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A Stagnation of Love (rewrite)	By : shinigamiinochi Category: Gundam Wing/AC > AU - Alternate Universe Views: 2207 -:- Recommendations : 0 -:- Currently Reading : 0
Disclaimer: I do not own Gundam Wing AC or the characters from it. I am making no money from this story

Chapter List
- 9
- 10
- 11
A Stagnation of Love

Chapter 3

Part 5
　

Trowa, Quatre, and I didn't get many chances to hang out together after that. Trowa had completely different classes and a different schedule than we did, plus his practices and games kept him busy. I didn't go to any more of his games, not because I hadn't enjoyed watching him play, but simply because I hoped that my tagging along with them that one time had given Quatre enough confidence to go out with him alone next time. So I stayed away from their dinners and meetings outside of school, beyond one time that they took me to a movie with them. In school I had tried to do the same, but the both of them included me into their talks and meetings like the third wheel that I was. I almost felt bad about it, but I also liked it.

I was still hesitant to call Trowa a friend. I knew a whole lot more about the boy, and I liked hanging out with him, but I just felt so weird about it. I think it was because I was helping keep this huge secret from him, and while Quatre was trying to keep that secret hushed, I wanted it out in the open. Sometimes just being around them made me feel like a pretzel being pulled in all these different directions. But I couldn't help but feel this camaraderie with the eighth grader.

He didn't like to flaunt that he was friends with Nate and I, but I couldn't blame him. We were tainted and he wasn't. Even if he had helped Quatre stand up to Relena at the basketball game, he was still scared of her, scared of what her rumors could do to his reputation. All the same, he was an easy guy to get along with and after being Relena's target for years, I sympathized with his efforts to stay out of her radar. I wished that she would just drop dead or go find some other targets and give my friend some space.

She didn't. If anything, I saw her more than usual, like she was shadowing us. Although that might just have been in my imagination. After Quatre had stood up to her at the basketball game, I had become hyper aware to her presence, and Zechs's. The fact that for almost a week, neither of them had done a single thing to us made me more frightened instead of relaxed. I knew that she was going to do something awful to Quatre, it was just a matter of when. Not that that did anything to prepare me for when she did.

We had two rounds of regional testing to do that week, Math and Sciences were on Friday and Reading Comprehension was on Tuesday. We would get our results back the following week, but by that Thursday, I was confident that I had done very well on the RC portion of the testing at least. I had been relieved when I had found out it would be on a Tuesday, giving Quatre and I plenty of more time to prepare for the Math and Sciences one, and giving me a reprieve of swim class. That was, until I was learned that swim class was being moved to Thursday because of the tests.

I hated my swimming lessons. Ever since Zechs had almost drowned me in the pool a year ago, I had learned to be very afraid of them. They took away time I could be working, were, in my humble opinion, totally useless, and between the two showers we had to take and our mingling with the upperclassmen in the pool, the lessons had taken on a nightmarish quality for me. I was on edge, always on the look out for something to go wrong. I never thought that the thing that was going to go wrong was going to happen before we even got to the pool.

We were all walking as a mass group towards the pool from school that day. Trowa got excused from all of his swimming classes that year, thanks to his basketball practices. Lucky him. I was sure he was a great swimmer, he had the long limbs and thin body for it. Quatre and I were trailing behind in the group like we always did. The both of us had found that when you were in the back, you didn't get noticed, while most of the kids that wanted to cause problems for us were at the head of the pack. We were halfway to the pool when we hit the major intersection of that part of town. Because Quatre and I were straggling, we missed the walk light while most of the group rushed ahead of us. I certainly didn't mind waiting for the light, it wasn't like I was in a hurry to get to the pool.

I never saw Relena walk up behind Quatre until I heard him cry out in pain. I whirled just in time to see her grabbing and twisting his hair from behind, Quatre unable to do anything to stop her unless he wanted hurt himself.

"Hi, Winner," she said with that fake, cheery tone that I had grown to hate, "It's been awhile, hasn't it? How have you been doing? I've been very worried about you. See, here I was being a good friend and taking it easy on you, warning you that hanging out with Barton isn't a very healthy thing for you, but I guess you must be losing your hearing because I could have sworn I've seen you talking with him every day this week. You must be going deaf, it couldn't be that you're willingly ignoring a good friend's advice, that just can't be true."

She twisted his hair harder and shoved him forward so hard, he almost tripped and fell in the street, regaining his balance at the very last second.

"I think you need to be taught some manners," her blue eyes narrowed as he stared at her, trying to gauge exactly what she was going to do, "I think you need to learn that you just can't go around ignoring friendly advice, not if you want to live a healthy and full life. Not to mention that you really hurt my feelings that night. I know that you didn't really mean it, you just didn't know any better, so here's what we're going to do."

She grabbed the back of Quatre's shirt and pushed him again. This time, he would have fallen right into the street where cars were passing us if she hadn't been holding his shirt.

"Relena," Quatre's voice was full of fear.

This wasn't just one of her stupid pranks. This wasn't putting tacks in his shoe or even forcing him to drink something he was allergic to. She was furious and what she was doing, just in fucking jest was incredibly dangerous. I felt my heart start to race. The light on our side turned red just then and cars from the left of us turned into our street, whizzing past us. I envisioned myself pushing her in front of one of those cars.

"Because I'm such a nice person," she sneered, "I'm going to give you one, last chance to redeem yourself. You're going to prove to me that you understand what happens to people like you when they ignore friendly advice and start to think that they're just like everyone else. You're going to cross the street, right when I tell you to. If you listen, do as you're told, and make it to the other side, then I'll forgive you."

My heart pounded in my chest like a trapped, terrified bird in a cage.

"Relena, stop," I begged her.

She couldn't really be serious with this, she couldn't.

"Shut up," she snarled at me and immediately turned her attention back to Quatre, "You can say no, of course, just like you said no to me before, but I wouldn't recommend it. Not if you don't want to find all sorts of nasty rumors flying around about Trowa's sexuality. I guarantee you, since you've been hanging around with him so much lately, they will be very believable."

Every drop of color disappeared from Quatre's face. He looked like she had just eviscerated him and I was sure that he couldn't have looked any more sick than he did if she really had spilled his guts on the ground. He didn't call her bluff, neither did I. We didn't need to because she was right. She didn't care about ruining Trowa's reputation. She would probably find it funny.

I could see the wheels turning in my best friend's head. I could see him blaming himself, hating himself for doing this to the boy he loved. He had dared to stand up to Relena, he had dared to be friends with Trowa and Relena could so very easily use that friendship to hurt the both of them. Whatever strength Quatre had had that night at the game was long gone now.

The stop light had turned green again. Cars harmlessly passed by us on the side instead of in front of us. With horror, I watched some terrible emotion come over my friend, resignation and determination mixed together. I saw what Relena had probably known ages ago. Quatre would do everything for Trowa. He would do anything to protect him.

"Quatre, no!" I yelled at him as he pulled his shirt from Relena's harpy grasp, turned and look out onto the street.

I didn't move to stop him. All I could do was yell at him. I was so fucking useless.

"C'mon, Quatre, this is stupid. You don't have to do this, just wait for the damned light!" I pleaded him, but he just kept staring ahead like he was sleepwalking. I turned to Relena, "Please don't do this. You know he's sorry. He forgot himself and did something stupid, that's all. He could get hurt!"

I would have gotten down on my knees and kissed her shoes if it meant getting her to call this off. Pride was worthless to me, I would have degraded myself to a level that a maggot would have been repulsed by.

"If you don't shut up," she said with a sweet little smile that made me sick to my stomach, "I'll make him do it blindfolded all the way to the pool. You know that I can."

I promptly shut up. My heart was beating so fast, it was a wonder that I hadn't blacked out. I wanted to cry in hysterics. I couldn't do either. I had Quatre's back. That hadn't changed in less than a week. I might have been useless, a piece of shit masquerading as his friend, but I wouldn't leave him. I wouldn't so much as take my eyes off of him.

Relena placed her clawed hands on my friend's shoulders and leaned in to speak in his ear. They would have looked like close friends having a talk to anyone not close enough to hear what she was saying.

"When I say go, you'll walk and you'll keep walking until you reach the other side. If you stop or run or walk back here, consider our deal broken. But you won't do that, will you? You'll just keep walking when I tell you to, won't you?"

