GOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOODD I hit such an enormous brickwall with this story X.x Seriously, how long have I put it off? No wait, don't tell me xP

BelleDanseuse: Thank you so much. That means a whole lot to me.

honey-boo-skii: Haha, gotcha . No, that guy still has a quite a long way until he realizes the error of his ways.

CarmillaD: Aah, con razón. Ahora entiendo la referencia. Generalmente me gusta y valoro más la serie original que el fanfiction que le hacen, pero en este caso noo xD

Pssh, no sos sádica, se lo re merecía ^^ Gracias como siempre nena… Acá va más Tyler para vos…

OneSecondEternity: D'aww, you cried? :# Thanks for the fave :) You inspired me to pick up this story. That is, even before I read you asking for it. I just opened my mail and saw the alerts and I went 'damn, people are giving attention to this story and I completely semi-abandoned it xP'. I'm sincerely sorry I took so long, hey I'm angry at me too xD

Part VIII

A good hour and a half had passed since Courtney had given Gwen the fright of her life, aiming a killer blow at her already destroyed nerves, and the Goth was still jittery.

Now, don't get her wrong. She wasn't intimidated by the brown-haired CIT— but her reaction, it had freaked her out.

The girl was just so weird. She came off as just a regular over-achiever that liked to flaunt her trophies –real or metaphorical- and blame things that came out wrong on other people. But when you looked more closely, she was actually kind of crazy.

She just did the exact opposite of what one expected of her. There you thought you knew her and then bam! She did something like this. It was quite frightening, in that it was unsettling.

She couldn't stop picturing Courtney's face… Her expression when Gwen realized she knew everything had been engraved so strongly in the Goth's mind, that she wouldn't be surprised if it plagued her dreams for the next fifty years. Memories of the wrongs she had committed as a teenager.

And somehow, Gwen knew that if she didn't feel worse about this was because, in a level of her subconscious, she felt like Courtney deserved it.

But that was bullshit. No one deserved this, especially someone like Courtney. For whom it was obviously so hard to open up, and who had finally found someone to lean on in the boy Gwen had stolen. Who looked like the last person to deserve something good, and was probably the first.

Looking back in the events –not just from this season, but from the last one as well-, Gwen realized that she didn't even know who she was anymore.

Two years ago, she could safely say she was a good person. Now, she wasn't so sure.

Pherhaps this was growing up.

Gwen was so hung up on her thoughts, that she didn't notice when she bumped into none other than Duncan himself.

Before she could say anything, he reached out for her arm. "Don't worry about Courtney. She's just venting. Let her cool off."

"How'd you…-"

"Tyler," he said. "He thinks that… that she saw us in the cargo hold."

"Oh my God, Duncan, it was horrible!" she exploded, covering her eyes with her hands. "She just kept screaming, and at one point I seriously thought she was gonna bite my head off!" Duncan could see that her current state was half fright of Courtney and half her own guilt eating her up.

He draped an arm around her shoulders, and let her continue to vent. She told him about the whole encounter, from beginning to end.

"…and then she told me we could go get married and get a house with a fence and a dog," she told. "And she looked like she meant it, Duncan. Like she really didn't wanna have anything to do with us anymore." She paused. "I believed her. I don't know…" she trailed off.

Then they both fell quiet, and Duncan looked like he was thinking over something.

"…Are you sure she said a dog?"

Gwen looked up. "What?" She was surprised even he would joke at a time like this.

"Um…" Duncan looked hesitant. "Are you sure she said dog? Didn't she say… golden retriever…maybe?"

The Goth realized he was serious, and thought back to Courtney's actual words. "Yeah, actually… that's exactly what she said."

She then looked at him, expecting him to explain whether this meant something or if it was some kind of code, but but Duncan uttered an, "Oh," and looked away, his face impassible, as if it didn't meant anything. Gwen hated when he just shut off that way.

She was about to interrogate him further, to try to get a little bit of truth out of him, but when she opened her mouth, she discovered she didn't have the energy. It didn't seem to be worth the effort. Gwen closed her mouth and looked outside the window.

She was used to things being out of her control.

"A truth that's told with bad intent beats all the lies you can invent."

-William Blake

"I love you."

It had been spoken softly, secretly, in a concealed space between his hand and his girlfriend's hair.

He had to be extra-close to her ear for her to hear him in the middle of the raging party that took place around them. And their suddenly motionless and quietfigures constrasted with the loud dance music and the half-crazed bodies swirling around them; but it was just as well, because as soon as that sentence came out, everything else seemed to be out of importance. Everything that didn't involve the two of them became colorless.

"I love you so much, Princess."

For the past week he had been trying the sentence on his mind, testing it, seeing if it still felt true after days, continually after the first time it had ocurred to him, a Tuesday while . Every time he saw her he would try that sentence in his mind.

As for why he had chosen that particular moment to get out with it, Duncan could find no reason for, other than to blame it in the fact that she was almost profanely beautiful when she danced.

He dared to break away; a thousand fearful posibilities shot through his head in the split second until he got a look at her expression. There, to his great relief, was a smile as bright as he had ever seen in hers. He posed his forehead on hers.

"I feel like marrying you tomorrow, and," his throat was suddenly dry, but he swallowed and went on, "and get you everything you want. A big house with a white fence and shit like that, and like twelve mini you's and me's a-and…"

He trailed off and Courtney suddenly cut him off with a kiss.

When she pulled back, she was still wearing a bright smile. Duncan held his breath for what she was going to say, the reason she had silenced him.

"…and a golden retriever," she breathed.

