Thoughts (Part 2)
A/N: I'm hoping for only three parts to this. XD All depends on how much Alice, Yumi, Sissi, Jeremie, and Aelita want to talk. XD I'm hoping for Alice, Yumi, and Sissi for part 2. X3
To the story!
"Alice, we need to talk…" he whispered to her as the two sat in her room.
"We're in so much trouble…" she whispered nearly inaudible to him, but he caught it.
"Is that something you wish to share, Alice?" he asked, coming to sit beside her and kissing her forehead.
"Not until I'm completely sure, no," she stated softly, lying down on her bed and looking at the ceiling. "What did you want to talk about, anyway?"
"Well, right now I'm trying to stop with the drugs and alcohol and shit. I wanted to talk about you stopping, too… It would be a huge help to me if you would so that we're doing it together and I'm not tempted to do it because you are…" he told her, laying down beside her and stroking her hair.
"I'll try, but you know how badly that normally goes…" she whispered, kissing his nose.
"That's when we're apart… This time we're doing it together, right?" he whispered, kissing her back.
"Yeah… Boomer wants me to stop, too," she added. "If we're going to do this then I need to be out of this house, though. We'll both end up way too tempted if I stay here… Maybe I can get enrolled at Kadic somehow…"
"I'll see if I can get anything figured out… With your permanent record they may want your parents here since you're not emancipated."
She nodded. "If anything my cousins could pose as my parents and I'll say that I want to try and get better and it'll be good for me. And I can always say that my parents don't know because they're druggies and don't want me here if my cousins refuse."
"Sounds like a plan… So, what are you hiding from me?"
"Please don't push it… You're going to be stressed enough as is. I don't want you stressing over something that turns out to be nothing."
"Fine, fine… You tell me the moment you find out, though. Whether it's true or not," he stated as he stood up and stretched. "Anyway, I need to be headed back to the school so I don't get in trouble."
"Why would you get in trouble? It's not curfew yet, is it?" she asked, looking over at her clock.
"I'm not really supposed to be off school grounds, okay? I don't know how much longer my distraction will last," he stated as he kissed her forehead and headed out the door.
-Yumi-
She paced in front of the school's entrance waiting for Ulrich. There was so much that she needed to say to him… To find out from him… She needed to hear the truth and couldn't get it from anyone else… When he got close enough to hear her she said, "Ulrich, we need to talk…"
He nodded in agreement. "Yeah, we do…"
"Let's go to your room so we can without worrying about someone else hearing us," she stated taking the lead and walking toward Odd and Ulrich's room.
He followed, his hands sitting in his pockets, without a word.
When the two reached his dorm Ulrich took a seat on his bed and Yumi occupied Odd's.
"You first," Ulrich said, leaning his head against the wall.
"There's so much that I want to say, Ulrich… One of which being that if William were back I wouldn't be content. I'm not even sure how you could think something like that. You meant, and mean, the world to me Ulrich. I don't feel the same way about William as I do about you. William is just a friend. I don't love him…" she told him in a shaky voice, looking up at the ceiling. She couldn't bear to meet his eyes…
"I have Alice… Truthfully, I'm not sure which of you I love… With the both of you it's different. I know that I miss you and I hate seeing you hurting… I could barely keep being mad at you when I would see that you were beginning to tear up… With Alice, though, it hurts to be away from her… It feels like a piece of me is missing and when I'm with her and we're together then I'm fully myself… I don't know if that's just because I've been with her for year or not… I just… I'm not sure…" he told her.
She couldn't tell if he was trying to meet her gaze or not, but he wasn't going to anyway. She couldn't bear to look him in the eye right now…
"Then we'll see… Ulrich, tell me something… Was it my fault that you left…? Back when you said that I'd be happy if William were here you said that you left because you got sick of the games we used to play with each other's emotions… So, was I the reason you left…? I don't even know why I did that… It seems so childish now…"
"My choice of leaving was a combination of things… One of which was our messing with each other… Xana was the main one, but I needed to get away from that… I couldn't take it…"
"You left us in such a tight spot when you left… Three days after you left Xana tried to set us all ablaze… The entire school caught on fire… We're lucky that no one was killed… How could you have been so selfish, Ulrich? We needed you. The entire human race needed you and you just packed up and left… Not everyone has what it takes to be a Lyoko Warrior… There are only a few that can handle it and when we were that far into the game training a new recruit was difficult… When we got Sissi to join us she wasn't ready for any of it… We were so worried that we'd end up with another William on our hands that Jeremie worked all of us to the brink of exhaustion so as to get in training time for Sissi before the next attack… How could you just leave…?"
