Who cared about fixing their stupid hair? No one wanted anything to do with him anymore. Even though he had only been suspended. The girl had been expelled. …His uncle said his ear would be fine, but Vlad wanted to keep it covered.

A 'cup' over his ear, a white 'headband' across his forehead to help keep it there, Vlad was slumped over the table, staring at shelves populated with his uncle's collection of oddities. Pitying himself in a mopey sort of way, Vlad wondered if he was one of those oddities, part of the collection. He didn't have the heart to ask when Walter walked across his field of vision, entering with a "Sit up straight," and exiting with a "Do something useful."

Having served three days of his out of school suspension, Vlad had observed some alterations in his uncle's habits. For one thing, Walter was consistently home for two or so hours while Vlad was actually awake. And Walter would sit at the table of mismatched chairs, otherwise dubbed "Vlad's Purgatory," and have his tea and scan through the stack of newspapers Vlad fetched for him every morning. There was little to glean from any one newspaper, or so his uncle said.

Walter was back with his tea, but rather than reach for the first of the papers, currently waiting for him on a nearby chair, he watched the slumped over, self-pitying little boy. Taking up one of the papers, Walter sat down, "Sit up."

Vlad straightened, and gradually, as minutes ticked, wilted back onto the table.

Walter would have told the boy to stop looking so pathetic, if he hadn't known a comment like that would only depress Vlad further. So he only gave his nephew reminders, to straighten his back, to raise his head. But eventually, Walter tried another tactic - dropping his brother's name: "How did Vlad get you to sit up straight?" Walter did not look away from his paper immediately, but, even though he had waited for the boy to compose himself, Vladimir's expression was still wary and embarrassed when he eventually looked up.

Vlad shrugged, but he sat up straighter and pushed back his shoulders.

Walter's eyes traversed the newspaper, methodical and unimpressed by any of the articles, "You should get out of the house."

Vlad frowned at the wall, turning his ankles restlessly under the table of mismatched chairs. He felt like a mismatched nephew. "I just… want to stay here." What he really wanted to do was explain himself better, but he found that he couldn't.

Walter, depositing his current paper on the chair to his right, took up a new paper from the chair on his left. "Then you can work on your homework," Walter turned pages so that the rustling could excuse Vlad's delayed response.

"I can do the homework later…"

"No."

Vlad dropped his face into his arms on the table, and remained limp, withholding a groan.

Walter took up his tea, "Sit up straight."

…

Once it was officially the afternoon, using an 'after-school' definition of 'afternoon', Vlad wandered over endless sidewalk paths, breathing deeply as he tasted the faint crispness of the approaching winter. The sun was going to set in a couple hours, but before it got dark, he wandered, guided by lonesome wants, towards the regular hangout. He listened outside the windows and the door for voices. He checked nearby streets for certain cars. Vlad found Jake's car, so he went inside.

Whatever they had been talking about, the four teenagers angled in chairs that crowded a square table, stopped to look at Vlad. Someone got up and went into the other room. Vlad watched the teen go, feeling numb and scared. He swallowed and stared at his shoes and the carpet, slowly merging into the nearest wall. They started to ignore him, but their voices were low, difficult even for Vlad to make out. Vlad wanted to ask them where Jake was, but he'd glued himself to the wall, and couldn't make himself pull any farther away from the door.

Eventually, Vlad heard clinking chips (actually plastic checker pieces) on the table, as the boys resorted to a game of poker. Jake lumbered into existence too suddenly for Vlad's constricted little heart, which blasted into his throat, and made him stare, wide-eyed, at the cushioned, beat up armchair directly in front of him. Vlad predicted correctly that Jake wouldn't ignore him for long. But he'd found it difficult to envision Jake sitting in that armchair, which was too far away to conduct a confidential conversation - for them to talk in whispers. Somehow, Jake sat in the chair, and Vlad lifted his head timidly, to meet his gaze.

Jake was calm, even a bit… sorrowful – not angry, at least. But there was disappointment in his face, and Vlad couldn't stomach the sight of it. He realized anger might have been preferable, though ten times scarier. He could at least outrun an enraged Jake. But a disappointed Jake… that was a new one. No way to run from disappointment.

Vlad realized too late that Jake was making this into some kind of public interrogation. Vlad wasn't aware of what would have happened to him if he'd been three years older; he didn't know the rules about hitting girls in their gang.

"Are you going to try and explain yourself?"

Vlad stared at Jake dumbly, nearly slack jawed. He looked nervously away, after noticing that the poker game had been paused. With the encroaching, somehow incriminating, silence, Jake gave the kid a second chance.

"How's your ear?"

