"Love never dies a natural death. It dies because we don't know how to replenish its source. It dies of blindness and errors and betrayals. It dies of illness and wounds; it dies of weariness, of witherings, of tarnishings."
― Anais Nin
Hi, my lovelies! I hope you all enjoy this chapter and that you like this rewrite, even if there's not too much that is different. (And also please don't be afraid to tell me your opinions on this, like, I'm doing this FOR you guys, mostly.)
Also, as a warning, there IS a discussion about faith and whether or not the Christian God is real or not, and if he's kind. This is not about me, as the author, trying to dissuade anyone's faith and/or undermine anyone's religion, it is simply about the characters having different opinions and experiences - as real people do - and talking about them.
Because while Bar's character could never believe in a god, no matter the religion, it's important to Eli's character and many others. So please be respectful, don't start any arguments, and no religion is wrong or bad unless it is actively hurting, discriminating against, or dehumanizing people at it's foundations. Like how Christianity isn't bad, but some of it's followers can be, as can be said for any religion. No one group of people is perfect.
Chapter 24:
A Cruel or Benevolent God
"I swear to potatoes there's something in my eye," Gus groans, rubbing his palm from his eyebrow to the side of his nose. He's being genuine, with a little frown, not even cracking a joke. Bar knows it's been bothering him the whole morning.
"It's brain cells," Fen says. "They're trying to crawl out of you knowing they don't belong because you have no brain."
Just like Fen's been mean the whole morning.
The beast instantly glares at the hot-tempered chick, knowing that his best friend was probably taking the words to heart. Like he always does, even though he didn't act like it.
"Why a-are you, you being so mean today, Fen?" Clementine asks, popping a piece of an orange into her mouth as Bar hands it to her and kisses her forehead. He often peeled her oranges, knowing the little goddess hated doing so herself but loved the taste.
Now, while that's still a reason to do it, he's trying to keep the lid on his anger shut tight.
"No reason." Fen's scowl argued with her words as she crossed her arms, body tilting back away from them, defensive body language and unfriendly expression..
"I called my future bae Aspen-Faye- Hey, that rhymes!- instead of AJ or Fen and now she's being a crabby, beautiful ass towards me." Gus explains, beaming towards Clementine.
There's hurt behind his hazel eyes. He wants to stab someone.
The little goddess doesn't see it, though, and just giggles and nods- making everyone go back to their respective activities.
Gus tried to help a confused Law with school work and momentarily failed- a common occurrence, but tried again nonetheless- as Fen begins to talk to Elijah about divinities and religion, momentarily dragging Bar into it while Clementine sat next to him, their shoulders pressed together, contently eating an orange.
Eli gestures around the table with a french fry. "Do you believe in God?"
Law didn't answer, but the broken boy knew that he was Jewish while Gus was Pagan, him having grown up in a Lutheran household but switched in middle school.
"Fuck no," Bar says, a scoff behind his words. How could he believe in a God that allowed a father like the one he had to live an unpunished life with no shame? That allowed his father to win, time and time again?
"Why?" The boy just looked confused.
Fen was indifferent, believing in nothing- no afterlife, no divine intervention pulling at strings, no big man in the clouds, and no slandered angelic son rotting away in hell.
Eli, on the other hand, was a firm believer that there was a God and that he is kind. Bar doesn't know how there could be a Christian God that could be kind.
Not when he condemns his people to Hell for infinity for actions in a finite life, how he judges horrible things while letting them exist, how death and disease could be so prevalent without any show for his hand dipping in to fix things, not when he's ignored his people for centuries and centuries.
How if he did exist, he's cruel.
"Because," Bar shrugs as he answers. "Even if God was real, he wouldn't have my faith. Good is hard to believe in. Bad is easy to see, it's everywhere. 'Sides, the God you are talkin' about isn't benevolent. What sorta God is kind when they make beings who are so easily awful? What sort of God lets their creations hurt the way we have?"
A God that didn't care about his children or prayers or bad sons or bad fathers or dead mothers or bullies or abuse.
A God that lets a father beat his son and hurts his daughter.
A God that let Clementine get hurt.
A God whose an absentee father himself.
"Ugh!" Conway suddenly groans, disrupting the tension strumming through Bar as he slams his phone onto the table, slumping in his chair. It makes him flinch. "Why are the girls who like being choked and submissive during sex the same ones who cry when yelled at?"
It's about consent, asshole, Bar thought.
