FicWad

Chapter Six – Wounded

Mikey’s POV




They just wouldn’t stop; not when I started crying like my eyes were bleeding misery almost as profusely as my nose was gushing blood, not when aforementioned nose made a shuddering crack against the sharp brick corner of the small shed they had me cornered behind, not when I coughed up some pure crimson agony out of my split lips.

They only stopped when they threw me into the vast see of torturous brambles, the sharp spikes digging in through my wristbands so that they unpicked last night’s healing cuts, and only then do I think that they stopped purely because they could tell that I was about to pass out and making me do so would mean a hell of a lot of trouble for them. More trouble than I’m worth, apparently.

I don’t even know what I did to those bastards.

No. I know exactly what I did to them; I was me. I was simply quiet little Mikey Way, the kid with wristbands to hide the scars and eyeliner to hide the sleep-deprivation, a kid who really couldn’t give a shit about their social status when I don’t even give a flying fuck about my own lack thereof. I don’t; two weeks ago I might have said that I would like to be a little bit more popular or at least have one person to run to at school when people start beating me up, but right now I honestly couldn’t give a shit, because Gerard is gone. The one person who was always around to gently dab at my face with a damp dishcloth as though he’s an archaeologist uncovering some great treasure, the one person who always held me whilst I cried and made me feel loved when everyone was telling me that I’m hated is gone.

Gone forever, never coming back; Gee’s abandoned me and nobody cares. Not that I expect them to. Why should they? I’m just some geeky emo-freak with no sense of social awareness and who seems to be synonymous with the term ‘punching bag’.

I can remember when I first started getting beaten up at my old school. I used to think that it would stop, used to eagerly await the day that they’d see I’m just a kid like them with the relentless optimism of an ignorant idiot until something finally snapped in the back of my skull, both literally and metaphorically, and I realised that this is just how it’s meant to be. People as free as me make those like the kids who beat me up start to question whether they have to be who society wants them to be anymore and so I have to be punished for making them doubt themselves when normally kids are falling at their feet either through fear or respect.

I really don’t respect them; I honestly can’t see how anyone could respect someone who thinks it’s alright to hurt other people. I do, however, fear them; fear them like a religious sinner fears the rapture. How can I not fear them when I know for a solid fact that they can do pretty much what they like with me and I can’t do anything to stop it? I used to be able to get over the fear because I had Gerard telling me that he’d keep me safe, that he was my big brother and that I was perfect; that I was something that I can never be again because nobody in their right mind would ever pull me into their soothing arms and tell me that I am perfect now that Gee’s gone.

Because with Gee gone I’m more of a wreck than I was before. With Gee gone I’m nothing. A million times less than nothing.

No, I am something; I’m some scarred up little freak with posttraumatic stress and no friends other than my old razor blade. An old razor blade that has just indented my weeping skin for the second time in as many days.

It’s times like this that make me glad that nobody cares; if they did then releasing everything, all of the guilt and anger and emotional hurt, through this apparently ‘destructive’ outlet would be a fuck of a lot harder. Because at least with nobody to care they won’t bother asking about why I always cover up my arms with wristbands, they won’t bother when one of those wristbands slips down a little bit to ask why my arms are smothered in a violent rash of life’s battle scars; ranging from a few faded white lines to the dribbling incisions that I have just made with my quivering fingers.

If I’d done this to myself two weeks ago I would most likely be panicking right now. Why? Because I would rather have died than see Gerard discover my dirty little habit; I can remember when he found out other people were hurting me and that was bad enough, all of the agony and sorrow that stained his eyes made me feel a gutting stab in my bony back with every tear that stabbed it’s way out of his profoundly concerned orbs of hurt vision.

But him finding out that I hurt myself? That would be fucking torture.

But now he never will and I will never have his strong, brotherly voice pulling me out of this addiction with his deep understanding and soothing hands to accompany his encouragement; I will never have a reason to want to quit again and it’s all my fault. And that’s why I really do deserve everything that my body has been put through today, from getting beaten up by a group of furious strangers to me slicing my own arms open, because anyone who can rob the world of an amazing person like my big brother truly does deserve to hurt.

