#wammy's house was a neverending well of betrayal and dissapointment

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B’s Strawberry Patch [Fic]

[~3k words]

[Rating: General Audiences]

[Wammy’s era, backstory stuff. Fluff and trauma.] 

Uhh. I wrote something. 

Apologies for the minor mention of some unintroduced OC’s. Florence and Salle are students at Wammy’s who we know more about in all of the writing I haven’t posted yet. Because.... I’m lazy. but nevermind that, I finally did a little character study on B. Just a littel taste. Here you go.

“B, my boy, you need to get a hobby.”

The words were at first incomprehensible, then surprisingly harsh– At least, coming from Wammy. While he wasn’t exactly soft, he was certainly known to most of the children as kinder than Roger– You wanted to face him with your questions about uncertain feelings, embarrassing problems, normal things that Roger would treat like the rites of a Satanic ritual when discussed around children. Roger was much better at– and some could argue, relished– giving bad news or reprimands. For this reason, when Wammy was stern, B actually listened. 

“I have a hobby.” B frowned, pulling at the loose thread on his sweater. 

Wammy sighed, smiling softly. “B, you haven’t played the piano in months.” B looked up at him sharply, then back to his unravelling sweater.

“Because I’ve mastered it. Am I to play through a composer’s entire life’s work in order to beat it into the ground?” He was growing agitated, and yanked the thread as he spoke, bunching it up. Wammy laughed. 

“I understand, B– You’re entirely devoted to your studies. It’s admirable, and perfectly in tune with what the program is intended for, but it’s also important that you branch out and explore interests not merely for the sake of academia. If it helps, think of them as extracurriculars. The–” He hesitated briefly– “The staff is, well… They’re worried about you. There’s a very high risk of burnout if you carry on this way, and your education and upbringing should be sustainable. You’re not meant to become a world specialist in criminal justice in a year, or even ten. This will take time, B, and while a full force effort is recognized, it is best saved for when it’s asked of you. For now, we are asking you to pace yourself.”

B snorted, snapping the thread. He looked up at Wammy, squinting at him from across his desk. “Well? What do you want me to do?”

Wammy suppressed another sigh with another long-suffering smile. “Whatever you want to do. I suppose you tend to approach things with the goal of mastering, completing, or otherwise overcoming them, and that’s perfectly fine for academics, but perhaps another approach would be better suited for constructive leisure. Have you given much thought to creative pursuits?”

B contemplated this, slumping deeper into the plush armchair beneath him. “I thought music was creative.”

“Well, generally if you compose your own pieces, then yes. But I seem to recall you vehemently refusing to do so when the idea was proposed, unless you’ve changed your mind–”

“No. It would just be another composer’s work in a different form.” 

Wammy laughed. “I believe by your logic, no books are original, as they use the same letters as Chaucer or Dickens. But I follow what you mean, if partially. What about painting, or sculpture?”

B was silent. 

“Well, it doesn’t hurt to try. I know that Mr. Barnes would be more than happy to teach his skills to someone, Lord knows he’s been burdened with his artistic background quite heavily in his time here, being forced to teach history. He’s been nearly bitter at times about it before. It would be a shame to let his other skills go to waste, perhaps the both of you could benefit from it.” Wammy was half-talking to himself by this point, and B could see the plans already formulating in his brain. 

“No.” B knew he was being petulant at this point, but he didn’t want to be having this conversation. If he simply refused everything Wammy suggested, the old man would eventually get frustrated and let B resume his normally scheduled activities. He didn’t understand why it was an issue, really— At first B is told that he must study and work hard in order to receive his promised rewards, but, oh, now not that hard. What this meant, then, was that they all must have underestimated him. B scowled at the thought. Of course they did. After all, he was number two. Maybe this was their twisted way of keeping him in that position.

“If you’re not going to choose something to do, then I will choose something for you. I thought a creative outlet might allow you to expel your energy in a less exhausting way than studies, but perhaps you need something entirely different.” Wammy gazed contemplatively at B, hands folded under his chin. After a moment’s pause, he smiled. 

“I think both the gardens and you might benefit from some hard work.”

~*~ 

Child labor. Wammy’s proposal amounted to child labor, B was sure of it. He and Wammy stood outside the greenhouse, squinting through the midday sun at the gardens surrounding it. While it wasn’t in shambles, it was clear that the greenhouse had been unattended for quite some time, and the bushes over grew, few blooms to snow despite the time of year. B curled his toes into the dirt beneath him, sulking while Wammy examined the area. Weren’t there laws about this sort of thing? 

“Until you find some other activity you’d rather do, you could work in the gardens or the greenhouse— Given it’s cleaned up some, I’m sure you could find a more academic pursuit in botany, perhaps some floristry. However much effort you put into it is entirely up to you, but I’d like you to spend at least an hour out here a day, save for the first two days of the school week, and weather permitting. It would be entirely yours, with no supervision required by staff, although if you wanted advice from the groundskeeper, I’m sure he would be happy to help. Otherwise, you’ll have to think of something yourself.”

