The next morning, Ludwig's mind felt foggy as he trudged up the street to the bus stop, his stomach reminding him that he hadn't eaten. Gilbert looked just as tired, and both held a rather disheveled appearance. Luckily, the bus pulled up not long after they got to the stop, and the two brothers were spared having to stand out in the light dusting of snow. The faint smell of Felicia still hung in the air around Ludwig, and the faint scent made him feel calmer as he boarded the bus.
The bus ride was mercifully silent; Gilbert evidently didn't have the energy to talk his younger brother's ear off quite yet. Ludwig leaned his head against the cold window, his eyes only half open as the bus bounced happily along.
"Oh, Ludwig-san!" a voice called as he got off the bus. Ludwig half turned to see the Japanese boy, Kiku, if he remembered correctly, jogging up to where he was standing.
"Good morning Kiku." Ludwig said politely, pausing while Kiku caught his breath. "Are you alright?"
"Hai, I am okay, Ludwig-san." Kiku said, straightening. "I just was curious about whether you know how Felicia-chan was injured."
"Injured?" Ludwig said in bewilderment, then realized. "Oh, you mean the bruise on her cheek? She was running and fell into something. A tree in the park, I believe she said." Ludwig nodded to himself, thinking back to the night before.
When Ludwig looked back at Kiku, he saw a strange look glittering in the smaller boy's otherwise expressionless eyes. Kiku shook his head. "Ludwig-san that is not what I mean." Kiku said, before giving a polite bow and hurrying away.
A feeling akin to fear coiled itself in Ludwig's gut, and he subconsciously sped up, weaving a way between other students, squeezing between gaps and searching, searching, for that bright red hair. All the while, a feeling of panic and fear continued to grow in his stomach. Where was she?
Finally, he found her, tucked away into a corner of the cafeteria with her face hidden in her knees. He approached her slowly and kneeled before her, reaching out and touching her gently. She flinched at his touch and didn't look up.
"Hi Ludwig." Felicia said, her voice muffled by her knees, and she tightened herself further, trying to hide from Ludwig's gaze.
"Are you okay, Felicia?" Ludwig tugged gently on her arms, trying to pull them away from her face, trying to get her to look at him. She resisted his efforts with a small whine.
"Felicia, what's wrong? What happened to you?" Ludwig asked, that strange fear still curling in his belly. "Please Felicia, will you just look at me?"
Silence fell between them for a long moment, and Ludwig shifted a bit, trying to get comfortable as the silence wore on. Finally, after a minute or two passed in quiet, Felicia spoke up, her voice quiet and deadly calm.
"Promise you won't say anything." She whispered.
"I promise." Ludwig said, heart beating faster in fearful anticipation.
Felicia lifted her head, looking Ludwig straight in the face, and the blonde student bit back a startled exclamation. Felicia's lovely fair skinned face was mottled with very light, but still visible, bruising on one side, the same side with the bruised cheekbone. Her lower lip was split, and her eyes were red rimmed, as though she had spent the entire night crying her heart out. Carefully, Ludwig reached over, brushing one hand over Felicia's bruises, touching his thumb to her split lip.
"I-I fell down the stairs when I got home." Felicia said, her voice still not rising above a whisper, her teary honey eyes gazing into Ludwig's.
Ludwig bit his lip. Those are not the kinds of bruises one gets by falling down the stairs. He should know, his Opa had shoved him down a flight once. But Felicia had made him promise not to say anything, so he merely nodded, forced to accept it.
"What are you doing?" a hostile voice asked, and Ludwig looked up from his kneeling position to see Lovino scowling down at him, a breakfast tray in one hand.
Ludwig pulled his hand away from Felicia's face and scrambled to his feet, so that he was looking down at the shorter Italian. "I was talking to your sister." He said in way of explanation, shrugging.
"Well don't." Lovino snarled, his green eyes spitting fire at Ludwig.
"Fratello—" Felicia tried to cut in, but Lovino ignored her.
"I had better not catch you with your hands on mia sorellina, any part of her, ever again." Lovino snapped angrily, not intimidated by Ludwig's superior height.
Ludwig was on the brink of arguing, of saying that Lovino could not tell Felicia who she could or could not see, but one look at the redheaded girl's tear streaked face changed his mind. He knew that Felicia probably didn't need anymore drama in her life. So he merely nodded his head before moving away, in the opposite direction of the Italian siblings.
"Where the hell did you run off to, Lud?" Gilbert asked, slinging his arm around Ludwig's shoulders.
