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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

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A Stagnation of Love

Chapter 5

Part 5
October 12, 2007
　

I am a colossal idiot. I am, quite possible, the dumbest person on the planet. Why? Because I am that special kind of person that can stick their hand in the fire over and over and over again and never expect to get burnt, even though they do every time. I am the kind of person who can fall in love with someone who hates him, but never stop hoping for something impossible. And then when it bites me in the ass, I feel shocked about it. How stupid can you get?

I'm such a hypocrite. I told Quatre to stay away from Trowa because all that relationship was going to give him was pain and here I am, pining after a guy that hates my guts. No, it's worse than that. If he just hated me completely, like how Relena and Zechs do, then maybe I could move on. Maybe my deficient heart could finally give up and go back to imitating a stone. Instead, I get a guy who I can't fucking figure out, who isn't who he pretends to be half the time. He keeps feeding me these little bursts of hope, of pleasure, only to stab me in the heart later for them. Trowa was a prick to Quatre, but at least he tried to be friends with him and didn't play mind games with him.

I should back up. I suppose you are waiting for me to confess that I grew some brains after deciding not to risk going home again, that I went to Social Services and told them that my father was beating me and my mom and that he had tried to sexually assault me, that I had run away and I'm living in a shelter or on the street of some different town. Well, I wish I could tell you that, but see, look up there at the top of the page. I'm a motherfucking idiot. The best laid plans of mice and men and pathetic teenaged boys often go astray. Only my plans went astray because... I won't say that it was overconfidence or even that I thought that I could ignore things, or even that I had some kind of hope that things would get better. If anything, my plans went astray because of love and dependence. Maybe love can save, but in my experience, it kills more often than any other emotion.

My plan was simple and not all that well thought out, but what can you expect out of me when I was operating on less than three hours of sleep, experiencing some kind of stress induced anxiety attack, and what little stability that I had had in my life was slipping through my fingers? So I had decided not to go back home. Great. Then what? I couldn't just sit on a park bench for the rest of my life. What was I going to eat? What was I going to do when it rained or snowed or got so cold that the thin jacket I had on was little more than a wet t-shirt?

I was getting paid on Friday from all three of my jobs. While it wasn't exactly a ton of money, it would keep me fed. My only other problem was shelter and clothes. The shower that I had taken after gym had been a godsend, but my clothes smelled and I couldn't wear my pajama shirt and ripped jeans for my shifts. I could ask Andre and Sal for a new uniform shirt and pants, that was easy, but I couldn't wait until the end of the week to get a change of clothes. I could buy them at a thrift store with the money that I had saved up, but that was at home, in the secret compartment in the floor.

No matter what options I filtered through my head, it always seemed to go back to that. Going home. Everything I had was there. I couldn't do a single thing without my stuff. Even with the money that I had saved, I had nowhere to stay. I could sleep in the park, I guessed, but the warm front that we were having was not going to last for more than a day and the last thing that I wanted was to get picked up as a runaway. I needed food and water. I needed my clothes. I needed my CDs and the jacket that Quatre had given me. I needed my cat.

It was that last thought, more than any of the others, that had me uncurling from my pathetic position, my arms wrapped around my knees as I pressed them against my chest, and standing up, slinging my bag over my shoulder. What had I been thinking? Running away from home... there was no way that I could do that. I could live without my stuff, without my money. Hell, I could even eat food out of a trash can if I had to. I could survive. But Pepper couldn't. What would she do if I didn't come home? I had to feed her and clean up after her. I had to be there for her. If I didn't go back, she would starve, or my father would find her and put her back out on the street or kill her.

I couldn't do that to her. She was my responsibility, my... my friend. I wouldn't be like her last owner, I wouldn't abandon her. I knew what that felt like, to be left out in the cold by the people that were supposed to care about you. My fears about my father, my anxiety about going home and my own sense of well being... none of it mattered compared to the one entity in my life that was depending on me. I realized then that I would face the horror that my father had become to protect and take care of my cat, because I loved her. I needed her just as much as she needed me. I just hope that I'll never have to learn the consequences of that choice. But I wouldn't be my father, not in this.

Feeling like I was walking to the gallows, I made my way home. As I got to my side of town, I thought about finding some kind of weapon to defend myself with. Just because I was walking into the lion's den, it didn't mean that I had to go in there defenseless. But the thought of me defending against my father with a knife or something was so ludicrous. I just couldn't imagine myself hurting him, even knowing what he wanted.

The closer I got to my house, the faster and more erratic my heart beat became. I couldn't believe what I was doing, what I was willing to walk into, all for a cat. But at the same time, it didn't surprise me. I had screwed myself over for someone that I cared about before, why not again? I felt real anger at my father for doing this to me. He was taking everything from me, piece by piece, even when I thought that there was nothing left for him to take. I felt like a complete idiot, doing what I was doing when all common sense told me that I needed to do something about it, either run away forever or call someone to help me. Hell, I should have run away from home before this had even happened. The longer that I was with my father, the more that that was abundantly clear to me. The more I was realizing what a huge mistake I had made in not taking Quatre up on his offer to leave Nausten. But I had never had much faith in any kind of authority, having the same man that was hurting you being a cop kind of does that to a person.

I had nowhere to go, no one to rely on, so what else could I do but go back? Maybe... maybe I would be lucky and he would never try that again? But I think that it doesn't make a difference. Just knowing that that's in his head is enough to fuck me up inside. When I saw my house, my heart seemed to stop right in my chest. I almost expected him to be there, standing on our front lawn, waiting for me. To my surprise, not only was he not there, his car was gone. He wasn't even home. I almost fell to my knees on the sidewalk and wept with relief.

