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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
- 1
- 2
- 3
A Stagnation of Love

Chapter 1

Part 2
　

March 3, 2004 (cont'd)
　

They did laugh. Well, they mostly snickered as Quatre and I walked back into the classroom, my face beet red with embarrassment, and I could see a few of them whispering to each other, and then giggling harder, and I could hear Relena's shrill crowing above all of the chuckles. It should have mortified me, but as I walked into the room, I suddenly realized that I didn't care. I had before but now, with Quatre literally walking by my side, and knowing that there was one person not laughing at me, it didn't bother me anymore. It did on some level. Deep down that laughter still hurt and mortified me, but not in any way that mattered, and not enough to make me bolt again.

Then Relena actually looked at me and saw that there weren't any marker marks on my forehead. A few kids continued to giggle, but she fell quiet. The sadistic glimmer and mirth that had been all over her face instantly disappeared and was replaced by a rage and icy hate that did not belong on any child's face. In that moment, it was like my father was glaring at me from the mask of someone else's face. It terrified me at the same time I felt some satisfaction that I had beaten her, thanks to my... my new friend. That realization was enough to warm the ice that Relena's glare had put around my heart. I had a friend. I expected her to try something as the two of us made our ways to our desks, but she just kept staring. Barely two minutes after we sat down, Mrs. Khushrenada came bustling back into the room, looking hurried and flustered.

"I am so sorry, class," she said and actually did manage to sound apologetic, "that took a bit longer than I thought it would," she glanced down at her watch and did a double take, "a lot longer," she said with a sigh, "Well, time for lunch and recess, we'll just have to pick up our lesson when all of you get back-"

The rest of what our teacher had to say was drowned out by the cheering of my classmates. I had thought it was chaotic before, seeing them run around the classroom when Mrs. Khushrenada had been gone, but that was nothing compared to watching all of them scramble pulling their lunches out of their desks and running at full speed out of the door past our flustered teacher. It was like watching a stampede of wild horses. In mere seconds, the only people in the classroom were me, Mrs. Khushrenada, and Quatre. He made an immediate beeline for me and I felt this intense happiness burst inside of me. I think a part of me had been scared that while I now considered him my friend, he didn't feel the same way and had just wanted to be helpful before.

"Do you know where the cafeteria is?" he asked me and I realized that he even though he didn't recognize me from the previous years he had been at this school, he also wasn't assuming I was as clueless as I was.

"This is my first day at public school," I admitted in a shamed mutter, "I don't know where anything is."

I thought he might make fun of me for that, or make some kind of assumption why I hadn't gone before, but he took me by surprise again.

"Oh," he said simply, not losing his bright smile, "I'll have to show you around then."

I was stunned for a moment, but I quickly recovered and grabbed my book bag, following the other boy out of the classroom. I kept trying to see what I had always seen in other people in him. I felt like anyone else would have accused me of being retarded or something, so Quatre had to as well. But every time I expected him to judge me for something, he took me at face value. I didn't know how to handle that. I don't think I ever really learned how to take it beyond a simple realization I had that first day I had met him. When I had asked him why Relena was so mean, he had said that maybe it was just who she was, something that wasn't meant to be understood or changed. Maybe this was just how Quatre was, and it would be pointless for me to do anything but accept that.

The elementary school only has one cafeteria, this large open space filled with tables, snack and soda machines, various posters about nutrition and after school activities covering the mica flecked, tiled walls. It was much, much louder than our classroom. Teachers bustled about, breaking up fights and telling kids to 'use your inside voice'. But the second the teacher walked off to another problem, the yelling would just start up again. Thankfully, certain grades ate at certain times, so we just had to share the cafeteria with the third graders and not the upper grades.

Quatre found an empty table in the far corner of the room where few kids were. I sat down with him and looked around with interest. We were far away from the area where some kids were buying food, but I could still smell the intoxicating aroma of hamburgers and mac n' cheese. The kids in the tables next to us had been chatting friendly with each other until they had seen Quatre and I approach. I recognized most of them from our class and they went stony silent when we passed by them. I realized that they thought we were trying to sit at the same tables as them, and clearly didn't want us to. A few of them even started spreading their backpacks and lunch boxes on the empty seats to make sure we couldn't sit down. I wanted to scream at them that it was ok, I didn't want to sit with them, either.

Even as the other tables got crowded, no one tried to sit with us. I glanced at Quatre a few times and saw how happy he seemed as he pulled out his lunch from his lunch bag. Beyond that happiness, I saw painful relief. He wasn't just my only friend, I was his, and I wasn't the only reason why no one was sitting with us. That thought brought equal sadness and relief to me. I watched him as he ate a cheese and bologna sandwich and felt my own hunger.

"Where's your lunch?" he suddenly asked as though he realized I had been staring at his food and not him.

"I didn't bring anything," I admitted with a blush.

I didn't want to tell him that I hadn't really known what to expect from today, and I was so used to skipping meals at home that the thought to bring food hadn't occurred to me.

