A/N: I love this chapter. Sorry for the long wait, but I was giving the new chapter of Prinzessin its run in the spotlight. I hope you guys like it, please read and leave your feedback. Also, I have a question for you all. Would you guys like me to write the missing chapters? Right now, this is the last chapter. But there are other episodes (Ocean's Eight or Nine, Million Dollar Babies, Super Hero-ld, Get a Clue, etc.) that could be written and potentially be good, but I'd be the only one writing them. So if you guys want to see them, then let me know in the reviews, otherwise this will be the last chapter!
It was sickening. It was horrendous. It was one of the worst things I'd ever gotten into. No, it was not a bird, nor was it a plane. It was my alliance with Beth. The girls' alliance.
I clenched my fists, mentally hoping karma would attack that girl sometime in the near future; it wouldn't do if the event occurred after she'd already lost the competition (she would lose, I would see to it) and gone home. I wanted to see her get what was coming to her. Correction: I really wanted to see her get what was coming to her. I would watch the event, and I would laugh, and then I would tell Beth that she was only getting what she deserved and that if she had been a better, more reasonable person, it wouldn't have come to her, thus the definition of karma.
Arguably, I'll admit, this could have been said for me as well, but I was the one on the roof.
Yes, the roof. I'd known this was coming as soon as Beth abandoned me to fight the killer octopus alone while she abused my poor PDA, but I had never imagined it would get this out of control.
That's okay because I'm counter-counter-manipulating her! A counter-top, I'd called it in the Make-up Confessional. Oh, how I wished I could eat my words. The whole world would undoubtedly think I was okay with this arrangement, but this was so not okay. Beth was obviously getting her kicks, enjoying the power she thought she had over me.
She manipulating me, but I knew about it, so maybe it wasn't manipulation after all. I really wasn't sure.
It had started with the seafood debacle, but it hadn't stopped! Next, she'd wanted to use my private bathroom, and that night, she'd invited herself to my gourmet lobster dinner. Then, having gained more courage, she'd insisted on sleeping inmy bunk; the bunk with the fancy bedding and goose-down pillows. And, of course, for the sake of my alliance, I'd had to say yes. I had to let her believe she was in control; I had to suck it up and roll with the punches. Her punches, however, were much harder than I ever would have predicted, and it was really, for lack of better words, pissing me off.
I'd concocted a personal theory, which was that, after the abuse she received from Heather in the first season, Beth's psyche was trying to reestablish its dominance, choosing whoever it could get to be its victim. My theory had been proved later, the same evening of the kung-fu challenge. "Courtney?" she'd asked me. "Would you get me some chips from Craft Services? I would, but—" She took the time to gesture to my PDA in her hand and smiled. "—you know I have Brady on the phone here, and I'm super hungry!"
Strangling her with my imagination, I'd said, "No problem, girl!" putting the stress on the word girl as a friend would do. I'd exited the trailer on my own, muttering to myself about déjà vu and how Beth's psyche was undoubtedly imitating Heather's exploitation. I mean, having me steal chips? How much more copy-cat could it have gotten? I'd figured it wouldn't be long until she was sporting a hideous wig in the fashion of Heather herself. I snorted; a wig would be an improvement on her hideous side-ponytail. Retro-cool, it was not. Retro-fool, on the other hand, was the very definition of Beth.
What killed me, though, was that in this new version of affairs, I was Beth! Me! It was outrageous, but it was true. In a very Beth-like manner, I'd smiled kindly, snuck into Chef's domain, snatched a bag of chips, and returned, upon which Beth, in a very Heather-like manner, had flippantly thanked me and continued utilizing my PDA.
At that point, I'd believed I'd wanted to kill her, but this event ended up grouped with many others that didn't even begin to compare: Chris forgetting to tell me that my private shower had no heat only afterI'd already turned on the water?Nah. Seeing that video of Duncan and Gwen wrestling under the stars? Pfft. Getting accused of "murdering" Chris, and Lindsay winning the challenge? Not even close. Not until I found myself on the roof did I know precisely what it felt like to really want to kill someone.
I sat there on the metallic ceiling of our shared trailer, a hammer in one hand and a scrap of metal in the other. "Why don't you go fix that leak, Courtney?" I hissed, mimicking Beth and her lisping-but-somehow-not-lisping voice. "Why not? Yeah, I know the leak's over the sink and it's not a problem at all, but I think you should fix it anyway!" I paused, having just noticed that my complaints had grown from a whisper to a scream over the course of three sentences.
