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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
- 13
- 14
- 15
A Stagnation of Love

Chapter 3

Part 9
　

　

　

It took me hours to walk to the train station, not because it was far from my house, which it wasn't, but because by the time I could hear the sound of the trains and see the building in the distance, I was shaking so badly that I had to sit down on a nearby bench. My stomach coiled at the mere thought of where I was going and every time I heard one of the trains go by, I thought I was going to vomit. It had been happening ever since that day, every time I saw or heard a train. I just remembered what Quatre did and felt sick. My hands would shake and my vision would become fuzzy. It was pathetic.

Wednesday night, I was jolted away by the sound of one of the trains going by South Nausten. It was a sound that I had lived with all of my life. Because of the factories, South Nausten had it's own train yard, but only workers could enter the yard since it was all cargo freight and incoming building materials for the construction companies. The trains themselves had a different sound to them than the ones that carried passengers to the Central Nausten train yard. It was that fact alone, that the train I was hearing was a cargo train and not one of the passenger trains that had killed Quatre, that let my heart slow down enough to fall back asleep that night.

I didn't want to go back to the train yard. I didn't want to go there and remember. But I had to. I needed to talk to him. I needed to see him, and if there was anywhere in town where I could do that, it was at the place that he had died. I felt just as much of a pull to that place as I felt a repulsion.

Looking back on it now, it's amazing that I didn't run into a cop or some other adult concerned with a teenager walking around carrying a bottle of vodka, but I got to Central Nausten without anyone trying to apprehend me or steal the alcohol. When I got there, I dug through a trashcan and found a paper bag and used it to carry the bottle and cake.

The Central Nausten train station was always open. There had been a huge stink about that a few years ago, all about workers' rights and the cost of keeping the trains running all day and night, but since a few of the train lines went to the bigger cities in our state, hours away, and the stations they went to kept late hours and a few of them were twenty-four hour stations like ours. Our town was a perfect lay over for people traveling through the state and the revenue the train station and local businesses did with the people passing through was greater than the pain in the ass of keeping it staffed in the early hours of the morning, I guess.

The train station kept a skeleton crew past ten pm and even before then, the station didn't exactly crawl with security guards and staff. There was only one guard stationed at a time and he or she mostly just patrolled the inside of the station and platforms for people breaking safety codes or bums trying to steal from the vendors. Beyond that, no one really paid attention to anyone else. If you were quiet and not doing anything illegal, you were practically a ghost. Certainly no one paid attention to a scrawny teenager passing through the station. I guess in a bigger city, someone would have checked my paper bag for a bomb or gun or knife or something else dangerous, but not in Nausten. We had never had a bomb threat or a school shooting in our entire history.

Just thinking about walking out onto one of the platforms, not even the one that I had watched Quatre die from, sent me to the men's room to puke up my lunch. I felt so pathetic sitting there on the bathroom floor, clutching to the dirty toilet like a lifeline. This should be this hard, I thought, but it was. I was surrounded by that day, the worst day of my life, the day from all of my nightmares. Every sight and sound of that station had me trembling like a baby and I felt like I was going to start screaming at any minute. Only my stubbornness, determination, and love for Quatre kept me from leaving.

I couldn't make myself go out onto that platform, though. I tried as hard as I could, but my legs froze and I couldn't make them move when I tried. All I got for my efforts was an upset stomach, headache, and blurry vision. I was sick of fighting myself, of feeling so frightened just by a place, so I went out to a different platform. It was the next one down from the one I had chased Quatre to, for a south bound train that went to some small resort town named Havensforth. All I knew was that the place had two big lakes that drew in a lot of tourists looking to hunt and fish. There was no one out on the platform and I doubted that it would see much traffic, even on a Saturday. March wasn't exactly tourist season.

It wasn't nearly time yet, so I sat down on the bench, placing my bag next to me. I hadn't planned on going there so early, but really, where else did I have to go? What did I have left in my life that mattered at all? Why not just sit there on that bench and pass the hours away? It wasn't like anyone would be worried about me. By late that night, my mother would have forgotten what I had said to her, if she hadn't forgotten already, and my father would just be furious that I hadn't gone to work. I doubted that he would be worried, even if I had never run out like that before, and I doubted even more that he would come looking for me.

I passed the time sitting on that bench watching the people and trains pass me by. No one stopped to talk to me or even look at me funny. It got dark pretty fast and the platform became lit up by some old fashioned styled lanterns that actually made the area look quaint and pretty. It helped me to relax and forget where I was for some reason, maybe because that time of day had finally passed me by, or maybe just because the darkness made the platform look so different, but I eventually stopped shaking and feeling sick. I could barely even see the tracks in the dark.

I got hungry right around the time I would have come home for dinner after work if I had gone. Not surprising since all I had had for lunch was a salad, a roll, and water, and I had recently thrown that up. There wasn't anyone to buy me lunches anymore and I hadn't had much money to buy more than that. I tried to ignore my hunger, but I had absolutely nothing to distract myself with. I was beginning to wish that I had brought my backpack with me so I could have one of my textbooks to read.

The vendors were nearly closing up shop by the time that I decided it would probably be a good idea to eat something. I bought a plain bagel from one of the cheaper vendors with the last two dollars that I had, telling myself that it was ok to waste money on a small meal. It wasn't like I was going to need those two dollars. The bagel was slightly stale and I hadn't had the time, or the real ability to care, to toast and butter it before I ate it, but it was something in my stomach at least.

I slept at the station that night. When that stupid idea had entered my head Thursday during school, I hadn't really planned on camping out at the station like that, but dealing with Relena and my mother had driven me there for some reason. It was just as well. The station was just as good a place to spend the night as my bedroom. When I finally started to feel sleepy, I laid down on the bench and draped my jacket over me like a blanket. It wasn't too cold out, but it was windy. I tried not to think about the fact that it was the jacket that Quatre had given to me for my birthday.

Ironically, for the first time since he had died, I didn't have nightmares about Quatre's suicide. My dreams weren't exactly pleasant. I was sitting on the bench, watching the trains go by and Quatre was sitting on the bench next to me, whole and alive, not a speck of blood on him, drinking from a hot thermos of tea. I could smell the jasmine so strongly, even in my dream.

I kept trying to talk to him, to apologize for letting him down, but he was angry at me for letting him die and refused to speak to me. It wasn't a happy dream, but it wasn't a bad one, either. Even if he was mad at me, blaming me, it felt so good being there with him, feeling his presence at my side again. I didn't want to wake up from it, but I did when an early morning train passed by where I had been sleeping.

I felt wide awake immediately, my stomach demanding attention that it wasn't going to get. I sat up, put my jacket back on, and looked at the station clock. It was nine-thirty. I had almost missed my time. I must have slept deeply and well to have slept that late. That was good. At least I had had a nice sleep for once for this.

I grabbed my bag and jumped down from the platform onto the tracks. I wasn't worried about getting accidentally hit by a train, I would be able to hear one coming long before I would be in any danger, and I also knew that the train that had woken me up was the same line that had killed Quatre. It would be another hour before the next one came down that rail.

I walk down the tracks until I got to the right spot. They had cleaned off all of the blood and gore very thoroughly, but I still found the spot with ease. Streaks of blood or not, I dreamed about that place every night. Every time I closed my eyes, I saw that stretch of track. There wasn't a single person on the platform, which was another point in my favor. The platform was high up, but I still would get spotted and trying to explain why I was walking along the tracks would just make me sound crazy. I was... am crazy, but that doesn't mean that I wanted other people to know it.

I found the right place, the exact spot where Quatre had fallen, the place where he had ended his life, and sat down there on the tracks. The metal and gravel were cold, but the knowledge of where it was that I was sitting, chilled me a hell of a lot more. If there was any truth to people having souls, was a piece of Quatre's still there on the tracks where his body had been pulverized? Was he haunting that stretch of track somehow, or had he moved on like so many people believe our souls do when we die? Was Quatre in Heaven, that 'better place' I heard about so much? Was he happy there, had he found the peace he had never found here? Or was he in Hell for taking his own life? Or was all of it just a big crock of horse shit?

I sat there on the tracks and tried to feel some glimmer, some faint spark of the person that had once been my best friend. His warmth, his smile, his kindness, his fears, his insecurities. I tried to feel Quatre, but all I felt was the cold and wind, the gray sky above me that was threatening rain but wouldn't deliver until the following day and the even grayer gravel that I was sitting on. I felt empty and alone there. I didn't feel any souls, anything human besides myself. I certainly didn't feel God as I sat where my friend had died.

I felt this sudden perverse, bitter urge to pray and ask God or whoever else might be listening what the point had been of Quatre's life, sadness and suffering, the pain he had felt that had led him to believe that death was the best answer for him. I wanted to ask why someone as kind as Quatre had been made to go through Hell while people like Relena and Zechs got to walk through life without a scratch. I wanted to ask if He really did hate fags, if He hated me and that was why my only friend was gone but I had been left behind. I wanted to ask Him why I had been born.

But I didn't pray. Because I was afraid of what the answer would be just as much as I was afraid that there wasn't going to be any answer at all. I had never been much for religion. I guess I'm just too much of a realist, I believe what I see and feel, and I have never seen or felt any proof that someone was watching over me. If some deity had made this world, that was great, but what did They have to do with me was how I thought about it. If there was a God, then He was just like my parents. He had created me, given me life, put me on this planet, but He didn't love or care for me any more than my mother or father did.

