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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 6

Part 1
　

November 15th, 2007
　

It didn't stop. The rapes, my inability to handle other people, my fear of my father, or my strange nightmares. But just like with everything else in my life, I learned to... not really cope with it, but keep going on in spite of it. I forced myself not to show anyone how anxious I was all the time, especially at school where I was surrounded by people. I tried to avoid my father as much as I could, even in my thoughts. I focused almost obsessively on other things; reading, my school work, my jobs. I started to write these short stories to try to vent the darkness that I felt. They were dark, violent, and twisted little things a lot of them, but even the ones that weren't didn't help very much, they just became something to keep my mind off of everything.

My father didn't rape me every night. Sometimes several days or even a week would pass me by before he assaulted me again. And sometimes, it didn't happen just at night, either. He seemed to get bolder and bolder with it. I impatiently waited for him to get bored with it, but that never happened like I had hoped. I had no clue what he was getting from it. He still hit me and my mom, so he wasn't venting out any aggression. Sometimes he wasn't drunk when it happened, but he often was.

I never got used to it, the rapes. They just carved a bigger and bigger hole in me. But, slowly, my body started to get used to it. I stopped hurting as much and bleeding as much as he entered me. But the emotional pain... it was like a wave carving away at a stone. I felt like every time, it took something from me. He was carving away pieces of me, leaving me feeling less devastated, but emptier and more numb.

Just like the assaults, I didn't have those strange nightmares but not really nightmares every night, either. Nor did I always have them right after a rape. They seemed to come at me in complete random, not sparsely, just enough to keep me off kilter. I kept experiencing these moments where I was awake, but I was still dreaming, and I felt filled with a terror that I can't begin to describe.

I kept waking up and finding myself in some strange place and unable to remember how I had gotten there. I would have these snippets of memory that were a part of my dreams, but I knew that they had to be true. It wasn't like sleep walking, it was something worse. I often found myself hunched under my desk like an animal. One time during an especially awful nightmare, I woke up in the hallway closet with the doors closed, clutching a knife. That terrified me worse than the dream, that I could go downstairs, dig a knife out of the kitchen drawer, and hide and not remember doing any of it.

But eventually, the blood on my sheets, the pain that I felt, becoming almost a complete insomniac because I was staying up late, listening to every sound with paranoia, trying to hear him coming up the stairs, all of it became as commonplace and normal to me as the bruises and broken bones had. It was just a different kind of abuse, a kind that I was struggling to learn how to hide, how to cope with.

My mother started to look at me strangely. I wondered if she knew or suspected what was going on. She never paid any attention to me, but just like I was, she was hyperaware of my father's presence and any changes in his mood. Had she noticed something that he had done or said that had made her realize what he had done to me? Or did she just understand that something was going on between us? If she did know, how did she feel about it? Was she angry at him? Angry at me? Did it make her feel better, knowing that I was getting what I deserved? Did it upset her, knowing that her husband was fucking her son, no matter her own feelings towards me?

If she knew, she wasn't doing anything about it. I chose to believe that she only suspected that something strange was going on, or if she had figured it out, she was like me and too scared of him to try to stop it. That was easier than believing that she knew and either didn't care or approved of it. She had never been a good mother to me, but I just couldn't handle believing that she hated me so much that she wouldn't even try to help me.

Not a day has gone by that I haven't thought about trying to stop him. I'm not a little kid anymore and as much as I tried to make myself believe that it wasn't any worse than the beatings, it was. It was taking a much larger toll one me, more than I can admit on paper, than getting knocked around does. I could get his gun from his bedroom and threaten him with it. I could call the police or social services. I could tell my teachers or, hell, I could tell Solo. He might actually care enough to listen to me. I wasn't completely helpless.

But I am. In all the ways that matter, I'm still that nine year old boy, walking home from school and terrified of going back home. That fear has only grown as I've gotten older. I'm overcome by it, every day that I walk home from work or school and never wanting to go there, like a piece of me is kicking and screaming and begging myself to never go back. It's easy to think that I can call the police on my father in the light of day, when I see my classmates and how abnormal my relationship with my dad has become.

But then it's night time again and I'm laying on my bed in a ball of terror, my heart racing and every sound coming from downstairs is like it's own nightmare. I remember what I am, a loser and weakling. I remember how easily my father had subdued me the first time and I think 'what's the point?' If I tell someone, they probably won't believe me. If I try to make him stop, he'll overpower me again and hurt me worse. Fighting back seems impossible. I've always been smaller than him, I've always been a child to him. That's my reality. It's a waking nightmare and no matter how much I want it to stop, I can't see the light through the darkness. I can't think of a single thing that I can do. What else is there but to endure it? All I can think about is my future, and for once, the prospect of my parents kicking me out as soon as I turn eighteen isn't the horrible thing that it once was. I tell myself over and over again that I just have to survive him for that long, then it will stop on its own.

Things haven't all been awful lately. I finally started my new job. Just like Solo had promised, the owner of the company, Mr. Leneski, was willing to give me a chance, despite my age and the fact that I couldn't legally operate most of the machinery the company used. He was a pretty nice guy, he reminded me of Sal a bit, kind of gruff and impatient at times, but he wasn't a sleaze like Andre was and was pretty understanding. He gave me seven days to prove to him that I wasn't a complete slacker.

I had worried at first that I was going to be given a lot of scut jobs, like maybe cleaning toilets, taking out the trash, or answering phones despite Solo's description of the job. The pay was nice, nothing to write home about, but more than I was making at my other jobs, and Mr. Leneski was willing to give me more hours if I worked out for him, but I really wasn't looking forward to being some kind of janitor. Thankfully, I spent that first week, after a day's worth of pep talks about what the project was going to entail, going out on site with Solo and few other guys to a home in North Nausten replacing some rotten slats in a porch.

Beyond walking Quatre to his house after school every day, I had never actually been to the North of this town. My father refused to let me go there. When I had been a kid, he had said that one end had no business showing up in the other, and that I would only embarrass us, but I think it was just a source of shame for him. He was always ranting about how everyone from North Nausten were crooks and cheats and smug pricks, looking down their noses at people like us that had to work hard to make a living. I think that he was just angry and spiteful about being as poor as we were and, like he always does, lashed out at what he thought was the 'real' problem.

After Relena had started to bully me, I just gained another reason to stay clear of that side of town. The home that we went to do maintenance on was on a different part of the North than Quatre's home. When I had gone down through that part of town, I had seen iron gates, driveways that were bigger than our entire property, and mansion-like homes that seemed as big as all the houses on my street put together and doubled. They had daunted me, like some fairy tale castle, this unobtainable thing that was totally alien to me. The people that lived in those places, minus my best friend of course, were from a different culture altogether.

The home that we worked on that week was a different beast from the homes of families like the Winner's and Darlian's. It was quaint, but very nice, especially compared to my own. It was just as unobtainable for someone like me, but more painfully so, because I could see myself being very happy in a two story home like that with well cut grass, a white picket fence out front, and a wrap around porch in back. They even had a porch swing, for fuck's sake! I could work myself to the bone for the rest of my life and I would never be able to step foot into a home like that. It really put my life in perspective for me, the kind of frustration and depression that my parents lived in, and what my future was going to be like.

Beyond looking at the home with jealousy and some bitterness, the work we did there was oddly satisfying. I could vent all of my rage and sadness for a few hours a day, pulling up boards and hammering nails until I was covered in sweat from the labor and my hands were covered in cuts and bruises. When my boss saw that I was putting in as much effort as everyone else and was willing to keep at a job longer than a lot of his other employees, he agreed to keep me on. The work wasn't exactly glamorous. It was dirty and my muscles hurt like hell by the end of a lot of my days, and some of it, like painting and putting on coats of primer or sealant, were boring, but I found myself falling into the mindlessness of it all better than waiting tables and folding pizza boxes. I was able to focus on what I was doing without being assaulted by my thoughts.

