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A Stagnation of Love (rewrite)	By : shinigamiinochi Category: Gundam Wing/AC > AU - Alternate Universe Views: 2207 -:- Recommendations : 0 -:- Currently Reading : 0
Disclaimer: I do not own Gundam Wing AC or the characters from it. I am making no money from this story

Chapter List
- 3
- 4
- 5
A Stagnation of Love

Chapter 2

Part 2
　

March 11, 2004 (continued)

And he did.

Even with the pain I was in, some part of me wanted to laugh. I remember how Relena had pushed me my first day of school, how my head had hit my desk and I had blacked out for a short amount of time. Like brother, like sister, but I didn't really feel like laughing. Thankfully, although Zechs had slammed my head into the locker harder than I had hit my head three years back, I fought not to black out and somehow managed it. I kept my eyes firmly closed for a long time as I laid on the floor.

Everything seemed to hurt. My head was obviously the worst, but my stomach was a close second. Just opening my eyes made my stomach roll and my head pound. The thought of throwing up on top of everything else made me focus on nothing else but my breathing. The taste of blood certainly wasn't helping. I became aware of a crowd forming around me, but I didn't care. Relena's bullying had gotten me used to people gawking at me long before Zechs. It was Quatre's voice that finally got me to open my eyes.

"Oh, my god, Duo!"

He was pushing through the crowd and knelt down to my level, looking positively frantic. The crowd started to disperse and I dimly realized it was lunch time. Food was the very last thing I cared about. Right then, the thought of eating at all again in my lifetime made me want to gag.

Quatre touched my head lightly, his hands shaking badly and I wondered how awful I looked.

"I'm ok," I murmured even though I felt far from it, "Zechs just-"

"I know," Quatre interrupted morosely, "Everyone is already talking about it."

I groaned at that more than the pain and I sat up, the world spinning like a top and Quatre, the natural nurse that he was, held my arm in case I fell over in my dizziness. I felt worse about hearing that than I had getting hit.

"What are people saying?" I asked, dreading his answer.

He hesitated, obviously not wanting to talk about it in the hallway.

"I don't care if anyone overhears, Quatre," I assured him, "but I need to know what they're saying."

It didn't matter who overheard us talking if people were already gossiping about it.

"Well..." Quatre fidgeted a little, "Dorothy has been telling people that Relena told you she liked you, and she kissed you but you turned her down. She's been saying to everyone that you... you must be gay, to not want to be with Relena. She said that Zechs was looking for you, that he was going to beat the sh-... beat you up."

For as long as I had known him, Quatre seemed incapable of swearing, and I would have laughed at his verbal stumble if I hadn't been so appalled. Bad enough that everyone in school was going to find out about that kiss, but that bitch Dorothy was actually telling people that I was probably gay? That was as bad as her saying that I definitely was, everyone was going to think that! I had always been an outsider, but this was different than being labeled as poor or awkward of being bullied. Everyone thinking I was gay was worse than everyone thinking I had killed someone.

"Is it true? Did Relena kiss you?" Quatre whispered like it was the worst thing that could have happened to me.

That made me smile as I leaned back against the lockers. For a moment, I had almost flown into a panic, worrying how my best friend, and the only person whose opinion I cared about, would take the news that I might be gay. But in true Quatre fashion, he wasn't even putting any speculation into that rumor. Knowing him, he was probably thinking that it was something that until I told him definitely yes or no, it wasn't even worth his time wondering about.

"Yeah," I confessed, "she said that she really liked me. Then she kissed me, just like that. She didn't even give me the time to tell her I don't like her back. I didn't like it," I murmured that part, still confused about my feelings, "and I guess she saw that because she slapped me."

I was honestly surprised that the story Dorothy had told everyone was the truth and she hadn't made up some lie, like I had been the one to kiss Relena to help her best friend save face, but the truth was bad enough, I guess. To my amusement, Quatre wrinkled his nose in the same revulsion I had felt. For the first time, I felt better about how I had acted. Maybe feeling grossed out by that kiss hadn't been because she was a girl but because she was a bully, so Quatre understood. Maybe I wasn't a fag and this was something only Quatre and I could understand.

"What did Zechs do to you?" he asked next in concern, looking at the blood that was no doubt smeared in my chestnut hair.

I told him about the fight and I didn't leave out any detail, not Zechs accusing me of being a fag or the last thing he had said to me. I hadn't thought it possible, but my best friend went even paler than he already was, his sea green eyes wide. He looked scared for me, and it was his fear that made me feel truly afraid.

"He's really going after you," he said in an awed tone.

"He's never done this to you?" I asked, getting more and more worried by the second.

Quatre shook his head.

"He's always picked on me from the first day we met, and Relena just followed his lead. He pulls cruel pranks on me, humiliates me, does everything he can think of to make my life miserable, but he has never gone after me like he just did to you. He's hit me a few times, and I know he beats up kids that piss him off, but he's never gone full out on me. At least not physically. This isn't good, Duo," he informed me in a dead serious voice, "Zechs is a terror when it isn't personal. I... I don't know what to do to help..."

He sounded so hopeless and guilty, like Zechs targeting me was his fault and not my own and he should find some way to make it stop. I wanted to comfort him, tell him that if he couldn't save himself, how did he expect to be able to save me, and it was my own problem, but I knew it wouldn't make him feel any better. My friend looked at me like I was in line on my way to the gallows for my execution. Was it really that bad? I thought about how scared I felt when Zechs had slammed my head into the locker, how vicious and intense he had been. And I thought about how he was probably just getting started on me. I already missed just having Relena to deal with.

"I'll be fine," I lied to him.

Quatre had enough problems to worry about, he didn't need mine on top of them, but I could tell from his expression that he knew I was full of shit. I knew he wouldn't press it, though. It was one of those things we wouldn't talk about. What could he do about it anyway? He hadn't told any of our teachers about Zechs bullying him and he wasn't going to tell them about this either. Good. I didn't want him to.

