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No one will ever believe you.
No one will ever believe you.
No one will ever believe you.
“…Q? Can you hear me? Come on, Q, don’t make me think you’re possessed…”“I think he’s having a flashback.”“Not a flashforward?”“Shut up, Tony, that’s not funny.”“And I’m not laughing.”Who is it? What are they talking about? These questions occupied Q’s consciousness for a brief moment, but then the nastily grinning face bubbled to the surface again. No one will ever believe you.“Do you know how to operate this thing?”“It’s not difficult.”“I mean, I don’t want to break it.”“Give it here. I know how to handle antiques.”There was a click, then a short hiss, and then muffled, but oh so familiar sounds reached Q’s mind.
I can't stop this feeling deep inside of me
Girl, you just don't realize what you do to me
When you hold me in your arms so tight
You let me know everything's all right
The mocking creature attempted to remind Q about their opinion once more, but some more “ooga-chaka-ooga-oogas” did push them out, and Q finally recalled where he was and who was around him. Those were four teenagers, three of which were his co-habitants (Q still couldn’t manage to call them brothers, although they lived in the same house and had been adopted by the same man quite a while ago) Steve, Tony and Stephen, and the fourth one was Steve’s best friend Bucky. And as soon as Q spotted what Steve was holding, he snatched it away and pressed it to his heart, having made the wire connecting it to the mini acoustic system unplug, so the music abruptly stopped (well, stopped being heard, for Q’s ancient Walkman continued working).“Thank God, you can hear us again,” Steve stated. “What’s going on, Q? I’ve never seen you so upset about being summoned to the principal’s office.”“Yeah, you haven’t been this zoomed out since some jerks broke your old Walkman,” Tony added.“That’s none of your business,” Q muttered, turning the device off.“Seriously?” Stephen sniffed. “Excuse me, but now it is directly our business. We all have spent too long at places where nobody was interested in our business. And when one of us was upset, no one cared why. But here the situation is completely different.”Q hugged his knees, acknowledging that he was not going to be left alone with his situation, and decided to let it out.
“How great that you came, Mr. Lee! It is about Peter again. This time, it’s just outrageous.”
“What happened?”
“He stole the wallet from Mrs. Hill.”
“I didn’t!” Q interfered, although he knew that it was not the best tactics.
“Peter, don’t interfere when adults are talking.” Principal Fury glared at him, but Q did not look away, doing his best to suppress rage building up inside him. However, this rage weakened a bit when he heard Mr. Lee’s reply.”
“Trust me, Mr. Fury, I would’ve known if Peter had performed a major theft like this. Recently, his behaviour has significantly improved. And I have observed his habits.”
“Mr. Lee, I know that you tend to see the best even in the most hopeless cases, but Peter is a thief! There have been countless cases when he stole from his classmates!”
“I know. But it doesn’t mean that he is guilty now.”
“Mr. Lee believes me! He actually believes me!” the little voice inside Q’s head piped up, but then was suppressed by the growing feeling of disappointment: “So what? No one else does. Except, maybe, for the basket cases I live with.”
“Peter, please exit. I need to have a private conversation with Mr. Lee.”
Q obediently dragged himself to the corridor and sat on one of the chairs under the wall. Silence was pressing on his ears, but not for long.
“I’ve heard everything.”
“Get lost, Jimmy,” Q grumbled, not even needing to look up to recognize Jimmy Moriarty. Hardly anybody at school liked him – among the kids, of course, for adults were thrilled with him. Always dressed in classy suits and ties (booooooring!) and always getting the highest score in every test… but that was the catch. As soon as Jimmy was confident nobody with authority could see or hear him, his true nature came out: there wasn’t a student who hadn’t heard about Jimmy’s shenanigans involving adding some kind of drugs to lunches (that day, almost everyone was let go home early for very delicate reasons), messing with substances at the chemistry lab, hiding fifty-five alarm clocks all over the school, having wound them up to ring at the same time… Generally, Jimmy was a swine. And the worst thing was that some adults did know what he was like, but could not or did not want to tell the truth, because Jimmy was from a rich family. So rich that it even seemed weird that Jimmy attended an ordinary school, not some cool private one, but Q suspected that his parents wanted to show off how good they were by making generous donations to the school their son studied at.
