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(A)bort, (R)etry, (F)ail? Pt. 1: Reconfiguration	By : Gimp666 Category: +M through R > Mega Man Views: 3876 -:- Recommendations : 0 -:- Currently Reading : 0
Disclaimer: I do not own MegaMan, nor any of the characters from it. I do not make any money from the writing of this story.

Chapter List
- 11
- 12
- 13
(A)BORT, (R)ETRY, (F)AIL?

PART ONE: RECONFIGURATION

A/N: Okay, I started to edit and spell check this, but I’m just giving up. @.o; I’m just too damned exhausted to care anymore. I’ve had a really stressful week and I’ve been sick again, so I’m just going to say screw it and put it up how it is. XD;; I’ll probably become a little more scarce over the next little while. I’m picking up a part time job to couple my full time one and I’m going to be selling Avon on the side so I can get a little cash ^^;;; *die* Having money to pay off my loan comes before ficcage sadly. ._.; I’m tired of no name food, washing my clothes in my bathtub, and giving myself crappy haircuts. Lol

Anyway, enjoy! ._.

There are few nudities so objectionable as the naked truth.

~Agnes Repplier

Chapter Twelve – The Truth

He arrived back at the balcony shortly after, looking considerably healthier. Rock had just gotten up to go look for him, worried after he hadn’t returned in so long. When he saw Forte, he sat back down reluctantly, casting him a worried glance. Forte waved him off, taking his seat again and trying not to look ill. “Don’t worry, it was nothing. Just an upset stomach.” Rock looked more concerned at that.

“Are you sure you’re okay?” He asked, glancing at his pallid face and shaking hands doubtfully. “It doesn’t look like it’s nothing. Maybe you ate something your energy converter couldn’t process.” That didn’t seem right, but he doubted he would get a straight answer out of Forte now. Whatever was bothering him would remain a secret until the younger boy was ready to talk about it.

Forte shook his head quickly, flashing him a false looking grin. “We don’t need to go. I’m fine.” He settled down again, but stayed considerably further away this time, staring hard at the stage below them. He didn’t look at Rock again for the rest of the performance.

The opera finally ended – not a moment too soon, in Forte’s opinion. He stood up, yawning widely, and arched his back out, stretching slowly and turning his neck from side to side slightly. It was more for show than anything, though. He wasn’t feeling very tired anymore, in fact, he doubted sleep was going to catch him anytime soon. “Well, I’m beat. Did you like it?” He pat Rock on the head, who was still seated.

Rock got up after a few moments and smiled at him warmly, nodding a little. “I did. Thank you very much.” He was staring at him analytically, sizing him up and trying to decide if Forte really was alright. He let up finally, hugging him quickly and grabbing his backpack. “I know you’re tired, but do you want to get something to eat first? I’m starving. It’s on me.” He added quickly. “I want to thank you for treating me to this play.”

Forte opened his mouth, hesitant. “I don’t know, Rock.” He thought uneasily that his meal might come right back up again, after the night he’d just had. However, Rock looked disappointed with his response, and he suddenly understood the situation, feeling bad.

The older boy was trying to make up for things, and find out where they stood, that was what his invitation was really about – setting boundaries. Or so he thought. “I guess I wouldn’t mind some tea, my stomach’s still a little harsh. You can get something, and if I feel up to it, I’ll just pick off your plate.” That seemed to smooth things over, and Rock’s face brightened up again.