Reverting back to my own tones, I did nothing more than groan and attack the roof with my hammer. I was nowhere near the location of the leak, but I needed to take my anger out on something, and I figured the roof had so many dents already, one more wouldn't hurt anything.
I tried to locate the leak, but the glare ricocheting off the metal nearly blinded me. Just my luck, it was one of those awful days, where the sky was so covered by clouds that I couldn't see the sun, yet it was still painfully bright. I hated that sort of weather, and it only added to the irritated frenzy I was in the process of working myself into.
I put my hands to my forehead in the shape of a visor in order to scan the roof, sighing in triumph when I found the actual source of the leak: a miniscule hole on the left side of the trailer. After crawling over carefully so as to avoid slipping and falling to a gruesome death, I sat down on the backs of my legs and stared at the hole angrily. Mocking me, it was. "Haha!" it said. "You're fixing me for Beth!What's wrong with you?"
"It's for the alliance," I said, trying to calm myself. "For the alliance, for the alliance, for the alliance… You want a million dollars, don't you, Courtney? Of course you do." I took a deep breath, picked up the hammer, and proceeded to beat the crap out of the area around the leak. "There." I paused, breathing heavily. "Do you feel better?"
Momentarily satisfied, I put the hammer down and surveyed the film lot. Judging by the damp feel of the air, a storm was on its way for sure; that must have been what had prompted Beth to send me out there in the first place. The dripping water was disrupting her sleep, she'd told me. Before, she'd asked to merely borrow some earplugs, but there was absolutely no way her earwax was getting onmyearplugs! That would have been crossing the line, so I lied and told her I only had one pair. It was coming back to bite me, though, seeing as she'd quote-unquote "suggested" I go fix the roof, and I had no excuse not to.
So there I was. On the roof. I just prayed to God it didn't start raining while I was still up there.
I turned my gaze to the sky above me and made a face at its dreadful gray color, which certainly foreshadowed terrible things. Quickly resolving not to be caught out on a metal roof in a lightning storm, I turned back to the hole and got to work, laying down the scrap metal and hammering it into place. This dented in our ceiling even farther that it already was, and I was no carpenter, so I had no idea if this was what I was supposed to be doing or not, but Beth didn't care. She just wanted her stupid leak fixed.
It was then that a drop of water fell directly onto the back of my head.
"You've got to be kidding me!" I screeched, turning my face to the clouds that loomed above me. A couple more drops fell on my face, quickly followed by a full on downpour of water from the heavens. "Arghh!"
"Hey, Courtney!" someone called from the ground below me. I crawled over to the edge of the trailer and looked down to see Beth poking her head out our door, wincing from the unexpected monsoon. "Whoa. It's raining!" she proclaimed.
"No, duh," I muttered before I could stop myself. Fortunately, she didn't hear me over the plinking sounds the raindrops made on the two trailers. I cleared my throat and moved a bit of hair that had matted itself to the side of my face. "Yeah," I yelled down to her, putting a slight whine in my voice as I did so. "It's reallywet up here! All my clothes with be completely ruined if I stay out here for too much longer!" Subtle nudging, I thought. That was all Beth needed, and she'd tell me to come down. I'd be out of the rain, and my alliance would still be standing. Perfect plan.
I watched her expectantly, trying to keep my internal fury under control. Beth's eyebrows furrowed and she screwed up her face, apparently thinking hard. Could it be true? I wondered, watching Beth quizzically from my vantage point. Has she developed a renewed conscience over the past half an hour? Could she be out here to tell me to come back inside? I made a note to politely thank her once she'd helped me down, and then I would trick her into going out tomorrow to fix the roof. Genius!
"Wow," Beth said, looking back up at my pathetically drenched form. "Well, I wanted to tell you that the leak's still leaking, so whatever you're doing isn't really working." She pulled her head back into the safety of the trailer.
I was still sitting there frozen, halfway through mentally chopping her head off, when the door opened a crack and said head popped out a second time. "Oh, Courtney!" she started once more.
"Yes…?" I prompted, raising my eyebrows and giving her my best "Get me out of the rain or feel my wrath!" face, though I doubt she saw it through the rapidly escalating rainfall.
She blinked a couple of times before opening her mouth. "I hope you don't get too wet while you're up there! And good luck." The door slammed shut, and I knew it was over. She'd covered her butt by hoping I didn't get wet (as if thatwould make any difference at all!), and she was gone, not to be satisfied until the roof no longer dripped drops.