Jimmy sneered, holding something – a brown wallet with an embroidered lizard. Q hardly managed to hold himself from lashing at him, but his expression must’ve let it out, because Jimmy’s grin became even wider:
“What are you going to do? You’re a worthless orphan with just enough luck to be adopted. And I am from a respected family. You’re a thief, and you’ll always have to steal, even you don’t need to, although I doubt that you will ever be able to use any other ways to maintain your living. And I am going to inherit a fortune.”
“But I am not a dirty liar like you,” Q snapped. Jimmy cracked up:
“Seriously? The Malfoys were dirty liars, but no one arrested them.”
“Until they slipped,” Q parried.
“I will not. And even if you try to defend yourself, just imagine: the little kleptomaniac beating the crap out of the best student! Who has an advantage here? No one will ever believe you.”
“I know that Jimmy is a filthy liar, but… but he’s right after all! No one will ever believe that he stole that wallet, not I!” Q yelped, rocking from side to side.Bucky cracked his knuckles (both real and metal ones). Steve’s face turned into a white cold mask. Stephen frowned. And Tony rubbed his chin.“First off, it’s not going to be left just so,” he stated. “I’ve heard about these Moriartys. They have been involved in a lot of dirty stuff, but always managed to escape with a whole skin. I guess this Jimmy inherited the best from all of his ancestors…”“What’s that look, Tony? One could think you’re up to something,” Stephen noticed.“I am,” Tony approved, grinning like a maniac. “You can’t imagine how much I am!”Q felt a little better, but the colours did not return to the world for the rest of the day. Even the food tasted like carpet (and it was spaghetti, one of Q’s favourites) for him. But Tony’s enthusiasm seemed only to grow with time, so even the youngest inhabitants of the Comic Book Manor suspected something.“Tony gotta plan,” Peter informed, having climbed onto Tony’s bed. The latter pretended that all he was interested in was Bucky’s prosthetic arm, which he was currently fixing. “Dat cuz Coo is sad?”“Stop fussing around, I don’t want oily stains on my bedclothes,” Tony murmured through his teeth.“Dat cuz Coo is sad.” This time Peter wasn’t asking. “Whattaya up to, Tony?”“Yeah! Told you that Tony’s planning!” A giggle was heard from behind the door, followed by an unmistakable punch. Tony rolled his eyes:“All right, you two godlets, get in. Bruce, stop hiding under the bed, I can hear your wheezing. Getting another coughing attack is the last thing we need. And… Natasha, Clint, get out of the ventilation system. Now. Hiding there is an old meme.”“How did he guess?” Natasha wondered, having gotten out – covered in dust and with spider webs in her red hair. When all the sneakiest kids in the world showed themselves, Tony counted them and asked:“Where’s Q?”“Listening to his cassette and refusing to talk to anyone,” Clint, who shared a room with Q, replied. “What’s going on? Everyone’s so mysterious about it.”“I’ll tell you one word: Moriarty,” Tony replied. The reactions upon hearing this were various: Thor clenched his fists, Loki raised his eyebrows, Clint reached for his back pocket where he usually kept his slingshot, Natasha produced her water pistol, Peter blinked and Bruce blushed till his ears. “That’s it. I see you’ve heard of Jimmy Moriarty.”“Tots! He was the one who had the idea of the green ink thing for Bruce!” Thor exclaimed.“He flooded all the bathrooms, and I was blamed for it,” Loki added. “And I was proven innocent just because I was in a different place at that moment.”“He put razors into my ballet shoes,” Natasha stated. “And not only mine, but everyone’s in the group. Some girls got seriously hurt, and I checked my shoes just in time to get those sharp things out. Just say no fun.”“He spoiled my test,” Bruce informed. “And wrote “I’m stupid” on it.”“It wasn’t me who caused Darcy to go to the hospital in winter,” Clint interfered. “We were playing snowballs, and Jimmy put a stone inside his snowball and hit Darcy’s eye with it. I dunno how she wasn’t left one-eyed. But everyone accused me because…”“And no one cared that you’re a killer shot, huh?” Bucky interrupted. Clint nodded. “Well, I have a story to share as well. Jimmy framed me by putting forbidden books into my bag.”“What kind of forbidden books?” Natasha wondered.“Some rubbish propaganda ones. So crude that it was even funny, but not for the ones who found them. Also, Jimmy spread a rumour that this,” Bucky flexed his now-free prosthetic arm, “had something to do with me being “brain dead”. Bah! I’m not really into parties and other social stuff, so what? But some were foolish enough to believe.”