Her nails dug into his shoulders. I wanted to rip them off with pliers, one at a time.

"Yes."

Quatre's voice was startling and steady, like a gunshot. Relena's eyes fixed themselves on the stoplight, waiting, while Quatre's stared straight ahead at his goal. I felt myself start to shake and I couldn't understand how my friend was so still and calm. I felt like I was dreaming. Our side of the stop light turned red and a couple cars turned into the street. I was never happier that it was a weekday and there wasn't a whole lot of traffic.

"Go," Relena hissed at Quatre.

He took a step off of the curb and I almost screamed. I heard whispering behind me from other stragglers in our class. They might as well have not existed at all to me. My eyes were fixed on Quatre's back as he walked as a decent pace, not sedate, but not running either, as per Relena's orders. That one stretch of street seemed a thousand miles long. I couldn't imagine what was going through his head, how he could just walk like that, totally collected.

'Walk with him,' a voice that was really just my own whispered at me inside of my head.

I should be out there, I realized. I should be walking with him. Relena hadn't said that he had to do it alone. I should be there, facing the same terror that he was, ready to push him out of the way if a car came too close to him. But I couldn't. I wasn't. I was a coward. Just the thought of walking out into traffic with him had me terrified and frozen to the spot. I wanted to kill myself as I stood there, letting my friend do this horrible thing. I didn't tell myself that there was nothing I could do, because there was, and I refused to make this any easier on me.

A black sedan sped past, mere inches from him, and the driver honked the horn loudly as my friend as it very nearly hit him. I cried out, but Quatre stood there, his hands starting to shake. I dared to take my eyes off of him, just in time to see a large truck driving down the other street.

'Please, please, please don't turn here. Just keep driving straight, don't turn right...' I begged the universe, God, anything that had the power to change the nightmare I saw coming.

But I knew that the truck was going to turn. It had the name of the grocery store that was further down this street painted on it's side.

"You'd better start moving, Winner!" Relena called to him cruelly.

Quatre's head whipped to the side and he saw the truck as it neared the stop light. He saw what I saw. The truck's right blinker flashed and it accelerated into the turn, going too fast for something that size down this street. I saw him notice it. And I saw him not move a single inch.

"He's frozen," I heard one of our classmates remark in fear, not that they had anything to be afraid of.

They were wrong. He wasn't frozen. He wasn't paralyzed with fear. He had given up. If only for one second, standing in the middle of that street, halfway to safety, my best friend had resigned himself. To the truck heading his way, to his misery, to his guilt, to Relena. He just gave up.

I didn't think about it then. I didn't think about what dark and horrible place Quatre's mind was at in that moment that had just... shut down his heart, shut down all the things in a person that drove them to survive no matter what. I didn't think about anything at all. I ran. I ran faster than I ever had on the track at school. I ran harder than I ever had with my father chasing me. I ran and I tackled my best friend to the ground in a move that probably would have made Coach Strum gape.

I grabbed Quatre's head and forced it to the ground, surrounding his slightly smaller body with mine, using my superior weight to make him lay flat just as I felt the truck strike him. Or me. It was hard to tell in that moment beyond the screaming voice in my head that I was too late, Quatre was dead, I was dead, and we were about to be turned into street hamburger. I felt something tear up my back. I learned later that it was the truck's license plate. I didn't even have the time to thank any kind of deity that the vehicle that had nearly killed my friend was something that was high from the ground, high enough for two stupid ass teenagers to pass under as they lay flat on the ground.

The bottom of the truck was searing hot and I felt several metal things scraping against my back, burning my skin with oil and grease. I couldn't breathe. The entire time, all I could hear was that screaming voice and my heart like thunder in my head. The truck had passed us by in less than half a second, but it had felt like a fucking hour to me as I hugged Quatre close, the warmth of his skin the only thing I could focus on without screaming out loud. Or maybe I had, it was all lost under the roaring sound of the truck.

When the truck passed by us and the driver slammed his vehicle to a stop, I was shaking so hard, I couldn't tell if it was me or the ground for awhile.

"Oh, God. Oh, God," I heard someone say. For a moment, I thought that I had. Later, I would realize that it had been the truck driver climbing down from his vehicle, thinking he had just run down two kids.

I pried myself off of Quatre slowly. It seemed impossible to move, like I had glued myself to him and just getting off of him with my trembling limbs was a trial. All of my muscles were still taut and aching. I could taste a revolting mixture of gasoline and blood in my throat.

"Quatre?!" I choked out with some effort.

He didn't answer me. He didn't so much as twitch. Had I been too late? I turned him over a little so I could see his face. His eyes were closed and his cheek was cut up and bloody from my pushing him to the ground, but I couldn't see any large head wounds. I shakily pressed my fingers against his throat, searching for a pulse. When I didn't immediately find one, I nearly panicked, but then I felt a heartbeat, sedate but strong. It was the most wonderful feeling in the world. Quatre was alive, just unconscious. I finished turning him over onto his back, furiously looking for any injuries. I had felt the truck hit him. I might have been panicking and terrified, but I was certain I had felt it or heard it.

He had scratches and cuts all over his arms from the pavement and one leg of his jeans were ripped to hell and stained with small patches of blood. Bruises were already forming on his pale skin. Both of our clothes were torn and bloody, although it would be hours before I realized my own injuries, and we were both filthy from the road. I thought that I might have just imagined the truck hitting Quatre until I saw his left arm.

When I had tackled my friend flat to the ground, I had been the most concerned about his head and back. What I had been thinking about couldn't be labeled as rational thought when I had seen that huge truck bearing down on him, but shattered skull and broken spine had been among those chaotic thoughts. I hadn't thought about his limbs.

The truck had hit him. It's front bumper had struck his arm and broken it in two places. The bone was sticking out underneath his upper arm. If it had been anyone else, I would have thrown up, but it was Quatre. All that mattered was fixing it. All that mattered was hearing someone tell me that he was going to be fine, that I had gotten to him in time.

"I... Is he..?" I heard the truck driver more clearly this time.

I looked up at him. He was just some ordinary guy, older than my dad with grey in his dark hair, neither fat nor buff but still bigger than my father was.

"He's hurt," I said, my voice still sounding hoarse, "he needs a hospital."

"Are you ok?"

It was the first time I had thought about it. In some distant place where all my sanity had fled to, I realized that I hurt. I felt that tacky feeling of blood that I was familiar with gluing my tattered shirt to my back. My back was in agony. My ribs ached and my head pounded. My knees and lungs were on fire. None of it mattered to me. Unlike Quatre, nothing was broken or too damaged for me to stand. I nodded.

"I'll drive you two there," the truck driver said, almost eagerly. Maybe he actually felt like shit for almost killing us, or maybe he was hoping that if he was helpful, Quatre's parents wouldn't sue him.

What Relena and the rest of the gawkers were doing was lost on me. All that existed in my world was me, Quatre, and this man that could help my injured friend. I could have been furious at him. It was his fucking truck that had hit Quatre. If he hadn't been driving that monster over the speed limit, and had better reflexes, he could have avoided hitting Quatre entirely. but if he had been driving any faster, the both of us would have been flattened. Besides, it wasn't his fault, not really. It was Relena's.

"Let me help you-," he started like he was going to grab Quatre.

I didn't need his help. Adrenaline like an electric shock was coursing through my blood. I could have run a marathon with energy to spare to swim a hundred laps. And I was determined to save Quatre. With no real consciousness of how much my body was hurting, I laid Quatre's injured arm over his stomach so it wouldn't move and I wouldn't do it any more damage, and I lifted my friend into my arms as I stood like I was holding a wet paper bag. The truck driver stared at me in astonishment and I had no clue why at the time.

Then we were moving. I would have ran to the passenger's side door of the truck if only my battered legs had been capable of it. Getting inside the truck and sitting down in the seat while carrying Quatre was a struggle I never want to relive. Frankly, I don't know how I managed it and probably could never do it again without that toxic mix of adrenaline and shock. I kept my friend cradled on my lap, which also wasn't that damned easy. I was taller than him, but not much. I would have put the seatbelt around us if I hadn't been so scared of hurting his arm.

The cab smelled thickly of stale chips, sickly sweet energy drinks, and cigarette smoke. It made me nauseous. When the driver blasted the heat on, directing the vents all on me, I almost yelled at him to shut it off, not understanding why he needed it on at all, or on me. It wasn't cold at all.

