Dedicated to the talented KentuckyPriedChicken for blessing me with the amazing fanart above^ I screamed when I saw it, love the detail! I appreciate your devotion so much <3
Chapter 5 | Leo
Leo's babysitter had known there was something wrong the moment Jayden paid her extra, years ago.
She'd seen the sly look in his eyes and the implication in the smirk on his lips. She'd understood that she might have to be tad secretive about the entire thing but she'd gone along because she needed the money. He was just a normal man who'd moved into town and didn't want people spreading news about his newborn. How drastic can it be, she'd thought as her eyes had lingered thirstily at the stacks of green.
She was stupid because it turned out more than drastic. Horrific. Insane. She should've known that he wouldn't let her leave after that. That she'd be stuck. Maybe if she had she would've prevented an innocent soul from enduring the conviction of a heartbroken lover and the silent injustice of the world
Her regrets were cut off when a small finger tapped her arm demandingly. She looked down at Leo.
"Tell me more?"
Five-year-old Leo was already a surprisingly beauteous boy who unfortunately hadn't seen more than the four walls he lived between and the far lush greenery through the splotchy glass window. Dirty brown hair that glowed sweet caramel under the choppy fluorescent lights and large blue eyes that twinkled obliviously of the tragedy he was caught in; he could have been an angel from the skies above, stolen and trapped by the devil and his allies.
She smiled. "Her name was Elizabeth," she continued talking to him about his mom. She always tried to engage with him in conversation. "That's what your dad says. But she's dead." Her eyes caught upon the knots in his hair and a certain gloom enveloped her heart. He didn't deserve this.
Leo frowned. "What-"
Jayden stepped into the basement, silent and sly. He watched Amy--the babysitter whom he'd easily lured further into the game with money fluttering down a string--make a pathetic attempt to brush Leo's knotty messy hair with nothing more than her bare fingers because that was all she had.
"What're you exactly doing, Amy?" He questioned as he moved closer with his hands clasped menacingly behind his back. Amy gasped inwardly, quickly pulling her hands out of Leo's hair and staring at Jayden nervously instead. "I saw you, silly boo."
"I just- I was trying to brush his hair. It's too knotty, y-y'know?"
"Oh, yes, I definitely know. And if I wanted you to brush it for him, I think I would've told you, right?"
Amy let her eyes drop to the floor. "I know. I'm sorry."
Jayden stared at Leo, long and scrutinizing. "If he can kill, I'm sure he can brush his hair on his own." The spite in his voice was poisonous. Leo finally looked up. Kill. The sound of the word wedged like a knife deep in his chest. He'd heard it too much. Jayden snorted at the clueless expression on his son's face, then waved his hand carelessly towards the door. "Leave, Amy."
Amy knew there was no negotiation when it came to his command and she hated that she'd led herself down to this road on her own. If only she'd thrown the money in his face and turned away from this entire sick game when Leo had still been just a baby. But now she was a part of it, the cheapest one, the pawn in a despicable game of chess that splayed out with all its excruciating weight on Leo's back.
She stood; gave Leo a piteous look and Jayden a covertly disgusted one. Then, she trudged across the old worn planks out of the basement without a single word. Like always. Who was she to deny?
Jayden waited until he could hear the door close behind her. He dove his hand in his pocket then brought out something relatively small and square. A picture. A picture of golden locks and glassy blue eyes, smiling pink lips and porcelain fair skin. If he held the picture further away from his face, aligning it right by Leo's shoulder, the stark resemblance between Eliza and Leo's facial structures and features couldn't be more noticeable. An impossibility. Clear and visible like the sun shining midst a cloudless clear sky, you'd see it with eyes closed.
"You look so much like her." Jayden tilted his head, the tip of his thumb trailing along the picture. His voice carried along a tremor that screamed heartache. He looked up at Leo. The cause. "Why? Why do you have to look like her? Do you like to remind me?" His steps forwards were slow but determined. When he stood right by Leo's knees, he crouched down until his eyes leveled with his son's.
