Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

When you're young, you don’t really know what forever means.
You think forever is summer vacation, or a Saturday morning cartoon that never ends.
You don’t know it can mean something bad. Something heavy.

I didn’t understand it that morning either.
Not at first.

It was just another day in our house.
the sound of birds chirping filled my room as i stared at the flower in my hand that i had stole from the garden.Dad was at work,Mom had been quiet for a while, poor her, probably too tired.

I wanted pancakes.
that all i could think about as my tummy made sounds, i stood in the kitchen feet cold against the cracked tile, waiting for mom to come down and ruffle my hair, yawning and tying her robe as she made the pancakes.

The clock over the stove ticked too loud. I counted the seconds. Five minutes. Ten.

Still, Mom didn't show up.

I climbed the stairs slow. Everything felt too quiet, like the house was holding its breath, i searched her room, my room, even the guests one,she was no where to be found, is she playing hide and seek?

I remember my hand hesitating on the bathroom door, the way the metal knob felt colder than it should have.
And when I pushed it open-
I stopped being a kid.

She was there.
Still.
Wrong.

There was a bottle on the counter and a crumpled towel on the floor. Her lips were the wrong color. Her eyes weren’t closed all the way.

I didn’t scream.
I didn’t know you were supposed to.
I just came up to her.

"found you"

I said loudly while smiling.
She didn't respond.
Was she mad that i found her?
I apologized.

The house become quieter.
I get it, she's asleep cause she's tired.
I crouched down and i layed next to her.
Maybe she'd ruffle my hair when she get up.

She never did.
Not even when dad hugged her crying.
Not even when the siren covered the sound of the birds.
Not even when that flower withered away.

After that day, things got strange.
Dad stopped.
He stopped opening the curtains.
He stopped telling me to do my homework.
He stopped talking.
He stopped eating.
He stopped looking at me.
He stopped existing.
Some nights he didn’t even come home, and I’d sit at the top of the stairs until my eyes closed.
I'd wake up at the same place shivering from the coldness, i'd hear his voice as he hummed mom favorite song.

When i'd ask him what wrong.
Why is he acting like a ghost rather then a human being.
He'd look at me angrily.

"How could i keep living, when my love isn't ?"

He yelled at me saying it was my fault.
i should of been the one who'd died that day, not her.

The fridge emptied out.<
Sometimes i'd eat a packet of ketchup for dinner because that’s all there is.
I miss mom pancakes.

When you’re seven and your mother is gone, people don’t really know what to do with you.
They treat you like something fragil.
They pat your head.
They tell you "Be strong."
They tell you "Time heals."

But what if it doesn’t?

What if time just... makes you emptier?

What if every day feels like that sunny morning, over and over and over again?

The flowers didn't look pretty anymore.
They looked ugly,
cursed,
scary.
I hate flowers.

I didn’t know how to fix Dad.
I didn’t even know how to fix myself.
All I knew was that love had wrecked our family.
It had left my mother curled cold on a tile floor.
It had left my father broken in a chair he never left.
And it had left me
small,
angry,
alone.

Love is bad.
It leaves you broken.
I don't want to experience it.
I don't want to end up like dad.
I hate love.

Chapter Text

There’s somethings that happens when you grow up in silence.
It stops feeling like silence after a while.
It becomes normal.
Like the sound of your own breathing — always there, always unnoticed, until someone points it out.
And suddenly your breathing start feeling heavy and hard.
But no one ever pointed anything out to me.
No one ever said, “This isn’t how it’s supposed to be.”

So I learned to live throughout it.

After my mother died, time stopped moving the way it was supposed to. Some days stretched out like rubber bands ready to snap, others collapsed into black holes. I don’t remember every day, but I remember moments. The important ones. The ones that helped building me, and that helped destroying me as well.

