He had been wrong.

If there was one thing no genius enjoyed, it was being wrong. It was almost an insult, really.

He had gotten emotional, and he had gotten every. Single. Thing. Wrong. Having it thrown in his face by both his best friend and a clumsy, utterly ordinary little nobody stung like a personal affront.

The pity stung just as much. The knowledge that his moment of weakness had had a witness was nearly too much to bear. The combination of the three set his heart rate racing and filled him with vehement anger until his limbs shook with it. He could feel the rational part of him be slowly crowded to the back of his mind, choked off by fury and heated shame.

"Was that really necessary?" Eddward growled, his voice low. He was outwardly calm, and practiced at remaining that way, though he doubted Marie was fooled. She knew him too well.

She looked him in the eye, unwavering. "Yes."

"You were not involved."

"'Were' being the operative term here."

"This is not a joke, Marie!" he snapped.

"You're telling me!" she retorted. "Besides, you were upset. That makes me involved whether you like it or not."

"Oh, and I'm not upset now," he snarled, his tone drenched in sarcasm. The anger made an attempt to flare up, but with some effort he kept it low, under control, like a Bunsen burner. "You are not my keeper, Marie."

A quiet scoff. "Could've fooled me. I'm gone for a little over a week and look what happens."

"My business is my own!" he snapped again. He struggled inwardly, fighting to keep his anger contained. "You had no right to interfere that way! You went too far. Do you have any idea how many boundaries you overstepped–?"

"You were hurting someone." She was shaking, but not faltering.

Her words, and the tone with which she spoke them, threw salt on the wound, and his temper flared. "Don't you dare judge me!" She cringed, and almost unconsciously he backed off, but did not back down. "What gives you the right?" he demanded. "What gives you the right to stand there and – and lecture me on what I do?"

She met him head-on, an immovable object meeting an unstoppable force. "Are you angrier that I got involved, or that you were wrong?"

Something in him snapped, and his leashed anger blazed completely out of his control. "You were not there, Marie!" His voice rose before he could stop it, and it was a losing battle to bring it back under control. "It was not any of your business, and yet you went and meddled and – and–"

He was pushing her, some part of him acknowledged. He could see it in her face, in the hardening of her expression, her eyes. "And what, Edd."

The heart of the matter slipped out before he could stop it.

"Youtook his side!"

Marie recoiled as if he had aimed a blow at her, but he was past caring because it was not fair, it was nowhere near fair, because she was his friend, his confidant, the only person he would ever allow to touch his possessions, or know when and where and why he hurt, or see what it looked like when he was weak, and she had gone and used that, had defended someone else, had stood against him –

Everything hurt, and no amount of effort from him would bury it or wrest it aside. And when he felt this helpless, all he could do was push, lash out, fight back against whatever was within reach. "What is your problem?" he demanded. "I thought you and I were friends! Was I wrong about that, as well?"

He had not seen the tears until it was too late, until they were already there, spilling over as Marie opened her eyes wide and pushed back.

"My problem is that I am your friend!" It was difficult to describe her tone. She was not simply shouting at him; in fact, she may not have been shouting at all. But every word struck, penetrated, dug in like nails. Tears glittered in her eyes and on her face, and he took a step back. "My problem is that I care about you, Double D! And – and sometimes I just get so scared that one day I'll look around and realize I'm the only one!" She breathed in, and it made an awful, anguished noise that had a similar effect on his anger to that of ice water on fire. "I don't want that," she said shakily. "Because I was on your side. I'm always on your side. Don't you realize that he was, too?"

Eddward gaped at her, for once at a loss for words. He had never been one to curse, particularly at himself, but he could understand in that moment why some people felt the need.

She stopped, shutting her eyes as if gathering herself back together, but when the tears continued, she opened them again. It hurt to meet her eyes, but if she could do it, then so could he. "I just want you to be happy," she said, her voice trembling. "A-and I'm tired of watching you act like you don't, o-or ruining it when someone comes along who might actually want that too." She wiped her eyes, futilely, bravely keeping her face as straight as she could. "I know you don't want to hear it," she went on quietly. "But I care about you. And what makes me sad, what makes me just – so angry with you – is that he could've cared, too."

"Marie–"

The first bell rang.

Students had already begun trickling back in, but now the hum of conversation outside grew as more headed either for their lockers or their next classes. At any moment, the next class would be arriving, and any hope for privacy would be entirely gone.

Marie turned to the door. "I gotta go." Even without her facing him, Edd could see her wiping her eyes on the heel of her hand.

He took a step toward her. "Marie, wait–"

She was already walking away, opening the door that Kevin had slammed shut minutes before. "I have class, Double D. I'll see you later, okay?"

He darted after her. "Marie!" She was already gone, leaving Edd standing alone outside the computer lab.

One curious student – Edd supposed he recognized him from free period – had apparently noticed the final exchange, and looked quizzically from Marie's retreating back to Edd. Edd fixed him with a stare that was fully attentive and nothing short of venomous, and his classmate walked away quickly with a sudden and deep fascination with the ground.