After another week of painting houses and building a shed for this one guy, Mr. Leneski offered me more hours. At ten bucks an hour, I would have been an idiot not to have taken that offer up, and it wasn't rocket science figuring out which job that I was going to need to quit to make that happen. Still, it was a bittersweet thing giving Sal my two week's notice.

Working at the pizza place had been a shit job, but Sal had been nice to me and I had kind of felt like an ass, quitting two jobs in less than a month. Still, Sal paid me 5.90 an hour and the factory paid me eight. It was no contest. He even let me leave before those two weeks were up so I could start my extended hours at Leneski's sooner. My life felt so chaotic. For so long, things had remained the same and now things were changing on me and so few of them were good. That said, it was something of a relief that I wasn't going to come home smelling of pizza sauce anymore.

The only real regret was that I couldn't bring home left over pizza like I had been, but if my dad started to notice, I could just buy some with the extra money that I was making under his nose. It wasn't a huge windfall, but after getting my first paycheck from my new job, and being able to pocket that extra four bucks an hour, I could buy us some extra groceries for the first time. I just hope that I can keep on like that, without my father realizing that I've been hiding money from him. The money that I've been saving... hell if I know what I'll do with it, but it's nice to be able to say that if I need to, I can buy Pepper a new brush or a jacket for myself for the winter or some books.

I rearranged my work schedule pretty well; Monday through Friday, 4 pm to 9:30 pm I work at Leneski's and from 10 to 2 am I work at the factory. Saturdays I work at the factory from 4 pm to 1 am and Sundays I work from 9 am to 6 pm at Leneski's. That gives me enough time on Saturdays to do chores for Mrs. Liddle and whatever my dad wants me to do around the house and my homework on Sundays. Although I have a bit more time on my hands, the work is a lot harder and I find myself coming home a lot more worn down than before. But it's worth it. Just knowing that I won't have to rely on Mrs. Liddle, that I can help if we run out of grocery money is worth it. I worry about my dad finding out, but lately he's more concerned with where his next drink is coming from and going to job interviews than he is why we haven't run out of meals yet.

Things got a little bit better for a little while a couple of weeks ago. My dad finally got a job. He settled for one of the janitorial positions that he had sneered at and I can't even imagine what a miserable time he had been having trying to find something better only to end up at that job. His temper had been legendary for the duration of that job, which ended up only being a week. He claimed that he quit, but giving the mood that he had been in, I have no doubts that he had been fired. What for, I don't know, but in order to have been fired from a janitorial position of all things, it had to have either been his drinking or his temper. I'm betting the latter for once.

Despite the beatings that my mother and I had gotten from him during that week that he had been employed, and the screaming fights my parents had had over, literally, nothing, it could have been nice. I had felt less pressure to help provide for us and he had been at work from the time that I had gotten home from school to when I was going to bed in the small hours of the morning. The best part was that he had to work that weekend and on Sunday, I got several hours of utter peace. For the first time since the night that he had first raped me, I was able to stomach eating more than a bird's meal.

But when he was home, it was a nightmare. He drank even more than before and as soon as he came home at two in the morning, he was tense and agitated, looking to vent his frustrations. That week, he crawled into my bed every, single night. Those were the only times that he was as violent with me as he had been the first time, even though I hadn't tried to fight him. Not that he was much better after he had lost his job, it just meant that he was home more often and had more time to drink.

We played off each other. His stress made me more stressed myself. I started thinking about sleeping in the basement or on a park bench, but it was getting too cold out for that. The constant anxiety and sickness I felt from things at home had me losing hours of sleep. Some nights I didn't even bother to try to fall asleep. I just laid there with a book and waited for him. I didn't feel like eating anything and I frequently skipped meals because I couldn't even force myself to eat.

I looked bad enough after awhile that Solo asked me if I was alright multiple times, and never believed me when I told him that there was nothing wrong. But that was ok. He was the only one in my life that gave enough of a shit about me to ask that question. It was easy, only having to lie to one person. This Monday, three days ago, I finally managed to get some decent sleep. I stayed wide awake for a few hours like always, anxiously waiting for the sound of my father coming through the front door, but it never happened.

He didn't come home. Even as deeply as I slept for those few hours, I knew that he wasn't there when I woke up. That's the way that things have been lately. Even if he doesn't slam the door, even if I'm asleep, the second I hear the noise of that door closing, I become wide awake. It's like being jostled awake by a car alarm, I always wake up with my heart pounding. That morning was the first time since the assault that I had managed to sleep without him waking me up or having one of those weird nightmares. At some time in the early morning while I was waiting for him, my exhaustion caught up with me and I blacked out.

For the first time in a month, it was my alarm clock that woke me up instead of my terror. The relief that I felt was sickening, a tiny slice of normality. That sort of feeling was dangerous. My father not coming home at night wasn't anything to be happy about. It was a dangerous omen. If he isn't here, then he's with Pat, and the longer he's with that pig, the worse my father is when he comes home. It's like all the poison that's in Pat just seeps into him. It also meant that, when he did eventually decide to come home, he was going to be stinking drunk and I didn't have the energy to deal with that side of him that morning.

Although that dark cloud hung over my head, my morning was peaceful for awhile. I played with Pepper, cleaned her litter box, fed her, packed my book bag, and took a shower. I hurriedly got dressed in the bathroom and by the time that I left it, my mother was just starting to rise for the day. I would have felt more relaxed if she hadn't been there, but her silent presence made for better company than my father's.

In the kitchen, I took time to pack myself a lunch for once and hoped that Zechs wouldn't steal or crush it. I had just bought some fresh eggs the day before, so I made myself scrambled eggs and mixed in pieces of leftover bacon that my father had forgotten about, but not before making my mother an omelet. I didn't know what kind of mood she was in, if she would throw it at me or be too tired to make anything for herself.

I had discovered after all of these years that if I tried to offer her anything, even a home cooked meal while she was too busy to make anything, that it would only piss her off. The trick was to not be obvious about it, so I just placed the omelet on a dish on the table behind me as I made my own breakfast. Sure enough, I heard my mother shuffle into the kitchen, pause, and then disappear into the living room. When I looked over my shoulder, the plate was gone.

I felt my lips quirk into a rare smile. I didn't know if she liked my cooking, or if being given food by someone she loathed embarrassed her, but the same, childish part of me that killed me every time my father told me that he loved me after fucking me liked the idea that she felt grateful for that one, small gesture from me, even if she would never let me see that. I doubted that she did. She probably only ate my cooking out of pure hunger, but I still liked thinking that it was more than that. No matter her reason, it made me feel useful.

I finished my meal and went to the sink to wash my dishes. When I was halfway done, my mother suddenly appeared behind me and, without saying a single word, placed her dish next to the frying pan that I hadn't washed yet, then disappeared back into the bedroom to get dressed for her first shift. She didn't say 'thank you' to me. She never does. But she didn't get angry or throw me a disgusted look, either, and that was something, I guess.

Just as I was putting my mother's dish on the drying rack, the front door flew open with a fierce 'BANG' that rattled the walls of our house. I froze and struggled to breathe, my hands shaking so hard that it was fortunate that I had finished washing the dishes, or I would have broken something. I nearly jumped right out of my skin as my father slammed the door behind him and strode into the kitchen like a devil on a mission.

