Disclaimer: I don't own anything you recognize in this one-shot. All song titles, plot points, and characters belong to their respective creators and owners, I am merely borrowing them.

Author's Notes: I was inspired to write this by the song Viva La Vida by Coldplay, and if you haven't heard it by now you must live under a rock. It's one of the best songs I've ever heard and, unlike Gary; I don't get tired of listening to it. I highly recommend listening to it while you read this, as to better understand why it so perfectly describes him. There will be more chapters to come as I write them, but my priority is on There and Back Again, and none of the chapters in this are in any particular order. They're just fun little one-shots based off songs.

The next one up: Riot, by Three Days Grace.

Chapter Summary: GaryXChristy; Gary understands and despises the only words that so flawlessly describe him.

Viva La Vida

I used to rule the world; seas would rise when I gave the word. Now in the morning I sleep alone; sweep the streets I used to own.

He hated that bloody song.

It wasn't because it sounded bad. No, as loathe as he was to admit it, the song was actually rather good. Amazing actually, but good was as far as he allowed himself. It had a catchy beat, an uplifting feeling (that lied for the lyrics) and the singer's voice had a British lilt to it Gary found he liked. So, given all this, why did he hate the song?

There were a few reasons, the first and least important one being it was overplayed. Every time he turned around, it was playing or being hummed. Whether Miss Phillip's radio pulsed with the tune, or Petey hummed the lyrics as he did his homework, Gary would be there to hear it. He had to suffer through art. Miss Phillip's radio was sacred ground and he would not, under any circumstances, even if dying from some dreadful disease and the cure was sitting on top of the radio, get near it. He would sooner die. Miss Phillips was scary. End of story.

Petey he could forcibly silence (at the impending wrath of Jimmy) or walk away from. It was the rest of the world he couldn't avoid.

The radio in his newest shrink's office, car radios driving past him, very nearly every student in Bullworth or patient at Happy Volts, random citizens of Bullworth, everywhere he went, that damn song would be playing in one form or another. So much so, he was certain that if he heard it one more time he would spontaneously combust.

He couldn't even escape it with Christy, being that it was her new favorite song. That in of itself wasn't the problem. Gary didn't much care what her favorite song was as long as it didn't interfere in their dates and make-out sessions. The problem was when Christy got a new favorite song; she listened to only that song. She hummed only that song, sang the lyrics to just that song, etched them on her notebooks, wrote her favorite lines on her arm in pen, and generally obsessed over just that one song.

Of course he had to date the crazy.

He wasn't entirely sure why she had agreed to go back out with him. They had dated before the riot last year (around the same time that blasted song was releaser, coincidentally enough) and he had dumped her the day of said riot in a heartless, cold way only Gary could provide:

"We're through, you pawn."

He'd only recently admitted to himself (and several shrinks) that he had genuinely liked her. Yeah, she was shallow, selfish, and an annoying gossip but it was that last trait that had initially attracted him to her. He could use her to ruin Jimmy, and anyone else who screwed with him. It was beyond genius.

But then, she had started flirting. It had been little things at first. Little smiles in the hallway, asking him for more gossip after lunch and giggling when he happily delivered her a dish of rumors and slander that would make a politician cross his eyes, glancing at him in class. It hadn't taken him long to figure it out. He was a genius after all, but what he couldn't figure out was the best way to actually seal the deal.

She had taken care of that with the starting of a simple rumor about Gary having a thing for Femme-Boy that had sent him through the roof. He'd chased her down, they'd argued (all the while her dodging around the fact she was jealous she didn't get to spend all that time with him, and him dodging around the fact he wouldn't admit he liked her) and he'd kissed her.

At the time, it had been to shut her up and prove her wrong, but the outcome had been a happy one: them dating and a make-out session that lasted until dinner behind the bleachers where one of the jocks had sat with his stereo blasting that song. Gary had happily ignored it, what with his hand under Christy's skirt and her nibbling at his ear, but one riot, and a fifteen foot drop through a skylight later and he realized it had been a sign. It only took him a stay at Happy Volts and a touch of shock therapy to figure out what, exactly, it was a sign of…

The song's meaning wasn't all that difficult to discern. It was practically a story about what had happened last year. He had been king, on top, in charge, with the whole world of Bullworth wrapped around his little finger and with the shattered glass of burnt out gym windows and the drumming of sneakers on concrete the whole world of Bullworth found out what he really was: Emperor Nero throwing them to the lions.

Bullies, Greasers, Jocks, Preppies, and even Nerds were making a habit of jumping him whenever they got the chance. Christy had been kicked off the cheerleading squad and ostracized by her friends while Gary had to lock his door and window at night to avoid being suffocated by a pillow. It was getting to be almost boring to wake up with his window smeared with egg yolks and the door painted with graffiti.

Part of him, in fact most of him wished he ruled again, but with a sound swat to the back of his head from Christy and a glance at his pill box he knew it wasn't worth it.

He just wished that song would stop playing on the radio so he could forget everything that had happened, and everything he had had. Petey, the only kid in school still talking to him with a semblance of civility, often said the song was meant to remind him, that he was supposed to remember so it wouldn't happen again.

Gary knew it was more than that. He knew it was played purposely, with the song put on repeat and the kids singing it at him in the hallways. They all knew, and all the kids in Bullworth were simply reminding Gary what he had known since he had first fallen towards the skylight: Saint Peter wasn't going to call his name.

For some reason I can't explain, I know Saint Peter won't call my name, never an honest word, but that was when I ruled the world.