Flinching, since he'd forgotten about the cup, Vlad hunched against the wall, his fingertips touching the plastic softly. He'd walked all over the place with this thing on his head. And he hadn't noticed any changes in other people on the street. Because he was used to people treating him, looking at him, as though he were damaged or dangerous.

"It's-" Vlad swallowed with difficulty, and tried to moisten his dry mouth. "It's… okay."

Then there was more silence. Vlad noticed the room was darkening. The sun had passed behind a building, or something…

"We don't hit girls." Jake watched as Vlad's crumpled sense of self-worth was kicked from one anxious foot to another, as Vlad shifted his weight, rocking a little as he tried to think, tried to rein in his dread. Jake checked on the others seated at the poker table, and someone nodded to encourage him, to show he wasn't being too intimidating. "We would have kicked you out altogether," Jake didn't meet Vlad's wide eyes.

The boy wasn't sure what Jake meant, but interpreted it to mean that his friends would have completely disowned him, all together, over this stupid girl. The thought sparked an ember in his brain, and the boys at the poker table were disturbed to see Vlad grit his teeth and grimace, stiffening his posture. He cracked individual fingers by his side, which gained Jake's attention, and gave the teen-giant cause for unease.

Vlad bit his lip, and then propelled himself through his own reluctant questions: "So we would all stop being friends, just because of this? This- this stupid thing?"

Jake shifted uncomfortably in the chair, "Well, 'this' is a big deal. You can't do this again."

Vlad's voice rose, showing blatant indignation, "Like I'd want to do it again. Like I'd actually go around hitting girls on my own! It's not like this is my hobby or anything. It- it just happened!"

Jake's frown creased, as he began to grow more serious, "We know exactly what happened."

"Okay, so what happened?"

Once the urge to shove the kid out the door was wrangled down successfully, Jake was able to cut back in a low tone, "You hit her because you were angry. She cut your ear, so you hit her, not once," Jake held out one finger, and then, like a switchblade, lifted a second, "but twice." He left the number hanging there, marked by his fingers. But Vlad only glared at him, showing an expression Jake wasn't used to. The level of discomfort in the room escalated as the late-afternoon sky colored; color emptied into the room, as the sun was no longer obscured.

Vlad tapped his ear cover bitterly, although it was painfully loud for him to do so, "She almost cut off my ear."

Jake shrugged in a way that made Vlad's teeth grate, audibly; his tone required Vlad to bite into his lip. Jake looked him dead in the eye, and asked, "So what?"

"She's basically fifteen and I'm-"

"So what?" Jake's interruption only fueled Vlad's temper, which Jake could clearly monitor by the boy's eyes, and how he worked his jaw.

Vlad glared at the floor, "So that doesn't mean anything?"

"No. Nothing."

Hissing, because he didn't use curse words naturally, Vlad sighed out some of his aggravation. But his next breath took it all back in, and he cringed and hung his head. He began to rock agitatedly, his curved spine rolling against the wall. "So you're the type that would just let a girl kill you, because she's a girl?"

Jake's voice evenly replied, "Yes."

"That's stupid," Vlad hissed, and shut his eyes. He continued to rock, then suddenly pressed his back flat against the wall, the back of his head also making contact. He breathed in deeply, and held his breath.

Jake looked to the boys at the poker table, but they were at a loss, and some showed signs of impatience (towards Vlad). Jake raised his voice momentarily, as though speaking over Vlad's internal thoughts. "Your uncle would probably agree. It's not my place to have that conversation with you, but he-"

The giggle slammed into them, and injected their veins with liquid cement. They couldn't move, think, or react to the way Vlad smiled at them, spitefully, yet mournfully as well.

"Jack-bean…"

Just hearing it, as the kid wore such an expression, the nick-name crunched like gravel between Jake's teeth, but he let Vlad continue.

"-my uncle kills women. He doesn't care that I've hit a girl who was 'three' years older than me, who attacked me and almost cut off my ear. My ear! Jake, my ear! It's a part of my body!"

Snarling back, fed up with the brat's stubbornness, Jake's nostrils flared as his grip on the armrests tightened, "I don't care if she'd actually cut it off. It doesn't justify what you did-"

"Those are your morals. Those are your dad's morals – and I've heard from him too. Joel was at the hospital with my uncle," Vlad's voice quieted. "…Those aren't my morals. And they aren't my family's morals," Vlad pointed at his chest. He endured the anger that mounted in Jake's darkening glare, and let his argument stand.

Jake shouted, hitting the armrests and jabbing a finger towards Vlad, "I said, I don't care-!"

