WARNING: Some mild bullying themes

Walking back home with Arthur took a while to become an everyday thing. He'd just ask me in the morning on the bus, then I'd tell Matthew I'd be walking home with him so he and Mom didn't worry. Before I realized it, he stopped asking and I just always met him outside the locker rooms.

Over the weeks, I realized that his bruises were slowly disappearing. I didn't ask him if they were still bothering him, but still, a big part of me was glad that he didn't have to deal with that, which soon lead to the nervousness that one day the walks home would end. Didn't they start because of those guys? I didn't ask him about that either.

Maybe he didn't want them to end either. We'd kick at each other's feet as we went down the sidewalk, both smiling and laughing when the other fell. In trying to help each other up, the tripee usually ended up pulling the triper down onto the pavement as well. Bad jokes were cracked, and we would have silent games of kicking stones, but mostly we just talked.

Our conversations sometimes consisted of homework, what we disliked, what was deemed "totally unfair," and what seemed confusing-that the other usually understood. Other times we talked about people, what so-and-so said in class, who broke up with who, what one of our family members did the night before, or even what the last gossip was about teachers (the custodian, Mr. Peeps, and one of the math teachers, Ms. Arithmet, were totally flirting with each other whenever they spoke). Nearly all of what we spoke of was something completely random and out of the blue, or was just us being stupid. He would go off about a T.V. show or book, while I talked to him about sports and comics. We both listened even if we weren't interested.

There were also those rare occasions where we discussed ideas. Sometimes they were simple like what it would be like to be plant, or to be on fire. Others it was if people were going to one day live on another planet or if there was already some other forms of life out there. I think I liked those conversations the best.

Days started flying so fast that before we knew it there were three feet of snow on the ground. Walking home went from about forty minutes to an hour due to the fact that we were slower trudging through snowbanks. Neither of us minded much, I don't think. We spent a good amount of time trying to playfully trip the other into it all, though it didn't really work.

One day the sun actually peeked out from behind the grey clouds for most of the day, melting the snow a bit. That was the day I got a step closer to the answer.

Walking slightly farther ahead of Arthur, I smiled up at the sky. "It's nice to see the sun again, huh?" I stated, not really looking back at him.

"Yeah, I guess," he said, somewhere behind me. Normally he walked faster than I did, but for some reason in the winter he took his time.

My gaze traveled down to my boots, which were barely visible under the snow. Lifting up my boot, balled pieces of snow flew off making craters below. My smile turned to a smirk as I stooped and grabbed a handful of the stuff, packing it together easily in my hand.

"What are y-" Arthur didn't get to finish his question and I whipped around and the snowball make contact with his stomach. Confusion swept over his face for a second before his mouth pulled up into a smirk and said something to the effect of, "You're such a child." Balling a handful of snow as well, he threw it at me and it made contact with my cheek.

Smiling at him, I packed a couple more and soon enough we were in the middle of a miniature snowball fight.

Throwing a couple packed balls at him, I managed to hit him in the arm and side. He looked a bit annoyed by it as he compacted some snow together in a sloppy sphere and chucked it at me, missing me by a couple inches. Tossing a couple more at him, missing him mostly on purpose, he ended up hitting me in the face two more times, much to my dismay. Finding myself hilarious, I chuckled a bit as I half-sung, half-yelled, "Why don't you hit me with your best shot?" Smirking at me, he chucked a snowball in my direction. As it made contact with my shoulder, he fired back, "Fire away!"

Laughing at each other, we continued throwing snowballs back and forth until we found the whole thing too humorous to actually continue. By then my shirt and areas of my jeans were soaked through, but I didn't feel cold for some reason. Arthur weakly threw a snowball at me, missing, but he was almost doubled over laughing, a smile plastered to his face. In the ten minutes of the snowball fight, I had seen him smile and laugh more than in the whole time we had walked back together-I know that isn't saying much.

For some reason, it felt unexplainably...good to know I was basically the reason behind that smile. Part of me was actually proud or something for making him grin like that. It was weird.

