Adult-FanFiction.org : Gundam, Beyblade, DBZ, FMA

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
- 12
- 13
- 14
A Stagnation of Love

Chapter 3

Part 8
　

I dreamed. None of it was pleasant, unsurprisingly. I suppose that anyone that had lived through the two weeks that I just had would have suffered from nightmares, too. But those dreams were nothing like the ones I had had after my run in with the truck. Back then I had dreamed about the accident, but I had dreamed things differently.

I had dreamed that I had been too slow and the truck had hit Quatre. I had dreamed that I had failed and Quatre had died. This time I didn't need to dream anything different, I had already failed. I dreamed my memories in one big loop. In my sleep, I watched Quatre die over and over again. I watched him fall. I watched him surrender to gravity, to all of the shit in his life.

When I finally escaped my own personal hell and woke up, it was Saturday night. A day and a half had come and gone. My eyes were nearly encrusted shut with dried tears and sweat. My face felt filthy with the stuff. I felt burning hot, the kind of heat that makes you feel like you're suffocating and my head was pounding. My bladder was so swollen and pained that it was amazing I hadn't pissed myself while I had slept. I knew my body well enough to know I was horribly dehydrated, but I felt so sick that I didn't notice my empty stomach at least.

I felt like someone had tied my feet to someone's car and dragged me through a hot desert. I felt hollow, emotionally and physically. How many meals had I missed? How many hours? I had slept for so long, but my mental trauma and nightmares made me feel like I had been awake that whole time.

I didn't want to leave my bed. My nightmares were terrible, but I didn't want to be part of reality. But my bladder reminded me that if I didn't go to the bathroom in the next few minutes, something terrible was going to happen, so I struggled to my feet. Pain flared in my back, but it was as meaningless to me as my empty stomach. My head felt too heavy and stuffed with cotton for pain to get through. I found the stairs in the pitch dark that was my room and stumbled downstairs and to the bathroom like I was drugged. I walked into the wall a few times.

The house was quiet except for the sound of my father's snoring and I wondered if he had even realized that I hadn't left my bedroom at all since Friday. I wondered if he knew I was alive. Peeing at that point was both incredible and agonizing, but I managed even in my out of it state.

I then staggered back upstairs with every intention of laying down on my mattress and escaping the world again for a very long time, but I didn't even make it that far. Dizziness struck me like a plank of wood to the face. I'm not sure if I blacked out and fell to the floor or I laid down on it, but I was gone when my head hit the hard floor not even a full foot away from my mattress.

I woke up again Sunday afternoon. Well, I didn't so much wake up as I was woken up by my father kicking me in the side. I felt even worse than I had Saturday night. I was weak and that heat I had felt was most definitely a fever and not the weather. My bladder ached even though it was empty and I recognized the early signs of an incoming infection. My head felt so heavy that even my father's kick didn't hurt at all.

"Get the fuck up. Andre called. You haven't shown up for any of your shifts," he snarled at me.

Andre is my other boss. I was surprised that the hard ass hadn't called yesterday. I blinked up at my father, my tired and sick brain unable to follow what was happening with any kind of intelligence. I tried to at least sit up, but it just made me incredibly dizzy and fell back onto my side. At some point in my sleep I had ended up back on my mattress somehow. My pillow still felt damp and I wondered if it was all sweat or if I had been crying in my sleep. My eyes felt irritated so I might have. My tears seemed endless, even as dehydrated as I was.

"I said GET UP," my dad thought I was being a smartass and was getting furious.

He grabbed my arm, his other hand curling into a fist. I urged him, silently, to hit me until I was bloody and broken. I wanted to be mangled, just like Quatre was. I wanted to be in agony. But then he paused and actually looked at me in the light of the overhead light bulb I had helped my dad install awhile ago. He must have turned it on when he came up here.

"You didn't touch the food I left you last night," he said with a frown, letting go of my arm," Did you eat anything yesterday?"

I shook my head.

"Don't want food," I muttered in a raspy voice, "Stomach hurts."

The thought of food disgusted me and it had nothing to do with not having eaten in days or being sick.

"When did you last eat?" he continued to question me, being patient, his usually stern and intense gaze soft and caring.

He didn't act like that often, but he was capable of it. I didn't want him to be. I wanted him to be cruel. I wanted his hate, not his care. I struggled to answer his question. What day was it? Sunday? Had I eaten the day that Quatre had died.

"Friday morning," I finally remembered I had eaten breakfast before school that day. Toast and jam with water.

My father placed a hand on my forehead, feeling my obvious fever. His hand was so big and cool compared to my heated skin. It felt so good. He used to do that when I had been small. My eyes slid closed at the memory, the comfort at feeling my daddy's touch. He would put his hand on my forehead and brush back my long bangs. I would grab his hand both of mine, loving and awed at how much bigger just one of his hands were. I heard his voice, but it only soothed me deeper into the darkness of sleep.
*****
"Duo."

My father's voice woke me up again no more than an hour later, but it was long enough for me to dream. That time I dreamt about being in the hospital after my dad had beaten me with that empty vodka bottle, how Quatre had cared for me, been there for me, and for his care, I had snapped at him angrily. I had said something horrible to him. And he had kept on being my friend after that. But in the dream, when I had said that terrible thing to him, I hit him. I punched him in the face over and over, until his blue-green eyes turned blood red.

"Your stomach will feel better if you eat something," my father told me, placing a hand against my throbbing back and helping me sit up.

The world spun a few times before it righted itself again. There was a bowl of steaming soup next to me on the floor that I assumed he had made. I smelled vegetables and chicken. Normally, it would have smelled heavenly, but at that moment it smelled revolting. My stomach wanted nothing to do with it.

