, Heather saw the person talking to her, who it seemed, was a goddess of the white pieces. It was her own mother.

The woman that Heather was staring at looked so much like her, she possessed the same seemingly timeless beauty that never lessened or weakened with added years. She was over forty-five but hadn't a single wrinkle or imperfection on her smooth skin. She looked as hot as always. The one major difference between mother and daughter was how their hair was arranged, with the mother's only reaching to her neck but spreading out far past her head to either side. But what stood out more were her eyes, which were even colder than Heather's had been during Total Drama Island.

"I must admit…daughter," The Older Woman said, acting as if the d-word were a poison burning her lips as she spoke it, "I'm surprised that you conjured up this elaborate little game here. Now why would you do that to your mother? I only want to help."

That caused Heather to scowl at the older woman, no longer caring if this was real. "Shut up, whore! Why don't you go suck the dick of the next millionaire in line!?"

"Oh, but I do! Besides, this is coming from the girl who gives a blowjob every other day? If I didn't know any better, I'd say you didn't want my generous offer of help."

"That's right! I don't want or need your help because I'm not like you! Not anymore!"

Heather's Mother simply smiled that horribly smug smile that Heather hated so much before motioning to the chessboard. "Oh, I beg to differ, dearie. Take a look at the board. Even now, for all your zealous proclamation to the contrary, you see them as pieces."

The Queen Bee looked down at the chessboard, and she saw the other pieces, black and white, changing and shifting. Soon enough, all thirty-two of the pieces for play had faces appear on them, faces she recognized. Faces of people that she would use or fight.

"Poor, poor little Heather, my little mistake," Heather's Mother taunted with malice, "You were always such a bright child. So much promise, so much potential…and yet you squander all of your skills foolishly trying to live a lie as you follow in my footsteps."

Heather stared at the woman who gave her life, her face as smooth and cold as the chess pieces. Her silence was the same as the lifeless and featureless void surrounding them.

"What's the matter, Heather? No witty comeback? No clever retort? No furious threat? Come now, give me something clever." Heather's Mother taunted with a smug smirk.

Heather shrugged before saying, "I'm just waiting for you to make your first move. White always goes first."

The older Asian woman on the other side of the board gave her daughter a subtle glare before moving one of her white pawns forward. "There," she said, "now it's your move."

'So I'm black, uh?' Heather thought as she stared at the dark chess pieces beneath her. 'It's most appropriate, isn't?' [2]


Monday, October 27th, 2014 (7:30 AM)

A firm hand shook Cody out of his slumber. Slowly opening his eyes, the Tech Geek noticed that his face was next to the bottom of the pulled-out sofa bed. As his powers of thought returned to his groggy self, he noted how stiff his body felt all over and how uncomfortable the surface he was laying on was. It took him a few moments to realize that he had been sleeping on the hard floor of the living room right next to Gwen.

Looking up, Cody saw Heather, looking concerned and oh so cute as she held a cup of steaming hot tea in one of her hands. Despite all of the negative emotion he had conjured up last night towards the Asian hottie, Cody now only felt gratefulness as he saw her.

"Thank you, Hea-" He started to say, before his girlfriend mimed the 'shush' gesture. She then pointed to the still unconscious Gwen, who was sleeping contently it seemed. After that, the Queen Bee motioned towards the hallway. Cody nodded his head as he understood. He got up and was about to follow her, but before leaving the room and joining Heather he took one last look at the slumbering Goth. Then with a silent sigh, he left the room.

The silence was awkward and thick as Cody quickly drank his tea, savoring the burning liquid as it passed his lips and rushed down his throat. By the time the tea was finished, Heather had broken the silence by saying, "I let you sleep in a little, but you still have plenty of time to get ready and make it to your classes on time."

Cody glared harshly at his girlfriend and asked, "Do you really expect me to just head to class and leave Gwen in our dorm, alone after everything from last night?"

"No, I don't," Heather replied flatly, "I expect you to leave Gwen here with me after everything from last night." Seeing that Cody was about to say something, no doubt a protest of some kind, the Queen Bee quickly continued by adding, "You fell asleep, after fighting it for a while, around four o'clock this morning. I was watching you, sure that it would happen, and after it did I stepped in to continue looking after Gwen." Heather paused to note the look on Cody's face and she saw that it was one of doubt. "Need I remind you what you overheard me and Dawn talking about? I know how much Gwen means to you, and I know you'd be upset if anything happened to her."

Cody's hard gaze softened at hearing that. He still hated the idea, but found that most of his arguments were slowly being depowered by Heather's valid logic. Using her skill at reading people to know that she was getting through to her boyfriend, Heather reminded him further, "And let's not forget, I did try to help Gwen out twice before this happened, long before you had any reason to believe that she was here in the first place. I would have told you the moment it happened, if I didn't already know that you'd try to confront Duncan when you did."