"Nowhere." Ludwig said, almost without conscious thought. He could just see Felicia, still sitting in the corner with her brother next to her, sharing the food off of the breakfast tray.
A sudden impact with his shoulder sent both Beilschmidt brothers stumbling. Ludwig turned to glare over his shoulder at the offender, and his blue eyes met Ivan Braginski's deep violet ones, and an involuntary shiver ran down his spine as Ivan gave a smile filled with childish malice. Ludwig could not see anything but those violet eyes that glittered with hatred and were as cold as the most freezing winter snowstorm.
Ivan broke their gaze, continuing down the hall as if nothing had happened, and Ludwig faced forward again, a feeling of dread curling sickeningly in his gut.
"Lud?" Gilbert poked his little brother. "Are you okay, bruder? You look like you've just seen a ghost."
At this remark, Ludwig let out a small laugh. "More like the devil." He replied, earning a laugh as the reached the junction where they would split up to go their separate classes. Gilbert released Ludwig and trotted off down the hallway, leaving the younger to rub at his sore neck as he turned towards his next class.
When he entered his first block, Felicia was already there, sitting hunched in her seat and staring determinedly at her notebook. She didn't look up as Ludwig approached, and the latter decided to sit next to Kiku again, sliding into his seat next to the stoic Japanese boy.
The class dragged on, and Ludwig would swear that his stomach was going to digest itself, it was so empty. Then, his stomach rumbled, quite loudly, and Ludwig was mortified at the angry sound, pressing his hand to the offending organ. Kiku slid him an amused look from the corner of his eye, and next thing Ludwig knew, the shorter boy was slipping a granola bar onto his lap. Ludwig shot Kiku a grateful look as he tore the wrapper open, eating the granola bar as quietly as humanly possible, sighing at the feeling of something in his previously empty stomach. He wasn't full, but it would be enough to tide him over for a few hours.
When the bell rang, Kiku gave Ludwig a sympathetic smile. "Why don't you sit with me at lunch today, Ludwig-san? If you don't have other plans, of course."
"Oh, um, thank you, Kiku." Ludwig said, slightly confused at the invitation. "I don't have any plans, so I'll see you at lunch."
"Hai." Kiku confirmed with a nod, slinging his bag over his shoulder and leaving the room.
Ludwig headed to his next class, pondering the Japanese boy's invitation. Had Ludwig actually managed to make a friend for the first time in his life? It certainly appeared that way. When he entered his second class, his heart suddenly dropped to his toes. Yesterday, he had been too busy on catching up with the class to notice it, but suddenly, the student in the second row of the class was agonizingly familiar. Yesterday, he had admired the girl's silvery blonde wave of hair, but now the sight filled him with dread. It was Natalya.
The rather petite girl ignored him, and Ludwig, who had no choice but to pass her to reach his seat, decided to do so quickly. Not quick enough, apparently. Natalya's foot flew out with blinding speed, and Ludwig tripped, falling into several desks before faceplanting on the floor. He could hear the class laughing.
"Ouch." Ludwig muttered as he climbed to his feet, feeling hot stickiness under his nose. The fingers he touched to it came away red.
"Ludwig, you'd better go visit the nurse." Mr. Wang, the strangely androgynous math teacher, pressed tissues into Ludwig's hand as he scribbled out a note before handing that to Ludwig as well.
"Yes sir." Ludwig said, casting a dark glare at Natalya as he passed her, making sure to keep well out of range of her feet. The blonde merely gave him a victorious smile as he left the room.
The nurse's office was empty, aside from the nurse, a Greek descent woman with a kind smile, and Felicia and Lovino. The pretty girl was hovering anxiously around her brother as the nurse gently cleaned Lovino's busted knuckles. Ludwig drew back, not wanting to call attention to his arrival.
"One day, you'll learn that hitting walls isn't good for you." The nurse sighed, still with that kind smile, dabbing at the split knuckles carefully. Lovino merely grumbled, but he didn't really seem angry with the kind hearted woman.
"I was angry…" Lovino said, and his voice lacked the normal anger that Ludwig had come to expect from the boy.
"Yes, what else is new?" the nurse said, a chuckle in her voice as she wrapped the Italian's hand in gauze. "And how are you, Felicia? Do you need anything?"
"No, I'm okay." Felicia said, giving a winning smile despite the pale bruising decorating half of her face. The nurse smiled gently, slipping an ice pack into Felicia's hand and guiding her to hold it to the bruising.
Ludwig reentered the room, clearing his throat and still holding the bloody tissues to his nose. The nurse jumped right up, pulling Ludwig in and sitting him down. "Hello sweetie, I'm Nurse Demeter. What happened?"