"Why don't you buy something?"

I blushed even harder.

"I don't have any money," I murmured.

"Your parents didn't give you any?" he asked, perplexed.

When I shook my head, he looked oddly horrified, like he couldn't imagine my parents sending me off to my very first day of school unprepared. I guess that sort of thing wouldn't fly at all at the Winner household. Quatre's parents were always prepared for everything, always leaving him anything he might need before they left for work, everything except for the time of day, or their attention. My problems at home were mostly because of my interaction with my father and my lack of interaction with my mother. Most of Quatre's problems were exclusively the latter.

Quatre dug around in his backpack and pulled out a fist of one dollar bills. He thrust them at me.

"Here, you can get whatever you like with this," he said.

I stared at the bills like they were some kind of monster I expected to come and bite me. I felt my face go red hot for some reason and I just didn't know what to say to him. No one had just offered money to me like that before. Quatre had absolutely no reason to buy my lunch for me, so I was at a loss of what to do.

"I can't pay you back," I started to protest.

I never had cash. Dad would sometimes give me a couple of bucks if he had change, but I would always use them to buy books or food that he had forgotten to buy. I knew that some kids got paid to do chores, but it wasn't like that at my house. I had to do those chores whether I got paid or not, and my parents never had spare money to give me. What money they had went to bills, food, and alcohol. Whenever I dared to ask my dad for some, his only response had always been 'what the hell does a kid like you need money for, buzz off.'

"I don't want you to pay me back," Quatre interrupted me, "I always pack my lunch anyway and I get paid allowance at the end of the week. This is just what's left of last month's."

That didn't make me feel any better, it made me feel worse. It didn't feel right to me, taking money from someone who was my friend (my only friend) and not giving it back. I was about to argue with him about it, to say to him that it was fine, I wasn't that hungry, but I saw this rare hardness in his eyes amidst the kindness and realized he would fight me on this. It was the only subject Quatre and I had consistently fought about in our friendship, him giving me money. The way he saw it, he never needed all of the money his parents gave him and I always needed more money, so the solution was simple. The way I saw it, I was accepting hand outs and it made me feel pathetic. I know he didn't mean for it to feel that way, but it just made me feel like shit.

I had just made this friend, and I was scared of losing him, even to something so petty as me not wanting to take his money, so I took the singles and got into line with the other kids to get my food. Everyone makes fun of school cafeteria food, and I'm sure it's nothing to get excited about, but meals at home consisted to food heated up out of a can or frozen dinners or cheap take out. I was used to greasy, bland, and generic food, so the food from the school cafeteria was probably better than the food I was getting at home. I was probably one of the only kids that was actually excited to see green vegetables and those little cups of fruit. Hamburgers were cheap and easy for us to buy, fruit wasn't. When I had been little, my dad would come home with a banana or orange for me as treats but they weren't things that he usually bought in bulk.

A few kids cut in front of me in line every now and then, but I didn't speak up against it. It was irritating, but I kept remembered Relena and how she had pushed me in the classroom. I just wanted to get through the rest of this day. I didn't want to fight with anyone or get bullied again, so I let them cut me. As I finally got to the front of the line, I saw that in addition to hamburgers, they were also serving a rich beef stew. The smell of it was overpowering, but not many kids were getting it, opting for the burgers or hot dogs. The person handing out the food even gave me a strange look when I asked for it excitedly.

Counting the money Quatre had given me carefully, I also got french fries, a fruit cup, a chocolate milk, and some peas, my favorite vegetable. The lunch lady asked me twice if I really wanted that. I guess she hadn't been getting many requests for stew and french fries, but it was the first time in my life that I had been able to choose my food for myself, and the only time I had been able to splurge on something I wanted. I couldn't think of a single reason why I shouldn't get what I wanted, it wasn't like anyone was there to tell me no.

I felt oddly giddy as I took my cafeteria tray packed with hot, fresh food and walked back towards our table. I couldn't remember the last time I had been this happy. I shouldn't have been. I had made a friend, and that was miraculous to me, but I had also made an enemy, and in my happiness I had forgotten that. In those brief moments, I had forgotten what it was like at home, that even in those moments when my dad was nice to me, I was always on my toes, waiting for the tide to change. This kind of happiness was new to me, and it was nice to have it, even if it didn't last very long.

On my trek across the cafeteria, someone bumped into me hard enough that I almost lost my balance. The person grabbed my tray to keep steady and an apology was already on my lips, even though they had been the ones to bump into me. Then I saw the hard blue eyes of the person glaring at me. It was strange, at the same time that the expression on that person's face was a glare, it wasn't precisely angry. It was more like they were trying to appear angry while lacking any real heat. But there was plenty of disgust and irritation there, and that was perfectly real.

"Watch where you're going, freak!" Relena snapped and I automatically flinched from her.

