Revamped!

[This is the final chapter of not only Scarlet's arc but season one! Before you start, yes, there will be a season two. More on that will be at the end.]

The Scarlet Letter: Part Ten

Scarlet texted her friends saying that she wouldn't go to school today because she had to take her Grandmère out of town.

The truth is her Grandmère left town alone early that morning.

Scarlet didn't go with her.

She planned to go to school but didn't.

Scarlet's been sitting at home all day.

-o-

Scarlet's morning started the same as it always does: she woke up, freshened up, put on her school uniform, and made her way into the kitchen to see if there was anything she could grab for breakfast.

The only thing that's different is her Grandmère's suitcase at the door. Scarlet takes a granola bar from the cupboard and opens it, taking a bite. That's when it hits her that Grandmère would be out of town for a bit. Scarlet didn't know why, though. All she understood was that it was some old lady get-together, despite Grandmère believing that she was still in the prime of her youth.

"Au revoir, Scarlet," Grandmère says, kissing Scarlet's cheek.

"Au revoir," Scarlet says, helping her Grandmère with her suitcase.

She waves off the car and once it's too far from her sight, she gets back in the house and closes the door. Scarlet heads to her bedroom and gathers her school books which didn't take that long since she didn't even take them out to begin with (so much for trying to catch up on homework).

Her head perks up when she hears the doorbell ring. Scarlet runs over, thinking it's Grandmère but when she looks through the peephole, she sees a random man there. Scarlet backs away for a second. If she has to fight, she has her fist and a gun locked away. Scarlet takes another precaution and opens the upper half of the Dutch door to see who this is what he wants.

It's the mailman but what Scarlet finds odd is that the mailman knocked.

"Miss. Scarlet Benoit?" He asks.

Scarlet hesitates before nodding.

"A letter came for you but I'll have to see a piece of identification before handing it over."

Scarlet quickly excuses herself as she runs back in the house. She finds her school bag and unzips the small pocket, opening her wallet as she makes her way back to the front door. She isn't sure why she has to show some ID for a letter but once it's in her hands, she'll find out.

"Here," Scarlet says, handing over her Lunar Academy school ID card.

"Something with your address," he orders.

Scarlet swaps her school ID for her driver's licence. The mailman cross-references the address on her licence with the one on the envelope and the house he's currently at. Scarlet wipes her sweating palms on her uniform skirt as she watches the mailman hand back her licence and gives her a clipboard.

"Sign here to confirm you got the letter," he says, pointing at a blank line at the bottom of the page with the top of the pen.

Scarlet clicks the pen open and swiftly signs it. She hands it back in exchange for the letter and bids the mailman a good day before closing the door again. She holds the envelope in her hands, ready to brace another letter from her father since who else would send her a letter, especially after he just mailed one to her - but it's not from him.

It's from the French government. Le gouvernement de la France. But why did she have to sign for it and why did she even receive something from there? She hasn't been to France in a decade and is surprised her French is still fluent inside of her. She lost her accent.

Scarlet opens it and reads it, the further down the sheet she goes, the number she feels. She understands the letter, but her brain doesn't want to process it. Her chest tightens, tenses, feeling like it'll explode.

She takes her phone out and goes onto the group chat with her friends, ignoring the stream of unread messages and starts composing a new one.

Group Chat - Ex-Cadet Captain Carswell's Crew
Members: Alpha Scarlet, Alpha Wolf, Carswell, Cinder Blackburn, Winter Blackburn, Cress Darnel, Kai Rikan

Alpha Scarlet: Won't be at school today. Had to take Grandmère out of town.

Alpha Scarlet: Will be back soon.

She said soon because saying tomorrow would be a lie.

She ditches her phone on the table by the door before anyone could answer and runs to her room with the letter scrunched up in her hand. It was a lie, she knows, but it was more comforting than the truth. It's not like any of her friends would question her and if they did, Scarlet would either come up with a different lie or leave them on read. Scarlet tears off her uniform as quickly and harshly as she could, changing into the comfort of her red sweatshirt and worn-out jeans.