Vlad overwhelmed the shout with sheer will-power, "I don't care! If someone is going to attack me, and hurt me, I'll hit them. My uncle's only complaint," Vlad took another verbal route as Jake's rage reddened his face, "was that I broke her nose. He said I should've hit her in the ear, because it was an 'eye for an eye' or, a re- uh… an ex-" Just as Vlad failed to find his uncle's words – since no one could argue with his uncle (in Vlad's mind) – the voice to his left, the opening door, the incredulous laugh and scoff, distracted all of them.

'Glasses' - Sriracha's boyfriend - shook his head, looked at Vlad, shook his head again and smiled. His hands ran over his face, but could not wipe the smile away. Everything about him asked, Is this guy for real? "What I heard out there," Glasses indicated the door, where he'd been standing briefly, "Is what I heard- Were," he laughed, "were you really talking about my girlfriend?" In the silence, and as he stared into Vlad's stiff face, the teenager's voice deepened and rose, "Are you honestly justifying what you did? You BROKE her f*ing NOSE, you little a*hole-" His shoe slammed into the wall, convincing others for a moment that he had just busted a gaping hole through it. He'd made a dent, but that was all.

Glasses turned, and, unable to keep his feet still, threw his thumb back at the door, his hands disappearing and reappearing from his jacket pockets as he asked in spurts, "Come on… Outside. …Let's go outside. I don't care if you're in middle school anymore. …Let's do it. Let's get this done – I'm… I'm not going to," he laughed, "just sit here, listen to you, and do nothing. …" He looked at Vlad with his strange smile, and then his entire expression warped with his roar, "GET OUT THERE. I'LL MAKE SURE YOU'LL NEVER HAVE THE CHANCE TO BEAT UP ANOTHER GIRL. GET OUT-"

Vlad threw out his hands, as through freeing something he'd been restraining. "Okay, sure. I'll fight you. I know you're sixteen; four years is good enough. I'm allowed to fight you. Okay? Let's go." The shiver in Vlad's voice could have been interpreted as fear, but from the way he walked, it sure all hell seemed like the little punk wasn't the least bit phased by the disadvantages he faced in fighting a 5'5", 110 lb sixteen year old. The teens acknowledged Vlad's dumb courage half-heartedly.

Jake and the other teens followed after Vlad and his challenger, loathe to let this fight actually take place outside their hangout. The teen who had called Glasses over, and a few other adolescent figures, emerged from another room and funneled into the alley.

They made a very broken, non-claustrophobic ring around the two. Jake grabbed Vlad's shoulder before anything could begin, but Vlad tried to push him off. Glasses snapped his fingers, and growled, "Black – back-off. I'm sorry, but he's earned it."

"He's in middle school. Come on." Jake looked about the circle as he held onto Vlad, seeking some immediate solution, but he found little support. At most he got a few shrugs, which said: Vlad actually needed this. Let him get his butt handed to him by the girl's boyfriend. That was some form of justice. We'll all be able to move on after this. And it's Glasses, for Christ's sake. He's a twig.

Jake tried to tell them, No – they didn't need that sort of animosity in their group, that this was messed up – but he was distracted when Vlad stepped towards Glasses, free of Jake, and then stood in a… legitimately 'ready' position. …He wasn't just standing there, like Glasses. He had taken some sort of fighting stance, something that didn't look like it'd been invented by a twelve year old. Well, maybe he'd been watching a lot of Karate Kid, or something, lately.

Vlad let Glasses crack his knuckles, repeat what he'd yelled inside the hangout, and then watched as the skinny teenager lunged towards him in mid-sentence. Vlad dodged the punch, turning his body as he swung his leg up, and swiftly brought the heel of his shoe into the teenager's jaw. Both stumbled awkwardly away, Vlad off balance from meeting the uncomfortably high target. Glasses stumbled because a second later he toppled to the ground, and didn't get up. In the silence that followed, Vlad counted to ten (like an official Taekwondo match) as he frowned over the inert body. Then he turned around and met the states of whoever might be looking at him, looking back even at Jake's blank dumbfounded disbelief.

Vlad threw out his hands again, in the motion of letting something go, or encouraging something to run wild. "Okay then. Someone else want to try and beat up a twelve year old?"

"What the hell'd you just do? Are you crazy?"

Vlad found that Jake was approaching, with wide jet black eyes and an unnerving snarl contorting his lips. Vlad pursed his own lips, reeling things in again as his nervousness, his lack of self-confidence resurfaced. "My uncle teaches me taekwondo- a- a couple times, at least. Since I… got in a fight with those three boys-" A grunted gasp of pain and alarm shot out of Vlad as a heavy blow struck the back of his head, rattling his brain. He stumbled towards Jake, seeing only a blur which he did not process. The unseen boy who'd hit Vlad tackled him to the ground at Jake's feet. Jake backed away, watching uneasily, and he didn't react to the other teen who stepped up to Vlad's head.

