Author's Notes: Well, woohoo, I continued. I always promised I would one day finish this, and I still fully intend on keeping my promise.

Chapter 4 & 5 were originally one chapter, but I'm so incredibly long-winded ( coughcough ) that I ended up splitting it into two separate chapters... but the good news is, because I wrote them together chapter 5 is already finished as well, so that means there's no way in hell the next chapter is going to take as long (unless I end up forgetting all about chapter 5 on my HD... :( But reviews tend to remind me of such things... erm...).

After chapter 5, there's going to be the big finale (likely 2 or 3 chapters) and after that the epilogue, so we're looking at 8 or 9 entries total for this story. Half-way done! Yay! :)

Thanks for staying with me for half of the ride so far! Thanks for every single review, they mean more to me than you'll ever know (or I'm ever going to admit!).

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The End of Every Story

Chapter 4: Rebellion

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When Roxas opened his eyes the next morning, he didn't know a whole lot of things, but the one thing he knew with certainty was that it had never been harder to drag his body to school.

It was with fear wrapped around his heart that he walked to school and no amount of tests, evil teachers or fights with other students could ever hope to so much as serve as a comparably horrible morning. No, not even the very occasional brawls with Hayner dotting the years of their friendship – which, a testament to the inherent strength of their friendship, had only served to strengthen their bond with the ultimate solving of their problems – could even hope to come close. He felt doom raging in his stomach and panic running along his nerve endings as he slowly pushed open the heavy front door revealing the bustling, lively school hallways with its noises spilling out into the open and right into launching an attack to penetrate Roxas's ears. Until that very day, the mere idea of him and his friends splitting up and parting ways would have caused nothing but a confused shake of his head and a carefree shrug of Roxas's shoulder at the mere impossibility of it all – now, though, pictures of him and Hayner, Olette and Pence separated were flashing in front of his inner eye; their effects were much like those of the horrible, gharish lightning bolts illuminating old, run-down mansions in bad horror movies.

The first steps taken into the school were weighed down by a heavy reluctance; his eyes were darting around wildly, not being able to decide if they wanted to do their best to catch Seifer or his friends, or if they wanted nothing more but to be closed and try to ignore each and every one of the silhouettes busily rushing up and down the corridors. Occasionally, an overzealous student bumped lightly against Roxas's shoulders, causing the short blonde's breath to hitch in his throat and Seifer's image to climb up its way until it was parading around right in front of his inner eye – but every time he caught their faces fully expecting to be confronted by the toothily grinning, bronze-coloured one belonging to Seifer, the face staring back at him with light puzzlement sprawled over it was always one he had never seen before.

Roxas sighed, shook his head, and started to walk toward the doors of his classroom.

Of course Roxas had contemplated staying at home that morning. Oh, how seductive this prospect had seemed, how easy and pleasant – but a closer inspection of the idea had all too quickly revealed to Roxas that not showing up would likely only result in Seifer's mood dropping – and as much as Roxas liked to think of himself as knowing exactly what the bully was capable of, he had to admit that there was no way to tell in what disasters said change of mood would result in. Seifer playing the voice recording to his friends was one of the least of his concerns as soon as Roxas had also realized with the final pang that set his decision to go to school firmly into place that it surely wasn't beyond Seifer to try to threaten Hayner and the others in frustration of Roxas not playing along. Possibly... even hurt them. And as much as Roxas's skin crawled at the mere thought of being invaded by Seifer's scents, sight and crushingly authoritative aura again, the thought of possibly abandoning himself as well as his friends to danger by not showing up was enough to muffle and suffocate the cries of fear wailing through his skull.

Roxas's heart was racing as his hand touched the door to his classroom. He could not help but hesitate. The dark blonde boy was running slightly late, so his friends were probably already inside. Seifer and his posse probably weren't. Seifer not coming to class late was a concept quite unheard of. On the other hand, though, so was the idea of Seifer seeking out lowlifes he not usually bothered to communicate with after class...

He quickly weighed his options, considering to visit the bathroom first to deliberately come to class late, when a voice that spoke up behind him snapped him out of his musings.

"Hey, Roxas," a female voice muttered. Olette.

Roxas's back stiffened. He turned around, his heart hammering away in his chest like a drum, and by the time his azure-blue eyes were hovering over Olette's pretty face, she was already pushing him inside the classroom without another word. Roxas drew breath in quickly as he stumbled inside, watching out of enlarged eyes as Olette quickly rushed in after him. Roxas noticed with a heavy heart that he had never before quite such a grave and worried expression edged into the girl's usually so carefree features.