Even knowing that he couldn't be home, I entered the house silently and cautiously, waiting for something to happen. I felt like an intruder, like I was walking into some carefully laid snare or a cave that was going to collapse on me instead of the home that I had lived in since the day that I was born. It didn't feel like that anymore, a home. It was alien to me. My father had done that to me, had made me feel like a trapped animal. How long did I have before he came home? How long did I have before he tried to molest me again? Even in his absence, my hair was standing on end and I felt chilled, every nerve screaming at me to get out of there.

I knew that I would never use it against him, that even in my fear and hate of him, I could never bring myself to seriously hurt him, but I still dug a knife out of the cutlery drawer and held it tightly in my left, unhurt hand at my side, my hand shaking as I started towards my bedroom. For a moment, I startled when I saw someone laying on my parents' bed, but it was my mother. I forgot about my fear at the sight of her and walked into the bedroom, making sure not to make a single sound so I wouldn't wake her up.

She was laying on her back, one arm thrown over his stomach. I didn't recognize her clothes and they certainly weren't the ones that she usually wore when she slept. I could easily imagine her coming home and just passing out like that, but for once didn't look drunk and there was no sign of alcohol at all in the room. If she had blacked out, it was from pain. Her face was pinched from it, and deathly pale. I could see fading bruises all over her face and along her arms from being grabbed and hit. She had dark circles under her eyes and her chestnut hair was wet from a shower.

I had a dozen questions on the tip of my tongue. How long had she been in the hospital for? Where had she been for the last few days? What had Dad done to her when I had been unconscious? Just how badly was she still injured? This sense of surrealness came over me as I watched her sleep, me standing there in her bedroom holding a knife because her husband had tried to molest me. I wanted to blame her, to hate her for him. It was because of her that he looked at me like that, mistook me for her. But I couldn't. He had hurt us both. I wondered what she would say if she found out what had happened the previous night? Would she have furious at him, disgusted? Would she not care at all or worse? Would she blame me for perverting her husband, or even say that it was what I deserved for ruining her life? How could I hate her when I was reason that she was with him... with the man that had beaten her to a pulp? And maybe she would be right. Maybe I did deserve this pain.

I brushed her hair out of her face, pulled the covers up around her, and left the bedroom. I felt guilty just then, at my inability to do anything, for myself and for her. I had only been thinking about my own problems, my own hesitance to try to stop my father. I didn't want to call social services on him because I didn't want him to get in trouble, and because I had felt for a very long time now that I deserved the things that he did to me. But what about Mom? Maybe I hated her for her neglect and verbal abuse, but didn't she deserve freedom from him?

I didn't know. My feelings were a knotted tangle. I loved her and didn't want her to get hurt, but I also hated her and felt a great deal of bitterness towards her. I wanted to help her, but some dark part of me wanted her hurt for all the things she had said to me, all the times that she had turned a blind eye when I had begged her for help. I glanced at the kitchen phone, trying to envision myself actually calling for help and what my mother's reaction would be if someone took my father away. Would she be grateful or would she hate me for embarrassing her and taking away a small part of financial security?

I noticed that the light on the answering machine was blinking and walked to it. It was probably just more debt collectors, asking for my dad. It wasn't like anyone else cared to call us. Still, I turned the volume down on the machine and played the message.

"Duo, this is Andre," my boss' gruff voice played, "I've been reviewing the schedules for this week and I need to reduce some hours. Unfortunately, I'll have to take you off your shifts this week since you're the only part timer I got right now and you're quitting soon anyway," I could almost picture the sneer on the man's hard, wrinkled face, "Call me Sunday and I'll let you know-"

I savagely punched the button to delete the message, imagining that I was punching him in the face instead. I pressed my head to the wall by the phone and laughed wryly.

"Fuck," I whispered to myself, "fuck."

I banged my head lightly against the wall. The prick had cut all my hours. Of course he had. I wasn't dumb enough to believe his shit excuse, either. He had cut my hours because I was quitting and he wanted to save some money. He figured he could last however long it was going to take to hire someone new and just get rid of me for the next two weeks. Fucking asshole. Yeah, he could last, but could I? Could my family if my father didn't get hired soon?

I stormed up to my room, still making as little noise as I could despite my anger and frustration. I felt like the whole world was out to get me and nothing was every going to go right again. What if the construction company decided not to hire me after all? I would be down a job and my father would find out that I had quit the diner. To say that he would be pissed was an understatement. What the hell was I going to do for two weeks? If he was home and found out I wasn't going to my shifts...

I maintained enough self control not to slam my bedroom door shut behind me. Pepper was there immediately and just seeing those yellow eyes staring up at me adoringly and that tiny, little meow of hers made a good deal of my rage flee me. She was the reason why I had gone back home, I reminded myself. She was the only reason. If I had had the courage to do that, then surely I had the courage to struggle through two weeks without my third paycheck.

Skipping meals seemed tiny in comparison to the measures I would have to take to make sure my dad didn't corner me again. I would have to come up with an excuse when my dad asked for my next paycheck. I could never lie to him, he always seemed to know when I lied and that pissed him off more than the truth did. Maybe I would just tell him that Andre had cut down my hours, he might buy that without too much fuss.

"Hey there, baby girl," I greeted and leaned down to pet her ears.

She head butted my hand affectionately, making me feel warm for the first time since I had left work that morning. I left her to stick the knife under my pillow and I went to work on those measures. The very first thing I did was get my jacket and change my clothes to a warmer shirt, new underwear, and my better pair of jeans. I dug out a duffle bag that I had found down in the basement once and stuff everything that I might need into it, if I needed to run. My favorite books, CDs, clothes, money, Pepper's wet food and a few of her toys. I really hoped that it wouldn't have to come to it, but if I had to run away from home, at least now I would be a little bit prepared.