I wasn't one of those pathetic people that expected that, as long as I worshipped a God and praised Them and followed Their rules, then They would solve all of my problems, but if God was real and supposed to love me like how people said that my parents were supposed to love me, why did He stay silent while my father beat me, my mother ignored me when all I wanted from her was a shred of affection, and Relena made me feel like shit?

I wasn't looking to be led around by the hand by some all powerful being, I had always been rather independent and I could take care of myself, but all I wanted from God was some notion of comfort and understanding, to know that things would work out one day and that I had a shot at being loved by someone. Instead, He had taken my best friend from me, the one person in my life taht I had dared to depend on. What was the point of faith if it gave me no comfort or confidence, but only bitterness and the feeling that I had been abandoned? Hell, I got that at home and at school all the time. I didn't need a god to add to it.

I hadn't really thought all that much about an afterlife, either. I couldn't stop from dying and whatever would happen was going to, regardless of my faith. But ever since Quatre had died, I had been thinking about it constantly, what would happen to me after all the shitty mistakes that I had made and where Quatre might be. I guess it still doesn't make a difference, but it still consumed me, especially the idea that he was still there.

I thought about it all the time, that when I died, I could see him again. It was a deadly thought, full of stupid hope, and only made my life more unbearable. If there was no after life, then my loneliness didn't matter. But what if there was and Quatre was there, waiting for me? What if I could see him, be with him like before? Then what was I still doing here? Maybe this was limbo, a perpetual train station and I'm there, still on that platform.

Maybe I'm meant to get on that train, like Quatre did, but I'm too scared to and I just keep waiting for a different train that will never arrive for me, while Quatre got off his train and is wondering why I'm taking so long. I guess it was thoughts like those that got me to decide to go to the train station that day when Quatre's family were burying an empty box and pretending that they were burying him.

"Quatre," I said out loud and waited, listening for some kind of answer.

There was only silence. My friend wasn't there, he never had been. I felt a deep emptiness in my heart. I felt it so strongly then, that I was the ghost, the one that was dead, and Quatre was the one alive somewhere else, on some other plane, while I haunted this place and everyone else as they waited for me to vanish and leave them in peace.

I took the cake out of the bag and placed it next to me, then I took out the vodka bottle. When this idea had originally came to me, I had planned to steal a bottle of wine from my parents if they had had any left. Wasn't wine what you were supposed to drink when you were celebrating or remembering someone, to honor them? That's how it was in the movies anyway. I wasn't even sure what I was drinking to, Quatre's spirit, my grief, his life, or the end of everything I had once known. One was as good as any.

I unscrewed the cap on the vodka bottle, took a sniff of the contents, and immediately wrinkled my nose. I was well accustomed to the heavy, unwanted stench of alcohol, but the knowledge that I was about to dump that poison in my body made that smell all the more revolting. Honestly, it scared me a little. It had frightened me all of my life seeing what alcohol did to my parents. They weren't exactly great people when they were sober, but when they were drunk, they became monsters.

How could I ever want to drink that shit when it was the reason for my father breaking my arm when I hadn't done anything wrong or for the horrible things that my mother said to me when she usually just ignored me? I had promised myself, long ago as a child, that I would never drink a single drop of the stuff, but I told myself then as I lifted the bottle to my lips that it was ok, it wasn't like I was going to live with it. I would never become my father.

I took three huge gulps from the bottle, like I was drinking soda or water instead of liquor, which in retrospect had not been a smart idea but I hadn't known what to expect. I had thought that I would just drink a bit of it quickly and that would be that. I was not expecting the complete lack of flavor from the vodka, or the intense burn as it shot down my throat. It was the most horrible thing I had ever tasted in my entire life, worse than cherry cough syrup any day. I immediately gagged and almost threw up the lot of it. I coughed and my eyes watered at the burning sensation that I had nothing to equate to.

I wiped at my lips, still gagging and stared at the bottle incredulously. Why the hell would anyone want to drink that shit, especially my parents?! What was so great about that that they drank it like it was goddamned water?! I put the bottle down in repulsion and seriously considered just forcing myself to throw it up. If I had known that it was going to burn out my throat like that, I wouldn't have even bothered taking it from my mother.

But then, as I sat there, that burning feeling eased off. It didn't disappear entirely, but left a strange warmth that actually felt kind of good. The longer I sat there, the warmer that I felt. I kind of felt like I did when I was really tired, like my thoughts weren't as sharp and the cold air wasn't bothering me as much. I didn't feel great and there was still that awful non-taste in my mouth, but I found that I didn't really care about that anymore. When it came to me that I had been too focused on analyzing what the alcohol was doing to me that I had forgotten to check my time, even that didn't bother me as much as it should have.

10:03 am, I read on the station clock. Quatre's funeral had already started, I realized. I took another swig from the vodka bottle, a much smaller one, and this time it didn't taste quite as bad, but it was still horrible to me. If I had had any plans on leaving the station that morning, I would have assured myself that I was never going to touch that shit ever again, but it wasn't something that I had thought I needed to worry about again.

I poured the rest of the vodka onto the tracks. I had seen it in a movie once, someone pouring liquor on someone's grave like they could taste it. I didn't think that Quatre would appreciate me giving him vodka to drink, he would have rather I had poured tea or chai onto his grave, but it was the gesture, wasn't it? I took the lid off the container that my cake was in and looked at it for a moment. I didn't want to eat it. I didn't want to get rid of one of the only things I had of Quatre, but I did. I couldn't hold on to it forever. It was dry from having been in the freezer for so long, but it was still the most delicious thing I had eaten all week.

"I wish you were here," I said out loud, my voice tight and my heart heavy, "You should be here, not... Why did you leave me?" my voice cracked and I felt myself being pulled down by a wave of guilt and sadness, "I'm sorry," I whispered, "I am so sorry... I let you down and I promised that I never would... How could I have done that? You were all that mattered to me... our friendship was the only actual important thing in my life, so why wasn't it enough for me to keep?" I rubbed tiredly at my eyes which were dryer than they should have been, "I loved you, Quatre. I still love you. Maybe... maybe it wasn't the kind of love you were looking for, the kind you had for Trowa, and maybe it wasn't as good as the love your father should have had for you, but why couldn't it have been enough? I would have stayed with you forever. No matter what Relena said or did, I would have stayed."

I wanted to cry. I wanted to just pour out my heart and all of the poison that was festering away inside of it. I think that, if I had been able to cry in that moment, I might have had a small of chance of letting go of all that hatred and bitterness and sadness. But I couldn't. For the first time since Quatre had died, even though I wanted to so badly, I couldn't cry. My tears had completely run out.

I could blame it on the alcohol, or at the wave of anger that accompanied my sadness, my equal anger at myself and Quatre, but I knew that it wasn't that. It was something else, something worse. I felt like the parts of me that were human, the parts that I had been with Quatre, the parts that were still a child, were dying and all I was anymore was something ugly. Something that was incapable of crying.

I stumbled to my feet, the world around me spinning for a second, and I, enraged, threw the vodka bottle as far as I could against the metal tracks. It exploded in a cloud of glass, the sound as angry as if I had screamed just then. I was lucky, as violent as my throw had been, that one of the glass shards hadn't cut me. I felt violently sick between the alcohol and my turbulent emotions, but I didn't throw up and suddenly, I was glad that I couldn't cry. I didn't want to cry anymore and me thinking it would bring me some kind of release was stupid. I just wanted to destroy everything. I wanted to destroy myself, just like Quatre had.

I heard the train's whistle from far away. It was approaching, but it was still a way's off. I looked at the station's clock again. 10:20. I had ten minutes before it would arrive. I thought the same exact thing then that I had when I had decided, for sure, to go there that day. It would be so easy, wouldn't it? I could just wait for the train to come, I could just stand there on that exact spot, the place where Quatre had made this same, exact decision. I could let the alcohol and my grief take control and forget about what it really meant, staying there on those tracks for another ten minutes. I could let gravity do it's thing, just like Quatre had, and go to the same place he had gone.

And it was easy. It was simple. I wouldn't have to think about my future, I wouldn't have to think about not being loved or being sad. I wouldn't have to think about my parents or my grades or my bullies or my guilt. In that moment, I truly understood, not why Quatre had taken his life, but the ease of which he had done it, how simple that decision had been for him. Life was hard and cruel, but not this. This was surrendering. This wasn't the struggle, it wasn't even a real action. It was just standing still and waiting for the inevitable to happen. After all, we all die, eventually.

So why wait? Why add more bad memories to my already overcrowded head? Why suffer when the end result was the same? I didn't want it anymore. I had meant what I had said to my mother the day before. All I wanted was to be with my best friend. Everything else had no meaning to me. So I stood there and waited. I watched the rising smoke from the train and heard it's heavy rumble as it came closer and closer to me. I felt it's power under my feet. I thought about how that stale, bland bagel was going to be my very last meal on this earth and bitter laugh escaped me. Then, as the gravel started to shift, I felt something besides sadness and anger. Fear.

What if I was wrong? What if there was no after life and Quatre wasn't waiting for me? What if this was all there was, this shitty life, and the train approaching me would wipe out everything? What if getting hit by it hurt, or what if I was right, but there was a Hell, too, and that was where I would end up, in a place even worse than this one? My fear of the unknown and, I am kind of ashamed to admit, my fear of never seeing my parents again, as much as I didn't like them at the moment, and my fear of death consumed me.