He still had reason to hope, he supposed. She would not have called him that if she had wanted nothing more to do with him, after all. Still, he decided, as he turned to walk briskly to his next class, he would be very glad when this entire affair was behind them.

Kevin supposed it was a good thing, that Eddward knew. Not that he had ever considered it a bad thing. But throughout the previous week, he had wanted nothing more than for Eddward to know, when at this point it seemed so... hollow.

At the very least, it couldn't be worse than Eddward assuming he was both stupid and a thief (and really, in this case, the two were interchangeable).

Kevin decided, after some thought, that he was not angry with Marie. Nor was he particularly pleased. He wasn't entirely sure how he felt, because... did it even matter at this point? It would be better, safer for it not to matter. There was no point. If there was one, he didn't see it.

He paid attention in class, but he still felt strangely detached, hollow, like a puppet with its strings cut and its stuffing removed. That was an awkward way to describe it, though, because words like that made it sound so unpleasant. If anything, it felt... lighter, almost. Freer. He had forgotten the specifics of his earlier outburst, but for the first time in over a week, since he had watched a track team athlete walk away with two accomplices at his side and Eddward's dogtags swinging carelessly from one hand, since he had stood silent and trembling while Eddward sobbed quietly on the other side of the locker room, since he had stepped out of the safety of neutrality and snatched the tags from their hiding place, Kevin felt like he could breathe the way he was meant to. No uncomfortable weight in his chest, no Sword of Damocles hanging over his head, no lump in his throat that no amount of swallowing would rid him of.

If anything, he felt clearer than he had before the entire mess had even started, and God was it distracting. Every now and then he checked himself to make sure he wasn't light enough to float away.

But when it all came down to it, Kevin realized absently over his lunch, he had no idea how to feel about any of it.

Kevin furtively watched his friends from his vantage point behind his sandwich. None of them knew about what had happened during break. Well, there was the slightest possibility that Nazz knew, if Marie had told her, but considering how Marie was when Eddward was involved, it was pretty slim. He wondered if he should tell them. He wondered about a lot of things.

"I don't think you should give it up."

Kevin paused in chewing.

The statement had come from Nazz, who was not looking at him, but could not have been addressing anyone else.

Nat stared quizzically at her over his half-eaten burrito. "What?"

Nazz's eyes flickered up to meet Kevin's, who stared at her in bland curiosity. "Remember your question? About what the point is?"

Swallowing, Kevin nodded wordlessly.

"Well, I don't know what the answer is. Hell, I don't even think there is an answer." She hesitated, twitching her spoon thoughtfully. "Not just one, at least. But what I do know is that praise and recognition is exactly what the point of being a good person isn't. That's what integrity is, right? Doing the right thing even if no one's watching?"

"Yeah, but in the case of Kevin, someone was watching, and that someone was a friend of Shark-Edd-Boy," Rolf pointed out dryly. "That was the whole of the trouble, yes?"

"I know, but – look." Nazz put her spoon back in her fruit salad. "I mean, first of all, Kevin, what happened to you wasn't your fault, but you still could've been a little smarter about it." Kevin scowled at her. "I mean smarter than leaving a worksheet with your name on it for those dumb jocks to find, or sneaking into the pool locker rooms. You know? And really, even if Douchey Dick had known from the beginning, do you really think he'd magically start being nice to you?"

"That's not why I did it," Kevin protested, feeling a bit defensive.

"Then why'd you do it?" Nat broke in.

Kevin glanced at his feet, the honest answer hovering on the tip of his tongue. Because he cried. Because they were his, and he loved them and wanted them back, and he cried when he couldn't find them. Nothing would have stopped him from saying it out loud. Sharing Eddward's weakness with his friends would have been a decent little act of revenge, after all. And yet...

There had been no one else, to his knowledge. No one else had been in that locker room and heard and seen what he had heard and seen; not Jimmy, not Marie. Just him. It had been his secret, his own piece to the puzzle that was Eddward Rockwell, and it was bad enough that he had lost his temper and blurted it out to Eddward himself, in front of Marie. Why should he spread it any further?

After all he had been through over one altruistic act, he could afford to be a little selfish.

"I don't know," he said simply, because in a way, that was also still true.

"Look at it this way, Kevin," Nazz went on. "Being an ass to everyone is easy. Being selfish and mean and thoughtless, it's all so easy. Being a good person is hard." She raised an eyebrow at Kevin. "You really want to pick the easy way just because people might not thank you for not being a dickhead? Just because Eddward doesn't get it?"

"No," Kevin said automatically. "That would be..." His voice trailed off a little. "It'd be a little like..."

"Letting him win," Rolf broke in. "Folding like Nanna's adversaries in midnight poker bouts."

"What he said," Kevin finished, fist-bumping him. In spite of himself, he grinned. "Yeah. I think I can do it the hard way." Perhaps a little self-righteous satisfaction with his own moral superiority wasn't quite the right reason to, as Nazz put it, not be a dickhead, but it beat being a nihilist.

It beat being someone like Eddward.