Looking into Leo's eyes was like looking into Eliza's. An illusion perhaps, a mind-trick contrived just to spite him. It took Jayden back in time, back to when he could stare into the original pair of blues, not those counterfeits. They looked so similar but so far off. Because eyes of a killer were bound to differ from the victim's. Ones smothered with cruelty and the others cradling beauty. "You have the same eyes."
Leo flinched slightly when he felt Jayden's cold knuckles skim up his delicate cheekbone. His fist relaxed until his fingers flattened against Leo's cheek, his thumb tracing the soft skin right beneath his eye.
"But they look much better on Eliza. So much more beautiful on her." Jayden withdrew his hand and returned his focus to the picture. Her face blurred, familiar eyes suddenly unrecognizable and lips twisting in a fit of fog and mist. The picture itself couldn't have transformed and he realized it was his own vision at fault. She would never change but his eyes could bleed oceans for her.
Leo watched Jayden stumble a step back as he pressed his lips to the picture. First, minor quivers caught his shoulders but then they turned to earthquakes that shook his entire frame along. Damn that man escalated fast. Leo heard words, fragmented and hard to connect, something along the lines of: Eliza, I miss you so much.
It was this peeking curiosity and oblivious innocence in Leo that gauged his next movements. He started by straightening his spine against the wall behind him, his brows falling in an unsure frown, then he leant forwards, slow and cautious, before finally trying to steal a glance at the picture. A mistake more then anything because Jayden flinched, withdrawing it like he didn't want him to see.
Leo's shoulders slouched slightly. "Wanna see." His bottom lip protruded in a sulky pout. "What're you looking at, dad?"
Jayden snorted through the tears like it was the most obvious thing in the world. "I'm looking at your mom, stupid."
Mom. Leo was just five but the word dug a hole in his ribcage. One second the growing cavity there made him feel hollow and the other it made his chest tighten. He'd never seen her, didn't even know what she looked like. All he knew was that she brought him to the world. "Want t'see. Can I see her?"
"No."
"Why?"
"'Cause you're bad. Bad people like you don't deserve to see her."
This time Leo frowned angrily. Bad bad bad. Every time he asked for something, his father would refuse because he was bad. It was both perplexing for his young mind and annoying. "I'm not bad," he huffed, crossing his arms defiantly. Jayden insisted. "No! Not bad!"
"You sure you're not? You killed her, asshole. That makes you worse than bad!"
Kill. Again. "Killed her?" Leo parroted. "When? Don't remember."
This had Jayden sputtering out a humorless chuckle. "You don't remember? You sure?"
"Y-yeah, I don't remember."
"Really." Jayden's face twisted into an expression that accused liar! "You don't remember what you did?" He stood, then trudged carelessly towards the dusty cracked shelves that lined one stale wall. His finger skimmed along the splintering edge and his eyes followed the tip until they settled upon the small switchblade shoved in between crumpled cardboard and a glazed lantern. "If you don't remember, I should remind you. Don't you wanna know what happened?"
He didn't even look at Leo. Just threw the words over his shoulder and kept his sight fixed onto the blade as he twisted it skillfully between his fingers. "I can't hear you," he pressed. "Do you wanna know how you killed her?"
Leo swallowed. He wanted to know, his curiosity begged for answers but staring right at the knife as it flung out of the handle, now shining against his eyes, he wasn't sure anymore. He didn't nod, nor did he protest. Just returned the question with nervous silence.
"Well then, let me show you." Jayden traced the edge of the knife with his eyes as he approached, each step light against the wooden boards beneath his feet but heavy with rage. He knelt down, aligning his eyes with Leo's. Blue eyes of cruelty, of rolling oceans in which Eliza had drowned. "You killed her. You were so brutal, so bad. She was screaming, screaming for you to stop."
