Title: Bother

Author: Aeryn Sun

Email: willowrose_98@yahoo.com

Feedback: Yes, please

Archiving: Realm of the Shadow. Any others, ask, and ye shall receive. Just ask first.

Rating: G? It's angsty. Like you're surprised.

Spoiler: Homecoming Queen

Couple: Sam/Brooke

Summary: Sam contemplates the big `why' as Brooke offers an apology.

Warning: If the idea of two women involved in a romantic relationship together disturbs you, run, run far far away and never look back. If it's illegal where you live, move quickly. If you're under the legal age, age quicker, it's fun here. Other than that, enter at your own risk, and enjoy.

Disclaimer: Not mine, never were. I bow to their creator and offer my humble thanks. I make no profit from this, only harmless (?) fun. My profit comes in the form of feedback.

Author's Note: This is just me 'doodling' to exercise my long atrophied writing muscles.

"I wonder sometimes why I bother. Like, why I bother fighting against the tide of inevitability like some sort of psychotic salmon trying desperately to get upstream in order to perpetuate the species. Just one of an innumerable many blending together into a blur of single-minded instinct.

If you think about it, comparing salmon and teenagers isn't really all that far off. Salmon seem all too desperate to spawn and teens just seem WAY too occupied with, well, the act of trying to spawn. (sex for any of you not following my somewhat obtuse ramblings)

Now what was I talking about before I started philosophizing about fish? Oh yeah, why I bother with, well, THIS.

Existence, or whatever you want to call it. I'm seriously missing the point of this daily struggle in the fishbowl known as high school. (I figure I started with the fish analogies, I might as well stick with them) I mean, I go in every day hoping that I can somehow keep my head above the water. Meanwhile, the sharks all swarm around me and look for any weakness or vulnerability so that they can attack and have themselves a tasty feeding frenzy.

And I seem to walk...er, swim...? Whatever, right into it every time.

All I want is to make sure the playing field is even; that no one's getting extra helpings of this or that. Make sure that the `little guy' isn't stomped on and overlooked in favor of the 'pretty popular' clique that seems to dominate all aspects of life. Yet every effort I make seems to come around and bite me in the ass almost as soon as I've accomplished anything.

So I wonder, daily it seems, why I bother to keep trying. I mean, I'm obviously not getting anywhere and all I seem to be able to manage to do is piss off all my closest friends with my `behavior'.

Now, see my problem is that the things that I do seem like the `right' thing at the time. It's only later when my friends shun me and berate me like a puppy who peed on the new carpet that I see that maybe `my way' isn't the only way.

God, I'm not making any sense here, am I?

Fantastic.

All I want...damn it what is it that I want? Other than this headache I've given myself to go away, that is.

I want to stop disappointing my mother. That's getting old real fast.

I want to stop pissing off and alienating my friends. I have so few that it seems somewhat self-defeating to keep making them hate me, however inadvertently that I seem to be doing it.

And most of all, I want to stop feeling like I'm second-best. In everything. To her.

Damn it, I REALLY want to stop feeling like I have to compare myself to Brooke McQueen in order to validate my existence. I'm tired of feeling like the night to her day. She's bright; I'm dark. Yin vs. yang and all that crap.

I'm tired of it.

And yet no matter what I do, I seem to get drawn closer and closer into the vortex that seems to surround her. Thanks to my mother's current ill-conceived romance with Brooke's dad, I'm now stuck living down the hall from the girl. And in this house, like at school, everything I do is wrong.

So, again, I repeat, why am I bothering? Why am I bothering to fight against the unavoidable truth that as much as want to hate the girl, I really don't? Why am I bothering to try and make her look bad when all it does is make me look petty and malicious? In my efforts to tarnish her sterling blonde reputation, all I manage to do is make myself look like a world-class asshole?

But outside of my ongoing crusade to topple Brooke from the heights of high school adolescent royalty, who am I? If I'm not the `arch-nemesis of popular head cheerleader Brooke McQueen' then how do I define myself?

A true journalist is objective and goes after their subject with tenacity and a desire for truth that far outweighs anything else. Yet my desire to expose Brooke as `the phony she is' isn't motivated by a search for a higher truth. If I were to be honest, at least with myself if no one else, I'd have to admit that it's motivated by envy.

Envy that she has or is everything I wish I could be. And everything I pride myself on not being. How's that for contradicting myself?"

**

Concentrating as she was on the white screen and cursor in front of her, Sam didn't hear the bedroom door creak open and the blonde housemate in question step in. Curious but not wanting to startle Sam, Brooke cleared her throat.

Sam jumped in her chair and spun around to face her intruder.

"Hey Sam, didn't mean to scare you," Brooke said softly as Sam glowered slightly. The brunette shrugged and went back to her laptop.

"What're you writing?" the blonde asked, slightly afraid that it was yet another scathing editorial on the Glamazon cheerleaders.

"Nothing, just rambling," Sam responded flatly. Brooke bit her lip slightly before deciding to just tell Sam why she was there. "Look, Sam, I just wanted to say that I'm sorry that I blamed you for putting those posters of me up around school. I should have at least considered that fact that you were innocent before I convicted you.

"Yes, you should have," Sam answered back, a bit sharply. "You turned all my friends and my mother against me for something YOUR friend did."

"Sam, I didn't know it was Mary Cherry. You were the only person who had access to that picture. You claim to be this big advocate for truth and honestly. So can you honestly say that you didn't see WHY we all thought it was you?"

And honestly, Sam realized that she couldn't. She couldn't in good conscience say that she would have believed her own protestations of innocence if she were someone else given the things she'd already done to sully Brooke's reputation. She sighed heavily.

"No, Brooke, honestly I DO see why everyone thought it was me. I just would have liked an opportunity to at least defend myself before I was burned at the stake," she countered. "But next time, try to at least listen to me defend myself is all I'm asking."

"Done," Brooke agreed and then groaned. "Is there really going to be another time?" Sam turned in her chair and offered a small smile.

"I really have no idea at this point. About anything. So let's just not worry about it for now, OK?" Brooke nodded.

"OK, night Sam," she said as she left. Sam grunted her response as she went back to the still open file on her computer.

**

"And as much as I want to, I can't stay mad at her. I can't seem to hate her. And I can't stop wanting to, in some way, BE her. Perfect. Popular. Pretty. The exact opposite of me. Flawed. Unpopular. Ordinary.

ARGH! Damn it, I hate this. WHY AM I BOTHERING?

And why can't I admit the truth...the deeper truth that keeps smacking me in the face everytime I dare to look at her...even to myself?"