When I was in the shower that night, a thought occurred to me; what if that was part of the answer, making others feel happy. Maybe that's what being a hero was actually all about, helping others by making them happy. With that thought in mind, I got another step closer to my answer.

The thought stuck in my mind a lot, for the better or worse. More and more people started hanging around me, as I started talking more to the kids who looked lonely. I started to make dumb, cheerful conversation with the kids who looked lonesome. I cracked jokes, gave them random compliments, and eventually left them when either the conversation died or a smile had started pulling at their lips. At first the compliments all had an absence of meaning, "I like your shoes," or "that's a cool shirt," and the boring "I really like what you've done with your hair." But after a while they were actually something. A couple times I got people to laugh and I'd just stare at them until they'd stopped and tell them just how amazing their laugh sounded. Everyone smiled and thanked me for it, but it was true, people had amazing laughs.

But as it turned out, people weren't always so easy to cheer up completely. Sometimes I'd make people smile for a minute or an hour or so, but it usually didn't last all day. After a while, they would go back to looking sad and lonely again and I somehow felt that it was my fault. Though it wasn't the random people I talked to in the hallways weren't what really got to me, no it was the people much closer to me.

A week or so before Christmas vacation started, I woke up to Matthew crying. It was somewhere around midnight and I had been asleep for several hours, he hadn't.

"Mattie?" I heard him gasp a bit, trying to hold back sobs. In the darkness, I could see his curled form tense a bit. He choked out something inaudible as I swung my legs over the bed and walked over to his side of the room. His bed was pushed into the corner opposite of mine, so while I was closer to a window, he was closer to the door.

"Matthew, what's wrong?" Sitting up, he untangled the blanket that had cocooned around him. "I-I-I jus...M-my frien's," he was definitely restraining himself from crying, I could tell by the way he stuttered and missed syllables. "Th-they jus-"

"Hey, calm down," I told him gently, sitting down on the side of his bed. Shaking, he just nodded and started breathing a bit heavier, trying to do what I told him. As he eventually calmed enough to speak, I sat next to him, rubbing my hand on his back when it seemed necessary.

Eventually when he seemed to be able to speak, I gently asked him, "What's going on?"

He took a slightly shaky breath. "They won't talk to me." My heart shattered at the five words. Matthew had started the year out with only three "friends." They were people that he thought he could trust and would pick to be around before anyone else. Why was this happening again?

"Matt," I said pulling him into a hug. He didn't make a move to even touch me so I let go of him after a while. Trying to sound positive, I ruffled his hair a bit and gently said, "Well one day they'll regret not talking to you. Trust me, you're going to be a world famous hockey player or biologist! You'll be so great one day that they're be a biography written about you and they're going to be so embarrassed that they're all the jerk wads so many people are reading about."

Matthew sat there, staring at me sadly. "Al, that doesn't help right now." The loneliness in his voice couldn't have been more obvious if he had actually tried. He'd just gone through the same exact thing last year and in the end only three of them stayed. What on earth had he done to deserve any of this? Everyone on earth just needed one friend, why couldn't Matthew just have one friend?

Sure he was quiet and a maybe little too polite at times, but people really liked him and he used to have a lot of friends when he was younger. I knew that in middle school friends groups did start changing-sometimes resulting in fighting-but that usually happened in seventh grade from what I'd seen. What were they so upset about now? Why couldn't things be simpler like they were back when we were kids? We always used to share friends, whether they were people or stuffed animals...

An idea hit me like baseball, hard and without warning. Sliding off the bed, I got on the floor and reached down under the mattress. "Al?" Matthew questioned.

"Sh!" I knew it was under there somewhere. Knowing Matthew, he never would have put it down in basement. After a minute, my hand made contact with something fuzzy. Grabbing it, I sat up quickly pulling out with me the stuffed polar bear that Grandpa gave to Matthew.

"Kumajirou?" Matthew asked in surprise, looking at me as though I had suddenly gone insane.

I just shoved the bear into Matthew's hands and cheerfully said, "Well who's a better friend than a bear?" He just rolled his eyes at me as I continued, "Besides, you can take it with you practically everywhere so you'll always have someone there for you."