"Screaming?" Leo's heart quaked; little continuous tremors that reverberated across his chest until his lungs were swaying until his ribs were shaking. The sound of it was awful. "Why?"
"Because," Jayden mumbled as he trailed the cold tip of the knife along Leo's bare chest. Featherlight and slow; the metal barely kissed his skin but his chest stilled like his heart had stopped moving, beating, pumping. Like Eliza's had. "You gave her so much pain. You tortured her. You made her back hurt so much, like this."
Jayden rounded the knife over the ball of Leo's shoulder, down his spine. Gradually, like he was taunting his prey, he pressed the edge harder into the youthful flesh until it broke skin. Blood peeked through the slash and began trickling like oozing paint.
"Dad!" Leo screamed, wretched and breathy, loud and pained. His shoulders jerked forwards as if subconsciously trying to move his back away from the knife. When he recovered from the momentary burst of pain and finally found it in him to open his eyes, Jayden was staring at him but he couldn't quite see well with the fog blurring his vision. "Ow," he whined. "Dad, that- "
"Shh, that's what she felt." Jayden caught Leo's shoulder and pulled him forward until he could glance at his back. A marble white canvas of youthful skin now splattered with the first strokes of paints. Jayden promised himself that he'd turn this into a hideous artifact devised from countless scars and cherry red, from broken skin and geometric purple splotches.
"T-That hurt, dad. Wouldn't do that to mom."
"But you did. And do you know what else you did?" It was a rhetorical question because Jayden didn't even wait for a nod. Perhaps satisfied with the deathly silence marred with only Leo's stuttered breaths, he brought the knife forward again, this time fast and rough and careless. It slashed over his protruding collarbone and elicited a pitched cry. Why did it sound sweet? "You tore her stomach. Don't you remember?" He cut a line that was quickly doused in red across his stomach, his eyes springing up again to assess the pained twist of his face and the strain to his shoulders. "Don't you remember when you did that? Tell me, Leo!"
First there was another sharp cry. "No!" Leo's hand trembled as hard as his bottom lip did as he reached down to hold the wound. "Stop, dad, please," he begged. "Hurts a lot, please—"
"She was hurt too! But you continued. I begged you stop but you didn't listen! Why? Why did you just let her die?" He pulled the knife away and watched the blood that smeared onto the shining metal with a crazed look in his eyes. A brush dipped in paint; the canvas was made for art. Didn't people draw to destress? "You know what you did next? You did this, to my heart, to Eliza's heart. You killed her. You killed us."
His voice melted until it became as wistful as Leo's eyes. As wistful as Eliza if she knew what he was doing to her prince. "Watch," he urged, one finger hooked under Leo's chin until he was forcing him to look down. "This is what you did." He pressed the tip of the blade softly into his heart. Harder, harder. It drilled into the skin, tore it in half until the gooey red surfaced. Leo whimpered helplessly. "Do you remember when you did this? When you stabbed my heart like this?"
Leo held his breath but that was difficult because the sobs racking his frame insisted on pushing his chest forward, against the knife. "I- I don't remember," he spluttered shakily. As soon as the the knife pulled away, his lips parted and he sucked a sharp breath.
"Try. Leo, try. You'll remember. You'll remember what you did to her." Jayden leant back until all his weight was balanced onto the balls of his feet. He watched the blood that dipped from the wound along Leo's collarbone, the thin stream that ran down his abdomen. Not enough. Eliza lost a lot more blood. "Do you know where she is now?"
Leo shook his head, defeated and miserable. His hair flopped over his forehead and his lashes shaded his flushed cheeks where crystal tears streaked over blooming red.
"She's dead! Six foot under the ground! I'll never see her again, you'll see never her. And she doesn't want to see you anyway, because you did this to her. You. Killed. Her."
