Chapter Text
Stephen hadn’t always carried that quiet, heavy look in his eyes.
There was a time not even that long ago when he laughed easily, talked too much, and found excitement in almost anything. The kind of kid who’d race the neighbourhood dogs, drag his cousins outside to play, and greet the morning with annoying enthusiasm.
People who knew him back then still remembered it clearly.
But that was before the incident.
People stopped asking after a while. Stephen never explained, and no one pressed. Kids have their tragedies; adults have their assumptions. Whatever happened that day didn’t leave scars you could point at. It just left… a shift. A silence. Like someone had lowered the volume on him permanently.
The cheerfulness didn’t disappear.
It simply withdrew, locked behind some door in his mind that he no longer touched.
His sleep went with it.
Nights stretched on, long and restless, full of half-dreams that dissolved the moment he blinked. Some nights he woke gasping; others he woke without realizing he’d ever fallen asleep at all.
And mornings… well.
Mornings became proof.
The eye bags.
The dullness.
The way he moved like he was aware of everything and cared about nothing.
Still, under all that, fragments of the old Stephen remained.
Buried, dimmed, quiet… but still there.
Today, someone was going to meet both sides whether Stephen liked it or not.