There were only three possible outcomes for Quatre telling a teacher, the most likely one would be he would get ignored and nothing would come from it anyway. The second was that he wouldn't get ignored, which would be a lot worse. Quatre was a Winner, so a teacher might pay attention to his problems the same way so many ignored Zechs and Relena. They might give Zechs detention or suspend him for a couple of days, a nice if pointless middle ground between doing nothing and pissing off the wrong parent. Or worst of all, option three, Zechs could be expelled. I didn't give that possibility much credence. If Zechs was going to get in trouble for beating up other kids, it would have happened already, but it was possible. If possibility number two happened, Zechs would beat the shit out of the both of us. If we got him expelled, he would kill us.

"We should get this cleaned out," Quatre said as he touched my bloody hair again, switching tracks.

I could appreciate that and it was something my friend did a lot. He couldn't stop Zechs from using me as his personal punching bag, so he would help me with the aftermath. He helped me to my feet, the world starting to become steady again. I almost told him I didn't want to go to the nurse, but saw he was walking in the other direction. We found ourselves in the boys' room and I wanted to laugh. It seemed like we always ended up there when things went bad.

I let Quatre play nurse as he carefully washed the blood out of my hair and off my skin. He even lifted up my shirt to look at where Zechs had punched me. My stomach was already starting to turn black and my ribs were tender as Quatre poked them, but neither of thought that they were broken. My ear was red and a little bit swollen, too, but it wasn't bleeding or bruised, so I didn't care. Quatre was more worried about the huge bruise on the side of my head from hitting the locker.

I didn't eat anything during lunch and Quatre didn't try to make me. I knew skipping meals wasn't a good idea. I was already skinny and I skipped a lot of meals at home, but even though I wasn't dizzy anymore, my stomach still hurt like hell and I was worried about vomiting. Neither Zechs nor Relena bothered us during lunch. That worried me immensely. Relena was sitting with Dorothy and a few other girls she was friendly with, probably gossiping about me and the kiss. In my mind, that's how I had started to think about the whole mess. 'THE KISS,' all capital letters. Zechs was sitting with a couple of other boys at a different table. I didn't know the other boys, they were all in Zechs's grade, but they seemed like the type I didn't want to be acquainted with.

Zechs and Relena's relationship is strange to me, but maybe that's because I don't have any siblings. They don't seem especially close. They never eat lunch together and I've never seen them really speak to each other or even make eye contact sometimes. Zechs acted like he was protective of her, and back then I had thought that was why he had attacked me so viciously, that he was just this stoic big brother that secretly had a soft spot for Relena. But now, a year later? I think that Zechs hadn't given a single, solitary shit about Relena.

Maybe he had listened to her when she had told him to stay away from me because of some kind of respect for her or he simply hadn't cared that much about me when he had Quatre to terrorize, but I don't believe he had cared at all that I had hurt her. I think he had just grasped on that as an excuse to attack me. To him, it was a game. He liked being vicious and messing with me. I don't even think Zechs likes Relena that much. Her tears mean as much to him as mine do.

At some point in my paranoid scrutiny of my two bullies during lunch, I had started to nod off, feeling drained by everything that had happened although we were only halfway through the school day. I was brutally awoken when Quatre slammed his thermos on the table. I shot awake like someone had shot a gun off in front of my face. He smiled apologetically at me, but honestly didn't seem all that sorry and I realized he had done it on purpose.

"You shouldn't fall asleep," he said worriedly, "I mean, if you might be concussed..."

"I am," I told him groggily as matter of fact, "I know what a concussion feels like."

Quatre's smile turned sad but he didn't say anything about it and I was glad. I dimly realized that he was right. I knew I had a concussion, even if it was a pretty minor one, falling asleep had been pretty stupid. I looked across the cafeteria again just to make sure Relena and Zechs hadn't moved. They hadn't. I peeked at my friend as he continued to eat his lunch, some sort of lentil soup with day old biscuits he had brought from home, and for that brief moment I saw him in the same situation I had just been in, dangling from Zechs's grip like a mouse in a cat's jaws.

Quatre had said that Zechs had never done anything like that to him and I decided to believe it. It made me feel incredibly relieved. I was glad that it had been me. It had hurt and it had terrified me, but I never wanted my best friend to know what it felt like. I could take it, and if Zechs could focus all that violence on me alone, I would take that and I would take it gladly. I just wished I could do more for him.

It's sick to remember now, but in a fucked up way, a part of me was glad Zechs had turned on me. That guilt I had felt, being the one immune from Zechs's bullying, was gone. Some part of me had wanted to share this with my friend, to really know what he had been going through all this time. I don't know if I had wanted to punish myself or if I had had that stupid and childish notion that if I experienced Quatre's pain, I could find a way to save him from it.

At recess, Quatre and I escaped to the wooded area on the edge of the playground like we always did. If we tried to go on the jungle gym, we would just get kicked off by the kids that always hung out there. The swings were even worse. They were prime real during recess and typically the older kids got them. Any little kids that tried to make a go for them got dragged off or worse. One poor, dumb kid in our grade dared to steal Zechs's swing once. He usually hid on the other side of school where no teachers were looking out to steal a smoke with some other older boys and look at skin mags, but no one messed with Zechs's swing, even when he wasn't using it.

That day he hadn't been all that intere4sted in swinging, but it had been the principle of the thing. He had promised the kid he wouldn't beat the snot out of him if he did exactly what he told him to. In this case, that was making the kid swing as high as he could, and then jump off the swing. The boy had ended up with a broken leg and Zechs had beaten him up anyway. No one had gone anywhere near Zechs's swing after that, not even one of the other eight graders.