He grabbed Forte by the wrist eagerly, grinning again. “Great! You won’t regret this, Forte. Come on, I know just the place!” He made his way down the stairs and out the door, Forte grudgingly in tow, and neither of them knew just how wrong that statement had been.

~~~~~~~~~~

Forte steeped his tea idly, staring ahead blankly and glad for the quiet after all the racket in the theatre. There hadn’t been much small talk between them, conversation had fallen into a deep, tolerable silence when they had gotten their order. Forte had appeased Rock by ordering some toast to go with his tea, and took a few bites after he set his tea bag on the edge of the saucer his cup rested on. Chamomile, good for the stomach. At least, it worked on humans. Couldn’t hurt to try. In any case, it had a sweet taste and a relaxing aroma to it.

He tipped the cup forward, sipping from it idly. He thought about these things – flavours, scents, anything except what was really bothering him. The evasion tactic really seemed to work this time. His stomach accepted the lightly buttered bread without forcing it back out violently, and he was grateful. He really didn’t want to vomit in the middle of the café, retching in the hallway of the opera had been embarrassing enough. He was nearly finished his first piece of toast when Rock spoke up suddenly, breaking into his thoughts.

“Forte?”

The taller boy glanced up at him, Rock’s face looked tight and strained with worry, eyes meeting his searchingly. He went for his automatic response without even thinking about it. “I’m alri-“

“No.” Rock cut him off, frowning. “No you’re not. Something’s wrong.” Forte broke eye contact with him, returning to his tea. He knew it would come to this, he’d just hoped it wouldn’t come so soon, not tonight. Rock reached over and rest a hand atop his before he lifted his teacup again. “I wish you would talk to me.”

“Rock.” He sighed, leaning back against the booth’s cushioned backrest. He stared into his lap, frowning a little. “Rock, you don’t want to know.” And he didn’t. Forte was certain of that.

Rock frowned as well, leaning forward. “Yes, I do.” He grasped Forte’s hand lightly, squeezing it with his own. “I’m worried about you, Forte. You’re my friend now. You’re a part of my family.”

Forte sighed, running his fingers through his violet coloured hair, frustrated. “No, Rock. You only think you want to know. If I told you… If I told you, you’d wish I’d hadn’t. It’s that simple.” He took another sip of his tea, working the idea of telling Rock over in his mind. It screamed bad idea. His lips formed a small, wry smile. Not just screamed, his mind was all but envisioning a twenty metre flashing sign with the word “Bad Idea” scripted across it in bold neon letters.

Rock leaned forward at the distant look on his friend’s face. “Forte, please.” He got up and moved to the taller boy’s side of the booth, sliding in next to him and resting a hand on his shoulder. Forte flinched slightly. “I want to know. It won’t change what I think of you. You need to talk about it. Was it something I did?” He was staring at him, face full of concern.

Forte stared at him incredulously. “Something you did? No.” He sipped his tea idly to get that dry, cottony feel out of his mouth, the texture that formed in his mouth when he felt nervous and sometimes scared. The feeling as though his heart had dropped and his blood had frozen. He didn’t want to think about this. His toast was long since forgotten. “No.”

He chewed his lip, still feeling guilty for enjoying Rock like this – for enjoying Rock at all. Wily was a rotten bastard, but he was his creator, and this went against everything he was intended for – everything he was built and programmed to be. It was the ultimate betrayal, almost sacrilegious.

As he sat, envisioning Wily, he pictured all the things he’d done to him. All the beatings, the verbal abuse, getting raped, losing Gospel… All the ways he had been wronged by the man. And he still felt a wave of guilt for letting Rock befriend him, god damnit. For letting the enemy play nice. Despite everything that had happened, it was still buried in him that deep. He hated Wily all the more for it. “No…” he repeated. “No, it’s nothing you did. You’ve…” He trailed off, unsure of how to explain what exactly Rock had done without sounding like a fool.

“I’ve what?” Rock looked a good deal guilty himself, and he felt worse somehow. “It was me, wasn’t it?” He gave Forte a tight squeeze. “I should never-“

Forte hugged him back a little stiffly. Rock didn’t deserve to feel guilty over it. He was the last person who should feel guilty. “It wasn’t. You’ve… been very good to me.” Rock was staring at him critically, trying to decide if he was being lied to most likely, and he sighed. No point in hiding it now anyway. He would just end up losing Rock’s trust, and that would take them down a step. And he wasn’t likely to start believing that it was nothing.

“Rock… things were really messed up when I left. I… I’m damaged goods.” His face felt hot with shame, and when Rock’s face drew a blank it didn’t help. He clearly hadn’t caught his meaning, probably assuming he meant physically, as his eyes wandered to the side of his face that had been nothing but a mangled, bloody mess. Well, this conversation was coming along fine.