The teen holding Vlad down ground the pale face into the coarse asphalt, scratching tender skin as Vlad grit his teeth and, unable to do more, shut his eyes tight as he tried to avoid getting dirt, grime, rocks, and eventually blood, in them. Vlad's arms were folded beneath his chest, but his hands were splayed as he tried, grunting, to push up, to get out from under the larger body. The newcomer's shoes kicked at the asphalt, and a pissed off voice snarled, "You think you can beat up someone who is actually our friend? You little punk! You freakin'-"

Vlad understood, to a sickening extent, the weight of that "actually." And then he yelled in pain as a hard heel came down on the fingers of his left hand, crushing his ring finger and pinky. As he yelled, he had to quickly shut his mouth and muffle the sound, to preserve some sense of pride, and to avoid letting his teeth scrape across the filthy street as his head was pressed harder into the asphalt by the teen on his back. The large hand was hot against his messy hair and scalp. Vlad thought he heard Jake's voice, but there were a lot of voices, so many that they were creating a smothering din. The pain, his own grunts and muffled yells, added to the confusion. The heel came down sharply again, causing Vlad to yelp and groan in frustration, a sound that was twisted by the feelings this experience of abandonment wrought.

The teen on his back tore off Vlad's ear cover, and hit the bandages that still covered the injured ear. But with this sloppy shift in weight as the teen lifted himself to complete the blow, when the boy tried to lean onto Vlad's skinny spine again, Vlad threw his head back and narrowly missed the teen's face. As the teen tried to reclaim Vlad's head, Vlad squirmed and twisted enough to sink his teeth into the ankle of the foot crushing his fingers. His elbow smashed into the face behind him, and Vlad managed to struggle free. There was a pause during which the boy with the hurt face gave up, but the other teen rushed forward, infuriated, and clearly much more adept at fighting than Glasses had been. A fist was thrown at Vlad. As it missed, Vlad swung his arm down and caught the teen's arm in the crook of his own - pinning it against his ribs. Swiftly, in a movement that seemed natural to him, Vlad turned against the momentum of the teen's punch, and felt the teen's elbow pop out of place.

Just like his uncle had said: dislocating a joint was better than breaking a "friend's" arm. Or… something like that.

Vlad let the teen fall away, and then stood there, strangely gargoyle-like; he appeared emotionless while his feelings wrangled with the crushed and writhing innards of his psyche. The injured teen on the ground behind him was no longer a concern as Vlad kept his eyes on the boy he had elbowed in the face. The boy, and all the others, stared at Vlad. Those who were aware of Vlad's… connection, slowly digested the fact that this was, in all actuality… the Angel of Death's nephew (or Jake's cousin – either served as an intimidating explanation).

Picking up his ear protector and briefly brushing dirt from the white elastic headband, Vlad pointed at the teens, seeming to grow smaller as his pre-puberty voice called out: "If you don't want to be friends," he stabbed his thumb into his chest painfully, "then I don't want to be friends." And he stalked off into the streets that were colored by the bloodying twilight, believing he had won his battle. In reality, he'd just freaked out and confused a bunch of teenagers, who were going to be more pissed-off than ever, now that Vlad had so 'arrogantly' hurt three of their 'actual' friends. Jake's perception of the situation sunk to a new low, and he went to his car to be alone, lighting a cigarette, holding it against his lips, not understanding what was going to happen next.

*~*~::..+..::~*~*

When Vlad got home after dark, his uncle was there, so, as usual, he said hello, and then walked past his uncle to go to the couch where he planned on doing his homework. He knelt down by his backpack, which was propped up against the side of the couch. But Vlad flinched violently, wincing as this hurt his injuries, and then nervously craned his neck back to peer up at his uncle as Walter stood over him, casting him in his shadow.

Walter scowled at the bloodied, scuffed up face, with those two large, absolutely oblivious red eyes. The appearance of the red irises and the cleaner, whiter left half of the boy's face - set in deep contrast with the bloodier, grime smeared right half of his face - was absolutely unacceptable. "What the hell happened to your face?" Walter hissed at his nephew, reflecting on the revolting hassle he'd have to go through if child services was called on him. If the bruises, swelling, and numerous lacerations were due to the school bullies, this was just getting ridiculous. The kid hadn't even gone to school today.

Walter rested his hand against the arm of the couch, leaning over Vlad to get a better look at him. He asked in a more neutral tone, "Did you violate your suspension?"

