Title: The Legacy of Evelyn Mercer
Author: Ima Pseudonym
Rating: PG (Maaaaybe PG13 for cursing, and implied violence… If you're squeamish.)
Pairing: None
Summary: Bobby's story. With a keen emphasis on Jack, towards the end. (Of course.) Don't get me wrong- I love Angel and Jerry. But they're definitely better adjusted than Jack (and even Bobby) so it's not as much fun to write about them. They are, of course, not ignored in this: Just not really dwelled upon.
A/N: There's something fascinating (if not fun) about delving into (fabricating) backstories for the characters of Four Brothers. Usually, I'm uninterested in reading stories where backstory 'is' the plot, but the Four Brothers fandom has always been an intriguing exception to that rule. Hopefully, it's the exception for others as well (should they have even had that issue) and ya'll will enjoy this. :) There will probably be more author's notes at the end of the fic.
Disclaimer: I own nothing, but woes. (And a harmonica to lament said woes.) …And this chair, and I don't need anything else. Just this chair, and my harmonica, and my woes and that's it. I don't nee- I need that. Just the chair, the harmonica, woes, and a will to write about the Mercers.
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Bobby had a violent history. Ha. Fucking understatement of the century.
It started with him as the victim. His 'mother' never had time for her little Robbie, seeing as she was always trying to find him a father. If 'father' constituted a man who stumbled, blind-sticking drunk, out of his mothers room to take a piss and told her kid to go the fuck back to his own room; because Robbie had taken to hiding in the shower when the man started hitting his only parent. When Bobby swore to protect her from the endless stream of assholes, she'd smacked him upside his head and told him he shouldn't have been listening in. When Robbie was seven, one man finished the job a long time in the works. He hauled the ancient television set into his truck and sped off, leaving the orphan crying until the neighbors noticed the lack of strange men appearing and figured something was wrong.
At the first foster home he cried when anyone called him Robbie until they changed it to the full 'Robert' just to shut him up. They didn't beat him there: The elderly couple he was staying with, and the four other bastards like him. They were negligent. When Robert threw a punch for the first time because another second grader had teased him about his dirty clothes, he'd been suspended for breaking the kid's nose, and locked in his room for three days, let out only for a couple bowls of stale cereal each day, and to use the toilet. They hadn't yelled at him. They hadn't even explained to him 'why' what he'd done was wrong. The other foster kids in the house kept their distance after seeing the after-damage to Robert's first victim.
He stayed with the elderly couple for another year, enduring their neglect with angry silence. The kids at school avoided him, while snickering behind his back. In third grade, he'd hit a girl with a chair after she made fun of his poor reading skills. He'd seen it done on pro wrestling (the one show all the foster children could agree on), but he didn't remember there being that much blood on the TV. She'd received six stitches on her forehead, and Robert had been expelled. When the girls' family tried pressing charges, the old couple had kicked Robert out and back into the cracked system.
The next house was worse. The middle-aged couple had a teenage boy of their own, and were taking care of another boy a few years younger than Robert. He figured that 'this' kid actually had a shot of finding a good family, until he saw how emotionally unstable he was. It turned out that the boy had good reason for it, as the couples' son was tormenting him day and night. Not tormenting as in 'you little thumb-sucker. What're you crying for? Just because your parents are dead?' (Although that would have been bad enough for most six year olds.) Rather, tormenting in a truly sick way. Like pissing on the kid's bed while he slept in it, so that he could run to his parents and shout that the little brat had wet the bed again. Or stealing his toys so he could melt them in the microwave. Even tearing the head off of the kid's only original possession (an old teddy bear) and then setting it on fire in front of him.