"Huh?" Duncan was taken aback.

"My favorite dog," she said. "It's not a house without one."

Duncan looked at her for a while. Her words poked fun at him, but the line of tears on her eyes and the soft tone she was speaking in prevented him from taking offense. Even though it wasn't what he had expected, he felt the corners of his lips tug upwards, and couldn't help but laugh along with her. He then closed the distance between them in a second kiss.

"I love you too," Courtney whispered softly against his lips.

Duncan had never seen, and never thought he would see, Courtney accept somebody's advances so quickly.

Was Alejandro's apparent Latin charm that strong? Or was it because ofDuncan himself, because of what he had done, that she was so fast to jump into another's arms? Was she trying to make him jealous? Or maybe to move on as fast as she could?

It was true that he was rather far away, plus it could have been his own interests making him see what he wanted to see, but if you asked him, the sultry look Courtney's eyes gave Alejandro as they fed each other chocolate cookies had nothing on the way they used to come alive when she looked at him.

The punk then heard an inhumanly loud burp behind him, and he was reminded that he was not alone in economy class, and that he had spent too long with his head poking out staring at his ex-girlfriend. It was getting to the point where he could no longer claim he was merely supervising the unfolding of his plan.

He turned right around and stuck his hands in his pockets as he strutted to his seat.

"Well," he sighed loudly. "I never knew my ex was such a slut."

Tyler shot his back a dirty look. "It's called healing, asshole."

Duncan halted. His temper flare as he whipped around to glower the other boy. "What did I tell you about talking to me that way?" He didn't give the boy a chance to answer as he gathered the shirt of his collar and raised him from his seat. He was secretly thankful he was allowing him to push all of his previous thought to the back of his mind. "Stop acting like you have a right to talk like that to me—'cause you don't."

His eyes delivered a clear message to Tyler: This was it, he thought. The end of the way.

Owen chuckled nervously. "Uh, he didn't mean what he said, Duncan, right?" he intervened from his corner. "You didn't mean to call him an asshole, did you Tyler?"

The other two stared at each other, Duncan waiting for the jock to confirm the blonde's words.

I mean everything I say, Tyler thought about saying. The question was, how much did he value his life?

Fortunately, he didn't have to make that decision, because in that moment, Alejandro walked back into the compartment, and chuckled at the scene before him.

"Amigos, what are we fighting about? This is a moment to celebrate."

Duncan crooked his head towards him. "Celebrate what?"

"Our plan is working to perfection," the Latino said slyly. "She's buying it."

"Awesome," replied Duncan emotionlessly.

Alejandro seemed to consider something in his head. "I must say Duncan, I'm at a loss as to why you decided to… end it with such a sweet lady."

Duncan raised a surprised half eyebrow, and he set the hovering Tyler aside for the second time this week.

"Dude. You trust that chick, it'll be the last thing you do," he said honestly, but then he thought of how much fun it would be to see the proud ladies' man reduced to mush at Courtney's hand. Thankfully, Alejandro didn't seem to take his warnings seriously.

"Anyway, later dudes," he said as he walked in direction to the door. "I've got stuff to do." But in reality he just wanted to walk. A low-class, crammy plane compartment got claustrophobic after a while. He only hoped he wouldn't find Courtney in the halls, but he was willing to bet she was doing quality-slash-strategy time with the other Amazons.

It was in this solitary setting that Duncan got to thinking about the irony of his current predicament. In his dream, he did not want Courtney and Alejandro together, and tried with all his might to keep them apart. In his waking life, he pushed them together.

He tried to swallow the heavy feeling in his stomach.

But, as he rationalized a second later, he was on the right path. He still wanted his revenge.

As he walked the hallways, Duncan had a vague idea that people passed him by and gave him dirty looks, yet they were all shadows with no faces to him. But in one occasion, one of the shadows stopped when they saw him.

"Hi."

Duncan did a double-take. "Oh, hey," he said as warmly as he could. He had almost passed by Gwen as he passed everyone else.

He slung an arm around her shoulders. "How are you?"

As he listened to his sort-of new girlfriend talk, Duncan almost felt guilty. He hadn't meant to use his friend Gwen. She had just been in the wrong place at the wrong time.

The girl under his arm was… a break, of sorts, to him.

That wasn't to say he was deceiving her or anything. He had even said it to her face and she hadn't even minded. He had looked at her straight in the eyes after she suggested they just went with the flow in their relationship, and internally chuckled in relief because finally! somebody who saw things his way, and then he had said it,

"See? That there is why I like you."

That is why I like you. Because you make is to so easy on me. Becuase you make yourself so easy to use. Because you are, out of your own will, saying the words I wish Courtney would say to me. Because you're giving me everything she never will.

…What he felt for Courtney was trickier.

One of the things that constantly amazed him was how not a moment of silence could go by between them when they were together in a room. No matter how much they both tried to hold back, no matter what they were doing and no matter what situation their relationship was in, one of them would always say something and they would end up fighting.

That was the pump, the sheer energy, that was distinctive of their relationship. It was distinctive of Courtney herself, and apparently, distinctive of Duncan too, as he had discovered when Courtney gave him the right environment to react.

It was viciously addictive, and the reason Duncan found himself going back to her every time.

But it was also the reason that would send him packing in the end, running desperately in the opossite direction and praying that she wouldn't find him.

He knew no one would ever make him feel what he felt with Courtney.

And couldn't have been gladder that it was that way.

Short-ish, I know, but next chapter… Well I want to tell you what happens next chapter… but I won't. ^^

~The Lighthouse