Pepper watched all this with interest before becoming bored and walking over to the door to scratch on it.

"Want to go out?" I asked her.

My kitten wasn't some bored tom that frequently needed to be let out to roam, but she didn't like being cooped up in my bedroom all the time, either. I always felt horrible that she didn't even have more than a single room to explore, even if the attic wasn't some tiny closet, and I liked to take her on walks at least a few times a week to keep her from getting so bored that she would destroy things. She seemed to recognize the word 'walk' and meowed excitedly at me. I chuckled and looked at my clock, before remembering that I didn't even need to worry about what time it was. I had only had the factory shift and the diner that day and I didn't need to go to the factory until 9:30.

"Alright, just for a little while," I told her.

I put on my jacket and slipped my cat into one of the pockets. They were big enough for her to comfortably hide in and she seemed to enjoy curling up in there. I had no clue what I was going to do when she eventually got too big to fit into any of my pockets anymore. Put her on a leash? I don't think that she would appreciate that.

On my way out, I checked on my mother again, but she was still asleep. I left a couple bottles of water on her dresser so she wouldn't have to get up if she was still in too much pain. I'm a veteran when it comes to broken ribs and internal injuries and how much just trying to go from horizontal to vertical can suck. I headed to the beach. Like me, Pepper loved the beach, especially the sea gulls. While I would never let her try to chase after them, she was very interested in watching them. I was sure that she would be equally interested in the squirrels at the park, but I hadn't taken her there yet. A lot of people walked their dogs there and I was paranoid about her getting bitten.

It was high tide this time and when I sat down on the mound, I had to sit Indian style or my feet would have gotten wet dangling them off of it. The waves were pretty non-existent, though, so I wasn't concerned with getting wet. Pepper poked her head out of my pocket and looked around, her ears perked up playfully. I watched her for a moment, but she hadn't gotten bold enough to try to get out of my pocket.

"Nice day, huh, girl?" I pet her head and she purred in agreement.

Despite everything, despite my tiredness and frustration and fear, it was a nice day. Right then, I was just happy to be away from the house, away from my father, and sitting there with my cat. I tried to find a silver lining in everything. There was no way I could find anything good about what my father had tried to do, but at least I wouldn't have to go to the diner again. While I mourned the loss of money, for the first time in a very long time, I had a chunk of my after noon free. I could go to the library or try to take a nap or watch television if Dad still wasn't home. Hell, I could get my homework done before my factory shift. I was just starting to feel my spirits start to lift when I heard someone walk up behind me.

"You're in my spot again."

I looked behind me, anxious and excited at the same time and saw Heero behind me. I expected him to be sneering and those words to be accusing like they had been before, but they weren't. He almost sounded like he was teasing me, like this was some secret joke between us. I had that feeling again, like I was dreaming or I was looking at a doppelganger. It was like this morning had never happened, like Heero himself had forgotten the cruel things that he had said to me, or he expected me to. I was about to snap at him to fuck off, not able to handle the confusion that he gave me, when his monster of a dog trotted right up to me and before I had the chance to even flinch, the husky mix was licking my face with gusto, it's tail wagging furiously like we were long time friends.

"Dammit, Kanuck, quit it," Heero snapped at his dog and tugged on his leash.

Kanuck backed up from me and looked up at his owner with large, piercing, blue eyes. He whined at Heero like a four year old that had had a toy taken away.

"Oh, hush," my bully rolled his just as piercing eyes.

I had read once that pets tend to take after their owners, but I think that's bullshit. Kanuck was a hell of a lot friendlier and nicer than his master was. Even though he sat by Heero's side obediently, he stared at me with this warm expression on his canine face, practically wiggling with wanting to go up to me again, his tail still wagging.

"Should I start marking my territory?" Josh asked me and this time his voice was definitely teasing.

I couldn't figure him out, if he was teasing me maliciously, rubbing it in my face that he was going to keep invading my space and there was nothing that I could do to prevent it, or if it was good natured and he had some kind of split personality disorder.

"What do you want?" I barked at him, a middle ground between accepting his bizarre behavior and telling him to go fuck himself.

He looked at me weirdly, like I put him off balance with that remark.

"I want to sit there," he said simply, sounding defensive and short, closer to the tone that I was used from him.

"Free country," I grumbled.

He started towards me and so did his dog, the large animal nosing around my jacket before his owner could yell at him again. It took me too late to realize that the dog was smelling my cat and was trying to investigate where she was. Pepper suddenly hissed, louder than I thought was possible for her to, and took a swipe at Heero's pet, managing to nail a tiny scratch on his black nose. Kanuck yipped in startled fear and darted behind Heero's legs, cowering there like a bear had just attacked him instead of a hand-sized kitten. I was on my feet in an instant, putting a hand protectively over my cat and frightened that Yuy was going to try to take revenge on her, maybe kick her or grab her from me and throw her into the ocean. That's what Relena and Zechs would have done.

"I am so sorry!" I apologized, "She's never done that before-"

And I was sorry. I might be angry at his owner, but Kanuck hadn't really done anything to deserve getting scratched, he had just been curious. Pepper didn't seem to realize the human danger that she was in and glared at Kanuck, her black and white ears drawn back and flat against her skull. She let out a low, warning sound from deep in her throat and I had no doubt that if Kanuck tried to get near her again, she would defend herself. I felt proud of her. My cat was a hell of a lot braver than I was. To my shock, instead of getting mad about it, Heero burst out laughing. It was this clear, deep sound, something that I had never seen him do before. It was the most beautiful sound that I had ever heard.