"You're such a child," he told me, laughing a bit. The laugh didn't last long, just as quickly as he had started laughing he was crying again. Hopping back up on the bed, I tried to calm him down at least a little bit, but my heart ended up shattering even more.

"Why am I not good enough for anyone? Why do they hate me so much that now my only friend is a teddy bear and I'm up every night crying and... What the hell did I do, Al?"

My hand fell from his back and I just stared at him, unable to make words form. He just fell back against his pillow, his face in his hands and Kumajirou sitting on his stomach.

"Why do they not care about me?" he mumbled after a while. Finally my brain managed to pull itself together enough to actually function properly.

"They're just afraid that you're going to outshine them." Matthew gave me a look through the cracks in his fingers. "People are always afraid most of things that shine brighter than they do, so they try to smother them to make themselves seem brighter." Waiting for me to continue, he took his hands off his head.

"You're just too great a person for them, Matthew. They're obviously not anyone worth being around if they can't pull their heads out of their asses long enough to realize that they're hurting you and actually appreciate how freaking awesome you actually are." Sitting up, he gave me a weak half smile, trying desperately to hold back tears.

"I think I needed that," he said in a whisper.

Somehow we managed to fall asleep in that tiny bed. We shouldn't have been able to, but we did.

A week passed and Matthew seemed to be getting on along fine for the time being. I didn't wake up to him crying, though I got the feeling he still did. I managed to talk Arthur into riding the bus home more often so Matthew didn't have to sit through it alone. He quickly agreed when I mentioned Matthew. Maybe after all those years they had still barely managed to keep in touch.

Even though we caught the bus home a lot more often, Arthur and I still walked home together. The weather had been getting warmer, and I sadly watched the snow melt, thinking of our snowball fight. Towards the end of winter, I started randomly showing up at his house, just because I got all my homework done and I had no one to talk to. I think if Kiku and I lived closer we would have done the same thing.

It was during one of the arbitrary visits, that Arthur and I became a bit closer in a way.

"Dude!" I called, opening the front door and just walking in.

"Alfred!" Peter yelled, running into my legs.

"Hey, kid," I said, smiling and ruffling his hair. "Where's Arthur?"

"Oh he's in the living room. He's babysitting me tonight while everyone else goes out for something about Lewis." Peter randomly changed the subject to some television show he liked to watch, I pretended to follow along while we made our way through the kitchen and into the living room.

Arthur was sitting on the couch, a book next to him, and the radio droning quietly in the background. He looked over at me as I walked in, not surprised to see me but almost angry that I was there.

"Go home, Al," he said in a dull voice. Tears clung to his eyelashes, never really spilling off onto his red tinted face.

"Dude, are you alright?"

"He's been like this all night. That's why Mum and Dad didn't make him go with everyone else." Peter said, picking up his Rubik's cube and twisting it a couple times. Arthur just glared at the wall, not commenting and on the verge of crying. Sitting down next to him, I repeated my question, "Dude, are you okay?"

"Alfred, just go home." He didn't sound angry, though his voice was shaking.

"No. Not until you tell me what's wrong."

"There's nothing wrong, just please go home." He turned his glare over to me and I could see awfully clearly just how much he was fighting whatever was boiling up inside him.

"Yeah," Peter put in, sounding curious. "What is the matter, Arthur?"

He stood up suddenly and started to move towards the hallway. "If you want to watch my brother for me, fine, do that, but I'm not going to sit out here being interrogated-"

Grabbing the sleeve of his sweater, I spun him around enough for him to look at me, before asking in a steady voice, "What's wrong?" He glared at me, causing a tear to slide down his cheek.

"Go home, Alfred. It's really none of your business, so just go. Leave me alone."

"Why do you think I'd ever leave you alone?" His eyebrows rose ever so slightly at my question. He tried to tear his arm out of my grasp as more tears started to escape, but I yanked him towards me, pulling him into a hug. Pushing on my chest, he made feeble attempts to get me off of him, his breath hitching a couple times. After a moment or so, he gave up on trying to fight any of it and clenched his hands into my shirt and cried into my shoulder for a while. I could see Peter watching us from out of the corner of my eye.

