A/N- Fun fact: Schizophrenia is actually caused by too much serotonin, which is basically the thing that makes you happy. So schizo people are essentially too happy, and drugs that bring you down stop your brain from getting it, and so without thinking, Hussie made Gamzee a grade an example of a self-medicating Schizophrenic. Which is why I analyzed him as such for my AP psych project. Anyway, here's chapter 3!

School started that year, and Tavros was rushing to class as usual, so that no one had time to pick on him, when he heard footsteps behind him. He looked back, expecting any given member of the football team, but instead found that it was the violet-eyed clown boy. He raised his brow in question, wondering what the boy wanted.

"Yo, Tavbro!" He called, jogging up to the boy in the wheelchair.

Tavros looked up at him, and Gamzee caught his breath for a moment, before pulling a piece of paper from his pocket. The pocket of purple spotted black jeans, something Tavros had never seen before. He wondered where the other boy had gotten them.

"I need help finding my classes, bro. This school is all up and motherfuckin confusing. The 300 hall turns into 500 half-way through, and shit like that." He said, and Tavros flinched at each curse. Not only did he not like foul language, but also the teachers defiantly didn't, and they were always walking around looking for an innocent victim.

"That's because it's new, and there was already a 400 hall. And I thought you were older than me. You're just a sophomore?"

"Uh… I fell behind. School wasn't really my focus for a couple years." He said, vague and more reserved than usual. Tavros noticed that his eyes were sort of glazed, and he wondered if his new friend did drugs.

"Oh. Anyway, we have a lot of the same classes together, so just follow me, I guess." Tavros said, and Gamzee smiled.

"Thanks, Tav. On to math class!" Gamzee said, getting behind the chair and pushing it. People looked at them strangely, partially because Gamzee still had clown make-up on, and partially because Gamzee was pushing him, when no one else had ever done so before. He was new, and it wouldn't be long before rumors of the two of them being together would circulate the school.

…

Surprisingly, Gamzee was fairly good at math. He answered every question, while everyone else simply sat there confused. Multiplying matrices was something very few got as quickly as he, and the teacher didn't seem happy about him being one of them. He was strange in a small town where everything had to meet the status quo. He was different, and if Tavros knew anything about people, it was that they didn't like different.

Two minutes before the bell rang, the teacher said that he had nothing left to do. Gamzee was seated next to Tavros, seeing as how no one else wanted to be within six feet of either outcast. Tavros was at a small table, so that he could just push his chair up to it, and Gamzee had scooted a desk over to sit next to him.

"How do you get this? It's so hard!" Tavros complained, and Gamzee's half-lidded eyes just smiled at him.

"You aren't good at multi-tasking, are you, Tav?"

"I don't know. But still, it's hard." The cripple's lip pouted, and Gamzee's breath caught in his throat, causing him to cough a few times.

"Anyway, I could help you with it, if you want. You could come by my place, or I could come by yours." The clown offered.

"I suppose. You seem to be able to do it better than the teacher." The quiet boy laughed a little, and it was like music to Gamzee's ears. Just the sound made him smile a little wider.

"I'm not that good. Anyway, who's house do you wanna do it at? Or maybe a library?"

"Oh, um… The library works." Tavros said, not really wanting his sister to scare off his only friend with her creepy smell-talk. He also didn't want to be alone with him just yet. Not because he particularly distrusted him, simply that he didn't know him all that well.

"Ok. We'll go after school. I'll make up some problems before then." Gamzee said, as the bell rang. They didn't share the next class, but Gamzee wheeled Tavros to his nonetheless, and showed up late to his second period. Tavros blushed the entire time he was being moved around by his friend.

….

Gamzee finished the day with no problems, something he couldn't wait to report to his caretaker. The voices hadn't so much as sneezed for the entire day. He hadn't even had to take one of the pills that he kept with him at all times. They were kind of like an emergency inhaler for the insane. He took one, and he calmed down within fifteen minutes, so the doctor said. Of course, the left him pretty much half-asleep for the next eight hours. He figured that was better than killing someone and ending up in the hospital again, though. His normal medicine seemed to be working well enough.