"You're such a privileged prick," he snarled out. "There's a big difference between bein' sexually dominated 'n verbally abused. I hope to fuck that any girl who respects herself stays away for you and the ones who don't."
"T-they do," Clementine whispers into Bar's ear and he snorts.
"Come on, Red." Fen rolls her eyes. "If no girls went around him, he'd be left with blue balls."
"And I care because?" He snarked. Blue balls aren't even real.
"Because then he'd start hitting on the baby orange again," the spitfire said, making Conway turn to the goddess and wink.
Without pause or hesitation, Bar struck his leg out and toppled the brunet out of his chair. Shrieking, Conway crashed to the floor, eyes wide and mouth shocked open.
The whole table bursts out laughing besides Clementine, who stifles her giggles, and Gus who is too preoccupied being frustrated.
Glaring, Conway pulls himself up while Fen high-fives Bar.
"Ugh! I'm worthless," the goof grumbled a moment later, starting in disdain at his math homework. To anyone else, it would've been an innocent comment.
A comment that was thoughtless, perhaps, or just simply one of pure vexation- one not really meant to be taken seriously.
But Bar and Lawrence? They knew better.
But, before they could interject and correct Gus of his actual value, Fen cut in and said something she really shouldn't have, rolling her eyes, as if it doesn't matter. "No, you're not worthless, you're just really good at worthless things. Like being annoying. So useless, not worthless."
Eli and Clementine don't even seem to notice the importance of the conversation and Fen, joking, doesn't care much but the other trio of best friends were frozen in their spots- waiting for what they knew would come next.
Bar and Law shared a look before they slowly edged closer to Gus.
"Augustine..." Law started slowly, cautiously. First name, so he'd believe what either of them said. "You're not-"
But Gus didn't stick around to hear what he had to say.
He bolted from his seat, basically tripping over himself in the process, feet slapping against the cafeteria's tiled floor in rapid succession. His chest was heaving and his body was shaking and Bar could tell-
Bar could tell with just one look that a panic attack was on the rise.
And he knew why, that much was obvious. Fen just fed into Gus's dark thoughts. Fen agreed with him; she helped him prove that his worthless, self-assured status was right.
She just fucked up- bad.
"Gus, wait!" Law shouted and swore a second later when his best friend only broke out into a sprint. Gus, like Bar, was a runner.
He had to be caught to be calmed down but that wasn't the worst of it- the worst of it was that his lungs protested running and that protest could prove to be lethal.
Asthma.
"Damnit," Law slams his fists on the table, not caring about an angry looking Bar and everyone else at the table now pin-still in confusion as he rushes after Gus, pulling out an inhaler as he did so.
Both Bar and Law kept an extra one of Gus's inhalers on them at all times, in case something like this happened.
Quickly but with tenderness to his touch, Bar lifted Clementine off of his lap and placed her on Law's old chair. He kisses her forehead and ignores the questions in her minty eyes.
He doesn't have the time to answer them, but he does remember to give her a finger boop, immediately standing.
Bar meets Fen's eyes, pulling his lips back to bare his teeth, like a dog in a cage. Like he has something to make someone bleed for. "Never fucking tell him he's worthless or useless, got that? Never. You- fuck it, you won't listen."
He didn't even look at his little goddess as he started to run after his best friends, prepared to take out everything in his way.
He had to get to Augustine.
He just had to.
There was a reason why the three of them were such close friends.
Why they trusted each other with secrets- why Bar trusted them with his abuse and everything going on in his head, why they knew about Law's father and how that deadbeat abandoned him because of his epilepsy, and why they knew about Gus's crippling self-worth and why Gus was that way, too.
All of them, at one point or another, were told they were worthless, useless, that they were better off dead- and they believed it.
And Gus? He got it the worst of all with his insecurities; worse than Bar.
Bar hated himself because he thought he was a monster and that he was incapable of being loved- but Gus hated himself because he thought that he didn't deserve to be loved even if he could be. Even if he wanted to be.
Gus thought he was a burden.
His emotionally and mentally abusive, unstable mother made sure of that.
Gus and Bar and Law have been through too much for a lifetime- too much pain and abuse and too much self-hate. Gus didn't deserve it, Bar knew that. He knew that neither of his best friends did.
Augustine was a loveable goofball, he loved annoying people and loved seeing how much it took to rile them up.
Because it covered up his fears.