Like the day I learned how to make toast without burning it.
Like the night my father threw a bottle at me and laughed when it shattered.
Like the first time I realized he wasn’t really there anymore, not in the way that mattered.
Like the afternoon i stopped as well, I became my own version of that ghost that haunted our house.

I was nine when I stopped hoping he’d get better.

By then, I had already started building the box.

Not a real one. Not with wood or nails.
A box in my mind. Around my heart.
Invisible. Untouchable.
I folded up my feelings and stuffed them inside. Every time I felt something sharp — sadness, fear, longing — I shoved it in deeper. I pressed the lid down harder.
Because if i didn't exist in others lives, how could i get hurt?

By ten, I didn’t cry anymore.
By eleven, I didn’t talk much either.

The teachers at school stopped asking questions. I wasn’t the kid who acted out. I didn’t scream, didn’t fight. I sat in the back, did enough to pass, and disappeared as soon as the bell rang. I wore the same clothes too many weeks. I kept my head down. I was invisible, and that was safer.

People say kids need love to grow.
Maybe that’s true.
Maybe that’s why I never grew right.

---

I remember a girl once tried to talk to me in sixth grade.

She had bright eyes and messy handwriting and a voice that always sounded like a cartoon character. She sat next to me at lunch. I didn’t look up. She said, “Hey.”
I didn’t answer.
She said, “You’re always alone.”
Still, I said nothing.
She waited.
Then she gave up.
Everyone gives up eventually.

That’s the thing about kindness — it’s soft. It bruises easy.
I was sharp.
I wasn’t made to be held.
I was afraid that if i was held, i'd just break and cause even more harm.

After some time, people left me alone.
Which was what I wanted.
What I needed.

---

Middle school bled into high school like spilled ink. The days didn’t change much. My father stayed the same ghost, sometimes silent, sometimes drunk, always absent. I got used to half burnt made dinners and empty rooms, to birthdays no one remembered till i forgot it myself, to holidays that came and went without a single decoration or a wrapped box, all of this became the usual for me.

My life felt as if i was a marionette.
I didn't want to move, Yet i did
I didn't want to speak, Yet i did
I didn't want to live, Yet i did
Someone was controlling the strings that were connected to my body and i couldn't resist or fight it, i was stuck and it felt like it was my punishment for that day.

I stopped wanting things.
I stopped dreaming.

Other kids had lives filled with things like sleepovers and soccer games and arguments over phone time. I had silence, broken glass , and the sound of birds, its always the sound of these damn birds.

The box started getting smaller,
Emptier,
Lonelier.

So I made a decision.

No love.
No friends.
No soft roses.
No open doors.

The box I built became my home.
If I kept everyone out, no one could break me.
If I stayed alone, I couldn’t lose anything.
If I never let anyone in, they could never leave.

---

But there were still moments.

Late at night, lying in bed staring at the cracked ceiling.
In the quiet hours before school.
I would feel it — this strange ache.
Like something had been ripped out of me before I even knew it was there.
But when i think about it too hard i just stop breathing, and my heart start to beat faster.

Sometimes I wondered what it would feel like to be held.
To be seen.
To be wanted.

But I hated those thoughts.
I killed them quick.
Shoved them back in the box.
Mostly cause i was afriad

---

By sixteen, I was good at pretending.
I answered questions in class if I had to.
I kept my voice down.
People didn’t ask where I lived, or why I looked tired all the time.
They didn’t care.
And when they did, i'll just push them away
Either way, it didn’t matter.

I wasn’t going to be the boy who made friends.
I wasn’t going to be the boy who fell in love.
I wasn’t going to end up like my parents — drowning in feelings too big to hold.

I was going to be untouchable.

That was the plan.

And for a long time, it worked.

Chapter Text

High school was boring.
That’s why I liked it.

It was the kind of boring that wrapped around you like a cheap blanket — scratchy, thin, but familiar. It didn’t ask questions. It didn’t dig too deep. It let you be a ghost without being pitied.

