A/N: I just love the Lemony/Ellington [Ellimony? Lemington?] pairing. : ) I secretly hope that Ellington is in fact Beatrice. This oneshot is a headcannon in the same direction. This is set in Ellington's PoV by the way.

**SPOILER ALERT** - This oneshot is set in the third book, 'Shouldn't You Be In School?' of the series, 'All The Wrong Questions' also abbreviated to ATWQ. It is the prequel series to 'A Series Of Unfortunate Events' - [ASOUE] Therefore, don't read this if you haven't started reading ATWQ yet. I warned you. So don't say I didn't.

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Why Is This Boy Different From All Other Boys?

I was almost thirteen and I had been wrong all along.

I was not at Wade Academy for a top drawer education. No, I had in fact infiltrated the school to search for my father— Armstrong Feint, a naturalist who had been captured by a villainous, evil man who called himself Hangfire. His associate— a woman, ran this academy and hence everything was in an extremely miserable state.

There were clasrooms but no classes, a library with blank books and the dull, sickly sweet smell of laudanum in the salty air. The laudanum made the students woozy, sleepy and indolent, a word which here means, "the students sometimes dropped down in corridors to sleep and hence, remained unconscious for a long time." However, I had managed to sneak in some coffee and thus, managed to remain awake for most of the times but sometimes it proved to be very difficult.

Now was one of those times.

It was nearly nighttime and the sky was rapidly darkening. I wanted to fall on my bed and lie down for an eternity when I spotted Stew Mitchum— a nasty bully, prowling on the grounds of the academy again. He had his mask on and I no idea as to why. I hated the boy; he was just so easy to hate, not to mention extremely annoying. The boy had a massive club in his hand and an aura of a wild gorilla as I watched him through the slightly foggy lens of my binoculars from my usual spot on the window. He seemed to be looking around for something— someone, like a vicious predator hunting for its prey. Then suddenly, his walk came to a short stop and then converted into a sprint. All of my sleepiness flew out the window. He was approaching another boy, a boy I knew; a boy who had fallen from a hawser into a tree one fine evening.

Lemony Snicket

Stew Mitchum hit him with a loud, sick thwack on the head and poor Mr. Snicket fell to the ground along with the phonograph— my father's phonograph. Rain was beginning to pour down and looking at the ominous clouds, I could tell that it was going to be a quite bad thunderstorm. His attcker tried to drag him inside but failed massively in doing so. After some five or six tries, he left him unconscious in the rain.

Often in one's lifetime one comes across numerous choices numerous times. It is always, 'either this, or that'. Choices are very tricky, like they were for me at that moment. For all I knew, I could have left Lemony Snicket to rot in the pouring rain to be collected by the woman who ran this place and in the process remain out of trouble. But I could have also saved him and helped him recuperate and fall in trouble along with him.

I chose the latter. And I don't know why.

I snuck outside my room shoeless because shoes caused a lot of ruckus and unnecessary noise in these hallways. I walked as silently as possible and stopped at every turn and corner to check whether the coast was clear or not. Some five minutes later I was standing in the storm and the wind was tossing around my pigtails. I approached him, frightened. He was lying on the ground and the rain had wetted him and his clothes. The hat he usually wore to hide his face had somehow fallen beside him and his dark hair was sticking out in odd angles. A large, angry bruise was forming on his forehead. Let's just say that I had never seen Lemony in such a bad shape before.

Even in this state he had clutched the phonograph in his hands and not let go of it. Truthfully, I had wanted to pull it out of his hands and leave it behind because he was already too heavy for me and I could do without the extra weight but I didn't have the heart to leave it because broken or not, it was my father's.

I slid in my arms through his underarms and wound them around his chest and tried to drag him in. At first he was too heavy and I was almost tempted to give up. Get a grip Feint, I thought and tried until I had displaced him by a mere metre, after which I broke down in a fit of breathless pants. This process repeated itself at least ten more times and by the time I had brought him in my room, I had been tired beyond measure. All my tendons felt stretched apart and my muscles were swollen with pain. I just wanted to sleep.

But I could not, because Snicket needed my help.

With great difficulty, I managed to get him on the bed and then stuffed him in between the covers so he could be warm while the rain did its knocking on the window pane. After that I took the phonograph out of his grip and put it aside. I didn't have any ice for his enlarging bruise, so I wetted an old washcloth in the basin and put it on his head. Why am I am helping him? I asked myself. No Feint, that is the wrong question, I thought. The right question would be, Why is this boy different from all other boys? In all my life I had encountered various kinds of boys— some lovely and some annoying, but never ever had I paid anyone as much attention as I had to Lemony Snicket. Perhaps it had been because none of them were as mysterious as him. Or perhaps not.

He moved around in his 'sleep' as I watched his lips mutter something that I couldn't decipher. In the faded light of the room I could see the scar on his cheek and I traced it with a gentle finger.

"Why do you intrigue me so much, Snicket?" I murmured out and continued to watch his face as if it was the most precious thing in the world, even more precious than the statue of the Bombinating Beast. After uttering that I did something that I shouldn't have done at all.

I bent down and pressed my lips lightly to his and kissed him. Of course, neither did he kiss me back nor his arms rised to pull me closer to him, for he was unconscious and I was glad for that.

A few minutes after that he cracked open his eyes, never to know what had happened. That's what I thought.

I was almost thirteen and I had been wrong all along.

-end-