Life is Strange AUs

Victoria could not imagine what sort of response she would get from her video. She had stayed up for perhaps an hour after the party last night, well past 3am, all things considered, and had enjoyed totally ignoring breakfast and showering to try and sleep off last night’s beer and vodka. While it was perfectly trashy, she felt no remorse as she uploaded it under its own URL, then sent links to it on her Facebook, Instagram, and other social medias. That bitch Kate had been criticizing her, staring at her, trying to make her look bad ever since the two started at Blackwell.

Victoria had a bit of a ritual every morning. While she did not deeply devote herself to social media, instead focusing on maintaining a professional online presence, she liked to make sure that everything went well online: photos had likes, her replies were considered, Hayden and every other Blackwell had sent an appreciable number of emoticons in response to a selfie, stuff like that. She had to give the people what they wanted, and in this case, she knew they would want that snot-nosed brat to be crushed. She wouldn’t dare look at Victoria in the eye again. And the few friends Kate had wouldn’t even try and get the video taken down - no significant social medias were hosting it, only links to it.

She was rather pleased to see that she had seven notifications on Facebook as soon as she brought it up on her phone, but was surprised to see that it listed several people who had responded to the video already, but she only saw one ‘Like’ - from Nathan. That didn’t seem right. She clicked on the notification, and was quickly met with a barrage of comments, some even from as early as 5am. On a Friday!

Trevor 4 Bernie: Yo, Victoria, you know this is srsly uncool, right? Take this shit down.
Nathan Prescott: shut the fuck up trevor - if you had been there, you would have seen this slut last night then you wouldn’t talk shit. don’t be a twat: kate was loaded and this video is exactly what she had coming for her.
Brooke Scott: Seriously, Nathan? You’re supporting this sort of behavior? Kate is a sweet girl and this is a horrible invasion of privacy, nevermind illegal; Victoria clearly does not have Kate’s consent to film or publish this. What did you stupid fucking Vortex Club assholes do to her - she’s clearly drunk in the video, and all I see is Zach and Logan and fucking you taking advantage of her. You’re all disgusting. I hope you get expelled, Victoria, both of you. I can’t believe you’d do this to Kate.
Warren Graham: Yo, what Brooke said. This is clearly inappropriate, plus it provides a record of illegal activity on the part of the Vortex Club. You need to get this shit down for your sake, nevermind Kate’s.
Alyssa Anderson: This is so incredibly disrespectful and inappropriate, I can’t believe you, Victoria. You should have helped Kate, not tried to publicly humiliate her. I don’t hear you cracking jokes at the boys, do you? @Zachary Riggins @Logan Robertson @Nathan Prescott. Grow up.

Victoria could not believe all of these worms were responding this way. Seriously? Warren was calling her out? Brooke? At least Alyssa made sense - she hung out with the little church bitch. She struggled through her tiredness, but she still managed to type clearly enough

Victoria Maribeth Chase: lol, really guys? You’re going to put this on me? Just look at Kate. This is ridiculous - she’s just a two-faced skank and I think we have a right to see what a hypocrite she is. And the guys are just being guys, shit B, what do you expect?

She closed her Galaxy down and sat up to get dressed. She looked like shit, and quickly recognized that she needed to take a shower. 9:10. She did not have a lot of time before class, and she wouldn’t have the protective barrier of Taylor and Courtney this morning. Not that she’d need it - it’s not like anyone was going to stick up to her in person. They never tried. Nobody could look her in the eye for long.

When Victoria entered the shower room, she was unsurprised to find it a slick mess, as it always was by the time class time rolled around. That was essentially the only reason she used it so early, before 8. However, what she was surprised to find was that it was occupied by only one other person: Kate Marsh, who was just now emerging from the far right shower. Oh, good, an easy target to get her confidence back. That wasn’t so bad. Victoria plastered a smirk on her face and strode forward confidently towards Kate, who didn’t even seem to register that Victoria was there.
“Hey Katie - great party last night, right? You looked like you were having a killer time?”

That’s when Victoria saw Kate’s eyes. They wouldn’t stop shifting around, but they were bloodshot, and purple coated underneath her eyelids. She looked like shit. She must have gotten a lot drunker than Victoria even noticed.

“What? Victoria … I … um, I guess? I don’t really … remember.”

Well, that wasn’t very fun. But Victoria could work with it. She continued forward, and Kate stepped back a little as Victoria entered too close to her personal space, so Kate was essentially wedged between the furthest back shower and the wall. “Oh? That’s too bad. It seemed like a night to remember. I had no idea you were so experienced with boys, Kate.”

This seemed to only confuse Kate further, and her eyes still wouldn’t focus on Victoria, despite the fact that she dominated Kate’s field of view. Her hands wrapped around herself, protecting herself. Victoria hadn’t even started intimidating her … that was weird. “What? What happened?”

Victoria leaned down, trying to grasp this moment of triumph firmly. A grin coated her face - it may not be as powerful without makeup, but Kate was small, so small. She was not going to make this blow up in Victoria’s face. “Oh, I’m sure it’ll come back to you - it’s all over the web at this point. You got drunk and macked on Zach, on Logan. You even came onto Nathan, not that he’d stoop that low.”