When the train finally showed up in front of me, I was shocked back into reality, the warm fog that the alcohol had given me was long gone, and I bolted for the platform. It was strange, I had something coming for me that was much, much, much bigger than the truck that had nearly shaved my back off, but I didn't feel the horrible terror and panic that I had felt during that mad run, maybe because it was only my worthless life on the line this time. As my hands grabbed the edge of the platform in the knick of time, strong hands grabbed my arms and flung me up onto the platform with an impressive strength that made me feel like a rag doll being tossed around by a pit bull. The person covered me with their larger body uselessly as the train lumbered harmlessly past us.

I was pressed so tightly to the person's flat chest that I could feel his rapid heartbeat. It was actually going faster than mine was. My panic was already starting to ebb off and I wondered if that was because of my lightly drunk or buzzed or whatever you could call it state. Or maybe the prospect of my imminent death hadn't frightened me as much as it should have. I pushed at the person holding me until they finally relented and let me go. I stumbled to my feet and found myself looking at, not some random do-gooder, but Trowa Barton.

I hadn't seen Trowa since the day that he had completely and effortlessly broke Quatre's heart. I hadn't even really thought about him besides remembering what he had done and my fury at him, so consumed by my grief. He looked like shit. His face was as white as snow and his dark green eyes were huge as he stared at me, but that could have just been from watching me nearly end my life in the same messy way my friend had.

The ugly, black circles under his eyes, his uncharacteristically messy hair, and the worn expression on his face weren't however. He looked like he had had as much restful sleep as I had. Good. I hoped that he dreamt about what he had done as much as I dreamt about what I hadn't. I hoped that Quatre haunted him viciously in his dreams. That Trowa had the humanity to feel some kind of guilt about Quatre's suicide while Relena hadn't didn't matter one bit to me. I wanted him to suffer.

'Why did you save me?!' I wanted to demand him in rage, but I found that I was too furious at just seeing him there, knowing just who it was that had pulled me up.

It didn't matter anyway. By the time the train would have reached me, I would have gotten up onto the platform in time. Even if I had hesitated, Trowa wouldn't have saved my life, just a foot or leg. If I hadn't already been running for the platform, he would have been too late to save me anyway. Just like with everything else, I thought bitterly, he was useless.

"Are you fucking insane?!" he roared at me loudly, grabbing my shoulders so hard that he would leave bruises on them, "What the hell is wrong with you?! Quatre kills himself and you, what, decide it's the cool thing to do and try to follow him?! Do you think he would be happy with that?!!"

I wrenched myself out of his grip and glared at him harshly. My rage was a storm and I wanted to blow him away into it. I felt even more enraged at him than I ever had at Relena. I could be mad at her for exposing Quatre's secret in front of the entire school, but I had never expected anything better from the bitch. But Trowa... he had let the both of us down. And wasn't that the reason why Quatre had killed himself? Not because of Relena's cruel prank, but Trowa's reaction to it?

I shoved him hard. Then I just kept shoving him because it felt so good until his back hit one of the lamp posts and he winced. He didn't do anything to fight back, although he easily could have beaten the shit out of me or pushed me away. That only made me hate him more, that I was actively attacking him and he wouldn't hit me to defend himself. He was so pathetic.

"Shut up!" I snarled at him, "What the fuck do you know?! You don't know anything about Quatre, and you sure as hell don't know anything about me! If I want to kill myself, what right do you have to say anything about it?! Who do you think you are? You're just a guy that hung around him for awhile, he was a fucking pastime for you, that's all! He had a crappy life. I was the only person he had to rely on, which is the biggest damn joke that there is! None of his sisters or his parents ever paid any attention to him. All his dad did was throw a thousand things at him that Quatre never wanted and had all these expectations of him that he could never live up to.

"And when he figured out that he liked boys, and was terrified of what that meant, he had absolutely no one to talk to until I figured out he had a crush on you. He loved you! He would have done anything for you if you had asked, and he was willing to suffer and push those feelings down just to be around you, for a glimmer of what he really wanted! He almost died just to protect you!

"But the second that you figured that out, you threw him away. When all he needed from you was understanding and acceptance, you made him feel like filth. Quatre didn't kill himself, you did," I shoved him against the pole again, slamming his head into it, and I wondered why I wasn't crying when it felt like I was.

Trowa didn't wince this time. The pure agony in his eyes wasn't from my actions, just my words. I hadn't thought his eyes could get any wider, or his skin any paler, but it did. He looked down at me with such horror, I thought he was going to throw up. Tears that I couldn't shed filled his evergreen eyes.

"You're right," he said in a soft voice that was so full of grief and self-hatred that it would have driven most people to tears, "I was responsible for his death. I loved him!" Trowa suddenly burst out like he couldn't possibly contain those words inside of him anymore in a heart breaking sob, thick tears streaming down his face, "and I knew... I knew that he liked me back! I knew that for the longest time... and I never told him, never let him know that what he was feeling for me wasn't hopeless! I knew that it was making him miserable and I still didn't say it... I could have so many times. I could have stopped it all, him getting his arm broken and jumping in front of the train... but I couldn't tell him, I just couldn't!"

Now I was the one staring at him in horror, feeling like I was going to vomit. All this time... all this time that Quatre had been hoping and loving him in silence, thinking Trowa was straight, miserable believing that he would hate him for his feelings, and not only had Trowa felt the same way, he had known?! I wanted to yell at him not to say this shit to me. It's too late, I wanted to accuse, you're always too fucking late.

"I should have told him the day that... the day that he died," Trowa looked down at his trembling hands, "I should have dragged him away from that mob and told him that it was ok..."

"But you didn't," I said with freezing hatred.

"I couldn't," he insisted, "Everyone was reading his thoughts and his feelings and making fun of him for being gay and I just froze. I was so scared of everyone saying those things about me, looking at me with that disgust! I was terrified and I ran-"

I slapped him across the face even harder than I had punched Relena the day before. It stopped the awkward words from flowing out of his mouth and split his lip open.

"You're a fucking coward," I hissed at him, "and that's a thousand times worse than anything they accused Quatre of!"

He touched where I had hit him with one shaking hand, his eyes to the ground, refusing to look at me.

"I know," he whispered brokenly.

I wanted to scream at him that it didn't matter if he was aware of it and I didn't care if he felt sorry or guilty or whatever, I would never forgive him and I hoped that Quatre wouldn't, either. I wanted to keep hitting him until my wrists were too numb to manage it or his face was nothing more than the bloody smear that the train had made of Quatre's face. I wanted to push him in front of the next train that passed us by.

But like what typically happened when I had violent and angry impulses, I buried my instincts and desires deep inside. I buried them deep because that pain I saw in Trowa was the same that I had been feeling and seeing in the mirror for days. All of the guilt and sadness that I had in me, Trowa had, too. We both hated ourselves for what we had and hadn't done. We both missed Quatre. We were both broken. I didn't spare him my violence because I felt sympathy for him, I didn't even have any for myself. I only did it because I had just enough empathy to know that hitting Trowa would make him feel better, because he knew that he deserved it, and I didn't want him to feel better.

"It's my fault, too," I murmured instead of the hateful, hurtful things I wanted to hurl at him, "I was his best friend, his only friend, besides you," I admitted grudgingly, "There were so many times he would say things that would frighten me, so many times that I would realize that he was so much sadder and more bitter about his life and his loneliness than he usually let on. But I never did anything to help him. I let myself believe that everything would work out eventually and I just turned my back to all of it.

"I knew his relationship with you was hurting him and I knew that being around you was making everything worse, that nothing good could come from it, especially after Relena had used you to almost get him killed. But I still did nothing about it. I should have tried harder to keep him away from you," my breath hitched and I tried to stop talking as I confessed things to him that I hadn't wanted anyone to know, but I couldn't help it, the words just kept slipping out of me, "I was his best friend," I whispered, "but I couldn't even stop him from falling. I just watched. I watched him die and I did nothing to stop it!"

Trowa moved away from the lamp post and stood in front of me, but I refused to look up at him. I had never wanted him to see me this weak and vulnerable.

"Do you really think that you could have stopped him from killing himself?" he asked me, his voice soft and kind and slightly incredulous.

His voice reminded me of Quatre's during those rare moments when we had spoken about my father's treatment of me and I tried to assure him that it was no big deal. Quatre would speak to me like that, so full of sympathy and understanding, but with just that slight tone that told me he thought I was being ridiculous. It made me miss him even more and I realized that I would never hear him talk to me like that again. All I would ever have left of that voice, that kind tone, was my memories. And hearing that similar tone came from Trowa only made me hate him more, because it wasn't good enough.

"I should have tried!" I screamed at him, my voice cracking and so strained and twisted that it sounded like I was crying, even though my eyes were still dry.

Trowa took another step forward and touched my cheek with his hand. I had never realized how big his hands were before then, or how gentle they could be. I wondered if he had ever touched Quatre like this and I hoped so. I didn't want to be the one he touched so kindly when those hands... that touch had been meant for my dead best friend. His touch repulsed me because it felt good. I didn't want him to touch me like that, but I couldn't move away because some part of me needed it and craved it. I wanted to lean into his touch and steal away all of that comfort that I didn't deserve and never should have been meant for me.