He handed me the bowl but I didn't feel the heat on my skin. I still felt cold. I didn't have a choice and some part of me knew that my father was right, I needed to eat something. I tried to drink from the bowl to see if my stomach would at least handle the broth, but my hands were shaking too badly. My dad took the bowl from me and lifted it, tilting a small amount of broth into my mouth.

My mind decided too many minutes had passed since it had last tortured me and gleefully supplied me an image of what Quatre's body might have looked like after the train had hit him, a bloody and mangled pile of gore, his limbs broken with bones jutting out, bone chips and red guts smeared across the track. The second the broth tried to slide down my throat, my stomach protested it's presence. I turned my head and vomited on the hard floor.

I expected my father to strike me or yell at me for throwing up, wasting food, and making a mess that he would need to clean up, but he didn't. He wiped off my face, gave me some water to drink that I had more success keeping down, and after a few minutes had passed, he tried to feed me more. I threw up again and he, with a patience and kindness that I hadn't seen from him since I had been a child, just repeated the whole process until, on the third try, I was able to keep down half a bowl of soup, including some of the vegetables and chicken, and half a bottle of water without puking.

He laid me back down on my mattress, pulling the sheets up and over me before starting to clean up my sick and disappearing down the steps for a few minutes. With food and water in me, I actually felt like a human being again. I didn't feel like I was just floating from one nightmare to the next. Even when I had been awake, I had just felt like I was stuck in a dream. The food in my stomach woke me up from my haze, but that didn't make me happy because it made me think. Quatre was dead. That hadn't changed in my sleep, so why would I want to be awake?

My father came back with a towel and a bottle of water, placing them next to my bed where I could reach. He put his hand on my forehead again, brushing my sweaty bangs away from my face.

"Get some rest," he said softly, his fingers lightly stroking my hair, "and make sure you drink the entire bottle. If you're feeling better later, I'll make you more soup."

I nodded, my eyelids starting to droop again.

"Thanks, Dad," I rasped and felt myself start to cry again, but my tears were silent this time. I let my father think they were from my fever.

He kissed my forehead and walked back downstairs, leaving my light on for me.

*****
I slept the rest of Sunday away, waking up early Monday morning. I stayed awake just long enough to chew on some bland crackers that had magically appeared at my bedside while I had slept and guzzled down the entire bottle of water. Then, my most immediate needs taken care of, I dozed off again.

When I opened my eyes late Monday afternoon and realized that I had just missed half of the school day, I panicked a little. Ever since missing a year of school thanks to pneumonia, I had never missed school because of sickness. The only times that I had ever skipped out of a day of school was because I was in the hospital with something broken or I physically could not get out of bed. Although, I suppose the trauma of losing the only friend you have to the point of making yourself sick counts as that.

But at the time, all I could think of was all the classes I had missed, all the homework I was late on, how my grades were going to suffer. None of that really mattered, but I think my brain was actively trying to separate itself from everything I had seen and felt in the past three days. I struggled to my feet in my disgusting clothes that I had been wearing since Friday, my hair heavy with sweat and falling out of my ponytail, and I thought about calling Quatre, to tell him that I was sick and not to worry about me. He always worried about me. Then reality came crashing back into me and I sat down hard, like someone had shoved me. I couldn't even blame my fever. It was almost entirely gone by then.

I felt my tears start all over again and even though I was sick to death of them and I didn't want to cry anymore, I couldn't help it. They just poured out of me like pus out of an infected wound. I didn't sob violently that time and I managed to get my tears stopped quickly, but not before my cheeks were soaked again. I stood up again, my back, legs, and headache protesting at being vertical again, but even if I had no intention of going to school that day, I couldn't stand being on that mattress anymore.

It wasn't that I was tired of not doing anything, because I didn't care. I didn't care about anything, not sleeping, not being awake, not eating, not my aches, not my tears, nothing. Depression is worse than physical injury and I was deep in it. I just couldn't lie there and do nothing because I didn't feel like I could sleep for another second, and I didn't want to think. Also the smell of my old sweat was getting to me.

I grabbed a fresh shirt and pair of sweatpants from my dresser. I felt dizzy from laying down for three days, but I managed to get down the stairs and into the bathroom without falling over. Neither of my parents were home and wouldn't be for a couple of hours, so I took my sweet time in the bathroom relieving myself and taking a very, very long shower. Any other day, it would have been amazing, since my dad was always yelling at me not to waste the hot water.

I got dressed and suddenly found myself with nothing to do, or rather nothing I had the energy or care to do. Even reading didn't hold any excitement for me, so I walked into our living room and sat down in my dad's lounger. It smelled of him and very faintly of beer. I flipped on the television and tried to find the most mindless thing I could, something that I could pay attention to but wouldn't require me to think at all. I watched a nature documentary about foxes for a bit, but then it reminded me of Trowa, of him saying how much he loved animals and wanted to travel the world and I had to turn the station before my sudden anger made me throw the remote into the television set. Every talk show I found talked about runaway children or depression or bullying or something else that reminded me of Quatre.

I eventually found a station that was having some kind of stupid action movie marathon, the kinds with lots of explosions, girls with big breasts, and muscled heroes with machine guns, but not before I felt like my heart was being ripped out of my chest. Everything I did, everything I saw, everything I heard just reminded me of Quatre and what had happened. My failure. All the things that I could have done to stop him... I felt hollow and grey, like I wasn't real. Even breathing felt difficult and I was trying as hard as I could to deny the fact of what my life was going to be like without him, but I couldn't.

What was I without my best friend? Before him, I had been completely alone, my parents the only people in my life. Quatre had saved me from total loneliness. Being with him, being his friend had just as much made me the person I am now as my parents' influence. What little there was in my life that I enjoyed, that made me happy, it was because of him. But now he's gone. How was I supposed to live with that?