Roxas frantically looked around the classroom and noticed with relief that Seifer and company were mercifully absent from it. Then, he turned back to the petite girl whose eyes had long since pierced through his skull, pouring silent accusations into it. Roxas swallowed.

"Olette...?" he asked quietly.

Olette shook her head, her shiny hair whipping her face as she did so. "My, Roxas, what have you done?"

Dread rose up inside Roxas at the same time as his heart plummeted down to his stomach. No. No, this couldn't be. It simply couldn't. Had Seifer already shown them the recording? No!

"What are you talking about?" Roxas pressed out from in between frantic veins pressing against his throat. His panicked eyes searched Olette's, but as much as he looked, the answers weren't spelled out in any language he could read.

Olette's eyebrows drew together in a deep, worried frown. "It's... it's Hayner. Roxas... I think something's wrong with him, he – I think he -"

But at that moment, the very boy they'd been discussing entered the room and when Roxas's blue eyes met Hayner's, he flinched as the realization of just what Olette had been talking about hit him.

For a couple of seconds that seemed to stretch into minutes or hours, Roxas's eyes were hovering over Hayner's face; yet while the expression on Roxas's face started to assimilate itself and reflect the one displayed on Hayner's a little bit more with every moment noisily ticking past, the realization of what was unfolding him before him was reluctant to sink its claws into Roxas's head. Then, slowly, so slowly, as though they were the last drops of blood leaking out of a dead body, all expression left Roxas's face. In a moment that seemed to physically sting, the sandy-haired boy averted his head until the devastation of Hayner's face had mercifully left his vision. It was boneless how he slid into his seat, and it was with an air of hard-wrenching shame that he drew in his shoulders, closed his eyes and pretended to wait – something that may have actually been successful if the image of Hayner's eyes hadn't been right there, lurking behind the curtains of his eyelids.

Hayner's... pain had been laid out so openly on his face – his pain right along with his his worry, his affection for him, for Roxas, for him - the undeserving... tangerine thief. Something was clawing at his mind. A realization that had always been there was writhing, thrashing about, demanding attention from Roxas's consciousness. Before he had the chance to examine the awakening realization, however, the thing he'd been dreading the most unraveled right before his eyes.

"Well, good morning, everyone!" Seifer announced, hurling a sunny grin into the classroom. Students were all sending him puzzled looks – Seifer not coming to class late was an occurrence so rare it had escaped everyone's memories. But despite not knowing why exactly he had chosen to grace the school with his presence earlier than usual, Roxas was pretty sure that everybody in the class knew that there was no chance in hell it could be good news.

The students in the class tightened up visibly as Seifer marched into the room. Roxas's face flushed the moment Seifer's presence passed, his stomach doing a near-painful flip as he was concentrating all his mental energy into pleading Seifer not to talk to him, to ignore him and to in fact forgot all about his very existence. He could see out of the corner of his eyes how Olette rushed to her seat, doing her best to avoid looking at the burly king of their school. Roxas's eyes widened as they fell on his best friend.

Hayner was rooted to his spot, staring at Seifer out of huge, emotional eyes – eyes that just looked about ready to trigger a reaction so impulsive it could range anywhere from a first blow to a full-body tackle and so vehement it could very well result in a brawl yet unseen on school grounds. Please, Roxas's mind pleaded. Please, Hayner, don't do anything stupid. Don't attack him. Please. Roxas closed his eyes, trying to somehow tame the wild animal his heart had turned into. The seconds ticked by. Tick-tack, tick-tack. Hayner was looking at Seifer, and Seifer was looking back at Hayner. One was studying the other, clearly with bent up emotions but confused enough not to be able to place them; the other was glaring at the other in a way that spelled superiority in bold letters. And even before Hayner averted his eyes, doing what Roxas had mentally been urging him to, everybody knew that Seifer was winning. As he always did, a voice inside Roxas's head could not help but comment.

Hayner slid back into his seat, but Roxas did not catch what expression he had on his face as he did so. He realized it was because looking at his best friend – his very best friend he'd ever had and could likely ever hope to have – would prove too heart-wrenching. The sandy-haired boy willed his eyes to flex upon the desk in front of him, ready to get into waiting mode. Slowly, one by he one, he banished every single thought out of his troubled mind until he had muted and killed even the quietest voice that had been wailing and crying, I'm sorry, Hayner.

The teacher entered and class commenced and Roxas waited and waited. What she droned on about, he did not know, and even if he had been interested, he wouldn't have been able to focus anyway. It wasn't until it landed in front of him that Roxas was – quite rudely at that – jerked out of his stupor. Before him, on his very desk, was a piece of paper he couldn't remember having placed there himself, shining brightly amidst the starkness of his desk. Bright and pretty like a miniature star. Only, as Roxas realized with a pang, likely to be a lot less friendly.