None of us spoke the entire ride to the hospital. I think that the truck driver was still too freaked out by what had happened. I was well beyond just freaked out at that stage. At some point during the ride, I can't recall exactly when, I realized that I was crying. I didn't look over at our driver. I didn't want to see his awkward concern or his fake kindness at finding a kid crying in his truck. My tears didn't make me feel better. I just felt like my insides were going to explode out of my skin at any moment.

By the time that we got to the hospital, most of my adrenaline was long gone. I was sleepwalking in a nightmare, ready to just give up and fall into blackness, the gentle rocking of the truck and the hot air not helping me to be alert and awake. The driver helped me out of the cab and I stumbled onto even ground. I was still shaky but I had managed to stop crying.

"Thanks for the ride," I muttered.

The driver looked at my awkwardly and asked me if I wanted help getting Quatre into the emergency room even more awkwardly.

"Just go away," I told him flatly. I was too tired and too scared to deal with him.

He didn't need to be told twice. The asshole, good intended or not, vanished and left me alone with my unconscious friend outside the hospital. Still, I was happy to see him go. I hadn't even taken down his license plate number or name. Oh, well, I thought. If Quatre's parents wanted to sue him, it wouldn't be that hard finding him and his beast of a truck.

I had never actually been to an emergency room when I hadn't been the one that had the emergency. It was a surreal experience. I didn't like being the worried part for once at all. I walked to the very first desk I saw. The receptionist's eyes went huge when she saw us.

"My friend..." I somehow managed to speak intelligibly although all I wanted to do was scream until all of this went away, "we were crossing the street... he got hit by a truck... his arm is broken..."

The receptionist didn't mince words with me. I guess a thirteen year old getting hit by a truck warranted immediate attention because she motioned or shouted at a passing orderly or nurse, or maybe she had done it via telepathy, it was all a blur at that point. The orderly disappeared for a moment, then re-emerged with a stretcher or gurney. I can never get those two straight. I let them take Quatre and watched, helpless, as they carted him off somewhere.

"Name?" the receptionist barked at me.

I blinked up at her like an owl. She might as well have spoken to me in French.

"Your friend's name, sweetie?" she said more kindly, her voice oozing sympathy.

"Quatre Winner," I croaked.

She wrote down the information on a clipboard that she must have pulled out of her ass.

"And yours?"

"Duo Maxwell."

At least I could remember our names. But I was fading fast. 'Shock,' some part of me supplied helpfully.

"And do you know his parents' phone numbers?" she continued.

I wracked my brain and found nothing. I was sure that I had known them at some point, but right then, standing in that white, hospital reception area, shaking and aching, I couldn't remember my own phone number. Panicking a little, I shook my head.

"That's ok, Duo," she assured me with a gentle smile. I was sure that they taught people like her that smile in their job training. I remember nurses smiling at me like that before, "I'm sure it will be in his medical file. Do you know if he's allergic to any medication?"

"I don't think so," I tried to be helpful, "He's lactose intolerant and his skin gets irritated if he eats blueberries, but I don't think he has problems with any meds."

"Good," she nodded and then paused. I got the sudden impression that she was stalling. At the time, I was certain that I had missed something, some scene or event that had happened before, but I couldn't figure out what it was.

When she couldn't figure out the next thing she was supposed to say and minutes passed, I was about to just walk off and leave her there, maybe find a nice, comfy hospital chair to pass out in until someone told me that Quatre was alright. Just as I had decided to do just that, a man strode out of the opposite double doors from where Quatre had disappeared into. He was wearing a long white coat, glasses, and holding a clipboard.

I had to assume he was a doctor between the coat and the attitude like he knew exactly where he was going, and it was somewhere very important. The doctor looked around the waiting room before noticing me and striding over. He was here for me. I was out of it, but I wasn't out of it enough to not realize what it was I was missing. The receptionist had called him. Was I getting kicked out of the ER because I wasn't related to Quatre? No, my frazzled brain pointed out, if I was getting kicked out, they wouldn't be sending a doctor to do it.

"Doctor," the receptionist stood back up from her chair, "This is the boy I called you about. He says his name is Duo."

"Thank you, Sarah," he said without so much as glancing at her. She was a footnote in his day.

"Hello, there, Duo," he greeted me like I had an appointment or something instead of just strolled in here with my bloody and battered best friend, "I'm Doctor Michells."

"Hi," I said dumbly, not sure why he was here.

"That was a very brave thing you did for your friend," he commented, raising a dark eyebrow when I shrugged him off.

"I just carried him in," I muttered.

His grey eyes glanced at my hands. They were cut and bloody and still trembling. I was starting to feel like a drug addict going through withdrawal with all this shaking that I couldn't control.

"Why don't you follow me, Duo?" he asked.

"Wait," I protested, "How is Quatre? Is he ok?"

He had to know. Someone had to know. The doctor smiled at me and it kind of made me feel better even though he didn't really have any real information.

"Your friend is being looked after, I promise, but now I need to look after you, ok?"

I looked up at him, confused. Why did anyone need to take care of me? I wasn't the one that had gotten hit by the truck.

"Why, I'm not hurt," I snapped at him, "Quatre's the one that got hurt!"

The doctor glanced at the receptionist. I saw her mouth 'he's in shock' to him. It didn't mean anything to me. I just wanted to see my friend, awake and fine, and then to sleep, in that exact order. Nothing else meant anything.

"Alright," the doctor said, obviously appeasing me, "But I would still like to check you out, just to make sure. As soon as we're done with that, I'll take you to see your friend."

He gestured towards the door that he had just come out of. I didn't have any choice but to believe him. I didn't know how long it would take to fix Quatre's arm or anything else that was wrong with him, and I wasn't sure how much longer I could remain upright. I followed him to a small examination room. Everything looked... grey to me, but there wasn't even enough of me to feel worried about that. I sat up on the examination table and immediately almost fell off of it. The doctor placed a hand on my shoulder to steady me. When he was sure that I wasn't going to fall, he went to the thermostat, turning it up. I remember how the truck driver had blasted the heat in his cab and wondered why everyone seemed to be cold but me.

As he walked back towards me, I caught my reflection in one of the mirrored cabinets. I looked horrible. There wasn't an ounce of color in my face, my eyes red from crying and they were glassy. I didn't look like I was any more alive than a recent corpse.

"Can I call your parents?" he asked me as he took some instruments out of one of the drawers.

"No," I told him, "they're both at work. They won't come."

I didn't tell him that it didn't matter if they were at work or not. My parents wouldn't come anyway. I could just imagine what my father would say if I called him and told him that my friend was in the hospital.

"You don't have any friends."

I felt a warm wetness behind my eyes, but I was even too tired to acknowledge that, or the fact that I didn't want my father here anymore than he would want to be here.

"Tell me what happened to you and your friend," the doctor switched tracks on me.

It was getting hard for my brain to keep up, especially when he shined a light in my eyes. I blinked sluggishly at him before I remembered he had just asked me a question.

"We were walking to the pool for our swim class," I said slowly, realizing that I was talking weird and not sure why.

Doctor Michells pressed two fingers to the inside of my wrist and frowned.

"When we were crossing the street, a truck pulled into the street we were walking on. It was going too fast," I lied too easily, even in my tired stupor.

"Any troubles breathing?" the doctor suddenly asked. He really needed to stop doing that, it was getting harder and harder to follow him.

I shook my head and he seemed pleased with that answer. What the hell did my breathing have to do with anything?

"The truck almost hit Quatre," I continued, "I managed to push him to the ground before it did, but it still hit his arm pretty badly."

"That was quick thinking," he said in approval and then glanced at my torn up knees, wincing, "I take it that's what all these cuts and scrapes are from?"

I nodded and then quickly decided to answer him verbally from then on. Nodding made the room spin. There was something wrong with me, I suddenly realized, and some rational part of me decided to wake up and tell the rest of me that the doctor had known that all along and probably knew what that something was, even if he wasn't telling me.

"Did the truck hit you?"

"No-" I paused and realized that I wasn't so sure anymore. Everything seemed like a dream to me and I was having a hard time remembering certain things, while others, like the feeling of the truck passing over my back, Quatre's warmth in my arms, and my screaming terror as it felt it hit him, were painfully clear and sharp, "I don't think it did. The only thing that really hurts is my back."