Did I even want to? It seemed like all I had left were my memories and my hatred. Every time I felt that pain, that emptiness in me, my very first reaction was to call Quatre and tell him about it. I think, by the time my father got home, I was so horribly lonely and depressed, I would have called Quatre's number just to hear his voice again. I would have told him about how much it hurt, watching him die, how colorless everything was to me, how bland and tasteless even the food I ate was without him with me, and I would have pretended that he was listening.

But I couldn't even do that much. Quatre had had his phone on him when that train had hit him. It was destroyed, too. His suicide had taken even that one, tiny, pathetic shred of comfort from me.

I spent the few hours until my dad came home staring blankly at the television set and alternatively crying. I didn't cry like I had Friday again and my fits of crying seemed to come and go randomly, like my sadness and depression were waves. Every time I thought I was coping, that I could survive it, they would swell again and drag me down. Thankfully when my father walked in, it was one of my better moments. I was actually watching the new action film at that point. Watching the wanton destruction on the screen suited my mood.

My father was always particular about his chair. Mom and I could use it when he wasn't home, but as soon as he was, we were expected to vacate it immediately. That time, he didn't say a thing or try to throw me bodily out of the chair when he came in and I was sitting in it. He sat on our old, beaten up couch that one set of my grandparents had given us and didn't so much as glare at me. If I hadn't felt so numb, it would have shocked me.

He was already out of his work clothes, his gun and holster discarded in his bedroom. He sat there without a word and watched the movie with me. Any other day, I would have been happy. It was nice to sit there with him, just be with him without any screaming or yelling or hitting or being scared of him. He didn't even have a beer in his hand, which was rare. But I was too sad to feel happy to spend time with my father. I was too sad to feel anything else. It was just seeping into me, soaking in to every joint, every inch of me.

The movie finally ended right before we normally had dinner. I heard my mother come in at some point, but had quickly heard their bedroom door shut. She hadn't come out since. She had one of her headaches again. Knowing that she wouldn't come out for several hours, maybe even for the rest of the night, I started to get up, but my father beat me to it. I was finally surprised by his behavior. He hated cooking and if Mom or I weren't around to do it, he would often just get take out or heat up some leftovers. Was he being nice to me because I was sick or did he know?

I didn't know what to think if he did know. My father could be cold and cruel and if he did know that I had just lost my best friend and had decided not to say a word about it to me hurt me. While he was certainly capable of it, I didn't think that was the case. I hadn't said a word to him or my mother about it and I didn't intend to. It seemed too personal, too close to my heart to talk about to them. I guess that sounds odd, having something so personal I could tell my parents about it, but it was true.

They had hurt me so much, I just couldn't bear tell them. Either they wouldn't care, which I wouldn't have been able to cope with, the last coffin nail to my tentative control over myself, or they would try to comfort me, which would be worse. I was holding on by my fingernails, I didn't want comfort from two people that so seldom showed me any love at all.

How would they understand? They didn't even know that Quatre and I had been friends. Even if my dad was aware that Quatre Winner had killed himself and I had been there to see it, he didn't know that I had just lost my best friend, my only friend in the world. He didn't know that I felt like my soul had just been ripped from my body. He didn't know that I couldn't stop crying. He didn't know that every second that I was awake, I felt like throwing up. And he certainly didn't know that the only thing I wanted to do was grab the big butcher's knife from the kitchen, bring it to school, and gut Relena Darlien with it. Right before I took it to Trowa Barton.

The action movie marathon on the station that I was watching changed over to the news. I wasn't surprised to see that Quatre's suicide was the biggest story they had. Nausten isn't such a small town that everyone knows everyone's business or crimeless, but still, nothing super exciting happens here. A few drug busts, some thefts, nothing exceptionally newsworthy. But the thirteen year old heir to the Winner business throwing himself in front of a train was great entertainment, I suppose. Especially the gay thirteen year old heir. While I had slept my life away, word of Quatre's sexuality had already made it to the cops. His parents, if they had even tried, had been too late to pay anyone off and that juicy little tidbit was apparently public knowledge now. There wasn't any mention of Trowa, though.

I guess my testimony, along with all of our classmates and whoever had been on that platform with us, had been enough for the police to label it a suicide. He had died instantly, the news report had said. There wasn't any footage or interviews with Quatre's family. I guess that kind of wealth could buy discretion and respect. I wondered how his sisters were handling it, if they were still going to school, hounded by their classmates.

I felt numb watching the reporter talk about the details of the suicide and it's 'impact on the stricken community'. Ha! I bet Nausten was real stricken. No one had cared when Quatre had been miserable and bullied, but now suddenly they gave a shit that he was dead? I didn't cry. It was strange, I had been crying all day thinking of these tiny, little moments Quatre and I had had, but I couldn't cry hearing about his death.

I turned off the television when the news report informed me that his funeral was going to be that weekend. I couldn't handle that. His funeral. Quatre's funeral. How could he possibly have a funeral? He wasn't even old enough to drive! The whole thing was so ridiculous to me and turned my stomach into a hot, upset knot.

"Dinner's ready," my father interrupted my dark thoughts.

I sat down at the dinner table as he served me waffles and bacon. My stomach churned at the smell of it. The syrup was too sugary, the smell of bacon too thick. I didn't want any of it. But the second I stuck a piece of waffle in my mouth, my stomach woke up and immediately got over it's nausea, reminding me that I hadn't eaten very much at all in days. I ate all of it and polished off seconds as well. I knew I was probably going to sick later, but at that moment, my stomach was pretty happy just to have something in it.

