Shattered Mirrors

Chapter Six: Second Verse, Just Like the First

Aya woke up to the smell of food. Her stomach grumbled and she sat up, but yelped out. She hurt everywhere. She slipped out of the bed. She was on a bed? Oh...yeah...Beej had come to her rescue. She walked to her dresser stiffly, whimpering the whole way as she forced herself to pull on at least a nightgown to cover herself. She didn't want to walk down the stairs...but that's where the food was.

But then she saw something out of the corner of her eye and when she turned she saw Beetlejuice standing there, a bowl in his dead hands. "Here...I uh...cooked. Took a while to figure it out..." He spoke like he was coaxing a cat again, like she was going to be angry at him.

Aya blinked. He had cooked...for her? He was a selfish, sleazy, perverted ghost of a pedophile. Why would he do something that...caring? She slowly took the bowl from him. It was warm. She looked down at the contents, wanting to make sure it wasn't bugs or lizards or something equally gross.

What she saw was a red creamy liquid, and she recognized the smell immediately. Tomato soup. Thankfully, it was one of the foods that was red and somehow managed to not look like blood, so she picked up the spoon in the bowl and slowly started eating, feeling a bit better with food in her. She didn't speak until she was done.

"Thanks...a lot...but don't think I'm gonna let you be all kind and crap even though I'm bruised up." Aya said, but not in the same fierce tone she normally used.

Beetlejuice noticed it right away. "Are you okay, sweetheart? What happened there?" He asked, cautiously. He had seen her angry, and he had seen her so angry that she was happy. But this, was just like...nothing. She was sad, he could tell that. But there was no trace of her anger. It disconcerted him. Just what had the prince done with her?

"Nothing, I wouldn't do anything the prince told me, so he had his guards beat me up. I'm perfectly fine. And if you really want to see how fine I am...I can still throw this bowl at you." Aya threatened, but, it was an empty threat, because she just set the bowl down on the table by her bed.

He raised an eyebrow at her obvious lie. The prince wouldn't just have his guards beat her up and that be it, right? And on top of that...what had the prince wanted her to do. Dressed as she had been, he could think of what he wanted her to do, but...the prince wasn't like him. They were alike in certain ways, because they were attracted to the same type of girls. But...he wouldn't just let her get away with a beating.

Something else had happened and he knew it.

Still, they were in a "I hate you"/"I hate you too" relationship...so he couldn't exactly expect her to trust him enough to tell him. What the hell? Why should he care?! It was her fault for what happened at the palace. Not his! He should be blaming her for all this...so why was he blaming himself?

"I'm taking a shower, be a nice old pedo and stay out of the bathroom." Aya said, a bit of her normal arrogance sinking back in.

Beetlejuice sighed. She was faking and he could tell, but he didn't argue, just faded off to do some serious thinking.

**

Aya walked into the bathroom and turned on the shower. She avoided looking at herself in the mirror. She couldn't stand to see herself beaten, broken...abused. Like what her parents used to do to her. The thought made her shiver. She slipped off the nightgown and refused to look at herself. She was ugly, hideous...and they had touched her. She stepped in the water and washed off, only opening her eyes to find shampoo or soap, other then that keeping her eyes firmly shut so she wouldn't see herself.

Yet...something clicked into place, a flashback.

**

Suddenly, she felt a gross rough feeling on her. She looked down again, even though she had just thrown up. A zombie-like guard had his dead, gross tongue licking her leg, where there was blood. She choked on more bile. But she couldn't look away. The zombie's yellow eyes looked up at her as it licked, as if he was doing something intimate, and not licking away blood. Blood she needed to live.

Then there was another feeling. The zombie wasn't there anymore. When had that happened? Had she blacked out? She was crying, she had vomited...twice now? She didn't know. What was happening? Why couldn't this end? Something was inside her. Fuck. It hurt. It felt like her womb was being ripped open. She looked up and saw an almost human looking guard over her. He was inside of her. And he was twice her size. She should feel more pain. She should be more...alert about her surroundings.

What was happening? Shit. Shit. Shit!

Suddenly she felt something hot burst inside of her, and she knew what it was. She threw up again. She was bleeding, she was used. Suddenly she felt her head slam onto concrete and she cried out.

She heard a creepy voice by her ear. "Thought you died on us for a while there." He whispered.

How long had this been going on?

**

Aya was sitting on the shower floor, crying into her knees, eyes shut. No, no...that...she didn't want to remember it. She could remember it all.