She let go of my tray and stormed off, but as she turned to go, I caught her smirking with satisfaction. I shrugged it off as her being smug about my flinch and continued on my way. I should have been more suspicious about it, but I had been young then and I hadn't really understood the level of contempt the girl had for me. I had, naively, thought that after her writing on my face and our removing it, she would leave me alone at least for a little while, or she would try something similar. I had already decided to try to not let her get to me, so I pushed her bumping into me out of my mind. But as I sat down, Quatre seemed much more subdued than before, and was studying me with a searching look. He was doing enough worrying for the both of us.

"What did she say to you?" he asked quietly.

I shrugged.

"Nothing, really," I assured him.

I dug my plastic spork into my bowl of stew, spearing a piece of beef with the pointy fork bit and gathering up some broth with the spoon bit of the bizarre utensil. I honestly didn't care about the taste. It was a hot meal, something I hadn't had in awhile. The past two weeks had been left over meals; salads that had been on the verge of spoiling that my mother had taken home from her waitressing jobs, cold pizza my dad had brought home from one of his many dinners out with his cop buddies, and cold tuna sandwiches.

"Don't eat that!" Quatre suddenly snapped at me.

Instinct from a lifetime of obeying orders often snapped at me like that made me drop my spoon. I looked at him in shock and then down at my food. I promptly fought the urge to throw up. I had been so eager to eat my lunch, one of the best ones I had had for awhile, I hadn't even really looked down at what it was I was eating. Writhing and squirming in my dark brown stew were a bunch of small, pink worms. Someone had just dumped them in there and I doubted that the lunch lady had mistaken them for noodles, which the stew didn't even have.

A part of my disgust came from knowing I had been mere seconds from eating the worms, but mostly it came from anger, I didn't need anyone to point out to me how the worms had gotten there, but I had never thought she would have sunk this low to humiliate me. Worse, I had been looking forward to this meal and she had ruined it, all for a disgusting prank. I wanted to scream. I wanted to walk right up to her and dump my food, worms and all, on her head.

"Relena," Quatre muttered and for the very first time, I heard real anger in his voice.

His anger shocked me a little simply because it didn't belong coming from the sweet, kind boy that had paid for my lunch and washed the marker off of my forehead. It was like hearing a lion's roar come from a house cat.

I looked down at my food again. There were just five worms that I could see squirming around in the broth. They seemed as eager to get out of the soupy mess as I wanted them to. Who knew when I was going to have such a big meal again? I could throw out the stew and just eat the rest of the food, I supposed, but I didn't want to. It was a waste of money and food. And I wanted it. It wasn't like she had dumped poison in there, what right did I have to throw good food away? More importantly, I didn't want Relena to win.

Despite my grimace as I did so, I carefully and gently picked out each worm from the bowl and placed them on an empty spot on my tray. They continued to wiggle around frantically, looking for cool dirt that wasn't there, I guess. I felt guilty, or at least sympathetic towards them. I guess that's strange, they were just worms, but Relena had intended for me to eat them. Like me, they hadn't done anything to deserve it. They were gross, and the thought of almost swallowing one of them made me gag, but I didn't want to kill them just because they were gross. Quatre watched all of this with confusion, obviously not understanding what I was thinking, then his face twisted into repulsion as I ate a spoonful of now worm free stew. It was delicious.

"That's gross," he said, opening his mouth and sticking out his tongue to demonstrate his disgust.

"It's tasty," I teased and ate another spoonful. I had no idea what worms tasted like, but I couldn't taste anything except for beef and broth, "It's perfectly good food, no reason to throw it out, and I can put the worms back in the dirt at recess."

Quatre's look of repulsion slowly turned into a soft smile as I explained. He looked... almost affectionate, even though we had only met a few hours ago.

"You're weird, Duo," he said, but he giggled as he said it, taking the hurt out of a word that would have been a biting insult from anyone else.

"Is that bad?" I asked shyly.

Although he had laughed about it, I was still incredibly nervous that what I had just done was really gross and strange. I worried that I had lost my only friend only an hour after making one. But I hadn't needed to worry, true to how he had always been up until then, Quatre smiled and nodded his head.

"Nah," he grinned, "I like weird."
*****
Nothing else extraordinary happened during lunch. We were left alone, but the entire time I had the feeling that someone was watching me. It might have been in my head, but I was sure Relena was watching me, waiting for me to find her little surprise and scream or throw up or something else embarrassing. I almost looked around the room to try to see where she was, but I didn't want to give her even that much satisfaction. We ate quickly, I didn't want the worms to get dried out and die.

At recess, the horde of kids ran out into the play area behind the school, most of the kinds jumping on the swings or jungle gym. I went right for a bunch of bushes near the woods at the edge of the playground, far from the other kids, and put the worms in the soil under the bushes so birds would have a hard time seeing them. Unlike Quatre, I really didn't mind holding them with my bare hands that much, it had just been the idea of eating them alive that had grossed me out. I felt oddly smug at that moment. I had not only thwarted Relena's attempts to gross me out, I had managed to save the worms, too.