I glanced behind me and saw him there, standing there with the same clothes that he had left the house wearing yesterday, all wrinkled and stained. His face was red and his eyes were bloodshot. There was a light stubble on his face that made him look even more unkempt, but the thing that terrified me was his expression. Like a coiled up snake, frustration and desperation and, worst of all, lust was smoldering there in his eyes, like it had possessed him.

I knew that he wouldn't be able to contain it, just like I knew that I was his intended target. I understood what I had at age thirteen, that all those times that he had disappeared for a night, he had just been with some prostitute, venting that same frantic desire. Only I'm his whore now. And I come cheap. All he has to do is catch me.

I bolted. Or rather, I tried to. I'm quicker than my father, but there isn't a lot of space to move between the table and the wall going towards the attic steps, which was the only place that I could go to get away from him. I didn't want to get stuck in the basement again, not in the pitch dark with nowhere to hide, and I couldn't get around him to the front door. He was close enough to the front of the table that it was an easy thing for him to block my escape. The next thing I knew, he was grabbing the back of my shirt as I tried to squeeze past him and bodily threw me into the wall, pinning me down like I was nothing more than a bug to him.

I felt him bury his face in my hair, smelling my hair and neck with strange tenderness. With unsteady fingers, he swept my braid over my shoulder and his breath washed over the bare skin of the back of my neck, hot, heavy, and rank as he kissed me there. His hands were fumbling at our clothes, but he had my pants down in seconds. Then he was slamming into me in a kind of frenzied fervor like a man indulging in something that he needed but hadn't indulged in for a long time. I braced my arms on the wall and buried my head in them, biting my skin at the pain and shame so hard that I could taste my blood.

I didn't bother to fight against it as he fucked me right there in the kitchen. In the state that he was in, I probably could have gotten away from him, but what would be the point? Even if I was able to get away from him half the time, he would still rape me that other half. What difference did it make? It was too much effort, too much of a struggle, and I just didn't care anymore. So I let him do what he did as my heart, my ugly, traitorous heart, waited eagerly for those brief, tiny moments when he would be kind. Those moments that he seemed to only be capable of when he was raping me.

The sounds of his panting and grunting in the otherwise silent kitchen were repulsive and I found my mind trying to wander away to some other place, some more pleasant fantasy, but the pain and those sounds kept drawing me back. My tears soaked into the sleeve of my shirt, but I refused to sob or make any kind of sound to show that I was in distress. I wouldn't let him have that much.

"Yes... yes... that's it, sweetheart... just a little bit more," he moaned into my neck, his lips oddly soft and gentle compared to what the rest of him was doing.

His strong fingers gripped at my hips, his nails scratching and cutting my skin as he came as hot and rank as his breath inside of me. My heart weeped poisonous affection as he called me sweetheart again, a thing that before all this had started, he had only called me when I had been a child. Then it was all over and he was gone like it had never happened for him, pulling out of me roughly and disappearing into the bathroom to clean himself off.

I barked a harsh and hoarse, and perhaps a bit crazy, sounding laugh into my arms before lifting up my head again. There would be no 'sorry' or even 'thank you' from him. He had come and I wasn't needed anymore, at least not until he got another hard on. I had thought of myself as one of his whores before, but the truth was much harsher than that. Whores get paid. I get used and discarded. A sex doll and a punching bag, that's what I am. At least whores get to just see it as a job, a profession. All I got were seconds, soft words that he said, a caress or a kiss that I can't even cherish coming from my father because they are entangled with memories of pain.

I wiped at my face, scrubbing proof of my tears off with my sleeve and started to pull up my pants. I flipped my hair over my shoulder and remembered how he had sniffed at it. The memory made me shiver. That was when I noticed her in the corner of my eye. My mother.

How long she had been standing there, watching, I had no clue. I hadn't heard the bedroom open, so she must have come out when my dad had still been going at it, the sounds of his pleasure masking any noise that she had made. Which of course meant that my father had to have had to push by her to get the bathroom. He hadn't even cared that she had seen, or maybe some drunken part of his mind was glad that she had, in bitter spite of her. I must have been quite a sight to her just then, standing there in the kitchen with reddened eyes, clutching my pants tightly in one hand, bruises on my bare hips and her husbands cum dripping down my legs.

She was staring at me in complete shock, but I couldn't tell if it was because she finally knew, finally understood what she had suspected, or if it was just seeing that sort of thing happening right in front of her. She looked so pale, even paler than when she had finally come home from the hospital and her light gray eyes were wide and round as she stared at me. Seeing her expression was when it really hit me, that she had watched my father having sex with me.

Words can't describe the sort of feelings that swept me away in that moment. People talk about moments in their lives when they were so embarrassed that they thought that they would die, but that doesn't even touch on what I felt. Embarrassment is too shy of a word. Shame comes close. Even horror doesn't really convey it. In that moment, I wanted to die and that's no hyperbole. If someone had handed me a gun right then, I think I might have blown my brains out just to stop the torrent of dark emotions running through me.

What I was completely unprepared for was when anger started to squeeze into my heart to overtake those feelings of mortification. Being embarrassed always makes me feel a bit bitter and angry. Every second that she stared at me like that, like I was some kind of freak of nature, made me feel more horrible, and angrier. I wanted her to stop. Just stop looking at me. It reminded me of that day outside of school, when Quatre had begged for Trowa to listen to him. She reminded me of all of our classmates, staring at him, mocking him for his pain.

'What fucking right does she have to stare at me like that,' I remember thinking in spite, 'She's the reason why this happened to me, not anyone else, just her!'

I embraced that thought, as ugly as it was. That was right. This was all my mother's fault. She was the one that he wanted, not me, but she wasn't the one that he was pinning down at night, the one that he was hurting. She was too good for that. Even though she frequently kicked him out of bed and didn't have an ounce of love for him, even though she said nasty things to him when they fought and freaked out if he just tried to touch her arm or kiss her, he loved her more than he would ever love me. To him, trying to rape her was an unthinkable thing, but I was fair game.

She had found a way to get away with completely stopping sex with him and had gotten away with that. Why couldn't I find that same way? Why did I have to be this loathsome person, all because my mother hated my father? I was being raped because of my father's desperation, a desperation that she had caused. And she had just stood there, for who even knew how long, watching him do it. She hadn't tried to stop him. Hadn't even said a word. So what right did she have to look at me like that, like I was the one that had done something terrible?

I hated her then, truly hated her, even more than I did my dad. I know that's not fair. I know that I was just ashamed and angry at myself and horrified that she had seen something so disgusting. I was lashing out at her, thinking things that I didn't even really feel to try to hide how much I hated and blamed myself, but right then, that hatred that I felt for her was very real. It was stronger than how I had felt when she had told me that I was a mistake, even stronger than the day that I had told her that Quatre had died. It was too large for me to swallow and got stuck in my throat, this bitter, awful thing. Every second that she stood there and didn't say a word to me made it grow and try to choke me to death.

"What the fuck are you looking at?" I snapped at her, finishing the job of pulling up my pants and not caring that I was soiling them.

She still stood there, mute and fish eyed, looking me in the eye for the first time in weeks. My hands curled into fists and I could feel my nails digging cuts into my palms. Why didn't she leave? Why didn't she just go away and leave me alone like everyone else, like she had been doing my entire life?! The only reason why she had come into the kitchen at all... it wasn't to help me, it was probably just to get a drink, just like him. The both of them deserved each other.