"It's alright," he assured me, "It's his own fault for being so nosey. About time he learned not to stick his muzzle where it doesn't belong."

Heero gave Kanuck's leash another little tug and the dog looked up at him with an expression that I can only call contrite and suffering. I had no idea that dogs could look like that, like a pouting child.

"I didn't know that you had a cat," Heero said awkwardly, running a hand through his thick, black hair and only making it look more wild.

I very nearly snapped at him that he didn't know anything about me because he wasn't my friend, he had no desire to be anything but an asshole to me, and decided that it was time to leave. My heart couldn't handle him, not the way that he was. It couldn't handle his bipolar behavior and his laugh and him trying to be social with me. I wasn't strong enough, not on that day, and I knew that if I tried to talk to him with anything more than bitterness, I was going to say something stupid. As he approached to sit down on the edge of the mound, I walked past him, avoiding making any kind of physical contact with him.

"You don't have to leave," he called after me, his tone irritated for some reason, like my leaving angered him or something.

Maybe he had just been planning some prank and I had ruined it for him. I wanted to quip at him that he didn't want someone whose breath smells like cum around.

"Yeah, I do," I grumbled at him and made my way down the beach.
*****
It felt very strange just walking home from the beach around the same time that I would be heading to my first shift of the day. Having down time for almost two entire weeks was not something I was going to get used to anytime soon, but after coming to terms with the fact that my boss had fucked me over, I was actually looking forward to having a few hours to myself, especially when I got home and saw that my father still wasn't there.

I felt so burnt out, running on nothing more than fumes and my thoughts bouncing chaotically between my father and whatever the hell had been going on with Heero that afternoon. How could someone call them a faggot one moment and then joke with them the next? He had almost been... friendly? At the very least, he had tried to be social and I just couldn't deal with it. I couldn't deal with tempering what I wanted, in the deepest parts of my heart, if he were just a normal person that I saw everyday. But he wasn't. His cruelty was terrible to deal with, but these random moments when he was almost nice were worse. I craved those moments, but they were killing me. They were making me want things, the same things that had gotten Quatre killed.

My mother was still in bed, and if she hadn't moved to lying on her side and if one of the water bottles that I had left her hadn't been empty, I would have thought that she hadn't moved the entire time that I had been gone. She looked so frail and I realized, with a kind of small shock, that she had lost weight. I don't know why I hadn't realized that before, but it was obvious to me then that she was thinner and the lines on her face were more pronounced. She seemed to be wasting away in front of me, fading away into nothing.

I had a fantasy then, watching her from the bedroom doorway. It was powerful and pervasive. I imagined myself taking my mother far away from here, somewhere that my father would never be able to find. I imagined going far away from him and Heero and taking care of my mother all by myself, getting a job and treating her better than my father had, showing her that I'm not so useless after all, that I could love her, I could never hit her or yell at her or hurt her. I wasn't so sure that she deserved that, but in that moment, I wanted to.

I shook off the weird feeling and continued upstairs. When I got there, I changed into my night clothes, set my alarm, and fell onto my mattress. For once, I didn't struggle trying to fall asleep. Everything that had happened to me that day... Pat feeling me up, learning that my father was attracted to me, Heero tearing my heart out twice... I felt like I had just lived three days with no sleep in the course of only little more than twelve hours. The second my head hit my pillow, I was fucking gone.

I was woken up a mere three hours later by the sound of the front door slamming shut with a decent deal of force. If I dreamed at all, my memory of it was washed away by the shot of adrenaline that instantly had me wide awake. I found myself curled up into a ball on my side, my left hand wrapped around the handle of the knife under my pillow. I didn't know if I had grabbed at the knife from the sound or if I had slept like that, but given how shaky I felt and how alert I was, I had obviously slept on a hair trigger, subconsciously waiting for any signs that my father was home.

My heart slammed around in my chest unpleasantly as I heard him storm his way through the kitchen, flinching when he threw something and it shattered. I knew the kind of mood that he was in without hearing his cursing and I knew what came next, even before I heard those heavy footsteps on the stairs leading up to me. He was either too drunk or too pissed to care about reason, to care about anything but destroying something and which one it was didn't matter, they were pretty much the same with him.

There were only two outcomes to this. Either he was back to his old self and he was just going to beat the shit out of me merely because it was what he wanted to do, or this was the man that had cornered me last night and he was going to finish the job that he had started. I imagined him coming up here and pining me down, wanting me and that trickle of adrenaline because a river, coursing through me. My grip on the knife handle tightened and I felt myself trembling with fear.

I could stop him, I thought, whatever outcome he wanted, I could stop both of them, for the very first time in my life. I wasn't a scared child anymore, I was old enough to drive, almost old enough to go see a rated R film all by myself. And I was old enough to stand up to my father, to tell him to stop, and to make him stop if he refused. Wasn't I?

A single, solid kick from one of my father's heavy boots sent my door flying open. He hadn't even checked to see if the door had been locked, not that the wimpy lock on that door would have held against that kind of force. I let go of the knife and rolled to my feet, moving before he could even enter the room. The rage that my father was feeling wasn't twisted up in his face, but smoldering in his eyes and I recognized it all too readily as the state he would get into where he was barely able to control himself, but didn't care about logic. He wasn't mad at me, specifically, but that wasn't going to stop him from hurting me. I was used to that state, used to him hitting me without any reason at all, just to vent his frustration, but I was more worried about how he would vent it, with a beating or something else.