Quatre and I stayed at the edge of the woods, close enough that the teachers could see us, but as far away from Relena that we could get. She didn't bother us, staying on the swings with a couple other girls I assumed must be her friends. It would have been nice to play on the jungle gym, but both Name and I were paranoid about Relena, and we had plenty of fun by ourselves anyway.

We played silly kids games like rock, paper, scissors, climbed a few of the smaller trees, and drew in the soft dirt with sticks. I had never played with another kid before. It was nice, everything that I had hoped my first day of school would be. It's ironic. Relena had effectively destroyed any likelihood I would be friends with our other classmates by making me her target, but in doing so, she had pretty much thrown Quatre and I together. I like to think we would have been friends anyway, but I don't know.

I didn't feel as nervous and skittish out on the playground as I had in the classroom, even with Mrs. Khushrenada watching. I felt trapped in that room and I didn't trust my teacher to help me if Relena tried anything. At least out on the playground I had plenty of space to run from her, and I wasn't ashamed to say that that was exactly what I would do if she approached us, no matter who would make fun of me for it. I didn't want to interact with the bully at all at that point. She never did approach us, though, even when we shuffled back into the classroom. I didn't dare to hope that she might leave us alone, though.

To my reluctance, we dove right back into math after recess. Mrs. Khushrenada had us working on more complex division problems, something that made me very flustered. Even with what my dad had shown me, I struggled with it. There were just so many little tricks and methods Mrs. Khushrenada was showing us that were new to everyone, and I had just learned only the bare essentials that my classmates had been working on all last year. When Mrs. Khushrenada called me up to the board to work on a problem, I was so horrified I thought I was going to die. I got through half of the problem before I got stuck and all I could do was stare at the chalk marks I had made like an idiot.

Unsurprisingly, Relena's laugh was the first one I heard, but the others were quick to follow. I hurt just as much as when they had all laughed at me before. My hands shook and whatever chance I had had at remembering how to finish the problem was gone. My head was blank, all I could hear was the laughter and all I could think about was my embarrassment, and how stupid I felt. Mrs. Khushrenada snapped at my classmates not to laugh at me and they finally quieted, but it didn't make me feel any better. She and Quatre had been the only ones who hadn't laughed. Looking pained and sympathetic, she let me go back to my seat.

I sat through the rest of the math lesson feeling sick to my stomach and very sad. When we moved on to our vocabulary, I raised my hand and asked to use the bathroom. I couldn't afford to miss the math lesson, as much as I hated it, but there weren't any words on the vocabulary work sheets Mrs. Khushrenada had handed out that I didn't already know. I could tell that my teacher knew I didn't actually need to go to the bathroom, but she let me be excused anyway. I left the classroom and went to the same bathroom that I had that morning.

I had a cruel sense of deja vu and wondered if this was going to be a habit, running into the boys' bathroom whenever my class laughed at me like a gopher into its den to hide from predators. I had thought that having a friend would make it better, and it had, but it still hurt and had me almost in tears, but this time I was able to hold them in. Would I ever be like the other kids in my class and just blend in? Would I ever have a ton of friends I could play with, would I ever understand all those math problems like they did, would I ever understand why Relena hated me so much and why the other kids didn't care about what she did? Would I always be the freak?

I felt lost. The confusion about my isolation made the pain worse, and it would take me over a year of this to finally realize the truth. I could ace all of my math tests, I could talk to all of the kids in my class and try to get to know them. I could be charming and funny and smart, and find a way to fight back against Relena. None of it mattered and none of it would change anything. I was different and I would always be different, the kind of different that wasn't cool or rebellious. In the end, I would still be poorer than most of the kids I went to school with. I would still come to school in bruises, still not have anyone to pick me up after school or buy me the same new, fashionable clothes and toys my classmates had. I would never have anyone to pack my lunch for me, sign off on field trips, or pay to have me take an extracurricular activity. I could never be like them and I would never have what they had.

But I had Quatre. I might not have a ton of friends to hang out with like the other kids seemed to have, but I had one true friend. I had someone who smiled at me and actually meant it, who never made fun of me and liked that I was strange. As far as I was concerned, I would rather have Quatre as a friend than each of the kids that had laughed. I looked at my reflection in the mirror. My forehead wasn't red like it had been before and I wasn't as paled or wide eyed as I had been that morning. If I had to really analyze it, bullying and all, I was a lot happier now than I had been when I had walked into the school for the first time.

I heard the bathroom door open and after all that thinking about my new friend, I was sure it would be him again. But it wasn't. To my shock, Relena stood there in the mirror, the bright lights of the bathroom bringing out the gold in her light brown hair for the first time. I felt a shock of fear go through me and again thought about how ridiculous it was to be afraid of this girl. Being afraid of my father had become second nature for me. He was bigger and strong, and I knew the kind of damage he could do to me when he was angry, but being afraid of Relena made me feel pathetic. But the fear was just as real because, no matter what she did to me, I couldn't fight back against her. Boys didn't hit girls, so what could I do? And in a way, she was just as frightening as my father with that mix of intense malice and glee on her face.

