Chapter Text
Once upon a time, there was a boy who loved his mother.
He loved the rest of his family, too, of course. His older sister, with her gentle hands that always patched him up after a tumble. His older brother, who more often than not had caused it. And the youngest three, not yet grown enough to lose their wonder in a world that frequently lost them. He even loved his father. Most of the time.
But he loved his mother most.
His mother was the one to put him to sleep at night, and the one to wake him. To shake him from slumber while the world was still dark, shushing him with quiet giggles as they snuck together through the kitchen door. She took him out into the night, ran with him barefoot under the stars, and washed his feet clean with well water until the green of the grass was gone.
“Our little secret,” she’d whisper as she kissed his red curls, and he had always kept it.
Others, though, were not so good at keeping secrets. And it turned out his mother had many.
“Please,” she’d begged as his father dragged her to the door by her hair. One pale hand scrabbled at the grip at her temple; one hand clutched at the boy’s own thin wrist as he trailed behind. “You can’t do this, Frank. You can’t do this; he’s mine.”
“That much I believe,” his father had growled, words for once not slurred by drink. “But nothing else.”
His mother’s eyes were wide as she looked down at him, and white all around. Like the moon had been when they sang to it the night before.
“Don’t let him do this, baby,” she’d rasped as she strained to keep hold, her usually sweet tone strangled by tears. “Don’t let him take you from me.”
His fingers weren’t strong enough to grip hers back as her hand slid down his arm. Her nails raked over his skin as she was finally pulled free and flung through the open door. It slammed shut behind her with solid finality, muffling her continued cries.
The red welts she’d left behind on the boy’s arm stung as his father grabbed at him next, pinched tight under a curiously uncalloused hand.
“Fucking bastard you are,” his father hissed, dragging him back from the heavy wooden door that shook with his mother’s frantic blows. Her voice faded as they wound through the house, stomping through the hallways where his mother had tiptoed in the night. Anxious faces peered out through doorways, streaked with confused tears, his elder siblings holding the younger back with tight arms. He tried to smile at them, let them know it would be alright, that their father’s mood would pass as it always did.
But he was not alright, and the mood did not pass. His father yanked open the heavy cellar door and tossed him through, slamming it shut behind him.
“This is where bastards belong,” he spit out, and old metal tumblers turned with a grinding clatter as he locked the boy away.
Tired, confused, and clutching the bruised scratches on his arm, the boy laid down on cold stone. He stared up at the starless darkness of the cellar ceiling, strained his ears for his mother’s absent voice. And finally, lying there alone with tears wet on his cheeks, he slept.