"Just get some of your goddamned whiskey," I snarled at her in rage and the tears that gathered in my eyes felt distant from me, like they were happening to someone else, and completely out of place with my anger, "and drink away the fact that the man you married can fuck his son just because he can't fuck a whore anymore, just like you drink away everything else!"

An intense pain came into her eyes then at my words. I guess she was sober enough to not like that accusation, the reminder of her alcoholism, but she still didn't budge. It was like she couldn't, like she didn't know what to do next. Tears streamed down my cheeks and I didn't even care. My hatred was gone. Something else was there now, something worse, something that threatened to drown me. I didn't care about my sorrow, about the black pit in me. I didn't care about anything at all anymore. I didn't even care that I was crying in front of the one person in my life that gave the least about any pain that I was feeling.

"Go the fuck away!" I sobbed angrily at her, "Just leave me the hell alone!"

Her eyes went impossibly wider in fear as I screamed at her and she bolted back into her bedroom like she would have if my father had been chasing her to beat her down. Had that been what she had thought? That I was going to hit her? Some part of me wanted to. It wanted to wipe that horrified look off of her face with my fists, it wanted to erase the agony in my chest and the shame that I was still feeling, even if there was no way that I could do something like that.

I ran upstairs, unmindful of the aches and bruises that my father had given me and took refuge in my bedroom. I didn't know what was worse, how embarrassed I still felt or how quickly my emotions had turned to rage, how easily it had been to consider striking my own mother. I felt like everything was slipping away from me. I felt like I was losing myself, that I was turning into a monster or beast and there was absolutely nothing I could to reclaim myself. Or maybe that's just who I really am, and I'm just finally becoming an adult. I don't want to believe that there's nothing I can do to change it, but maybe I'm just too weak and incapable.

I worried for a second what my mother was going to do now that she knew the truth, but I just remembered that expression on her face and I knew that she wasn't going to do anything about it. That was my only source of relief. I didn't think that I could take much more anxiety before I broke down completely. I pulled down my pants and underwear and grimaced at how messy they were. I wanted to throw them away, or better yet, burn them. But I couldn't keep throwing away clothes simply because they repulsed me, and I didn't have the time to clean them, either.

I tossed my soiled clothes into my hamper, vowing to wash everything in there twice if I needed to that week, cleaned myself off with a towel, and went in search of clean clothes as quickly as I could. I quickly discovered that I didn't have any clean underwear or sweatpants left. I had five minutes to get dressed and rush out of the house or I would be late for homeroom and I didn't even have any fucking underwear. It was just another straw on my already broken back and I gave out a cry of pure rage and frustration, kicking my hamper so hard that it crashed into the wall. Pepper, who had been eating at her bowl, darted into her hole and cowered there, frightened by the noise. I didn't even have the ability to comfort her.

I panted with my anger and felt this overwhelming urge to destroy everything in sight, to just rip up all my clothing and follow my cat's lead, to find some dark hole to crawl into until everything went away. If only I had that luxury. I again felt the cruelty of it all, that the world couldn't just stop for me, that it couldn't let me take a breath. No, I had to keep going on. My life was falling apart and I still had to worry about getting to class on time.

I took a couple of deep breaths, trying to calm myself before I had a full on panic attack, and searched through my closet. I hadn't been wearing my jeans at all lately, so they were all clean. I really didn't want to wear them. Wearing tight clothing or anything that conformed to my skin made me feel weird. Nervous and anxious. I don't know why, but I just feel better wearing baggy clothes still. But I didn't really have a choice that day. I pulled on the jeans and changed my shirt to something that was long enough to cover my butt and my crotch. It made me feel better. I told myself that that was because no one would be able to tell that I wasn't wearing underwear.

I felt on edge throughout most of the school day, but it was only partially because of what had happened at home. My mind kept wandering to it, turning it over and over, that expression on my mother's face. More than one teacher yelled at me for not paying attention, but the embarrassment of my classmates laughing at me for zoning out was absolutely nothing to me. I was used to that. But it was more than the morning that had me feeling like I was wired with nervous electricity.

I'm sure that I've mentioned this already, that sometimes bad days just come at me out of the blue, but other times, I can just sense that something terrible is about to happen. That day was the latter. From the moment that I walked into school, I just knew that something was going to happen at my expense. It was this electric charge in the air, warning me to keep an eye out for something. It didn't take me long to figure out what, or rather who, I needed to worry about. Every time I crossed paths with Zechs and his friends in the halls, I caught them glancing at me and laughing. They were planning something. I just wish that I had had some kind of warning about what it was before it had happened.

Or maybe it would have been one of those unavoidable things. Just another source of embarrassment for me that day, another straw on my back, trying to break me. Maybe the universe or God just hates me that much. Maybe I could have handled it better if it had happened on any other day, but I don't think so. I think some things are just hit you in this vulnerable place and nothing can prepare you for them.

It happened towards the end of the lunch block. I was walking to my locker to grab my books for the rest of the day, like I did every single day. On the outside, my locker didn't look like it had been tampered with. There was no graffiti on the outside of it, no sign that someone had gotten into it. Of course, there hardly ever was. I don't know how Zechs knew the combination to my lock, but he seemed to have no trouble in leaving me little 'presents', just like he had Quatre. I didn't bother asking for a new lock combination, that wasn't allowed in Zechs's fucked up little game. That was breaking the rules and it would come with a stiff penalty.

I opened my locker door and stared dumbly at something that I had definitely not put in there. It was a clear mason jar with a black lid and there was something in it, something liquid. I just kind of stared at it for a minute, unsure of what it was and why it was there. It wasn't one of his usual pranks, I had thought at first. Initially, when I picked it up and looked at it, I thought that it might be some kind of jelly or paste, or maybe something that he had cooked up in chemistry and if I shook it, it would blow up in my face. The substance was a milky white color and looked slimy and familiar, but I couldn't figure out what it was.

Braving a possible explosion or it being a kind of crude stink bomb, I unscrewed the lid on the jar and sniffed it. The aroma filled my head with the worst kind of memories and in my horror, I am almost dropped the jar. The knowledge of what I held in my hands filled me with revulsion and disbelief. It was semen. I knew it because the smell wafting from it was the same rank stench that I had smelled on my sheets after my father had raped me that first time. It was the same smell that he left on me and in me every time since then. Zechs had put an entire jar of the stuff in my locker. I was ready to toss it back into my locker and run as far away from it as I could when someone at my back stopped me and grabbed the jar full of fluid from me. I didn't even need to look back to know who it was.

"What's the matter, Maxwell?" Zechs Darlian hissed in my ear as he cornered me against my locker, "I thought you liked this sort of thing? I was up all night making it special, just for you, you know. Here, why don't you try some?"

Before I had the chance to duck or dodge or really register anything besides my disgust for him and trying to figure out if he was just fucking with me or if the stuff in the jar really was his, he dumped the jar over my head. Slimy cum poured down on me, into my hair, and dripped down my face. I could feel it there, on my skin. I could smell it, that heavy, nauseating stench of sex and violence and pain and filth and everything that had come to embody my nightmares and my life lately.

The panic attack was swift and overpowering. My heart screamed in my chest as memory after memory of my father fucking me hit me like a train. All I could smell was the semen pouring over me, all I could feel was sorrow and terror. I could feel him thrusting into me, I could feel his hands on me and his hot breath at the back of my neck. Too late I realized that I was shaking and hyperventilating. I saw Zechs, Trant, Mueller, and Alex all standing around me, laughing uncontrollably at the sight of me freaking out at their disgusting prank.

