A/N: I can't get this musical off my mind! I rewatched the movie, but I don't get the same feel as I do in the musical. I think it's mainly because I'm putting more focus on JD, and while Christian Slater did an amazing job as I'm sure it's a really tricky role and yet I believe in him, he's just totally unsympathetic. Musical-verse JD is probably even harder to play, but he's also a more sympathetic character. But even though he thought he loved Veronica, they weren't right for each other. There was no way Veronica could carry that guilt forever. But now, there are people who adore villains. So I've created someone.

Plot: It's 2019 and while Indiana Jordan is on holiday with her family in China for New Years, a new illness strikes them. An asthma attack hits Ana one night and when she wakes up, it's 1989, September, and while she has the same parents, the same wardrobe, and some of the same possessions, the school, classmates and background of her life are totally different. Ana always wanted to be in a musical, but not like this. But, as she thinks, she's always wanted a boyfriend who would protect her 100%. And she doesn't mind if a few people who deserve some punishment disappear along the way…

Disclaimer: I don't own Heathers the Musical, or anything that I might mention that's from the movie. I do own Ana – and if you're wondering, yes, I checked the locations I mention.

Being ill sucks, no matter where you are and what you want to do, but being ill really sucks when you're on holiday. Even worse. Why had Mom and Dad thought the best place for Christmas break was Wuhan, China? I would have liked a reprieve from winter. Why couldn't we have gone to Costa Rica, or Hawaii, or Australia? But they'd sounded so excited when they told me "We've been able to book a holiday abroad, Ana!" that I hadn't said a word when I found out where we were going. Yeah, that's me, Ana. Short for Indiana Shannon Jordan. I was conceived when they were on holiday in Indiana, so that's what they named me, but no one ever called me that. I would have died if my friends knew that's what Ana was short for. As if I hadn't been teased for my name sounding like the lead in Frozen.

If I'd chosen my trip abroad, I'd have picked somewhere a little exciting where it was also hot! Okay, Hawaii wasn't terribly hot in winter, but it wasn't freezing, like it was back home in Ohio or here in Wuhan. In all my dream destinations, the air was clean, not all smoggy. They weren't full of designer fakes that frayed after two weeks, just chainstores that didn't try to fake it and real designer. They had exotic wilderness, volcanoes and bush and rainforest (OK, China has rainforest too, but that's it). And as far as I knew, none of them sold bootleg infected bat meat.

I mean, we'd been at the market for barely a quarter of an hour, and now my parents and I were all sick. We were confined to the hotel room, and it was the worst for me. I'd had to be so careful as a kid to not even catch the tiniest cold or any seasonal illness. I'd had flu once, and that was hard enough, although I didn't remember it myself. Dad had told me I nearly died. I was two years old and it was when I was first diagnosed with asthma. I was usually fine as long as I had my inhaler, pills and some water on hand and didn't do any exercise that was too extreme or do it outside in cold weather (yeah, why had we chosen China in winter again?), I could manage it. I had gone years without a full-scale asthma attack. Yeah, I'd had a few blips, especially when I was little and wasn't allowed to keep my pills with me, but I hadn't had any actual attacks since I was fifteen. Now I was seventeen, halfway through senior year and I had to catch the disease where I couldn't breathe properly anyway! My throat was on fire. My head ached. When I dragged myself out of bed to go to the bathroom and looked at myself in the mirror, I saw a pale, tired girl with tangled, almost white natural ringlets, eyes that were so bloodshot you couldn't even tell what colour they were (mostly a dark grey with a blue tint if you looked closely) who was about to cough until she vomited out her lungs. I could barely stand, all food tasted like cardboard, and half the time, I was wracked with chills, shaking violently, which didn't make it any easier to breathe. I could barely talk for coughing. All I could really do was lie around, listening to music through my headphones, no longer strong enough to care how uncool it was to be a musical theatre nerd. It wasn't like I could sing along if I'd wanted to.

