Well, here I am again!! 'Tis Nonsuki-chan, back with another story to humbly present to you. For some reason, I like the way this turned out. And I hope you do, too. So smile!!! (I like smiling. And banana bread. There's some in the oven right now!! YAY!!! Oh, and laughing and Oompa Loompas rock, too. o)
I would like to give a very sincere thanks to Cordria for beta-ing this story for me. You should go check out all her stories!! She has a lot, and they are all AWESOME!!!
Fake
Fake.
In the end, it had all been an act. A charade. And he'd been found out, people calling him the name he deserved.
He knew he was a fake. He knew that what he was doing wasn't 'nice' or 'cool' or any other of a million words to describe something good and decent. Face it, pretending to be something you're not wasn't good or decent.
He'd tried to be himself. Once before, a long time ago. He'd tried to let people see the real him. Let people get close.
And in the end, it had come back to bite him in the ass. The people he'd forced himself to trust had turned on him, ripping his fragile ego with words of steel, tearing at his soul till it fluttered down to the bottom of a pit, where he could no longer reach it. Where he couldn't rebuild himself.
He wasn't sure he wanted to put himself back together.
Then, to his extreme joy, his family had moved, traveling across the country to somewhere new. Determined to be 'cool', he'd created a new him. He could slip this persona on and off like the armor it was.
When he wasn't himself, no one could dislike him. They could dislike the person he was pretending to be, but they never disliked him.
After a while, it became a habit. His family started to move around a lot, following his mother and her job. Often, he wouldn't even pack, just dig out the necessities for the next transformation. When he needed a new piece for the costume, he went and bought it. His allowance, the guilt money his mother gave him for not being able to spend very much time with him, was a considerable amount and he put it to good use.
His true self eventually became buried underneath hundreds of layers of false identities. He didn't care. He'd found a new game, a way to hurt others.
He'd find a girl, or a guy-he'd come to terms with that a long time ago-, be the perfect boyfriend, and then break their hearts. Usually, it was the unique ones he played with. The ones who got to be themselves like he never could. He'd toy with them and once his hooks had dug in deep enough, he left them.
Of course, he never just left them. Where was the fun in that? He left them to be with the one person they truly despised the most. The complete opposite of who they were.
It was his way of showing them that being different from everyone else was not a good thing. You ended up hurt and broken. Better you learn it young than later.
When he was told they were going to Amity Park, he didn't blink an eyelash. He'd been working on new identity and wanted to take Gregor out for a spin.
It had worked. He'd soon found the most unique girl in school. Sam Manson. She was goth and not afraid to speak her mind. She liked Danny Fenton, even he could see that. And Danny obviously had feelings for her, a strange mix of love and sisterly affection. And that had somehow made it even more satisfying than usual when she had started to fall.
He'd known Danny didn't trust him. And to be honest, he didn't trust Danny. The guy gave off bad vibes. So when Danny had pissed off Sam, he'd smirked. Now the boy couldn't get in his way.
It had still blown up in his face. He'd lost control. He'd shown the true him. And he was shocked that the real him could actually force its way up. Gregor disappeared and Elliot came back. Came back with a vengeance.
Then that weird ghost kid, Inviso-Bill, had shown up, had shown up and fought off The Guys in White. Hovering in midair, glowing green eyes concentrating on the figures in front of him even as they took in everything around him, mouth set in a determined line, the Ghost Kid had glared down at Elliot. Disapproval and extreme dislike had danced in those amazing orbs.
That disapproval and dislike in the eyes of the ghost had hurt way more than anybody else's eyes had ever hurt. At that time, he had felt his heart throb painfully inside of his chest. Feeling as if he was about to break down, he'd clutched desperately at the remnants of Gregor.
Gregor was gone though, dead. So he'd used a different identity, fumbled his way through an excuse, and had run.
When he'd reached home, he'd taken a good, long look in the mirror. And to his surprise, Elliot had stared back.
Shocked, he'd run to his room. When his mom had come home and told him that they were moving again, he hadn't said a word, just gone woodenly up the stairs.
He'd seen Sam and Danny a few days later. He'd wanted to apologize, to say something before he'd left, but… The two were laughing, watching their techno-geek friend humiliate himself. When he stepped forward, the laughter had stopped. He'd ruined their fun. Anger and hurt had shone in Sam's eyes and he was sure that if looks could kill, he'd be in a lot of trouble. It was Danny's eyes that had caught his attention though.
They, like Inviso-Bill's, radiated disapproval and extreme dislike. But, mixed in, there was a bit of….
A bit of understanding and sympathy. It was the look of one who had also pretended to be something they were not. The look of someone who had to lie to people on a regular basis to protect himself. The look of another fake.
Elliot could sense, though, that Danny hated the lies and the pretending.
Because, in the end, Elliot lied to protect himself, lied to get revenge on those who had hurt him.
Danny lied to protect others.
Elliot didn't know how he knew this, but he did. And his heart ached.
For these eyes, these baby blue eyes hurt him most of all. For they could see all the way inside him and pick out the truths and the secrets.
Elliot feared those eyes.
Some truths, he didn't want, felt sure that he'd break if they were forced upon him. So Elliot had just bowed his head and walked off before he could be confronted with them.
Even so, he caught some of them. He was faced with the fact that he'd come to hate himself, hated everything he'd become, everybody he'd become.
He could see in Danny's eyes that the boy had gone through a lot. And he hadn't broken.
Not like Elliot had.
Knew that Danny was as much himself as he could be.
Elliot hoped that soon he could make it up to everyone he'd hurt. Hoped that he could bandage any wounds that remained. Maybe then he could face Danny's eyes.
He would be Elliot again.
No longer a fake.
Not fake.
Fini