I busied myself after dinner with cleaning my room, stripping the smelly sheets off my mattress and putting fresh ones on it and clearing away the plate of crackers and empty water bottles. When all that was done, I laid on my mattress with the light on, staring up at the ceiling. I had homework to do, I realized, but also realized that, even if I had had my school books with me, I had no intention of doing it. I just didn't care. It was the first time in my entire life that I purposively skipped doing my homework and wasn't worried to the point of fits. At some point I managed to fall asleep, but it wasn't for many hours and I dreamed heavily. My nightmares were there to stay.
*****
I went back to school on Tuesday. I hadn't wanted to. I didn't want to face my classmates and teachers. I didn't want to see the pity and fake concern on their faces. I didn't want to see Trowa and I didn't want to see Relena. As far as I was concerned, they had killed Quatre, the two of them, and they had gotten off scott free for it. But what was I going to do about it? Kill them? I wanted to, just the thought of looking at either of them filled me with dull rage, but I knew that I wouldn't. It wouldn't bring Quatre back.

I didn't even care if my father would be pissed off by my hanging around the house when I wasn't even sick anymore, but I had nothing else to do. Might as well go to school, I decided, because it was better than staying home and staring up at my ceiling, hating myself.

I don't think I need to say it, but school was hell. It was the first day I had ever been surrounded by my peers without Quatre to shield me. I was unprepared for the amount of rage that was in me returning to the place that had broken the only person that had ever truly cared for me. I hated everyone. Every person that stared at me in the halls and whispered to their friends I wanted to hurt. My heart was a stone, a bleeding stone.

My life has become a shitty, lackluster clone of how my life once was, a mockery of it. That day, when I thought about all the things I had once thought made me miserable, I wondered why I had thought them to be that bad. I sat through my first class with Mrs. Khushrenada, her voice like white noise. Quatre's desk next to mine was empty, only it wasn't his anymore. They would get some other kid to sit there maybe or it would stay empty, but it would never be his again. I could feel Relena's stare from somewhere behind me and willed her away. Even my rage at her wasn't enough to bring me out of my depressed stupor.

I didn't take any notes and when Mrs. Khushrenada skipped over me when she handed out the homework, I didn't even notice. I felt like crying. I was a ghost. The bell rang, signaling the next period, but I didn't move. The idea of getting up and walking to my next class was nightmarish. What was I doing, just shuffling through the motions, like nothing had changed? Just like everyone else? It was like no one had noticed that Quatre had died, no one cared, and that was probably close to the truth. No one had ever cared.

Hands touched my knees and I blinked, bewildered, at Mrs. Khushrenada. She was kneeling in front of me, looking at me with such earnest sympathy that I felt sick.

"Oh, Duo," she said, tears in her eyes, and drew me into a hug.

I had never been hugged by a woman before, only ever Quatre. It was strange and oddly comforting, even though I told myself that this person was not my mother, even if she felt exactly like I had always imagined being hugged by my mother would feel like as a child.

"I am so sorry," her voice was thick and I realized that she was crying.

I felt my own tears start to drip down my face for about the millionth time in the last four days. When she finally let go of me, she cupped my face in her hands.

"How are you?" she asked me, looking at me with more kindness than my mother ever had.

I wiped at my face.

"I..."

'I'm not doing too well, all I have are nightmares, I don't know how to handle this, I need help, why would he kill himself, how am I supposed to live with myself?'

A thousand thoughts in my head, all clamoring for attention.

"I'm coping," I lied.

She smiled sadly at me and I wondered if she could see right through me, could see my tired eyes, if she could see my depression.

"If you need to talk about it, I will always be here for you," she promised me, "If you need anything. You know that don't you?"

I nodded half heartedly. There was nothing she could do to help me and she probably knew that. Her hands dropped to her lap and held mine in hers, giving them a gentle squeeze.

"The principle wants to see you," Mrs. Khushrenada told me, "but you don't have to if you're not up to it. He just wants to give you your backpack back and talk to you for a little bit. You're already excused from your next class, if that's what you want."

I shrugged. I didn't care one way or another. I might as well. At least I wouldn't run into Relena or Zechs in the principal's office.

"I guess," I said noncommittally.

She gave me one last, weak smile and let me on my way. I had never been in Principal Chandler's office before in my entire time at this school. I might not be the best student, but I stay out of trouble, or had before Quatre had decided to fall in front of a train. His secretary just waved me in, staring at me with this pitiful look that suddenly made me angry. When would people stop looking at me like that?

"Ah, Mr. Maxwell," the principal greeted me as I walked in.

I blinked at him stupidly for a second. I hadn't expected him to be so formal. I was just a 7th grader, and my dad was 'Mr. Maxwell', not me.

"I am very sorry for your loss," he said solemnly.

I was getting kind of tired of people saying that to me, but then he added, "Quatre was such a smart boy," and I just felt devastated all over again.

"Thank you," I murmured uneasily.

I suddenly felt the complete unfairness of it as I stood there in the principal's office looking at this man dressed in the nice, but probably on the cheap side, suit in my cheaper jeans and t-shirt. Quatre had been smart, rich, nice, kind... he had been everything that I wasn't. But he had died and I was alive. Where was the justice in that? I should have been the one to kill myself, not Quatre. No one would miss me, mourn me, or ever say something like 'he was such a smart boy' with any kind of sincerity like that.

Principal Chandler stood from his desk and handed me my backpack.

"I believe that this belongs to you."

I took it back without much enthusiasm.

"If you need to talk to someone or if you are having any problems... adjusting, my door is always open," he advised me, "and you have the full support of our guidance counselor and therapist."

"I know," I said and just wanted to get out of that office. He was a nice enough man, but I knew I would never be coming back there with any of my problems.

"Very well, then," he said with a little frown like he wished that I had opened up to him. He probably wanted to cover his ass. I was really starting to wish that the adults at that school would stop looking at me like they were trying to assure themselves I wasn't going to slit my throat any time soon.

On my way out of the office, out in the main hallway, I nearly bumped into a man and woman that were trying to get into the office. When I actually looked up at their faces, my heart stopped. I recognized them at a mere glance, not because I had ever met them or seen their pictures, though. It was harder to tell with the man, but I had seen the shape of his nose and mouth for four long years and I would continue to see it in my dreams. And the more that I looked at him, the more traits I could see as traits Quatre would have grown into, if he had lived to grow into them.