I turned to look at her, feeling that sense of deja vu again, only instead of someone coming in here to help me, it was the person that had driven me to run in here to begin with. I suddenly felt very angry. Was there nowhere in the entire school I could go to get away from her?! What terrible thing had she followed me in here to do this time? She didn't even seem all that concerned that she had just walked into the boys' bathroom. She just strutted in like she didn't care, like she could do whatever she wanted, angered me.

I wish I had the courage to strike her, especially as I wondered if she had done stuff like this to Quatre. It was so ludicrous, I couldn't even protect myself from her, but I wanted to protect him. I thought of asking her why she hated me so much. Why me, out of all the other kids? And what was the point of it? But I realized that I didn't actually care. Quatre's family was well off, given his clothing, and they had been friends since they had been babies, but she still picked on him. And Quatre was so nice, her reasons for picking on him, no matter what they were, didn't make sense to me. I crossed my arms over my chest and glowered at her, trying to mimic the same look my dad had that scared me so badly, but I was sure I was sucking at it. It's awfully hard to look imposing when you're just a kid, even to other kids.

"You can't be in here," I said in what I hoped was a solid, authoritative voice, "This is the boy's room. You're not a boy," I said obviously.

She smirked at me, intimidated one bit, and walked by me as though she were rubbing my face in her boldness. I felt the hair on the back of my neck rise up, the same way they did when my dad came home in a bad mood and I just knew something terrible was about to happen. I wanted to get out of there, but she was too close to the door and I didn't want to get near her. My head still ached a little from hitting the desk earlier when she had pushed me.

"How did you get rid of it?" she suddenly snapped at me, bewildering me until she looked at my forehead, "And how did you know about the worms?! I thought you might like them, since you're nothing but a worm yourself, but Quatre helped you, didn't he?! I guess it's true, scum sticks together!"

Oddly, her calling Quatre scum rankled me worse than her calling me a worm. He wasn't scum, and I was about to protest that to her when it came to me that she wanted me to be flustered and defensive. She was trying to make me rat out Quatre, to betray him to her for helping me. Would she go after him for it? I imagined that she would, and even if she wouldn't, there was no way I was going to do that. Quatre was my friend, the only person in the world who wanted to be my friend. I would never betray him, no matter the reason.

I shrugged.

"They were easy to spot," I lied, "It was just so obvious, I found them quickly."

Her pale face flushed red with anger and she looked like she wanted to scratch my face off in her rage.

"You have to realize that he'll never be friends with you," she sneered, her anger making her look like a snarling wolf, seeing through my deflection, "Even someone as terribly stupid as you has to know that. Quatre's rich! The Winner's are one of the richest families in town, along with mine, what does he need with poor trailer trash like you? He just feels sorry for you, but at the end of the day, he'll remember that you're trash and he's not. He'll dump you like spoiled fruit."

My heart twisted with anxiety. I knew it wasn't true, not really. Quatre would never be that cruel, he wasn't like her. But all the same, it hurt because there was a sliver of truth in it. I was dirt poor and Quatre was rich. I didn't know why he would want to be friends with me, especially someone that no one else liked. Did he pity me or was just friends with me because we were both being bullied? No, that didn't seem like the boy I had just been playing with. Maybe I just didn't want it to be true, because then I would have to admit to myself that Relena was right, that Quatre didn't really want to be friends with me. But even if it was just pity, I wanted to be his friend. He had been kind to me, and even someone who was just hanging around me for those reasons was better than being completely alone.

"I don't care," I told her sharply and honestly, "Even if he's using me, he's still nicer than you are."

I remembered everything she had done with me that day with vivid clarity, her attacks, her hatred, her confidence that she could do whatever she wanted and not get into trouble for it, but I was still incredibly unprepared when that rage on her face exploded and she suddenly grabbed at my hair, shoving my head into the poor of water that had collected in a clogged urinal. The water was just deep enough to submerge my face, making it impossible to breathe as she held my head down. The water lapped around my ears, making the sounds outside of the water muffled, like nothing was real except for that water and my inability to breathe. I tried to grab at the sides of the urinal so I could get the leverage to shove her back and get out of the water, but the sides were too slippery for me to get a good purchase on.

Panic filled me and only my desperate need to not drown, especially in something as pathetic as a urinal kept me from screaming in fear. But even in my panic, I couldn't believe that it was happening. Was she really going to kill me, all because I wouldn't betray Quatre and had told her that she wasn't nice? My lungs burning and my head buzzing with a thousand thoughts and feelings, none of them pleasant, I came to another epiphany. No one would care if I died. Relena probably wouldn't even get into trouble for it. My parents would probably thank her for doing them the service and freeing them of me after all this time. Quatre would care, but eventually he would get over it and realize he was better off without me, just like everyone in my life. How old I was didn't matter, that this wasn't fair didn't matter. I had never felt more useless than I did at that moment realizing that I couldn't think of a single reason why she shouldn't drown me other than I just didn't want to die.