“Buck not bwain dead.” Peter leaned on his side and glanced at him from below. At this moment, it was obvious that even such an unsociable person like Bucky could not resist the charm of the youngest one of the Comic Book Manor gang.“By the way, Peter, does the name Moriarty say something to you?” Tony asked. Peter sucked on the tip of his forefinger for some moments and said:“I heawd it fwom adults.”“And were any cruel pranks played at your preschool?”“Nope,” Peter shook his head.“Steve also has a grudge against that Jimmy boy,” Bucky continued. “Because of that drawing of a… em… of private parts on the blackboard. Steve was with me when it happened, so I approved it wasn’t him, but who would listen?”“And Strange told me about a prank involving Jimmy and firecrackers under chairs as well,” Tony mused. “I think I see a pattern here. All the pranks are directed at someone. They are personal. Jimmy knows what should be done so that a certain person is accused and not him. Of course, I was accused after that sewing machine at the housekeeping class broke, because I was the one to fix it!..”“How do you know Jimmy was behind it? It could’ve broken by itself,” Bucky supposed, having made Tony glare daggers at him:“First off, I don’t approve that something is fixed until I check several times that it is. And secondly, Jimmy teased me about it.”“Me as well,” Clint admitted.“And me, and me, and me,” a sequences of voices followed.“And he never repeats the same prank twice,” Tony continued. “His head may have gotten too big, but his brains remained the same size. And he is on his own, while there are almost a dozen quite brilliant heads.” The insane smirk showed itself again. “I think I’ve got the picture. Just wait until Steve and Strange return and Q comes back to Earth. This is going to be soooo much fun!”
“I fell like an idiot,” Bucky confessed through the gaiter covering the lower half of his face.“We’ve already started, so let’s just do it. Yeah, I agree that Tony’s ideas don’t sound as the most reasonable in the world, but they do work, trust me,” Steve hummed in return. Although winter had already succumbed to spring and days were getting warmer, nights and early mornings still remained cool, so gloves, gaiters and knitted caps that the boys were wearing didn’t seem suspicious at such an early hour. And they didn’t encounter anyone along their way to the middle school.“Is this here?” Bucky asked when they got to its backyard.“Yeah. Thank goodness it’s on the first floor. Here’s the needed study.”The window over them suddenly opened, and a small head popped out:“Come on, get in!”Steve and Bucky scrambled in and spotted that Tony was already doing his part of the work over the hinges of the cupboard with glass doors which contained models of geometric shapes.“We entered through the doors. Natasha picked them,” he explained, not distracting from his work. “Why are you standing? C’mon, we don’t have too much time!”While Steve set off to draw on the blackboard, Natasha hid in the lower cupboard (the one “which no one ever opened”, according to Q), and Bucky asked:“How many lessons are you going to skip? Just interested.”“Ah!” Natasha waved aside. “Housekeeping. Can’t stand sewing anyway… sorry Tony. If it’s okay, I’ll get out after the second class.”“So, Jimmy pranked me at the high school where we study,” Steve muttered to himself, adding extra details. “Let’s see how he likes the fact that all three of us are gonna be at our school the whole day…”“By the way, did you bring the cover?” Tony asked Natasha.“Yeah.”Tony gulped, having recalled how furious Stephen had gotten about his most favourite edition being sacrificed to the grand plan. He had reluctantly agreed only after two promises: that their plan would work and that Tony would buy him a replacement (not cheap, by the way, so Tony had to delay his dream of getting a new tool set for an indefinite period).“What about Bruce?” Bucky muttered, listening for extra sounds.“He’s found a better idea than the one what we were discussing,” Tony smirked, having checked the results of his work. “And it arrived yesterday evening. Ooooh, I think I smell some rebellion here!”Steve stepped back to admire his creation and stood akimbo, clearly proud of it.“By the way, this is included in the basic artist training program,” he stated innocently. “Now let’s get out. Our work here is done.”“Not mine,” Natasha reminded.