Past Zechs, I saw Heero. He was just standing there with the rest of the crowd, some laughing like my tormentors were, others looking in shock. Had he known? Had he helped them plan this? That thought was too much. I had this image in my head of him conspiring with Zechs, laughing about dumping semen on me, about how a fag like me would probably enjoy that. I felt sick, like I could vomit right there in the hallway. But Heero wasn't laughing. He was looking at me with wide, blue eyes in shock and... and disgust. Who wouldn't be disgusted at the sight of me? He hadn't known, but I bet he would be laughing about it with them later, when he was done being repulsed. Relena was there at his side, laughing, too, but just as disgusted.

Seeing them there, the perfect couple, mocking me and looking at me like I was a nasty little turd that they had found in their soup, it was too much for me. All of it was. I was already shaken up from everything that had happened that morning, all those little straws. I finally broke. I shoved past Zechs and he let me go. He had already had his source of amusement for the day. He had already won. I ran down the hall, not caring at the kind of image that I presented or who I ran into, and I didn't stop running until I was flinging open the door to the chemistry lab and slamming it shut behind me.

I made a beeline for the eye wash station and grabbed the nozzle attached to the long hose. I was about to spray my hair down when I remembered that it was still up in a braid. I fumbled stupidly with my hair tie, my hands trembling and forgetting that the mess was all over my hair. When my fingers touched the rank stuff, I pulled my hand away like it had burned me. The creamy mess was covering my hand. It was too easy to believe that it was really Zechs's, too easy seeing him jerking off into that jar.

The smell was like paint fumes to me. I know that sounds ridiculous, that semen doesn't have the strong of a smell, but I was hyper aware to it. To the smell, to the feel of it on me. An image wormed its way, unwanted, into my head and behind my eyes, the image of Zechs standing over me and ejaculating right in my face. Only my mind couldn't decide if it was Zechs or my father.

I retched into the sink and didn't stop until there wasn't a single thing left in my stomach. Throwing up and crying at the same time is actually a lot more difficult and painful than you would think. I didn't waste a second's thought on either, though. As soon as I was done throwing up and finishing the job of taking my hair tie off and my hair unraveled, I turned on the water, leaned my head into the sink, and soaked my hair with it. I scrubbed at my hair frantically, blindly trying to get all of it out with a kind of panicked fervor. I wanted to shave all of my hair off. I had the water running all of two minutes when I heard the door open behind me. I turned, not sure if I should be afraid that a class was coming in, or angry that it was Zechs and his cronies come to make fun of me, but it was worse than that.

Heero stood in the doorway, his face still pale for his skin tone and his blue eyes wide. He reminded me too much of my mother, watching some horrible, disgusting scene and just frozen in place, only when he looked at me, there was some guilt in his expression. Or maybe that was just in my head, maybe I just wanted to believe that he felt bad for what his friends had done to me.

In reality, it was probably just pity, just him being relieved that something like that would never happen to him. Look at the poor, miserable faggot. I could imagine him talking to Relena about it later, lamenting about how I only had myself to blame about this, really. If I didn't like guys, this wouldn't have happened. What was worse, pity or disgust? I didn't know, but I did know that he was the very last person in the world that I wanted to see me like that; hair wet and plastered to my skin, panting, smelling of semen and vomit and tears streaming down my face. My only consolation was that he might not realize that I was crying thanks to the water.

"Duo," Heero said and took a step into the room, his voice hoarse with confusion.

His expression became pained and he looked lost for what to do. It dawned on me then that he hadn't come in to bully me. He wanted to help me. He pitied me so much that he thought his help would actually be wanted, or maybe he just felt like shit for what happened and wanted to make himself feel better. His reasons didn't matter to me. I hated him. Just like I had felt that morning with my mother, I hated him more than I had ever hated anyone in my life, even my parents.

"Leave me alone," I hissed angrily at him, "Just go away and leave me alone!"

I didn't want him near me. I didn't want him to see me like this, crying and having an anxiety attack, covered in semen and feeling ashamed. Wasn't it enough that he was straight and I was gay? Wasn't it enough that he was rich and popular? Wasn't it enough that we would never even be friends, let alone what I wanted us to be? No, he had to see me at my lowest, he had to see the kind of person that I really was. But despite all of that, there he was, ignoring my demand and still walking forward, still lost, but still stubbornly there.

"Duo, I am so-" he started to say, putting his hands up in a defensive position.

I snapped. Rage boiled in me. I didn't want to see him. Not ever. Why couldn't he just let my heart die? Why couldn't he just be the prick that I wanted him to be and stop inserting himself into my feelings like this? Why did he have to be an asshole one moment and so nice to me the next? I didn't want to be confused. I wanted clarity. I wanted my life to make sense for once. I wanted him to go away forever. I reached out for the thing that was closest to me: a jar full of glass beakers, and I threw it at him, throwing my aim off enough to make sure that when it hit the wall behind him, he wouldn't get hurt by the glass as it shattered.

"Get the fuck out of here!" I screamed at him as fresh tears poured down my cheeks, "Who the hell wants you here?!"

Heero flinched at my throw and walked back out of the room, but not before hastily glancing back at me like he wanted to say something. He closed the door behind him, leaving me alone. I should have felt relieved that he had gone, but I didn't. I wished that he had stayed with me, helped me, comforted me. Even my own damned feelings didn't make any sense. I turned back to the eye station and continued washing out my hair, letting the water fall over me and down the back of my shirt as I sobbed violently. I skipped my class, partially because I was still too raw and ashamed, but mostly because I couldn't stop scrubbing at my hair and face, even when I knew that I had cleaned it all off. I was never going to feel clean again.
*****
That night, I had one of those dreams again. I was awake, but dreaming that there was something in my room, something that was going to hurt me. I could see it watching me from that dark corner of my room, crouched there with glowing eyes, like some kind of beast or demon. I had that same feeling of absolute terror, the knowledge that I was being hunted, that it wanted to eat me and drag me into the darkness with it. I was as sure of that as anything in my life and just like every night that I had one of these weird nightmares, I found myself curled up into a tiny ball on my bed, panting with fear, and yearning for a weapon to defend myself.

I think that the wounds that my father had gifted me with that night had only fueled the nightmare and made it more real. After coming home late again, frustrated and angry at something, he had been like an animal, more brutal and vicious than he usually was. For the first time in weeks, he had torn me and made me bleed. Not nearly as much as that first time, but enough that even hours later, it ached. There were angry, black bruises on my wrists, hips, and thighs from him grabbing me too hard and, worst of all, bloody scratches from his nails on my lower back. I would notice them in the morning when I took my shirt off to take a shower, but even in my nightmare, I felt like I had been mauled by an animal.

As I laid there in the dark, feeling my terror in my chest and on the verge of screaming with it, a revelation came to me. It was such a simple thing, but obvious to me at the time. I knew why this was happening, why the thing in my room kept coming to me. I knew why I was so afraid and why I hadn't been able to scare it off yet. It was simple, really. For a monster like that, a knife was far too small. Of course it wouldn't be scared of such a thing. I needed a better weapon... a weapon that even a monster would be frightened of. In my half awake, half dreaming state, all of this made perfect sense to me and I didn't understand why I hadn't thought of it before.

Keeping one eye on the thing in my room, I got out of bed and walked down the steps. I suddenly found myself in my parents' room, without having any memory of how I got there. My father was on his back, one arm thrown over his chest, and snoring deeply. My mother was on her side, facing away from him, and curled up like I had just been. Even in sleep, she had made herself as small as possible to stay away from him. They were oblivious to me and I felt no fear at all that I would wake either of them up. I was more frightened of the monster upstairs than I was of either of them or their anger.