Kate’s hand lifted to her mouth, and covered it as she sunk down a little. Victoria’s eyes were quick to notice her wrists, which looked like they’d had an adhesive applied to them - thin impressions noted they’d been indented by a fabric, and hair had been torn out. Victoria sighed, “Oh, now Kate, who’ve you been fucking around with? This is so much richer than expected - you weren’t just making out with whatever trash you can find, you’ve been a proper slut, haven’t you?”

As Victoria reached into her pocket to retrieve her phone to take a picture, however, Kate literally fell to the ground, out of combined fear as well as general instability. She must still be tipsy, maybe even still stoned from whatever she provided for the club last night.

The door to the shower room opened. “Hey, Victoria, what are you doing?”

Victoria turned, and noticed the tiny little girl, Stella Hill, entering the shower room. “Oh, what do you want, bitch?” Victoria snapped, not appreciating the back up. Of course, the late sleeper would emerge at a time like this.

“Back off of Kate, Chase.” Victoria was a little stunned as Stella charged right up to Victoria, ending within a rather intimate, aggressive distance. Seriously? This girl was at least five inches shorter and one of the skinniest girls in school - what the fuck was she going to do? Still, Kate was down and not getting back up.

Victoria rolled her eyes as she turned around, standing casually to show how unthreatened she was. “Oh, please, lecture me junkie. I’m just filling Kate in on what she missed last night, I thought she’d like to know.”

Stella made a sound of disgust and glared up at Victoria. “Get the fuck out, Victoria - what you did is awful, and you don’t have to try and make Kate feel worse about it.”

Then, Alyssa poked her head in and wobbled inside, as she tended to do. Victoria was outnumbered. She hated that. “Ugh, whatever, you sluts have fun. See you in class, Katie~” Victoria said, half-singing, and exited the shower room. She may have a big advantage on these girls, but she wasn’t getting naked with this much hostility around.

“What’s going on?” Alyssa asked, just as Victoria passed by her.

Victoria, once she got dressed, went to seek Taylor and Courtney out by the ‘Rachel owes me money’ trees. They were waiting there, but as she strolled over to them with a practiced smirk, they averted her gaze, both burrowing their faces in their phones. 
“Sup biatches?” Victoria asked. Courtney’s eyes flicked up. Unlike Taylor, it appears that she hadn’t been drinking the night before, which was pretty typical. Even if she acted a bit like a drone, she was really dedicated to her academics at Blackwell, and wouldn’t risk sullying her record with illegal activity on school grounds. It was hard enough to get her to drink over at someone’s house, nevermind at Blackwell.

“Nothin’ much, Tori.” Courtney just went back to her phone. By peering down, Victoria became aware that Taylor was on the Facebook thread - and it appeared several more messages had been added.

Victoria laughed, “Oh, right, that. Did you guys get a chance to look at Kate’s video yet?”

Courtney averted her gaze for a moment, but slowly, Taylor raised her eyes, and they met Victoria’s. Taylor looked like shit. “What the fuck, Vic?”
Victoria was taken aback, and her face pinched together in confusion. “What? Seriously, you too?”

Taylor shook her head. “I can’t believe you would do that … I mean, you published that video online! What were you thinking?”

Victoria provided her with an incredulous expression for a moment, then made scooping gestures with her hands as if she were spoon feeding the explanation to a very dumb Taylor: “I was thinking … this ho bag has been disrespecting us for weeks? She talks purity and Bible all day long and then she tries this shit? Is nobody else thinking … this is exactly what she had coming for her?”

Courtney was now the one to roll her eyes. Seriously, she was going to roll her eyes at Victoria? That was some bullshit. “Oh my god Victoria you just don’t get it. She handed out pamphlets in shit. She got loaded and kissed some guys. Now you’ve tried to ruin her life. It’s a complete overreaction and it’s so pathetic.”

Victoria’s arms crossed in front of her chest, and she loomed over the other two girls.  “Seriously? So, what, you’re turning on me? This is bullshit. Kate is just some sl-”

Courtney took a step forward, and she was right in Victoria’s space. The lunge was so sudden that Victoria actually took a step back, and her illusion of dominance was temporarily broken. This seemed to make Courtney smile for a moment. “Oh my god - you’re done. Take that shit down and get a grip, Tori.”

Victoria was nearly agape, but she had just enough control at the end of this, while humiliation flooded her, to curl her lips into a sneer and imitate her best friend: “Whatthefuckever,” she spat, and pushed past them both to the main campus.

It wasn’t until Victoria came back from PE that things got particularly bad, though. She went back to her room to escape, as she quickly discovered the skater gang talking shit about her, which wasn’t really anything new, except that Taylor and Courtney were no longer there to back her up, and she was out of her element without Nathan around, and she hadn’t seen him all day. When she found herself back at her room, though, her slate had been erased. No longer did the invulnerable Gandhi quote stand as a barrier between her and the trashiness of the girls around her. Instead, there was just a little caricature of Victoria holding a camera in the corner of the slate, with the caption: “I bully others to hide the fact that I’m a classless bitch”. Inscribed into the cariacature’s pearl necklace, rather clearly, were the letters ‘DD’ … Daniel DeCosta? Seriously? Daniel fucking DeCosta was sneaking into the girls’ dorm to give her shit? How the fuck did he think he was getting away with this?

Victoria was only stowed away in her room for so long before there was a knock on the door. She initially ignored it, but then came the voice: “Victoria Chase? Principal Wells would like to see you. It’s Ms. Grant.”

She sighed, staring up at her ceiling. The words escaped her much louder than intended: “No way. No fucking way.”