Standing there, holding him, my focus kept bouncing around to different things. His fingers felt kind of bony curled up against my back. Had his family always had pictures hanging right there? Man, Arthur was skinny compared to some of the other guys that were in our grade...not that I'd hugged many of them before. The Kirkland's walls were pastel blue apparently, something that I hadn't notice before. His hair smelled good, why did it smell good? That one floorboard looked almost exactly like that other one a couple feet away from it. Dang, Arthur was warm.

After a minute his breathing steadied, and he pulled away from me so I let go of him. Peter, looking as confused as ever, opened his mouth to say something before Arthur quickly put in, "I don't feel like talking about it." Peter almost did a couple times, but I didn't push it.

Time passed in the blink of an eye, filled with simple, almost silly things. I cracked as many jokes as I could remember from second grade, the weird ones that you can't believe we're ever funny but still make you smile. Peter brought some action figures down from his room and we sat on the floor moving the plastic toys along as he narrated some story. I tried to help him a bit when he got stuck but he just shushed me. He eventually ended up killing the guy I was playing with so I had to die as well. Arthur sat on the couch chuckling at us and shaking his head a bit.

That went on for a while before Arthur got up and said, "Alright, time for bed, Peter."

Groaning, Peter whined, "But we're having so much fun!"

"No, Mum said you had to be to bed by eight and it's way past that already, Peter."

"Oh man. If Mum"-I emphasized my obviously fake English accent, which earned me a scowl from Arthur-"said that you have to do it, then you have to do it." Just as I finished the sentence I lifted Peter up onto my shoulder.

"Alfred put me down!" He hit my back as if it would get me to do as he wished, but I ignored him and carried him upstairs. Pushing open the first door on the left of the hall, I walked into Peter's room. Painted a deep blue, the walls were covered in drawings, pictures and posters. Toys were scattered on his floor and his desk was covered in...was that a pile of dirt?

Gently throwing him down onto the bed, I announced in a nasally voice, "The S.S. Peter has docked!" Squirming a bit, he laughed a bit and sat up. Hopping of the bed and trying to make me move, Peter made an attempt at pushing me out of his untidy room. "Now get out," he told me after a while. "I have to get my pyjamas on!"

"Alright, alright," I said, putting my hands up in surrender and walking towards the door. "You better go to sleep though."

"I will!" Giving him a smile as I closed the door, I called, "Goodnight, Peter!"

"Goodnight to you too, Alfred," his muffled voice yelled back.

Arthur was waiting near the stairs, arms crossed, an irritated looks etched to his face. "Do you want me to tuck you in too, Eyebrows?" I asked him teasingly, trying to poke him in the side. He swatted my hand away, giving me a look. "That'll be the day," he muttered not really looking at me. Shoving me lightly, he then followed up, "And don't call me 'Eyebrows!'" Laughing at him a bit, I decided to ignore the fact that he was glaring at me.

After a while, the two of us made our way into Arthur's room. Hanging all over the room, posters for multiple different bands almost covered up the pale blue painted underneath. His bed was pushed up against the wall in one corner with his dresser on the opposite side of the room. For some reason, Arthur had ended up with the smallest room in the house and it really showed. Almost every time I walked in, I tripped over his desk chair.

Flopping down on his bed, I purposefully tried to take up as much of it as I could. "Move," Arthur said, sounding pretty tired. Screwing my face up a bit, I kind of hummed to myself for a minute before defiantly saying, "No."

Shoving my legs off the bed, Arthur sat down by his pillows. Sitting up, I gave him a smile, which went unreturned. Trying to lighten the mood even a bit, I started telling him about what had happened in Science that day. A couple kids were playing with the Bunsen burner when the teacher walked in. Long story short, our teacher finally got rid of his mustache and the fish's tank needs new water.

Arthur just nodded along at the story, giving obviously forced half smiles at the funny parts. As I finished, silence settled down between us, making itself at home. Tapping my fingers on my thigh, I tried to quickly come up with something else to say. Arthur did before me.

