Chapter Text
Phantom Valonsäde never claimed to be normal.
There were so many reasons, so many answers to the question “what’s wrong with you?”
Firstly, he was Autistic. Not really a thing ‘wrong’ with him, but something that made him different nonetheless. He also happened to have PTSD. his stupid uncle and his bullshit abuse.
He also happened to have been born a girl. Not really a secret, not wrong, but another tick on the box of ‘bulling target’. He’d realized he was a boy about when he was 10, but he’d hid it until he was twelve and it came out. He had to pray for forgiveness that night on hot coals.
Oh, did he not mention the religious trauma? Yeah, he had a lot of that. His Uncle, William Valonsäde, was a preacher at the local church. He seemed friendly, but behind closed doors, he was a real piece of work.
Phantom knew he’d have never tolerated him if he was his son. However, he was his ‘poor orphaned nephew’, and being his ‘saviour’ earned him brownie points.
His parents died when he was 5. House fire. Their cat had leapt up on his mothers alter, and knocked over a candle. His dad had put him outside, and ran back in for his mother. They found their burned corpses curled together, loving even in death.
That was another reason William hated him- his father had married his mother; a witch. She was a some sort of pagan, but his memories were foggy, and he’d be in mountains of trouble if he tried to look it up. He had been tried to be forced into Christianity, but it’d never stuck for him. He considered himself a witch too, he guessed.
He was weird, to say the least. He loved books and nature, was a firm believer in the supernatural, got goodish grades, and he explored abandoned buildings.
Which ended him where he was now.