Dead. Killed. Bad. Under the ground. An analogy that started settling at the base of Leo's skull since youth, imprinted in his veins and the depths of his ear canals. He didn't understand much but he could feel the guilt like a puppy would. Leo hung his head down, sniffling and coughing slightly. "I- I didn't do that, dad. I didn't meant to."
"Don't lie!" The words were followed by a slap that sent Leo's head crashing against the wall behind him. Jayden leered at his son as he cried out again for a second before finally standing straight with a revolted expression twisting his face. He observed the knife carefully then thrust it recklessly into the corner. He wiped off the tear that trickled along the edge of his jaw, breathing out heavily as if composing himself again.
Just as he held the knob and made to push out, his eyes caught upon the blood stains that blemished the front of his shirt. He made a noise of disgust in the back of his throat, though what repulsed him was not the cruelty he'd shed on his son but rather the dirty blood that marred his pricy clothes. Swiftly, he pulled it off and threw into the corner then proceeded to open the door.
Amy was standing there and looking straight at him. Tender jaw slightly agape and eyes wide; the shock was as conspicuous as the bleeding wounds on Leo's chest in the background. "Oh- oh God, what did you do to him!" she tried to shriek but somehow it came out automatically hushed. Her hand flew up to cup her mouth but her fingers shook against her lips. "How could you—"
"Don't act like you care," Jayden cut her off. He caught her arm and pulled her closer until he was breathing against her earlobe. "You're in this as well, remember? You better shut your pretty mouth. If you think I'm a bastard then so are you."
She couldn't counter because he was right. Maybe she would've tried to speak but he beat her to it:
"Clean his cuts." Jayden barely strode forwards when he reversed to his place again. Amy watched his side profile nervously; the edge of his lip twitched, then it turned to an ugly smile. He turned so that he could face her. "Damn, your teaching skills are on point. Leo's been learning some shit, hasn't he? If you think I don't see the books you're showing him, you're stupid."
"I just- if I don't do that he would never learn to talk and-"
"Nah, Amy, no worries." Jayden slapped her arm, hard and taunting. She winced. "Leo's gotta learn. I want him to understand some shit at least."
Like that, Jayden abandoned the mess of blood and the beginning of scar blueprints scrawled upon skin with his chin lifted and his chest puffed. As soon as he stepped past the threshold of the basement, he left the crazed lovesick man there and slipped the pretentious mask on to conceal his hideous grin and donned the normal persona. Outside that basement he was another person; the respected Jayden. Inside he was an obsessed and lovesick man stuck in the hole his wife left behind.
Amy looked at Leo. Broken, shattered. He sprawled on the floor in a heap of whimpers and cries and blood dripping from open wounds. His small thin fingers that splayed out on the planks suddenly fisted, and he slammed it lightly onto the floor. Maybe out of frustration that he couldn't remember, that he'd been told things he couldn't connect to. Or maybe out of pain and maybe both.
"I'm so sorry, mom," he sobbed aloud, turning so that he was facing the ceiling. He remembered how Amy had told him dead people lived up. Not that he exactly understood. Still, he couldn't look up long enough before he screwed his eyes shut and let the tears stream. The wound on his back burnt like fire but the shame in his chest was paining him more than knife itself ever had. "I didn't wanna kill you!"
He pressed his cheek onto the planks beneath him. The tears that trickled from the oceans in his eyes curved over his nose and down his cheekbone. His shoulders heaved in sync with the sharp movement of his chest. The world felt fuzzy. What had he done?
"I'm so sorry!"
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Hey everyone!! It's been a while since I updated sorry! :( as always I'm not satisfied with the chapter(bc I'm iconically pathetic) but your thoughts anw? Jayden and little Leo?
Also I'm so sorry the prequel is boring so far(can I get more pathetic?) :( I promise it's gonna get a lot more interesting when everyone grows up more. There are many important stuff coming up! By the end of it you'll even get to see Leo's first days with the captors!
Thank you so much for reading/voting/commenting. I can't thank you enough for being so amazing <333