I don't know exactly what I had expected Quatre's father to look like, but while he wasn't as tall as I had thought he would be, he was just as imposing as my best friend had led me to believe. My father was taller than him and would no doubt win in a fist fight, but Mr. Winner had the coldest, most intense and driven stare I had ever seen. I imagined that same man only ever interacting with Quatre to tell him that he had to get the perfect grades and go to the perfect college. I almost shuddered thinking of that cold, piercing stare directed at him. His sandy hair and brown eyes didn't make him look much like his only son, you had to really study his face to see it.

Quatre's mother on the other hand was a completely different story. My friend had clearly gotten most of his obvious features from her. While Quatre had been handsome, Mrs. Winner was beautiful. Not gorgeous, but beautiful. Her skin was pale and perfect and I could easily imagine his smile gracing her pale, pink lips. Her blonde hair was just a few shades from white, and naturally wavy. She wore her hair in the exact same way that I did, in a low ponytail.

She had his eyes. That made my heart ache with pain, seeing those green-blue eyes that I had thought I would never see again. Those eyes were the same shade as his had been. Those eyes had the same kindness and shyness in them. I couldn't bear to look at her.

I felt rage simmer dangerously in me at the sight of the two of them. These were Quatre's parents, the two people in his life that were just as responsible for his death as Relena, Trowa, and myself. For all I knew, they were more responsible. I remembered all the times he had gotten locked out or forgotten or had to go home to a dark house. I remembered all of the times that he had needed them and they hadn't been there for him, every single time. And I hated them. I would have been content to slide past them and never see them again after Mr. Winner said 'excuse me' in a slightly snide way, but then his wife took a good look at me and her eyes widened in shock.

"Oh!" she said in a near gasp, "You're that boy that saved Quatre's life."

Bitterness consumed me, turning that dull rage into something searing hot and out of control. Of course. I wasn't Quatre's friend to these people. I was just the boy that had saved him from getting by that truck. Saved him. Ha! That was fucking hysterical. What exactly had I saved? Two weeks for him to feel agony at Trowa ignoring him and Relena destroying his life. I had saved his life so he could live just long enough to think he repulsed the boy that he loved, for me to push that same boy away from him, and for everyone in school to laugh and point fingers at him like he was some kind of monster, a freak.

For the first time, I wished that I had never ran out into that street after Quatre. I wished that I had let that truck hit him. Wouldn't that have been kinder to him? No... if I was making a wish then I wish that I had gone out into that street and stood with him. I wished that I had let that truck hit me, too, instead of being the one left behind.

I should have just muttered 'yeah, I'm him,' and pushed past them, or just ignored them entirely. But I didn't and looking back at it now, I regret it. At the time, I didn't feel sorry, but I did feel frightened. Of myself. I had so much anger and resentment twisted up inside of me. What amount of it that I had had before Quatre had taken his own life seemed so miniscule by comparison. I regret letting all of that hurt and rage take control of me, but I won't say that Quatre's parents hadn't deserved it. I was convinced... am convinced that if they had been better parents, if they had given him something to come home to, he might have thought twice about killing himself. Looking at them, I just couldn't understand how they had made Quatre, who had been so smart and well-behaved, feel so unloved.

"Not well enough," I snapped bitterly at her, "He still killed himself, didn't he? I might as well have let that truck hit him for all the good I did for him. All I did was delay his death for a little while."

Quatre's mother damning eyes went perfectly wide and began to fill with tears. His father looked irritated that my words had upset his wife, but shook that expression off easily.

"There was nothing anyone could have done for him," Mr. Winner said sadly, "There must have been something very... very wrong with Quatre for him to have done that. He was sick and no one knew it. He didn't want anyone to help him," the man's eyes became distant and I wondered what he was thinking of.

Was it Quatre's suicide that made him sick and hopeless to his father? His depression? Or was it the mounting rumors that his only son had been a faggot? His words had meant to soothe me or himself, but his belief that there was no way that Quatre could have been helped enraged me. What did he know about it?! He hadn't even known that there had been a problem... he hadn't even tried!

"You don't know a single fucking thing about your own son, do you?" I said bitterly, enjoying his and his wife's horrified expression far too much, "No one knew he was sick? All you had to do was just look at him, just talk to him for one goddamned minute of your busy life to know that he was depressed! You still don't have a clue why he took his life, the real reason do you? You don't even know that Quatre and I were best friends," I felt hot tears drip down my face, my breath hitching in my throat, but I still couldn't stop myself, "You were NEVER there for him! He had to talk to me about being gay and feeling lonely because he had to go home to an empty house every fucking day, because he never saw his parents anymore!

"You never gave him just one single moment of your lives, you love your jobs more than you loved him! What do you think he felt when he realized that, happy?! Even his sisters didn't talk to him most of the time! When he realized he was... he was different, he was frightened, he needed you to tell him it was ok, not be worried that his own parents would love him less than they already did if he said anything.

"If you had just spoken to him once this week, or bothered to visit him in the hospital after he broke his goddamned arm, you would have seen that he needed help," I glared at Quatre's father with the full weight of my rage although I was terrible out of breath and drained at that point and I wondered if I was really yelling at the couple in front of me or myself, "You might as well have killed him yourself," I hissed at him through my pants.

For a moment, the bastard's face went white as a sheet, then what I, a mere, thin, thirteen year old boy wearing thrift store jeans and dark circles under his eyes, was daring to say to him really filtered into his brain and he turned bright red with rage. We were a matching set. In that rage, I saw his love for his dead son and the enormity of his grief. He hadn't shown Quatre that love enough, but that didn't mean that he hadn't felt it.