“I’ve had thorns in my garden?” More staring, and he felt a slight rush of anger at being humiliated more than necessary. “Wily’s a big pervert!” he tried again. Rock was nodding his head slowly, but it was obvious he wasn’t quite comprehending the true meaning of what Forte was trying to say. Then he made it worse by trying to rationalize it.

“He was a pervert, so when he hit you, you left… right?” He thought about this a second more, then added, “Because he said something perverted to you?” He was confused, that didn’t quite make sense. Forte didn’t seem the type to be bothered by something dirty from an old man’s mouth unless it was really, really bad, or… He frowned more, realization beginning to dawn on him. “Or… he did something perverted to you.”

Forte sighed softly at that, knowing he should feel irritated at Rock, but finding he surprisingly wasn’t. He just didn’t want to be having this conversation with him. “Something like that.” He responded with vaguely, wondering if that was enough of an explanation for him and hoping it was. This was one thing that he had really hoped he would never have to discuss with Rock, he wondered if that was enough of an explanation for him.

“Something really bad.” Rock muttered.

Apparently not. Forte sighed, avoiding his eye.

Rock reached over suddenly, clasping his hands over the one Forte wasn’t gripping onto his cup with. “He did, didn’t he? He did something really bad to you.” He was giving the violet coloured robot a rather intense stare that Forte didn’t have to look up to know was there. It was one of his special ‘I’m going to find out and I’m going to save you’ self serving looks that he still hated.

“Rock…” he tried again, but he already sounded tired, defeated. “He… yes, it was something like that. He tried not to hate that stare, not to hate him, because he really liked Rock, and this might damage things.

Rock thought on it for a few moments, then frowned a little. “did he… you know, kiss you?” He made a slight face of disgust at the thought of Forte being made to kiss those old, livery lips, shrouded in wrinkles, and began to wonder if maybe this was a conversation best left dead after all. Because even that wouldn’t warrant something like running away from the old man. Not worth being blacklisted.

Forte grimaced slightly, pushing the cup away too. “I almost wish.” He groaned quietly, in disgust. “No… I don’t mean that, before you ask.” He felt another hot stab of anger. Why was Rock asking him this? What business of his was it? And the bastard didn’t even look sorry, just curious. His temper surged before he could control it, and he said possibly the worst thing possible. “He fucking raped me, why do you have to keep asking? I don’t want to think about it, so stop. asking. me! ”

There was a short lived moment of panic when he worried that Rock would ask him what rape meant, and then he really would lose control, but when he looked up, Rock was staring at him silently with a horrified expression. Well, that had certainly shut the little bastard up, hadn’t it? He was too busy feeling bitter to have any guilt for the way he was talking to someone he supposedly loved.

Rock stared at the taller boy, mouth working slowly as he looked for something to say. He hadn’t been expecting something like that, it was just too disturbing for his normal realm of thought. He tried desperately to wrap his mind around what Forte had just said, to try and keep things from spiralling out of control. How could Wily do that? It was the kind of thing you read about in the newspaper, but there it seemed distant, alien. Something that just couldn’t happen to people you knew.

He knew he was completely unprepared to deal with something this gargantuan right now, and likely to say something wrong, but he had to say something. He couldn’t just keep staring at Forte, he looked absolutely miserable. He had to say something before things became irreversible.

“Wh-what? Are you sure?” He knew it wasn’t the right thing to say, but he was in such utter shock, it was the best thing he could come up with. That kind of thing wasn’t supposed to happen to people like Forte, who wasn’t afraid to speak up for himself and put others in their place. He was too strong willed, he wasn’t meek, and he wasn’t passive. So how could this have happened?

Forte looked up at him, giving him a malicious glare. “Am I sure? Are you calling me a liar? You think I’d lie about something like this? You finally harass me into telling you and you don’t believe me?” There was a deep, angry blush on his cheeks, and somewhere, under all that anger and hatred in his eyes, there was an incredible amount of hurt, masked but still there.

Rock was too stunned by the contemptuous look he received, coupled by Forte’s vicious outcry to respond at first. He simply stared at the stranger standing in front of him, and wasn’t sure how to deal with him. It wasn’t the Forte he had gotten used to since he had come to stay with the Lights, but it wasn’t the old Forte either. This was an entirely new breed of Forte he was staring at, a new version, unpredictable and frightening.

“No, I didn’t mean it like that.” He asserted defensively. “Of course I believe you, you’re my friend. It’s just that it’s so… just…” He stopped himself before he finished, realizing he couldn’t end that sentence. It would be the strike of the match that would burn down the tentative bridge they had built together. Disgusting. That was what he’d wanted to say. Vile, sickening… wrong. But none of those words were very fitting responses, especially with Forte so upset.