To put it quite simply, I screamed very loudly and pounded at that piece of scrap metal until the possibility of water getting past it was approximately negative one thousand.
"Courtney!"
Her again. Perhaps she'd come to hope I didn't get electrocuted, stranded on a metal surface as I was. "WHAT DO YOU WANT, BETH?" I screamed over a huge clap of thunder, not bothering to look at her and her supposedly innocent face.
"Sweetheart, this isn't Beth," the voice replied. It was screaming to be heard over the rain, but it managed to sound somewhat calm, chuckling.
I whipped around, prompting a collection of water drops to fly from my face, only to be replaced seconds later by fresh ones. "Duncan?" I asked, though I already knew beyond a doubt that it was him. No one else had the nerve to call me "sweetheart."
He jogged back a few steps through the mud so he could get a better view of the roof and, consequently, me. "What are you doing up there?" he asked, the expressions "amused" and "baffled" fighting for control of his face. I noticed that he held a bag of chips in his hands, and my fury towards Beth was instantly increased, twofold. My bet was that I'd never be able to look at that chip brand again without remembering the girl's tyranny.
"I'm fixi—!" I cut myself off, though, not wanting to finish such a sentence. Admitting to anyone that I was on a metallic roof in the middle of a thunderstorm fixing a leak in a roof for Beth just sounded far too pathetic to my own ears, let alone anyone else's. "What I'm doing on this roof isn't any of your business!" I screamed down instead. Anything to make him go away so I could find my own way down and retreat into a place with a ceiling.
Duncan wiped some rain off his forehead. "You look like a cat that got thrown into a swimming pool!" he announced.
What a complement. "That's because I'm all wet!"I growled from where I knelt on the roof. A tree above me chose to empty a load of water onto my head at that exact moment, further illustrating my point.
He paused a second, sniggering to himself, and then put his blue eyes on mine. "Well, I knew I was hot, but I didn't know I could get you turned on so quickly!" He gestured to his shirt, plastered to his chest from the rain.
By that point, the roof was growing slippery at an alarming pace, so I hammered a steep dent into it and latched on. "That's one of the most random things I've ever heard!" I yelled down to him. It was possible that I'd heard him wrong, but what Ithought he'd just said didn't contain a single hint of logic.
"It's not random!" he retorted over the plinking of the rain. "I show up, and then you're wet. I'm turning you on!" he said jokingly, wiggling his eyebrows at me.
I might have laughed, except he still wasn't making any sense. Well, actually, I later amended, I probably would have thrown my hammer at him instead, because his jokes were more often offensive than funny. "I was wet way before you showed up, Duncan!" I replied over the pounding rain. A lightning bolt extended down somewhere across the film lot, and I felt the beginnings of a self-induced panic attack coming on.
Duncan rolled his eyes, implying that there was something I wasn't getting. "Damn," he said, still continuing the joke and obviously willing me to understand. "You must be really horny then!"
God, how I wanted to get off that roof. "I have no idea what you're talking about! How horny I am or am not has absolutely nothing to do with the fact that I'm wet right now!" To figure out how far away a storm was, you were supposed to count the seconds from the lightening to the thunder, right? I resolved to start counting at the next bolt.
"Do I have to spell it out for you?" Duncan asked irritably, safe where he was on the ground. I shrugged at him, which he took as a cue to continue. "I show up, and then you tell me you're wet." He put an emphasis on the word, but it was lost on me and my alarmed mind. "Guys get hard-ons, girls…" He trailed off suggestively, waving his hand around in some sort of explanation, but I stared at him blankly. "Geez, it's not even funny anymore!" he yelled after a second. "Why do you have to be such a prude?!"
I sneered at him, though the hair stuck to my face likely hid it. "It's not my fault your jokes aren't funn—!" And then it clicked. I had reached understanding, and like usual, I was offended.
"Oh my god!" I screeched. "You're such a pervert! Why would you even feel the need to bring up something like that?!"
Duncan smirked, pleased to see that his sexual innuendo hadn't gone completely to waste. "It's all worth it to see the look on your face!" he yelled, sticking his tongue out at me and catching several raindrops in the process.
"JERK!" I yelled, then calming down enough to add, "You're already facing one life-threatening situation today. You don't want to make it two."
"Are you calling yourself threatening, Kitten?" he asked cheekily, as if the very idea was preposterous.
