Work Text:
Mike Hanlon is three. Chubby fists clutching the soft fabric of his mother's long dress, feeling her hands warm on his head. Hearing his father's laugh, his legs swinging against his chest as he's lifted up onto his shoulders. Mike is calm. Mike is safe. He loves his parents more than anything in the whole wide world. He knows no different, after all.
Will Hanlon still hears whispers.
He closes his eyes and remembers a building on fire when he himself was just a boy, before he'd met Jessica and had their own son. It's been thirty years, give or take a few, and he can hear the music of that night, the voices of people he'd known all his life--women smirking at him and men's booming laughter, and then--
Panic. Hoarse screams. Smoke.
Will Hanlon manages to get out. Just in time to see the swastika spray-painted on the Black Spot's wall, the cross burning like a brand on the front lawn.
Will makes sure that Jessica and Mike aren't involved (though his wife isn't naive and it's one of the things he loves about her--she knows about the world, about their 'perfect little town', and her face is solemn). There's no reason for the three of them to stand out anymore than they already do because of their skin and he thinks they're safe.
Butch Bowers, local cop and definite nazi, has to see them as good nggers and Will is determined to suck up his pride for his family.
Mike Hanlon is three and his father does not survive the second hate crime in his path.
Years later when asked Mike doesn't know what to say. Who the hell asks a child to recall the violent death a toddler was forced to witness? You'd be surprised. After all, he was a toddler when it happened. His memories of that day are purely sensory.
The smell of burnt cloth. Hands--black, peeling, like when his dad would try to cook and burn something at the edges. Screaming
(MIKE MIKE PLEASE IT BURNS HELP US SON PLEASE MIKE)
and some of that was his own. Sobbing so hard he can't breathe--or was that the smoke?
Now though, he just wants to be left alone.