Fairy Tale fic: Nobody's Girl
Characters: The Ice Queen, Ice Queen/Kai, background Gerda/Kai
Rating: R
Length: 1969 words
Status: Complete
Warnings: Implied, non-explicit child abuse. Also, sex and drugs.
Notes: A modern retelling of Hans Christian Andersen's "The Snow Queen." Title and cut text stolen from the Bonnie Raitt's hauntingly beautiful song "Nobody's Girl." Written for neuxue who snagged a slot in my fic meme. My dear, you are a fabulously kickass muse. This was a blast to write :)
Nobody’s Girl
She was born a pale and silent child, so pale and so silent that the nurses thought she was stillborn. But her heart beat steady in her tiny chest and her dark eyes stared unblinkingly at her mother from the arms of the nurse who held her. The nurse cradled the fragile curve of the girl’s skull in her palm and presented the child to her mother, no more than a girl herself. But the mother, her eyes were rimmed with white, her expression one of horror as she looked at her perfect daughter.
“No,” she said, and her voice cracked with terror. “No! Take her away. She will devour me.”
“W-what? Devour you?” the nurse repeated, shock coursing through her. The child was suddenly much heavier, a life no one cared about like a lead weight in her hands. “But she’s your daughter. Are you sure you-”
“I’m sure!” the mother screamed. “Take it away! It will devour me!” She thrashed in her hospital bed, cowering away from her child, pale and silent in the nurse’s arms. The girl’s dark eyes followed her mother’s convulsions, and the nurse hurried away. The corridor behind her echoed with the mother’s haunted screams as she took the daughter away.
She was nobody’s girl, that pale, silent child. No name, no mother, no one to love her.
The nurse called a social worker, and tried not to wonder what would happen to the beautiful, unwanted little girl.
The little girl grew up, a Snow White in foster care. Hair like ebony and skin like the purest snow, she was so pretty, so perfect. But her life was no fairy tale, no woodland friends, no prince waiting to ride to her rescue. No kind dwarves to love her like a daughter.
No, she lived in the real world.
And if a few hands happened to stray, or linger too long on her little girl body, well, she was so quiet. She’d never tell.
After all, who would believe a girl nobody wanted?
When she was sixteen and angry, she shaved her head and tattooed birds across the pale skin of her arms, dark blue wings spread in flight, their freedom inked into her veins like she could make it her own. She smeared lipstick bright across her lips, whore-red, and smiled a smile that even the mirror on the wall couldn’t say was real.
Her newest father, whose hands crawled thick and sweaty across her skin at night when his wife was asleep, slapped her when she walked through the door, head bare and tattoos bold on her snow-pale skin. His hand left a red weal on her cheek, bright as her whore-red lipstick. She spit in his face in retaliation, grabbed her backpack and took off out the door. Her Converse pounding like a heavy metal baseline against the rain-slicked pavement, she ran and ran and never looked back.
She slept in the streets after that, huddled in an army surplus coat she stole from a Goodwill truck, shooting up when she had the money because it was easier to forget than it was to remember. Just another runaway with a tragic past, another girl nobody wanted.
So when a man with a camera, looking for realism he could gloss up and sell to fashion magazines, came along and took her picture, promised her clean needles and a warm bed, well, how could she say no?
“Lie back,” he said, and she did, her head bare and her tattoos vivid on her skin. “One arm up behind you, there, just like that.”
A puff of cigarette smoke, “draw me like one of your French girls,” and a bitter laugh. “Perfect,” he said. “You’re so angry, so raw, they’re gonna love this.”
Click, snap. Rinse, repeat.
Her eyes burned, and she blinked, trying to scrub away the pain.
“Eyes open, don’t blink. Windows to the soul, darling.”
Pale and silent, she kept her eyes open.
“That’s it. You and me girl,” he said, “we’re gonna make it big. You just lie back and look pretty.”
They couldn’t get enough of her.
Money started rolling in, showing up in better clothes and better make-up, with better cameras and better lights in tow. Better everything, the better to make her ever more perfect. Her face was splashed across billboards and the covers of magazines, and everyone knew her name. Everyone wanted her.
She was everybody’s girl.
She slept on silk sheets and sipped Cristal like she’d never known anything else.
All she had to do was stare at the camera, eyes open.
Eventually, she couldn’t feel the burning any more. The pain transformed into something hard and crystalline, and she forgot that it had ever been something hot and seething, something waiting to course down her cheeks like a river.
It was a small price to pay, not being able to cry. She’d pay it a thousand times over, if it meant she could keep her fairytale, clean needles and silk sheets and people who wanted her.
Her hair grew back, long and dark, and she went from defiant and raw to sleek and elegant. Evening gowns and red lipstick - no more whore-red, she was classy now - and handsome men to pose with her.