“Shocking.” he substituted in their place quickly, but it was too late and the damage was done. Forte, despite his tendency to spend little time listening and more time acting on impulse, was unnervingly good at reading him, and he knew the violet haired boy had already seen in Rock’s eyes what hadn’t reached his lips. He’d read him like an open book left out on someone’s desk.

Forte stood up, face an angry shade of red, and reached into his pocket, throwing a handful of change onto the table for a tip. “Are you satisfied now? I told you, Rock. I knew you wouldn’t want to know. It’s too ugly for your little self deluded vision of the world! It doesn’t fit in there, does it?” He was breathing hard, nearly shaking with emotion, a mixture of rage, fear, shame, and countless others. “Let’s go home.”

“That’s not true, Forte. I’m glad you told me.” But Rock wasn’t very sure he was. He knew how ugly the world could be, he knew this kind of thing happened every day, that part had been false. He’d been around long enough to know better. He wasn’t sure he had wanted to know what went on at Wily’s fortress behind closed doors after all, though. Perhaps there was some truth in that. Forte turned away from him, going up to the counter and setting his tea cup down on it. “It’s getting late.” he told Forte’s back, taking that as their cue to let the conversation slip, and following the taller boy out the door.

The walk home was slow, bogged down with silence, and agonizingly thick with tension. They made the entire trek back without exchanging a single word between them, though Forte almost wished for some semblance of conversation. He wouldn’t even mind Rock’s long winded rambling, had almost come to enjoy it, and was sure it would carry some of the tension out with it.

But Rock didn’t make a sound, and didn’t seem to realize how badly Forte needed some background noise. Or maybe he wasn’t sure what to say. In any case, he seemed tongue tied for once, and Forte wasn’t about to be the one to start up conversation. Maybe he was too proud, or perhaps just too scared.

He walked ahead of Rock, who let him stay a good ten or so steps ahead of him. When he rounded the corner he found the lights off at the house, save the dim front porch light. He felt a small tightness in his stomach, certain that if the evening had ended differently, he might have been happy that everyone else was asleep. He might have spent a little time on the porch with him, and a lot of time in his bed.

He swatted at a few moths gathered around the halo of light in irritation, now in a considerably bad mood. Why didn’t things ever go right for him? Every time he was sure his life was finally starting to fall into place, things went to shit. He had made so much ground here, and it seemed like everything was finally over, he was going to find a way to be happy. He’d been comfortable here… content. He’d never had that before.

He stepped to the side so Rock would unlock the door, and just wanted the night to be over with. How could things have gotten so bad? He thought of the light atmosphere when they had left only hours before, and he wanted to scream and break something. It just wasn’t fair. He stared at the back of the Light boy’s hair as he unlocked the door, and fought the thing inside him that was driving him to speak. Not tonight… Probably never.

Rock thrust the key into the lock, eyes downcast, then turned it, slipping the key back into his pocket. He paused at the door, still staring at the knob. “Forte… I’m really sorry.” He murmured quietly. “I don’t think any differently of you.” He glanced up at him guiltily, like a child caught stealing from his mother’s purse.

Forte nodded a little, stiffly. “Yeah, I know. It’s okay.” But it wasn’t really, not by a long shot. And Rock did think differently of him now, of that much he was sure. He just couldn’t tell if there was more pity or disgust in those eyes.

Rock nodded back slowly, as if in agreement with the taller boy. “Things just got out of hand, tonight.”

Forte frowned a little. That had been the understatement of the century. Things had gone to hell in a hand basket three hours ago. Things had been spiralling out of control since he had pulled the blindfold from Rock’s eyes, maybe even before then. What was he doing here? Had he honestly expected some great in his change in his life by coming here? Things were always going to be shit, he should have stepped up and accepted that a long time ago.

He pat Rock on the head briefly, two taps, then stepped inside, slipping his shoes off and tossing them to the side lightly. When they reached the stairwell, they broke away from each other with a surprising sense of finality as Forte headed for the living room instead of up the stairs.

Rock must have sensed and possibly hoped for this, he said nothing and let Forte go, heading instead up the creaking stairs to bed, not casting so much as a glance in his direction.

Forte settled onto the couch quietly, burying his face in a cushion, and sank into an exhaustive sleep. The nightmares that night were the worst yet, and he fell from one to the next with a vivid intensity he’d never experienced before.
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(A)bort, (R)etry, (F)ail? Pt. 1: Reconfiguration