At that, he quickly glanced at my back and when his face came back within my field of view, he was wincing again.

"Your knees are scraped raw, your elbows, too, and you have a fairly bad cut along your back along with scrapes and some first to low second degree burns, but it's hard for me to tell with your clothes in the way," he summed up my injuries. I hadn't even realized that my back had been burnt that badly, "would you mind taking them off so I can do a more thorough examination? You can say no and we'll wait until we can get a hold of your parents, but if you do say yes, I will still have a nurse present since you're a minor."

I shrugged. I didn't care. I was beyond caring. My parents were not going to be 'gotten a hold of' and I didn't want them to be. Things were simpler when my father wasn't involved. My clothes were ruined anyway and the blood on my shirt was starting to bug me.

With my consent given, Doctor Michells left the room briefly to grab a nurse. I looked at my reflection in the cabinets again. I somehow looked even worse than before and I wondered if the truck really had hit me or maybe I had hurt myself worse when I had tackled Quatre to the pavement than I had originally thought. Not that I had thought about my injuries at all until then. I didn't even recognize myself, I was as white and pale as a human being could be. My eyes looked hollow and dead, but my face wasn't nearly as cut up and scraped as Quatre's had been. It could have been a lot worse, though.

My face could have been as burnt and raw as my back. I had tucked my head down against Quatre's at the very last moment, unthinkingly. I shuddered when I remembered how close the undercarriage of that truck had come to the back of my head. Instead, it had scraped and cut and burned my back. I couldn't complain about that trade, not the few cuts on my face or the pain in my back. At least I still had a head.

Doctor Michells returned quickly with a nurse in tow. She had red hair and was carrying a blanket for some reason. That's all I noticed and remembered about her. When she closed the door behind her, without thinking like the idiot that I was, I tried to pull my torn shirt off of me. My back had been hurt before. I had been cut, bruised, and battered. I had had broken ribs and limbs. All of that didn't hold a candle to the sheer agony that shot through my back when I tried to peel my shirt off of it. I didn't scream, but I came very close to it, managing to taper it off to an underwhelming, choked gasp.

"There's no need for that," the doctor scolded, irritated that I had hurt myself in my impatience.

The nurse put the blanket down on the spare chair and fetched a pair of scissors from a drawer, handing them to him. Cutting my shirt off of me turned out to be more difficult than I had thought it would be. Where I had been burnt and bled, the material of the shirt had very nearly merged with my flesh. Thankfully, this doctor was a gentle touch and patient, taking his time to slowly pull each scrap of bloodied and filthy cloth out of my various wounds. It still hurt like hell, but there was really nothing he could do about that beyond knocking me out while he did it. The nurse offered to hold my hand if it would make me feel better. I told her no, partially because I knew that it wouldn't and partially because I was afraid I would break her hand.

It actually felt really good not having anything touching and pulling at my back anymore. I wrinkled my nose at the smell coming from my shirt as the nurse bundled it up in a biohazard bag. The shirt had been almost soaked in gas and oil and blood. It took me a moment to realize that that smell was coming from me, too. The oil and gas was on my skin, too.

"Looks like the truck that hit you had a bit of a leak," the doctor confirmed for me, "You have a fair amount of oil in these cuts. They'll need to be flushed out before we put any salve on them. But that can wait until later."

He disappeared behind me again to do a more thorough investigation of my back. He hissed and made some sympathetic noises as he saw the extent of my injuries.

"You were lucky you weren't flayed," he muttered and I wondered if he had really meant for me to hear that, "You definitely have a couple of second degree burns here. I'll prescribe you some burn cream that should help them heal faster before you go home. That truck took off a good deal of skin from your back. Your parents will need to keep an eye out for any infections and help you to keep these wounds covered always. The only exception is when you bathe.

"You also have some deep cuts here. They aren't bleeding too badly, but a few will need stitches. I'll be able to tell how bad they are when we wash them out," he walked back where I could see him, "No sports," he told me sternly, "no gym, no running, for at least a week. And when you sleep, try as hard as you can to sleep on your side or on your stomach if you can."

I nodded. It was all I was capable of. I was beginning to feel overwhelmed by all of this. My back was in agony, but the pain, like everything else, still felt very far away from me. The doctor started talking again, but it was all white noise. I was fading in a haze of pain and chaos. I wished that Quatre was there with me. He would tell me what was wrong. I jerked back to reality when the doctor pressed a hand against my right side, the side I had landed on partially.

"Your ribs aren't broken at least, just badly bruised," he remarked and then grabbed the scissors back from the nurse.

I had seconds to mourn my jeans before they were gone. I might have been able to patch the knees up, but the doctor hadn't even bothered to ask me if I didn't want them cut. He at least let me keep my boxers, the only article of clothing I had on that hadn't become mangled besides my socks and sneakers. I was grateful. I had enough sense left to know I did not want to be naked in front of these two adults, regardless of their profession. And it was around that time that I finally realized how incredibly cold I was. I was freezing to my fucking bones. Was that why I was still shaking? But the room had to be sweltering at that point.

"Your knees aren't as bad as your back is, but they'll take a long time to heal," the doctor continued.

I barely noticed him. Or my knees. Or my back. Black spots were beginning to appear in my vision. Why was I here? I caught the doctor nodding to the nurse. With a soft, but concerned smile, she wrapped the blanket around me.
*****
Shock sucks. I had always attributed it to something that happens to people going through real, violent trauma. Mothers who lost their children. Soldiers fighting a war. Kids that watched their parents be murdered right in front of them. I had never thought it would happen to me, and I certainly had never thought it would happen just from saving Quatre's life from almost getting mowed down by a truck, but apparently it's a common thing to experience when you're the most terrified that you've been in your whole life. Shock was the reason why I had kept shaking. It was the reason why everyone kept turning the heat up around me and it was the reason why that receptionist had called a triage doctor on me when my actual injuries hadn't been life threatening.

As it turns out, some people can actually die from shock if it isn't treated. Treatment being laying the person down with their legs up and making sure they stay warm since they're losing body heat. Doctor Michells couldn't have me lay down with my back the way that it was, so he had settled for keeping me warm and engaged for as long as he could while checking me for serious injuries. All in all, he had been a good doctor. I had certainly had worse.

All of this, at the time of my shocked state, had gone right over my head. Honestly, I had been lucky to have been able to string to words together with my frantic, muddled brain. No matter how hard my father had hit me, no matter what damage he had done, how many bones he had broken, I had never come that close to death before. I don't know exactly what had triggered my shock, seeing that truck come for me, or watching it head for Quatre.

The second that that nurse had wrapped the blanket around me, I had blacked out. No, blacked out is too kind of a phrase for what my mind had done when it had felt that warmth around me. It had just shut off. I fell and I fell hard into a place that was devoid of even dreams. When I finally came back into the living world, it was hours later and I was beyond disoriented. I didn't know where I was, when I was, or why I was.

I felt... better, sort of. At the very least I no longer felt like I had been turned into road kill and was only standing upright from sheer will power. I still felt shaky, but it was from a mixture of tiredness, confusion, pain, and a complete lack of energy instead of shock. I no longer felt cold and my confusion was from just waking up, not a lack of basic cognition.

I was lying in a hospital bed on my stomach, as per the doctor's orders, my back wrapped in bandages. From the feel of it, my knees were, too, and there was a band aid on the worst scrape on my cheek. I very carefully turned on my side and didn't feel any pain at all in my back. The doctor must have given me some sort of pain meds. Awesome. There was an IV in my arm, probably fluids. I slowly peeled the tape off holding the needle in place and pulled it out, wincing as I did it. It didn't hurt or anything, I just really hated needles, but I wasn't going to just stick it out in that hospital room all day. I had to find Quatre and I couldn't do that hooked up to an IV.

Someone had dressed me in a hospital gown, which was better than just wearing my boxer shorts, but the thought of wandering around in the flimsy gown wasn't very appealing. Thankfully someone had left clothes for me in the chair by my bed, including my sneakers and socks. Was this some kind of new hospital service, buy clothes for pathetic kids that ruined theirs? Not that I was complaining.