“You’re my femme fatale,” he said, camera clicking away, “you’re gonna eat ‘em up. This is the big time, honey, and you’re gonna blow ‘em all away.”
She wore each persona like the latest designer clothes, shedding them as the seasons changed. They cut her hair and let it grow back again, dyed it red, dyed it blonde, bleached it white.
They took a laser to her tattoos, burned away the birds arcing in flight across her arms. She didn’t care. She was the femme fatale, the heartbreaker, the coy tease. She didn’t need the birds and their wings.
“You’re gonna be an ice queen, girl. You’re gonna be colder than ice and fiercer than a blizzard. Come on girl, lie back and look pretty.”
It wasn’t hard. She’d been an ice queen for a long time, cold from the Cristal and the heroin and the snap-click of the camera, the crystalline tear frozen in her eye.
“Perfect,” he said, and she was.
She collected boys. Sometimes the ones she modeled with, sometimes the boys who came asking for her autograph. They were bright and warm, so different from the icy chill that burned through her.
She stripped for them, let them touch her. Their fingers were like tiny flames on her skin, but they guttered and died in the chill air of her room with the silk sheets and flutes of Cristal. They were warm, but they were never warm enough.
She was no Snow White, no softhearted girl waiting for her prince to save her and keep her warm.
She was an ice queen, cold and numb and perfect like a statue, alone in her perfection.
The last boy, he was different. The same, but different. He was a singer, played guitar in a club she visited. He had his arm around a girl with a shaved head and tattoos on her arms. Flowers, not birds, but it didn’t matter.
She wanted this one.
The crowd parted as she walked to the stage. She trailed a cold finger along the curve of his cheek, and he left the girl with the shaved head and the flowers on her arms. She was the girl that everyone wanted, and he followed her when she walked out of the club.
She stripped for him, in the room with the silk sheets and the flutes of Cristal. His hands were warm on her body, eyes wide and reverent as he looked at her, and the chill didn’t seem so terrible as held her that night.
This one, she thought. He’s different.
The boy stayed with her. At first, he waited outside the studio for her to finish her shoots, kissing away the click-snap of the camera. He held her at night, candle-warm fingers running over her body like a prayer.
She was the ice queen, but perhaps she found in the boy a match for the cold that burned in her veins.
This will work, she thought.
At first, the boy seemed immune to the cold. He held her and kissed her and smiled like he was happy. But he grew colder and colder, all his warmth leeching away as he slept beside her.
He stopped smiling, and he stopped singing. His hands plucked half-heartedly at the strings of the guitar, and his songs sounded like funeral dirges.
The shard of ice in her eye grew jagged. It ached when she looked at him, ached when she looked at the camera. It was a glacier, hard and cold and too forbidding to face.
She was good at pretending - she did that for the camera every day. So she pretended it wasn’t there, pretended her boy wasn’t slowly freezing, pretended everything was still perfect.
And then the girl came. The girl from the club, with her shaved head and the flowers on her arms. She walked into the room with the silk sheets and the flutes of Cristal, her breath clouding the icy air as she moved toward the boy.
He was huddled on the bed, cold and tinged with blue. The girl cradled him in her arms, held him to her and whispered for him to come back, that she loved him, please, come back.
The ice queen stood and slid off her robe, letting the boy see the sight that had kept him by her side for so long. She did not shiver in the cold air. She was the ice queen, perfect and cold and flawless. How could he not choose her?
The girl with shaved head and the flowers tattoos looked at her and began to cry, breath catching in her throat. She knew who the boy would choose - she would make the same choice, if she were in his place.
Her tears rolled down her cheeks like a river, like a flood. They fell on the boy’s frozen skin and he blinked, gaze drawn away from the cold beauty of the ice queen. He looked at the girl with shaved head and the flower tattoos like she was a miracle, a blazing sun come to save him from the cold.
He kissed her, pressing himself against the not-perfect girl like she was everything he wanted, everything he needed.
As they staggered to their feet, the girl the boy had chosen looked over at the ice queen, the girl everyone wanted.
She reached out a hand to her, fingers wet from the hot tears she had cried, and grasped the ice queen’s cold hand.
“I forgive you.”
The ice queen was wrong. The boy was not different. He wasn’t the one to chase away the cold. It was girl with the shaved head and flower tattoos on her arms, the girl who was willing to risk everything to save the boy she loved. She burned, an inferno enough to melt even a glacier.
And the ice queen felt something crack, something shatter. The shard of ice in her eye splintered and melted, trickling hotly down her cheek, the first true touch of heat she had felt in years.
It coursed over her skin, and she closed her eyes and let herself cry. And as she cried, she felt a phantom brush of wings where her tattoos used to be, and she was she was no longer the ice queen, no longer the Snow White girl trapped in the foster system. No longer nobody’s girl, something more than everybody’s girl.
