Estrangements (Phan AU)

Eccentric

adjective

       • deviating from a usual pattern; unconventional in manner or appearance; odd; (circles) not concentric; off center.

noun

       • an eccentric person.

His mother does not stay sane. It's a gradual change, a slip from pecking him on the forehead at night to sending him off to bed by himself. He doesn't notice, much too young to attribute the difference to anything other than his growing height and strengthening bones. He's getting older- it makes sense that she should withdraw from the coddling all infants require.

He's eight when she hits him for the first time.

She stumbles through the door with a hand on her stomach and a vile stench to her breath, makeup caked down her bright red cheeks and nails bitten to bleeding stubs. He's at the door in an instant, hovering by the staircase as she wanders right past him, and he knows he shouldn't follow her, but he does.

He follows her right to the kitchen, where she's leaned herself heavily against a dining room chair, and he watches her with childish eyes that know nothing of the swell to her stomach or the insanity to her gaze.

"Mom?" he calls out, because he doesn't know any better. She whirls on him with wild eyes and a twisted mouth, fingers like claws as they clench around the wooden chair. She is vicious and crazed, not a mother but a woman pushed far past her breaking point.

"You," she snaps, and her voice is venom leeching through fragile veins. "This is your fault. If I didn't have you, he wouldn't be going back to that fucking skank."

If he were older, he'd realize that mental illnesses are often made worse by pregnancy hormones and the resulting strain on the body. He'd know that she's not well and sometimes her words are not her own and her thoughts are not her own and this isn't really his mother speaking, it's all the things that are wrong inside her head. He'd see that she's sick, as surely as if she'd caught a physical disease, and the hand she raises to strike him with is not lifted out of lack of love for him. He'd know that she does love him, she always will, and she'd never wish he hadn't been born if she were in her right mind.

But Dan is not older. Dan is eight and his mother hits him and her belly swells and this is the beginning of the end and he's not even old enough to know it.

It doesn't end there. It doesn't end until seven months have passed and Dan is not really eight anymore, but eight and seven months of maturity far beyond his years. It doesn't end until his mother is staring at a wet spot on the floor of their kitchen and calmly instructing him to call the last name in her contact list. It doesn't end until Dan's hands are shaking and eyes are wide and he's staring at a woman he's not sure he knows anymore and there's a man on the other end of her phone telling him he'll be there to drive them to the hospital and thin trails of red like the firetruck he still plays with begin slicing down his mother's legs.

It's not even over when they're sitting in the hospital, Dan curling as far into himself as he possibly can because maybe if he disappears into the folds of his favourite sweater, he won't have to hear the way his mother screams. There's a herd of people all around her and a nurse right beside him, trying to take his hand and coax him from his perch, but he shuts his eyes and he shuts his mind and he pretends he's somewhere where the only love he's ever known isn't crumbling at his feet. If he doesn't know what's happening, he can't know it's something bad.

The screaming stops. The coaxing stops. There's nothing but silence as he pries his windows open and greets the outside world, earthquake eyes darting to the woman on the bed. There's a thing in her arms and it doesn't make a sound, her own gaze locked firmly on the new infant's face.

He has a brief moment where he thinks maybe she's okay again, maybe this is like when he was born and she'll go back to being the mother he still tries hard to see her as.

The moment is gone. Her face twists, anger and disgust and a thousand novels he's never tried to read before printing crude text across her sharpened features. The doctor leans over, peering at the newborn she clutches unwillingly onto, and the sunshine that'd been pressing at the windows gives up finding its way inside.

"What's wrong with him?" Dan's mother demands, her voice harsh and vicious as she thrusts her second son towards a nearby nurse. "He's broken."

Dan doesn't see the doctor's face when she says that, but he does see the way the woman seems to recoil at her words. His brother is carefully removed from unloving arms and whisked away to somewhere unknown, not another syllable released as the room begins to clear. His nails dig into the fibers of his printed Star Wars pajama pants, knees pinned hard against his chest as he stares unseeingly at the woman fiddling with the bed-sheets.

"There's something wrong with him," she repeats, quietly this time. He doesn't know whether she's talking to him or the imaginary beings he often finds her waging wars against. "Maybe they don't see it yet, but there is. There's something wrong with him. I know there is. A mother knows."

For a long minute, the room is silent. The blinds are shut and the bed sheets are a soft fabric that doesn't rustle. For a long minute, Dan says nothing.

The minute passes. "You're not a mother."

His voice is gentle, kind despite the subjectively cruel words, and it doesn't waver as they wait for his brother to return. The woman on the bed turns her head, eyes dark as they trace across the one son she managed to love before she ran out of the feeling. She doesn't argue.

Two hours later, a new doctor sweeps back into the room with a bundle of baby boy in his arms, moving to hand him to his mother before redirecting to his brother when she turns purposefully away. There's blankets thick around him, tumbling from Dan's small arms as the infant encased within keeps proportionally large eyes wired shut. He's warm and soft, his breaths so small they can barely be felt, and Dan finds himself fascinated by the younger brother he'll never get to keep. He knows he won't. His mother is busy pulling up maps to fire stations on her phone and refusing to look at the life she's created.

"Hey, little guy," he mutters, quiet so she won't hear. "You'll be better off without her. She's sick and she can't take care of you, but it's okay. You'll go to someone who can because that's how it works. That's what happens. Everything's going to be fine."

As though reassured by the sound of his voice, bright blue eyes flit open not a second after Dan's closed his mouth. They're wide and deep, oceans easy to drown in, and part of him learns in this moment that the eyes are where the truth lies, where everything lies. All he needs is to figure out how to read the stories they tell.

Except that right now, staring into thunderstorm blue eyes, Dan isn't thinking about what he needs to do in the future. He's crossing his fingers against the thick wad of blankets in his arms and praying his brother will know at least as much love as he has, if not more. He prays to anything listening that those thunderstorm blue eyes will stay bright, stay clear, the way their mother's did not.

It's not that much to ask for, he thinks.

He's wrong.