Vlad shook his head before his hand went to inspect his cheek, and then jerked away when it stung.

Figuring what had happened, since he knew about the "little bitch's" sixteen-or-so year old boyfriend, and had received numerous warnings from Joel about how "the kids" might react to Vlad's actions, Walter strode past the couch, pushed open the door to the bathroom, and opened the medicine cabinet. He plucked up some hydrogen peroxide, Neosporin, and two packages of Band Aids which came in various sizes. As he picked up supplies and crammed them into his arm, he muttered loud enough for the boy to hear, "Those brats actually beat you up... A twelve year old. This is-" Walter didn't have the energy to finish the sentence, inundated with bogging frustration. Quietly, he returned to the couch, impatiently snapping his fingers for the boy to sit down, before he sat beside him with a tired, mostly aggravated sigh. The boy looked bad. There would be bruising, there was already swelling, it was hell getting street grime out of these sorts of cuts. Walter had little patience for the tediousness of the task set before him.

Walter worked on Vlad's face with a wet cotton ball, but he eventually instructed his injured 'patient' to go to the sink to wash off the dirt. At this time, the displeased uncle laid out his questions. He wanted to know who had done it, and why; whether Jake had been present; why Jake hadn't interfered; and how badly Vlad had injured the other boys.

Returning to the couch, Vlad's capacity to care about his pain was suspended by the thrill of having his uncle assume he'd won his fights. And the nearly giddy child was overjoyed to affirm the assumption. He had kicked the girl's boyfriend in the jaw and knocked him out, but the boyfriend had started it all and had punched first (or, at least, he'd tried to). Vlad roughly guessed at what he'd done to the other boys, hesitantly mentioning the bite, which he'd almost forgotten about.

The cotton ball left Vlad's face, and he saw his uncle frown. "Biting is how you get diseases."

"I know." Vlad's chin touched his chest glumly, "I'm sorry-" a slight yip escaped him, as his uncle jerked the injured chin up so he could continue cleaning Vlad's face.

Walter's eyes were narrowed as he worked, "You might break a tooth one of these days… I should take you to a dentist, sometime. With your genes - you'll be bound to have some sort of problem with your teeth."

Vlad didn't quite comprehend what his uncle was saying, but nonetheless he tried to participate in the conversation. "Well, my mom was German. Are Germans supposed to have bad teeth?"

Vlad blinked back at his uncle, as Walter stared at him with an off-putting look of confusion. After a pause, Walter asked blankly, "Your mother was German?"

"...Yeah?"

Cringing away, as though his uncle had spontaneously combusted into a fireball, Vlad was somewhat terrified when Walter let out a bark of laughter and then proceeded to chuckle, motioning to Vlad like the kid was some sort of stray cat, to tell him that it was okay to come closer. He carried on with his doctoring, a wry grin continuing to make Vladimir feel uneasy, "No. Vlad couldn't have married a German woman. He had a very special place in his heart for Germans, and for the Soviets."

"Well," Vlad pursed his lips, and, thinking back on his dad, and his own personal experience, was quite aware of the fact that all his father's heart had ever contained was hatred (his mother had been the one and only exception). "My mom was adopted, and her adoptive parents were German… and she grew up in Germany. But my dad said, that since we don't know where her parents came from, she wasn't technically German. She could be Romanian, or… something." Vlad trailed off, transfixed on his uncle's face as Walter snickered to himself, chuckling into the back of his hand for a moment as he tried to grapple with this absurd reality.

"Vlad would say that. ...A German. ...He gave me hell when I was engaged to marry a Russian girl. A real Soviet Russian, at that," Walter snorted. "Do you speak German?"

The boy nodded.

Walter snorted again, his amusement leveling and thinning, "I might have a job for you then. Sometime… perhaps."

The room was quiet for a time. Vlad curled and uncurled his toes and fingers, from both pain and nervous restlessness.

Finally Vlad opened his mouth again, "Well, my dad never seemed to have gotten over World War II."

"Your grandfather lost his father in a labor camp, and his older brother in a concentration camp. Vlad took that to heart."

It was silent after this. Eventually Walter smoothed out the last of the Band-Aids – a medium sized one, to cover the fact that the bridge of Vlad's nose had been scraped raw. At least the damage could be masked, a little. Didn't kids cover themselves with Band Aids for fun these days? "Do your homework if you want." Walter got up to leave, "But you don't need to tonight."

He then left Vlad on the couch, and went out, a bit late, to meet with Joel.

Vlad took care of his mashed up fingers by himself. Or, at least, he tried to.