Forgiven, perhaps this time, she could learn to be herself.
Feedback is love!
Rating: R
Length: 1969 words
Status: Complete
Warnings: Implied, non-explicit child abuse. Also, sex and drugs.
Notes: A modern retelling of Hans Christian Andersen's "The Snow Queen." Title and cut text stolen from the Bonnie Raitt's hauntingly beautiful song "Nobody's Girl." Written for neuxue who snagged a slot in my fic meme. My dear, you are a fabulously kickass muse. This was a blast to write :)
Nobody’s Girl
She was born a pale and silent child, so pale and so silent that the nurses thought she was stillborn. But her heart beat steady in her tiny chest and her dark eyes stared unblinkingly at her mother from the arms of the nurse who held her. The nurse cradled the fragile curve of the girl’s skull in her palm and presented the child to her mother, no more than a girl herself. But the mother, her eyes were rimmed with white, her expression one of horror as she looked at her perfect daughter.
“No,” she said, and her voice cracked with terror. “No! Take her away. She will devour me.”
“W-what? Devour you?” the nurse repeated, shock coursing through her. The child was suddenly much heavier, a life no one cared about like a lead weight in her hands. “But she’s your daughter. Are you sure you-”
“I’m sure!” the mother screamed. “Take it away! It will devour me!” She thrashed in her hospital bed, cowering away from her child, pale and silent in the nurse’s arms. The girl’s dark eyes followed her mother’s convulsions, and the nurse hurried away. The corridor behind her echoed with the mother’s haunted screams as she took the daughter away.
She was nobody’s girl, that pale, silent child. No name, no mother, no one to love her.
The nurse called a social worker, and tried not to wonder what would happen to the beautiful, unwanted little girl.
The little girl grew up, a Snow White in foster care. Hair like ebony and skin like the purest snow, she was so pretty, so perfect. But her life was no fairy tale, no woodland friends, no prince waiting to ride to her rescue. No kind dwarves to love her like a daughter.
No, she lived in the real world.
And if a few hands happened to stray, or linger too long on her little girl body, well, she was so quiet. She’d never tell.
After all, who would believe a girl nobody wanted?
When she was sixteen and angry, she shaved her head and tattooed birds across the pale skin of her arms, dark blue wings spread in flight, their freedom inked into her veins like she could make it her own. She smeared lipstick bright across her lips, whore-red, and smiled a smile that even the mirror on the wall couldn’t say was real.
Her newest father, whose hands crawled thick and sweaty across her skin at night when his wife was asleep, slapped her when she walked through the door, head bare and tattoos bold on her snow-pale skin. His hand left a red weal on her cheek, bright as her whore-red lipstick. She spit in his face in retaliation, grabbed her backpack and took off out the door. Her Converse pounding like a heavy metal baseline against the rain-slicked pavement, she ran and ran and never looked back.
She slept in the streets after that, huddled in an army surplus coat she stole from a Goodwill truck, shooting up when she had the money because it was easier to forget than it was to remember. Just another runaway with a tragic past, another girl nobody wanted.
So when a man with a camera, looking for realism he could gloss up and sell to fashion magazines, came along and took her picture, promised her clean needles and a warm bed, well, how could she say no?
“Lie back,” he said, and she did, her head bare and her tattoos vivid on her skin. “One arm up behind you, there, just like that.”
A puff of cigarette smoke, “draw me like one of your French girls,” and a bitter laugh. “Perfect,” he said. “You’re so angry, so raw, they’re gonna love this.”
Click, snap. Rinse, repeat.
Her eyes burned, and she blinked, trying to scrub away the pain.
“Eyes open, don’t blink. Windows to the soul, darling.”
Pale and silent, she kept her eyes open.
“That’s it. You and me girl,” he said, “we’re gonna make it big. You just lie back and look pretty.”
They couldn’t get enough of her.
Money started rolling in, showing up in better clothes and better make-up, with better cameras and better lights in tow. Better everything, the better to make her ever more perfect. Her face was splashed across billboards and the covers of magazines, and everyone knew her name. Everyone wanted her.
She was everybody’s girl.
She slept on silk sheets and sipped Cristal like she’d never known anything else.
All she had to do was stare at the camera, eyes open.
Eventually, she couldn’t feel the burning any more. The pain transformed into something hard and crystalline, and she forgot that it had ever been something hot and seething, something waiting to course down her cheeks like a river.
It was a small price to pay, not being able to cry. She’d pay it a thousand times over, if it meant she could keep her fairytale, clean needles and silk sheets and people who wanted her.
Her hair grew back, long and dark, and she went from defiant and raw to sleek and elegant. Evening gowns and red lipstick - no more whore-red, she was classy now - and handsome men to pose with her.
“You’re my femme fatale,” he said, camera clicking away, “you’re gonna eat ‘em up. This is the big time, honey, and you’re gonna blow ‘em all away.”
