death is the only ending for the trash queen

Part 1

It really wasn't fair.

She'd worked so hard for so long to get her life together. Escape her shitty family and make a fucking life for herself where she could finally feel happy.

Being the victim of a random hit and run after all of her struggles just barely coming into fruition wasn't fucking fair.

She wasn't the sort to complain to management but if there were a management to complain to, she'd be having quite a few choice words with them.

It was unfortunate but she could also understand that her situation wasn't the most pitiful one out there. She was just one person with an unfair fate among billions of other people with unfair fates and she deserved better.

She was only twenty years old when she died.

It really wasn't fair.

However what made her situation uniquely unfair wasn't her sudden death, her tragic childhood, or her brief happiness.

It was that she opened her eyes shortly after losing her life.

"Penelope." A gentle and elegant woman spoke the name softly and she had an instinct that it was her name even though her thoughts and memories were fuzzy at best. "I'll protect you, my beautiful daughter."

The line was cheesy and if she had the ability to, she would have commented on it. She was in no mood to tolerate this sort of cheesy nonsense.

The difficulty was that her thoughts were as scattered as the stars in the sky.

Confusing memories of her first life were present but the underdeveloped brain of a baby simply wasn't wired for memory retention or even object permanence.

Penelope spent the first few years of her life in a confused fog where she understood very few things fully, as most toddlers did.

She knew that her mother was the queen and her mother had two very different faces. The kind and loving face she had just for Penelope, raising her daughter with all the love in the world.

And then there was the face that her mother showed to everyone else, including her father.

Her mother was the trashy queen of the Roan Kingdom.

Penelope was about four years old when her brain was finally developed enough for her to put together all the shattered memories of another lifetime into a cohesive structure that allowed her to view the world around her through the lens of an adult.

Of course she'd always been a bit more mature than other children her age, the remnants of memories, habits, and maturity all still existing within her even when she couldn't comprehend how or why.

But four was when there was a noticeable shift within her.

'Fuck... I died.' Penelope felt strange, looking up at her mother of this life. Cale had fallen asleep with her daughter in her lap. The pair were allowed the privacy of the queen's quarters in a space in-between the stress and politics of high court. 'Damn... my mom's going to die.'

It was a rather dispassionate thought that didn't fully capture Penelope's shock and horror at the revelation.

Cale Henituse, the villainous queen of the Roan Kingdom. Wife of the noble and great Alberu Crossman and infamous for her lush behavior.

Penelope recognized her. How could she not? It was the last thing she read before she died.

She hadn't even gotten to playing the game. She'd just been reading the character summaries and the broad plot outline. But the cartoonish image of an evil woman named Cale Henituse was certainly a ringer for Penelope's mother.

Alberu Crossman, Penelope's father, was a capture character in a stupid app game. And the plot summary explicitly referenced the death of his evil wife.

His daughter was also supposed to be a villainess although Penelope hadn't had the opportunity to read her own character bio before the truck hit her.

"...this is bad." Penelope settled down in her mothers lap and stared up at the ceiling with a grim feeling gripping her heart.

Her and her mother were likely to die as the villains. And she didn't know exactly how or when.

Most frustrating of all... Penelope glanced up at her mothers sleeping face and frowned.

Cale Henituse was no villain.

She played a part and she did it well. Penelope hadn't quite been able to understand the two incongruent faces of her mother before this moment but it made sense to her now.

The trash queen only pretended to be trash. And she did it to protect her daughter.

Penelope didn't have a lot of experience with parental love in her previous life. Her experiences with family left her cynical and standoffish.

But in this life she had her mother.

Penelope held the sleeping woman's hand tightly in her own tiny chubby ones.

"...I'll protect you, mama."

She had to. To maximize her chances of survival.

And... she didn't want to lose her mother. Especially not just so that her nobody of a dad can go join some fucking reverse harem.

Penelope's memories of her father weren't bad. The times she spent with Alberu Crossman were actually quite positive and wholesome.

But he didn't like her mother. And her mother didn't like him. And frankly, Penelope had already chosen her allegiance.

It would be a good idea for her mother to get a goddamn divorce. And a large settlement.

Penelope quite liked the idea the more she rolled it around in her head. There was no need to get rid of the villainess queen if she left on her own, was there? And then Penelope could live out her days peacefully away from her stupid dad and the stupid politics he was entrenched in.

Cale stirred, pulling Penelope into a gentle hug as she woke up. "...what are you up to, munchkin?"

Penelope smiled despite herself. Every cynical bone in her body from her twenty years living in South Korea let her know that family wasn't something to be trusted unconditionally. But, her four years as Penelope Crossman allowed her to feel entirely warm and soppy when her mother used that voice. The gentle tone for just the two of them. Their own little secret from the world.

"I don't like his majesty." Penelope said, her chubby cheeks puffed out in a pout. It wasn't on purpose. It was just that her body was so much more expressive as a child.

Cale snorted, letting out a hearty laugh as she kissed her daughter's little chubby cheeks. "Yeah, he's a piece of shit." She agreed. "What happened to calling him papa though?"

"He doesn't deserve it." Penelope said, wrapping her shaking arms around her mothers neck and hiding her face in the crook of her neck. "I only need mama."

It was so childish. Penelope cringed at herself. She wasn't really prone to this level of immaturity in either of her lives.

It had just shaken her up too much.

The warm and loving embrace of her mother could disappear any day.

'...I can't let her die.' Penelope didn't realize how badly her body was trembling until her concerned mother was worryingly trying to find out what was wrong. 'Anyone but her.'

Her dim impression of her father was significantly lowered by the high probability that he was the one to kill the queen. Wasn't that a common trope in stories like this? The noble king kills his evil ex before living happily ever after with his new fling?

Fuck that.

Penelope wasn't going to let that happen.

But for now, the poor four year old girl with too many emotions and memories to handle in her tiny body cried in her mothers arms while she was comforted softly by that same loving woman.

Tomorrow. Tomorrow she'd gather her composure and put this mortifying scene of weakness behind her.

Today she was going to grieve. For her own death. For her mother's death. For the unfairness of it all.