"Drink it, drink it!" I heard her screaming like an animal through a world that made everything sound like my head was stuffed in a pillow.

I didn't want to give in to her. That's a stupid thing to say when my lungs were hurting and my head was swimming from a lack of oxygen I guess, but it didn't even have anything to do with not wanting to drink the dirty urinal water. I just didn't want to let her win. I didn't want to give her the satisfaction of surrendering to her. It was incredibly petty, and I knew if I gave in to that pettiness I was going to die. I probably will die because of that stubborn streak in me one day, either from fighting against people like Relena, or my father. I never won in my entire life, and just once I wanted to. But in the end, I was terrified and my chest hurt too much.

Just like I always did, I gave in. I drank in the foul tasting water in huge gulps, wanting to vomit from the bitter, flat, stagnant taste of it, but I almost cried in joy as I felt Relena let go of my head, letting me lurch out of the water. I coughed and gagged, taking in great, big breaths, the air tasting sweet and fresh and wonderful to me. I heard her laughter through the sound of my own heart pounding in my ears. It was like the sound of fingernails scraping against a chalkboard. I didn't even try to stand, my legs were still shaking, I just slumped against the wall gasping, my bangs stuck to my forehead, the front of my shirt sloshed with water. I wanted to cry so badly, but I just felt empty. What was the point, I asked myself, it wasn't like it would make a difference. I wouldn't be able to tell if they were tears at all or just more dirty water.

I was angry at what she had just done to me. How had she escalated from humiliating me in front of our entire class to trying to kill me in revenge? I tried to find the rage I had had earlier when she had walked into the bathroom, but it was mysteriously gone. I was starting to understand that there was just no winning against her. Even if I did hit her, I doubted she would stop. I was just trash, like she had said, a poor boy from the other side of town from her. She had more friends than I did, more money, nicer parents. She even had more anger and hate than I did. What could I possibly do?

I stayed there in the bathroom with my back against the cold tiled wall and just concentrated on getting air back into my burning lungs. My eyes were red and irritated from the water, my vision so blurry I might as well have been crying. I heard Relena leave and almost laughed at the pathetic image I had to have given her. I hoped she was happy with her handiwork. When I was absolutely sure she was gone and wasn't coming back, and I wasn't shaking so hard, I got up and stood at the sink. I didn't look at my reflection. The thought of doing so, at seeing what I looked like, repulsed me. I wrung out my shirt and hair as best I could, at least so I wasn't dripping water.

When I walked into the classroom, vocabulary had become geography. Mrs. Khushrenada had her back to the class, using a pointer to point at a poster of the United States map she had pulled down in front of the chalkboard. I was able to walk past her and sit down in my seat without her seeing how wet I was. She didn't seem to realize that my and Relena going to the bathroom at around the same time had been significant and I was actually relieved about that. My classmates did notice though and I heard a mixture of subdued giggles and snickers as I sat down. I felt defeated. Every giggle I heard, I wanted to punch something even more. My father was right. I was weak and pathetic and that's all I would ever be. I ignored my anger and just sat and stared blankly at the chalkboard instead until the sounds of mirth and mocking settled down. Worried about what Quatre thought about all this, I glanced over at him. He was looking at me with an incredibly concerned expression, like he wanted to go over to me and ask if I was ok. I smiled at him even though it was the last thing I felt like doing. My friend smiled back at me and just like that, my own smile felt much more real. Just like that, my feelings of defeat vanished, and that itself felt like a kind of victory to me. Relena could hurt me. She could make me doubt myself. She could even, obviously, try to kill me, but she hadn't taken Quatre away from me.

The end of the school day was surreal for me. I shouldered my backpack and headed out to the parking lot with Quatre. He hadn't asked me about what had happened in the bathroom yet and I didn't volunteer the information. I was still too shook up by it. We watched Relena closely as she walked up to a sleek black car that had just pulled up the school, like a limo picking up a celebrity. From the opposite entrance of ours, where the older kids came out, a tall boy joined her getting into the car. He had the same blue eyes that Relena did, but his hair was dyed silver, pulled back into a lazy ponytail. He must be the brother Quatre told me about, I thought. He didn't have her too perfect appearance, his hair messy and his clothes just as lazily assembled as his hair, but there was no mistaking those hard blue eyes.

"That's Zechs Dorlian," Quatre informed me, "Stay far away from him. He's much worse than Relena. Lucy Stephen told me that last year he broke some kid from the lower grades' arm just for looking at him funny."