I managed to just barely avoid the first punch that he threw at me, darting to the side of it, but he wasn't nearly as drunk as I could have hoped he would be. He recovered from his miss and slammed his knee into my gut and when I doubled over in pain, that's when the real blows started. He sent me to the floor with a barrage of punches. I can't even remember exactly which blow did what, I only remember the bursts of pain along my face, chest, and side. Then I was on the ground and all I could do was curl up into as tight a ball as I could and tuck my head under my arms, making him hit my arms instead of my face.

My father's beating was wordless. He didn't scream at me or call me any names, he didn't rant about whatever had worked him up into such a frenzy. Not that he needed to. I had no doubt that he had been out on an interview that hadn't gone well or some job prospect had dried up. He was like a passing tornado, one minute there, in my face, hitting me and panting with violence. Then the next he was kicking at me almost half-heartedly and storming out of my bedroom, leaving me there to bleed on the floor.

I opened my right eye, the one that wasn't swollen half shut, and watched his booted feet as he walked down the steps. Usually, after he went after me like that, I would feel so angry, like my father had transferred some of his rage onto me through punches. I would feel the injustice of it and loath him for the bitterness and pain that I felt, wondering what I had done that was so horrible that he needed to do that to me. But this time, I didn't feel anger or pain or even weariness. I felt relief. Not that he was leaving, or that, through some miracle, he hadn't broken anything for once, but I was relieved for the beating itself.

I guess that sound sick, that I could be happy to get the crap beaten out of me for doing nothing wrong, but I did. I was relieved that he had chosen to go off on me instead of my mother, and I was relieved that he had hit me instead of trying to rape me. I felt the comfort of the familiar, like some great pressure was easing off of a deep wound somewhere inside of me. This was the father that I was used to, not the one from early that morning. I was hurt, but not in the way that I had worried myself sick about. The man that had just hit me was the one that had raised me, not the stranger wearing his skin.

But why? Why hadn't he tried to molest me like before? Had he not been drunk enough? Had that just been some freak thing from him? Or had I just imagined the entire thing? Had I, in my exhaustion, misread his expression? I felt comfort in those thoughts, a very dangerous kind of comfort. The comfort that people give themselves when they tell themselves that a potentially fatal event will be fine, that it could never happen to them. It made me feel better, relieved, and like some darkness had been leeched out of me. But all it was, was denial. It was a lie that I happily told myself because I couldn't bear to think of my father like that anymore, I couldn't bear face those memories anymore. So it felt good to look at them and think, no, I had imagined them.

I slowly picked myself up off of the floor after making sure that I didn't have any serious injuries. While I felt like I had just taken a tumble out of a moving car, it was not the worst beating that he had given me. It hadn't been one of his uncontrollable, drunken rages that usually resulted in a broken arm or rib. That being said, my face and arms felt like pounded hamburger and I could taste blood in my mouth. I rolled up one of the sleeves of my shirt and found a lovely patchwork of black and red bruises forming on my pale skin. It was going to look horrible and feel even worse by the next day.

I wiped at my throbbing nose and my hand came away bloody, but despite the pain, it wasn't broken or even swelling that much. It was the same story with my chest and side, agony without any damage that would require me to go to the hospital, work was just going to be painful that night. I looked around for Pepper, but I couldn't see her. All the noise that my father had made had probably scared her into her hole.

"Good girl," I mumbled and winced as just talking hurt my face, especially my left cheek and my lips. There was a ragged cut on my tongue from my biting it.

My arms shaking a little from the pain and remainder of adrenaline, I managed to strip out of my shirt and pants and got a better look at my father's handiwork. It wasn't anything new. Fresh, livid bruises merged with old, fading ones. There wasn't much of a spot on my arms or stomach that wasn't black and blue. My stomach hurt, but my face felt worse, and although there was a ringing in my ears, I didn't feel concussed. All in all, it could have been a lot worse.

As I put on the clothes that I had worn earlier, I heard the shower turn on downstairs. I guess he needed to wash the blood off his hands, I thought and finally felt a bit of that bitterness. I grabbed my duffle bag and started to unpack what I had just put in there, feeling like that had been hours ago. I had been foolish, I knew, thinking that I was preparing myself for running away. I didn't need to do that, I told myself, I could survive, continue on like I always had. It wasn't like I had anywhere to go.

I think that there was some things, some moments that only come around once, and when they pass, that's it. You can't go back and try again, you don't get a second chance. I think that I had my shot at running away from home once, that day when Quatre had broken his arm. And I think that, when it passed me by, that was it. That was my one and only shot at finding the courage and ability to actually do something about my life. I chickened out then and I keep chickening out now, keep coming up with excuses about why I can't, why I don't need to.

I don't have any friends begging me to do it anymore, so why bother? That's how I felt then, unpacking my clothes from the duffle bag and putting them back in the drawers of my dresser. I had no where to run to, this place is as good as any other. At least here, I can take care of Pepper and I can finish school. I had only wanted to run to keep my father from touching me again, but if that wasn't going to happen, there really wasn't a point.

I took the knife out from underneath my pillow and I felt just as silly for its presence as I had unpacking my things. I had never intended to use it on him and I don't think that I ever could. Even to save myself from being raped or beaten, I didn't have the courage. I felt so pathetic knowing that. I'm so weak, I don't even have the ability to defend myself. I shrugged my jacket back on and, knife in hand, I went down to the kitchen to put it back in the drawer.