Quatre and I had made due by making our own swings. I had gotten the rope from the dump and Quatre had collected bits of an old hammock he had found at his house, plus some sheets to make the seats. We tied them onto the sturdiest branch he could find last year. I don't know what's more amazing, that those swings actually worked or that they remained ours for a year and a half. The first time we had used them, I had thought about how nice they were and how I should get as much fun as I could that day, because I was so sure that the next day I would find them trashed, stolen, or being used by someone else, but that never happened. I threw them away this week. I don't need them anymore.

I made a beeline for them that day, and swinging lethargically back and forth with Quatre actually made my stomach feel better for some reason. I thought about the predicament I had found myself in with Zechs, Quatre's fear and his desire to make things better. Now that the pain was starting to feel less sharp, I discovered that my own fear was starting to feel less frantic. I was still scared of Zechs, but I think Quatre was still more frightened than I was. Now that my initial terror and shock were gone, I asked myself if it really mattered. Had Zechs done anything to me that my father hadn't done at some point? I was used to being used as a punching bag at home and I had hoped it would be different at school, but I could survive Zechs just like I had survived my father.

I was justifying it, trying to make it out into better than it was so I wouldn't have to feel terror again. Quatre had been right. Zechs Dorlian is a monster. In some ways, he's worse than my father and I never should have let my guard down, but I did. Our next block was gym, another subject I was pretty lackluster in, but Quatre was even worse than me.

I did ok in track, archery, badminton, tennis, basically anything were I didn't have to use brute strength for, of which I had none. I was decently fast. I wouldn't win any awards, but I could keep up with the group. I wasn't tall enough to be any good in basketball and too skinny to even consider playing football, and when we played softball, Quatre and I never got picked. My favorite events were when we had to go one on one, like in free badminton. Quatre and I could just volley the birdie back and forth all period.

Our school has this stupid policy that you can't wear your normal school clothes during gym. We didn't have uniforms or anything like that, but we had to wear shorts and t-shirts, and even if you wore sneakers normally, you had to wear different ones in gym. You also had to take showers afterwards. I honestly didn't mind that bit. At least at school, there was always hot water. We had these stalls, so there was privacy, but Quatre absolutely hated doing it. He was always paranoid that Zechs would do something when he was showering, so we would coordinate our showers, one in, one as look out. We knew the look out couldn't stop Zechs or one of the other boys if they tried something, but we could warn each other.

I slipped into one of the stalls, quickly dressed into my gym clothes, and stepped out into the gym. I put my school clothes and backpack on the bleachers with the rest of the lower classmen's. The upper classmen had lockers in the gym they could stash their stuff, but even though there were lockers to spare, it was some kind of unwritten rule that we weren't to use them. I took special care to put my sneakers under the rest of my things. They were the only pair I owned. My gym sneakers were actually one of Quatre's sister's who had close to my shoe size. They were shaped a little bit different than I was used to, but they fit. Still, I didn't really consider them mine, I was just glad I had a spare for gym. There's no way in hell my father would have bought me a second pair.

Just as I jumped off the bleacher, the back of my t-shirt was grasped by a now familiar hand and I was shoved into the wall. Faster than I could react, Zechs pulled my arms behind my back, holding both of my wrists in one hand. I could have elbowed him in that time, or slammed my head back into his and broken his nose, but that fear was back. I had stupidly assumed that after what he had done earlier, he would leave me alone for the rest of the day. I guess dealing with Relena for two years hadn't taught me anything. I did struggle against him a little out of instinct, but when he shoved me against the wall again, I immediately stopped, knowing how pointless it was.

"Hi there, faggot," the older boy jeered in the same ear he had grabbed before.

He put his other hand on the back of my head and ground my face into the wall. I squeezed my eyes shut as I felt the brick cut up my cheek.

"Zechs, please stop," Quatre pleaded.

I opened my eyes and saw him standing there, deathly pale and anxious. I wanted to hiss at him to shut up and disappear, but Zechs beat me to it.

"You going to stand up for the fairy? How sweet," the teenager sneered, then his gaze turned icy cold, "I suggest you fuck off, Winner, unless you want twice what he's going to get."

Quatre flashed me a look of pure guilt and seemed like he was about to cry, but he stayed silent and back off. Maybe some part of me, way deep down, had felt bitter that he wasn't trying to save me, but if it did, that part was tiny and mute. I was glad Quatre was backing off. I didn't want him to get hurt because of me.

"The boys and I have this wager going," the bully hissed in my ear, but loud enough that I didn't doubt everyone could hear him, "I say a pretty little queer like you can't possibly leave the house in the morning without a tiny, little red thong. My friends say it's a hot pink bikini."

I heard loud laughter and snickering from behind us, the voices both female and male and I realized that the whole class was watching this. My eyes widened in horror as it dawned on me what Zechs was about to do.

"Won't you settle our little bet, Duo?" he said in a tone of mock friendship.

"Please, don't," I begged with everything that I had, even when I knew it was pointless.

I felt his free hand slip into the back of my gym shorts, grab the waist band, and pull them down, just far enough that the entire crowd could see my underwear. My face felt like it was literally on fire and I squeezed my eyes shut as tears gathered in them. I refused to cry, even as my chest heaved. I had never felt so ashamed in my life. Relena writing 'liar' on my forehead in front of one single classroom had been nothing compared to this. I felt like I was going to throw up, like I should find some hole to crawl into and never emerge again.

"Aw, too bad," Zechs said in fake disappointment as he lamented my plain black boxer shorts, "Looks like all of us were wrong. Not only are you a fag, you're a boring one. We're really going to have to do something about that, Duo."

The gymnasium erupted in uproarious laughter and cruel jabs about whether I really was gay and about my underwear, how I looked like I was going to cry, which I didn't doubt. I could feel myself shaking and the tears were becoming harder to keep back. I felt so... so overcome with useless rage and embarrassment. I hated myself for being weak, for letting this happen and for letting it bother me this much, I hated Zechs for doing it and I hated everyone else for laughing. Zechs had gotten exactly what he wanted and let go of my wrists, but it did little to comfort me.

