Four weeks into their training, and Lex and Zell were still acting like children. Lex refused to respect him, and in return, Zell wouldn't uphold his side of the deal, and continued to annoy her with details of his personal life. He'd ramble on about how much he despised his barrack apartment, and how it didn't compare to his hometown of Balamb, or he'd ask her advice on what to do with his little girlfriend back home, but never expected her to respond. It reached a point where she could only associate her by the nickname that Lex gave her-Library Girl. Aside from frustrating and boring each other to their limits, they were moving along with an impressive speed. Rumour had it that the head of the department lost a large bet due to their success.
Lex was skipping biology with Lenny and Raize one afternoon when she witnessed something that bothered her. As she basked in the sun on the side grounds overlooking the track field with her friends, allowing the grass to tickle the backs of her legs, and the breeze perform a beautiful waltz with her hair, she glanced over to the parking lot, and saw a irksome scene unfolding. She saw Seifer and Zell arguing, and then she watched as Seifer placed his hands on Zell's chest, pushing him around.
"Hey, guys," Lex stood up, refocusing her attention on her friends. "Let's go get milkshakes!"
The guys jumped to their feet, and soon they were on their way, but not before Lex glanced back to check on her instructor's situation.
The next day, Lex was dragging her feet towards the training facility. Her inner organs were performing circus acts, she could feel small bubbles of acids rise up her like a steady river, and if she didn't know better, she would assume she had a film of a soupy, condensed substance covering every inch of her. Despite their better judgement, her, Lenny, and Raize decided to purchase twenty four gallons of ice cream, and proceeded to stay awake the entire night to polish them off. Raize stayed home that day, Lenny was abnormally chipper than ever, while Lex felt like a slug. All she hoped was that Zell didn't have anything rigorous planned for her lesson, or he would see a new side of her that would surely cause her her credit.
As she crawled into her class, she instantaneously took notice that Zell had a black eye. She didn't make any fuss over it, but she couldn't help but wonder if it had something to do with what she saw the day before.
"You don't look too spry today," Zell made the observation. He was in the middle of putting away all the equipment that he prepared. He had his hand-held targets sitting next to an array of weaponry. "I was thinking of starting a section on fighting with small items until I heard that you and your friends stayed up all night eating multiple gallons of ice cream so to spare a scary situation, I've decided we'll take it easy, and mainly work on stretches and footwork."
"Who told you?" Lex demanded.
"Lenny," He answered with no guilt. "He asked me to take it easy on you today. He's a good friend you've got there."
Lex remained quiet. She thought back to how she saw Seifer treating Zell, and wondered if he considered that friendship.
With a bitter expression, she nodded at Zell. "No commenting on my personal life, remember?"
Zell snorted back a silent chuckle, and signalled her to take a place on the mat. They began with some basic stretches to warm her body up to the concept of moving, which Lex was already finding to be too difficult to be anything less than shameful. He had her sit down with the bottoms of her feet touching, and encouraged her to lean forwards. He guided her, lowering her until she almost touched to the floor. As he held her there, she decided that she wasn't going to let what she saw drop.
"Do you always let Seifer push you around?" She dove in head first. She felt his hold fault under her question.
"What're you talking about?" His voice was uneven.
"I saw you two yesterday in the parking lot," Lex told him. She wasn't going to let him evade this. He continued on the lesson plan in spite of her intrusion, and as he guided her to the next position, he remained silent.
"What? You can find things out about my life, but I'm not allowed to bring up one thing that I personally witnessed?"
"I thought you said you wanted to keep our relationship strictly on a teacher-student level. No personal chat, right?" He retaliated.
Lex rolled her eyes. He was the one who was constantly talking about his life outside of these walls, regardless of the fact that Lex couldn't be less interested. She shook, her head. "Tit for tat."
Zell remained silent for a moment. It was obvious he didn't want to talk about it, but Lex didn't care. She wanted an answer, and she wasn't the type of person to let subjects drop, especially if she was in control of the conversation.
"Why do you care how people treat me?" Zell was trying one last defensive manoeuvre.
"I don't care how people treat you," Lex wasn't afraid to speak the truth, no matter how insensitive it may be. "But it bothers me when I see people who don't stick up for themselves. Why didn't you stand up to Seifer? I know it's not because your incapable of holding your own. I spar with you, I know what you can do, so why didn't you fight back? I don't want people to assume that I'm being trained by a wimp."
Zell sighed. There was no choice but to spill his guts, and she could see in his eyes that he knew it. He handed her a bottle of water, and sat down across from her. Flashbacks to early school years came to mind, and she promptly got prepared for story time.
"Seifer and I have known each other our entire lives, or damn close to it," He said, fiddling with his bottle. "We were in the same orphanage as kids."
Lex looked across to Zell. She didn't know that he was an orphan as well. That explained his desperate need to please everyone, she figured. She knew that if she let herself make a big deal of this, there wouldn't be a stop to the remarks made by her friends. Just because the two of them shared an important personal thing in common didn't mean she was going to suddenly turn a new leaf and become friends with him. Letting herself sigh internally, she cleared her mind of judgements, and tried to listen to what he was saying.
"…the ocean was right at our feets. I would look out the window from the bedroom and watch it come in at night. If we were good, our Matron would let us go down the path. I always stayed. Seifer took a liking to tackling me, and holding my head under the water."
"And you let him?"
"I looked up at him like he was my older brother. How was I suppose to know that it wasn't brotherly affection he was showing, but was just being a giant asshat? I didn't know any better, and when I finally figured it out, it was too late. He was more than comfortable bullying me around, and I didn't have the means to stop him then. I just hoped for the day that we were adopted and taken away from each other," He shrugged his shoulders. "But even as we grew older, and were sent to different homes, we ended up going to the same schools, and he would just pick up from the last time he saw me.
"It sort of escalated when we were both accepted into Balamb," He continued. "Seifer banded together with a couple of students to form the Disciplinary Committee. It was the perfect excuse to bully all the students he wanted and get away with it. One of the reasons I agreed to transfer here part time was because I knew I wouldn't be at his mercy all the time. That is, of course, until Squall decided not to live on campus this year so now Seifer has the perfect excuse to come to Morneve as much as he wants. Now he can bully me in two different galaxies. Talk about the best target a guy can have."
Lex nodded. The story about his past did nothing to amuse her. He admitted to her that he had no intention of standing up for himself to him, and that annoyed her. As long as he saw himself as a target, she refused to help him in anyway. Standing up, she started heading for the doors.
"Where are you going?" Zell called after her.
"I'm going to the nurse, and the next class, you're going to fight me like you've always wanted to fight him."