As her eyes ran across his figure, she continued, "As fit as you are now, Duncan's still got you outclassed." Heather saw a curious expression on Cody's face. "And we both know that I hate seeing you get hurt," she then flashed a sexy, naughty smirk, "and that you don't like getting hurt. Otherwise you wouldn't have picked "stop" as one of our safe words." Heather was rewarded for that little bit of attempted humor with a small smile from Cody, the first smile he had shown since Dawn had brought the towering Goth loaded with liquor into their world. "And Gwen wouldn't want to see you get hurt either, especially not for her."

If the silence had been thick before, it was downright oppressive after Heather's words. Cody found that the very ability to speak had been torn from his tongue at hearing that. Guilt and feelings of foolishness that he couldn't exorcise possessed him like a legion of demons. Fighting against that army of many within him, Cody forced himself to speak.

"I-I'm…I'm so sorry for how I acted last night. I made a complete ass of myself, didn't I?"

"Yes, yes you did. Why do you think I let you sleep on the floor while I watched over Gwen for you?" Heather said with a nod and a kind smile before lovingly kissing Cody. The previous smile on the Tech Geek was nothing compared to the soft curling of lip that showed itself after the kiss. His teal eyes looked at Heather with thankfulness and awe. As much as Heather loved seeing that look, she knew that she had a lot more to do soon. So, she looked away before adding, "I knew how you would have reacted to knowing her situation, as I already said. How could I not? I know that…" she gulped several times, "you love her, after all."

"H-Heather…that's no-not…"

"Cody," His girlfriend told him with a cold stare, "you should know better than to lie to me. I can read you like a book these days, and you were a even crappier lair before."

"I'm-I'm sorr-"

But stopping her boyfriend again, Heather had a dismissive waving motion with her hand. "It's nothing to be sorry about," she said, "it's a part of who you are, and it's why I fell in love with you in the first place." The Queen Bee then kissed the Tech Geek again, this time with her tongue, savoring the feeling of his teeth and tongue on her own. Eventually she released him. "You're a good man, and a good person," she said smiling warmly, before pausing and looking at Gwen through the opened doorway into the living room. Turning back to face Cody, her expression became less cheerful as she added, "but unfortunately that's exactly why you can't help Gwen."

"I disagree," Cody said, "we are friends, Heather. And I've helped Gwen out before."

Heather shook her head. "No, you aren't friends," she said neutrally, "You were friends, three years ago. But it would appear that a lot has changed in that time. The Gwen who made it to the finale of Total Drama Island wouldn't have stayed with Duncan for more than thirty seconds before leaving him high and dry. Something's changed her, and you know it as well as I do."

Even though Cody clearly didn't like hearing that, his face showed that he couldn't argue with her reasoning. Heather was pleased to see this, and even more pleased that her boyfriend couldn't hear what she added in her head, 'Besides, she was never much of a friend to you to begin with, even after you set her up with Trent!'

The Raven Haired Beauty allowed the silence to choke the air for a little while longer before adding, "As much as I know you want to, you can't help Gwen with this. I might be able to, but I have to admit I don't know that for sure."

The Tech Geek was truly desperate to help out, but he had difficulty thinking of a valid counterargument, but after a long time of not doing so he settled on saying the first thing he thought of, "Why would you be able to help Gwen when I can't?"

"Because I'm not a good woman, or a good person."

"Heather I don't-" Cody started to say, after recovering from that unexpected blow.

"Cody, please stop," Heather said softly while raising one of her hands. Cody stopped. She released a small sigh, one that almost sounded a little painful as it passed her lips. "I know you think that I'm a good person…and I love you for it. But let's face facts here. I try to be good, and I am better than I use to be, but I'm still far away from truly being good. A good person wouldn't have cheated on you; wouldn't have tried to rob Jasmine and Sammy of their first time; wouldn't have been a ruthless Queen Bee for so long. I have more fingers than I have people I actually care about in any capacity. If it were possible for me to leave with you, your parents, Lindsay, Jasmine, Jo, and Sammy into a perfect paradise as the rest of the world burned …I'd do it without hesitating."

As Cody stared at his girlfriend in disbelief, he saw a raw sadness he almost never saw. "I hate most people," she continued, sounding even more forlorn than she previously had, "Maybe hate is too strong a word. But when it comes to most people, I…just don't give a damn. I know that I should care, at least a little, for everyone, but…I don't. So often, when I look at people, I either see nothing worth liking…or I see things I hate. I guess the desire to be the big bad Queen Bee is dulled, but the gut instincts are a lot stronger. I-I…" Heather continued, allowing a small and yet unknown to Cody part of her soul pour out of her.

Looking to her side, Heather allowed her train of thought to die in a whimpering silence. Cody remained just as stunned as he had been before. This quickly, briefly, made him forget about Gwen. He had known that Heather wasn't very sociable in a meaningful way with most people and that when she did allow herself to feel guilt she was very self-critical, but that couldn't have prepared him for the extent of the melancholy that was presented. And he knew by now how to detect when Heather was lying or exaggerating the truth, so he knew that his girlfriend had meant every single word she had just said.