The whole scene was broken up by our gym teacher's whistle. I turned and watched the class run over to him on the other side of the gym to start their warm up exercises. He didn't seem to notice Quatre and me in our little corner. Or more like he didn't want to notice us. I couldn't care less.

"Duo," I heard Quatre say in an almost whisper and glanced at him.

He had tears running down his cheeks, tears I had denied myself, and he looked like he might lose it at any moment. A part of me wanted him to go away, to leave me alone so I could cry and feel my shame in peace. But that's not what I really wanted... no, what I really needed. I needed my friend. I needed to know I wasn't alone. I gathered up all the strength I had left, which was very little, and shoved my tears deep down into my stomach. I pulled up my shorts and turned to smile at him like none of it had ever happened, never mind that there was blood trailing down my cheek, my eyes were wet, my skin was still scarlet red from embarrassment, and my wrists were bruised. It was what I wanted to believe, that it hadn't happened.

"Well, at least he didn't hit me again," I said with a cheer I didn't feel.

I don't know, even now, how I was able to smile then, how I was able to keep from crying or my voice cracking. Quatre had the most painful expression on his face. It was almost enough to destroy the brave facade I was trying to put on. For the very first time, I saw the same guilt on his face that I had felt every time Zechs had started in on him and I had done nothing. But it was more than that. A lot of people might read this and accuse me of being overly sensitive. They might say that boys got pantsed by older boys all the time, that it was cruel, but nothing to cry over. But that wasn't what had just happened. If Zechs had just run up to me in the hall and pulled my jeans down, it would have been embarrassing, but I would have handled it.

This had been different. I can't even really explain it well, the reason why it had shaken me, the mount of shame, not just embarrassment it had made me feel. It had been... menacing? I guess that's a good word for it. Zechs had questioned my sexuality, had announced it to the entire class. He had checked my underwear, scrutinized it. He had exposed me, not just my underwear or my body, but something I was starting to feel self conscious about. A thing I hadn't even thought about, someone I hated had brought to the surface. I felt as violated as if he had reached into my shorts and groped me.

Gay... fag... it was the absolute worst thing he could have accused me of being. If a single person in this school hadn't heard about my not wanting Saren to kiss me, they would surely hear about this. Everyone was going to watch me closely and wonder... is he really a fag? Most of them, the ones that knew what Zechs and Relena were like, would know they were just spreading that rumor to torment me, but some would think they were telling the truth. Even the ones that knew it was just gossip would follow Zechs's lead and treat me like I was gay, because it was fun to them, and it wasn't like I was their friend or anything.

But what hurt the most about those accusations was that I didn't know. If I had just known I wasn't gay, I could deny it or ignore it, and like so many things in elementary school, it might just get forgotten. Even if I had known that I was gay, I could just brush it off because Zechs was right, I was a fag. As long as no one knew that as fact, I could get past it. But I was twelve, not a child anymore and not a teenager. I didn't know anything about who or what I was at that age. And every time Zechs called me fairy or faggot or gay, I felt this great unknown. Every time, I asked myself 'well, am I?' It was that uncertainty, the anxiety that made it so bad.

Looking at Quatre's face, I knew he understood all of that. He understood why this had upset me so much more than being hit had. His tears were the same ones I had almost shed. Suddenly, my best and only friend hugged me tightly. I was still feeling emotionally sensitive, and a part of me wanted to push him away, but I couldn't. I didn't care if anyone saw us, and where they were grouped on the other side of the gym, I knew that they couldn't. Quatre's arms around me were exactly what I needed.

"I'm ok," I said and tried to believe it myself.

He let go of me and I pushed all of the rage I had felt down inside, where I hoped Quatre wouldn't be able to see it. We joined our classmates, our teacher snapping at us for being late, and I pointedly didn't look at either Zechs or Relena, though I could feel them staring at me.
*****
"Good hustle, Maxwell," our gym teacher, Mr. Sturm, barked at me as we finished our last lap around the track.

Mr. Sturm was one of those teachers that seemed only suited for physical education and couldn't possibly hold a job in anything else. You know, those gym teachers that coached pretty much every school sports team, always could be seen with a whistle around their necks, and seemed physically incapable of speaking in anything beyond a bark, even when he was happy about something. I blushed a tiny bit at his praise. Mr. Sturm gave out compliments like a desert produces rain, he was capable of it, but hardly did, and he hardly ever had any time for a student that wasn't on one of his teams.

He was usually snapping at us underclassmen to run faster, hit harder, stop slacking, ect. I must have improved my track time enough for him to notice, not that I cared. I couldn't give a shit about sports and in reality, it was unwanted. I could feel Relena glaring at me the same way she always did when a teacher praised me or I spoke up in class. Her glares had become a lot worse since she had kissed me.

"Thanks," I murmured.

When we were far enough away from the man on our way to the showers, I heard Quatre snicker and I rolled my eyes at him.

"Maybe you should sign up for the track team," he teased.

Quatre was well aware that I considered sports to be pointless wastes of time, especially mine and that usually I didn't even try in gym class. I had only done better than usual today because I had hoped if I channeled my rage into some physical energy, it might just go away. It hadn't. I just felt angrier feeling Relena's glare. I hadn't asked for her to kiss me, I thought in frustration and tried to quell it.

"Yeah," I snorted bitterly, "because running slightly above average is going to get me real far in life."

I grabbed my school clothes from my pile on the bleachers, leaving my school sneakers and backpack there and head for the showers. I took my shower first, going as fast as I could, then acted as Quatre's look out. I was so sure that Zechs would try something when I had been in the shower, but I didn't even see a glimpse of him. That only scared me. I didn't think the older boy could resist pulling something shitty for more than five seconds. That feeling only intensified as I walked out of the locker room and neither of the two bullies were in sight. I sighed as I found my backpack again and dug my shoes out of the bleacher. When I wasn't prepared, Zechs and Relena showed up out of nowhere and when I was, they were nowhere to be seen.

