Authors Note: Wrote this years ago and recently I found it hiding in my assignments for school. My friend upon reading it said it was pretty good so I thought why not post this. Anyways, I do not own Leper, Gene, Finny or any other characters within A Separate Peace by John Knowles. Please Review so I know if I should start writing more fanfictions. ~Thanks~
Leper's Pov:
Ever since I was a child, i always loved anything and everything about nature. Whether it was the lush forests that stretched for miles with leaves that changed to look much like fire or the rivers full of rushing water and the many living creatures who called it home, I loved it all. As a child, I collected all sorts of things that I found on my treks through the forests and fields near my home in Vermont. Such things included feathers dropped by passing birds, shiny pebbles I found in a nearby stream, leaves that had fallen from the highest trees, and even a few curious shells that had somehow found themselves lodged in the mud of a river. As I got older, my love for nature did not diminish, but instead flourished like a specially beautiful Red Clover in the sweet breeze of Spring. My mother and father only encouraged me to do what I believe was the right path for me. Of course the war had put a damper on how much I could get away with. Not long after I turned 7 years old was my father drafted so that he could fight to protect our country. He had waited to be drafted because he had wanted to spend as much time as possible with his family before having to go through the hard trials of war. My mother went on to enroll me into Devon Academy so that I could do something better for myself than I could ever find in our little town in Vermont.
-TIMESKIP-
My time at Devon Academy became what I came to look back on in my moments of despair as I huddled in the corner of my room in the loony bin. The memories of those times are usually hazy at best and hard to grasp onto. I could remember how I came to see Gene as my only friend in a place where most people did not care for such trivial things as trekking through the woods or observing the beavers in their home. While the other boys talked about the war, all I wanted to do was continue living a peaceful life surrounded by the gifts of nature and go through life at my own pace instead of being rushed headlong into a war I didn't see a point in fighting.
Of course the peace I had kept ever since childhood was to soon come to an end after seeing the war propaganda that had ensnared me into believing that it would be great to ski down mountains covered in white as I carried out missions for the purpose of contributing to winning the war. I see now that it was a mistake on my part to rush headlong into enlisting in the war just like the people I had previously looked down upon. My time in basic training came to twist and distort my mind, filling it with images of violence and gore that I had never wanted to even imagine. Although my time in basic training was some of the worst memories I had in my entire life, I now see that it was foolish to think that I could just walk away from the military even though I was about to be discharged.
I'm still not completely sure what had compelled me to bring myself back to Devon Academy. Perhaps it was my need to see Gene again, even after he had acted so cruelly towards me for but a brief time. Or perhaps it was to see what had become of the place where time seemed not to touch. Even so, my return to the academy only paved the way for more chaos to introduce itself into my once peaceful life. Had I not returned perhaps Phineas would not have died in the way that he had, long before he should have. Maybe Gene wouldn't have left to join the Navy.
Though I could only despair over the 'what ifs', seeing as I could not change the past. Though many of my memories are hard to remember, I could clearly remember how not long after my arrival into the academy, Brinker and a couple of his friends came up to me as I watched the clouds move in the night sky. They had asked me to accompany them to a trial on the truth of Finny's injury that was being held. They asked me to come in as a witness to the accident, even though I knew they only wanted to gather evidence that could be held against Gene. Later, I ran as fast as I could out of the place that the trial was being held in so that I could escape Brinker, who most likely would have held whatever I told them against me or Gene. I did not want to accuse my only friend of committing a horrible offense against Finny. The time after that is all a blur in my mind, though I could remember that I had gone home soon after Finny's funeral only to find my teary-eyed mother standing with two other men wearing all white clothing. The men grabbed onto my arms and dragged me into a white van. Before I knew it, I was dressed in white clothes and shoved into a lonely room colored the same as my and everyone else's clothes. I was left alone in that room for hours with only wispy memories of the past to keep me company.
End