Moving like an old, arthritic man, and kind of feeling like one, too (I might have been pain free for the moment, but my body was still stiff and aware that it was injured), I got out of the bed and got dressed. The clothes had obviously been gifted from someone who didn't know my clothing size. The sweatpants fit ok, but the green, long sleeved shirt was a bit too big for me. I walked stiffly and slowly out into the hallway after I struggled to retie my sneakers.

The floor I had ended up on was not the floor I had started with, but I managed to find a nurses station easily. To my relief, one of the nurses was the redhead that had helped treat me. She smiled brightly when she saw me.

"Hello, there," she said, "Are you feeling better?"

I nodded.

"Do you know where Dr. Michells is?" I asked her, "I'd like to thank him for everything. And... uh... the clothes?"

"He said that you would be eager to check on your friend," she explained.

I felt myself blush a little at the doctor's 'good deed'. Maybe it really was a hospital service.

"Do you know which room Quatre Winner is in, then?" now that I had some sleep and medication in me, I was feeling slightly less panicked than I had before about my friend, and the nurse's demeanor helped, but I was still desperate to see for myself that he was ok.

The nurse nodded to the one that was sitting at the computer behind the desk.

"Before you see your friend, the doctor prescribed you some painkillers, antibiotics, and burn cream for you," she handed me the prescriptions, "you can get them filled out in the pharmacy downstairs before you leave or at your convenience, but Doctor Michells wanted you to take the painkillers before you go to bed tonight. He stitched up a couple of your cuts," she handed me a packet of paper as well, "these are instructions for taking care of them. If you have to take a shower or bath tonight, try your best to keep your back dry or covered."

"I don't have any money to pay for these," I looked morosely at the slips of paper she had given me. I didn't know much about the health insurance that I had, but I usually had to pay something for any medicine I got at a pharmacy.

"It's all covered," I was told.

I blinked at her.

"How do you know which insurance I have?" I asked, perplexed.

"We contacted your father. He gave his permission to treat you and gave us your insurance information. Your friend took care of the rest."

I stared at her in pure astonishment. I didn't know what was more amazing, that my father had actually taken that phone call, that he hadn't immediately hung up, or that Quatre was awake and paying my 'bill'. I wanted to be angry at him, taking care of me when he should be taking care of himself, but I was too happy that he wasn't dead or in a coma or something. I would worry about my Dad maybe being pissed at me when I got home later.

"Winner is in room 223," the other nurse intoned.

"Can I go see him?" I asked meekly.

"Of course, just sign this," the redheaded nurse handed me release papers. I guess blacking out had gotten me officially admitted. I signed it eagerly. I wanted to get Quatre and myself out of here as soon as possible.

"223 is down the hall," the other nurse pointed, "and to the right."

"Your friend can be discharged tonight, too," the redhead said pleasantly.

"He's ok, then?"

She nodded with a soft smile.

"His arm was broken and his shoulder and cheek were scraped up pretty badly. He had to have minor surgery for his arm and it's in a cast for the next six months, but he's lucky. He's young, so he shouldn't have problems if he lets it heal."

I felt like crying with pure relief. I hadn't fucked up too badly. I walked to Quatre's room with my packet of papers and prescriptions, almost limping. I really hoped the pills the doctor had prescribed would take away as much of the pain as whatever was in me right then.

I stopped as I stood outside of Quatre's room. I suddenly felt very nervous. What if his parents were there? What if they were pissed that I hadn't reacted faster? I knew that Quatre wouldn't be mad, but I had never met his folks before and I never wanted to meet them. After years of seeing them disappoint my best friend over and over and over again, I was already a bit biased about them, but it was more than that. They were the Winners, one of the richest families in Nausten, maybe even THE richest family in Nausten. Which probably isn't saying much in comparison to the rest of the country, but here in this town, that kind of wealth went a long way. And me? I was just some bug in their windshield. What would they say and do if they found out that someone like me was friends with their only son?

"Suck it up," I muttered to myself.

I might be broke and a piece of trash, but I was still Quatre's friend. And at least I hadn't made him feel like shit or locked him out of his own damned house. I knocked on the door.

"C'min," a thick voice told me.

My stomach dropped when I walked into that room and saw my friend. Quatre had never looked smaller than laying in that hospital bed. His thin arm was in a huge cast from his upper arm to almost his fingers. It seemed to completely dwarf him. He looked pale, although probably not any more pale than I still was, his cheek covered in a bandage. There were dark circles under his eyes and he looked sick. Although, if I had found myself in this place with a broken arm because some cunt had forced me to almost get hit by a goddamned truck, I would look sick, too.

His eyes brightened when he saw that it was me, but he still looked so tired, lost, and sad. There was a darkness to those eyes that hadn't been there before, a darkness that I didn't like.

"Quatre, I..." I stared to say.

'I'm sorry for not making her stop, I'm sorry for being such a weak piece of shit. I'm sorry for not being there for you. I'm sorry I broke your arm.'

"You saved my life."

I froze where I stood, just a foot into the room. He said it so matter of fact, like there was no doubt in his mind. I wonder what whoever had treated him had told him. It really hit me then. Even though I had been too late to act, I had saved him. Quatre was alive. Hurt, but alive. I had been late and cowardly, but I hadn't fucked up. I felt tears stream down my face, but that was ok. Quatre was the only person in the whole world who I could cry in front of. I walked over to his bed and sat down in the chair next to it. We were the only two in the room. Maybe his family had stepped out somewhere.

"I'm sorry, Quatre," I choked out without sobbing, "I didn't know what to do. I should have gone out there with you. I should have pushed you out of the way... I didn't even think to protect your arms... it's because of me that your arm got broken."

He snorted at me, a sound that I had never heard him make before.

"Shut up, Duo," he said, but it was affectionate and not unkindly, "You ran out in front of a goddamned truck to save me. You risked your life for me. You could have been killed trying to save me! No one else did a thing, and no one else wanted to a thing to help me. No normal person would have done a thing. I didn't even try to help myself. If I had known that you were going to do that, I would have..." he didn't finish that sentence and I wished that he would. I wanted to know why he had just stood there, watching that truck almost hit him. I wanted to know why he had given up like that.

"You got hurt and almost killed saving me and you're feeling bad that you didn't think to save my arm from breaking because you were too busy trying to save my stupid, foolish head. You frustrate me so much sometimes," he smiled at me, a warm, loving smile, but also a pained, bitter one.

I flushed. I didn't know what to say about that. I supposed that, in perspective, my guilt was kind of stupid.

"You aren't super human, you know," he said softly and reached out with his good hand to clasp one of mine, "The cops were here a little while ago."

My eyes widened. I had figured that there would be an investigation. It wasn't every day that a Winner, let alone a thirteen year old, was nearly mowed down in front of his classmates, but I hadn't thought the police would show up that fast. I wondered if my father was a part of the investigation. Probably not, since his son was directly involved. The Nausten Police force was small, but they still had rules.

"They'll want to talk to you, too," he warned me, "especially if that truck driver doesn't report what happened. If they haven't talked to you already."

I had no clue if that driver was going to report anything. He had seemed like an ok guy, but that had just been my impression when I had been half out of my mind. He had also seemed quite eager to do whatever it took not to get into trouble. For all I knew, the only reason why he had stopped his truck at all was because he hadn't wanted to be implicated in a hit and run incident, and it wasn't like the cops wouldn't have been able to figure out that it had been him. How many trucks from that particular store could there be making deliveries at one time?

"They haven't," I confirmed and wasn't looking forward to sharing my side of the story.

"They talked to some of our classmates," he gave me a strange look, "They said that you shouldn't have been able to have reached me in time. They said that they had never seen anyone, including on any of our or the high school's sports teams, that had ever run so fast or tackled so hard. They said it was like a miracle."

My flush grew darker. I was no miracle.

"I had no choice but to be fast," I murmured, "You weren't moving out of the way. You were going to die. All I could do in time was run as fast as I could and push you under the truck. And I still almost didn't get to you in time."

I looked away from him, his intense, aquamarine gaze making me uncomfortable. He was looking at me in awe and I just couldn't handle that.

"I know you don't know it, and you'll refuse to believe me, but you are absolutely amazing, Duo. I don't deserve your friendship," he said sadly.

My own thought reflected back at me made me panic. He couldn't think that. He just couldn't. He was the amazing one. He was the one that deserved a better friend than me. Just knowing that he thought such a thing turned my stomach.

"Don't," I pleaded shyly, "please, just don't."

