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(This is no.7 "Saviour" in the list of 20 fanwork fiction themes.)
Yzak to the rescue
The school bus was still a couple of blocks from the art museum. Dearka went from feeling nauseous to verging on panic. He'd been fighting strange feelings about the class visit since it had been announced days before. Now he realised: he couldn't do this, he couldn't! His palms were sweating and he might be sick at any moment. He was going crazy.
Yzak who was sitting beside him near the back of the bus had finally noticed his pallor and silence.
"What's the matter with you?" he hissed in an undertone. "You aren't going to frigging puke, are you?"
"N-no. Yzak, it's...it's the thought of the museum...you know
that museum..."
"What do you mean 'that museum'? Oh shit – not the one where your mom...?"
"Yeah. The one where she had the accident."
"This is the same one? You've not been there since?"
Dearka, even through his panic, glared at Yzak. "Why would I ever go and look at art for shit's sake? And in
that place?"
"Well, why the hell didn't you say something before this?"
"I thought I could handle it. I thought I'd be all right; it's been over two years...I-. Oh shit, Yzak, I think I'm gonna lose it if I have to go in there...."
Dearka's mother had attended a function at the art museum. Someone had spilt a drink on the marble staircase in one of the galleries. Before one of the servitors could clean it up, his mother had slipped on the wet surface while coming down the steps. It wasn't a huge distance to fall, but quite enough to snap her neck when she struck the stone balustrade at the bottom. Even Coordinators had freak fatal accidents sometimes....
"Just get a grip!" said Yzak out of the side of his mouth. "Listen! You won't have to go in there. Just follow my lead..." And with that he yelled, "Bastard, I'm gonna kill you!" And punched Dearka hard on the nose.
Dearka yelled and instinctively struck back. Within moments, the lively fight between them had spilled out of their seat into the aisle, attracting the attention of their classmates and the teacher. He strode up the bus aisle and pulled the struggling boys apart. The vehicle was now pulling into the parking area outside the museum.
"Just what is the meaning of this, you two?"
"It's that bloody Elsman! I'm gonna punch his lights out...."
"No you're not, because I'm gonna do yours first! Bastard!"
"Enough! You two boys are a disgrace. Neither of you are going into the museum with this behaviour. You'll stay on the bus, and the driver will take you back to the school. You will report yourselves to the principal's office immediately on arrival. Do you understand? Now take seats on opposite sides of the bus, and don't speak to each other again."
The bus was a few minutes on its return journey before it seemed safe to Yzak to sneak back to Dearka. He slipped into the seat beside him and just sat there quietly. He could see the driver looking at them in the rear view mirror, but when there was no further sign of hostilities between them, he ignored the two boys.
"Well, Dearka?"
Dearka was wiping blood drips from his nose onto his sleeve. "You didn't have to hit quite so frigging hard, Yzak!"
Yzak could feel the ache over his ribs where he was certain a bruise the shape and size of Dearka's fist was forming rapidly. It didn't make him feel particularly sympathetic. He laughed nastily. "I had to make it look realistic, didn't I? Anyway, what are you complaining about? It got you out of the museum visit!"
"Yeah...but what are we going to tell the principal when he asks what we were fighting about?"
Yzak smirked. "That's easy. I'll just tell him how frigging annoying you are and that I lost my temper. He'll believe that 'cause it's true! My mother always says the hardest lies to detect always contain a large element of the truth in them. She hears a lot of them, so she should know."
Dearka grinned over the bloody fingers favouring his nose. He was aware that Yzak's mother talked about politics with her son, though Yzak was close mouthed about the details, other than the occasional off-hand remark like this. "Yeah, I guess so. Thanks Yzak. You saved my butt..."
"Yeah, yeah. Just don't get any blood on my clothes will you..."
And the two boys sat there companionably all the way back to school.