"I'm sorry," he started almost quietly, "this is a little random, but may I sit with you tomorrow at lunch. I realize that I turned you down-"

"Of course you can, dude!" Something like relief washed over his face. As he opened his mouth to say something, I cut him off, "But why?"

Dropping his gaze, he started playing with the hem of his t-shirt. He sighed a bit not making a move to clarify anything. Quiet returned, this time almost deafeningly loud. Not wanting to push him, I didn't want to try and ask again, but at that point I was pretty much willing to do anything to break the wordless noise.

I was considering nudging him a bit, when he suddenly spoke again. "Really, I don't know what I was expecting to happen." Why did he sound so drained? "I knew they wouldn't handle anything like that extraordinarily well. They never really have accepted anything that's different in the slightest. I thought that maybe just one of them would since he was the first one to get the others to accept me." There was something bitter in his voice, almost like he was angry at something or had just been stabbed by the person he trusted the most.

"I was wrong... I was so wrong," he almost whispered, the anguish in his voice thick. Suddenly, he seemed to snap out of whatever state he was in. Sounding absolutely fine, he calmly said, "He told the others yesterday, after school. I told him quite a bit ago, so I think he told...others before them. They all said that I wasn't allowed to be near them anymore and that I was disgusting." He chuckled dryly without humour.

For a moment I couldn't help but think of what was happening to Matthew at school. Why them? I felt completely, totally repulsed at people whose names I barely knew. Why did it have to be them? It could have been anyone else but them. Why couldn't it be someone... Realization hit me, right then and there. It was happening to other people; people I didn't know or didn't talk to. There were so many others probably dealing with the same sort of problem that I just wasn't aware of. They weren't the only ones.

Wrapping an arm around his shoulders, I softly pulled Arthur into my side. He didn't fight back or tell me to go home. After a second of just sitting there, unsure of what to say, I sort of repeated myself. "I'm not going to leave you. Not because of something stupid or petty. It would just add too much to your tragic backstory, and no one needs a tragic backstory." Scoffing a bit, he shook his head at my comment and muttered something that sounded like, "If you only knew."

I didn't question it, though I really wanted to. Though I wasn't exactly sure what would drive so many people away from him like that, I knew that it shouldn't matter that much.

Letting go of him, I moved a couple inches away from him. Just as I opened my mouth to say something, I glanced at the clock on his bedside table. Was it really already nine? Mom's going to kill me! Feeling my heartbeat pick up a bit, I quickly said, "I have to go."

"What?"

"I was supposed to be home a half hour ago," I said as I jumped up off the bed. He looked a little disappointed as he simply stated, "Oh. See you tomorrow." As I stared at him, something inside my head just shut down for a minute.

Putting my hands on his cheeks, I quickly pulled his face towards me, placing a hasty kiss on his bang covered forehead. Closing his bedroom door behind me, I looked over my shoulder at him and quickly stated, "See ya!"

I left him looking dazed and confused beyond belief with a blush creeping over his cheeks.

Walking in the front door, I braced myself for whatever was about to go down. Mom was probably going to yell at me in that way where didn't actually raise her voice at all. As I got myself prepared for Mom's usual scolding, I walked into the living room to find Matthew sitting on the couch reading a book.

"Where's Mom?"

"Work called about an hour ago, she had to leave," he stated, looking up at me. "She's not going to be home for a while, so don't worry."

"Okay, thanks Matt." I ruffled his hair as I made my way to the stairs.

Going to bed about twenty minutes later, one thought wouldn't just let me sleep.

Why were the best people treated so poorly?

I told you I would have another one out today and look at that, I kept my word!

Before I forget, Happy Canada Day, here's a bit of Canada angst that will be expanded on later.

How did you guys like the snowball fight? Or the two School Employees flirting (which is based off a true story)? And how about all that hinting towards Arthur's sexuality (and oblivious Alfred)?

Also I noticed in the comments someone was asking about the Hermione cameo from one of the earlier chapters and yes indeed that was her. Good for you for picking up on that! I'll probably be throwing in a bunch of allusion like that in future chapters.

Anyway, have a good day everybody!