Each appalling act that the couple's son pulled was ignored, or passed off as a cry for attention. But Robert kept quiet. They fed him here, and the man would even help him with his homework. Be damned if Robert was going to let the little shit pull anything on him though. When he tried to cut Robert's hair while he slept, old habits were revisited. The chair thing had worked once, if for nothing but to teach someone a lesson. The couple's son was thirteen when he lost half his sight. The chair connected so solidly with the back of his skull that his right eye actually came free of its socket. Robert watched it dangle for a bit, before there was a startled scream from the doorway. The teenager woke up after a few days, but too many things had been ripped, or forced loose, and the doctors had no choice but to just remove the useless orb. Robert would never know that, though, because he was gone that very night.
For a few years, Robert (now Robbie again, or Rob, or sometimes Bobby) passed from abusive house to abusive house. Each getting worse, as fewer people would take him, and those who would were sure they could beat some discipline into him. But fighting back was second nature to him, and years of results said that if he hurt them bad enough, he'd get to leave again. And if they hurt him… he'd wait to heal and get them back. By the time he was fourteen, he'd attacked his last three guardians, and no one would touch him. He spent most of that year in juvenile hall, fighting the other teenage punks for cigarettes.
The guards kept clear of him, poorly concealing their amusement as 'Bobby' took down another kid three years his senior. They'd started taking bets on how many kids it would take to finally bring the punk down. It was during a four-against-one fight that Evelyn Mercer showed up, social worker in tow. Every guard cheering the fight on with the other children said goodbye to their jobs that afternoon, and Bobby sat slouched and glaring in the front seat of the woman's minivan.
The rules of her house, she said, were simple: School 'would' be attended. No drugs/alcohol/etc were to be so much as glanced at. Homework would be finished, vegetables eaten, and lights out at eleven. There was another foster child in the house, when Bobby arrived. An eight year old girl with deep scars etched into her tanned face. Bobby could never remember the names of any of the other kids he'd met before Evelyn but he remembered her. Maria.
She'd been abused by her father in ways Bobby had (for all his transfers) only heard whispered about. But he'd never seen, knowingly, first hand what that kind of abuse could do: Not only physically, but mentally. Maria would follow Evelyn from room to room, crying when left alone anywhere near Bobby. And it hurt him that she'd think him a threat, so he stayed clear. The sight of her quelled some of his eternal anger at the world. Suddenly, his many woes did not seem so tragic.
Time passed like this at Evelyn's for a few months. Maria gradually came out of her shell and started smiling and babbling in Spanglish, around her foster mother. She even stopped crying if left alone with Bobby. When he duct-taped her dolls ripped arm back on it, and kissed the dirty toy better, she even started smiling around him. When Evelyn found a loving family for the girl, she hugged Bobby goodbye. A week later, there was Jerry. Jeremiah was as bitter as Bobby had been, but less eager to fight. If an argument over the remote control got heated, he'd back down, and Bobby would apologize guiltily.
It was Evelyn who encouraged Bobby to express his anger in the form of a sport. Soccer hadn't been cathartic enough. Nor had baseball, or wrestling. In fact, wrestling turned out fairly disastrous, which shouldn't have come as a surprise. Fate had Jerry flipping the channels one evening, and stopping to watch a particularly bloody fight that had been filmed at a recent hockey game. Evelyn bit the inside of her cheek, and worried about potential dentist bills from lost teeth, but she couldn't deny that this was the perfect sport for the violent boy.
A week before his seventeenth birthday, Bobby knew there'd be no family for him. In only a year, he knew he'd be pushed onto the streets with nothing but the clothes on his back, and an insincere fare-thee-well from social services. But on the day he turned seventeen, he'd received his first car (albeit a 'very' used car). In the glove box were the papers for his adoption; only waiting for his signature beside Evelyn's. For the first time since before his stint in juvie, Bobby cried. In front of Evelyn. In front of fourteen-year old Jerry.
A year went by and little else changed. Bobby and Jerry grew closer, always getting in trouble, and weaseling their way out of it. Bobby's intimidation tactics, and Jerry's quick-wit and charms made them infamous around the neighborhood. One thing was for sure… You didn't egg the Mercer house at Halloween. Not that anyone would have, because Evelyn always gave out the real chocolate, and not just stale tootsie rolls.