"No one tried to help him," I whispered, my voice rough with too much emotion, none of it I had wanted to expose to anyone, especially not to him who only deserved my hatred, "Not a single person. His family, his teachers, all the kids that we go to school with and saw Relena bully him, none of them did a single fucking thing to help him through it!"

I looked up into his green eyes and noticed for the first time that there was a little bit of gray in those eyes. I bet that Quatre had known.

"And I was one of those people!" my voice hitched again, and even though I wasn't sobbing, I felt like I was barely keeping it together. When was this going to stop hurting like this? "Do you have any idea how much knowing that hurts? Quatre was the only person in my life that cared about me, that loved me... Do you know how much it kills me, having to lump myself in with all those people that I hate for not doing something for him?! So why am I here? He was always there for me... a lot of days, Quatre was the only reason I got the fuck out of bed! He sure as Hell was the only reason why I kept at school.

"No matter what awful thing Zechs and Relena did to me, he was there for me. He was always kinder and smarter and better than I could ever hope to be. So tell me why a useless piece of shit like me is here when he's dead! What is so fucking special about me that I get to keep on living and he doesn't?! Why should I even want to? I'm nothing but dumb, white trash! I'm angry all the time, I hurt all the time, and all I want to do is beat you and Relena and Zechs and Quatre's entire family into a pulp. Quatre died and he took what little was good about me with him. So you tell me, Trowa, why the hell shouldn't I kill myself now, before I destroy anything else around me?!"

Trowa's attractive green eyes narrowed into something hard and his face moved in close to mine. I thought he was going to spit at me or bite me in anger. Him kissing me was the very last thing I would have expected him to do, but that was what he did. His hand still cupping my cheek, he pressed his lips against mine.

I don't really know how to describe my second kiss accurately or how it made me feel. For half of it, all I could do was compare it to the disaster of Relena's kiss, how different they were. I didn't remember much about Relena's kiss beyond my repulsion of it, but even though I hated Trowa and his sudden move had startled me, I wasn't repulsed by it. Relena's kiss had been insistent and forceful, although it had been no more than her pressing her lips to mine. Trowa's was just as chaste, but it felt more intimate to me. Maybe because his was more welcome than hers, maybe because he was older, or maybe because he wasn't kissing me out of desperation, to prove something.

Trowa's kiss was shy and hesitant, the kiss of someone who wasn't entirely sure of what he was doing. It was awkward for both of us, me because I had never been kissed by a boy and I couldn't stand being near him without wanting to bash his head in, and him because he didn't love me.

I'm still not exactly sure why he kissed me that day, if he had just been lonely or he had thought I might like it and wanted to comfort me. Maybe he had just been using me to fill Quatre's place for a moment. Maybe I reminded him of the person we had lost. That was laughable, of course, Nate and I were nothing alike. But we were both pale, slender, short, and wide-eyed, and we had been friends. I just can't think of any other reasons why he would have done something like that.

Despite Trowa's shyness, and despite my complete lack of experience, the kiss wasn't unpleasant. Relena's lips had been full and tasted like the lip gloss she used, something waxy and fruity. I guess some guys might have liked that. Trowa's lips were smooth and shaped differently. I'm not quite sure how that made me feel, but it was good and some part of me enjoyed it. It excited me, the thought that I was kissing a boy instead of a girl. It felt... more natural to me, even when the realization that I was being kissed by my best friend's crush made reality crash down on me. Even in my horror and anger at him for kissing me, it still made me feel warm. Or maybe that was just the alcohol, but I don't think so. Trowa's kiss made me feel a completely different kind of buzz.

No more than five seconds passed before what was actually happening destroyed the happiness I had felt, muddling it with bitterness and guilt. Trowa Barton was kissing me. The first thing I had felt beyond misery and loneliness in days and it was because of him. The boy that Quatre had loved, the boy he had bled for, cried for, and ultimately killed himself over was kissing me. It was wrong, so very wrong. I wasn't the one that Trowa loved and I sure as hell was not the person he should be kissing. That kiss had been meant for Quatre and I had stolen it from him. I know how crazy that sounds. Quatre was dead by his own choice, in reality he had thrown that kiss away, and even if he had lived, Trowa might have never gained the back bone to kiss him. But in that moment, I felt like I was betraying Quatre, stealing something precious and beautiful from him.

I had no business kissing a boy that I didn't love and didn't love me, and I certainly had no business enjoying it. It was Quatre's funeral, and I was using the boy he loved to comfort me. I felt like the lowest, sleaziest kind of scum there was. I felt pissed off at myself for desperately latching on to that comfort, and I felt pissed off at Trowa for offering to me.

Then, after probably no more than fifteen or twenty seconds, it was over. Trowa pulled away and left a cold, empty hole in my heart. It was tiny compared to the gaping chasm that Quatre's death had caused, not even worth hurting over, but I still felt it there. I felt alone and, stupidly, abandoned. There was something more that I wanted, something that made my first real kiss seem off and pale. It wouldn't be for weeks afterward that it would finally come to me why that kiss seemed so off to someone who hadn't even been really kissed before.

Replaying it in my head over and over again, I realized that Trowa hadn't just felt awkward and shy, and he hadn't truly been kissing me to comfort me. When he had kissed me, he hadn't really been kissing me at all. But it was still the best thing I had ever experienced as an adult in my entire life. And it wasn't even mine.

"Please," he whispered as he pulled away, his lips still so close to mine that as he spoke, they brushed against mine, the barest of touches like a feather and it made me shudder, "I know that you hate me and I know that I have absolutely no right to ask it of you," he rested his forehead against mine, his heat and smell suffocating me, smothering me, "but please don't kill yourself, Duo, not like Quatre.

"Relena and I have destroyed enough lives. We've caused enough death. If you took your life like he did... because of what I did to him... I couldn't handle that. I know what a shitty thing that is to say, and I don't expect you to live for someone you despise so much. But if... if you're really so lost that you need a reason to live, then live for Quatre. Live because that's what he would want you to do. Wherever he is now, Heaven or Limbo or wherever, he wouldn't want to watch you die because of him," he backed away from me a little and placed his hands on my shoulders like he thought if he could keep touching me, it would ground me, "I couldn't bear to watch his best friend kill himself, too. You're the... the last piece of the boy that I loved, Duo," he said miserably with a strained voice, "you're the only living part of him that I have left."

That sentiment made me snap, dragging me out of the stupor that kiss had put me in. The last living part of Quatre? I was nothing like that! We had been friends, but I was nothing like him, nothing that was a part of him. I had been the loser that Quatre had let attach to him like a parasite. I had only dragged him down, and let him down. There was nothing left of him here, and if there was, it sure wasn't me. Trowa was right, I hated him and I wasn't going to suddenly latch on to life because he wanted to use me to feel better!

I shoved him away from me and punched him in the exact spot that I had slapped him earlier which was already starting to bruise. I couldn't help it, I'm right handed and I wasn't exactly thinking about what I was doing, my fury warding off any sensible thoughts. My blow made him stumble back in shock, but to my disappointment, he regained his footing quickly and didn't come close to falling off the platform. I hoped my punch had hurt like hell.

"Quatre is dead," I said with cold ferocity, "He's dead and whatever is actually left of him that the train didn't shred into nothing is rotting in the ground. He doesn't know anything anymore. There isn't anything left of him, you'll never see him again, and he isn't watching anything from some better fucking place."

My words were incredibly cruel and even Trowa's pain as he looked at me then didn't satisfy me. I strode up to him, grabbed him by his shirt, and slammed him against the lamp post. I shouldn't have been able to manage it. Trowa is a good foot taller than I am, but somehow it was easy for me to toss him around like that. He wasn't trying to resist, but I wasn't exactly strong.

"I'm not Quatre," I growled at him, "He knew how much watching him die, trying to live without him was going to hurt me. No matter how depressed he was, he knew that at least one person was going to cry over him, but he still killed himself. If I die, whether I take my own life or not, no one is going to give a shit about it. I don't have a single person in my life anymore that is going to cry over me, so don't you fucking dare tell me that you do!

"You didn't even care enough about Quatre to be his friend, and you think someone as pathetic as you is going to make my life any better than you made his? What happiness being around you gave him, it's nothing compared to the pain you made him feel when you broke his heart!" I shoved him again, my anger at myself and him spilling out in waves. It was all I could not to punch him again, "You keep saying that you loved him, that that's a lie! You never even knew him! If it weren't for him, you never would have had that back bone to talk to him, so I don't now why I was so shocked you wouldn't stand up for him!"

He was looking at me with that hurting, horrified expression again.

"You weren't our friend, you weren't his boyfriend. You were just the weak piece of shit that helped Relena kill my best friend, so you're right about one thing and only one thing," I hissed at him, "You don't get to ask a single damned thing of me. So stay the fuck away from me. You want someone to kiss, take Relena's advice and find some pretty girl. You're already her prized puppet, so don't delude yourself into thinking you're anything better than that."

I turned and walked off the platform and through the station. I couldn't bear to look at him for another second. My anger was making me physically sick. My hands were shaking, my head was pounding, and I felt like I was going to retch at any second. I wanted to punch something nice and solid like a brick or concrete wall until I shattered my hand.

My brain was in a million places at once; thoughts of killing Relena, my guilt, my hatred of Trowa, my depression and failed suicide attempt, that kiss, all of my conflicting feelings. I felt like I was going crazy, and all because Trowa Barton had kissed me. I hated him, but I had certainly liked it, especially if I compared it to Relena kissing me a year ago.