Seemingly incapable of words, he raised his hand to strike me in his anger at my audacity. I willed him to do it. I wanted that man to strike me more than I had ever wanted my father to, because this was Quatre's dad, and as much as I hated him, I had had my own role in his son's death.

But he didn't. Something deflated his anger and temporary insanity, making him lower his hand. Maybe it was my own, naked grief. Maybe he saw the truth beyond my enraged ranting. Or maybe he had just had second thoughts about striking a crying thirteen year old.

"Duo," I heard the principal say from behind me and turned to look at him. I thought that I was in trouble for causing such a scene, but it was Mr. Winner that he was glaring cautiously at. I guess Principal Chandler didn't like adults almost hitting students in his office right in front of him, "Why don't you go to recess?"

It wasn't anywhere near time for seventh grade recess, but I could take a hint. I was in no shape for classes and he was giving me a free pass. I took it, squeezing past the Winners.

I took one look back at Mrs. Winner, and I will never, ever forget how she looked just then. She was stricken. Stricken with fear and horror and absolute grief. If her husband had refused to believe what I had screamed at him, she definitely hadn't. She had taken my poison filled words into her heart. I wonder, even now, what it was that had scared her so badly that day, the truth in my words, or me.

I might hate the Winner family for never treating Quatre right or loving him enough, and for letting all those bad feelings and secrets weigh him down to his death over the years, but they truly suffered from his death, more than I had ever, childishly, thought that they would. I had heard that a few of his sisters missed a whole week of school while another dropped out. Lily ran away from home a week after Quatre's funeral.

And Quatre's mother... she killed herself two weeks after Quatre had after swallowing two whole bottles of antidepressants. I heard from one person that Lily had found her in the bathtub that she had died in, and another that it was her husband, not that it makes a difference. I never found out if she had overdosed from the meds themselves or if she had drowned, there was so much misleading gossip about it.

A week after Mrs. Winner had committed suicide and two weeks after Lily had gone missing, Mr. Winner sold his entire business and he and what remained of his children left Nausten. I wonder if its that easy to leave behind bad memories. I don't think it is. I had killed Quatre, then I had killed his mother and destroyed his family.

My mother was right. I never should have been born.
*****
I walked out to the playground, past it, into the little patch of woods that Quatre and I always went to when we went out to recess together. I found our swings and sat down in mine. I stared at his like if I looked at it hard enough, looked at it without blinking until my ears teared up and my vision became blurry, I could make him appear there. I could actually see it in my head, him sitting there, swinging lightly as he talked to me about something, a book he had read, Trowa, anything he could think about, smiling that smile of his.

"I miss you," I said out loud.

Sadness squeezed at my chest. I did miss him. I felt so alone, so... bereft. I don't have the right words for how it makes me feel still. But I missed him, I missed having someone to talk to.

"I wish you could tell me why," I whispered, "Why you did it, why you didn't just stop and talk to me, talk to someone. Why, Quatre?! Why did you have to give up and leave me behind?"

I felt angry all of a sudden, angry at him, angry at his parents, angry at myself most of all. He knew how much I needed him, and he had looked me in the eye and ended it all. Sitting next to me on the swing, Quatre smiled at me sadly and reached out and touched my arm. My memories painted the feathery touch of his fingers on my skin and I shuddered. I had to close my eyes. It was too easy to imagine him there, to imagine that he was real.

Both recess blocks came and went as I was sitting there, but no one bothered me, not even Relena. I saw her from where I was, talking with a huddle of girls, including Dorothy, all of them laughing, smiling, and nodding to what she was saying. Relena herself had a sweet little smile on her face. I wanted to cut her face off. Did she feel anything about the fact that Quatre was dead thanks to her cruelty? Guilt? Loss? Regret? I didn't think she was careful of feeling any sort of human emotion besides rage and pettiness. She should be the one with a funeral scheduled in five days, the one with parents and siblings grieving over her.

I waited for all of my classmates to walk into the building when the bell rang before getting off my swing. I stared at Quatre's swing one last time. I remembered when we had put them up, how nice it was to have something of our own that we had made ourselves. I touched the rope that his was hanging by. I remembered hanging it and tying it for him, because he was scared of climbing trees.

I used the trunk of the tree for momentum and hoisted myself up on the branch. It was still sturdy and took my weight easily. I took my time untying the knots that felt like I had only tied them a few days ago. His swing crumpled to the ground and I jumped down after it. I was careful gathering the rope and folding it all up before putting it safely in my backpack. I didn't plan on ever going back to that place and I just couldn't leave it behind. I had no reason to visit those swings again.

I was willing to sit through the rest of my classes, even gym, through my recent haze, but instead got pulled into an assembly for two of my blocks. It wasn't just my grade, either, but all of the students got pulled from their classes. Principal Chandler stood center stage in our auditorium and talked about depression, suicide, Quatre, and a whole bunch things that I'm sure principals are required to talk about when one of their students decides to end their life, no matter the reason why. I could feel some people staring at where I was sitting during the assembly.

I left halfway through it, when one student in the lower grades asked if they were going to make a monument to Quatre, like the two plaques we had out front dedicated to students who had died in car wrecks or to cancer. Principal Chandler had informed her that it was under discussion with the school committee, but I knew that that just meant that they were going to bury the whole issue. They didn't give kids that killed themselves memorials, it kind of sends the wrong message. I just couldn't take it anymore after that, that entire day, having to be reminded of my best friend every second.