With a loud battle cry,I felt through the puddles on the roof, found the hammer, and chucked it straight at his head. It would have hit him, too, if it weren't for his advanced, juvenile delinquent-brand reflexes.
Duncan ducked down and retrieved the object from a mud puddle, bringing it close to his face and squinting through the torrent of rain. It took him a while to identify it, in which time I'd formed a half-baked plan of escape involving a double back layout from my gymnastics days and the tree beside me. He tilted his head up to me finally and called, "A hammer? What the hell do you have a hammer for?!"
"I already told you," I started, evaluating the sopping tree and deciding it would work just fine, "that's none of your business!"
He gaped at me before folding his arms crossly. "Have fun getting electrocuted, then!"
"Shoot," I hissed under my breath. I'd forgotten to keep a lookout for the next lightning bolt. I turned my gaze to where I'd seen the last one just as another extended down from the sky. One Mississ—
BANG!
Unfortunately, it looked like the storm was right on top of us, meaning that the likelihood of getting electrocuted had become exponentially higher than it had been ten minutes ago.
Duncan stared at me for a second before asking, "How are you going to get down?"
I stood up, pulled my hair out of my face, and turned to him resolutely. "I'm going to do a double back layout, which, if I've thought it through correctly, will put me at the perfect angle to grab onto that branch—" I pointed to the tree. "—which will bend under my weight and lower me to the ground."
Duncan looked at me like I was crazy. I had to admit, I was so far gone by this point that it was definitely a possibility. "That's stupid!" he screamed, trying to straighten up his Mohawk, which had gone limp to one side. "You're going to kill yourself!" He opened his mouth, presumably to add some snarky comment about how he wouldn't mind it if I were to die, but he seemed to decide against it.
"Well, I can't do what I did to get up here the first time!" I called back to him, trying to find my bearings on the uneven roof.
"Why not!?" Another crack of lightening found a hole through the clouds, and Duncan winced at the thunder that followed immediately.
It wasn't until then that I realized he was putting himself at nearly as much risk as I was, standing outside as it were. Lightening was supposed to strike the highest thing, which was me, but there had been scientific controversy over that… I cast the notion aside, intent on executing my double back layout before either of us died. "Beth helped me up here! Do you see her around here anywhere!?" I hollered bitterly. "No, you don't, do you?!"
Duncan watched me for a few seconds, apparently struggling with himself. "Let me help you down, then." He'd said it more quietly, but I'd been able to make out every word.
I paused for a moment, considering saying yes, but I then decided against acceptance. To take his aid would be to admit failure, and that wouldn't have been tolerable. "I don't want your help!" I screamed. "Just go inside your own trailer and leave me alone!"
The traces of worry previously on his features were instantly replaced by those of frustration. "You're being an idiot! Doing a double front pike—"
"It's a back layou—!"
"Doesn't matter!" He cut me off just as I'd done to him. "It's suicide! Just let me help you down!" He walked closer, ending up nearly flat against the trailer wall.
"Not a chance!" I raised my arms above my head, preparing for the stunt. I took a few deep breaths, but Duncan's gaze, focused on me through the rain, was distracting me. "Seriously, Duncan, if this is going to work, I need you to leave! I can't focus!"
Duncan sighed and looked at me furiously, blinking the water out of his eyes. "You know what? All right! But when you slip and crack your skull open, don't try and tell me I didn't try to help you!"
Even in my hysterical state, I couldn't help but take a crack at him. "If I cracked my skull open, I don't think I'd be telling you anything, you dolt."
He nearly smiled, but caught himself just in time to turn it into a grimace. "Okay then. It's your funeral!" Without any more words of protest, he turned around and left for his own trailer.
A deep breath. A few steps forward. Pushing off my hands. Flying through the air. Grasping the tree branch.
It all happened in a few seconds, carrying itself off without a hitch. I hung off the tree branch, waiting for it to lower me gently to the ground so I could find Duncan and gloat over my plan's success, but I found myself facing a dilemma: The branch wasn't bending. At all.
I looked to the ground, which seemed much farther away than it had from the trailer roof. "SHIT!" I cursed, against my common policy of clean language. I struggled to get a better grip on the soggy bark beneath my hands, feeling myself begin to hyperventilate. "I'm screwed, I'm screwed, I'm screwed, I'm screwed…" I would fall to the ground and crack my head open, making me unable to tell Duncan that he hadn't tried to help me, just as he had predicted.
But then: "Hah! Told you it wouldn't work!"
I shrieked uncontrollably from where I hung.
