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“That’s… going way over my head.
I’m going home.”
Eustace didn’t hear what Edgeworth said after that, he had already turned and left, gripping his baton between his hands and bending it as he muttered to himself. Roundabout thoughts of ‘I screwed that up’ and ‘I *cannot* tell my dad what just happened.’
Unfortunately, Excelsius Winner already knew, but Eustace didn’t know that yet. Eustace just really somehow forgot that Excelsius figured things out disgustingly fast. Someone reported to him. Who?
Again, he didn’t know. Eustace didn’t know a lot of stuff.
He entered the Winner household through the connected garage. He had lost his front door key, and somehow he remembered the garage code. He averted his eyes away from his father’s gaudy motorcycle, and all of the skulls, and the weird stain in the corner… Eustace shuddered. The garage gave him the creeps.
Once he got inside, his heart sank to his shoes. Excelsius was one, already home, and two, flicking at his lighter. Eustace’s eyes widened in fear he couldn’t possibly hide. “D-Dad! Hey! Uh, the investigation was-“
“Stop your idiotic chatter, son.” Excelsius interrupted, looking up from the flame emerging from the little silver box. “I heard what happened at the Zodiac Hall.” He flicked the lighter shut. “Take your gloves off.”
Eustace grimaced, unable to defend himself. Who had told Excelsius? Edgeworth? Gavèlle? Someone informed his father of his mistakes. He had made so many mistakes. His gloves came off slowly, tugged off and gingerly set aside as Eustace stepped up closer.
“It’s disappointing, really. How such a sweet boy like you can get that investigation crushed so quickly.” Excelsius shook his head, motioning for Eustace to present his hands. His palms were all scarred up, old burns bleeding into fresher ones. Little circular scars dotted his wrists too, plus similar ones higher up. And his hands were trembling really bad. It had been years of this, and just the sight of the lighter instilled cosmic dread into his heart.
Eustace didn’t say a word. The lighter did enough speaking for both of them.
His mind blanked out for a completely undetermined amount of time, when he snapped back to the reality, he was sitting on the bathroom floor, wrapping bandages around the few fresh burns. It wasn’t as bad as it had been in the past. Excelsius’s moods fluctuated. It was miserable.
He winced, tugging the bandages tighter. There was a new circular one right on one of the arteries in his wrist, and his clothes were mussed and he smelled like smoke… he dug his nails into his arms, trying to ground himself properly. What had even happened? Just the lighter? Eustace’s lungs and throat hurt too, everything was disorganized again.
He ended up back in his room, staring up at the ceiling. His joints ached and his hands stung, the ceiling was decorated, at least. Eustace had put up posters ages ago, pictures of composers and musicians he had once admired. Now they just felt like distractions. Even his baton hurt him, like most everything recently. He had a nasty mark almost always on his cheek from the baton flicking out of his hands. It stung every time. Everything stung. It felt like every touch he received in some way hurt him.
Mostly Excelsius. It was always Excelsius. He dreaded going home. He felt haunted by his home. An ache settled into his core every time he stepped over the threshold.
The ache didn’t go away the first night.
Nor the second.
By the third, things started appearing in the corners of his mind. He usually didn’t go so long without rest, he had stayed busy throughout the late nights by reading, working, letting matches fizzle down to the ends and leaving tiny burns on his fingertips. Eustace wasn’t supposed to have access to the matches after he’d flushed a box down the toilet as a younger teen.
The audible hallucinations were the worst. His father’s voice worming into his thoughts while staring into the darkness. Curling around him until he teared up. Excelsius wasn’t actually there. He was off working. There was no reason for Eustace to be so worked up. He had to be going mad.
But of course not. Winners were always perfect. Hallucinating wasn’t right. He must’ve been dreaming. A nightmare. A really sucky nightmare that he’d wake up from any minute.
Eustace hadn’t slept for 72 hours.
He had barely closed his eyes. The instant coffee he had snagged from the Prosecutors Office was holding him over.