I opened the drawer on my father's bedside table and took out his gun. All my life, I had never touched it. I had barely even looked at it, always afraid of my father's wrath. I knew that it would be in there. He wasn't a cop anymore, but he would never let go of that gun, whether because it was still useful or it was something for him to remember. I knew that, just like how I knew that it was loaded. The safety was on, but it was always loaded. I remember my mother being upset about him keeping it loaded and in the house like that when I had been a kid. He had snidely asked her what the point was of an unloaded gun and that had been the end of the argument.

The gun felt both oddly heavy and strangely light in my hands as I held it. Too light for such a deadly thing, but it's heaviness spoke to me of how effective it would be to kill the monster. If there's any weapon in the world that can kill such a thing, I thought in my dreaming state, then it would be this gun. Without even thinking about what I was doing, I turned the safety off, looking at what I was holding with a kind of awe.

Just like that, I came awake like a shot. Fear still made my heart thump unpleasantly in my chest, but that clarity and surety that had had me invading my parents' bedroom in the middle of the night vanished. What the fuck was I doing? I remembered all my strange, nightmare thoughts, but they no longer made sense to me. The fear that I felt then was of how I could... not really sleep walk, but the action was the same. The fear quickly turned into the age old one of getting in trouble with my father. There I was, standing like a pale ghost, wearing only a long night shirt after my father had discarded my pants and blood dried on my thighs, not only in their bedroom, not only capable of waking the sleeping bear, but touching something that I was never, ever, ever allowed to touch.

My hands trembled, feeling the true weight of what I was holding. I should have put it back in the drawer and snuck out of the bedroom. That would have been the sane thing to do. Instead, I found myself glancing down at my father. He was sleeping so deeply, so peacefully for a man that had just viciously raped me hours before. Was this how he had slept the first time? How he slept every time? While I tossed and turned and had these horrible nightmares, while I struggled just to sleep for one solid hour every night without being woken up with a scream in my throat, he got to sleep like a baby.

I felt fear as I watched him sleep, the same fear that I had felt from the first time that he had assaulted me, but more than that, I felt sorrow and rage. This was what my life had become. I was scared all the time, and angry all the time. When was the last time that I had felt anything more than those things? Anything more than misery? And it wasn't going to stop. He was never going to stop. My life is now defined by those moments, either waiting for the rape or when it was actually happening. My life was ugly and twisted and disgusting. What was the point? Why was I even alive? I didn't want it. Not anymore. I couldn't do it. Everything was hideous to me.

I pressed the gun to my temple and curled my finger around the trigger. It would be easier this time. No doubts. No razors. No bleeding out slowly on the floor of the bathroom, only to wake up in a hospital bed with my father glaring down at me. Just a single bullet and that would be the end of it all. I would die. I would stop. The rapes would stop, the bullying, the fear, all of my self hatred. I could finally sleep, for the first time in three years. I wouldn't have to see Heero or Relena or Zechs ever again. I wouldn't see anything at all and, right then, it was all that I wanted. I wanted to close my eyes to it all forever. No more pain, no more struggle...

I looked down at my father and felt tears drip down my cheeks at the thought of ending my life, for real this time. I wasn't even scared of dying anymore. I wasn't scared of how easily I had come to that decision, either. I was just so tired. I didn't want to be scared of him anymore. I let my hatred of him fill me. It was easier than my love for him, so much easier.

The man sleeping so soundly on that bed had wanted to have sex with me for such a long time, I thought with angry bitterness. Three years, at the very least. For three years, he had wanted to fuck me, and for three years, he had stopped himself. I don't know how he had managed that, why it was that only last month he had finally lost control. But he had stopped himself from doing it for three damned years, he had had that self control.

I hated him then, not for his desires, not for using me, but for giving up on me. He had given in. Just two more years, that's all he had to have done! Just held it at bay for two more fucking years. He could have spared me all this pain and agony, but instead, he had given up so easily! He didn't even care for me that much, to not hurt me like that.

I came back to myself like I was waking up for a second time and discovered that I wasn't holding the gun to my own head anymore, but I had it trained with shockingly steady hands at my father's head, the muzzle of the gun so close to my father's closed right eye that it was almost touching his skin. My finger was still on the trigger. I could have squeezed it while in my trance and killed him without even knowing it.

I should have been shocked, and in a few minutes I would be, but right then I felt this steady, perfect calm fall over me. My hand didn't waver or tremble. I pressed down on the trigger, depressing it half way to its mark. It would be easy, even easier than shooting myself. Just half an inch, then that bullet would go right through his eye, right through his fucking brain and that would be it. Mom would never get beaten anymore. There would be no more drunken fights and screaming, no more rape, no more of his insults and hate. And wouldn't he deserve it? For everything that he had done? I had gone down into their bedroom to shoot a monster, and wasn't that exactly what I was doing?

My tears blurred my vision. I imagined myself going through with it. I imagined his face exploding in red and gore. I imagined my mother waking up with the shot and screaming. The fantasy was pleasant, like some kind of wet dream. I wanted to do it. I wanted to shoot him with his own gun. My finger clenched at the trigger, unable to depress it enough to set off the gun, but equally unable to let go of the gun.

I felt like there were two separate people in side of me, warring against each other; the person that was full of hatred for my rapist and would have gleefully fired that gun over and over and over again until there were no bullets remaining, and the part of me that was horrified at what I was doing, the part of me that knew that the face that I wanted to destroy wasn't just the man that was raping me. This was my dad. That face was the same one that had smiled at me as a child and kissed my forehead when I had been sick. How could I do it? How could I kill someone that I loved?

Am I a murderer, I thought then. I remembered that moment when I had broken down in front of him after Quatre's death. I remembered how I had sobbed and my father, completely unaware of why I was crying, had held me and had tried, in his own fumbling way, to comfort me. A killer... is that what I was? Not even a brute like him, not even someone who lashed out viciously at the people that I loved, but someone so full of loathing that I could take my own father's life?

My hands fell limp at my sides and all I could do was stand there in horror at what I had almost done. What I could have done. What I had wanted to do. This wasn't me. That person holding the gun to my father's head had been a stranger and that person terrified me. What was I becoming to be able to do that? What was all the darkness in my life turning me into?

I put the safety back on the gun and returned it to the drawer. I left my parents' room and walked to the living room. I sat down on the couch and hugged my knees to my chest, staring at the darkness of the room, the nothingness of those shadows. I felt sickened and very frightened by everything. I felt like I was still dreaming, only it was a nightmare that I couldn't wake up from. Maybe that's what going insane feels like and that was what was happening to me.

I stayed like that the entire night, not thinking of anything, not even trying to sleep. I was blank. Even when I heard my parents waking up hours later, I didn't move. When I finally did, I felt cold and stiff, like a slab of rock. I can only call the state that I was in a daze. Nothing filtered in through the veil that I shrouded myself in. I walked from class to class that day, not paying attention to anything around me besides a single, pure thought that followed me around like a bad smell.

I should have pulled the trigger. Not when I had been aiming at my father, but at myself. I should have pulled the trigger then. I should have erased myself from the world, before I ever found out what I was capable of. Later, when I emerged from the hole in my head, I would curse myself out. I would throw up. I would punch a wall and call myself every bad name that I knew for what had nearly happened, but that wouldn't be until later that night. Until then, all I could do was mourn everything that I had always thought that I was. A loser, an idiot, a terrible friend... but this... I didn't know if I could accept this about myself.