I do deserve to hurt. Of course I fucking do. I deserve to be dead for causing Gerard to run through those demonic flames of excruciating heat and helplessness; for killing my own big brother through my own clumsiness and stupidity. I could never kill myself though, that’s something that a coward like me would never be able to do; after all, what if I were to see Gee in the afterlife and he told me how much of a shit little brother I am for causing his death? I wouldn’t be able to deal with that. It’d just… kill my soul.

Ha fucking ha. Bastards like me don’t even have souls; not functioning ones anyway.

Yet I can still feel hurt and agony and regret and guilt in crushing depth, just gnawing away at the rotting pit where my soul would be if I were worthy of having one.

My wrists are stinging almost as badly as the right side of my face is, but that has nothing on how bad I’m feeling on the inside; I really want a friend right now. I know that I don’t deserve one and that nobody will ever think of me as one when I’m such a fucking weirdo, but I still would really like someone to just care. I know that that thought contradicts a lot of what I just said, but it’s true. I just want someone who won’t beat me up, someone who will smile at me and try to be nice to me even though I’m a miserable little emo-freak. I want someone like Gerard.

I want someone like Frank.

Frank with his arrogance that only seems to compliment the way he moves; like he is who he is purely because he has the sheer confidence to make things go his way. He does and for that I don’t know whether I admire him for having the guts to just grab what I want, envy him for having the confidence that I know I will never have because I don’t really desire it all that much like I know I should or whether I should pity him for having to act like a little dick purely because that’s what he seems to think people want him to be. I don’t. I just want him to either leave me the fuck alone or try to be nice to me.

No. No I really fucking don’t. If he’s nice to me then that means that he’ll be my friend and if he’s my friend that means it will sting my heart like my the fading sting from my razor blade’s sharp kisses when he abandons me. Because he will. Everyone does; Ray, Mom, Dad, Gerard and even the hope that I once possessed within me. All abandoned me and each time it really fucking hurt simply because I let myself learn to rely on those things. Never again. I know better now. It may have been a harsh lesson, but I now know how the world works and how the only thing that I’ll ever be able to truly rely on is that we all end up either leaving or getting left behind. It’s just how life is.

At that thought I let out a weak little whimper, pulling my torn knees further into my battered chest and running my hand harshly through my sweat-slicked hair only to find it’s frustrated path is blocked by numerous bumps and lumps; fuck, my body hurts. Like it’s on fire, just like Gerard was when he left me. I wish I was on fire; at least that way I might be able to find solace in the knowledge that I have suffered as badly as my big brother was forced to because of me.

I know that I did this, that I made myself all alone with my shameful childishness and infantile panic, with my tedious shyness and abnormal lack of normality, but that doesn’t stop me from longing for someone to wipe away the crimson stains from my face, for someone who would actually care if they saw my cuts, if they saw how much I need someone like them.

I don’t need anyone though, much less anyone who cares. Having people who care only makes it hurt all the more when they stop caring. Or leave. Which they will. Everybody does.

“Mikey?”

At the sound of the weak, sheepish voice from the other side of my slammed-shut door I yank my wristbands down over my still slightly oozing slices, wincing ever so slightly at the hiss of agony that the harsh rubbing of rough fabric over fresh snips in my skin causes.

Wait. ‘Sheepish’? The voice was unmistakably Frank’s, but the one thing that I would never expect him to be is sheepish; I would expect him to just barge in here with a smug smirk on his face, ready for me to give him the respect that everyone else at school does. But no. He’s nervous, guilty even, and I don’t know why.

Yes I do; it’s because it was his friends that kicked the shit out of me. I know it was, I saw him hanging around with them when I went to catch the bus. They were his friends and so now he feels responsible. It isn’t his fault though, of course it isn’t, but I can’t help but want to blame him purely because he could have stopped it; could have saved me from the pain that’s piling up on top of my previous agonies.

And I’m scared of him too; what if he wants to hurt me for pissing off his friends? In the state that I’m in right now I doubt that I’d last a punch against someone like Frank. Panic pulsates through me like a plague, eradicating any traces of the hope that I abandoned long ago; I don’t think that my body can cope with being punished again.

“Mikey, can I come in?” He calls through the door, heaving a heavy sigh as he does so, as though I’m frustrating him already even though I haven’t even spoken to him yet.