"Courtney, relax!" I flailed around, searching the ground for Duncan's fluorescent Mohawk, eventually finding it directly below me. "Courtney! Courtney, stop, you're going to crack that twig!"
It's just as well, my depressed brain told me. At least my death would be quick and painless that way. I continued screaming, though I was hardly even aware of it at this point. I couldn't even hear myself over the torrential downpour around me. Where was Noah when you needed him?
"PRINCESS, IF YOU WANT TO LIVE, YOU NEED TO SHUT THE HELL UP AND LISTEN TO ME!"
And for some reason, at those words, my brain managed to communicate with my mouth enough so that it closed, and my ears enough so that they opened. I thought it might have been because of the pet name, but I really hoped that I was incorrect in that assumption.
"Finally!" Duncan muttered below me. Then he yelled up, "Okay, Courtney, all I want you to do right now is let go."
"WHAT?!" Did he want me to die? He probably did. They all did! Stupid competition, turning everyone into vicious pythons…
I felt myself breaking into hysterics, and my brain instantly went in to overdrive, concocting conspiracy theories. That must have been why Beth had left me on the roof, even after it had started raining. Shewanted to kill me. It was so obvious! She knew about the risks of being up on a metal roof in a lightning storm, and sent me out accordingly so I would die. Oh my god, I thought. I was literally going to die. Cause of death: a stupid alliance! If I did, in fact, live, I would make her life a living hell, that was for sure.
Duncan cupped his arms around his mouth, probably assuming I hadn't heard him, and repeated himself. "Let go!" Oh, I'd heard him, but that was not an idea that would fly with me. Not possible.
"No! That right there is what would be suicide!" I shrieked, pulling myself up higher to maintain my grip on the branch. A small crack! made its way to my ears, and I whimpered.
"It's not!" Duncan called, the hints of desperation creeping into his vocals. "Believe me! You just have to do it!"
"I…I can't!" I screamed, my eyes relieving themselves of a couple tears, which promptly mixed in with the rain. I found that I was beyond caring about what he thought of me. This was merely a matter of willpower, and I didn't think I had enough left to execute a second stunt. My brain had completely lost control of my hands.
Duncan was silent below me for a long time. Several minutes passed, yet they felt like hours, and I'd begun to wonder if he had just left me to die all on my lonesome, when he spoke again. "Are you still with me, babe?" he asked.
I tried to reply, but my throat seemed to have constricted of its own accord. I nodded instead and hoped he could see the weak motion.
"Good." Apparently, he had good eyesight. "Now imagine: That whole tree is made of green gelatin!"
I wasn't aware of myself shrieking nor letting go of the branch, and I only realized that I was back on land when I'd yanked my head up and found myself caught in Duncan's arms, bridal style. We stared at each other for a moment, his blue eyes boring into my dark, wet ones. I hesitantly wrapped my own arms around his neck but was careful to keep my head away from his chest. That was just too close for comfort at the moment.
I swallowed, and upon finding that my throat had regained function, said simply, "You caught me."
Duncan rolled his eyes, but his mouth curved itself into a smirk. "Way to state the obvious." I tried to summon the valor needed for pulling off the thank you that was necessary, but Duncan carried me to my trailer door and threw it open before I managed to spit anything out.
"I know," Beth was sniggering into my PDA, lying on a top bunk with her feet in the air. "I'm pretty sure she's still on the roof, but I'm not really worried abou—" Beth cut herself off at the sight of Duncan, soaked, carrying me (also soaked) into the trailer, bridal style. "…Hey, Brady?" she said, not taking her eyes off the two of us. "I have to go."
Duncan deposited me on the nearest bed before turning to Beth and fixing her with a murderous glare. "I hope you're happy," he said bluntly, walking out of the door a second later. It hadn't been much, but his actions somehow spoke volumes to both myself and Beth.
I threw my hands to my face and wiped the remaining water off it, mourning my soiled clothes, not to mention my soiled reputation. I then rolled over to face Beth, fixing her with a look that I hoped was as murderous as Duncan's had just been.
Beth attempted a smile, but her eyes looked like those of a child who'd been caught feeding her vegetables to the family dog. "Thanks for fixing the leak, Bestie!" she said after a second in an obvious attempt at reconciliation.
I shook my head at her slightly, snatched my PDA out of her unsuspecting hands, and returned to the waterlogged bunk. "You owe me one, Beth," I said, trying to keep the malice out of my voice. "You really owe me one."