B pressed his lips together, folding his arms tightly around himself. It felt like a punishment, entirely unfair. But B could adapt-- he was excellent at suffering. He’d already begun forming his own ideas as to how he’d manage to make this experience bearable (nevermind the fact that Quillsh had just told him he could think of something else, this was a challenge as much as a punishment and B did not refuse challenges,) musing that this would be a fantastic way to fuck off and do as he pleased during school hours. Quillsh didn’t give him enough credit— B wasn’t all studying, with no play. He would let the others drag him on their adventures, smoke cigarette stubs someone had collected from the ground, and carve out grotesque scenes into fallen tree stumps. He couldn’t really offer those outings to Quillsh as a hobby, though, and to be fair, they weren’t very structured activities. They mostly just ended with someone getting a poison ivy rash, or returning to the house with a lunch sack full of worms. 

This particular task was somewhat more restrictive than simply wandering around the grounds around the house-- He’d be within sight of the orphanage, close enough for other people to bother him. But people rarely did linger around the garden much, the other students instead choosing to spend their time roaming, or at the more closely maintained front garden. When he thought about it, B realized he couldn’t really remember the last time anyone paid any mind to the back garden. It was, even for it’s proximity to the house, a place of solitude. It would be his. He considered having a space to himself. 

In Krasnoyarsk, he rarely belonged, and even rarer were things that belonged to him. His instinctive distrust had melted away the more time he spent at Wammy’s, and when Quillsh told him something was his, he believed it.

He liked it. 

The strawberry patch was his.

When exams season neared, the patch wilted. The more demanding the classwork grew, the fewer qualms B had with simply letting the whole thing decay. But in the early summer, like glorious clockwork, the patch thrived, rising to vibrance under B’s distracted attention. It turned out it wasn’t that difficult to get the unmanaged patch to produce fruit.

It needed a great deal of cleaning out, to be sure. He mostly spent his first few days hacking bedgrudgingly at the waist-high weeds that had taken root amongst the main strawberry beds, plotting his violence vengeance on whatever idiotic staff member had presented Quillsh with their ‘concerns.’ He seethed about the idea that he, the top student who was clearly more well-adjusted (and better at being an actual human) than his competitors, would be at risk of ‘burnout.’ His anger cleared the entire patch of several bins of weeds, the rotted wheelbarrow half-submerged in dirt on one end of the gatden, and a few rotted strawberry plants by the end of the week. 

The next day, he trudged out to the garden, and spent most of his hour sitting. Thinking. Mostly thinking about how ridiculous it was that he was out here, staring at a clean, barren garden, while the boy who could obliterate his name from the pages of history itself sat inside, likely miles ahead of him. He thought of ripping the remaining strawberry plants out of the ground, shredding their roots and small, light grean leaves, abandoning the whole project, giving Quillsh the finger, and kicking A’s ass. Intellectually and physically. 

He couldn’t. Instead, he found a hose, blasted the tiny plants with water, then went back inside for the day. For a few weeks, stewing and watering the plants was all he really did.

Despite this, He was greeted by mid-summer with tiny green berries. He thought at first that some sort of larvae had attached itself to the flowering plants, but was struck with awe when he realized they’d produced fruit. He’d produced fruit, in a way. The sight of actual progress made him forget his plans for vengeance, and the bitterness in his mind was replace with all sorts of ideas for what he could do with the berries when they ripened. He was now motivated partly by the occasional desire to simply get away from the house, and moreover the thought of the house cook’s strawberry rhubarb pie. He became far more troubled with actually getting the patch to produce more fruit than actually managing it, and paid no mind when the roaming plants took root in the tulip beds across the garden. He did eventually clean out the greenhouse, reasoning that he’d need somewhere to store his supplies, and it didn’t hurt that some of the overgrown herb planters were salvageable. 

That old bastard really had convinced him to engage in manual labor, but B had begun to like it. He liked the solitude, the feeling of protective satisfaction with his plants, and the signs of nature shown on his tanning skin in dirt and sweat when he returned to the house for the night. Roger would mutter about hiring a gardener on occasion, shaking his head at the sight of strawberry runners creeping alongside his office window (his office, which was set on the opposite side of the house from the garden, a good ways away from it) and B would pay him no mind. In the long run, both Roger and Quillsh were relieved B had found a less destructive hobby, and they no longer had to worry about finding half-completed, amateurish taxidermied roadkill in the staff’s records room.