She got out of the shower, and dried off and slipped back in the nightgown. Then she caught sight of her reflection in the mirror in front of her. She shook her head. She looked ugly. No one would ever want her. Not after that. She would be scarred for the rest of her life. Those cuts would cause pink welts in her skin...that would never fade. Not even Leslie would want her after this.

She was suddenly slamming her fists into the mirror, crying at the same time as the glass shattered and covered the floor. She sunk to the floor herself, crying at everything that had happened. And it was all her fault. If she had only slept with the prince...she wouldn't have been used like that.

**

Beetlejuice heard the mirror shatter and he groaned. Why did this girl insist on breaking mirrors? Did she want bad luck for the rest of her life? Yes, Beej was superstitious when it came to things like that. Although he wouldn't admit it to just anyone. He poofed into the bathroom and looked at the mess. The mirror was broken, and her hands were bleeding. She was crying. It was then that he guessed what must have happened.

"He had the guards rape you?" He asked, and his voice was soft. He was angry, how could the prince do something like that. But then again, it was the prince, and...the guards weren't anyone he'd like to see. He bent down by her, gently scooping her up to get her off the glass, before taking her out of the room. He'd bandage up her hands in a second.

She didn't answer him, and she didn't struggle against him for once. When he set her down on her bed she wiped at her eyes.

"Just answer." He said, frustrated at how she wouldn't talk. Normally she didn't stop talking...

"Just leave me alone. Now!" She said finally.

Beetlejuice was surprised. She could've said that so many times before, and she hadn't. But she did now, when he was trying to be kind. Maybe things would be better if she had never met him. He didn't think about how her life had been before he scared off her parents, instead he just poofed away...finding a spell to make it like she never met him. But he couldn't find a way to erase her memories of him.

The thing with the prince had never happened now, neither had him scaring away her parents, or Leslie getting fired. Now it was all just a dream for her. Most likely a bad one.

**

Aya woke up the next morning and heard her parents arguing. She wasn't hurt anymore, except for the basic bruises from her parents. She checked the date. That couldn't be right...could it? What had happened?

"Oh...no..." She whispered softly. She was alone again. She had told Beetlejuice to leave her alone and he had.

She felt worse then when she had woken up...after being used the first time by those guards. Why should it matter? She hated him, right? So..him not being there was like a god sent.

Still, she felt like she wanted to cry as she saw her perfectly unscathed reflection.

**

Beetlejuice hadn't honestly left her, this was a trial spell...it would only go on for three days. She would live her life normally for three days and he would decide if she was better off with out him. He felt bad spying on her from inside the Roadhouse. He had a mirror on the wall, watching everything that happened around her today.

**

She got dressed for school, feeling worse by the second. She hadn't known Beej long...but she didn't want to live her life the way it had been. Her life was empty now.

She walked downstairs, prepared to leave when her dad blocked her way. Oh no...not this again. She had almost forgotten what this was like.

"Where do you think you're going?" Her father asked in a taunting tone. He looked like a male model for Calvin Klein or something of the sort.

"School, I'm 16, I go to school." She said, remembering that she had said something to Beetlejuice when she had tried to get past him.

SLAP!

She winced at the sudden, unneeded abuse, but she just ran out the door, running to school. She was crying softly by the time she got there. Her life was exactly the same as it had been before.

She walked out to the back of the school and carefully climbed up a tree that was near the school, walking along the branch until she reached the roof of the school. It was where her and Leslie used to talk, because no one would see them up there from the back of the school. She sat down, and decided to skip her classes, although she normally wouldn't skip.

Why was she so down about losing Beetlejuice?

**

Beetlejuice watched her through the mirror. The was her dad had slapped her, made him angry. He hated it when men were abusive to women. She shouldn't be treated that way. He had never agreed with abuse, especially not when it was a parent abusing a child. That was just...horrible. He wanted to go scare him off again, but he couldn't. He had to wait to see if things were better without him.

"Damn my ideas." He mumbled a bit.

**

Suddenly someone climbed up on the roof and she turned to see Leslie. "What do you want?" She asked in an annoyed tone, before she remembered that her breaking up with him had never happened now.

"Sweetheart, what's wrong?" Leslie asked as he looked at her. "You are normally in my class by now." He said softly.