His first thought was about Hayner as he grabbed the piece of paper and unfolded it with shaking hands, but one look at the elegant handwriting was enough for realization of just who had sent him the note to sink in. He knew that handwriting. Wasn't it ironic, in a way, that Seifer, the one boy whose humanity nobody could help but harbor doubts of, was to be the one with the most beautiful, elegant handwriting?

Hey Roxas.

Bored to death of this fucking class, aren't you? But worry, not – I have just the antidote to your boredom.

Your first order.

Roxas's eyes darted over to where Seifer was sitting – and sure enough, the emerald green eyes of his opponent were firmly trained on him. Looking into the blonde's face caused the smaller boy's stomach to give a funny jolt.

First order? Roxas's mind thought frantically. Here? Now?

A cloud of doom gathered over Roxas's head, and his mind tricked him into thinking he could hear it glee in joy as it was about to split open. Just as the boy has started to hurriedly scribble an answer, asking him what the hell was wrong with him and whether he couldn't the fuck postpone this until after school, Roxas's body came to a complete halt. His breath hitched, he could've sworn his heart skipped a beat – and all he was left with was helplessly watching on as the beginning of the end of his life unfolded in front of him.

Seifer had stood up. In a very twisted way, it suited him, to be the only one standing amidst of sea of seated students – a cruel leader coolly regarding his minions was what he looked like. The teacher, a pretty young recruit named Rinoa Heartilly, one of the few popular teachers at school, stopped writing on the blackboard, her eyes trained on Seifer while the rest of her face had given way to bewilderment and confusion. To Roxas it seemed like every single movement that had been going on this room came to a halt as countless breaths were drawn in.

It was the teacher who broke the silence first, managing to get hold of her composure at least. "Seifer, what are you doing?" she demanded, although fear had managed to creep its way into her voice, nearly breaking it. When he didn't answer, she repeated her question – but fell into the same silence as everybody else as Seifer started to slowly walk toward her. Roxas, and everybody else, watched the scene in front of them, not one pair of eyes daring to avert itself from the intriguing events unfolding. When Seifer had reached the front of the classroom, the students witnessed how the teacher immediately gave way to Seifer and let him pass, perhaps instinctively knowing there was no point in resisting Seifer, or perhaps because she trusted him not to wreak havoc on the blackboard. Roxas had to admit though, a much more likely possibility was that the young teacher was simply as scared of Seifer as the entire rest of their goddamn school was.

The blonde grabbed a piece of chalk and started to write. Dozens of eyes attached themselves to the back of his broad, masculine hand, holding the piece of chalk in an eerily elegant and refined way. Other eyes were staring at the back of his golden head from which the quiet sounds of snickers could be heard when one was listening intently enough. Still other eyes, Roxas was sure, had crept down to take in the muscles playing underneath the honey skin with each stroke of the chalk, and the long, lean bones of his back, exposed to the world.

Nobody broke the silence until after Seifer had finished writing, but when he did, the class let out one collective gasp of surprise, and as though the hold the situation had held over the teenagers had suddenly been lifted, dizzying, rapid discussion filled the room.

Today, 7 PM, the Sandlot.

The fight of the year – come and watch!

The last bit of colour left Roxas's face.

"Mr. Almasy, care to explain what you had to disrupt my class for?" The teacher did her best to sound professional, but the tremor in her voice gave her fear away.

"I'm afraid not, Miss Heartilly. It won't be me who will explain," Seifer flashed her one dazzling smile, then turned to his audience – and when his eyes fell onto Roxas, blood thirst, arrogance and all things evil and unclean sped out of Seifer's face toward him. Toward him and no one else they came running, leaving Roxas with no choice but to meet their force. Smiling – no, grinning, grinning smugly and evilly – Seifer continued, "but I'm sure our favourite student Roxas has a thing or two to say about it. Roxas, if you'd be kind enough to explain..."

Voices erupted from all around Roxas – some were amused, some displeased, all of them surprised. The weight of the dozens of eyes now focusing exclusively on the sandy-haired boy was enough to make his breath go faster, for sweat to break out and the first droplets of it to pearl on his forehead. Although he could not see the gazes for his own was still locked intently on Seifer, he could feel them – and on the scale of sensations which ranged all the way from orgasms to wiping your ass with poison ivy, this one was unpleasant enough to rival the very bottom.

