AN: Eli's first day back back at Degrassi. This can only end well. -insert sarcasm here-

Warnings:

Disclaimer: I don't own Degrassi.

Chapter Ten

It's Too Late To Apologize

Eli's hands start to shake, so he shoves them in his pockets. He doesn't want to deal with this right now.

He doesn't want to deal with this ever.

It didn't happen as far as he's concerned. Now if only there wasn't a jagged, if ruggedly handsome according to Clare, scar reminding him every time he looked in the mirror.

Clare loops an arm through his with a reassuring smile. Sometimes he hates that she can read him so well. He doesn't want to acknowledge that he needs to reassured. Adam cracks a smile and then pretends to gag behind his hand. The action is so jarringly normal that Eli has no choice but to smile. Things don't have to change, he tells himself. He can just go to school and date Clare and hang out with Adam and nothing has to change.

Which is when he sees him.

Eli's heart stops beating. His lungs stop breathing. His eyes stop seeing. His feet stop moving.

And then as if making up for lost time everything is going two times fast. Heatbeat, breathing, blurring-whirling vision, shaking-trembling muscles. Eli wonders if this is what a panic attack feels like.

He's coming this way. He's coming here. Here.

Black speckles his vision, little flakes of nothing that threaten to overwhelm him. A trembling hand comes out of his pocket, disengaging his arm-lock with Clare and he clutches at his chest. Suddenly everything hurts all over.

"I can make you feel it."

Oh god. Adam steps in front of him, so protective, and suddenly Eli doesn't want to be protected. He wants Fitz to grab hold of him and finish what he started when he slammed his head into the pavement. He wants Fitz to do it over and over until he sees crimson blood and white bone and gray brain. Until there's nothing left of Elijah Goldsworthy.

"Eli," Fitz starts. No. Eli doesn't want to hear this. Doesn't want to hear the voice that haunted his nightmares when he couldn't wake up. "I'm so sorry."

Something, somewhere, snaps. Eli's bent and bent and bent until he no longer resembled anything like himself but he can't bend anymore.

He's broken.

"You're sorry?" Eli hates the way his voice trembles and breaks. "You're sorry?" He doesn't make the conscious decision to, but he's pushing past Adam and slamming his fist as hard as he can into Fitz's monstrous, remorseful face. He topples like a sack of potatoes.

And Eli starts kicking him. Face, stomach, arms, legs. Anything and everything he can reach. He can hear Clare screaming at him, begging him to stop, but he can't remember why that should matter. All he knows is that this boy, this man, this monster took something from him that he can never get back. Took everything from him.

And then, Adam's there. Arms locking around him and dragging him away whispering words that used to be important in his ears.

"You'll never touch me!" Eli finds himself shouting at the boy curled around himself on the ground. "Never again. Never."

Adam hauls him to Morty and practically throws him inside. "Go home."

"What?" Bits of the real world are slipping in again. Clare's staring at him a mix of confusion and horror, and he can't tell which side is winning or at whom the horror is directed.

"Go home. I'll talk to Simpson." And then he's leaving, tugging Clare along after him.

And Eli's left sitting in a hearse shaking like a leaf in wind, clinging desperately to the last shreds of his sanity and feeling himself losing grip.