The Tech Geek was snapped out of his reflections by a soft kiss from Heather. When the kiss ended, the two lovers stared at each other for a few prolonged seconds.

"You need to leave," Heather informed him softly, "go to your classes and then take your time getting back. I need to have a good, long talk with Gwen about her current…situation." Her boyfriend shot her a worried look, one that despite its attempts at being hidden was obvious. "You don't need to worry about anything," she added, waving off that concern. "I'm not going to hurt her or chase her out the second she wakes up. I just want to talk."

"I-I…I don't know, Hea-" Cody said, sounding and looking dubiously at her.

"Cody," Heather interrupted, again with her voice softer and heavier than it usually was, "I have to ask you to please trust me. I know that trust in me is running a little thin right now…but I have to ask that you trust me. You mean the world to me, Cody, and I know how much Gwen means to you."

Once again, a heavy silence filled the air. After remaining quiet for about a minute, Cody sighed before saying, "I-I…trust you, Heather. It's just that I feel like a mess right now."

With no further comment, Heather gestured towards the bathroom before saying; "You need a shower before going to class. You're going to be late if you don't hurry."

After sneaking in one last kiss, which Heather would have started if he didn't, Cody made his way to the bathroom even as his head felt clogged and full of rattling tin.

Waiting until she heard the shower water turn on, Heather grabbed a few things before sitting down in the reclining chair. Once she made herself ready, facing the sleeping Goth, the Queen Bee placed a yellow notebook on her lap and took out a green pen. Then, she began to write, fleshing out vague ideas half-formed in her nightmare filled slumber. She only stopped when she heard the shower water cut off. As eager as she was to continue, the Queen Bee waited until Cody was fully dressed and had left before resuming.

When Cody did leave, she gave him a reassuring wave and a smile, which he returned, though his were not as confident.

Once the door was closed and a minute had passed without him returning, Heather turned her head to look at Gwen, glancing at her past mortal enemy now sleeping on her couch.

After doing so, she took out her notepad and resumed writing her thoughts on its pages.

Heather knew that she had to take care of a few things before Gwen woke up, but she also knew that judging by how wasted the Goth was that she would have plenty of time.

With that in mind, the Queen Bee resumed writing down her thoughts in her notebook.


And that is the latest chapter of Unbreakable Red Silken Thread! As always, we hope you all enjoyed it! :)

Once again, Kenju has some things that he would like to say. Once again, take it away!

"As promised here is the closing AN that was mentioned at the opening of this story. Alcohol poisoning is in fact a VERY serious thing, and each year many people, especially teenagers and college students die because of it. In real life the symptoms Gwen exhibited in this chapter would be indicative of life threatening and very serious levels of alcohol in her blood. The only reason, ONLY reason paramedics were not included here is due to Dawn's canon near mystic level abilities which we have included. If a person is passed out drunk, throwing up like we had here, it's a very serious matter and not a laughing one.

"In addition to that, I'll ward off all of you who are already thinking that we've turned Duncan into some abusive asshole for no reason other than to have him as a bad guy because you are flat out WRONG. Yes Duncan is an antagonist in this story, but his and Gwen's relationship has only just been HINTED at, there is a great deal you don't know yet. We have planted enough hints however to give someone with a keen eye for details a rough idea of the main problem, but it's going to be awhile before it's made blatant.

"Last but not least, hate to do this and even more I hate saying this, but the next two chapters are going to focus on Cody, not Heather and Gwen. You'll have to wait to find out what happens next. Sucks I know, but we're following Cody for a very important reason, and I'm sure most of you know what it is after reading this chapter. On the plus side, next chapter will introduce all but TWO of our remaining 'regular' cast members (regular meaning there are a few cameo and one shot characters not yet reveled)."

Ok, now, I just have a few things to say on top of that before closing out this chapter.

[1] This moment is not just a reference to the gross-out moments of Total Drama (though that is primarily was it is and what it was designed to be) but also a more literary source. Much of the wording here is taken from Miguel De Cervantes' Don Quixote, one of the most famous works of satire ever! It's the story about the crazy guy in armor who attacks windmills believing that they are giants. Just to clarify, this is taken from the 2003 translation by Edith Grossman, which my professor from a previous class deemed to be the most faithful and funny translation of the work. The specific part that is drawn from here is on page 131 from chapter 18.

[2] This dialogue is taken from the Ingmar Bergman's 1957 film The Seventh Seal. This film is a MASTERPEICE! It's not only my favorite foreign film but also its high in my top ten list of all-time favorite films. Now, despite what you might read about it, this movie is lively, deep, serious, funny, and truly timeless in its quality. This movie is the film that every horrible pretentious art-house film wants to be! I can't stress this enough…go find and watch The Seventh Seal! You won't regret it! It's that rare classic, old movie that critics rave over with almost religious awe that deserves every bit of praise it has gotten since it came out over half a century ago!

Now then, the wait for the next chapter will likely be longer than the wait for this one but as always Kenju and me will do our damnnest to make it worth the wait! :)

Until next time, read, review, favor, follow, and spread the word! :)