God Help the Outcasts: A Disney Crossover Fanfic

Chapter Three: Ugly Duckling

A/N: First chapter from Drizella's POV--so exciting! Please don't forget to rate and review. :) 

Drizella twirled before the mirror at her mother's request.

"Beautiful! Just beautiful!" the old woman cried, clapping her hands together. Her blue eyes were wide with fervor and admiration. Drizella lifted up the obscenely garish, lime green fabric of her new dress and made a face.

"Mother, do I have to wear this?" she asked. She examined the equally flamboyant turquoise bow in her brown curls dubiously.

"Of course!" she laughed. "How else is anyone supposed to notice you?"

Drizella frowned. Her mother had just insulted her openly for the third time that morning.

"I'm going to the bathroom." she said, trying to hide the pain in her voice.

"Hurry back!" her mother called as she picked up her skirts. "I need lots of time to make you presentable!"

By the time she reached the bathroom, Drizella was in tears. She slammed the door and leaned against it, staring in the mirror at the trails her tears were making on her powdered skin. In a rage she snatched a towel from the lavishly decorated shelf against the wall and wiped her face clean. She then ripped the bow from her hair and threw it to the floor.

"Am I really that ugly?" she asked the mirror, leaning against the sink on her arms. Hurt, dark eyes stared at her from beneath neatly plucked eyebrows. Her nostrils flared over her face, and her narrow pink lips trembled from the effort of containing her sobs.

She turned away from the non-responsive glass and stared instead at the turquoise ribbon, crumpled on the floor.

"I hate you." She hissed at it, feeling a little silly for talking to a piece of cloth.

She didn't care.

"I hate you, too!" she spat at her dress, untying it and wriggling out of it, leaving it standing on its hoop on the floor.

She glanced in the mirror again, now in her white cotton under dress, and thought she felt a little better. But those curls-those fake, stupid curls her mother had spent all morning on-made her eyes surge with angry tears again.

She picked up the pitcher of water on the floor-it was nearly full-and dumped its contents into the basin. She thoroughly washed her hair, fingers digging through the grease holding her hair in that ridiculous shape.

Straightening herself, she looked in the mirror yet again and watched as water dripped from her now straight hair onto her white dress.

Mother's going to kill me. She thought, but that thought was quickly replaced by another. But I don't care.

The second thought appealed to her greatly. She let it repeat itself over and over, like a chant in her head, as she pulled another towel from the shelf and vigorously rubbed her hair with it.

I don't care, I don't care, I don't care!

"I don't care anymore." She said aloud, letting the towel drop to the floor. She thought she looked much better this way, with her stringy, wet hair clinging to her shoulders and ridiculous embellishments gone from her body and face.

At least it was real. It was her.

Drizella suddenly felt vulnerable, because of her mother's voice calling for her from Anastasia's old room and because of this startling self-revelation. She found herself reaching for the lime green atrocity still standing upright on the floor, like an empty shell.

No. A voice, her voice, asserted in her mind. Her trembling fingers stopped inches from the fabric. This is what you used to be. Not anymore. Not after this.

Drizella suddenly saw the mask for what it truly was-a mask to hide behind, the empty shell of her life since Cinderella in all her charm and beauty had come along.

No. Her voice said again. It wasn't Cinderella's fault. You know you and Anastasia and Mother made her a servant to make yourselves feel better. Anastasia realized this. And look where she is now, happy with her husband, the baker.

"Anastasia's a traitor." She said aloud, but the words were an empty lie and she knew it.

Anastasia's not the traitor. You're a traitor to yourself.