She's panting heavily. Maybe she read the letter wrong. They'll know she got the letter. Maybe the whole ID and signing process spooked her out and she was picturing the worse on paper.

Scarlet picks up the letter that she threw on her bed whilst changing. She straightens it out and rereads it only to find out that what she read the first time was all true. Her panting turns into shaking, causing tears to start falling from her eyes and her lip to quiver. A howl tears free from her chest, grief and rage quake through her. It's hard to be disappointed when expectations are true.

-o-

Moments pass and Scarlet finds herself sitting on the floor in the hallways with a half-empty bottle of vodka by her side. The other half was whirling inside of her. She didn't care about the time or if society deemed it to be too early to drink. Clearly, they haven't had the morning she's had. She's her own priority. She chooses herself every time. If she wants to drink to drown her thoughts, that's what she'll do. Besides, this problem started long before she could really, really see it.

Her head sways side-to-side and she realizes that she has a higher alcohol tolerance than she thought. Maybe it ran in the family. That's what her father did, right? Drink himself into a different reality to escape his issues? That's how she understood it when she was a child. To think that her father was the last person she ever wanted to be and now look at her - in a position he was in so many times since her mom left. The irony is so strong that the iron itself will soon rust and tear.

She remembers Cinder's words from a while ago - "You can never get rid of your demons. You just bury them deep inside and the scary part is that they could wake up in the shadows at the least expected moment so you just have to live with the fact that there's always going to a little venom in your veins."

She side-glances at her reflection in the vodka bottle, parts of her face distorted by the waves in the liquid. She's raw, swollen, and red with tears - or maybe that's her curls or her sweatshirt, she isn't sure and the technicalities will only give her a headache if she thinks about it too much. All that matters is that the reflection on the bottle shows what she is: that whatever she does or wherever she goes, her parents can never be separated from her. The words in the letter showed her her path - the daughter she was ordered to be.

That's the thing about negativity and alcohol combined - it gives her an uncontrollable control and makes her ugly in one swish.

Her father wins with that second letter even if he didn't send it. He wins. The most unexpected thing can be the key to victory and he wears that proudly. Even if she bothered to reply to his first letter, it wouldn't have made a difference since the second one would've come knocking.

Maybe she never went crazy after all her childhood traumas simply because she's always been crazy?

That was definitely the vodka talking. All this was the vodka making sense of things for her.

She tries to stand, using the wall to help her and walks for a bit with the neck of the bottle in her hand, stopping at the doorway of her bedroom once again. She tugs at one of the curls on her head with her free hand, straightening it before releasing it and letting it coil again. She's lost in her memories. Bad ones. Was this how Winter felt before she left Artemisia? Probably, because this is how Scarlet probably felt the day she left France.

That's it. That's what she has to do.

Scarlet needs to get out of here so she acts on it. She downs the rest of the vodka in one go and drops the empty bottle on her bed. There was nothing she wanted to do more than leave but at the same time, she wants to be unconscious and out of the loop. Scarlet can't help the way she was born. She can't help what she is but only the life she picks for herself and this is what she wants (needs or has) to do.

She pulls out her empty suitcase from her closet, opens it, and drops both the letter she got from her father and the letter from the French government in before piling more clothes on top.

Besides, what the stars was she going to do from here? Nobody's promised a tomorrow. Nobody's also here. She's alone. She could do whatever she wants. Nobody could stop her.

That was all the adrenaline she needed to leave France all those years ago. Who would've thought it'd come back to haunt her in the form of a letter?

[And that concludes season one (with possibly the worst cliffhanger yet).

Before you start, I would love to thank all the readers who have made it this far. You guys are the absolute best.

I'm going on a hiatus. THIS STORY WILL BE CONTINUED! I still have to plan season 2, look at my other stories on my other platforms, and most important, I'm starting university.

I don't know when I'll be back or when season 2 will be out but know that the moment I start writing, I probably won't stop.]

[2020: 3rd year university starts in two days, I have even more stories to write and work on, and I'm still planning season 2.]