He flashed me an irritated look and I quickly changed subjects. I didn't want to know that the person whose friendship and approval I always tried to be worthy of thought so little of himself and far too much of me, just because I had saved his life

"One of the nurses told me we can both go home tonight. Are your parents picking you up soon or does your doctor need to do something else for your arm before you can go?" I asked, still on edge waiting for Quatre's mother and father to suddenly emerge.

"My arm is fine," he said, but looked at his cast morosely, "the impact broke it in two places, but my doctor is confident that it will be completely healed in six weeks, ten at the most. He prescribed me some pain meds to deal with any pain, but broken bones are easy to care for. I just have to keep the cast dry and not move my arm too much before the cast is removed."

At the time I had felt relieved to hear that. Now it just depresses me to think about, knowing that I never got to see that cast being taken off.

"My parents aren't coming to pick me up," he suddenly added like an after thought.

"What?" I was shocked. I knew that his parents were usually too busy for him, but he was in a hospital with a broken arm for fuck's sake!

"Don't worry about it. They're just busy at work," he tried to assure me, but it just came out sad and full of resignation, "Lily is going to take me home instead."

Lily was his second oldest sister. She was seventeen and had just gotten her driver's license a couple of months ago. She was always eager for an excuse to drive. I wanted to ask Quatre if all of his sisters were going to get cars when they could legally drive, but I was kind of scared of the answer. At least his parents weren't completely abandoning him here like mine had.

"My nurse said that you were hurt when you pushed me down," my best friend said in concern.

"Not really," I half lied. In a way, Quatre had gotten off easier than me in the injuries department, at least in terms of how much it was going to bother and hinder him before it healed, I still didn't consider my fucked up back and knees to be a big deal. There were a hundred more horrible things that could have happened to us.

"Duo," Quatre gave me that authoritative tone of his that he often used when he realized that I was bullshitting him.

I sighed.

"I skinned my knees to hell. I'm probably lucky that I didn't fracture them with how hard I hit the ground. I managed to get both of us under the truck, but it was a close thing. The undercarriage of the truck was overheated and it burnt me a bit. It ripped up my back pretty good, too. The doctor that treated me said it almost flayed me, so there's something to feel lucky about."

Quatre paled and hissed in sympathy. I don't know why I told him that last part. He looked so guilty, like he had been the one to nearly skin my entire back off.

"I am so sorry," he said sincerely, "Duo, I mean it. When Relena made me do it, I never thought you would get hurt. If only I had gotten out of the way of that truck, you wouldn't have gotten injured so badly..."

'Why didn't you?' I wanted to scream at him.

"But you're ok now?" he asked guiltily.

I shrugged.

"For now," I confessed, "I guess they gave me something when they were working on my back. I don't feel anything right now."

I didn't tell him about my stitches or how hard it was to move or the horrendous pain I had felt trying to just take my shirt off. I was sure that he would figure it out the next day at school when I had to struggle walking from class to class. That was something I really didn't want to think about. I would have o try my hardest to hide my injuries from Relena and Zechs. I really didn't need to give them something to hurt me with, and even with the painkillers coursing through me, I knew it wouldn't take much at all to hurt me. At least I had a doctor's note to get out of gym for awhile. Something good had come out of that shit show.

"What did you tell the police happened anyway?" I asked him.

I immediately wished that I hadn't when a deadened, emotionless look appeared in his usually expressive eyes.

"Exactly what everyone else told them," he said flatly and tiredly, "I stupidly tried to cross the street when the 'do not walk' sign was lit and when I saw the truck coming, I froze, but you didn't."

Something tightened around my heart. I almost laughed, but it would have come out bitter, angry, and insane sounding. Some part of me, some foolish part, had thought that maybe, just maybe, Relena had gone too far this time. I had thought that there was no way she could walk away scott free after the...

The what? What had happened to us? What could I call it that made sense of something that still seemed so completely insane to me? Accident? Harassment? Bullying? Attempted murder? I wanted to vehemently deny that last one, but how could I? What had Relena been trying to do? Frighten Quatre? Teach him a lesson? She had been well aware that he could have been hurt, could have died. And she had forced him out onto that street uncaringly.

Or had she? I didn't want to believe it, but the more I thought about it, the more of it that I remembered, the more that I thought that Relena had wanted him hurt. Would she have even been content if Quatre had gotten to the other side of the street untouched, or would she have been furious and tried to teach him another 'lesson'? A worse, more horrible thought entered my head. What if she was even angry that I had saved Quatre's life? No, no I couldn't believe that even Relena hated Quatre so much that she would want him dead. No one could be that ugly.

In all honesty, although I had hoped that this awful incident would stop Relena's bullying, that her goading my friend into the street would get her into enough trouble that we wouldn't have to see her for awhile, I was not at all surprised that our classmates had lied for her, whether out of admiration or fear. How could I have expected anything different from them? Who, but myself, would stick their neck out for Quatre? And hadn't he said that exact same thing to me?

"No one else wanted to do a thing to help me."

But still, it hurt hearing that even Quatre would lie about it. Had he had much of a choice, though? The word of Relena Darlian and a handful of our classmates against Quatre's. His word would go so far only until someone pointed out that he hated Relena and that Quatre had been on painkillers when he had spoken to the police. It didn't matter if anyone believed either of us. Nothing would happen to Relena, I was sure of that.

"You can tell them what you want," Quatre offered softly.

I could, of course. I could tell the truth. But who would care? It wouldn't change a thing. I was on painkillers, too. I had gone into shock. And I was just Quatre's stupid, worthless friend. The same person that Relena had named a liar all those years ago. If the cops asked me what had happened, I would tell them exactly what Quatre had. I would lie and pretend that I was telling the truth. The irony was laughable.

"So she gets away with it," I muttered angrily in the face of my logic, "She gets you hurt and she can just walk away, like always."

"Like always," Quatre agreed and looked away from me, his blue-green eyes dazed, deep in thought.

What would it take? How much pain and hurt did Relena Darlian have to cause before it stopped?

"She tried to kill you," I snapped at him more harshly than I had intended, "She was going to let you die!"

Quatre was silent. He didn't deny anything I had just said. That, more than anything else, chilled me to the deepest part of my heart. I had wanted him to come up with some... some reason or excuse as to why that wasn't true. He had known her longer than I had, and he could have used any logic to comfort me about it, but he hadn't. He knew what I had tried to deny. Relena was a monster and when she had forced him to walk out into that street, she had been trying to hurt him. Really, really hurt him. That she had done it because she had been angry wasn't a consolation any more than knowing that she had done it for fun.

"I am quite sure," he said with a bitter little smile, "that she'll kill me in the end."

That chill turned into a full blown nor'easter. Even now, as I sit here on my mattress and write in this stupid journal, I feel cold remembering those words, remembering how he looked that night, his eyes far off and full of secret things, secret thoughts that I would never hear from him. I remember that look and I wish that I had understood back then what that look had meant. I wish that I had taken his words even more seriously than I had.

"I think I've known that for awhile," he mused, "I just don't know when exactly I realized it. I thought it was ok at first. I thought that if I kept my head low, I could survive it. I have you, I have a friend, and you've always been there for me since the day we met. A lot of days, I think I can do that, just take one day at a time, just let her do what she wants until she goes away for a little while. Then when I started hanging out with Trowa more, I thought I could be strong enough to get past it. But at some point, I realized that she will never leave me alone. No matter what I do, no matter how I act towards her, she'll never be happy until I'm dead. And now... now I don't know if I can take anymore of it."

That look was back in his eyes. Surrender. Resignation. Hopelessness. It was the same look he had had when he had almost let the truck run him over. Because that was exactly what had happened, no matter how much my mind screamed that that was a lie. Quatre, if only for a moment, had wanted that truck to hit him. And that terrified me.

I didn't even know what to say to him about it. I was frozen in shock with my revelation. I knew that he got depressed, especially lately when he thought about his feelings for Trowa. Hell, I got pretty damned depressed when I thought about my life, too. But I had never had a moment like that, a moment of total surrender. I think I could have tried to deal with his feelings if he had confessed all of that to me on a normal day.

But today hadn't been normal, and because of those feelings, he had had a weak moment. He had almost killed himself through inaction. What could I possibly say to him to make that better? He had always been the strong one of us, always the kind one, full of hope. I just couldn't deal with him so despondent and bitter. He wasn't ever supposed to look like that.