Those feelings followed me around today as well. Disbelief. Hating myself for not being able to be a better person. Fear of my own body, my own feelings. I truly do feel like I'm going insane. I can't even try to fool myself into believing that it's because of my sleep deprivation and depression. I can't deny the rage that's in me, or how good it felt when I had hit Relena and Zechs. There is something ugly in me, and for all my attempts to cage it, it's growing. Sooner or later, it's going to devour me. What will happen to me when that occurs? Will I kill my father or my mother or even Relena or Zechs? It's not like the fantasy of shooting those two hasn't come to me before. Who am I? And why can't I be anyone else?

For the first time since I told Heero off, when school let out today, I walked to the beach. I can't say why. I had thought that I had been smart avoiding the beach, avoiding him whenever I could. Smarter than Quatre had been. But maybe it wasn't that. As I left the school and tried to think of how I wanted to spend my time before work, I realized something. I realized just how empty the last month of my life had become. I'm not just talking about the nightmares, the sleep deprivation, being love sick, or even the rapes.

Ever since my father had first assaulted me, I had stopped doing a lot of things. I don't go for runs anymore. I don't go to the beach. I don't go to the library as much as I used to. Even my cooking has been a rare thing outside making my dad dinner when he needs it. I read to pass the time, but I don't feel the excitement and the love for it that I once did. At some point, I had stopped doing the things that I used to enjoy, or I just plain stopped enjoying them. I came home, took care of Pepper, did my homework, and cowered in my room. Beyond that, it was just work and school and nothing else. I hadn't even listened to my music in weeks.

Even realizing all that, I felt no desire to stop and do something that I liked. I just... didn't care. That was as frightening as the realization of how close I had come to murdering my father. How could you just stop loving things? Enjoying the smallest things in life? The only time that I'm even happy anymore is when I'm playing with Pepper. Everything else is just a white wash. Is it depression, tiredness, or something else entirely? Am I truly changing, becoming this person that's blank of everything except for fear or anger?

I went to the beach partially because I had nowhere else to go and I didn't want to go home, and partially because I needed to. I needed something, anything, to feel something besides darkness. The beach was chilly as we started to get closer and closer to Winter. It wasn't quite so cold that I needed a winter jacket yet, but there was a cool wind coming off of the water, an omen for things to come. I was used to it. That's what Nausten is; long winters and short summers. Even during the spring, we have frequent cold fronts that make it feel like winter again.

I walked all the way to the mound and sat down on the edge. It was almost high tide and the waves were choppy. The water was black and the sky grey and cloudy, the kind of sky that threatens a storm but doesn't quite deliver. It suited my mood and that wasn't what I wanted. I had wanted it to be bright and blue, the sun beaming down and making me feel just a little bit of warmth for once, even if it was fake. I wanted it to be summer again. Things had been better then.

When I heard familiar footsteps approaching behind me, I almost screamed out in frustration and left right then. How the hell did he know that I was here every single time?! Was he fucking stalking me?! That was just my wishful thinking, I knew. That he came here to see me was a delusion that I couldn't afford to have. He just liked this spot. Someone like him, someone who didn't need a job or have a ton of chores could probably go to the beach every damned day. It must be nice. He sat down next to me without so much as a 'hi' or to ask me to leave or ask if he could sit. It rankled me, him walking around like he owned everything, like I even wanted him there.

"I thought I told you to fuck off," I snapped at him and felt my face flush despite myself, remembering the last time that we had been alone together, my shame still very fresh in my mind.

"I thought that you weren't the sort of person that tells people where they can and can't go?" he shot back sharply before his tone softened again, "Besides, maybe I don't want to listen to you. Maybe you need someone to talk to."

I couldn't help it. Even though his words made my heart hurt and ache for something that I had had once, but had lost, and even though I loathed him for reminding me of something that I didn't want to think about, I laughed.

"And you think that person is you?" I looked at him incredulously, but there was nothing in his expression that told me what the hell this boy was thinking and my mirth died in my throat.

Confusion doesn't even come close to what I felt as we awkwardly sat there, staring each other down. I realized that we weren't at opposite ends of the mound like usual, but he had sat closer to me this time. It made me feel very shy suddenly and I couldn't even hold on to my bitterness.

Those beautiful blue eyes of his glanced down and that soft, worried, but intense expression that he had had hardened. I looked where he was and saw that he was staring at the black bruises on my left wrist. My sleeve had pulled up and I hadn't been aware of it. I tugged it back down nervously and not sure why I felt so off balance. He always made me feel that way, but this time was worse. I felt very vulnerable and raw. There was a voice in my head chanting 'if only he knew' and it made me feel ill. If only he knew that I was letting my father fuck me. If only he knew that I had contemplated murder. If only he knew just what a freak I really was. My being gay didn't even come close to how fucked up I was and him finding out about those things was a new source of horror.

"Why don't you tell on him?" he asked, perplexed as his eyes found mine again.

I snorted.

"What difference would that make?" his naivety would have been charming if we were talking about anything else but my father's abuse.

Who was he, I wondered, that he could talk about that so boldly, just come out and talk about the same thing that Quatre hardly could? It just felt so strange to me, him stumbling into my problems when everyone else was all too happy to ignore them, even myself.

"It wouldn't make any difference if I told anyone," I pointed out, "No one would believe someone like me over my dad. Besides, I don't have anyone to tell anyway."

"What about your mother?" he asked, his brow furrowing.

I almost snorted in derision again.

"If you're asking if she hits me, too, no, she doesn't. And that's her only good quality. If you're asking if she'd do anything if I told her, that's a no, too. She hasn't done shit about anything in seventeen years," I said bitterly and wondered why I was being so honest with the one person that I didn't want to know these things.

"Even if I did, it doesn't really matter. Even if my father stopped, Zechs beats me up, too. You don't really seem all that concerned about getting him to stop," I sneered at him.

Heero flushed darkly in guilt. I wished that he would stop doing that. I didn't want to know that he felt bad, I didn't want to know that there was someone in there besides the person that was mean to me that could care, could feel badly about the things that he said and did and the people that hanged out with.

"Look, what happened before-" he started to say and I had to cut him off.

"Don't," I snapped at him, "I don't want to hear it. I don't care if you're sorry or if you had nothing to do with it and I don't want your fucking pity. If you had known what he was going to do, would you have tried to stop him? Told on him? Warned me?"

He looked away from me and said nothing, but he hadn't needed to. His silence and refusal to look me in the eye as he thought about that said everything.

"You're such a hypocrite," I shook my head, "You ask me why I don't do anything about my dad hitting me, but you're worse than me, aren't you? You don't like what Zechs does to people, it makes you uncomfortable, but you don't stop hanging out with him and you don't try to stop him. So stop acting like you don't get it and that feeling bad about it makes you a better person than him. It doesn't. It's because of people like you that he gets away with being a prick!"

My own rage surprised me for a moment, how quickly Heero had gotten to me. It seemed like no matter what I felt, when it concerned him, my feelings were always in the extreme. I could never be nonchalant around him. He flushed even darker, not liking me pointing out just how weak he was.

"Why do they hate you so much?" he asked, still not looking me in the eye, "Relena and Zechs... it's true that they pick on other people, but not like how they are with you. The things that they've said... they hate you more than anyone I've ever known has hated someone."

"I'm a faggot, remember?" I smirked darkly at him, catching a quick glance from him, "What's not to hate?"

"Are you really..." he murmured, almost to himself, "...gay?"

I felt frozen, completely incased in ice at his question. This is the sort of person that he is, I was just starting to realize. The sort of person who just blurts out questions like that so boldly and bumbles into things without worrying about the consequences. It was probably a good thing that he wasn't gay and interested in me. I over think every little thing and consequences are all that I worry about. How could two people that are like that possibly even get along as friends, let alone boyfriends? Hell, Trowa and I are both reserved, quiet, and worry about things like that and we had been awful together.