Mom and Dad had many of the same complaints as me, but neither of them had asthma. No one could figure out whose genes gave me that. They had trouble drawing breath, too, but they'd never experienced that before, the way I had. But I think we all knew it was worse for me. I had pills, a glass of water and my inhaler within reaching distance, but no matter how many puffs I took, I still felt like I couldn't get enough oxygen. I didn't need to take pills unless I had an actual attack – a mild one that wouldn't send me to hospital.

Singing along to music wasn't the only thing I couldn't do. I could barely talk, even if I wasn't coughing. It aggravated my throat, I couldn't speak above a whisper, and it used up some of my air. Mostly, I was just lying there, listening to my favourite soundtracks. I wouldn't have told anyone how much I was into them, but they kept me sane. While I hadn't been interested in any of my classes for a while and I'd felt like I'd lost interest in hanging with my friends, engulfing myself in the musical theatre I loved was the only thing that kept me from thinking about ending it all…except when I was listening to Audrey beg Seymour to feed her to the plant when she died, or Heather McNamara struggling to open a jar of pills while people in her head told her to kill herself, but they didn't count because I was thinking about them. I didn't want to die, especially when I was daydreaming about ending the first act of Legally Blonde with the best song in the musical or singing the last high note of Defying Gravity as Elphaba. I would have loved to actually be in a show – then I could openly be into musical theatre and have no one sneer at me. But I knew I wouldn't have the energy, even though I knew I could sing in tune and act well. I wasn't allowed to learn dance, because Mom and Dad were convinced it would aggravate my asthma, again. The thing didn't allow me to do anything active, and dance was the one thing I wished I could do most of all.

Although I didn't get to go to the theatre much and hardly anything came to Ohio, anyway (I had been up to New York a few times, but that was it), I watched a lot of school productions and hidden proshoots on YouTube and movie musicals if I could get my hands on streaming services with them. I'd always loved the Disney movies from the 90s, which were my first introduction to a musical format. At seventeen, I'd grown out of those, but I'd watched every movie I could find, every musical that was bootleg recorded and put on YouTube. Okay, so I didn't like all of them. There were some really old ones, like South Pacific and Show Boat, that I didn't really like, even though I found Oklahoma fun and, like everyone else, loved The Sound of Music. Some of the old ones from the Fifties were kind of fun, and I liked a lot of the ones from the last fifty or sixty years. I especially adored Sweeney Todd, which was part horror, and I loved horror movies. Still, I liked modern ones, too. I'd never seen Hamilton, but the soundtrack sounded good. And I liked the soundtrack of Heathers so much that I was a little disappointed when I listened to the one of Mean Girls afterwards (I'd liked both movies equally – Mean Girls was funnier, but Heathers was more unusual). It wasn't bad, just not as good.

I was listening to I Am Damaged when another barrage of coughing hit. My vision started clouding. I could barely hear Ryan McCartan's recorded voice. I knew I couldn't breathe, and it hurt worse than it had before. Weird, because I could hear the wheezing as I struggled to draw breath. I reached for my inhaler, but my hand couldn't seem to grasp it. It was like one of those nightmares where your body doesn't obey you. It felt like being in one of the Nightmare On Elm Street movies.

Either way, it felt like everything was getting further away. The coughing seemed to stop. The last thing I heard was a voice in my headphones murmuring in tune "Say hi to God."

And then I died.

Yup, not wasting time on exposition here. At least, Ana thinks she's dead. The question is…well, remember how Tangled started? He tells you he died. Ana might be dead. We'll find out.

And if you're wondering, yes, she and her parents all had Covid. Or coronavirus if you prefer. This was before vaccinations came and before it spread to the rest of the world. But asthma is a complication. My parents just had a variation of the illness, and I had it a few months ago, but none of us have asthma. I know the symptoms are a little different now and I had both vaccinations and a booster, but it was still miserable. Also, yep, pronounce "Ana" the same way you pronounce Anna's name in Frozen, since it's short for Indiana. Oh, and I checked out if China had a rainforest, and it does. A tropical rainforest.