I dropped my shoes on the ground and sat on the bleachers to put them on. Usually I just stood and slipped my foot into them quickly. I can't say why I sat down to do it that time, but in seconds I became relieved that I had. As I started to put my right sneaker on, something stabbed the heel of my foot viciously. I hissed and kicked the shoe off, cradling my injured foot in my lap. Blood was already starting to blossom through my sock.

"Are you ok?" Quatre asked in a panic.

"I don't know," I said honestly.

I couldn't figure out what had hurt me. Whatever it had been, it had stung like hell. Quatre studied my sneaker as I did the same to the bottom of my foot. There wasn't even a cut or hole in the bottom of my sock, and the wound itself was practically invisible. The bleeding was already starting to stop, but it was going to hurt walking on it for a bit. Quatre frowned as he pulled a large tack out of my shoe. It had once been silver but was now stained red. Someone had carefully taped it to the sole of my sneaker so the pointy end would stick straight up.

"Relena," he muttered angrily, "she used to do this to my shoes in kindergarten."

I blinked at him stupidly as he walked over to the trash can and angrily threw the tack into it like it had been in his shoe and not mine. I didn't even feel angry. I would later when it had the time to sink in, but at the moment I had just felt bewildered. I could see her putting a bug or glue or mud in my shoe, but she had never done anything like this before. She was escalating. Or maybe she wasn't, not entirely. Quatre had said she had done this same thing to him as a child, but she had never done it to me.

Had she been holding back all this time because she liked me? I hadn't seen her do anything like this to Quatre, either, so maybe she was pulling out old tricks in her rage. In that case, she really was escalating from how she had been treating us. And it was all my fault.

Quatre sat down next to me on the bleachers and rummaged through his book bag for something.

"Let me see your foot," he ordered when he finally found what he was looking for.

I pulled off my sock and rested my bleeding foot in his lap. He calmly washed the blood off with a bottle of water he had had in his pack and put a band aid on my heel.

"Feel better?" he asked.

I would have teased him a little, maybe said he should consider a career as a nurse, but I was still shocked by what had just happened. I guess what shocked me the most was that I was shocked at all at this point. Both Zechs and Relena had shown me they weren't going to pull their punches. Getting stabbed by a tack wasn't such a big deal compared to Zechs beating me, but it was the knowledge that Relena had snuck it into my shoe while I had been showering that really got to me. What else would she do if she got the chance. That thought startled me and, ignoring Quatre's question, began digging through my backpack.

I found what I was looking for immediately.

"Oh no," I moaned as I pulled out my history textbook.

Or more accurately, what was left of my history textbook. Quatre hissed in sympathy as he saw the extensive damage. It looked like someone had thrown it into a jet engine. That someone had painstakingly taken to it with what looked like a pair of shears. There were long cuts on the hardcover, and almost all the pages were cut up and slashed, all gathered up and jammed into the book so when I opened it, they fell out in a nest of paper.

"You can borrow mine next period," he said in a soft voice, putting a supportive hand on my shoulder.

I felt red hot rage boil in me at seeing my textbook. It wasn't fucking enough was it, that her brother had humiliated me, assaulted me, and she had put a tack in my shoe. No, she had to destroy the only way I was going to get through my class! I almost threw the book across the gym at that point and screamed. If Quatre hadn't been there, I think I might have. I don't know what was worse, the violence she had done to something that had been mine, or the consequences of it.

With gym ended, it was free reading period, but after that was our history class. I couldn't get through a single lesson without this textbook, and forget about doing the homework. Quatre and I sat right next to each other, so we could share his book, but the thought of that made me more angry.

"No," I snarled, "I'm just getting by in world history, if I skip my homework assignments because of this, I'm screwed. And I don't have the money to buy another one."

The school just gave us textbooks for free, but if you lost yours or it got ruined, they had to order more, and they made you pay for it. Our history textbook was 78 bucks. Relena had just destroyed more money than I saw in over a month.

"I can give you mine," Quatre offered, his voice small and concerned seeing me so angry, "I can skip a couple homework assignments while they order me another one. You know I can afford it-"

"No," I said again but this time I was sad and desperate on top of angry. I looked at him and something in my eyes made him flinch a little, "I am NOT going to let her win this time, Quatre, not over this."

I stuffed the remains of my textbook into my bag. Just then I looked up and saw Relena all the way on the other side of the gym by the girls' locker room. She had been watching us and when she saw the rage on my face, she smirked. There was so much smugness, so much malice in that smirk. I wanted to take the tack that Quatre had thrown out and jam it in her face. Instead, I boldly strode over to the line of lockers and found one that was open, the lock on it loose. I took it off and read the combination that had been written on a piece of tape on the back of it before peeling the tape off. I felt her eyes on me and wanted to smirk myself. Good, let her watch.

"What are you doing?" Quatre hissed at me, looking around anxiously.

"Making sure she can't fuck with my stuff ever again," I ground out.

I shoved my gym clothes and gym sneakers into the locker and looked over at Saren. That superior smirk was gone. In it's place was the same look of rage I had had before. Our places had switched. I saw intent in those hard blue eyes, but I didn't care. For the first time since the fourth grade, I felt like I had gained footing on her.

"Put your stuff in, too," I told Quatre.

I thought I could help him, too. It seemed like such a small thing, even then, just a way to keep Zechs and Relena from putting more booby-trap in our clothing and have them deface our things, but it was something. In reality, it was the only way I could fight against them. I had let her bully me for the past two years and hadn't done a single thing to stop her. This, as petty as it was, seemed important to me. To my dismay, Quatre shook his head.

"You shouldn't do this, Duo," he cautioned.

"Why?" I asked bitingly, "Because the upperclassmen will be pissed that I'm using their lockers? Who cares. I won't get into trouble about it and all they'll do is what Zechs intends to do to me anyway."

"No," he voice rose and he sounded frustrated all of a sudden.

Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Relena storm out of the gym. Good riddance. I turned my attention back to my friend and saw him pull his advanced mathematics textbook out of his pack. He flipped through the pages slowly, showing me page after page. In marker, there were things written on almost every page. 'Ugly' and 'die' were the tamest amongst them. I saw that damned f word written quite a few times. I guess Zechs had made the same accusations against Quatre that he had made against me. Not all of the words were written in the same marker and I realized that they had been written after a series of time, maybe even since the beginning of that semester. I reached out tentatively and touched one of the many 'die's that had been written across the equations.

"Why don't you replace it?" I asked sadly, each word and slur against my friend were like shards of glass in my heart.

"I did," Quatre admitted, "Relena started doing this to all my textbooks last year. I bought new ones at first, but she just kept doing it and Zechs came after me worse. When I stopped replacing them, things got a little bit better. If you do this, Duo, they'll just get back at you worse for fighting back, you have to realize that."

Then he pulled out his history homework. It had been given the same treatment that my book had and I couldn't help but feel that Relena had did that as revenge against me, not Quatre. I turned from him, closing and locking the locker with my things inside. I felt like this was less of a victory now, but I refused to back down.

"I know," I murmured, and I did, "but I can't just accept this."

I don't know why I couldn't. I had been letting this go on for years. I had let things like this go on at home for even longer. So why now, why did I have this sudden urge to try to stop it? Maybe that was the point. I had to let my dad bully me, I couldn't stop it, so all I could do was this. All I knew was that I had to try.

Quatre sighed and I knew that he thought I was an idiot. That was ok. I was an idiot, but I felt frustrated that he was so willing to let them do this to him, to write those things in his school books.

"What are you going to do about your history textbook?" he asked.

"Got any tape?" I replied and managed to quirk a small smile.
*****
It took the entire free reading period and by the end of it, I was so frustrated I'm surprised I hadn't started crying or swearing, and that was probably only because I hadn't wanted to get kicked out of the school library, but I did it. As Quatre put his homework back together enough to copy it onto a fresh notebook page, I reconstructed my history text book as best I was able. I used up all of Quatre's tape and a roll of tape the librarian gave me, and the end result was the ugliest thing you could imagine, but I could physically read the pages. Putting them back in order had been the hard part. Quatre might have thought I was a moron for it, but he still smiled at me when I had finished.

As an added bonus, we managed to get to our history class on time. Relena was already there, looking smug again until I pulled the textbook I had reassembled out of my pack. As ugly as my book was, the expression on her face was a thousand times worse. I should have felt smug about it. I hadn't wanted her to win, and I repaired the damage she had done. But I saw that look of unadulterated rage on her face and felt a chill. I didn't feel like I had accomplished anything other than sign my own death warrant.

Our teacher was running late so our class lapsed into a laid back social environment within seconds. Quatre and I chatted about a movie he was looking forward to seeing and he might take me to if I had the time to next week. We did stuff like that every now and again. I used to feel terrible about now being able to pay for things like movies and Quatre paying my way, but he had simply said that he really wanted to go, just making me feel guilty about making him go by himself instead. Sometimes, the ruthless businessman his father wanted him to grow into shined through. As sweet as Quatre was, he could be a master manipulator when he wanted to be.

I didn't even see Relena walk up to my desk until Quatre went silent in mid sentence. I glared at her. I had known she would retaliate against me, but I had thought she would at least wait until after class or something.

"What?" I snapped at her, tired of all these games and just wanting this day to be over with.

I didn't see the pepper shaker she was clenching in a fist so tight it the plastic shaker was starting to crack, but Quatre did.

"Duo-" he started to warn, but it was too late.

All I saw was her enraged sneer and a cloud of black and grey as she lashed out with the shaker, pepper splashing into my eyes. Then, the worst pain I have ever felt filled my eyes and nose and pretty much every sense I had. I don't concretely remember what happened after that, just the hot haze of agony as my face felt like it had exploded. I think I might have screamed, or maybe that had just been Quatre and a few members of my class.

It wasn't like in the cartoons. I didn't sneeze uncontrollably and that was the end of it. I don't remember sneezing at all. I felt like clawing my eyes out of my head and was too scared to even open them. I remember being very afraid after the searing pain had subsided enough to have an intellectual thought that I was going to go blind. I felt tears gush down my cheeks like tiny waterfalls as my eyes tried to get the offending grains of pepper out, not realizing how useless it was to even try. My nose dripped, too, and felt like someone had shoved a hot poker into it. I barely regained enough of my dignity not to curl up into a ball on the floor screaming, but only barely.

"Relena!" I heard our teacher cry out.

"I am so sorry!" Relena exclaimed, sounding incredibly guilty and almost tearful, "I tripped on Duo's desk leg..."

She was an infuriatingly good actress and I knew that our teacher was going to believe her even if I couldn't see it. I felt Quatre grab my arm and wanted to cling to him in fear.

"Winner, take him to the nurse's office," our teacher said frantically.

Quatre didn't say a word, but led me out of the classroom.

"It's going to be ok, Duo," he said as soon as we were out of ear shot of our class, sounding as terrified as I felt.

I couldn't muster up the ability to respond to him, glad that he didn't ask me how I felt or if I was alright. Speech seemed impossible. I could taste the pepper in the back of my throat even though I hadn't swallowed any. I kept rubbing at my eyes. I felt the pepper grains in there, like the sand you get in your eyes when you first wake up, but bigger and awful. Quatre walked us as fast as he could, but little by little I felt the pain spread. I had no idea that pepper could cause that much agony, but it seemed to go all across my face until my entire head felt like it was on fire.

"Don't rub," Quatre insisted, his voice shaky, "You'll make it worse."

I almost quipped at him that there was no way this pain was going to get any worse, but I did as he said, keeping my hands at my sides even as I felt like my facial muscles were twitching. I felt like I was going to pass out and throw up all at once and every movement we made on the way to the nurse's office was torture. By the time we actually got there, I felt like my face was made of a mix of lava and stone and that if I took another step, I was going to die.