Sitting on the edge of his bed in the low dawn light, something kept shimmering in and out of his vision. It was blurry and unfocused, but it looked startlingly like a length of frayed, rotting rope. He had found that same rope in the garage years ago. Maybe a year after his mother went missing. It had smelled coppery in the garage for months, honestly. But Eustace had been upset. He had been close with his mother, and when she disappeared, Eustace was entirely lost. He made some rash, and stupid desperate decisions.
The scar around his throat itched a lot. Eustace tried not to scratch it, but when he was in the bathroom at two in the morning, glaring at himself in the mirror, he couldn’t help but scratch at it. All of his scars were itchy. The perfectly round ones littering his throat and collarbone were a total eyesore. His uniform covered most of them, at least. It would be great if he didn’t keep adding more.
Every scar had a different story. Some were desperate, some were routine, and some came at the worst time of night, when Eustace had stolen a package of very expired cigarettes, and sat out in the garage, methodically lighting each one and stubbing it out against his arm. It hurt. So much. He wasn’t going to lie and claim he was ‘used to it’ in any way. Tears welled up in his eyes and he took minutes long rests to calm his shaky hands. He didn’t know why he kept doing it, why it felt right to brand himself with the stupid nasty smelling cigarettes in the confine of the garage.
It was easier when someone (his father) did it as punishment. He couldn’t wimp out of it. It was certain, set in the stone. He would always fail at the investigation. Excelsius would always get mad before promising to fix it up. Eustace would always blank out and wake up hurting in many ways.
But none of that mattered right now. When faced with multiple days of sleep deprivation, he often found himself craving some form of physical reassurance. When Excelsius finally returned home, Eustace was a genuine mess. He managed to get out of his bed and leave his room too.
He found Excelsius out on the porch overlooking the backyard and smoking. Obviously. Neither of them cared much for hanging out there, not with the secrets that laid beneath the dirt.
Without saying a word, Eustace stepped in front of his father and hugged him. Tightly. Excelsius didn’t say a word. He didn’t need to. He could’ve shoved Eustace away and Eustace would still love his father. Excelsius could hurt him right then and there, and it would still be love.
But he didn’t. And that hurt more than the rejection Eustace was waiting for. Excelsius just dropped his cigarette and ground it into the deck with his boot, before hugging his son back. It wasn’t gentle by any means, his hands dug into the bruises he had left days before, but if Eustace ignored the pain, he could pretend everything was fine.
Without a word from either of them, Eustace extracted himself from the hug, wiping away the tears that had escaped down his cheeks. He didn’t run off just yet, he simply kept his eyes averted, feeling trapped by Excelsius’s gaze.
But Excelsius wasn’t looking at Eustace in a way that was particularly hostile. He was actually smiling. A sickeningly gentle little smile that made Eustace’s stomach turn when he finally caught sight of it. His father never looked so kind. And when he did, it foreshadowed the worst things.
Not that Eustace even knew it was bad.
He didn’t know any of it was bad.
The burns were love. The bruising was love. The harsh words were love. The aches that settled into his bones and the pit in his stomach as he stumbled out of his bedroom into the bathroom bleary-eyed some nights was just love.
He loved his father.
Loved him enough to methodically burn cigarettes against his arm to gain his favor for showing strength. Loved him enough to genuinely stay oblivious to everything.
Loved him enough to see a smile made of straight malice and manipulation and cry like a baby, because it was the same smile Excelsius had given him when explaining to a tiny Eustace that his mother was gone.
Eustace stumbled back forwards, and somehow wasn’t rejected cruelly. Excelsius held Eustace tighter than last time, but his hands were actually gentle, one lightly brushing through his hair and the other reaching down so he could pick Eustace up.
It wasn’t particularly hard. Eustace was on the taller side, but he was wiry and quite light. Eustace felt like a kid again. Excelsius had never been that affectionate when he was younger.
“Such a sweet, stupid boy, aren’t you?” Excelsius murmured lightly, turning on his heel and walking them both inside. “It’s alright. I’ve got you.”
Eustace could just close his eyes and pretend nothing bad had ever happened or ever would happen. Because he had his father. And his father could never do anything wrong.