I caught my reflection in the flat metal of the toaster and glared at myself. Hair mussed, face bruised, one eye half open, lip split in three places, and blood smeared under my nose, I looked like some kind of freak in the distorted reflection. Heero and Relena would agree with that assessment. I scowled as Heero intruded my thoughts again, refusing to feel even an ounce of any emotion besides hate for him to enter my heart. I soaked a washcloth and scrubbed the blood off of my face with it, not caring about how much it hurt anymore. I fixed my hair and debated what I was going to do now that my father was home and I still had some time before work.

How long before my father gained enough sense to realize that I was home when I shouldn't be? How long before he beat me up worse for that, too? I didn't want to stick around long enough for that, not even to make myself some dinner. I didn't even want to be there when he got out of the shower and I would have to look at him. It was getting harder and harder for me to do that. Ever since that morning, I was finding it actually painful to look at my father and see anything but that look, to feel anything but loathing for him. I hated that. I wanted it to be like it was sometimes, when he was nice to me and I felt loved, if only for a second. That I couldn't have that, that the longer he was in my life, the harder I had to try to feel love for him at all only made me hate him more.

With no real plan of what I was going to do, or enough energy left to care about my empty stomach, I grabbed a book from my room and left the house. I walked to the beach with the sense that I had been walking around in circles all day. From the factory to home to the park to school to home to the beach to home, back to the beach and then to the factory... I guess my life is just that, walking in circles. I could go anywhere, I could even take the bus to one of the neighboring towns, but I wouldn't. I just keep going to the same places and waiting for time to pass me by.

There was still some light out when I made it onto the beach, but it was fading fast. The sky was a beautiful mix of gold and lavender while the water was dark, a moody bluish black. There were only a few people milling about on the boardwalk, mostly couples that were watching the sunset. It was getting a bit chilly and I knew, after living in Nausten my whole life, that this would be the last warm day we were going to get for awhile. The cold air made my bruises ache, but at some point in my walk, the swelling around my other eye went down enough that I could see normally out of it. I mourned Summer's loss and thought about what I was going to do to prepare as I walked.

I will readily admit that I prefer the Spring and Summer over the winter. We aren't South enough for many heat waves, but Winters always hit us hard. I don't necessarily hate the cold and I like the snow, not to mention the vacations from school and therefore Relena and Zechs, but I'm not exactly well equipped for the cold. Winter jackets are expensive and I'm not relishing the fact that I'm going to have to buy one when things get too cold in just a few months. I'm also going to have to buy a thicker blanket for my bed. My old one has too many holes in it. My only hope is my mysterious new job and my father's continued ignorance about it.

All thoughts of my ever being cold again ceased as I approached the mound and saw, to my shock, that Heero was there. My face heated up and for a moment, I couldn't feel the cool breeze. I froze for a moment, unsure of what to do. I didn't see his dog anywhere and I couldn't figure out why he was still in that same, damned spot.

He was like a cancer, slowly taking over my life, inserting himself into the grey that I had become used to after Quatre's death, filling it with things I didn't want. He couldn't even leave me alone outside of school. He wasn't stalking me, I told myself, we just both liked the same spot on this beach, even if that's what it felt like. I should walk away and find another spot to sit and watch the sun set, I knew, but realized that I was walking towards him, like he was some bright flame or magnetic pole, drawing me in just to destroy me.

"What are you still doing here?" I couldn't help the accusation from slipping out, my voice cold and hard.

He turned to look at me and his eyes pushed the air right out of my lungs. I think that my idiotic heart might have even stopped for a moment, but those eyes were... they were beautiful. That deep, blue color of his reflected the red-gold of the sunset, all mixing together like some cosmic event. I could drown in them, so very easily, and lose myself forever. I wanted to do that, just drown and let him kill me, smother me up, and forget everything else that existed in the world. I lowered my head a bit, letting my bangs hide my expression so he couldn't see how shaken I was by his gaze, or the black eye.

"I like it here," he sneered, "Are you going to order me to leave?"

"I'm not like you," I snapped back at him, "I don't tell people where they can and can't hang out."

He looked flustered at that and didn't even say anything as I stubbornly sat on the opposite edge of the mound. He had a Styrofoam container on his lap and I could fell the fried scrod and french fries from where I was sitting. It made my stomach churn with hunger. It didn't occur to me until then that Relena might be with him, but she would never want to sit on the ground like we were, and she sure as hell wouldn't want to eat anything from the boardwalk. I wanted to ask him why he was always here without her, but it wasn't any of my business and I didn't really want to know anything about their love life.

We settled into an awkward silence as we watched the sun set, making me feel nervous. When I had gotten my fill of watching the explosion of colors across the sky line, I opened the book that I brought with me and tried to make Heero fade out into the background.

"You read a lot," his voice broke through my concentration, making me feel frustrated.

"Yeah, what of it?" I asked suspiciously, expecting him to make some jab about me being a nerd or a book worm.

"Nothing," he sighed instead and looked dejected.

Had he been trying to start up a conversation? I stared at the words on the page that I was reading in confusion. Why would he want to talk to me? Why couldn't he just be like everyone else and avoid me or harass me and make sense?

"I can't do that," he stumbled almost nervously, "Read frequently, I mean. I can do it for homework, but whenever I try to do it for fun, my brain wanders too much. I can't concentrate. You can focus really well."

I quirked an eyebrow at him at that. He was being so weird and I wondered if he was the sort of person that just really didn't like silence, so he had to fill the void with his own voice.

"It's not about focus," I told him, "I just like stories."

"Video games have stories," he pointed out, "So do television shows. What's the point of reading when you can just watch a movie?"