She wore each persona like the latest designer clothes, shedding them as the seasons changed. They cut her hair and let it grow back again, dyed it red, dyed it blonde, bleached it white.
They took a laser to her tattoos, burned away the birds arcing in flight across her arms. She didn’t care. She was the femme fatale, the heartbreaker, the coy tease. She didn’t need the birds and their wings.
“You’re gonna be an ice queen, girl. You’re gonna be colder than ice and fiercer than a blizzard. Come on girl, lie back and look pretty.”
It wasn’t hard. She’d been an ice queen for a long time, cold from the Cristal and the heroin and the snap-click of the camera, the crystalline tear frozen in her eye.
“Perfect,” he said, and she was.
She collected boys. Sometimes the ones she modeled with, sometimes the boys who came asking for her autograph. They were bright and warm, so different from the icy chill that burned through her.
She stripped for them, let them touch her. Their fingers were like tiny flames on her skin, but they guttered and died in the chill air of her room with the silk sheets and flutes of Cristal. They were warm, but they were never warm enough.
She was no Snow White, no softhearted girl waiting for her prince to save her and keep her warm.
She was an ice queen, cold and numb and perfect like a statue, alone in her perfection.
The last boy, he was different. The same, but different. He was a singer, played guitar in a club she visited. He had his arm around a girl with a shaved head and tattoos on her arms. Flowers, not birds, but it didn’t matter.
She wanted this one.
The crowd parted as she walked to the stage. She trailed a cold finger along the curve of his cheek, and he left the girl with the shaved head and the flowers on her arms. She was the girl that everyone wanted, and he followed her when she walked out of the club.
She stripped for him, in the room with the silk sheets and the flutes of Cristal. His hands were warm on her body, eyes wide and reverent as he looked at her, and the chill didn’t seem so terrible as held her that night.
This one, she thought. He’s different.
The boy stayed with her. At first, he waited outside the studio for her to finish her shoots, kissing away the click-snap of the camera. He held her at night, candle-warm fingers running over her body like a prayer.
She was the ice queen, but perhaps she found in the boy a match for the cold that burned in her veins.
This will work, she thought.
At first, the boy seemed immune to the cold. He held her and kissed her and smiled like he was happy. But he grew colder and colder, all his warmth leeching away as he slept beside her.
He stopped smiling, and he stopped singing. His hands plucked half-heartedly at the strings of the guitar, and his songs sounded like funeral dirges.
The shard of ice in her eye grew jagged. It ached when she looked at him, ached when she looked at the camera. It was a glacier, hard and cold and too forbidding to face.
She was good at pretending - she did that for the camera every day. So she pretended it wasn’t there, pretended her boy wasn’t slowly freezing, pretended everything was still perfect.
And then the girl came. The girl from the club, with her shaved head and the flowers on her arms. She walked into the room with the silk sheets and the flutes of Cristal, her breath clouding the icy air as she moved toward the boy.
He was huddled on the bed, cold and tinged with blue. The girl cradled him in her arms, held him to her and whispered for him to come back, that she loved him, please, come back.
The ice queen stood and slid off her robe, letting the boy see the sight that had kept him by her side for so long. She did not shiver in the cold air. She was the ice queen, perfect and cold and flawless. How could he not choose her?
The girl with shaved head and the flowers tattoos looked at her and began to cry, breath catching in her throat. She knew who the boy would choose - she would make the same choice, if she were in his place.
Her tears rolled down her cheeks like a river, like a flood. They fell on the boy’s frozen skin and he blinked, gaze drawn away from the cold beauty of the ice queen. He looked at the girl with shaved head and the flower tattoos like she was a miracle, a blazing sun come to save him from the cold.
He kissed her, pressing himself against the not-perfect girl like she was everything he wanted, everything he needed.
As they staggered to their feet, the girl the boy had chosen looked over at the ice queen, the girl everyone wanted.
She reached out a hand to her, fingers wet from the hot tears she had cried, and grasped the ice queen’s cold hand.
“I forgive you.”
The ice queen was wrong. The boy was not different. He wasn’t the one to chase away the cold. It was girl with the shaved head and flower tattoos on her arms, the girl who was willing to risk everything to save the boy she loved. She burned, an inferno enough to melt even a glacier.
And the ice queen felt something crack, something shatter. The shard of ice in her eye splintered and melted, trickling hotly down her cheek, the first true touch of heat she had felt in years.
It coursed over her skin, and she closed her eyes and let herself cry. And as she cried, she felt a phantom brush of wings where her tattoos used to be, and she was she was no longer the ice queen, no longer the Snow White girl trapped in the foster system. No longer nobody’s girl, something more than everybody’s girl.
Forgiven, perhaps this time, she could learn to be herself.
Feedback is love!