Disclaimer: The world and characters of Charlie Bone are not mine, nor will they ever be.

Oh, here I go again with my Paton-centric stories... I just can't help myself! Anyway, I do intend for this to be an actual, multi-chapter story (it's a sign of the apocalypse!), and I should have chapters out every week or two. Each chapter will feature a different secret of Paton's that has affected his life in one way or another.

As usual, I am a review addict, so any comments are greatly appreciated. Read and enjoy, mes amis!


Everybody has a secret. Just like the hair on your head, secrets are there, hovering around you, impairing your vision, and growing longer by the month. And, just like hair, each secret is a different color. Blonde, brown, black—every secret has a shade. Secrets can be black and life-altering, dark deeds kept from ever seeing the light of day. They can be raw and red and painful, or a cheerful, bright, amusing blonde. Depending on the secret, a person's life can change.

These secrets sit locked away behind years of silence, buried under layers of denial and a refusal to face reality. Sometimes, against our will, they slip out, escape their chains and burst free to wreak their havoc upon the world; sometimes, they remained cloistered away within our minds, never to see the light of day. A secret is a promise a person makes to him or herself, a solemn vow to retain knowledge-personal or otherwise-that he or she does not wish to share.

Secrets can be sordid, a recollection of uncomfortable affairs and errors. They can be dark and agonizing, sharp knives whose points drive deeper when twisted. They can cut, stinging like a whip cracking across your exposed back. They can bruise, snapping bones and emotions like twigs.

Secrets can also be trivial, little blurbs of information or opinion that we would simply rather keep from common knowledge. They can incite moments of hilarity, their revelation sparking a round of good-natured teasing and amusement. They can inform, give an interested party an additional detail regarding friends or family.

A secret is a powerful tool, capable of good or evil. Anyone can use a secret, but only a select few can keep ithidden. In the wrong hands, even the smallest of secrets may very well prove deadly. This is why we fight, tooth and nail, to keep our secrets safe. This is why we strive to remain silent, even when we know the battle may very well be lost.

This is why we keep secrets in the first place.

Like the rest of the world, Paton Yewbeam has his share of secrets. Here are ten, and how they changed his life.

Secret One: Of all his sisters, Venetia was the only one he never loved.

When Paton was born, Venetia was five. She adored being the baby of the family, and was quite put out when she realized this squalling new arrival had usurped her position within the familial hierarchy. She was a pampered child, justifiably doted on by her parents and older sisters. She never wanted for anything, be it attention, toys, or time. Venetia thrived upon the attention, blossomed into an intelligent child who loved to be loved. Upon the arrival of her dark-haired, infant brother, though, Venetia suddenly found herself pushed to the outskirts of the attention bubble. Now, she looked in on its new center-her baby brother, Paton.

Venetia imagined herself forgotten, created a world in which she was next to nothing to her parents. Her young brain took the reversal in her situation and ran with it, unable to understand that babies in general, be they Patons or Grizeldas or Venetias, generally garner more attention than older children. She held Paton personally accountable, her five-year-old logic placing all of the blame on her brother.

In return for Paton's popularity, Venetia took it upon herself to make his life a living hell.

While Grizelda, Eustacia, and Lucretia cooed over the boy who could be the next endowed Yewbeam, Venetia stole his belongings, destroyed his toys, and ripped his books to shreds.

When Paton went to his parents, tears streaming down his cheeks, Venetia whistled and looked the other way; she certainly hadn't done anything. The little viper must have broken his own things. When it was just the two of them, as it often was when the older ones went off to tend their own matters, he was reduced to "The Brat," the baby brother Venetia never asked for.

One day, when he was five and Venetia ten, following a particularly subtle demolition of his favorite book, Paton mustered up enough courage to confront her. "Why do you hate me?" he cried, unable to comprehend such blatant malevolence. He sniffled, running a hand over his face and smearing the tears away. His dark liquid eyes looked up at his sister, waiting for her to explain it all away.

Venetia smiled a simpering smile and flicked the back of his head so hard that he yelped. "I don't hate you," she said, lying through her teeth. She did hate him, hated him more than anything else in the world. At least he wasn't endowed; she still had that her trump card. Even so, as she turned away, her dislike overcame her and she paused, contemplating his question once more.

"I don't hate you, Paton," she repeated slowly, tilting her head to consider the useless lump that constituted her brother. "I loathe you."

When Paton turned seven and discovered his endowment, he saw Venetia's behavior take a turn for the worse, if such a thing were possible. Her whole world came crashing down around her when Paton proved to the world that he, too, was endowed-that he, too, was special.

Paton didn't understand her behavior; he hated his endowment. He couldn't go out in public; at night, he was confined to whatever rooms had candles. His friends did not understand him anymore, nor he them. He was virtually an outcast, yet here sat Venetia, jealous of him.

The worst of the early years occurred when Paton was still seven, barely two months after he discovered his endowment.

"Dad?" Paton crossed the threshold of the house, stepping into the darkened entryway. "Mom?" He peered through the gloom. He had been out all afternoon romping in the surf, and had expected his family to still be at home where he had left them after lunch.

"They've gone out." Venetia stood at the top of the stairs, hand resting imperiously on the banister as she glared down at her younger sibling.

Paton reeled in shock. They had gone out without him? They had abandoned him to Venetia?

"Why do you want them?" she mocked, hatred souring her voice. "Is widdle Paton afwaid of the dawk?" A malicious smile curled around the edges of her lips. "We can't have that, can we?"