Maybe that’s what is frustrating him; the fact that I simply don’t want to talk to him when today at school it was a case of everyone else fighting to be near him, like he’s some sort of industrial strength magnet and they’re just minute specks of iron. I can definitely see why everyone flocks around him though, I probably would do too if I thought I actually stood a chance of not being rejected by him or that he might not abandon me like everyone else does. He looks like the sort of person that girls would fantasize about if they were feeling particularly rebellious with regards to the sort of person that they should want to go out with; he really does possess those stereotypical bad-boy good looks, all deep and mysterious eyes surrounded by vinyl-black shocks of silky hair. Hair that I can’t help but imagine as being twice as soft as it looks if it were to be pressed against my bruised face; but I can’t think like that because losers like me only ever get abandoned, never loved. Or when we do get loved we get left behind in the end anyway. So what’s the point in bothering?

“Look, if you don’t answer me I’m gonna have to come in because from what I hear you got beaten up pretty bad and for all I know you could be concussed or some shit like that. So either tell me to fuck off or let me in because I just wanna help you.” His voice is shaking, like he feels that he’ll just fall apart if I’m not alright, and that makes my heart flutter in it’s bruised ribcage; Frank Iero, the extremely attractive yet extremely arrogant kid that has been unfortunate to have me for a foster brother, sounds like he wants to help me.

But why the fuck would someone like Frank want to help the emo-freak that his friends hate almost as much as he does? It’s got to be a trick and even if it isn’t, I really don’t want to get as close to this boy as my heart is screaming at me to; in the end I’ll just be alone, with nothing left but painful of memories of what I’m missing. Like he’d ever actually think of me in any sort of romantic sense anyway, he could have anyone so why the fuck would he willingly choose a freak like me? He wouldn’t. Which is another reason as to why I can’t get close to him; my heart can’t take being broken again.

So I say nothing, just try to stifle a whimper as pain shoots through my face like a bullet as I feel the sting of my busted lips and both black eyes. But that has nothing on the pain of the memoires. The memories of Gerard hugging me like a matter, looking like he would be slaughtering my tormentors if it wasn’t for the fact that I needed him with me more than he needed to fulfil his desire to bring justice to those who wrong me; the memories of Gerard humming out our grandmother’s old lullaby to me whenever I couldn’t sleep through the tears and the agony; the memories of everything that I can never have, and it is that fact that has turned all of my most treasured memories into my most feared nightmares, things that I just want to forget so I can never understand what it is to be alone because without those memories I would never have known any different. But I do and it really fucking hurts.

Another fragmented sob flies from lips like an arrow from an uncontrollable bow; I’m normally quite good at keeping quiet when I want to be, but there’s something about the threat of Frank’s friendship and care that’s messing me up inside, like a paradox making a robot malfunction. The bullying, the pain, the grief, the cutting, the loneliness; it’s all just pouring out of my mouth in the form of almost hysterical sobs, like I’ve never not been crying and never will not be. Just… unending, forever in putrid misery.

I hear the door creak open to reveal a red-eyed Frank Iero stood in my doorway, eyes wide with contrition and mouth gawping at me in shock. But what could I expect; I’m curled over my knees at the pillow end of my bed and bawling like a starved baby, it’s hardly normal behaviour for a fifteen-year-old is it?

“Shit, Mikey. I… I’m so sorry. I didn’t think that they’d… Shit.” He fumbles with his teary words as though the shock of seeing his friends’ victim all torn and bloody suddenly makes him care, makes him feel guilty because it’s the walls of his house that are being shaken with the sobs of a victim. He doesn’t fucking care; why the fuck should he? “You’re face… Fuck, I’ve seen them hurt kids before but this… Jesus Christ.”

And to that, there’s only one thing that my spinning head can think to reply with.

“Please help me.”

He nods, a strange glint shining in his eyes that makes my heart flutter and makes me accept something that I really don’t want to; I think that I might just be falling in love with Frank Iero.

“Don’t worry Mikey, I’m gonna make up for this. I promise.”





A/N: Thank you very much for reading, I hope that it was alright! Sorry that the chapters so far aren’t really all that long or interesting, they will hopefully be getting better pretty soon… Thank you very much for reading and please review! :)