misanagi

So We Did

Rating: R
Pairing: 1x2x3x4x5
Warnings: AU. School fic (kind of). Angst. Violence.
Summary: They don't tip toe around students in a reformatory school, especially not in this one. This is the place where they send all the lost cases, the children no one has the patience or the will to deal with, the bad ones.

Notes: Written for the 444 on sdqb. Prompt # 17: correct.

Thanks to Anne for the beta.

____

We all had our reasons to be there
We all had a thing or two to learn
We all needed something to cling to
So we did

Forgiven – Alanis Morrisette


We stand in front of the principal, the five of us, heads high, defiance in our gazes, waiting for him to announce our punishment. It will be severe. They don't tip toe around students in a reformatory school, especially not in this one. This is the place where they send all the lost cases, the children no one has the patience or the will to deal with, the bad ones.

Father sent me here after I ran away. Maybe that's not the right description since I didn't sneak out but walked out the front door, turning my back on him and his expectations. But he wouldn't let me, not the Winner heir. Away in Switzerland in a boarding school was the story. Of course, people shouldn't know I was shipped here, to this hellhole where they were supposed to correct my attitude. Do my Father's dirty work and beat the defiance out of me.

A disobedient son.

It's the same reason Wufei's here. He refused to marry while I refused to become the heir. His family expected his obedience and Wufei had given it to them, unconditionally, until they demanded too much. They demanded he become someone else, and he refused.

We are the lucky ones, the ones with real families to ship us away. Duo was sent here by the state. After moving from one foster home to another, from orphanage to orphanage, they sent him here, not because they expect him to change, but because they would rather not deal with him.

They could have sent Heero to juvie and they would have if he wasn't a genius. Too much talent to waste, they had said. What are a few fights when he has a mind like that? They wanted to use him. Cure him of his "violence problem" and control him and his magnificent mind. Juvie would just make him more rebellious and that was a big no no.

Trowa, they simply didn't understand. They didn't get how someone could be so calm and so aggressive at the same time, so stoic and so passionate. They never understood him to begin with. His sister tried to stop the state from sending him here. She was the only one who visited any of us. She worked in the circus and the state didn't think her stable enough financially to give Trowa a "normal" home. So instead, they put him here, in a much more "normal" environment. Hah!

They call us kids with attitude problems, and they think they can correct that. They can't see there's nothing wrong to begin with.

Duo says it was luck we ended up in the same room, Heero says it was a random arrangement made by a computer; I think it was destiny. We all agree that this wouldn't have happened with anyone else but the five of us. It didn't happen just because we were in the same room; it happened because we were us.

It didn't happen overnight either.

At first, I was too proud to talk to them, too consumed with the anger of being sent here, the shame of not being able to do anything to stop it. Wufei, for all his defiance towards his family, felt he deserved this punishment for not being able to submit to their wishes, and befriending anyone would lessen that punishment. Duo was too guarded; too many false friendship and backstabs had diminished his trust in people. Heero firmly believed he didn't need anyone and Trowa, as confident as he appeared, had never had a friend, and didn't know how to ask for one.

But this place isn't easy.

I had never been hit before so when the teacher – not that he ever taught us anything – ordered me to extend my hand, palm up, so could he deliver a hit with his bamboo cane, I refused. Defiance is one of the things they wish to correct here. He hit me on my arm, instead, twice, and when I indignantly pushed him away, I found Duo, standing next to me. Later that day I found Duo had been hit before but that was the first time it was done with a bamboo cane.

Heero was used to corporal punishment. He wouldn't say why, but he wasn't surprised, like the rest of us, that it was a method used here. His eyes didn't soften at the sight of mine and Duo's thin bruises, but the next week, when we were cornered in the yard by seven older kids calling us "pretty boys", Heero stepped in and made sure they didn't lay a finger on us. That night Duo and I tended to Heero's bruises.

It wasn't until our third week that we realized Wufei was bullied, daily, and he refused to fight back. That same day someone took his glasses. Duo stole them back for him, and when, in retaliation, the bullies were all but ready to cut Duo's braid, Wufei decided to fight back. The bullies never bothered him, or any of us, again.

By then, I had forgotten all about my anger, pride and shame, so I approached Trowa and talked to him. I was surprised to find out that no one had ever done that before.

At first it was just a sense of honor, the need to protect each other, but eventually we became friends, and after that, becoming lovers was easy.

It started with Duo and Trowa, holding each other the night Heero and I were put in solitary. When Wufei woke up, the three of them huddled in the same bed, holding each other, and then the hugs became kisses, and the kisses, touches. Two days later, when Heero and I were allowed to return to our room, they pulled us towards them, without any explanation other than their touches and kisses, and we both understood it and accepted it.

It's unusual; we knew that from the start. It's more than fleeting touches born out of necessity. It's much more than friends who kiss. It's special but we know others won't see it that way. For them it would be just something else they need to correct. We kept it a secret.

And today, somehow, our secret got out.

So we stand on the principal's office, waiting for him to finish giving us a disgusted look and pronounce his sentence. We extend our hands when he orders us, palms up. None of us give him the satisfaction of crying. Solitary for a week, he announces, and I have to will myself to keep my eyes firmly ahead and my chin up. He won't see me hurt.

But he isn't done. He's moving us to new rooms. He's ordering the teachers to keep us apart at all times. We are not to talk with each other. He says we are bad influences to one another. He says it's for our own good.

Everything else we could have handled; the beatings, the temporary isolation, but not being pulled apart.

Heero hits him on the neck and the principal falls, unconscious on the floor. Trowa takes the car keys from his pocket and Duo, the money from his wallet. We walk out the office, locking the door behind us, heading straight for the parking lot. There's no time to collect our things, no time to think about the consequences, and when a teacher spots us and yells for us to stop, we run.

Wufei takes care of the guard at the entrance and we run towards the ugly beige car. I climb behind the wheel and, when they are all in, I push the gas pedal. I don't stop when the guard at the gate signals us. I don't stop when he starts closing the gate.

We are running away, drifting from their "correct path" and following our own. It's what they fear, what they are willing to break us apart to prevent.

It's what feels right, what we want, what we need.

So we do.


- The End -