A flip of the light switch beside her brought the overhead light to life, and nearly brought Paton's to an end. Caught unaware, and still too unaccustomed to his endowment to have honed his reflexes, Paton looked up in bemusement at the light. He realized what his sister had done only when it was too late. His aura overwhelmed the electricity, and the fragile bulb burst, raining glass down around him in a shimmering cloud.

Paton cried out in pain and alarm, flinching as beads of glass connected with his skin, the razor-sharp rain ripping open his skin with frightening ease.

"Paton?" his mother's voice rang through the house, taught with alarm; Venetia, it seemed, had been lying. "Paton, where are you?" His mother ran through the kitchen door and drew up short as she caught sight of her son standing amid the gleaming sea of glass, its waters stained red with his blood.

Paton's only acute memory from that hazy day of explosive agony was looking up at the stairs through the bloody mask that coated his face and seeing his sister doubled over at the waist, face contorted into an expression of horrible amusement and elation.

In that moment, he realized Venetia's hatred was reciprocated.

When Paton heard about Lyell's death, he knew Venetia had done it. By then he and his other sisters had no lost love between them, and while he knew they were certainly capable of such a heinous act, he knew that the actual deed had been Venetia's doing. Only she was cunning enough, only she was cruel enough to murder her nephew.

All through the eulogy, he glared at the smug form seated two rows ahead. The air around him crackled tangibly with tension, and he clenched his fists, muscles tensing as he turned over the events of the past few days. Did she even know the pain she was causing.

Sensing his anger, Venetia turned, smiled, and gave a wave—a brief little flutter of the fingers that struck him as soundly as a blow. She knew.

When Paton was forty-six, Venetia ran him over.

He never saw the driver's face, hidden as it was behind a wig and an overlarge steering wheel, but he knew that she was to blame. It had been miracle that he had survived at all, a fluke of fate that had left him battered and bleeding on the worn road rather than a flattened mess.

In the hospital, woozy with pain and medication, he forgot himself and allowed himself to show his opinion of Venetia, to reveal thoughts that had been churning in his mind, unspoken, for years—and to Charlie and Julia, no less.

"She hates me," he croaked, forcing the words out of his bruised chest and raw throat. He ached, felt trampled and run down.

Julia seized his hand, holding to her as if she intended never to release it. "Who, Paton?" she asked, clutching the hand like a lifeline. "Who hates you?"

Coughing and wincing at the pain such a simple exhalation evinced, Paton grimaced and sighed heavily. 'Venetia." Even the agony he was in did not mask the loathing that seeped into his voice. "She's hated me since I was born, and has been out to get me for nearly as long."

Julia drew back, horrified by the implications of his accusation. "Surely she couldn't have hated you as a child," she declared, squeezing his hand reassuringly. "Surely she's…she's not the one who hit you, is she Paton?"

Paton drew back and shrugged as much as his bruises would allow. "I believe so," he confessed, "and if that is the case than her actions certainly speak for themselves." A trace of bitterness sat on his tongue, tainting his words with its tang.

Charlie spoke up for the first time. 'That's why you're so much better than they are, Uncle P!" he declared, eyes blazing with righteous enthusiasm. "No matter what she does to you, you never lower yourself to her level. You never hate." He smiled down at Paton, supremely confident in his unyielding differentiation between right and wrong.

For that, Paton had no answer.

When Paton's relationship with Julia progressed into the realm of reality, he swore up and down to himself that he would keep her free of family affairs. She would remain safe on the sidelines, and would be free from harm—safe from Venetia and the disasters that followed her.

He should have known better.

Running into the bookshop, legs on autopilot, his heart pumping and mind churning, Paton was mad with grief and rage. He was at a loss, destroyed by the knowledge that Julia was dying—maybe dead—because of Venetia. She had finally gotten her revenge, in the most final, devastating way possible.

With the belt that wrapped around Julia's waist, constricting the life from her, Venetia was killing Paton as well, the same as if she had attacked him outright.

This was the day Paton let his hatred and anger consume him, the day he made his peace with the mutual loathing he and Venetia entertained. He faced his fear and hatred of his sister.

"Julia..." He knelt by her side, pressed her cold fingers to his lips. He watched, not daring to hope, as Charlie leveled the wand at the belt and blasted it to smithereens. His heart nearly burst with relief as Julia heaved a great gasp and sat up, pale and wan but very much alive.

In that moment, Paton knew what he had to do.

He had to confront his sister and that miserable old hag she had brought with her; he had to face Venetia.

In the moments following Yolanda's death, as he watched Venetia's house burn to the ground, consumed by blazing flames that he had caused, Paton knew peace. He was free from all the pent-up anger, the rage and hatred that he had subdued for most of his life. Now it was liberated, released from his psyche upon the world.

In that moment, Paton became a new person. He no longer hated Venetia; he was no longer burdened by guilt that told him he owed her love regardless of his emotions, no longer weighed down by years of suppressed abhorrence. He knew where they stood, and he was at peace with that.

He was a free man.


Man have I missed writing! School forced me to take a hiatus for a few months, but I am back in business now. So, a few more details about this fic: I intend for it to be around ten chapters, with each chapter introducing and exploring a new secret about Paton. The secrets are already decided, so giving me suggestions will not affect the story (though I love hearing other people's ideas, so go ahead and hit me with them).

I am really excited about the concept of this story; hopefully, you are as well.

As always, reviews are the only way I can know what you like/dislike, and the only way I can tell that anyone is actually reading my writing. So...please review!