"What happened here?" I heard the nurse ask and had to wonder how I looked that she sounded so concerned.

"I got some pepper in my eyes," I croaked before Quatre could say anything.

I hated myself for it. This had all happened because I wanted to stand up to Relena, just once, even knowing that she or Zechs were going to retaliate. You'd think I'd be smarter, after everything Zechs had done to me, but apparently not. This was all my fault. But some part of me still ached in wanting to point the finger at her, and I didn't. Because what would be the point? No one would believe me, and if they did, they wouldn't care. All I kept thinking of was that I was an idiot, and that this could have been Quatre if Relena had really wanted to hurt me. Putting my things in a locker and taping up my books was so petty... how could I ever have felt that I had any control?

The nurse made a tsking noise.

"Sit him over here," she ordered my friend.

Quatre led me over to what I could only presume was one of the beds and sat me down on it.

"Does he need to go to the hospital?" he asked worriedly.

"Not at all," the nurse said and almost sounded bored.

Her nonchalance about the fact that my eyes felt like they were burning out of my skull actually made me feel a bit better.

"I just need to get the pepper out of his eyes and wash them out, he'll be able to go back to class as soon as I'm done."

I highly doubted that, but still didn't say anything. I didn't even care that they were talking over me. As long as this pain went away, they could do whatever they wanted.

"Tilt his head back," the nurse ordered and I felt Quatre do just that.

"This is going to feel a bit weird, Duo," Quatre warned me, "but it's just the eye wash station, ok? You're going to need to open your eyes though."

I nodded, but it was easier said than done. The second I tried to open them, all I saw was red and the burning got much more intense. I immediately shut them, then opened them again. It took me a few minutes to actually keep them open, but Quatre and the nurse were patient with me.

Then the nurse sprayed the water into my eyes and I felt like my whole body convulsed. I had thought that having cool water on my face with it burning like that would feel good, but it was such a shock, the difference in temperatures making me feel ill. I blinked as the water splashed in my eyes and felt the grains of pepper disappear little by little, along with some of the pain, but not all of it. I shivered as the water stopped, my shirt getting wet as it dripped down my neck.

"Is that milk?" Quatre asked incredulously.

"You're going to put milk in my eyes?" I asked in the same tone, balking and I started to lower my head.

"Keep still," the nurse scolded, "this will neutralize the burning."

The milk felt even worse than the water and every instinct I had was screaming at me to shut my eyes. But then, the second the milk actually hit my burning eyes, the pain vanished. It was like someone had waved a magic wand. I blinked and then looked at the nurse. She wasn't the same nurse I remembered from the last time I had been here. The last one had been a brunette, this one was a blonde.

"The pain is gone," I said in amazement.

She chuckled.

"Milk, especially whole milk, is always the best thing for a pepper burn," she told me.

I filed that information away in case Relena ever decided to shove pepper in my eyes again. Quatre gave me a relieved smile and handed me a wet washcloth. I wiped away the milk and water and blinked again, just to make sure my eyes didn't hurt or I wasn't impaired. They ached a little, but the pain was completely gone, I couldn't believe it.

"You ok to go back to class?" Quatre asked softly.

I nodded.

"I feel fine now," I said.

Quatre and I thanked the nurse and left. The whole thing had probably taken about fifteen minutes, maybe twenty, but it had felt a whole lot longer to me. This whole day had taken on a surreal, dreamlike quality in my mind. I feel like all of it couldn't have possibly happened; the kiss, Zechs beating me up, everything that had happened in gym, and now this. I felt like the universe hated me, like I was progressing through some sort of chaotic battlefield. I didn't want to go back to class. At that point, I was scared of what else might happen, but I knew I couldn't afford to miss a class. I wasn't as terrible in history as I was in math, but I was far from excelling in it.

"Are you sure you're ok?" Quatre asked as we walked down the hallway.

"I'm fine," I assured him, "my eyes and nose still kind of ache, but the pain's gone. That milk really did the trick," I laughed half heartedly, "I'll just have to be more alert next time."

"Duo," Quatre murmured sadly, "I'm sorry, I didn't see what she was holding fast enough..."

There was so many things I could have said to him then. I hadn't seen that pepper shaker in time either. I did this to myself. You had warned me that she would retaliate and I thought I could handle it. And a much more bitter thing. 'What would you have done if you had had the chance to stop her from throwing that pepper in my face? You said yourself that it's foolish to fight against Relena and Zechs, they'll just escalate to prove how pointless it is. If you had stopped her, she just would have done something awful to you, too, so what exactly would you have done for me that you refuse to do for yourself?' I didn't say any of it. I smiled at him.

"It's fine," I said, "It only hurt for a little while, it's not a big deal."

I gave his hand a squeeze and walked into the classroom with him. It wasn't a big deal. Compared to everything else, having pepper thrown into my eyes wasn't that bad. I told myself that over and over, even if I just couldn't believe it.

The class went silent as Quatre and I walked in, even our teacher halted her lecture. I was sure that my eyes were red and they still felt a little bit irritated, but I pretended that everything was normal. Relena stood up from her desk when we approached.

"Duo, I'm so sorry," she said and smiled at me sweetly.

If I were a masochist, or an optimist, or just one of those people that chose to look at the world through rose tinted glasses, I would have chosen to believe that she really was sorry. Too bad I had been born a pessimist.

"It's ok, Relena, I know it was just an accident," I smiled back.

I wasn't as good an actor as she was, and I'm sure there was some malice in my voice, something only she and Quatre would be able to hear, but my reaction made her falter and it was enough for me. Our teacher dove right back into the lesson, probably content that it had all really just been an accident and everything was ok, or she just didn't care enough to make it an issue. I just wanted to forget about it. It had hurt like hell, and the rage that Relena had had when she had done it was frightening, but I shoved it to the back of my mind. I just needed to get through this horrible day. Just history then math then it was swim lessons then I could go out to dinner with Quatre. I desperately needed it.