He'd rather be annoying for reasons he could control than for his personality, he'd rather piss someone off on purpose than make a mistake, he'd rather wear a mask than have his true self analyzed.
It was something the three of them understood.
Gus blankets up his insecurities with a stupid, go-lucky smile and charismatic attitude; Law covers up his sensitivities with swear words and a calm demeanor; Bar hides away his kind heart behind a dagger-edged tongue and steely glare.
Fen telling Gus that he, in fact, was useless was worse than any physical blow.
It reinstated the fact that he wasn't wanted, that he was and never will be good enough. And it triggered something inside of Gus to just... switch and it would be for a while from this day forward.
Something more mellow, something sad, to be presented in his behavior.
Fen, knowingly or not, really screwed up.
When Bar finds his best friends, Law was crouched by a shaking Gus, who panted between puffs out of his inhaler, back to a set of lockers and eyes welled with tears, half choked off whimpers coming out of his mouth.
Fuck, now Bar really wanted to fight someone.
No one should be able to hurt his best friend and get away with it. Even if it was a goddamn accident or if Fen didn't know the consequences of her words.
No one should be allowed to call his best friend useless. No one.
Bar sits next to his best friend and gently pulls off his jacket, wrapping it around Gus's shoulders and leaving him in a loose long sleeve, knowing he gets too warm and that Gus hates feeling vulnerable, so being covered helps.
Law sat next to them too and locks eyes with Bar- communicating silently.
Both of them know that this won't be something the goof could just slip off his shoulders, no, this will dig into his skin like pebbles do when you fall on broken concrete, and if it could, it would've drawn blood.
This will hurt. This Gus won't forget.
"You're not worthless or useless. Fen wasn't serious, that isn't an excuse but still." Law started, trying to comfort Gus.
Bar's the one who continues. "She shouldn't have fuckin' said that 'cause we all know it's not true 'n a stupid bold ass lie. It's not true, you matter. You matter."
Gus shook his head and took another deep inhale, tears now staining his shame-stained, red cheeks.
Bar frowned and wrapped his arm around his best friend's shoulders. Both him and Law gave him a side-ways hug, trying to make him feel secure in his spot and self. Though, Bar knew it did little to help.
But all someone really needs at times is a reminder that someone else is there for them.
All someone needs is to not feel so alone anymore.
"It's literally so fucking impossible for you to be worthless, Augustine," he said, voice stern and steady, sharp. Law nodded along, agreeing. "You fed my cat when I was out of town, you help me calm down when I... try to do something stupid, you patch me up after my bastard of a father takes a couple of hits at me, you help me with this loser," he slaps Law's chest, "whenever he gets a seizure. You're genuinely cool to hang out with. Like, the hell, if I thought you were the least bit worthless or useless I would've kicked your ass to the curb a long fucking time ago. You know that."
Gus did know that, and it helped. Bar and Law sat there, talking to him about all his good qualities and the bell rings and they stay. They sit there and comfort their best friend, trying to get him to see the value in himself.
They sit there, comforting their weeping friend.
They sit there even after his shaking stops. They sit there until the inhaler can safely be put away. They sit there until the tears stop.
They sit there and try to be good friends; to be the good people everyone says they can't become.
By the end of the day, they're tired but successful.
"You okay?" Law asks, breaking the comfortable silence.
The goof just nods but pretty soon, he bawls his eyes out again, gasping for air, and nails digging into his palm. A tragic, heartbreaking sight- to see someone so pure suffer.
Bar thought, just like himself, Gus wanted to feel something other than that crushing weight of depression.
They all did.
Law and Bar stayed next to their crying best friend until the halls became too crowded and not even their hardest glares could keep the rambling students and nervous freshmen away from them.
But since the last bell just rang, everyone was eager to get home and they understood the rush.
"Come on, man." Bar held out a hand to Gus as he stood, pulling the puffy-eyed teen up with him. "Let's go get some food and break shit."
"Okay, I want a tattoo." Gus rubs his nose and sniffles, more embarrassed about the panic attack than crying- by now all three of them knew there was no shame in tears.
"Yeah?" The beast says. "It'll hurt like shit the first time."
"It's going to be the mouse from Cinderella," Gus concludes, ignoring Bar's comment. "Y'know, the one named Gus?"
"I think that's a cool idea," Law said. "This weekend?"
He sniffles and nods. "Yeah."
And just like that, the conversation died and all three of them are left to their own thoughts. Bar just hopes that, one day, Gus will see that he's everything.