Author's Note: Greetings fanfiction people! Chapter three is here. Thank you to my readers and reviewers. You bring me so many smiles. Sorry I was unable to get this posted last night… stupid life interfering with my fictional obsessions… Anyway, don't get too excited because today's installment is a little weak and filler-y. There's a small time jump as well. My aim was to give a tiny peek into just how brutal early Wammy's was while further examining the relationship between B and A. I know the bullying scene is a little cliché… Please forgive me.
Disclaimer: I do not own Death Note or any of the characters used in this story.
Roger pulled a chart down from the highest shelf in his office and opened it with a sigh. It had been almost seven months since Wammy's House opened its doors and already things were starting to unravel.
The children that they had gathered were all brilliant in their own ways, but with great intelligence came all manner of other unwholesome qualities. Some of them were arrogant and had superiority complexes so strong that they viewed their peers as ants, others were quiet and withdrawn, speaking only to tell the staff in the mess hall what kind of soup they wanted with their meal, and then there were those who used their intelligence solely to torture and manipulate those they viewed as weaker. Roger worried for all the mentioned children, but the most upsetting students by far were the ones that could not be easily categorized. Students like B, who was as unpredictable as a string of winning lottery numbers, or A, who had the nervous heart of a cornered prey animal.
Roger longed to step in and help the unfortunate brood, but his instructions prevented it. Everyone working at Wammy's House had been given orders from Quillish Wammy himself to stay as uninvolved in the children's lives as possible. They were told to ignore the bullying and the anxiety and let the children work their way through the trials independently. This order was convenient enough for most of the staff, but maddening for Roger, who knew such anarchy was a bad idea.
He looked at the chart in his hands. This weeks rankings…
Every week the children were assessed based on their performance in classes, as well as more obscure factors, and the results were posted in the main hall for all to see. It established a brutal, almost pack-like hierarchy among the children which added to their already astronomical levels of stress.
Roger bowed his head, grabbed a box of thumbtacks, and headed for main hall, hoping futilely that maybe this week no one would see the demeaning list.
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"Hey, Number Twelve," a gangly, brown-haired boy said maliciously. "Still studying? It's not doing you any good, you know."
A looked up from his book and shrunk into the library chair he was seated in.
"Hi, D…"
The taller boy snickered and repeated A's words in a high, mocking tone of voice.
"You're even lower on the list this week than you were before! How is it that you spend so much time buried in your textbooks, but still manage to be such a miserable failure?"
"I'm trying my best," A replied fearfully, running his fingers over the corner of his book. "Please leave me alone…"
"Apparently your best isn't good enough. Why'd they even let you in here?"
B watched the unfolding conflict from a study carrel across the room and gritted his teeth. He couldn't decide which was more aggravating: D's nauseating cruelty or A's inability to stand up to it. He slowly abandoned his chair and headed toward the other boys.
"What do you want, weirdo?" D demanded, leering at B as he approached.
"Good question."
D waited for B to elaborate, but was met with only silence and B's piercing eyes.
"Yeah?" D asked expectantly.
"Yep."
A sunk down further into his chair.
"What the hell is that supposed to mean?"
"Another good question."
D balled his fists and snarled at B.
"Cut the crap!"
B smiled.
"Are you upset?"
"No," D growled venomously. "I'm just wondering why some pathetic freak is wasting my time with nonsense."
B's smile widened.
"Oh good, then you know how A feels."
Both A and D's eyes widened at B's response, but for entirely different reasons.
"B…" A whispered apprehensively, begging his roommate not to say anything more.
B looked at A out of the corner of his eye and raised his hand to block a punch from D. The black-haired boy turned the block into a grab and gripped D's wrist tightly so that the bully could not pull his hand back.
D struggled helplessly to free himself, but could not escape B's ever tightening fingers.
"A," B said authoritatively. "Come here."
A blinked and hesitantly got to his feet.
"I want you to do something."
"Huh...?"
"Punch him."
"What?!"
"Punch D. Right in the stomach."
"I-I don't want to do that!"
"I know you don't. But you have to."
B was going to teach A to stand up for himself by any means possible. It was for the blonde's own good. A couldn't afford to lose any more numbers to bullying and constantly swooping in to rescue the boy was becoming tedious.
A's lip quivered as he looked from B's unreadable face to D's explicitly angry one.
"B, this isn't right… I don't want to do this…"
"You have to," B said again.
Tears started to fall from A's eyes as he inched toward the restrained bully. Cautiously he lifted his hand and threw a weak punch into the center of D's gut. The lack of force behind the punch rendered it almost unnoticeable, but B was satisfied with the action, and did nothing to stop A when he ran from the room crying afterwards.
Once A was safely out of earshot, B wrenched D's arm at a painful angle and threw him to the ground. He then began to thrash him with a series of forceful kicks to the ribs. The beating did not end until D rolled over and vomited.
"Glad to see I make you as nauseous as you make me," B stated matter-of-factly, delivering one final kick and turning to leave.
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B returned to his room where he found A pacing back and forth across the same five feet of floor space. The blonde's face was pale as a ghost and shone with a thin layer of sweat.
"What are you doing?" B asked, avoiding the pacing grounds.
A looked desperately at B and wrung his hands in the front of his shirt as if trying to dry it of some invisible saturation.
"Get somebody. Quick, B."
"Why? What's going on?"
"I'm dying. Please get someone. One of the teachers. Please."
B looked above A's head and, though the numbers were lower than they had been a few months ago, A still had a fair amount of time left.
"You're not dying," B said, watching A move frantically across the floor.
"Yes I am. I can't breathe. Please, B."
"How are you talking to me if you can't breathe?"
A disregarded B's statement and began to wring his shirt more violently.
"My heart is beating out of my chest. I can't feel my fingers. I'm going to faint."
"A, I think this is all just in your head. You've got to calm down."
A tried to take some deep breaths, but wound up coughing on his own panic.
"I'm gonna die, B. I'm gonna die."
The blonde began to repeat the statement like a mantra and paced faster.
"Calm down," B said, actually starting to get a little unnerved by A's strange behavior. "When did this start?"
"When I got back to the room," A gasped. "Right after you made me punch D. Why did you make me punch D? I didn't want to punch him."
"That's not important," he replied, unwilling to come right out and say that he was trying to help him gain a backbone. "I think you just got upset about the conflict and misinterpreted your own anxiety. You'll be fine."
"I'm not fine. I'm dying. And I'm dying as a bully! I'm gonna go to Hell, B, and it's all your fault!"
A began to gasp even more pathetically as he attempted to hold back tears.
B stared at his mentally anguished roommate with confusion and an expanding share of anger. A should be thanking him for what he did! What was this?
"You did what you had to do."
"I did what you made me do!" A sobbed.
What an ungrateful…
"Well, it's done. Now, sit down and stop freaking out."
"But, I'm gonna die. I'm gonna die."
"You're not going to die!" B yelled angrily, looking at A's numbers again and wishing his statement were completely true. "Sit down and shut up or I'm leaving."
B didn't think it was possible for A to become any more panic stricken, but the proposition of B leaving the room managed to accomplish it.
"Don't leave. Please don't leave."
B considered leaving just on spite, but remained for reasons which he could not fully comprehend. It was an odd mixture of pity and fascination.
He leaned against his dresser and watched A have the remainder of his panic attack, hoping his roommate would eventually stop chanting the morbid mantra that his eyes knew to be true.
Author's Note: Poor A! Panic attacks suck! Thank you all for reading and please leave a review if the fancy strikes you. New chapter coming soon. Here's the preview: unpleasantness.