"You use more parts of your brain reading than you do watching TV," I argued heatedly, not out of offense, but interest, "Besides, there isn't much creativity in most of the main stream movies and television shows that I've seen. I don't know about games because we don't have a system or a computer at home, but most of the movie trailers and TV shows that I've seen have pretty similar plots and characters. Doesn't that get boring? And at least books don't have commercials."

To my surprise, he didn't jump at the chance to make fun of me for not owning a computer.

"You got me there," he said with this little ghost of a smile.

I returned to my book, but my attention was split between the words and covertly watching him. He fished a fry out of his container and bit it, making a dissatisfied face.

"Why does the food here suck so much?" he grumbled, "Even the fish doesn't taste fresh."

"We don't have a fishing industry here. If you don't like our food so much, then don't eat it," I shot back, annoyed that he was ripping on food when I hadn't even eaten since... fuck, I couldn't remember. My brain was still fumbling with lack of sleep.

"You eat it then," he retorted and tossed the container onto my lap.

I stared at him for a moment, waiting for the trick, but he only glared back at me like he was daring me to refuse the food or maybe he was expecting that. Well, fuck him, I was hungry. Even without a fork, I tore into the fish and chips, finishing it in seconds.

"You eat like a hyena," he remarked, but I couldn't tell if his expression was disgusted or amused.

I shoved the last piece of fish in my mouth and flipped him off. He laughed deeply, sending a pleasant chill down my spine and I felt my face flush. He shivered when a cold breeze hit us, but I was unfazed by it.

"Well, your food might suck and it's too bloody cold," he grumbled, "but I guess this place isn't all bad. At least you have a beach."

That was something that we could agree on. I brushed my bangs out of my face as another quick breeze pushed them into my eyes. We fell into another bought of silence, but this one felt less awkward to me. It hurt so much then, sitting by him, the taste of his food still on my tongue. For a moment, I thought that I could squint at our relationship and see us becoming friends. But that was just too fucked up for me to dwell on for more than two seconds. I couldn't help glancing at him out of the corner of my eye and felt startled when I caught him staring at me.

"Zechs do that to you?" he gestured to the large bruise on my cheek.

I rubbed at it self consciously, a thousand lies on my tongue. I had lied so much in my life that it came as a reflex, but looking at him then, I didn't want to lie. Worse, I realized something terrible about myself, about how I saw him, something painful. I could have told him to fuck off or that it wasn't any of his business, but I didn't. I trusted him, I realized with disgust. Not in the way that one trusts a friend, but I felt like I knew him enough to know that, if I told him the truth, it wouldn't come back to bite me in the ass.

I kept seeing that concern he had shown me the day he had seen me limping. And just now, when he had asked if Zechs had hit me, I could almost imagine that concern again. It was probably nothing more than good manners, but I don't think that I had imagined it.

Heero wasn't Relena. If he knew that my father had hit me, he wouldn't use it to torment me. He hated me for being gay, and he could be cruel, but he didn't really seem capable of the Darlians' sadistic torture. He was an asshole, but a pretty middling one, if I was being honest. Heero was right in that middle between Relena and my classmates that just plain avoided me. I trusted him to care about me enough not to gossip about getting hit, and I trusted him to hate me enough not to give a shit that I was being knocked around. At least not enough to do anything about it. He might even think that it was funny, and I could handle that. Or maybe I had finally reached a state in my life that I just didn't give a fuck who knew anymore.

"No. My father lost his job recently," I blurted out. Despite knowing that I didn't really care, my words just... slipped out without any conscious decision on my part, "and he gets frustrated sometimes trying to find decent work."

In the early evening light, I couldn't tell if the pale look that Heero had on his face after that remark was shock or disbelief or something different altogether. I wanted to smack myself for saying that. I had been thinking that I could, that it didn't matter, but it did. Seeing that expression on his face, I couldn't believe what I had just done. Was I nuts, or just sleep deprived?

"That's..." he struggled with his words before I could take it back and say that it was just a joke in poor taste, "Parents shouldn't take their problems out on their kids."

His words shot through me like daggers, ripping something in me. He wasn't condemning me for what I said, but that look on his face... Did he pity me? What the hell did he know about it? He wasn't my friend, he wasn't even a nice person and he was judging my family just because my dad hit me around a bit? He had no problems dating the bitch that treated me just as bad, worse, really, than my dad did, so what right did he have to pity me?! I couldn't even begin to understand the rage that washed over me at the sadness and shock in his voice, or the pain that his words filled me with. I didn't want that concern from him. Never him.

"A lot of people do things that they shouldn't do," I snapped at him, "I, for one, should not be hanging out with someone like you."

Heero's blue eyes went wide, either at my anger or my words. I stood, holding my book in a grip so tight that it's a wonder my fingers didn't leave a permanent crease in the soft cover. I grabbed the Styrofoam container to throw away and made to flee. This was a bad idea, I told myself, being near him. I understood, with absolute clarity, why Quatre had invited me to have dinner with him and Trowa all those years ago. I had thought it so ridiculous that he had thought that he would not be able to control himself about his crush, but he was right.

All these years, I've kept quiet about my father abusing me. I never even told Quatre, he had just guessed it. But in one moment, alone with the boy that I had a crush on, a boy that wasn't even a friend or sympathetic party, I had blabbed the truth. I wrote about how I felt on the matter, that it was simply an issue of not giving a fuck and the trust that it was irrelevant, but that's not exactly the truth. The truth is that, I think, a part of me wanted Heero to care. It wanted to see him be concerned. It wanted someone to give a shit. Well, Heero apparently did care and I hated him for it. So who was the bigger hypocrite here, him or me?