When Bobby was closer to nineteen than to eighteen, Angel showed up: Thirteen years old and mean as the Devil, himself. He had a habit of stealing which Evelyn again and again forgave. When Jerry threatened to kick the kid's ass for trying to make off with Evelyn's rosary, Angel fought back, preemptively. Bobby had been at the rink, trying out for an amateur league, and Evelyn had been away at work. (The government checks, alone, didn't cover the grocery bills to feed three young men.) Jerry held back as long as he could, until the pain from a kicked shin robbed him of the last of his patience. Angel ended up with a black eye, a fat lip, and a hell of a lot of bruises. Not to mention the bite marks from when he'd attempted to get his arm across Jerry's throat. Jerry was left with a bloody nose, a bruised rib, and the rosary. It was fortunate that Evelyn got home before Bobby. Both boys were taken to the hospital, and while they sat sulking with their foster mother in the waiting room, social services showed up. For fifteen straight minutes they argued about taking Angel away: To juvie, to be filed with the other kids as a hopeless case.
The argument stretched over the weeks and into an actual court. Evelyn's lawyer was a girl who'd stayed with her for three years, some twenty years previous. Twenty-six years of dedicated service to the foster system saw her as the victor. Angel never stole again. Well… Not from Evelyn, or her kids.
The youngest of her charges had been spared but there was no need to voice the fact that he'd never be adopted. To save time, and to ensure that nothing like the past few weeks ever happened again, Evelyn filed for the adoption of Jerry and Angel simultaneously. No longer feeling he was 'allowed' to remain angry at Angel, Bobby took the kid under his wing. Hockey was used to satisfy angry urges, with some rough-housing thrown in just because. And now the infamous duo of the household because the infamous three Mercer brothers. The neighbors' children ran screaming in gleeful mock-fear whenever the three would go outside together, like it was a big game of tag and anyone with the name Mercer was 'it'.
In the years that followed, Bobby moved out, and eventually made it to a quasi-big hockey league. Jerry fell in love repeatedly, before settling on a pretty girl from a different town named Camille. They'd only known each other three months when they were married. Bobby made it to the wedding, and smiled in all the photos with several chipped teeth. Angel ruled his junior high, and then high school, discovering the opposite sex, and what it meant to get in a fight for a girl. And loving it.
A few children passed through the house, arriving scared or angry, and always leaving the better for Evelyn's care. Most of them did find good and loving homes.
When Angel was a sophomore in high school (the second time, but the only grade he'd ever needed to repeat), Evelyn brought home Jack. A twelve-year old with a history of abuse like nothing even Evelyn had seen before, Jack was tall for his age, pale, skinny as a rail, and jumpy. A lifetime of hostility had left its impression (physically, and mentally) on him, and he would flinch if voices were raised; even in happiness or excitement. Any new person he met (regardless of age or sex) was viewed with accusing and frightened eyes, and Angel couldn't stand sitting in the same room with the kid for long. He felt guilty for things he'd never have considered doing in his darkest nightmares.
Evelyn was patient, supportive, calming… In a word 'perfect'. But all of her well-practiced methods for drawing him out of himself seemed to be for naught. Jack would only meet Jerry under the condition that Evelyn was in the room. (A small victory in that he trusted this foster mother.) He'd cry at night. Sometimes he'd scream, and then shout his apologies to the invisible phantoms coming after him. It was a month before he met Bobby, who came in early one evening, hauling his duffel bags, and hockey gear. Jack had been watching Nickelodeon; waiting for Evelyn to return from the super market. She'd promised that she'd bring him back a candy bar. Angel was hiding in his bedroom studying, to his own disgust, because he was too nervous to go downstairs and watch TV with the jumpy kid.