Did that mean that I was gay? I didn't exactly have any desire to have sex with Trowa, but I was only thirteen, I barely knew what sex entailed, especially sex between two guys. The thought of him kissing me again was definitely not unpleasant, as confused as it made me. If he or any other boy had kissed me like that, I would have agonized over it. But at that point in my life, the fact that my sexuality had once consumed my thoughts and fears seemed like it had happened to someone else.

I was gay. I didn't even question it, I only felt cold acceptance about it. In that moment, my own sexuality, my own identity meant nothing to me. I didn't think for a second about what it was going to mean for me and my future. An hour ago, I hadn't had one before I had chickened out. I didn't think about how this same sexual identity had destroyed Quatre's life and gotten him killed. That would come much later.

I walked all the way back home on foot. I could have gone to work. I would be horribly late, but it would have kept me occupied and my father would be less angry over my being late than skipping both shifts all together. But the thought of standing in that kitchen, washing dishes or answering phone calls made me want to scream. I wasn't in any kind of mood to be pleasant to anyone.

On the way home, I could hear the sound of both of the town churches' bells ringing. It was twelve o'clock, Quatre's funeral was over. The churches always rang their bells after a funeral service, regardless of which church the deceased had gone to. I couldn't remember if Quatre's family had been Catholic, Protestant, or something else. Religion was one of those things we never talked about, though I guess it really isn't a popular subject for people our age.

If just one of the churches had rung it's bells, the sound would have been pretty or chilling, depending on who was listening, but together they sounded chaotic and clashing. The protestant church was newer than the Catholic one and didn't even have real bells, it was just a recording.

There was no one at home when I got there, but the lock was still broken. I didn't even bother with pretending to use my key to unlock it. I just walked inside. My back pack had migrated from the kitchen where I had thrown it the day before to the attic stairs. I could imagine my father coming home last night and getting pissed off finding my stuff in the kitchen like that. Had he wondered where I had gone, or had he not even noticed that I hadn't come home last night? I wondered where he was for about a second. Mom had work on Sundays, but Dad wasn't supposed to. That didn't mean that he hadn't been called in on an emergency or that he hadn't gone out to get groceries, maybe even the lock on the front door, or maybe he was just at a bar. It was a bit early for that, but I had no clue what he did when he wasn't here. And I found that, on that day, I really didn't care.

I grabbed my pack and went up into my room, carelessly throwing it into a corner. There were a dozen things I could do now that my big task was over, a dozen things I hadn't been planning on doing because, for the last couple of days, I had been planning my suicide. I could do my homework, clean that house, oil the hinges on the basement door so it would finally stop making that shrieking sound, mow the lawn, or I could just get a knife from the kitchen and slit my throat.

What exactly did a person do when they were supposed to be dead, but found their heart still beating? Nothing felt important or even worth my time. I felt listless, like I was just going through the motions for absolutely no reason at all, but I had felt like that every since Quatre had died. I thought about really killing myself for about as much as the time as I had wondered where my father was. It was funny, two hours ago I had sat on the train tracks, fully willing to let a train hit me, but then, sitting in my room, I felt as apathetic towards taking my own life as I did doing the dishes.

I hadn't been able to do it, anyway, I told myself. I had chickened out, so what was the point? But mostly it was just in the back of my mind. I hadn't decided to give up on it. All of my reasons for going to the train station were still there, none of them had gone away. I just had so much shit in my head.

I didn't do anything that I could have. My brain was too muddled, too busy screaming at me. My rage was still there, pumping adrenaline and hatred for everything into me. I laid down on my mattress, not even bothering to take off the clothes that I had been wearing since Friday, and closed my eyes. I felt so empty, just scraped clean after exploding at Brian, but it wasn't a good kind of emptiness. I tried to sleep, to silence the madness in my head, but I couldn't get my thoughts to shut down. After two hours of tossing and turning, I finally gave up the idea that I was going to get any kind of sleep shy of taking some of my mother's sleeping pills. I grabbed one of my books and tried to read but with similar results. My brain was in over-drive and I was thrumming with all this left over energy from my rage.

Trowa, Quatre, Relena, Zechs, my first real kiss, my sexuality, my guilt, my future, my suicide attempt... my thoughts were endless and frustrating. I felt this intense anxiety in my chest and I had the impulse to hit something just to work off whatever was wrong with me. I felt like I was going crazy. I probably was. So much had happened to me in so little time, I didn't have the ability to cope with it. I had no one to talk to about any of it, no way to just... move on.

And did I even want to? Hadn't that been one of the reasons why I had decided to kill myself, because the thought of continuing on like that was unbearable? I thought about going to the cemetery and finding Quatre�s gravestone so I could talk to him, but I didn�t want to. I didn't want to look at his headstone and pretend like I was doing anything more than talking to myself.

I couldn�t sleep, couldn�t even eat although I recognized my hunger, and just sitting around doing nothing while I was so wired was making things worse. I needed to let go of all my pent up energy, all of my chaotic thoughts. I wanted to be hollowed out and mindless. If I had had access to a punching bag, I would have whaled on it until my arms were so sore, I wouldn�t have been able to lift them. But I didn�t have anything like that to hit, so instead I went back downstairs, put my sneakers on again, left the house, and ran.

I ran South, as hard and as fast as my legs would let me. I ran away from all my thoughts and memories, all the bad things in me. I ran so long that everything else besides the burning in my lungs and the pain in my legs became nothing more important than white noise. I ran like all the things that had made me so angry were monsters chasing after me, and I suppose that they were. As I ran, I imagined that Quatre was there at my side, matching me step for step. He had always been a terrible runner and had never been able to keep up with me. When he had run track in gym, I had slowed my stride so we could run together, but in my imagination that day, he was just as fast as I was.

We ran together, side by side down my street. We ran past the train yard, past the liquor stores and video stores and adult stores and convenience stores, we ran past factory after factory, we ran even after my chest started to hurt and my head throbbed. I didn�t know if I could make it, but Quatre could run forever. Finally, we reached the town line and I turned around. I turned and ran back the way I had come, but Quatre didn�t. He kept running, straight out of Nausten.

In my imagination, he ran away, away from me, some place better. He didn�t kill himself. Quatre just ran away and left me behind. Somewhere, he was living the life that he had talked to me about once in the hospital, living off his parents� stolen money. In my mind, he was happy and would find a boy better than someone who wouldn�t stand up for him but would kiss his pathetic best friend instead, a boy that would love him and never be too much of a coward to say it.

I ran back home alone and by the time I got to my house, it was dark out and I was in so much pain and I was breathing so hard, my heart beating so fast that it still surprises me that I didn�t throw up or just collapse. I didn�t stop or lay down, I just walked right into the bathroom, stripped out of my sweaty clothes and stepped into the shower, panting with burning lungs. The icy cold water that came out of the showerhead was both heavenly and excruciating. I hissed in pain when it hit my right hand and I felt a stinging pain there.

I looked at my hand and saw that my knuckles were caked in blood, but it was dried. I gently scrubbed the blood off with some soap and a washcloth. The knuckles on my right hand were black with bruises and skin over them was broken, but no longer bleeding. I must have punched Trowa a hell of a lot harder than I had thought I had.

It came back to me then, the feeling of my fist colliding with his face, that sensation of raw power meeting warm, yielding flesh. I remembered how wonderful it had felt hitting him and that look of pain on his face. That must be how my father feels every time he punches me, I thought. I gagged. My anger was fading away, back to cold emptiness, and now the memory of my rage and striking someone I had once been almost friends with just made me feel ill.

My hands trembled. I had hurt someone with them, two people even. Maybe they had deserved it, I certainly thought so, but it had been my hands that had done it. Just like my father. I shoved them under the flow of water so I wouldn't have to look at them anymore. Cut up and bruised, they didn't look anything like my hands to me.

This wasn't me. This had never been me. I didn't take my anger out on people like that. That was my dad, but never me. What was I becoming, that I could so easily punch Relena and Trowa like that when before, when Quatre was alive, just the thought that I might be capable of that had horrified me? If Quatre could see me now, would he be as disgusted as I felt?

I had never really been a good person. I had had these violent thoughts for a long time, but I had never had the stomach to act on them. I had always been too frightened of becoming my father, of hurting people and liking it. Wasn't that exactly what had happened? It wasn't that I had punched Trowa and Relena, it wasn't even the overwhelming rage that the both of them had made me feel. My best friend had killed himself because of their actions. I don't think that anyone who cares as much for someone as I had about Quatre wouldn't feel like that in my situation. But I hadn't just hit them as some sort of release to my anger. I had liked it.

When my fist had connected to their faces, it had made me feel so good. Realizing that repulsed me. I didn't need alcohol to be like him. All I needed was this rage boiling inside of me. Once, I had almost hit Relena and I had thought that my inability to do so was cowardice. Now, I wish I had that cowardice back. Even after Quatre's death, I couldn't be the person that he had insisted that I was. I was nothing better, nothing more than my father's son.

I stayed under the icy cold spray of water for so long, my skin went numb and that felt good. I felt good not to feel anything, I just wished that I could make that numbness reach deep down inside of me. What was the point of this, I asked myself. What, exactly had been my reasons for not killing myself on those train tracks? Because I might not see Quatre in the afterlife? I couldn't see him now, so wasn't the chance that I could worth taking?