I struggled through the lesson, partially because my mind was distracted between my thoughts and my eyes still being a bit irritated, so I was struggling not to rub at them, and partially because we had missed a large chunk of the class. I was happy when our teacher finally gave Relena our homework assignments to pass out. One period down, I thought, just a little bit longer. I watched as Relena marched right past Quatre and I to hand the homework sheets out to the kids behind us, then handed the remainders back to the teacher. The teacher didn't even notice that she had skipped us. I glared at the bully as she sat down in her seat with that damnable smug expression of hers.

I looked over at Quatre. He was chewing on his lip, the way he always did when Relena pulled this prank on us, but I could already see him submitting to it. We had gotten zeroes on homework assignments because of it before and I knew that if either of us raised a fuss about it, Relena would retaliate. But I couldn't afford to miss another homework assignment, I was already almost in the tank with this class and I needed every point to get a decent grade. Maybe if I waited until after class to ask our teacher for the sheets, Relena wouldn't find out about it until we had to hand them in tomorrow. That probably would have been the smartest thing to do, but like I've said before, I'm an idiot.

I don't know exactly why I did it. You would think that after the pepper I would have learned to keep my head down, but my rage had been steadily building during the day and it was getting ready to explode. I was just so sick of seeing my best friend being bullied and seeing Quatre so unwilling to do anything about it. I calmly walked up to the teacher's desk and grabbed two more homework sheets. Our teacher looked at me, perplexed, but kept going on about our homework.

As I walked back to my seat, Relena lashed out her leg and tripped me. I managed not to fall on my face by grabbing at the desks at either side of me, but it was a near thing. The whole class roared with laughter, even though it wasn't that funny, and our teacher yelled at everyone to be quiet. I looked back at Relena, expecting her to be smirking again, but she wasn't. She looked furious. I hurried back to my seat. Quatre looked at me like he wanted to scold me for doing that, but thankfully didn't say anything. I didn't need him to lecture me, I had figured out by that point that what I had done was beyond stupid.

When the period ended and our classmates started to filter out, I wasn't surprised when my teacher called me over to talk to me outside the classroom.

"How our your eyes, Duo?" she asked kindly.

I subconsciously rubbed at my right eye. It was the one that was giving me the most trouble, but it was mostly just raw and irritated.

"They feel a lot better," I confessed.

"I think you know why I asked you out here," she said.

I nodded. I liked Mrs. Kline. She, like most of our teachers, were oblivious to what was going on between me, Quatre, and Relena, and was kind of an airhead, always forgetting things, but she was nice and like Mrs. Khushrenada, she did try to connect with her students.

"My last test score," I murmured.

I had tried to study for my last history test. I had stayed up, drank lots of caffeine, and poured over my notes, but my parents' fighting had kept me from concentrating. By the time I had taken that damned test, I had been exhausted and couldn't remember anything that I had read the night before. I had gotten a D+ on it and it was a miracle that I had gotten that much.

"Duo, you have got to get your act together," she scolded but not cruelly, "I know you have a hard time and not just in my class, but I also know that you're engaged. There are a lot of students here that do as poorly as you, but they don't care. You do, and it hurts me to see you getting scores like that."

All I could do was nod. I couldn't tell her that she was wrong. I might be engaged, but it didn't matter. I was too stupid, I wasn't like Quatre or Relena or any of the other kids that got top grades. And even if I was, how could I do any better than I was when most of the time, I couldn't concentrate because of my parents or I was in too much pain to get any work done?

So I did what I did when all of my teachers pulled me aside like this, I lied and said that I had been slacking off lately, but I would do better. And I would every now and then, but eventually I would get stuck in the same cycle. Mrs. Kline bought it like she always did and bustled off to her next class. I walked back into the classroom to get my things and my stomach dropped. Relena had moved on from me and back to Quatre. She was standing at his desk with him sitting down, her hand clutching his blonde hair as she practically shoved a bowl of something in his face.

"Drink it, drink it!" she was practically screeching at him, but not so loud that anyone out in the hall could hear her.

I didn't need to look at what was in the bowl to know what it was. She had done this before, but not since we had been in the fourth grade and Quatre had accidentally dumped some paint on her new blouse. She had gotten a bowl full of water and had dumped paper and pencil shavings into it. She had called it her very special punishment soup. Back then, she had made him drink the entire thing until he had thrown up in front of everyone. I saw that he was starting to drink it like he had that time and something in me snapped.

Before I could stop myself, I strode up to her and grabbed the bowl from her. I felt something in me screaming at me to stop, that I was making everything worse again, but the rage in me was like steam, propelling me forward and there was nothing I could do to stop it. I dumped the entire bowl of 'soup' on Relena's head.

"Augh!" she screamed, just standing there with bits of paper and pencil shavings in her hair.

I didn't stick around for her to decide to do anything to us. I grabbed Quatre's hand and made a run for it. We made it all the way down the hall before I stopped. Quatre pulled his hand from my grip.

"That was the stupidest thing you have ever done!" he yelled at me, "She is going to kill you! Do you want her and Zechs to kill you?! What were you thinking?!"

I could have snapped at him that I had done what he was too chicken to do, protect him, and it was on my tongue, but I didn't have it in me to say that. I felt my anger sink back in me and I just felt depressed and dejected. I looked down at my hands, the same hands that had dumped that bowl on my bully. I didn't feel triumphant about it. I felt scared, and not because of Relena's retribution. I was scared of myself.

"I don't know," I murmured.

All the anger in Quatre deflated at that.

"I just don't know."
　

End part 2
Author's note: Originally this chapter was just going to be in two parts, but it just got too long, so I broke it in half. I'll be posting the third and final part of this chapter in a little while.
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A Stagnation of Love (rewrite)