I looked at my friend in shock. It was almost impossible for me to believe there was someone out there worse than Relena, but I decided to trust Quatre. I wouldn't so much as look at Zechs Dorlian, I decided and hoped we never crossed paths. I didn't want to get my arm broken, both of them had already been broken enough already. The school day really was over, I realized as I watched their car leave the parking lot along with a bunch of others. I didn't know if I should be happy or sad about that. On the one hand, I had survived the day and Relena couldn't do anything else to me. On the other hand, I would have to say goodbye to Quatre. And I would have to go back home. At least my father wouldn't be home until later, but that was little comfort to me at that moment. I was sure that, since Relena had said that Quatre's family was rich, his family would be picking him up from school, too, but he didn't even look for a car. He just kept walking past the parking lot and off of school grounds.

I followed my friend, even when he walked the opposite way that I lived, to the wealthier side of town. I was sure he knew that I didn't live this way, but I hoped that he also understood that I wanted to spend as much time with him as I could. Maybe he even realized that I was hesitant to go home, but I don't think so. During that walk to Quatre's house, passing beautiful house after beautiful house with rich, green lawns, swimming pools, and cars I didn't even see in my part of Nausten, I got a taste of my first real shame towards my own home and my own neighborhood. I was incredibly glad that I was following him and not the other way around. I didn't want him to see where I lived. I especially did not want him to meet my parents. What would he think of my gruff, cold father or my mother who even in those days had spent most of her life in a bottle?

Instead of mutts and large, aggressive dogs that I often saw with my neighbors walking our neighborhood, I saw people out walking tiny dogs that looked more like stuffed animals than actual dogs. They yapped at us as we walked by, their owners not bothered by their behavior one bit, but Quatre just calmly walked past them. They reminded me of Relena for a moment, well groomed, but with a nasty temperament. I love animals, but I didn't like those dogs at all and I still don't. I much preferred the feral cats that prowled our neighborhood. Like me, they were underfed and scruffy, but they weren't as mean as Brutus was. I talked to them a lot and was nice to them, giving them scraps of food when I could, and they had gotten used to me enough to let me pet them. I always wanted to take one of them home, but knew that I never could.

"Why don't your parents pick you up from school?" I asked as we walked.

Most of the kids that lived on this side of the town got picked up, while a lot of the kids on my side took either the school bus or the public one. It wasn't that long of a walk to this side of town from the school and I made the commute on foot to my house which was further, but it was long enough that it made it odd his parents hadn't been there.

"I'm a latch-key kid," Quatre told me.

I gave him a puzzled look. I had never heard that expression before.

"What's that?" I asked, tilting my head in confusion before my worries about him thinking I was stupid could stop me.

It was the sort of question my father would have made fun of me for, but Quatre didn't. He treated me like I had always wished my parents would when I had questions like that, answering my question with patience instead of irritation.

"It means that my parents aren't around much. My mom and dad run this big company, so they have a long commute. By the time I wake up to go to school, they're already gone, and by the time they get home, I'm asleep. I only really see them on the weekends, but they're always on the phone or running off to emergency meetings. I have six sisters, but they're all too old to really bother with me. They make dinner for me and help me with my homework, but most of the time they're out with friends. So I'm used to being on my own at home. Technically, my mother is just my step-mom. My real mom died when I was really little and my dad remarried. I guess my older sisters were really messed up about it, so they don't get along that well. I was too young to remember my real mother, but my new mom treats me like she treats my sisters anyway. So even when she is home, she talks mostly with my dad. I'm alone more than I see any of them. I have to unlock the door when I get home since I'm the first one home and make my lunches because my mom forgets stuff like that a lot," Quatre explained to me.

He sounded so sad as he said it. Sad, lonely, and abandoned. All the emotions I felt every day, whether it was from my mother's cold shoulder or my father's abrasiveness. I wanted to hug him so badly, but I didn't know if Quatre would appreciate it or if it would make him uncomfortable.

"I haven't seen my father in a week," he murmured so softly under his breath that I was sure that he hadn't meant for me to hear it.

I almost did hug him then, but settled for standing close to him, our hands almost touching. If I could go back in time to that moment, knowing what I do now, older and more self-aware and just more aware in general, I would tell him that I would never abandon him like his fucking family had. If he had been my brother, I wouldn't have made him feel lonely by getting caught up in only my own problems. Not now when I know better, after I learned that mistake the hard way. If he came back into my life, I would always protect him, no matter what happened to me or how much it hurt. He deserved that much from me. I would love him, and I always will.

But at nine years old, I didn't know what I know now at thirteen, and I didn't know how to be a real friend until I found myself alone again. Instead, I decided to share with him some things about my own family. It had only seemed fair.

"My dad's a cop," I told him, "and my mom waitresses at two different places. They're pretty busy at their jobs, and sometimes my dad doesn't come home, but I still see them a lot. But even though they're there, they don't talk to me that much. They ignore me most of the time. And I'm an only child, so it can get pretty lonely at times."