Because I would miss my parents? Maybe I would, but not nearly as much as I missed my only friend, and would they even miss me? Because I was scared of death? Of the pain of it? Would death really be any more terrible than what I was feeling now, this horrible emptiness, living each day feeling either sadness or anger, or more recently, fear?

The fear of what my anger was going to make me become, that one day as an adult, I would look into the mirror and see my father's face staring back at me, that I would never be able to escape all the parts of him that I hated no matter how far I ran from him, and not a single part of him that I loved would be there. Wouldn't it be better to end my life now before that happened, when I still had enough of Quatre left in my heart to feel this horrified at what I had done? What was the point of life if I could never feel happiness ever again?

I glanced at my father's shaver on the shower ledge and picked it up. I had never needed one, not yet anyway, but it was easy to figure out how to open it and take out the razor blade. I held it up to the light coming through the old, yellowed shower curtain. It gleamed silver, looking sharp even to my eyes. I tested it, it's sharpness and how it might feel by running it over the tip of my finger. It cut through the skin like it was butter. It was so sharp that it took a second for the cut to even hurt and the blood to well up out of it. Blood dripped down my finger. It looked so startling as it appeared suddenly, like magic on my pale skin, that bright color. The cut stung and I imagined how much it must hurt to cut deeper and wider.

My hand started to shake again as I realized how solid and real my thoughts were and that I had just been standing there, thinking about cutting myself until I bled out. I quickly washed off the blade and put it back where it belonged. I turned up the water until it was nearly unbearably hot, but it didn't do anything to alleviate my chill. I stayed in there for a very long time, washing my hair and scrubbing every inch of my skin until I had nothing left to wash, then I just stood under the spray, feeling it's warmth so I couldn't feel anything else. The whole while, I pretended that I hadn't just been entertaining thoughts of suicide like it was a normal consideration.

The hot water quickly cooled to luke warm, then cold, but I still didn't leave. I was used to the cold and it didn't bother me as much as it should have. At least most of my angry energy was gone and my heart was back to a normal rate. I had been in the shower for hours when I heard someone come into the house. I hastily turned the water off as I recognized my father's gait as he walked into his bedroom right next to the bathroom. He was going to be pissed if he found out that I had been in the shower that long and had used up all the hot water, but thankfully he took his showers early in the morning.

I grabbed a fresh towel from the rack and dried myself off quickly. Normally I would have combed out my hair and redone my ponytail before getting dressed, but I knew my dad would want the bathroom as soon as he left the bedroom if he had been out drinking or at work. He was already bound to be angry at me for skipping work again and I just wanted to stay out of his way. Then it dawned on me that I hadn't brought any clean clothes into the bathroom with me and I swore at myself. I wasn't some kind of prude that running naked up to my room freaked me out and I wasn't such a neat freak that I couldn't see putting my dirty clothes back on as an option, but neither appealed to me. Wearing sweaty clothes that I hadn't changed in two days right after I had washed myself kind of defeated the point of showering and walking around in the nude, even if my father was the only one home, embarrassed me.

'And him finding your naked, dead body in the shower wouldn't have been?' I thought bitterly and wasn't even sure why I was bitter.

I wrapped the towel I had used to dry myself with around me, tossed my dirty clothes in the hamper, and left the bathroom, nearly bumping right into my father in the hallway. We kind of just stared at each other for a moment, me in wariness and him in bewilderment, an expression that I had never seen him wear before and I had no idea why he would look at me like that, like my mere presence was confusing to him. I quickly tried to gauge him, to see what sort of mood he was in, just how angry he was about me skipping work, if I was in for a hospital visit or just a black eye.

In the mood that I was in, I would have welcomed a beating from him. I certainly deserved it. But instincts born from thirteen years of dodging my father's assaults were more powerful than my recent yearning for justice and punishment and even though it was on the tip of my tongue to hurry up and apologize to him about missing work, to try to soften his anger before we came to blows, I kept silent. As I studied him, I realized how late it felt and that by the time he had come home, I would have been home from my shift if I had gone anyway. Unless one of my bosses told him that I hadn't shown up that day, he would never know. I would find out much later that Sal had recognized Quatre from all the times he had come to the restaurant to hang out with me. He had thought that I had been at the funeral and had given me a free pass. I don't know if Andre had the same reason, but neither of my bosses ever tattled on me. Of all the things to be lucky about.

My father continued to look at me with a weird expression. He didn't look confused anymore, that look had vanished very quickly, but it had been replaced with something else. I don't even know how to describe it. Awe? Frustration? He seemed shaken by something, but I knew better. Nothing could shake him, nothing ever had. It took me a moment to realize that he wasn't really staring at me but at my hair.

I wondered for a second if he was just very, very drunk and was staring off into space like my mother often did when she had been drinking for awhile. But even when my father had been drinking heavily, he never lost that sharp edge of his. He only got easier to piss off and senselessly meaner, but he never lost his concentration or that intensity of his that I often wondered was a part of his occupation or he had always been like that. But not even my mother looked like he did just then when she was out of it, because he wasn't just zoning out and looking through me. He was actually looking at and seeing my hair.

He was clearly drunk, there was no doubt of that, but not nearly as drunk as I had seen him before. The smell of beer on him was stronger than the smell of vodka probably still was on me, or I assumed because I couldn't tell. I was thankful for that because I didn't know if he would be furious at my drinking or just not care. It was not a problem that I was going to repeat, I already had the beginnings of a headache and my mouth tasted absolutely disgusting to me. But even so, his face wasn't flushed that much. There was another smell coming from his clothes that mingled with the beer: perfume.

My mother didn't really wear perfume and the perfume that she did wear once in awhile, usually to job interviews, smelled absolutely nothing like what I smelled on my father. It was a cloying smell, floral but not as strong as the one my mother used. It probably smelled nice when it wasn't mixed with the smell of beer. That wasn't the first time that I had smelled perfume on him and it wouldn't be the last.

I guess a lot of people would have gotten upset to learn that one of their parents was having an affair, but I didn't feel any kind of rage towards him for cheating on my mother. I just felt sad. My parents didn't exactly have a good marriage. My mother hated him and refused to even let him in the bedroom a lot of times. I didn't exactly go out of the way to listen for my parents having sex, but hearing some of the things that they had screamed at each other over the years, I don't think they had had sex since I had been born, and if they had, it was rare. Would my mother even care if she found out he was having sex with another woman? I wanted to believe that she would, or maybe she already did and that was why she was always so hostile towards him. Or maybe it was the other way around and he did that because she was hostile.

I didn't even know if I could call it an affair. That kind of implied that there was some woman somewhere that loved my father, or at least liked him enough to want to have sex with him, didn't it? One, single woman. But that perfume never smelled the same. I wasn't exactly an expert in women, but I didn't think they changed perfume that drastically. I tried to imagine what my father might be doing that he was having sex with not just one woman, but a few different ones. Only one word came to mind: prostitution.

The image in my head of my father going to a whorehouse or picking up a prostitute from a street corner depressed me. I wanted to believe that he wasn't the sort of man to do something like that, but if he was the sort to cheat on his wife so blatantly, then why not with a hooker? That wasn't the only thought that upset me. We weren't exactly well off. 'Barely keeping head above water' certainly described our financial situation. We weren't exactly homeless or eating at soup kitchens, but we had to be painfully careful about our money.

I had gotten angry at my father once for spending our tight food budget on beer, how could I understand and cope with him spending money for sex? Or maybe he wasn't paying for it. He was a cop, one that could make a lot of trouble for a prostitute, one that might be persuaded to look the other way if she waived her fee. That that sort of scenario seemed a lot more plausible than him using money we didn't really have sickened me. The thought that my father was abusing his power, risking not only his job but could go to jail for it, just to get laid was terrible.

All boys see their fathers as heroes, I think, or at least look up to them, especially if they do a dangerous job like law enforcement or fire fighting. I might not have a great relationship with my father, but I had still been one of those boys. His beating me hadn't diminished that. What he was at work and what he was at home had always been separate to me. I told myself that it didn't matter. Our family had been broken for a very long time. But it still hurt. Looking at my father, smelling the perfume on him and knowing that he had gone out to fuck some strange woman against every oath he had ever made while I had been running with a ghost hurt me.

"Your hair..." he suddenly blurted out and reached one hand to touch a wet lock of my hair.

I flinched a little at his touch, so used to him pulling my hair to hurt me. But his touch was light as he let my chestnut hair fall through his fingertips almost tenderly, like it was something special instead of something he saw every day. Although, I realized, that was the first time I had walked around with my hair loose since it had gotten long enough for me to put up in a ponytail. The way he looked at it now, loose and clean from the shower, made me uncomfortable and I didn't know why. He just looked so... I would almost call it wide-eyed, like a mix of a little kid finding something wonderful and an adult reliving some pleasant memory he had never thought he would have again. He ha to have been a hell of a lot more drunk than I had thought he was, that was the only thing that would have made sense.

His expression hardened and he looked bitter suddenly, letting go of my hair.

"It's too damned long," he grumbled, like my hair offended him, "You need to cut it," he started to walk towards the kitchen and then said with a tone that I could only call wistful, "You look exactly like your mother used to when she was your age," and then he was gone.