-Ulrich-
He looked down at his shoes. Now it was his turn to avoid her eyes… "I guess I just got so caught up in going to a school for something that I loved and leaving all the Xana stuff behind that I didn't think about that… I didn't think about what problems that it would cause all of you… During that time I was just focused on what I wanted to do."
"That was really selfish of you…" she whispered as she looked at him through her eyelashes.
He nodded.
Silence fell over the two and Ulrich was about to get up to stretch his legs for a walk before Yumi whispered, "Why Alice…?"
"Back then I was still in the selfish Ulrich phase. She was in full support of my moving to America to play soccer and came to all the games and stuff… I chose to lose soccer. Maybe once I'm all better and not suffering from withdrawal symptoms I'll get back to it… And maybe you and I could practice Pencak Silat again?" he asked with a small smile.
"I'd really like that, Ulrich…" she whispered smiling back. "You know, we've all missed you a lot and I'm happy that you're trying to get back to your old self…"
"Well, you should probably be headed home and I need to get to dinner before all the food is gone… See you tomorrow," he said before leaving the room and walking down the hall.
As he walked he started to think about everything that had happened. He was finally getting back to being himself again and hopefully this time, with his friends' and Alice's help, he would actually accomplish the goal of it before he veered off course and ended up a druggy again… They needed Ulrich the Lyoko Warrior and Ulrich the druggy was going to go away this time. For real.
A few minutes after he'd sat down in the cafeteria and began eating Sissi walked over and sat down. "I'll leave if you want me to, but I just wanted to say thank you…"
Ulrich raised an eyebrow at her and motioned for her to continue as he ate.
"If you hadn't have left I wouldn't have ever made the best friends I've ever had… Because you left I got to be in on the secret that I'd always wanted to know… Hangout with the kids that I wanted to hangout with… I get to save the world like you all did… If you hadn't have left then that would have never happened and I'd still be the stuck-up brat that I used to be," she said as she put a bite of food in her mouth.
"You really know how to cheer a person up, Sissi… All I've heard since I left was how horrible I was and then having to explain myself. I'm glad that some good things happened out of my moving… If you were in my shoes back then, what would you have done? Your parents bugging you for better grades while your dad talked about this amazing school in America with an amazing sports' program and scouts that would come and look for new talents... Being tired of the life of a Lyoko Warrior… Tired of the repetition and the near-death experiences…" he whispered, laying his chin on his arms after putting his arms on the table.
"I probably would have stayed here and demanded a break for awhile, not taking no for an answer… I mean, yeah, it can be overwhelming, but there are only a special few of us that can do it, right? And they were your friends and still might have needed you for non-Lyoko related matters…"
"I guess you're right, Sissi… It was really hard leaving, too… Jeremie was pretty ticked and Yumi refused to even look at me. The only people that were supportive of it were Odd and Aelita and Jeremie still called to get me back here…"
"See, there you go… They could have given you a break every once in awhile. I mean, they really wanted you to be here. I should know. None of them could stop talking about it. 'This would be so much easier if Ulrich were here.' Or 'We'd be done with this in half the time if Ulrich were here to help…' and things such as that. Odd was always complaining about how his best friend wasn't here and would sabotage any attempts that Daddy made in trying to get a new roommate for him. Most of the time it just took the smell of his feet to have them running," she told him with a smile.
"Sounds like Odd alright…" he whispered, looking at his food. "Sissi?"
"Hmm?"
"You don't hate me for all of this, right? I mean, I know that the others were really mad in the beginning, but you never really seemed to try either way… Why is that?"
"Answering in all truth and honest, I don't hate you. Things get difficult and it happens a lot… I don't see how people get hooked on the stuff with how nasty smelling it is, but I get it… It's difficult to be the hero and get good grades and all that. And I never tried, because I had faith in you. I knew that deep down in your heart you were a Lyoko Warrior and you knew it. You knew that you were a fighter and I knew that you'd come back eventually… And here we are now. You and me sitting here talking like this and you wanting to come back."
Ulrich smiled and leaned over and hugged her. "You really don't know how much that means to me… After everything you're the first person that has pointed fingers and told me that I didn't care or that I was being selfish…"
Sissi hugged him back and replied with a smile, "That's what friends are for, right?"
(*)(*)(*)(*) Later That Evening –Jeremie's dorm- (*)(*)(*)(*)
"I'm assuming you know why I've called you in here?" Jeremie asked, looking Ulrich in the eye.
"Yeah, to talk with me, right?" he asked with a sigh. Jeremie had woken him up at mid-night for this…
"Yeah…"
A/N: that's a decent place to leave off as it's a good set-up for the next chapter. XD I'm kind of looking forward to finishing this fic. =3 It's gone on for a good amount of time. XD
Read and review!
~MoonlitxAngel