Quatre stopped walking and smiled at me, that smile full of both understanding and sadness. I looked at the house we had stopped at. It was huge! I remember thinking that I could understand how lonely it might be in a house that big, even if you had six sisters. I wanted to be jealous of Quatre. He had money and siblings and a big, beautiful house to live in, but I didn't. I had never thought a person with this kind of life would have any of my problems, but looking at his loneliness was like looking in a mirror.

He suddenly reached out his hand to me, his hand curled into a fist with his pinky extended.

"Do you know how to pinky swear?" he asked me, his eyes both soft and serious.

I shook my head. There was a lot I hadn't known back then. He gestured to his hand and I caught on to copy him, watching in fascination when he curled his pinky around mine. His finger felt soft and warm.

"Like this," he said and shook my hand a little with our pinkies linked, "Let's promise that no matter what happens we'll always be friends, we'll never abandon each other or be lonely."

An incredibly warmth and happiness filled my chest at that moment and I nodded eagerly.

"Ok," I agreed, "I promise."

It turned out to be a promise neither of us could keep, but for that moment I felt like I might die from the happiness I felt as we made that promise. We let go of each other's fingers and said goodbye. I watched him unlock the large gate in front of his house and disappear inside. The warmth inside of me turned to pain. I told myself that it was ok, I would be seeing him tomorrow, but it didn't help how I felt.

Walking back to the poor side of town was both terrible and long. It was like watching pristine paint peel away and reveal something ugly underneath. Mini mansions and manicured lawns melted away into convenience stores and homes badly in need of repair, pedigree dogs turned into mutts, and neighbors exchanging pleasantries became hardened teenagers with nothing more to do but smoke outside the bars they weren't allowed to go into and glare at anyone passing by them. Our house wasn't any better in reality, but it wasn't quite as rundown as some of the other buildings on our street. The paint was aged and some of the wood was rotten and needed to be replaced, but my dad wasn't apathetic like some of our neighbors. He kept up with what repairs he could on the weekends, complaining about it the whole time. The real problems our home had came from expenses and the way it looked. There was no reason to spend money and time on repainting it when the plumbing needed to be fixed.

My mother was sitting on our front step, already halfway into a bottle of wine at that point. It must have been a bad day. By the time I had reached the seventh grade this year, she had upgraded from wine to vodka. Her grey eyes were cloudy and bloodshot, the lines on her face showing. As the years went by, those lines would get deeper and more pronounced. Her drinking would get much more frequent and she would look a good ten years older than she was, at least.

"Hi, Mom, I'm back from school," I greeted in a soft voice, mindful of the headaches she was often plagued by.

My mother continued to look past me, like I didn't exist, and in her frequent drunk stupors, to her I didn't. I took the first few steps onto our porch, which needed quite a few boards replaced, and looked down at my mother. Standing above her like this made her seem so much smaller than me, even if that wasn't true. She looked older than she should, her face more worn than many of the mothers I had seen today picking up my classmates. But her chestnut hair was like mine and I recognized some of her features in my own face.

I felt the same strange mixture of feelings towards her that I did with my father. I hated that she wouldn't look at me and say hi back to me, ask me how my day was, acknowledge that I wasn't just an unwanted specter like how I imagined a normal mother would. But I also loved her. She was my mom and I loved her. I just wish I didn't have to hate her, too. But in that moment, I think I loved her more than I hated her. I felt a pain in my heart for her, and a great deal of guilt knowing I had put many of those stress lines on her face. I wanted to hug her then, but I didn't. It would be like hugging a corpse.

I carefully walked up onto the porch and walked into the house. It had been dark and cloudy out on the walk home, not the sort of clouds that meant rain, but there had been enough of them to keep the sun from shining, yet no one had turned on any lights in the house. I imagined Relena as she came home, running out of that sleek black car with her older brother and into her house, which I was positive was as big and beautiful and perfect as Quatre's was. Her mother would be there in the kitchen with some sort of snack for them, something she had no doubt made herself. She would ask her how her first day in the first grade was, her eyes as blue as her childrens' but lacking that hard edge to them.

I walked into my own kitchen. It was exactly the same as how it had been left that morning. Mom was supposed to have washed the dishes when she got home today, but they were still there, the small kitchen smelling of stagnant, dirty that water that for a moment reminded me of the urinal Relena had shoved my face into. The toaster was still plugged into the outlet, something else my mother had forgotten this morning. If Dad came home and saw that the kitchen was dirty like this, and the toaster still plugged in, wasting electricity, he would be pissed.

Replacing the image of Relena in my head, I thought of Quatre. I thought of him walking into his big, perfect house and making himself a snack in a kitchen as empty and dark as mine. No mother to make him snacks or ask how his day was. No mother to ignore him. No mother at all. In that moment, I had never felt more alone. I wiped furiously at my wet eyes, unplugged the toaster, and started washing the dishes.
End Chapter 1
I am now caught up rewriting all the material from the last version of this story, so look forward to some brand new stuff next chapter ^_^
Thanks for reading~
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A Stagnation of Love (rewrite)