So when there was the sound of bags hitting the floor, Jack thought nothing of it. However, when someone who was most definitely not Evelyn dropped heavily on the couch beside him and snatched the remote from his lap, Jack thought something of it. The phrase 'jump out of your skin' had never made a lot of sense to Bobby until he'd heard Jack's terror-stricken shriek. Jack dove for the floor, while Bobby clutched his heart. The sound of feet racing down stairs, was punctuated by a swear that meant Angel had missed the last step and met the floor face-first. Jack screamed again at the heavy crash.
"SHUT THE HELL UP, GODAMMIT!" Bobby bellowed, and instantly all noise stopped.
"BOBBY MERCER!" Hell hath no fury like a woman who catches her kid swearing at an emotionally unstable youth. Evelyn rushed into the living room, shopping bags forgotten in the front hall. She went to help Jack up, but he scrambled away from her outreached arms.
"What do you think you're doing, Bobby!? Haven't you been listening about what I've told you? You can't just come in here scaring-"
"This is Bobby?" Jack, now on his feet, yelled in an attempt to stop what sounded like a fight brewing. Silence fell again. His eyes were wild, lips drawn in a thin line. But he relaxed, slightly, as Evelyn quickly regained her wits, and realized her shouting hadn't helped matters any. It was a few more moments before she could respond. Angel had already found an excuse for leaving the room by picking up the abandoned groceries and moving them to the kitchen to be put away. The sound of a bag opening was followed by crunching.
"This is Bobby, yes. You remember I told you about him?" She pressed, cautiously, and to her immense relief, Jack nodded. Only within the last week had Jack begun answering questions the majority of the time instead of just fading into himself, oblivious to the pains of the world. She'd feared the worst, when she heard him scream. That she wouldn't have the energy, or ability, to coax him away from the things haunting him a second time.
"The hockey player…" Jack acknowledged, trembling and paler than usual, but making a valiant effort to keep rooted to the spot.
"Sorry if I scared you, kiddo. I wasn't thinking, I guess." Jack frowned at the epithet 'kiddo' but said nothing. Evelyn noted Jack's expression. More irritation than fear. It struck her as odd that that could be a good thing for anyone, but- Stranger things had happened. It was another moment before she made up her mind.
"Why don't you two talk for a bit, while I stop Angel from eating us out of house and hearth? Yes, I'm talking about you, Angel." she said as she disappeared from the room.
Bobby remained on the couch, where he'd plopped down, staring at the kid opposite the coffee table.
"Mind if we watch something a little more grown up?" he asked, and (call the presses) waited patiently for Jack to shake his head minutely. Bobby flipped through the channels, aware that he was under close scrutiny and that there were ears listening in from the kitchen. And then he grinned as he settled on Beavis and Butthead. "Much more adult." He declared, outright smiling at Jack's bemused laugh. The kid didn't move any closer to him throughout the end of the short episode, but he did seem somewhat more at ease.
Dinner that evening was somewhat more enjoyable than it had been since Jack showed up. Angel wolfed down his food as fast as possible, but not for the sole purpose of bolting up to his room to hide from the foster kid. Bobby kept up the conversation with Evelyn, complaining about the league and the moron refs, while Angel shot potatoes at everyone, shouting his own opinions through mouthfuls of food. Jack contributed nothing. But for the first time he listened instead of tuning out to his own frequency. Evelyn smiled wryly to herself. Who would have thought that what the boy really needed to push progress was an unintentional (and ultimately harmless) scare. If only she'd caught Jack with the hiccups, this might have been done weeks ago.
END
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Okay, so I've been horrendous in writing new stories, for the last- er… Long while. But I enjoy finding old ones, and posting them(after I brush the dust off). This one, in particular has probably been around (if only to my knowledge) for over a year. If you enjoyed this fic, then I'm sorry it took so long to post. (But, hey! At least, to you, it's new.)
Reviews, suggestions, and especially questions are welcomed. If you have questions, make sure to log in first, so I have a way of contacting you to answer. :)