At the local library, a small thing with only a few hundred books and an encyclopedia, Tavros and Gamzee sat down for the strange tutoring. People would likely have assumed Gamzee dumb due to his strange appearance, but the fact was he was quite the intelligent boy. Just with serious issues.

"Okay, so you multiply these numbers, and then add them with the product of these numbers?" Tavros asked, starting to get the hang of it after seven problems.

"Yep. See, I knew you could all up and get it." Gamzee said, ruffling his hair, not even thinking about it. It had been what Karkat did to him when he was in the hospital, and he didn't consciously remember it, but his body knew it was reassuring. What he did notice was the fact that as his hand was raised, Tavros flinched away, as if expecting to be hit. The smile fell from Gamzee's face, and he excused himself, saying that he needed to go to the bathroom.

Tavros wondered what he had done wrong. There had been a big smile, and his clown friend had been so happy. Was his hair greasy, and he went to wash his hands? He ran his hands through the dark chocolate mohawk, and found it to be a little dry if anything.

Gamzee's reaction, however, had nothing to do with anything that Tavros had done wrong. When he had flinched, Gamzee realized that he was used to being hit, and the voices started up again. Once in the bathroom, he locked the door, and took the small bottle from his pocket, dry swallowing one. He read the label, and took two more, though the voices only seemed to get louder. Tears started in his eyes, as they got so loud it was giving him a headache. He looked at himself in the mirror, fingers gripping the porcelain of the sink so hard his hands were white, rather than their normal pale pink.

Behind him was the monster that had haunted him for a decade. Like a mix of himself and a lion, with a victorious smirk on his face.

"Go away." Gamzee growled at it, teeth clenched.

"Come on, Gamzee. Don't you want to make the people who hurt him pay?" The voices said, uniting into one.

"Yes, but not the way you like to play ball. I can't take back what's been done. Only be with him so it doesn't happen again."

"But you can't always be with him. What if they find him while you're gone?"

"I can't do anything about that."

"You can kill them, Gamzee."

"They'd send me back to the hospital."

"So you're that selfish?"

"I can't protect him from there."

"He won't need it if you kill them all."

"I can't, and I won't. Just go away."

"You'll warm up to the idea soon enough." The voices started getting softer as the medicine started working. Gamzee felt himself become heavier, and he was stumbling as he walked out of the bathroom.

Tavros looked up as his friend came out, looking a lot more sluggish than usual. He wondered if the boy had just smoked something in there. It made sense.

"Hey, that took a while, are you okay?" Tavros asked, wondering what the cover-up would be.

"I'm fine. Whatever was for lunch isn't agreeing with me. We should get home. Come on, I'll carry your stuff." Gamzee said, packing up the books into Tavros' brown back-pack, and placing it on the back of the wheel chair before wheeling him down the ramp and heading toward their homes.

…

"Hey, Gamzee! Where the fuck are you?" Karkat yelled through the house, and Gamzee walked down the stairs, his eyes barely open, and stumbling like a drunk.

"I'm right here, motherfucker." The young man replied.

"So you had to take one of the pills?" the nurse asked, sighing. He had hoped the kid would last at least one day.

"Three. One didn't work." He said, sitting on the black leather couch, sinking in to the thick cushions.

"What! You could have overdosed you dumb fuck!" Karkat yelled, scowling.

"But if not, I might have hurt Tav. It was just the two of us when it happened." Gamzee said, as if that much should have been obvious.

"Tell me what happened." Karkat said, sitting in his recliner. Gamzee told him about how even the voices seemed to be really protective of the small boy. The nurse said that this made sense, considering the voices were essentially a more violent version of him. They carried his desires, without his morals.

"So what am I supposed to do?" Gamzee asked. Since he had met him, Karkat had always had the answers, or at least an answer. He trusted the Asian nurse with his life and sanity.

"Just take the pills, and try to avoid any situation in which either you or Tavros could be in danger. That means coming straight home. Any extra studying will be done at one of your houses, preferably his. That way you don't have to worry about him going home from here. You can use the car on Fridays, when I'm off." Karkat said, ruffling his messy black hair.

In spite of the fact that he was a grown man, Gamzee acted a lot like a child. He got up from the couch to place his head on Karkat's lap and fall asleep. Karkat sighed, and rubbed his head to keep him from having nightmares, as was common with the poor boy.