Elizabeth

Lately, she's been craving cigarettes.

She used to crave brownies, fudge, all forms of chocolate, at midnight when she couldn't sleep. Now, the closer the clock creeps to the witching hour', the more her tastebuds remember the long-forbidden lure of nicotine. She's fairly certain this isn't a sign of maturity.

Regression has been the name of the game lately, she thinks, as she perches in her studio window, her fingers itching to hold an ash-tipped cig. The weird thing is...the weirdest part is how little she's regretting it.

She's been remembering little Lizzie Webber lately, like she's this girl she used to know a long time ago. Thinking about her old friend and arch-nemesis, she's starting to wonder if she still knows how to slip inside her skin; she's even beginning to think it might be worth a try.

Lizzie knew things, things Elizabeth thinks she's forgotten. She knew want, how to be selfish with her own needs. She called a bitch a bitch cause, hell, takes one to know one. She was no one's standard of excellence, and most people's idea of the opposite.

And she could smoke a freakin' cigarette like nobody's business.

She rises up on her knees, pushes the window open with an impatient, graceless gesture. She wants to run, scream, peel off this skin that suddenly feels too tight with her fingernails. But, she can't; she's Elizabeth, doncha know? The girl in the song. She contents herself with breathing deep, letting the moonlit air fill her lungs. She isn't content at all.

She doesn't know what she is, or who. Elizabeth isn't a woman she knows at all anymore. Lizzie, though, Lizzie she kind of remembers. Lizzie wasn't anyone's other half; she was whole all on her own. She'd give...she finds herself hard pressed to think of what she wouldn't give to remember what that feels like.

She won't let herself blame the rape. That's the one thing-- Elizabeth wasn't born that night of red blood and white, whiter, whitest snow. He took enough from her; she refuses to let him carry the death of Lizzie Webber, too.

No, that came later. And, when it did, it was her kill. She struck Lizzie Webber's death blow. She's not sure exactly when, but, oh, she knows why.

It wasn't Lizzie that Lucky Spencer fell in love with, you see.

It's not his fault. She knows that -- or, at least, she almost does. He was the first boy she loved who really loved her back. It's not his fault he loved her broken. It's just the way it was. Was. Lucky is a was now. Elizabeth isn't sure she'll ever get used to that. Lizzie is fairly certain she already has.

Both of them loved him, of course. But only one of them let him be the other half of her soul. She wonders if that's what's she's been looking for in Jason, in Zander. Not love, not even lust, but a way of filling the void inside her that Lizzie used to live in and Lucky used to own.

Her fingers tap an erratic pattern against the window frame, feeling ridiculously empty. It isn't a cigarette she wants; it's something far less tangible and far more dangerous. She wants her past back, she wants to look in a mirror and call the woman looking back at her by name. She glances up suddenly, catches her reflection in the moonlit window.

Lizzie Webber.

She thinks it has kind of a nice ring to it, after all.