“Who. Did. It.”The students were glancing at each other. Some were chuckling, some were in horror, and Q felt as if fireworks of triumph were ready to explode inside him when the teacher glared at him, but could not accuse him. Naturally, Q wasn’t that skilled in drawing, especially things clearly not for kids of his age.“Why are you looking at me?” Jimmy exclaimed. “It wasn’t me! Look, my suit would’ve gotten all chalky if it was me!”Q spotted that the words “IT SERVES YOU RIGHT” were almost literally written on the foreheads of some of his classmates and did his best to keep his expression neutral. After all, it was just the beginning.Meanwhile, the PE teacher Mr. Coulson, whose class was taking place outside, was too busy reproaching the students for bad jumping skills to notice that a certain boy with hearing aids sneaked away and ran to the open window at the first floor. Having made sure that no one was watching, Clint got his slingshot from under the bush where it had been hidden, loaded it with a marble, aimed and shot – one, two, three! Then he tossed the slingshot back under the bush and dashed to join the class again. And right on time: the students in the room were yelping and running around, trying to get away from the stream of water from the shattered aquarium and pieces of glass from both the aquarium and glass doors scattered around the floor.“Quiet! Quiet!” the teacher shouted. “Everyone, carefully walk out. And when I find out who did it…”But hardly had everyone gotten out of the room when a scream was heard from the bathrooms, and Q (and not only he) had to hold his nose because of the stench that flowed from that side. Yeah, yeast toilet paper was doing its job and was far less obvious that just tossing yeast into the toilet.“Why are you looking at me?” Q asked when the teacher’s eyes stopped on him. Again. “I was in your sight the whole time. How could I possibly have caused these things to happen?”The teacher almost roared with irritation, but could not say anything in return – at first.“Show me what is in your bag. Now. Or you will get sent to Principal Fury again.”Q obediently opened his bag that contained nothing more than regular school stuff – three textbooks, a folder full of copybooks, a space-themed pencil case and a lunchbox. The two latter items also had nothing suspicious, to the teacher’s chagrin.And that was when Jimmy’s bag suddenly fell from his hands (only Q heard a whistle of a marble through the air and its hitting leather, because he was waiting for it) and opened, having revealed its contents – almost all the same with Q’s, but of more expensive varieties… and with additions, those being an empty cover that used to be the illustrated edition of Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone, a bag of marbles and – the ill-fated wallet. As they say, Jimmy’s face was priceless at that moment.“It wasn’t me,” he stated, attempting to recreate his usual smug fashion. “Q put these into my bag. I’m sure.”“Really? Look how stuffed my bag is. I couldn’t have sneaked them in,” Q replied with a wide sneer. “Besides, what did you do to that poor book? Ain’t it violent?”No matter how Jimmy tried to defend himself, the final blow came: the librarian showed herself in the corridor, looking as if she had seen hell on earth. Q knew that she was very religious and tolerated fantasy – especially books that Stephen was fond of – like “Satan’s messages”, so he realized what had been done and had to take some deep breaths not to let his ribs shatter with laughter.“I’ll prove that it was you, Q! Trust me, I will! Just you wait!” Jimmy shouted along the way, while being dragged to Principal Fury’s office. And Q just grinned and said, looking him in the eye:“No one will ever believe you.”
“Good news everyone,” Steve informed, appearing in Tony’s and Stephen’s room with his cell phone. “The Moriartys are leaving town. Guess our master plan worked even better than we thought.”“But now they are going to torture someone else,” Stephen grumbled, having put the replacement Philosopher’s Stone, identical to the sacrificed one, on the shelf.“Pinning those pages to the walls has not been easy,” Tony confessed. “But it could’ve failed if it was not for Natasha. She placed evidence into Jimmy’s bag and left so quickly that not one spotted her.”“That was easy,” Natasha commented. “When everyone’s panicking, one just has to catch the moment.”Meanwhile, Q was in the middle of a conversation, which, unbeknownst to him, was listened to by at least four more ears.“I understand that you wanted to have revenge upon Jimmy, but something this destructive…”“But what if nothing else works?” Q exploded. “I mean, you understood that it wasn’t me, but no one else listened to me!”“I get it, Q. When no one listens, one has to shout.”“Besides, Jimmy did it all for fun, because he could, and this was done to return the favour,” Q went on. “Okay, that yeast toilet paper thing could’ve been too much…”Thor and Loki, who were listening under the door, high-fived each other.“…but the main thing is done. Jimmy is exposed, and I am proven innocent.”“So try to act similarly. I’ve noticed that you have been doing your best not to steal, and you should continue.”Only if it is not about all-round jerks like Jimmy, Q thought, but kept quiet.“This time, I am not going to punish you, but you have been warned.”“I get it,” Q nodded. Your warnings are actual.When Mr. Lee exited the room, the twins rushed in almost immediately.“So, is it true? You’re not going to steal anymore?” Loki asked, almost bouncing with excitement.“What for?” Q flopped onto his bed and put his hands behind his head. “I have a house, I have some seriously cool pals, and I have my Walkman. And I have Jimmy out of the way. Why would I need to steal?”