This was a way to get rid of him for good. "I...think it'll be better for us to stop seeing each other. This is dangerous. You're married, and she's expecting your kids...and I know I can't compare to her." Aya said, being calm and breaking up with him.

Leslie blinked. He had never been broken up with by someone. Especially when she was the first student he had ever been involved with. "Well, if that's what you think. At least one last time as a goodbye?" He asked, sliding closer to her.

She let her breath catch. He was handsome, but her thoughts were on the dead people that had raped her. "I'm sorry, I can't." She said, moving away.

"Was it something your father did?" Leslie asked suddenly. He knew about her abusive situation, and he pulled her to him, holding her. His head on her head.

She let him do it, because she knew that she wasn't going to let him after now. He was a part of her past.

**

Beetlejuice seethed with an emotion he didn't recognize as he watched her teacher pull her into an embrace and sooth her from whatever was bothering her. He growled in annoyance, but he couldn't interfere yet.

**

After she went through her classes alone, working on her work, sitting by herself and thinking about things, she went home. She came home to her parents throwing things at each other and a dish landed near her head when she opened the door. On second thought...she'd go to the cabin. She walked until she was at the cabin. Her life wasn't that horrible, but it was miserable.

After a moment she looked around. She missed him. "Fuck, I shouldn't miss that pervert." She said softly.

**

Beetlejuice heard what she said, and his eyes widened. She missed him? Where had that come from. He could feel something tug in him though at the comment. He shook his head. "You're just being nostalgic." He told himself.

**

Aya sighed. Nothing was worth this. She'd even go back to that horrible hurt state then not meeting Beetlejuice. "Beetlejuice, Beetlejuice, Beetlejuice." She said, softly, calling him.

But he didn't come. Was that possible? She blinked and looked around. He had come when she called him before. She tried three more times, but nothing happened. Nothing happened.

**

He felt bad that he didn't come to her. It wasn't required that he come when his name called, but it felt horrible when he didn't answer. He knew when someone called his name, and he knew automatically where the person was so that he could go to them. But he didn't go to her just then. There was a mirror in the cabin and that's where he was watching her from now.

**

She looked over at the mirror, remembering the morning when she had sent him away and he had been inside the mirror. She picked up a rock on the ground and threw it, straight at the mirror, but this time it was because it was suspicious.

**

Beetlejuice groaned, a glass shard cut across his dead cheek, and a bit of thick blood oozed out, but not like how a humans would. His blood was barely slow, and it just formed into a thick bubble on the wound. "Dammit, watch where you're throwing that shit."

Aya perked up. So she wasn't crazy, Beej was real. "Get your ghostly ass out here." She said as she growled out loud.

Beetlejuice sighed. His cover was blown. He popped out in front of her. "No need to cuss." He said with an exaggerated sigh.

"What do you think you were doing?! Making it seem like I never met you! I thought I was crazy. I thought that I had dreamed everything up." She said, yelling at him. She threw a glass shard at him, but it missed.

"I thought things would be better if that never happened to you." Beetlejuice said. "So you wouldn't have to...deal with what happened to you." He said softly.

"You were worried about me?" She asked, growing silent.

"Of course not. No one should have to deal with that." Beetlejuice said, with a scoff at the thought he had actually been worried about her.

Aya sighed. "So are you still here again...or are you going to leave me alone?" She asked him as she ran a hand through her hair.

"I'll stick around, but first thing's first...down to business." He said. He got rid of her parents again, after leaving her, but this time he didn't make them insane, instead he used a scam to convince them to go on a looooooong trip out of the country for modeling. He knew they were too dumb to realize it was a hoax.

Aya figured what he was doing as she headed home, and gave a sigh of relief. Just one day had seemed horrible without her ghost friend.

He was her first friend, wasn't he? What a nice thing to have...she found herself thinking as she went home.

A/N: Awwww, so sweet. I couldn't let her...keep the effects of what happened to her, I had to make things better, although it'll still scar her for a while. You can't go through that kind of trauma without being scarred. Still, seems like the two missed each other. Is this the beginning of love? Probably not, but it'll be nice to find out. ^^ Another chapter finished, thankfully.

I hope all my readers like this. I'm glad to say that I'm the proud owner of FOUR reviews. Woot, woot.

Please review, I really like feedback. I message almost everyone who reviews me, because I like knowing people's reactions to what I write.


REVIEW PLEASE. Thanks everyone who read this. Constructive criticism is accepted, but only constructive. I don't want flames, or people completely downing Aya.