Ludwig opened his mouth to say that he'd been tripped, but found himself changing his story at the last second. "I fell." He said, voice stuffy sounding around the tissues.
From the corner of his eye, Ludwig caught Felicia giving him a strange look, but then the nurse was pulling the tissues away from his nose to inspect the damage.
"It doesn't look like your nose is broken." Nurse Demeter said, touching his nose gently. "And it isn't swelling either. It looks like you may have smacked it just hard enough to make it bleed." She concluded.
"Great." Ludwig sighed. The nurse smiled indulgently, moving to her desk and filling beginning to fill out a form.
"Is there anyone you'd like me to call?" she asked, glancing at him.
"No!" Ludwig hadn't meant to shout, but the last thing he needed was them to call his Opa. He'd be in so much trouble when he got home if they did, and wasn't really ready to spend another few hours avoiding home.
"Alright." The nurse said, looking slightly taken aback at his outburst. She finished filling out the form and filed it away. "Just stay here until the bleeding stops, okay?"
"Yes ma'am." Ludwig said, switching out his tissues for fresh ones. He settled back into his seat.
Lovino hopped off of his own chair, Felicia following barely a second later. "Can I go now?" the older Italian asked, glancing at the nurse. She gave him a nod of consent, and the two redheads booked it from the room, Felicia sparing a quick glance over her shoulder at Ludwig as they passed him.
.-.-.-.-.-.
When lunch rolled around, Ludwig made his way into the cafeteria empty handed. He glanced around before he spotted Kiku sitting at a table with two brunette girls and a sleepy looking brunette boy. Hesitantly, Ludwig sat next to Kiku.
"Hello, Ludwig-san." Kiku said with a smile, inclining his head politely. "These are my friends. Elizaveta-chan, Xiao Mei-chan, and Heracles-kun."
"Call me Mei, it'll simplify your life." The darker haired brunette, evidently of Asian descent, smiled at him.
"And you can call me either Eliza or Lizzie." Elizaveta said, words accented with a dialect that Ludwig instantly recognized as Hungarian.
"Oh!" he said in sudden understanding. "You're the girl who hit my brother in the head with the frying pan, aren't you?"
Eliza gave a laugh at this. "So Gilbert is your brother, huh? Yeah, I hit him alright." Her smile changed to a scowl. "The pervert was trying to cop a feel…" she said bitterly, scowling across the cafeteria at Gilbert's distinct white hair.
"Ludwig-san, I asked you to sit with us for a reason." Kiku spoke up suddenly, his expressionless eyes serious. "Please forgive me for being blunt. You don't have a good home life, do you?"
Ludwig felt his eyes widen, and panic swooped in his stomach. "H-How do you know…?" he asked, his voice coming out slightly strangled.
Kiku looked down at his lunch tray. "I lived in an abusive home for seven years, until my mother was imprisoned. After that, my father and I moved away. It was a very hard time for both of us."
Ludwig looked at the smaller student with revelation. Humble, polite Kiku had probably turned out that way because of an abusive mother. For the first time, Ludwig knew that someone understood what he had been through. Kiku unfolded a napkin, placing half of his sandwich on it, and sliding it across the table to sit in front of Ludwig.
Before Ludwig could open his mouth to say anything, his voice died and he could only stare as Eliza passed him a bag of chips, and Mei tossed him an orange. Ludwig was at a loss for words, but Mei and Eliza both gave him an understanding smile.
A flash of red caught Ludwig's eye, and he turned, reaching out his hand subconsciously as Felicia passed him, catching her small wrist in his hand. The redhead spun around, eyes wide and terrified for a moment before she seemed to recognize who had grabbed her.
"My goodness, you scared me, Ludwig!" Felicia gasped, breathless in her fright, an embarrassed flush on her cheeks.
"My apologies." Ludwig said, pressing the orange into Felicia's hand and releasing her wrist, turning back to the others with his heart pounding and face feeling hot. He heard Felicia continue on her way after a moment.
"Are you alright, Ludwig-san?" Kiku asked.
"He's fine." Eliza said, as she and Mei exchanged a knowing smile.
"In all seriousness, I am worried for Felicia." Ludwig said, his voice a low rumble as that now-familiar concern curled in his gut. "All of those bruises… You don't get bruises like those from falling down the stairs, believe me. I think…"
"She's being abused." Mei said softly, brown eyes sad as she watched Felicia's retreating figure.
Ludwig nodded. "Yes."