"We used to be friends, you know," Quatre said, like he hadn't just blown my world apart, "Relena and I. We were never close, and our friendship was kind of tentative even at the start. Our parents threw us together when we were toddlers and we would play together a lot. But the older we got, the more we grew apart. She got new friends and I didn't. Zechs was always teasing and bullying her at home, and she would take that out on me. By the time we were in the seconds grade together, we weren't friends anymore and every little thing I did, she seemed to loathe."

That was all news to me. I had know that Quatre and Relena's parents had made them hang out with each other when they had been little, but not that they actually used to be friends. I wasn't at all surprised to hear that Zechs had bullied his little sister. Seeing the two of them interact with each other, I had suspected that before. I could have felt sorry for her. It is hard enough dealing with that prick during school hours, I can't imagine being forced to live with him for your entire life.

So yes, at one point, I could have felt sorry for Relena. I could have sympathized with her and understood why she was such an insufferable bitch. But Relena wasn't just a person taking out her anger and frustrations at home on two people who were even more miserable and weaker than she was. She was exactly like her brother, a sadist, and some of the things she had done to Quatre and I were a whole lot worse than just bullying and harassment. How her brother treated her had added fuel to the fire, but it hadn't made her a monster, I was certain of that. She and Zechs were cut from the same, exact cloth.

"I was ok, at first," my friend told me, "I hated the bullying, and I resented her for everything that she did to me, but I was used to it. Even when she and Zechs started escalating, started being... frightening, it was terrible enough, but now that she's targeting Trowa... targeting the person that I love... it's worse than ever. She isn't just trying to make me suffer or tear us apart. She's trying to ruin Trowa's life just for daring to be friends with me!"

His voice was twisted up with so many awful things. Hate, fear, bitterness, hopelessness. I couldn't bear lying to him. I didn't know how to make anything better for him, how to protect him and Trowa from all of this. And it scared me that the thing that he was upset about wasn't that Relena had tried to hurt or kill him, but that she had threatened Trowa's reputation. Did he care about his own welfare so little, or did he love Trowa so much? If that was what love was, if it could turn Quatre into the person laying on that hospital bed, in tears and full of dark sadness, then I was very glad that I had never experienced it because I wanted nothing to do with an emotion like that.

"Quatre, I know you don't want to hear this, and I don't want to argue about it after you've been hurt," I finally managed to say something and I hated how desperate and pleading my voice came out, "but you need to tell Trowa how you feel about him! Relena knows you're in love with him and she knows that he doesn't have a clue. That gives her power over the both of you! She's obviously quite happy to use it to hurt you and to threaten you to do shit like this!

"You almost died today just to keep her from starting some stupid rumors. Trowa should know what's going on, he deserves the right to be able to protect himself! If he knew, then Relena couldn't surprise him with it or use it against the two of you. The worst that happens is that he decides not to be friends with you anymore. I know that would hurt you, but then Relena wouldn't care about him anymore. He would be safe, and so would you! For all you know, Trowa could be ok with you being gay and he might find a way to combat rumors like that. I mean, he's popular, so rumors of him being gay could really hurt him and his sports career, but because he's popular, people might not want to believe them for that same reason, right? Keeping quiet about it to him is just going to make it easier for Relena to force you to hurt yourself again!"

I was almost panting from saying so much so vehemently, but I had meant every word of it. The entire situation was frustrating me, but it made me wonder. If I fell in love and I had to make a choice between how I felt and some logical situation that would make things better for the person I loved and myself, but it meant that I couldn't be with that person, what would I do? I didn't have any sort of answer because it was an impossible question for me to answer. How could I when Quatre was the closest person I had to loving someone?

"I can't!" Quatre cried out, fat, miserable tears streaming down his ghostly pale cheeks, "I'm not that strong, Duo. I'm shy and a coward, and no matter how much I know that I should just try to not be friends with him anymore, for both of our sakes', there's no way I can do that! And what if I tell him that I love him and he's ok with it? What if... what if he likes me, too?

"No matter what happens, no matter how he feel about it, I ruin his life! He either gets associated with being friends with a faggot or people find out that he's one and his career gets destroyed just because I opened my big, fat mouth! He deserves a normal life, and even just being friends with someone like me... Relena was right! I have no business being around him! And what if I tell him that I'm gay and he turns me down, or worse, he looks down on me for what I am? If Trowa ever hated me... if he ever looks at me like how Zechs and Relena look at me... it would be the death of me."

Quatre tried to wipe at his tears with his cast, scowling when he remembered that his arm was injured, and scrubbed furiously at his face with his good hand.

"I know," he said softly, visibly struggling to control his emotions, "I know what I should do, but I can't. I have thought about it until I've gotten headache after headache, and I can't compromise. I can't stay away from him and I can't tell him the truth. I'll just keep going in circles around him, I'll keep hurting myself, even if it isn't fair to him, either. That's the kind of terrible person I am, Duo. Even if I'm deluding myself, I just want to believe that someone can love me like that, the way that I want to be loved one day by someone. When I look at him, I think that he could be the one, and I know it's in my head, but pretending that that one day is possible... it makes me happy. I'm not stupid, I know how insane it sounds, but it does."

"It's not crazy," I murmured, looking down at my hands, "Wanting to be loved... doesn't make you a terrible person. I just want you to be loved for real, and not just in your head or in some distant future."

He smiled brilliantly at me, his eyes full of tears, and for a moment he was like how he used to be, before he fell in love. For that one moment, he was the boy I had become friends with in the fourth grade, sad and lonely, but still hopeful, still so happy just to be with me and unburdened with the knowledge of his future.

"When I was little," he told me with a deep sense of reminiscence, "and my father would be too busy to pick me up from school or my mother would forget it was my birthday because she had a meeting, and even my sisters didn't want anything to do with me and I would come home to a dark house every single day... I would dream about just running away from all. Every time Relena called me a loser or Zechs punched me, I would tell myself 'today is the day'. I would fantasize about skipping school and running home. No one would be there, just like always, and I would pack a suitcase full of my clothes and toys. Or maybe I wouldn't even go home. I would just run to the train station and wait for however long it took for the train would appear. I would pay for a ticket with whatever money was in my pocket and then... then I would just be gone. No one would ever be able to find me. I could go to some far off place, pick out a new name, and none of my problems would follow me. Some days, I would even run to the train station thinking that. But I never got on. I never took that step off the platform. Some days, I wish that I had.

"Then I met you, Duo," he smiled at me again, that soft, warm smile that I loved so much, "and every time I thought about that train platform, I would think 'I can't run away, I'll miss my best friend too much' and I knew that I just had to stay. Not because of my family or because of anything that I was afraid of, but because, for the first time in my life, I had a reason to stay here."

I felt myself crying at his words, at his sadness and loneliness, but also how much he loved me. He looked away from me for a second, and it was easy for me to imagine that he was visualizing that train station, the same one my father had used to take me to when I was a child. Then he looked back at me and that childish expression was gone and dead. That mature sadness and darkness that clouded his eyes so much in the recent year or two was back and I hated it for possessing him once more.

"If I did run away," he said wistfully, "If I said that I wanted to go on the train and go far away... would you come with me?"

I stared at him in shock. I thought that he was just kidding around, but his expression was deadly serious. He was asking me to run away with him.

"I know where my parents keep their emergency credit cards, and I know what all their passcodes are. No matter where we'd end up, we'd be set for a long time," he told me, the mature strategist in him emerging. He actually sounded excited at the thought of stealing some of his parents' money. Or maybe that was spite. "How about it, Duo? As soon as we're both healed, we could be out of this shitty town! You'd never have to worry about your grades or money ever again. We'd never have to take these regional tests or SAT's or any of that crap. You wouldn't have to half starve yourself or wear clothing with holes in the winter just to make it to your dad's next paycheck. You could quit those stupid jobs and do what you want to do, instead of what your goddamned father wants you to do. He'd never strike you every again. He'd never yell at your or call you worthless ever again, your mother, too, and it would serve them right!

"Neither of us would get bullied again and me..." those blue-green eyes of his turned distant again as he thought of something that he wouldn't say, "I'd never have to come home to an empty house again. I'd never have to listen to my father lecture me about all the things I'll have to do to prepare for taking up the company after him, all the extra classes I'm going to have to take in high school, the grades I'll need to get, and the college I'll have to go to, when he knows... he's known for years that I don't want to fill his shoes, I never have!