I stared at his retreating back with wide eyes and I was sure an astonished expression. I touched my hair subconsciously for a second. I was used to him ragging at me about my hair to the point of verbal abuse. It was too long, it made me look like a girl or a fag or a dog, I needed to get my ponytail cut off. Of course he never gave me the money to get a hair cut, just harassed me about it. But he had never told me that my long hair made me look like my mother had.

And what had been that weird look he had given me when he had touched my hair? Had he been feeling guilty about what he had been doing today because I reminded him of Mom? Or had he just been remembering something, some pleasant memory from when he and Mom had liked each other, before I had come along and destroyed their lives?

I shook off the incredibly bizarre and awkward moment, never wanting to think about my dad touching my hair and looking at me like that again. It made me feel weird and I had no clue why, so I pretended like it had never happened, walking upstairs to my bedroom. I dressed in pajamas, combed my hair, and put it back up in its ponytail. I already felt better just to have it not loose anymore. When I went back downstairs, I could smell the light scent of soup coming from the kitchen, reminding me that I hadn't had a real meal since Thursday night. I didn't want to eat anything, but my stomach ached with the need to put something into it.

In the kitchen, my father was stirring a pot of what looked like left over chicken soup. Without saying a word, we danced around each other, him preparing the soup, adding a few spices that we had to it to give new life to it, and me preparing the salad and setting the table. I only set two place settings. That late at night, if my mother hadn't made an appearance yet, then she was pulling a late shift and would miss dinner. I didn't exactly miss her.

My father handed me a bowl of steaming hot soup as I placed the salad on the table and I sat down with it. The soup had bits of chicken, potato, celery, and carrots in it and whatever else my father had put in it had made it taste pretty good. I was just happy to have something hot. I didn't bother with the bread, it looked chewier and staler than I wanted to deal with.

When my father returned to the table with his own full bowl and put a bottle of salad dressing on the table, I felt like he had punched me in the gut.

"W-what's that?" I stammered as I stared at the bottle.

It was Quatre's salad dressing. The same, exact dressing that he had loved to put on everything; salad, vegetables, bread, and even chicken. He had always brought it with him to school, too, and had let me use it when I had told him that I liked it, too. It really wasn't that strange to see it sitting on my dinner table at the same time that it was. They had it at all the grocery stores in town, even the smaller, family run ones. But the stuff was pricey, nothing that my parents would have bought. We always used the generic brand stuff.

My father shot me a strange look at my shock.

"There was a sale because they're discontinuing it," he said gruffly in a bored tone, "Your mother wanted to try it."

The sudden sadness that fell on me almost made me laugh. They were even taking one of Quatre's favorite things from me. How pathetic was I that I was getting depressed over a stupid salad dressing? But the thought that that might be the very last time I would get to taste it strangled my heart. I watched my father in a daze as he unscrewed the cap, ripped off the protective seal, poured some on his salad, screwed the cap back on, and handed it back to me. I felt like I was living in a nightmare and all I was doing was eating dinner.

I wanted to knock it out of his hand and scream. Was this going to be what my life was like from now on? Constant reminders of him? Would I always be tossed around like a rag doll by my emotions, thinking that things were going to be alright, that at least I was beginning to cope with his suicide, only to have this immense grief always lurking around the corner, ready to eat me alive? That idea, and the realness of it, horrified me so completely. Instead of letting it overwhelm me, I took the bottle from him and poured it on my own salad. I speared some lettuce and carrots with my fork harder than I had intended to and shoved it into my mouth.

With the very first taste, memories assaulted me with more cruelty and brutality than anything Relena or Zechs could think to do to me. All at once, more like powerful hallucinations than memories, I remembered each and ever time Quatre had shared his food with me. In my head, I saw him as I approached him every single day in the cafeteria, all those times when he had come into my work, all those times that we had met on the weekends.

In the course of just an instant, I saw it a thousand times. A thousand times that his eyes would light up when he saw me, like I was someone special, someone that mattered, and just my showing up could make him happy. A thousand times that he would share his food, all the things that he liked with me, simply because he cared about me. I saw it a thousand times in my head, a thousand of his smiles, that infuriatingly kind smile that he never seemed to show to anyone else. His generosity, his love, his patience and caring, his... his light . I saw all of that just from one bite of something that he had once liked. Once.

And suddenly the world seemed so painful and tedious to me, so full of nothing. Each moment that passed me by seemed like forever, like I was trapped, stagnant in tar and everything was gray and agony. It wasn't just that I had no appetite anymore or nothing that I had cared about before mattered to me, it was worse than that. Even just the act of breathing seemed stressful and useless, and all I could think about was 'is this it?' Was this my life without Quatre, and the only time that I would feel anything at all besides rage would be these moments of pain, the only love and joy I could feel again be in these memories of him?

My desire to kill myself stopped being because I wanted to see Quatre. It stopped being because of him at all. I wanted... no, I needed to do it because I had lived thirteen years being unloved, being nothing and I had only survived them because of him. I don't care how jaded a person is, living without feeling is easy, but living without love is impossible. Just one year felt horrible to me, but fifty, sixty, or even seventy?

I couldn't bear the thought of living my life like that, without having someone in my life that would share their food with me, simply because they wanted to show me something that they loved. If that was what life was for me, being alone, just a body in a crowd, I didn't want it.

I hadn't cried all day. I hadn't been able to, even when realizing Quatre's funeral had began, or when the boy that should have been his boyfriend had kissed me, or when I had realized that I was gay, or even when I had realized that I was turning into my father. But then, sitting at that dinner table with my dad, tasting that damned salad dressing and remembering Quatre, remembering his absence, I cried like a fucking baby.

A single sob burst out of me and it was like the flood gates that I hadn't even known that I had burst open with it. Tears that I had assured myself that I would never cry again flowed down my face like twin waterfalls. I didn't know what was more embarrassing, that I was crying and sobbing in front of my father for what had to appear to him as no reason at all, or that after everything that had happened to me that day, it was just this normal, every day thing that had broken me.

I pressed my hands to my face to try to hide my tears, but it was a pretty pathetic gesture with the way that I was sobbing. I heard my father push his chair back and stand up from the table. He was either leaving me here to cry it out alone or he was going to hit me. My dad hated crying, it drove him crazy. If he did hit me for it, it wouldn't be nearly the first time, or even the twentieth, but I didn't even feel any fear about it. You ever get a pain so awful that you can't even feel any other hurts, like stubbing your toe after slamming your hand in a car door? My hear was exactly like that. Dad could have beat me right into a hospital bed and I would have felt it at all.

Suddenly, instead of his fist in my face, I felt his arms around me. For a moment, I thought that I was dreaming. I brought my hands away from my face and saw that he really was kneeling in front of me and hugging me tightly. His hands rubbed at my back, trying to comfort me, and it did feel good, even though he was holding me a bit too tightly.

I couldn't even remember the last time he had held me like this, not for a long time. The last time that I could actually remember it, concretely, was when I was really little. My mother had forgotten to turn the oven off and left a dirty pot in there. Me, at that age where children were always looking for ways to help their parents and get just a shred of approval, had thought that the oven had been cool and reached in to grab it to give to my dad as he washed the dishes.

Suffice to say, I burned myself really badly and I still have a slight scar on my right palm to prove it. I was careful, even back then, not to cry in front of my father, especially over something small, but the pain was so bad, I couldn't help myself. When he had seen what had happened to me, he had swept me up in his arms and rocked me, telling me that it was ok. It had felt so good, the pain hadn't even mattered. For all that my father had done to me, it still felt good, every single time he held me like that.

For some reason, some part of me always believed that he could make things better. He had even done that childish thing of kissing my palm and saying that would make the pain go away. The memory is bitter sweet, though, because it sparked off a huge fight between my parents that ended up with my father giving my mother a bloody nose and two cracked ribs. It had made me wish that I hadn't cried at all.

"Sssh, baby boy," he said, just as he had when I had been younger, "it's going to be ok. Everything is going to be ok, you don't need to cry."

His words only made me cry harder against his shoulder, but it only made him hold me tighter, like it would help. I didn't know how to feel. I felt love for him, for moments like these, as rare as they were, when he cared for me and acted like a father. I felt sadness that it wasn't enough to make me feel any better, that he couldn't just love me all the time like he was supposed to. And I felt a dark, bitter kind of humor at him comforting me and telling me that everything was going to be ok when he didn't even know why I was crying.

The most painful thing was that if my relationship with my father had been normal, the kind you see on television, the kind that most of my classmates have, he would have known why I was crying so hard. He would have known days ago and maybe, back then, he really could have made it just a little bit better. Just knowing that I wasn't alone, that someone still loved me, would have pulled me out of the dark tailspin I was in. But I was alone. I could cry in my father's arms as long and as hard as I wanted. As soon as I stopped, I would be alone again.

I don't know how long it took me to stop crying and my dad to stop hugging me. Long enough for the soup to go completely cold. He took our bowls to the stove, dumped the soup back into the pot, stirred it for a little while, and poured it back into the bowls. I ate it dutifully, just to have something to concentrate on besides the shit in my head. I don't even really remembering tasting it. I didn't dare to take another bite of my salad. My father didn't ask me why I had cried and I didn't talk about it. I just couldn't bring myself to talk to him about someone he had never even known existed.
*****
I don't know what else to write about. There really isn't anything else, at least nothing that I haven't already written about. After I hit Relena, Mrs. Khushrenada decided that I needed to start to see the school counselor. I even went, but I never talked. There are just some things that you can't talk about to complete strangers. My depression, my rage, and how much I missed my best friend, not to even mention my horrible guilt and feelings of responsibility towards his death and my continuingly worsening nightmares were some of those things.