I didn't know how to answer that question. I didn't want to answer it. I'm an honest person. Between my father beating me every time he caught me in a lie and just being that sort of person, I'm not the sort to go around spewing lies and stories about things. It doesn't come naturally to me. Hiding my father's abuse and my own feelings are about as close to dishonesty as I come and I don't like pretending to be someone that I'm not. That seems exhausting and I have no idea how Heero can act around Relena's group when it makes him uncomfortable.

But no one had ever actually asked me if I was gay before. For the last four years, I had simply been told that I was a fag and any attempt that I could have made to protest that would have been ignored anyway. But how did I answer that question? My initial instinct was to be honest and say yes, I liked boys. But there was no way that I could say that. My life was hard enough without that rumor being thrown around. I wasn't sure how it could make things any worse than they already were, but they sure as hell were not going to make things better or easier.

People made fun of me and called me fag, but I knew that most of them didn't even believe it. Just how bad would the bullying get if I confirmed it? And I knew that if I did, it wouldn't just be Relena, Zechs, and their friends that I would have to worry about anymore. Everyone in the whole school would come after me about it. Worst of all, what if that lovely bit of news made it back to my father? But all of that meant nothing in comparison to Heero knowing. It was hard enough, knowing that he hated gays, that he hated me. If he knew that I was... was one of them for certain... I couldn't take his contempt. I would do anything, absolutely anything, to keep him from knowing that I was gay. Even lying.

"No," I said, "I'm not."

It hurt me, saying that. It was the right thing to do, I knew, but it was a strange contradiction in me. I didn't want to tell him the truth, but I loved him and I didn't want to lie to him, either. He was the one person whose opinion of me mattered to me for whatever reason, and I didn't like lying to him about who I was.

"But they think that you are?" he pressed.

"Probably not," I admitted, "They just hate my guts. Relena always has, even when we were kids. It's just an easy rumor for them to spew. I've never had a girlfriend and then when they found out that Quatre was gay..."

I bit my tongue hard enough to draw blood. Where the hell had that come from? Why had I just confessed that to him out of the blue?

"Quatre?" he questioned and I really wanted to tell him to just forget it. The last thing that I needed that day was to retread ancient history.

"He was my friend," I heard myself say instead and I couldn't get the stream of words stopped, not understanding where all of this was coming from and why I was venting all of it to Heero when he was just curious, "He and Relena used to play together when they were little, but she bullied him even before I had met either of them. She's actually probably the reason why we became friends. She went after me the very first day of school that I had with them and Quatre helped me deal with it. He was one of Zechs's favorite targets, too."

"I don't think that I've met him," Heero pondered, completely unaware how he was ripping my heart open.

"He doesn't go here anymore," I snapped angrily, trying to think of anything else but Quatre so that I wouldn't end up crying in front of my crush again, but Heero was like a relentless bloodhound with his curiosity.

"What was he like?"

My heart was pierced, again and again, by memories that I hadn't let myself remember in years. I smiled sadly, unable to stop the expression.

"He was nice... and kind, and very smart. But he was also quiet and shy. He was my only friend, but we were close. Maybe at first he just hung around me because we had bullying in common, but I was the only friend that he had, too. I even named my cat because of him," I felt tears prick at my eyes and, embarrassed, I hastily wiped them away, "'Pepper'. That was the name he was going to give the dog that he was going to get as soon as he moved out and went to college or got a place of his own. His dad was allergic to animals, but Quatre had always wanted a dog."

I glanced over at Heero, scared that he was repulsed by my crying, but I found him smiling softly at me. That smile was almost as painful as my memories and my loss. It tore apart my heart at the same time that it filled me with all of these wonderful feelings and desires. It was like a drug to me. After so long of being in the dark, of feeling bitterness and anxiety and denying myself anything that felt remotely good, feeling love for him and that smile was painful and it was killing me, but I needed it.

"What happened? Did he move away?" Heero asked, just driving that spike deeper and deeper into me with his innocent and understandable questions.

I felt that rage again, boiling hot and searing in me.

"Why don't you ask your fucking girlfriend?" I snarled and stood, ready to bolt.

I couldn't handle it. I had so many things in my life that hurt, that frightened me and mauled me, I couldn't cope with thinking of that years old hurt of missing Quatre, of wanting him to come back, and my guilt of being unable to save him.

"Wait!" Heero fumbled and grabbed briefly at the bottom of my shirt. He hadn't even touched my skin, but I felt a jolt of electricity go through me, "You don't have to go. I'm sorry, I didn't mean to upset you-"

I pulled my shirt from him.

"Let's get something straight," I said to him coldly, my voice flat and sharp as I tried to control my raging emotions, "You're wrong. I don't need anyone to talk to, and even if I did, it wouldn't be you. I don't know what the hell is wrong with you, why you would even want to talk to me or why you think that I would want to talk to you when you do the things that you do in school to me, but I want you to understand something right here and now. We are not friends. We are never going to be friends. You're a bully and I'm your victim, that's all we are and that's all we are ever going to be! So stop trying to talk to me when no one else is around and stop acting like you give a shit when I'm upset! Stick with your sadistic friends and keep bullshitting them that you're just like them. That's what you're good at," unable to keep my anger under control, I started to walk away, "I had a friend once and now, I don't want another one. I don't need any friends," I muttered, "and I especially don't want one like you."

Just before I was too far away and the biting wind could steal his words away, I heard him call out to me one last time.

"That's not true."
　

End Part 1
VERY important author's note: First off, this chapter is going to be rather short. In fact, the next part will mark the end of chapter 6, but it is a very, very important part with an important plot development that actually isn't upsetting, lol.
Anyway, IMPORTANT news (sorry for the caps, but I often get questions from readers that are answered in these notes, so I feel like no one reads them): In exactly 15 days, I will be moving myself, my stuff, and my cat across the country from Massachusetts to Florida so that I can move in with the woman that I love. Not only do I still need to pack and consolidate my life, the trip itself is going to be a lengthy one. I will be leaving Friday the 24th and arriving sometime early Sunday. What this means is that my writing might be affected. I don't know how much it will be, since I will be taking a week's vacation as soon as I get there and I will be going to a convention the next weekend, but there will probably be some kind of delay. I will probably be able to get the rest of chapter 6 out before the move, but in case I don't, don't fret. There is a reason for my absence.
I want to thank everyone who reviewed and favorited, as usual. I'd say that I'm sad for making people cry with that last post, but, well, I was crying, too ^_^
Ok, review response time.
Zombiedactyl: Never give me a challenge like that, lol. I've certainly gone darker for some stories, but I really don't want to make this that kind of story, haha
Fred Freeloader: First off, I can't directly respond to anyone who is signed on as guest, so I will have to do this here in the author's notes. We've had this discussion more than once and this will be my last time responding to it. I am not abandoning TRTK. I have stated that many times. But, as I said in my author's notes for that story, I needed a break from it and ASOL is so old, I just want to finish it before moving on to anything else. I do not know when I will be able to return to TRTK, it might be years. As for your comments on this story, you won't know it's being updated unless you sign up for updates. I don't notify for updates because ff.net is supposed to do that for me. As for how many chapters are left, ASOL has a grand total of 10 chapters and an epilogue, so we are almost halfway done with this story. 6 is going to be short, but 8 is going to be a monster, probably even bigger than 3 was.
　
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A Stagnation of Love (rewrite)