I wasn’t the weird kid, or the smart one, or the athlete. I was the one no one remembered was in the class until attendance. The teachers mispronounced my name sometimes, even after months of roll call. no one tried to talk to me anymore, The students didn’t bother with rumors. I wasn’t interesting enough for that. I had no scandal, no drama, no spark, i wasn't a human, it felt more like i was something.
But i existed.
And that was enough.

The school bell was my cue. I moved with the tides of the day — hallway to classroom to hallway again, following a routine i didn't remember creating. I sat in the back of every class. Ate lunch in an empty stairwell. No one noticed. No one cared.

And I told myself that was good.
That safety was worth the emptiness.

Because safety meant no one got in.
And if no one got in — nothing could break.

---

The library was one of the few places I didn’t hate.

It was quiet.
Still.
Safe.

The shelves stretched high and close, walls made of spines and stories. I liked walking between them, dragging my fingers across the books without stopping, just feeling the hum of other people’s words. Other people’s lives. I didn’t read them all. Sometimes just the back covers. Sometimes just the titles. Sometimes it was enough to be surrounded by stories that didn’t belong to me.

I went there most afternoons.
Even when I had nothing to do.
Especially then.

That day was like every other.

I was walking toward the back — the older fiction section where nobody really went unless they were trying to kill time or hide from the world. There was a book I’d been meaning to reread. I remembered the cover more than the plot. Something dark blue, maybe a compass or a key.

I reached out for it.

And another hand touched it first.

I froze.

Not because of the interruption — people grabbed books all the time — but because of what I saw.

The arm was pale.
Too pale.
And it wasn’t smooth like most skin.
It was a map of damage.
Scars.

Dozens.
Big and small.
Long, jagged lines like lightning strikes. Thin, straight ones like tally marks. Faded white streaks. Angry red ridges. Some deep. Some barely there.
Some old.
Some not.

The hand that held the book trembled — just slightly, like a leaf caught in a breeze.

I looked back.

And that’s when I saw her.

---

I don’t know how to describe what happened next.
Maybe nothing happened.
Maybe everything did.

She wasn’t looking at me. Her eyes were on the spine of the book, her fingers running across the title like she needed to memorize it with her skin. Her hair fell in messy waves around her face, hiding part of it. She wore sleeves that had slipped back just enough to reveal what I’d seen — and probably more underneath.
Clothes too big.
Posture too small.
Like she was trying to disappear.

And yet — I couldn’t stop looking.

Not because she was beautiful.
Not in the way people usually mean that word.
There was something else.

Something...
undone about her.
Like a thread pulled loose and never tied again.

She blinked, and finally looked up at me.

Our eyes met.

That was it. Just a second. Maybe less. But it hit me like a punch.

I should’ve looked away.
I should’ve done what I always did — mumbled an apology, turned around, disappeared.

But I didn’t move.
Because something in her eyes looked familiar.
Not her face. Not her voice.
Her eyes.

There was a kind of stillness there.
A kind of drowning.

And I recognized it.

Because I’d been living in it my whole life.

---

She didn’t speak.
Neither did I.

After a few seconds, she tugged her sleeve down with her free hand, took the book, and walked away without a word. Her footsteps were soft, like she was used to leaving rooms without being noticed.

I stood there for a long time.
Staring at the empty space where the book had been.
At the ghost of her still hanging in the air.

I didn’t even know her name.
Didn’t know her story.
Didn’t know anything at all.

But something about her cracked something inside me.
Just a hairline fracture.
Just enough.

I hated it.
I wanted to shove it away.
Stuff it into the box like everything else.

But I couldn’t.
Not this time.

Because for the first time in years,
I felt something that didn’t fit in the box.

Not quite fear.
Not quite curiosity.
Not quite sorrow.

Something in between.

And whatever it was —
it was hers.
And i definitely did not like it.

For that split second,
a crack formed in the box i built.