I didn't go to my last class, gym, and I skipped my swimming class, too. I seriously doubted that I would be missed. I was scared to cross the street where we had almost gotten killed by that truck, partially because it still frightened me to think about it sometimes, but I was also afraid of what I might do if I walked across that street on that day. I just went home and laid down on our shitty couch, thinking about the equally shitty emptiness in my stomach.
*****
During one of our many failed and useless sessions, the school therapist told me that a loss like the one that I was facing never really goes away, that it will always hurt and make me sad, but that time would make that hurt less and less. Every day, she said, it would hurt me a little less. But that wasn't true. A month since Quatre's death and it still hurts just as much as that first day back at school, staring at his empty swing and imagining his empty touch. It hasn't gotten any better, not a centimeter of the empty hole in my heart has gotten any smaller or been filled by a single thing. A few days certainly hadn't made a damned difference.

By that Friday, nothing had gotten any better. Every day, both at school and at home, was a nightmare. Every second, I longed to see and talk to Quatre, and every second my depression grew like some sort of movie monster inside of me. With Quatre gone, nothing was the same. Everything seemed a bit blander, a bit more colorless, and nothing anyone did pulled me out of the downward spiral I was in.

Even my favorite books and favorite foods couldn't make me happy. My appetite and sleep habits never recovered. I slept in two to three hour bursts, my nightmares always wrestling me out of a deep sleep, and I ate like a bird. When everything tastes like cardboard and sand in your mouth, you stop having any enthusiasm for what you're chewing on. I ate because my body needed it and I couldn't get very much skinnier, but I had no interest in food anymore.

School didn't get any easier, either. All the things that had been important to me before; grades, literature, writing, spelling, not making an ass of myself or letting other people know how stupid I was, they didn't matter to me anymore. I hated everything in my daily life, especially my classmates and their petty, pointless lives. I thought about running away like Quatre had dreamed of doing. I thought about dropping out of school. I thought about putting my father's gun to my temple and pulling the trigger. I thought about that one a lot. But I didn't do any of it.

I stared to focus during class and do my homework again on Wednesday. I didn't know why. It wasn't like I had woken up out of my haze of sadness and bitterness, and it wasn't like I suddenly cared about school again, either, but I put the effort in for some reason. Maybe it was because Quatre had always been so adamant about not giving up on my education or maybe it was just because I needed something to do beyond feeling miserable all of the time.

I never returned to my swimming lessons, though. Surprisingly, I never got into trouble for that. I think that all of my teachers, especially Mrs. Khushrenada, were relieved I was doing my work and I hadn't just faded away at that point, that I was turning my homework in without any of them having to talk to me and deal with me personally. Half of my teachers didn't seem capable of handling me the way that I was, some because of the effort that would take, others because they just couldn't handle a depressed kid without crying themselves.

The other half were like Mrs. Khushrenada and took my consistent homework as a sign that I was getting through this. They would probably be a bit alarmed if they knew just how often I thought about blowing my brains out when I got home in their classes.

I didn't want Saturday to arrive. I didn't have work that day, and for the very first time, I wished that I did. I wanted something to take my mind off what day it was and washing dishes and folding pizza boxes was the best I had besides my meager homework. I wished that I had classes to go to or some chores that my father wanted me to do, but there was nothing. Saturday was Quatre's funeral.

I had decided, the very second that I had heard about it, that I didn't care if I got an invitation to it, I wasn't going to go. I couldn't bear just the thought of sitting amongst Quatre's family members and listening to someone who had never even known him talk about him. I didn't want to look at the empty casket because there hadn't been enough whole parts of him left to bury or have those people look at me with that disgusting mix of pity and curiosity. I especially didn't want to see Quatre's parents again. Still, I felt angry that they hadn't even tried to ask if I would go. I didn't know if they were being petty or they hadn't believed me when I had said that I had been his best friend.

I was on my way out of school on that Friday, distracted thinking about how I was going to spend my weekend, the very first weekend I would spend without my friend, when I heard Relena's voice for the first time in a week. She had completely ignored me since Quatre had died. I didn't know what to think about it. Was she going to leave me alone from now on, and if she did, why? Because Quatre was dead? Because it wasn't as entertaining, to just pick on me? Because she didn't think it would effect me anymore? Because she actually felt guilt over Quatre's death?

Or was she content, just for the meantime, with the damage that she had done? Or was I just so low on her radar at the moment? And did I even want her to stop tormenting me? Did I want Quatre's death to be the thing that, after all this time hoping and dreaming of, ended her bullying me? How could I possibly deserve this peace and quiet when Quatre never had, when her torment was exactly what I deserved? I didn't know, but the sound of her voice just then had the same effect to me as nails raking a chalkboard.

"Oh, of course I'm going!"

My hair stood on end and goosebumps raised on my skin from the mere sound of her voice. A part of me wanted to run from it as fast I could, the old, instinctive part of me that was frightened of her, but it was the part of me that was filled with rage and bitterness and loathing for her that I listened to. I walked towards that hateful sound, around the corner of the hallway until I could see her, the twisted, fucked up nucleus surrounded by Dorothy and her other 'friends', but I was far enough away that she didn't notice me yet.

"Mr. Winner asked me, personally, to come to Quatre's funeral," she was saying with a repulsive mix of fake somberness and self-importance, flicking her hair over her shoulder, a gesture I saw her do a lot when she was being social, "After all, Quatre and I knew each other since we were kids. I want to pay my respects to one of my dearest friends," she said with what sounded like deep sadness.

If I didn't know her so well, it would have actually sounded sincere. The group following her every word certainly fell for it.

"It's just so terrible!" a redheaded girl I had seen hanging out with Relena and Dorothy before but didn't know anything about placed her hand on Relena's arm in what was a soothing gesture, "I am so sorry you had to go through that, Relena. I still can't believe he killed himself like that!"

"Yes, it was devastating," she said and there were actually crocodile tears in her eyes, "I always knew that Quatre was... troubled, his kind always are. I mean, a person would have to be troubled to like someone of the same sex and Quatre was obviously no different. But I never thought that he would do something so... so horrible as take his own life just because he was ashamed of his own choices in life!