Roxas started to shake. Fear wormed his way up his throat, clawed its way into his stomach and gathered his heart into an embrace way too tight. He didn't dare break eye contact with Seifer, whose smugness slowly started to dissolve as impatience was starting to bleed its way into his features. Everybody expected him to say something, but even as he opened his mouth, nobody but hitched breaths came out. What was he supposed to say? What could he say? Why did Seifer have to humiliate him like this? Why was he doing this to him?

"Roxas, come on and tell them about our little rendez-vous," Seifer sneered. It was malicious enough for several of his classmates to flinch, but Roxas didn't notice, just as he hadn't registered anything else people around him had been doing. The environment had long since melted away - Seifer the only one left in Roxas's vision - yes, even the only one left in his thoughts. All other students were resembling hazy shapes on watercolour paintings; their voices nothing more than background noise coming from so far away. He swallowed, and then, suddenly, it happened.

His stomach turned painfully, he felt a wave of nausea run through his body, and before he could register what he was doing, much less defy his own body's movements, he had already gotten up, whipped around and went for the door. Willing his ears not to hear the collective gasps coming from out of the classroom and hexing his eyes not to see the shocked expression on his friends' faces, he carried himself with wobbly strides that seemed determined to sway and hinder him. Indeed, he came close to falling more than once; yet somehow the sandy-haired youth managed to stumble out into the hallway. Making his way for the boy's bathroom, it was only when he was jerked around violently by a vice-like grip on his shoulder that he snapped out of his stupor, only when he was crushed against the wall of the hallway with his skull connecting painfully with the wall that he started to wonder why the hell he had just done what he had done.

Roxas looked up into Seifer's eyes. Roxas heard the bustling from inside of the classroom – was his mind playing tricks on him, or was that Olette screaming? - but the sound was soon cut off as the much bigger boy dragged him along the hallway until they reached the boy's bathroom. Seifer opened the door, pushed himself along with the struggling smaller boy inside. As soon as the door closed behind the two boys, the sound of a lock being turned reverberated through the hallway.

The class was in complete chaos as soon as Roxas had left. Everyone had had to witness open-mouthed how Seifer had sprinted after Roxas like a lioness after its prey. More than one of the students had thought they had seen something closely resembling bloodlust inside Seifer's eyes. Students were running around freely inside the classroom, talking and muttering and screaming and gargling, creating a dizzying mess of torn pieces of voices and conversation that was thundering around Hayner in a maelstrom of buzzing noise.

Through the maelstrom though, he was hearing one voice much more clearly than any other, and it just happened to be the one voice he would much rather not hear at the moment.

When Seifer had run after the stumbling Roxas, Hayner's good friend Olette had let out one piercing scream and had then run over the Hayner's side where she had started to scream at him while urgently shaking his shoulders.

No matter how he tried to shut off his ears , her shrieks violently bore their way into his ears and plunged themselves into his consciousness.

"Hayner!" she gasped. "What are you still doing here? You need to get out of there. You need to help Roxas!"

Olette hesitated as she took in Hayner's form and realized for the first time just how devastated he looked. His eyes were hollow – yes, almost dead. The expression on his face was unmoving, seemingly forever frozen in place. His face was harder than usual, making him seem a lot older than he really was.

"Hayner!" Olette insisted, feeling her heart tearing apart by having to bother Hayner, but her fear for Roxas overriding all over emotions. "Hayner, you've got to do something. Seifer may kill him!"

At the sound of the word "kill", Hayner did indeed flinch, but while Olette had expected for his whole face to light up in realization, it didn't take long for the unemotional mask to once again snuggle up against Hayner's face. He was not speaking, and Olette felt the panic drumming away in her stomach; felt the sweat breaking out all over her body; felt the fear for Roxas's life rebelling against all sane and selfish thought. She didn't stop shaking Hayner's shoulder, not until he finally, perhaps having reached the end of his patience, brushed her hand aside with one less-than-gentle stroke and finally turned his head to flex his honey-brown eyes upon the panicked girl. He felt his heart call out to Olette in pain as he saw the naked fear mingling with the affection for Roxas inside her and he felt the knot in his throat only intensifying as he saw the begging on her face, in her eyes. He felt sorry for her that very moment, more sorry than he'd ever felt for her – but he couldn't grant her her wish. As much as he longed to soothe his friend's fears, as much as he himself wanted to do nothing more than to run up to Seifer and kick his ass for even daring to lay a hand on Roxas – his Roxas – the truth of the matter was that he... couldn't.

He couldn't, because he had understood.

"He won't kill him, Olette." He saw that she was about to interrupt him, possibly scream again, so he hurriedly added, "I know he won't. Trust me." His face darkened, the pain in his eyes glittering like dying stars. "And if he does so much as leave a bruise on Roxas, I will without a doubt kill him. I promise you."