As the patch flourished, B flourished in turn. He woke up at sunrise each day, slinking out of the house in his slippers to check the patch, evaluating whether or not he’d harvest today or tomorrow. He was immeasurable ecstatic after his first harvest, proudly presenting a basket of small, red, wrinkly strawberries to the house cook. Considering how ridiculously the patch had sprawled out, it was a rather sad harvest, but B was immensely proud of himself. He tucked away three of the jars of strawberry jam the cook used them for for himself, two to eat, and one to just look at. 

All things considered, B was beginning to grow into a reasonably well-rounded child. More than he’d previously considered himself to be, at any rate. He didn’t want to admit that Quillsh was right, but finding  his life no longer restrained to his studies gave him a certain level of peace. He snapped at his class partners less, and paid less attention to Roger’s lectures. He spent them staring out the window, lips twitching as he held back a smile at the sight of a tiny red berry on the window ledge. He even shared his precious jam with a few of his friends, out on one of their free-roaming adventures. Florence had brought the fancy crackers the cook kept hidden above the refridgerator, and they ate them together in silence, all agreeing wordlessly that it was the best jam any of them had ever eaten. B didn’t like the attention the patch had begun to draw from both students and staff, but it was mostly by reputation. It was a sacred site, and although the younger students still whined at the cooks to make more strawberry crumble, B and the patch itself were mostly left alone. 

His menacing attitude that had previously caused other students to give him a wide berth wasn’t as effective as it once was, and though still not by everyone, he became liked. The cook was particularly fond of him, and although he didn’t mean for it, the ventures with jam and crackers in the forested grounds created a different kind of dynamic between him and his friends. He still got into fights, but more often, it was in defense of someone else-- Not himself. The violence wasn’t really needed in any of the circumstances he found himself in, but Salle in particular, who had a similar appetite for vengeance, but a smaller stature than would allow it, appreciated the thought. He became as protective of his friends as he did his garden.

He found that it was good to be loved, even if the price was learning to love in return. He still did not grant any attention to new students, and still despised certain teachers, but he’d finally found himself on solid ground. He’d given himself enough room for vulnerability. 

He didn’t like it. 

At least, he told himself he didn’t like it. There’d be a day where it all came crashing down, where someone betrayed him, or he was hurt, and he’d have to move again, and he’d return to drifting between places that were never homes, finding barren field after barren field. He knew it wasn’t right to feel as comfortable as he did, but despite his natural instincts, couldn’t dwell on his pessimism for long. B was starting to really believe he’d found a place where he belonged. A home.

The only thing standing in his way was A. 

A had the one thing B did not– Approval. The title, the position, the chance for everything B was working towards. In the grand scheme of things, the strawberry patch didn’t matter. Even his friends, as helpful as they were, did not matter. There was only one thing that really mattered, and he couldn’t afford to soften and let the competition win.

A was number one. He was soaring ahead of B, it seemed, and the staff treated him like some kind of child-angel, like a superhuman being who could cure any disease with a touch of the hand. It drove him insane. Before he saw his own growth, he saw A’s growth. He saw A continuing to excel, to get ahead of him, in front of him, above him. The warmth he felt when receiving praise from the house cook for his progress in their lessons was instantly washed away with a cold jealousy for the reverent silence that overtook the room when A walked in. 

A did not have hobbies. A’s inhumanity, which B had previously regarded as a weakness, was really his strength. A was never told to engage more in extracurriculars to avoid burnout– A was pushed, and pushed, and pushed because he could take it. B couldn’t. That’s what it was. He figured it out one day, two years after his work on the strawberry patch had begun. He was passing by the staff break room; the door was left cracked open, and he couldn’t help but eavesdrop. He didn’t intend on doing so for very long, but the sound of his name made his feet turn to lead.

“Yes, he’s doing well. He’s never cooperated this well with the structure before. Nearly no complaints from the infirmary this month, which is pretty remarkable. It’ll really be beneficial for him, he’s learning skills he might need later to… Well, you know.” A hum of acknowledgement from another voice. “I just don’t think he’ll take it as well as the others would. Like A.”

He didn’t know exactly what they were talking about, but he had a pretty good guess. These weren’t good intentions. They were just being proactive. All of them– the staff, Roger, Quillsh– they weren’t enriching his education.

They were softening a blow.

Florence finds him one afternoon ripping up the strawberry patch. He’s not harvesting, the berries scattered on the ground around him are already mushy and overripe, moldy bits sticking to each other in the sweaty August sun. He was uprooting them, ripping apart leaves, kicking clumps of dirt over his plants. His hair stuck to his forehead, plastered in sweat, a grim expression on his face. His shirt was stained with fruit pulp, and his hands were black from digging in the rich dirt he’d so carefully fertilized the growing season before. He didn’t look at her, and continued to destroy the beds. After that point, and for the remainder of his stay at Wammy’s, the garden remained empty. The plants rotted. The weeds returned.