"And Trowa..." his voice softened almost to a whisper, "I'll leave him behind but... I'll never have to worry about him hating me, or me ruining his life..." Quatre looked up at me, his eyes soft and pleading, like a puppy's, "Would you come with me?"

I continued to stare at him. I had no words. How had he known all that about my parents? He knew that my father hit me, but I had never told him about my father's penchant for calling me worthless, or that my mother had. Had he just guessed that? Quatre was smart, could he really figure out where my insecurities about my self worth stemmed from?

I hadn't known about all the pressure his own father had been putting him under to succeed him in the company business. I had known that Quatre wanted nothing to do with his father's job. He wanted to study music and mathematics when he went to college, not business. I couldn't imagine dealing with that, having all that stress about getting perfect grades and being forced into classes I hated because of a man that was otherwise absent from my life. Quatre's father didn't know the first thing about him. Worse, it seemed like he didn't want to know. It wasn't like I had such a great future, either, but that was because I had no other choices. Quatre had such potential... he was so smart, he should be allowed to do what he wanted with that intellect, not thrust into some stifling office.

Quatre's proposal sounded wonderful to me. Leave Nausten with my best friend. Leave behind all of my stresses, all of my fears, and go someplace where I would be free, where I could do what I want and never be beaten, never be screamed at, never be told that I was an unwanted piece of shit. Just me and Quatre. We could take his parents' money and rent some place. I would be happy with a shitty apartment, and I was sure that Quatre would be able to bribe someone to rent to a couple of teenagers.

Neither of us needed much. All I wanted was to buy some books, maybe a TV, or even a typewriter. I had lately been reading up on poetry and flash fiction and kind of wanted to try my hand in it, even if I was sure I was going to fail miserably at both. We could probably make that money last awhile, even if we went out to dinner a few times and to the movies.

Just the thought of it made me almost cry. The freedom, the endless road of possibilities, all the things that I could do with just the two of us that I never would be able to now. Maybe we could even find a place that would be more accepting of Quatre in a more liberal state and he could forget all about Trowa.

Paradise. That's the word for all the things I was thinking of, but I had better ones. Utopia... and a dream. It was just as impossible as it was wonderful. We could find someone willing to rent an apartment to two thirteen year old runaways, yes. Money was the solution to almost any problem. But how long would that last? How long until the cops showed up to take us back to Nausten, kicking and screaming, either because Quatre's family was looking for him, or someone had found it odd that two thirteen year olds seemed to be living in a place without any adults? How long before our money ran out? Because no matter how careful we were, no matter how far we tried to stretch whatever sum of money Quatre planned to steal from his parents, it would run out eventually. And then where would we be? I didn't want to run away from the only home that I had ever known just to end up homeless. We were too young to get jobs, even just part time ones.

What would we do when we got older? How would we live? Would we be able to find decent jobs and if we did, we would be able to go to college? I hadn't been planning on it anyway, but how could Quatre want that for himself?

The thought of running away to someplace new, someplace that might be more open minded and away from my parents sounded wonderful in theory, but it also terrified me. I had never left Nausten. Everything I had ever known, everything I was familiar with and comfortable with was here. That wasn't something I was happy about.

I often felt like a cat trapped in a cage, unable to do anything or grow, but it was what I knew, and the unknown was just as terrifying to me as the thought that I would never leave that cage. How the hell could someone like me just pack up and move to some strange place? Could I even survive? What the hell did I know about the rest of the world? I couldn't even find most foreign countries on a map.

It was just as laughable considering finding a place that would accept Quatre... accept the both of us. Hatred wasn't just confined to Nausten, or even the state we lived in. It was everywhere. There was no place that would accept people for being different, and even if there was, how were we supposed to find it?

As for leaving my parents, well... There were times when I hated my father. There were times when I hated my mother, too, especially after she had told me that I had been unwanted. My father beat me and degraded me. He treated me like garbage. My mother ignored me most of the time, ignored that she even had a child, and the times that she didn't, she was even crueler than he was.

But even with all of that, even with all of the scars the both of them had inflicted on me, those that were actually on my skin and those that were on my heart... I still loved them. I loved them very deeply. And although I wanted to deny it so much, if I ran away from home, I would miss them terribly. I would miss the deep sound of my father's voice and his laugh when he watched something on television. I would miss feeling his hand on my forehead when I was sick and he was checking my temperature. I would miss looking at my mother and feeling this odd burst of warmth at how much she looked like me, the red in her hair.

I could never admit it, I could hardly understand it, but I didn't want to run away like that. Even though I knew that they wouldn't miss me. Hell, they might even be happy to see me gone. I still didn't want to turn my back on them. I couldn't tell Quatre any of that. He would think that I was messed up, wanting to be with people that hurt me. But they didn't always hurt me, and even when they did, I couldn't stop loving them. How could I possibly make anyone understand that?

I felt myself panicking, thinking all those things and realizing that quite some time had passed and I still hadn't answered Quatre's question. I could only imagine what I looked like, wide eyed and pale, staring at him like that.

"Duo, relax," he laughed, shocking me back into reality, "I'm just joking around. This pain medicine my doctor has me on has me a bit loopy. I wasn't being serious."

I could have believed that. I wasn't exactly feeling completely there myself with whatever I was on, and I had certainly never heard him talk like that before. I could have written it all off as him just blowing off steam after Relena had gotten his arm broken. But then he smiled at me, but not a single part of that smile reached his sad and disappointed eyes, and I knew then that he was lying. He had meant every word and if I had said 'yes' in that moment, we would have gone together. But in my silence, that moment I had passed. I hadn't said a thing, but I might as well have told him flat out no.

Sitting in that hospital chair, looking at my pale and injured friend as he smiled at me and lied to me, his eyes pinched with pain, I never once, not for a single second, thought that when I turned him down in that moment, that he would decide to leave me here, alone. I had thought that by not telling him yes, that meant that he would stay and stick it all out with me. I was a selfish asshole, only thinking about my own fears, what I needed, and not all of the reasons why Quatre was so desperate to run away from his life.

Knowing what I know now... remembering that last day at the train station with him... if I could only go back in time, back to that moment, I wouldn't hesitate for a second. I would tell him yes. But I can't, and it's that thought that keeps me awake these nights, every night in the month since that Quatre's been gone from my life. That, and that last smile he had given me.

"Hey, you should sign my cast!" his smile was much more natural this time as he attempted to wave his cast at me in the sling it was in, "I'd rather that you be the first one to do it."

I raised an eyebrow at him, perfectly happy for the change of topic and putting our entire, bizarre conversation into the deep, dark corner of my brain I often put things that disturbed me.

"You got a pen?" I quipped.

"There should be one around here somewhere," he glanced around, "I thought I saw one of the nurses leave one..."

I reached over to loot around in his bedside table. I was doped up, but that didn't mean I wanted to move around unnecessarily. I wanted to avoid the pain that I felt earlier as much as possible, and I didn't want to let Quatre know just how bad my injury really was. I was lucky and found a pack of markers.

"Someone's kid must have left those there," Quatre remarked and then shot me a questioning look when I very deliberately pulled a dark blue one from the pack instead of a black one.

"I read in a book once that blue is the most soothing color," I teased, "and that's why they use blue a lot in hospitals and stuff. Maybe if your cast has blue on it, it'll heal faster."

He rolled his eyes at me.

"You're hilarious," he said dryly.

"I wonder why people started doing this," I muttered as I wrote on his cast, "It's kind of morbid, isn't it? Getting people that care about you to write their names on a wounded limb?"

"I imagine," Quatre remarked as he read what I was writing with an affectionate smile, "that it makes the person feel better. They can look at the thing that's hurting them and see how much people care about them. The more names that are on the cast, the more they're loved. It must be nice to have a cast so full of names, you wouldn't even be able to tell what color the plaster was, but it would be really terrible if, by the time the cast comes off, you didn't have any names at all."

I didn't like how sad my best friend sounded when he said that, but there was a soft light to his eyes when he finished reading what I wrote, so I hoped my name at least wouldn't make him feel bad when he looked at his broken arm.

'Get well soon, and remember not to scratch! -Duo'
　

End Part 5
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A Stagnation of Love (rewrite)