"Why?" Olette demanded, tears fighting their way out of her eyes, her contorted in a horrible mix of confusion and defiance. "Why won't you go out and save him? He's your best friend! You can't know for sure Seifer won't hurt him. We don't know Seifer and wasn't it always you who told us how evil and dangerous he was?" Her face hardened. "I can't believe you forgot all that, Hayner."

"I've come to realize something," Hayner said. "What is going on right now... this thing between them...it is only between the two of them. And I have a feeling that..." his heart contracted in pain while a sigh was doing its best to worm its way out of his throat, "that Roxas wouldn't want to have it any other way."

Olette stared at him. At first, the expression on her face was the same that had been on it earlier, when she had screamed at him, grabbed his shoulder and shaken it with all the might of her petite little body – but then it gradually changed. Hayner had been friends with Olette for so long that he immediately knew what the change on her face meant – she had understood. And with a pang so violent that it almost sent his stomach into upheaval, he realized that, rather than just the words he had just uttered, she had grasped something else entirely, as well – the one thing nobody but him knew, nobody but him could ever know.

Panic was thrashing about inside his insides like a monster tied down in vain; his thoughts were crushing against each other, hindering each other, making it impossible for any intelligent one of them to make its cause clear to Hayner's mind.

Before Hayner could reply, the teacher spoke up.

"Please, everyone, return to your seats," she said, running one of her hands through her dark hair. "I'm continuing the lesson now."

Olette stared at the teacher grimly, but eventually complied. Not, however, without sending Hayner one more look that caused a shiver to run down his spine and an intense bang of frustration to clog his throat. The look had been hard to read, but one thing seemed obvious: Olette had figured out what this was all about and while she wasn't yet ready to accept it, Hayner had no doubts that she eventually would – when it came to what she would go on to do to solve this mess, though, he couldn't even so much as wager a guess.

The teacher interrupted Hayner's train of thought once more. "Pence, why don't you answer task number 4 in our literature book, page 97? I trust you have read the book I assigned."

The class fell silent. So this was it – even the teacher was too scared of Seifer to send someone after the two fighting teens, even she too intimated by his wrath that she chose to ignore the... Hayner struggled to come up with an appropriate word... disease that was Seifer Almasy. The disease that had done a grueling job at dismantling the core of their school and had been so successful at invading every corner of the minds of everyone in it. Yes, Hayner decided, the word disease fit Seifer Almasy remarkably well.

Teacher Rinoa Heartilly was smiling at Pence in a way that was obviously meant to be encouraging – instead of that, however, it came out grotesque and wrong. It was a smile that failed to hide the battling emotions underneath, a smile so fake as though someone was pulling up the corners of a corpse's mouth.

All eyes turned to Pence, who until this moment, had been sitting at his desk in complete silence, unmoving, seemingly uncaring. While the weight of every pair of eyes in the classroom was on him, he calmly opened his book and when he spoke, the words came out clearly and firmly – and only the slight tremor underneath them belied the seeming ease with which he spoke them.

"Task 4: describe the characters of Risse and Maello," he read. "In the book l'Ouverture, Risse is the predator while Maello is the prey. Up until the point of his seduction by Risse, Maello had been a timid person with identity problems, and as soon as Risse stepped in and tried to give him the one thing Maello had always been yearning for – a place and an identity – it was easy for the predator to claim Maello as his own, and to pull him over to his part of life. The dark side." All eyes were resting on Pence as he continued, "it is fair to say that if it hadn't been for Maello's identity issues, Risse's tries to claim him as his own would have been quite futile – it was the combination of their characters that allowed the story to play out the way it did."

Rinoa Heartilly was shifting her weight from one foot to the other, staring at Pence out of a big dark eyes.

"...am I right?" Pence asked, a worried look slithering over his face.

"Quite right. Yes, Pence... very good," the teacher said, smiling nervously. "It seems you have read the book with interest indeed." Relief seemed to wash over her face as she straightened her body and announced with newly-found authority, "now, to continue with the class we will now move on to -"

Hayner stopped listening to the pretty teacher, her voice becoming nothing more but background noise. His thoughts returned to where they belonged – Roxer, his best friend... and maybe more.

Hayner shivered, buried his head between his arms and, desperately trying to calm down his thundering heart, he tried to do the one thing his skills in had always been so far inferior to Roxas's.

Waiting.

Author's Notes: Yeah I know... not enough Roxas/Seifer interaction in this chapter. But trust me, the next chapter makes up for it... and it features a nice scene that I think some of you may have been waiting for. :)

See you in chapter 5!