I started to storm off, hating myself for my weakness and hating him for not hating me enough, when he turned and grabbed my arm tightly. His grip was strong and made my bruises throb, but his touch was like ice and electricity. It tingled even through my shirt and I paled at the thought of what his bare touch might do to me. He could have had barely a hold on me at all and it would have been enough to restrain me. I couldn't move. I could barely breathe.

"What the hell does that mean?" he demanded.

I felt my anger swell at his touch and I trembled, hoping that he couldn't feel it.

"It means," I sneered at him, barely restraining from screaming at him to let me the hell go, "that I don't need to be talking to someone who laughs and makes fun of me in class but has no problem talking to me so long as no one is around to see him do it! It means that I don't need to have these fucked up, social excursions with someone who lives in a completely different world from me, someone who can afford to be a hypocrite!"

Heero looked away from me and while it might have just been a trick of the dim light, fading into the darkness of night time, I thought that he looked ashamed.

"I... I'm not a hypocrite," he said softly, unsure of himself, "I'm just tired... I'm sick of acting like someone else."

"Who the fuck are you, then?!" I yelled at him, feeling my tightly wound control slipping away from me as I felt tears prick my eyes, but I absolutely refused to let him see me cry about something that he didn't even understand, "Who are you, Heero? You treat me like garbage when you're with your fucking girlfriend, but when you're here, you act like I don't disgust you! So who are you? Are you a loser like I am, or are you Relena's precious boyfriend, the person that sneers at me and calls me faggot right by her side?!"

His eyes were so intense as he looked at the sand, refusing to look at me and full of turmoil. He didn't say a word and that silence was worse than anything that he could have ever thought to say. In reality, it said it all perfectly to me. I understood him then with clarity. This was what he was. Maybe he wasn't a bully, not really. He was a coward. That was his true nature. Not cruelty, but the willingness to act cruel. He didn't even have the back bone to make a decision and follow through with what he claimed wasn't who he really was.

I wrenched my arm away from him, his touch, which had excited me minutes before, repulsed me. He was just like Trowa, I realized in disgust. He knew that what he did to me was wrong, but he had no desire to change it. He was happy being with Relena and her group. What reason did he have to be genuine when being this... this terrible person had given him everything a boy like him could possibly want? I wasn't a friend to him. I was just the boy that he talked to once in awhile so he could tell himself that he wasn't really a bully.

"Don't worry about it," I said snidely, hiding my hurt behind my cruel tone, "Even if you don't, I have the balls to make the decision for you."

I turned my back on him, tears streaming down my cheeks, tears that I would make sure that he would never see. He wouldn't know why I was crying anyway.

"Don't show up here again," I demanded harshly, "Go find another place to stalk for a charity case to make you feel better about being an asshole."

He didn't try to follow me as I walked all the way down the beach, past the boardwalk, past the handful of beach houses. I didn't know if I was glad or hurt. At some point, I gave in to the tears and started to cry harder, but there was no one around to see me. I felt like I had with Trowa, when he had told me that I was never the one that he had wanted to be with, only worse. He had told me once that I wasn't worth it, not worth outting himself or trying to comfort. I wasn't worth anything to Heero, either, and I hated myself for not accepting that.

I was a cynic, made up of nothing but rough edges, so why? Why couldn't I just believe that Heero was nothing more than a dime a dozen asshole and turn my back on him? Why did he make me hurt like this? Why did he have to keep showing me these pieces of him that made me want more? I wiped angrily at my cheeks, but only felt more tears replace the ones that I swept away. I was so pathetic. Heero was probably thinking about what a freak I was, getting so upset just from him trying to be a little bit friendly with me, for being concerned that I had gotten hurt by my father.

I wasn't even so sure why I was crying anymore. It wasn't like I had lost anything. And maybe now I could go to the beach without worrying about bumping into him all the time. Wasn't that what I wanted, for him to leave me alone? But walking through the beach parking lot that night, I felt like I was rotting from the inside out.

When I had been a child, I had had dreams. There had been things that I had wanted, things that I had told myself that I would achieve when I grew up. But through the years, I had learned to beat them bloody and shove them into the dark recesses of my heart. It was easier that way. Sometimes, in a fit of depression, or maybe just to prove to myself how useless things like that were, or even to punish myself, I take them out again to look at what might have been if I had grown to be a better person, a smarter person, a stronger person. But those dreams just get quickly hidden away once more.

It's like that with Heero. He was a dream that I desperately wanted, something bright and beautiful and at the same time ugly and twisted that I could look at when I was feeling sad. Like the dream I had of my father and mother loving me. But just like that, I knew how stupid and useless it was. He was straight, upper middle class, handsome and well liked. He had a future. Fuck, he had a girlfriend, someone who could give him anything that he wanted! She could have sex with him, goddamn it! He could walk around with her on his arm and kiss her in public and people would say about what a beautiful couple they made.

She could give him everything that I couldn't. If he really loved her and they had any kind of future, she could give him a family. Even if I were a girl, I could never give him those things. It was best this way, I told myself. Do what Quatre was never able to do, before it kills you. Stay away from Heero Yuy. Don't talk to him. Don't hold a friendly conversation. Don't look at him and think about how beautiful his eyes are. Don't let him get even one more inch into your heart. I let everyone use me. I let Trowa fuck me and treat me like a stand-in and I let my father treat me like a punching bag. I was not going to let Heero to make him feel good about himself.

Fuck love anyway.
End Part 5
　

Author's note: ok, this part is a bit on the short side because the next string of events is going to be too long and I really want to keep them all in the same part. The next part will most likely be the last of this chapter, making this story almost halfway done ^_^
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A Stagnation of Love (rewrite)