"I certainly hope that little prank didn't make things worse for him. I'm sure that the person that did it had the best intentions and just wanted get him to open his eyes and see how his... his sickness was hurting his friends! I just wish that he would have come to me and told me about his problems. I'm sure that I could have helped him find a way to cure his affliction or at least find some professional help."

I don't know when I started to walk towards her, but suddenly I was mere feet away. Her back was to me, so she didn't see me approach, but the girls in front of her did, including Dorothy. The other girls shrank away at something that they saw on my face, perhaps my insanity or my cold, detachedness. Dorothy looked frightened herself. She could handle my anger with the same disdain that Relena always had for it, but I wasn't angry. I was beyond that. I felt a clear purpose, not rage. My heart was cold and hollow. I felt blank of humanity.

"Relena-" Dorothy tried, in vain, to warn her best friend.

Relena turned to see what the problem was, just in time for my fist to connect with the side of her face. She fell backwards on her ass and looked up at me with absolute shock and horror. It was the most reaction I had ever gotten from her before and it should have made me feel good, to look down at her like that, to actually have her beneath me for once, but I didn't even feel that much. I felt no satisfaction towards her fear of me at all. Her lip was split where I had hit her and blood slowly tracked down her chin. A drop of it fell on her perfectly white shirt. Watching it spread across the pristine fabric was fascinating. Her friends screamed and a few actually ran away while others stared at me with the expression that she had. I guess they thought I might hit them, too. I was considering it.

"You're so repulsive," I said with a cold smirk, my father's voice... Relena's voice coming from out of my mouth, "The world would be a better place if you had died instead of Quatre. Why don't you just kill yourself like he did and see how many people mourn over you, just how many people won't give a single solid shit that the mighty Relena Darlien is dead? Why don't you try and see how little you're really worth?"

She brought a shaking hand to her face, touching the bruise that was already starting to form there. I looked down at her with contempt and disgust. I thought, if only for a moment, I saw tears forming in her pale eyes, but that might have just been in my imagination. I turned and walked away from the group of my classmates, down the hallway, and out the door. I walked all the way home and it wouldn't be for days later that I felt any sort of regret about what I had done, or any fear of what I was capable of.

I walked into my kitchen to find my mother getting through a bottle of vodka and reading a battered book. Her eyes were completely red and the bottle was half empty already. She had obviously been at it for awhile. I threw my book bag down on the kitchen floor, the books making a loud slamming sound that jolted her out of her stupor. She glared at me with red hot contempt and anger.

"What the hell are you doing home?" she snarled at me in a badly slurring voice, heavily drunk, instead of looking through me like she so often did. She was in a foul mood. Good, so was I, "Shouldn't you be in school?!"

I felt disgust seeing how incredibly drunk she was at that hour. This was my mother, I thought, the woman that had given birth to me, falling into a bottle because she wasn't good for a single other thing. She didn't even know what time it was.

"Not that it matters," she laughed harshly and in the past, that disdainful laugh would have cut through me like a knife, but I didn't have enough of a heart left to cut anymore. It was all just scar tissue, "I bet your teachers won't even know you're gone with the grades you bring home," she laughed drunkenly again and took a long swig of her bottle, "You're beyond useless, aren't you?" her head slumped almost to the table as her glazed eyes stared at the liquid in the bottle, "Can't even... can't even... get through school... what the fuck is even the point of you going? Like anything useful is ever going to stay in that shit brain of yours... just a waste of everyone's time, that's what you are-"

I slammed my hands down on the table in front of her, startling her into almost spilling her vodka, but I grabbed the bottle from her and put it down on the counter next to me with the same force that I had hit the table with my palms. It was a wonder that the bottle hadn't broken. She looked up at me with the same horrified, frightened expression that Relena had. She thought I was going to hit her, I realized, just like him. She was expecting it out of me. What did she see when she looked at me, I wondered. Did she see him, the him that she had had sex with in high school, the him that she had loved once, or how he was now, a loser that liked to hit her?

"My best friend died last week," I told her with a steady calmness that would have frightened even Quatre if he had ever heard me speak like that. There was no emotion at all in my tone, just icy coldness. I bet that's what sociopaths sound like when they aren't trying to manipulate someone or pretend to be normal, "You don't even know who that is, do you?"

She didn't answer me. She just kept looking up at me like I was some kind of wild animal.

"You're so pathetic," I sneered at her, sounding horribly like my father, like I was channeling him, "Nothing more than a drunk and you call me useless. You won't even remember any of this tomorrow morning. You'll just drink it all away, your entire life, just a bad, alcohol filled dream. All you can think about is yourself, you know that? Did it ever occur to you for one second of your pointless life that I don't want to be here with you anymore than you want me in your life? You didn't do me any favors by bringing me into this world," I swiped my long, wild bangs out of my eyes and felt a wetness on my cheeks that I hadn't realized was there, "I just want to be with Quatre," I felt my coldness crack along with my voice as grief suddenly filled every hole I had in my heart, every bit of emptiness.

I strode to the refrigerator, opened the freezer door so hard that it slammed into the wall and grabbed the bit of birthday cake that Quatre had made me that I had never eaten. I turned back and snagged the bottle of vodka, too. My mother was looking at me with complete fear and pain, tears as silent and unknown as mine tracking down her flushed face.

I had hurt her and I didn't care. Why should I give a shit when she had never cared about hurting me?
　

End Part 8
Author's Note: This was meant to be the last part of Chapter 3, but it ran a little too long (over 50 pages), so I decided to break it in half. The next part will definitely be the end of this chapter and then we will be entering another time jump. I will be taking a short break after I post the next part to get my notes for Chapter 4 together.
- 12
- 13
- 14
You need to be logged in to leave a review for this story.You need to be logged in to leave a review for this story.
Report Story

A Stagnation of Love (rewrite)