I told her that I wasn't really sleeping for more than five hours on a good night, two on a rocky one, and none at all on a bad one. I told her that I couldn't manage to sleep more than three hours at a time, and that was being generous, that I would wake up with my heart racing and I would have to get up and do something for a few hours before trying to sleep again.

I'm not stupid. I know what night terrors, insomnia, and sleep deprivation are and how they can fuck with a person, how they were just making my depression worse and that it was a never ending cycle. But when the counselor got a doctor to prescribe me sleeping pills, I just filled them and hid them in my room. I didn't take any, not even one. I kept looking at that bottle of white pills and thinking of Quatre's mother. How many pills had she taken to kill herself? How many would it take to end my whole life? What if it took the entire bottle? I didn't dare take just that one. I needed to save them, if I decided that was how I wanted to go.

The counselor eventually got fed up with my refusing to talk about Quatre and what I was really feeling and declared that I needed an outlet, some way to release al lthe negative feelings I have before I explode. She gave me this journal and told Mrs. Khushrenada to make sure that I was using it somehow. I don't believe that such an outlet exists. I think that the awful things in me can't ever really come out, be expunged somehow. I sure don't feel any better writing in this stupid thing, though it's been a great way to pass the time.

I had hoped that Mrs. Khushrenada and the counselor were right, that I would get to the end of this... this story, narrative, whatever you want to call it, and it would be like all this darkness was just pulled out of me, or at least silenced for awhile. If it was like that, I think I could have continued on, because I would have hope that it would get better. But it didn't help me at all. I know now that nothing will, not even time.

Then I beat up Zechs, punched him four times in the face until I broke his nose and then writing in this journal became a lot more than a suggestion. Zechs got me back, though, like I knew that he would, especially after I wasn't expelled and his parents went on easy on me because I was 'grieving.'

Sometimes I wish that I had looked those two people in the eye and told them what their children really were, that their daughter was a murderer and their son was a thug that should be locked up in jail, that I hadn't beaten Zechs because I was 'troubled' or 'sad,' but simply because I had wanted to and hadn't come up with a single reason not to anymore.

It had felt good, too, better than punching his sister had been. Maybe it was because he was bigger than me, more of a challenge to have tackled him and hit him the way that I had, or maybe it was because of all the times he had beaten me and Quatre up. I had realized, a long time ago, that even though he hadn't been at the front of the school with us that day, I was positive he had had a hand in outing Quatre. It had been bothering me, how Relena had gotten at Quatre's journal. The only thing that made any sense was that she had broken into the Winner home somehow. But I just couldn't see her doing that. Breaking in was more her brother's thing. The only other scenario that I could come up with was that one of Quatre's sisters was friends with Relena or Zechs, or had been intimidated by them. Neither was a pleasant thought.

When Zechs cornered me the next day after my near expulsion, I didn't even fight back. It would have been pointless to. I had been expecting some insidious form of payback, not him just walking up to me and punching me just like I had punched him. He gave me some bruises worthy of my father, a black eye, a probable cracked rib, and a broken nose. All things considered, I got off light. He probably would have done a lot worse if I had fought back or tried to hit him again.

He left me bleeding on the floor and I walked calmly to the nurse's office. I don't remember what lie I gave to the nurse, I had a million of them after thirteen years living with my father. I tripped and fell into a locker. I fell down some stairs. All terribly cliched, but effective when it came to bullshitting people.

There is nothing else. Nothing that I can write about that makes me happy, not even anything that makes me sad. There is just... nothing. What keeps me going these days, oddly, are thoughts of ending all of it. All this bullshit. Sometimes I just lay down on my mattress and think about how I'll do it for hours. I don't think about why I want to kill myself anymore, or even what, if anything, will come after I do it.

I don't think about what I'm leaving behind or if I'm going to go to Hell or if I'll see Quatre again. I just think of how. I think of those pills under my mattress, my father's razor blade, his gun, the rope we have in the basement, the train, a car, or even just goading Zechs on until he kills me in rage. It's strange, but thinking about these things comforts me. I would have thought that wanting to kill myself, thinking about my own death and about how much it's going to hurt would frighten me like it had when I had stood on the train tracks, but it doesn't at all anymore.

It's thinking about not ending my life that scares me so much now. I don't think that the pain of death can really match the pain I feel every single day, just waking up and realizing how empty my life is. I don't know exactly when I had finally decided to do it, when I had tasted Quatre's salad dressing for the last time, or at some point in writing all of this. Eventually, I stopped debating about it and just wondered when I could finally let all of it go. And it is a comfort, knowing I have a way out, knowing that I don't have to worry about my future anymore. At least I'll never really know just how much of a loser I am.

I've been waiting. Waiting to finish this journal, and waiting for the right time to kill myself. Sometimes I wake up in the early morning when it's still dark outside, my head fresh with my nightmares and my heart hammering in my chest so hard that I feel like I'm going to scream, and I think about just doing it. Running downstairs, grabbing my father's razor and just doing it right there. But every single time, my fear stops me. Not my fear of dying, but my fear of my father walking in on me before I'm gone and stopping me. I'm afraid of him 'saving' me. So I've been waiting for the perfect time, a time when no one can possibly stop me from doing this, because I'm not so sure I'll be able to try it a second time.

I've thought about leaving a suicide note, but what's the point? People that do that just want to childishly hurt all the people that have hurt them, or stupidly think that their death is going to mean something, make something change. It never does. I could go on and on about how Relena and Zechs Darlian killed me and killed Quatre, how my mother's cruel words to me made me loose all faith in myself and my future, how my father's fist have injured more than just my body.

I could try and make people see how much Quatre suffered and how much the people in his life need to be punished for it, but I'm not naive. Quatre died and everyone in school knows why. They know what Relena did to him, and Relena certainly knows what she did to him, but not a single one of those people cares, not a single one of them has tried to change anything. Relena doesn't feel an inch of guilt for what she did and I doubt my parents will change after I'm dead, that they'll love me anymore. If anything, maybe my death will give them peace. I don't want to think that. I still love my parents, despite everything, but I know what my birth did to them. What it did to my mother. Besides, I think I've said all that I can here. I'll let this journal be my suicide note, if anyone ever reads it. But I don't expect anyone to give a shit about my death, not when no one cared about Quatre's.

I decided it will be today. May 1st, 2004. My dad will be out of the house until tomorrow morning. He said it's because of his job, maybe a stakeout or paperwork, or maybe he's just lying so he can go out and fuck some woman. I try to picture her in my head, pale and blonde like my mother, or maybe he doesn't want to remember her at all and the women he fucks look completely different. At least I'll never know that for sure, I'll never know the sort of man that my father really is.

I don't know what to write. I can't think of anything profound, even though it will be the last thing that anyone knows of me. I've read a thousand books, but not a single thing comes into my head. I guess all there is is the obvious. I loved Quatre. I love my parents, even though they only seldom showed any affection for me. For the very first time in my life, I want to believe in God, and I want to look him in the eye and ask him why. I want to ask Relena why she did everything that she did to us. And I want to ask this entire town why they let her do it. That's all I have left to write.
　

　

*****

(blood smears)
I'm sorry. I'm so, so sorry. I don't want to be forgiven by anyone. I just want... no, I need everyone to know how sorry I am.
I'm sorry, Dad. I don't mean to make you so mad all the time. I try to be good, I try to be better so you won't be so tired and frustrated, but I can never do anything right. I can't even be a son right. I'm sorry I made such a mess in the bathroom. I'm sorry you and Mom aren't happy.
I'm sorry, Mom. You're right, I never should have been born. You could have been happy, had a real family. You shouldn't have a husband that hits you and cheats on you. You shouldn't have a son that ruined you inside. I'm sorry I'm so useless, I can't even protect you or get you to stop drinking. I'm sorry you had to ruin your whole life for worthless trash like me.
I'm sorry, Quatre. I'm sorry for what I did to you most of all. You deserved a better friend than me, someone that could have made them stop. I'm sorry that I was too stupid to understand all those times you tried to tell me how you were feeling... no, I did understand them. I understood how depressed you were, how you wanted to escape from everything, but I chose to just ignore it. I ignored you when you needed me the most, just like my parents always do! I'm disgusting, absolute trash, and you deserved so much better than me. I wish that I could have been a stronger person, then you would still be alive.

But I understand it now, how you could do it. Maybe not why, not the real reasons why you felt like you had to, but I understand how easy it was for you to just let go of it all, to just surrender. It isn't hard at all once you realize that they're wrong. Nothing gets better. And it didn't hurt, not really. It stung at first, but then the stinging went away. I don't feel it at all anymore

it's warm and nice getting hard to hold this pencil
sorry mom a nd dad this is all I can do anymore
Im gonna see Quatre now
　

End Part 9
End Chapter 3
　

Author's Note: I want to thank everyone who has reviewed this story, it's helped me to push through some of the harder parts. I don't know when chapter 4 will make an appearance, and I'm sorry for leaving the story at the place that it is at the end of this chapter, but I need to take the time to make notes for chapter 4 and 5. I also want to take the time to do some minor edits to the novel I am trying to publish. My new year's resolution is to get that story out there ^_^
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A Stagnation of Love (rewrite)