~ eternal sunlight ~
Aaron Hotchner. T. 979
First acquaintances are excruciating.
Chiefly when an individual is being introduced to the solid knuckles of a fist which has been honed to smash and break anything in its path… A fist which has been groomed to perfection in musky bars and silent back alleys, relishing in the superb feel of every split lip and broken rib. The fist of a man who has trained his hands to beat and bruise the malleable flesh of everyone he meets without judgment. Man or child.
Or rather, in this moment, one specific boy.
A pint-sized youth with raven black hair and naturally gloomy-coloured eyes which swirled with feverish panic as he lay motionless on the softness of the living room carpet, struggled like a newborn fawn as he relearned how to breathe, one tiny little breath and feathery exhale at a time. One breath too deep might aggravate the predator even more and worsen his already ill-fated situation, he knew. Not to mention the fact that he hadn't checked for broken bones just yet. It was best to play it on the safe side of the tracks.
Using the classic tactics of any prey, the boy strained to remember just how to restart his young heart into its regular activities and tried to force himself to calm down, stay immobilized and perfectly silent. Meanwhile, inside his aching head, he began to appeal desperately to a god he had never believed in; a god which must have had a long list of better things to do than listen to little boys.
The subsequent blows were instantaneous, swift and as razor-sharp as sound, only genuinely experienced between tiny intermissions which the attacker either took to rest... or to find more wounding places to jab at. Little Aaron wasn't positive about which option was more accurate, he merely wondered at the pain which ate away at every nerve within him. Never in his short life—ten full years—had Aaron Hotchner ever felt such horrid pain and for a long time the agony of his situation zapped him of all brain function.
Pain was reality.
Glittering sunlight danced through the filthy window from high above his head, flowing like golden-orange water through the yellowing rags which impersonated curtains, to frolic along the hills of his blood-soaked face, like a peaceful kiss from the heavens. It wasn't enough to make him believe in the compassionate gods of fairytales... but it was enough to make the most minuscule part of him hope for tender-hearted angels. People like his mother, who suffered from unspeakable horrors before they died, yet always strived in the very foulest of situations to achieve the best for others in the same circumstances.
Indeed, such beauty was enough to make Aaron hope for his mother's angel.
Certainty was an utterly different matter all together. You could dream a thousand dreams of the gloried Heaven full of thunderous trumpets which sounded at your arrival, and silver-bell voices of innocent children ringing fearlessly in the clouds, wish upon a bluish-white fire coloured star each and every night for your entire life span without ever gaining a single result. Hope was a double-edged sword, for it played on both sides of the battle.
Hopefulness was such a horridly simplistic thing, but even at a young age Aaron knew its dangers: vulnerability and sorrow. Hope could either set your spirit free or turn your soul to dust and ashes. Yet without hope human beings would be mere shells—organs, bones, blood, some trivial emotions and nothing more. So everyone eventually has to ask themselves: Is it worth the risk? Can I go through life like nothing more than a ghost, or can I lift myself up off the floor and endure?
Am I, as an individual, capable of bravery and courage while in the midst of despair?
Aaron catechized himself within the private recesses of his mature mind without knowledge of the interrogation. He was, in the deepest sense, unaware of the war which ragged within him. Inside of the boy's mind was an abyss of pain without thought. He merely lie there on the carpet, wordlessly afraid of his Father, feeling the sunlight on his bloodied face as he wished for his mother's angel. In all retrospect this would never be a moment on which Aaron would look back and say, "That was an odd thought for a child to experience."
In fact, it was unlikely that he would even remember the moment. Except for one thing: He would once day ask himself during one of the worst cases of his adult life, after being shot by a man in a mask, "Am I, as an individual, capable of bravery and courage while in the midst of despair?" And in that moment glittering yellow light emitted from a flickering streetlamp would shine though his hotel curtains and dance across his slender face.
And grown-up Aaron Hotchner would remember:
Sunlight shinning down its brilliant rays to open the fragile petals of flowers in the early mornings of spring time in much the same way it shone into a little boy's heart. Hope, he knew, was the flower which bloomed within, stretching its petals like wide wings within his very limbs, its stem rooting itself inside the confines of his heart.
The bullet eased straight though his chest, knocking him onto his back, and there was nothing but pain in its wake, leaving him with the task of relearning how to breathe—one tiny little breath and feathery exhale at a time. Yet this time around, strangely, there's no fear of a looming man come to steal his life away. Today Aaron Hotchner knows that the heart is resilient, the mind can overcome; he can replenish what has been lost. The sun will continue to stream though many filthy windows because hope, like the rising sun, is eternal.
First draft: 5-25-09
Revisions: 10-16-09 & 9-23-12