Crying, a soft crying resonates from down the hall. A child is wailing, calling for someone to come and pick him up and coddle him and shush him gently, to tell him not to cry and to go back to sleep.
Crying, a soft cry that echoes down the apartment halls and straight into the ears of the one that the child calls, the infant is calling to be plunged into the light and out of the darkness and surrounds him, to be lifted from the confines of the crib and cooed at and tickled, to be quieted with soft murmurs and rocked back to sleep, maybe fed and then placed back in the crib and lulled back to sleep with a full belly and a lullaby.
Crying, a piercing wail from a child that's been ignored for too long, a pitiful cry from a baby that's hungry and tired of the dark and the loneliness, from a child that calls for attention and love, tears streaking his hiccupping face as he calls for the one who cares for him.
He continues to go ignored, however, long into the early hours of the morning when the one who he was calling for has long since left to go who knows where. He doesn't know that, all he knows is that he's cold and hungry and growing fearful of the silence and the darkness and whatever's howling outside his window. He doesn't know that he's home alone, he can't even understand the concept of being home alone. He just knows that nobody is coming to answer his screams for attention.
It's the next day before he finally stops his screeching, his throat aching and his stomaching taking over the pitiful wailing. The sun streams through and his tears dry on his face, glad that at least someone has answered his cries and turned on the light. He hiccups a few more times and lifts his chubby hands, making grabbing motions to the sun. Pick me up?He asks it. Pick me up, I'm hungry. I'm hungry and I want to be fed. Thank you for turning on the light, now attend to my other needs! It's been long enough already.
But, of course, the sun can't answer his little whimpers for assistance. The sun can merely keep climbing up higher and higher into the sky in silence.
A few hours later the door slams open and he starts up his wails again, well aware that someone is home and able to feed him now. He's hungry beyond belief, he's sad and alone and the sun is going down and he knows that means that darkness, too, is coming. He cries once more to be picked up and cuddled and cooed at, to be fed and rocked and burped and sang to. Instead he gets a door slamming loudly and scaring him into wailing louder, he gets a smuppet thrown in his general area and a shitty katana being waved somewhere above him. But those two things, however unpleasant, mean that he'll be fed and picked up. It might not be gentle, and there may not be any cooing, but it was better than starving in the crib, and the baby would take what he could get.
An hour later he's fed, if only slightly and even if it's on plain, cold mild from a bottle that was thrown near him, and even if he had to tug himself across the carpet to get to it and slurp at it hungrily. And he's been picked up, even if it was by the foot once and slung over a shoulder the next time. He'll take what he can get. He can't even comprehend that there's other ways of life, actually. Hell, he's barely nine months old.
There might not be coddling and lullabies, but this is all that he's ever known, and it's fine with him.
Thundering, loud booming noises that shake the room of a three year old boy. Thundering, loud crashes that make him jump and curl further into his pillows and blankets that adorn his bed. Thundering, flashes of light that light up his room and give him solace from the dark, but leave him lingering and lonely in the pitch blackness once again in mere seconds, if that. He's terrified, honestly, because he hates the storm and in his childish fantasies, if the thunder booms loud enough the entire top of the building will shake off and he will plummet to his doom.
He'd never go crawling into Bro's room though, because he's a big boy now and he can take care of himself. That's what Bro tells him, anyways. So he takes care of himself, wrapping his sheets tighter around him and staying awake all night in fear of the terrible, terrible crashes from outside his window. He wants to scamper out of his room and tug on his brothers sleeve, ask him if he can spend the night with him and clamber over him and into the bed where he is, so that he can press himself into his big brothers side and hug away the awful storm that makes him tremble alone in his own bed.
Instead he stays where he is all night and in the morning after he hears the door click shut to tell him Bro is gone at work he gets out of bed and blearily toddles to the kitchen and tugs at the fridge door. He grabs a piece of cheese, the only thing in there at the time that he can eat (because you can't eat swords, that's not why they're in the fridge. Sometimes it's hard to tell what you can and can't eat, so he usually just sticks to cheese slices). He spends at least fifteen minutes struggling with the plastic before grabbing a step stool and dragging it to the trash to throw away the wrapper and shoving the cheese in his mouth.
He goes back to his room and buries himself in blankets, napping now that the storm has succumbed to peace and he doesn't have to fear the dark anymore.
It's not crawling into the warm embrace of a guardian to scare away the storm, but this is all that he's ever known, and it's fine with him.
Sirens, wailing and loud, fill the ears of a six year old boy as he walks himself to first grade. Car horns, blaring and over-bearing, make him walk a little faster. Taunting, condensing and creepy, from the homeless on the side of the street as he walks alone. Everyone is so much taller than him, everyone walks so much faster. He wished that Bro would drive him like the other children at his school, but he didn't whine because he wasn't ever supposed to complain about anything because he was lucky. He could be the one on the side of the road, he could have no one. Bro could have just left him where he was and he would have died. He should be grateful, and so he was, and so he didn't complain as he walked himself to school each morning and as he walked himself back home every day at 2:50. His little legs didn't get him very far very fast, but they got him where he needed to go.
They got him to school and to his classroom, where he hung his bag on his hook and took his seat at the back of the class and sat quietly, another lesson from Bro. His brother, cool and smart, was who the little boy aspired to be. So when Bro told him to be quiet, the little boy was quiet.
He sat through his lesson, and then at 2:50 he started his walk back home. It still made his legs ache, still made his back hurt from his heavy backpack, and he still silently wished that Bro would drive him home, but he was grateful and didn't complain, simply pushing his shades further up his nose and continuing the trek to his home.
It's not car rides home and talks about his day, but it's all he's ever known, and it's fine with him.
Punching, it's something that the ten year old boy was familiar with. It wasn't a big deal, punching someone. It wasn't a big deal, being punched. It happened all the time to everyone, right? So punch he did. Punching, a punch to the face for the kid with the glasses for being a nerd. Punching, a hit to the chest for the blond for being gay. Punching, a punch to the head and into a locker for the kid with the black hair for being irritating. Children, apparently, aren't supposed to do the punching, but the little boy doesn't care and punches anyways. This is to help people get stronger, according to Bro, and they just aren't strong enough! When Bro punches, it's to train and help the little boy grow. It's a good thing that he does, and the little boy should be grateful. So grateful he is, and train he does. On the roof with shitty katanas, in the living room with fists, in the kitchen when he goes to scrounge up a meal.
Deep down he hates the training. It hurts, it's hot, the little boy can't win. He'll never win, he knows that. But, he supposes, that's why he's got to train. So train he does, because he's not supposed to hate it and maybe if he trains enough he'll stop hating it.
It still hurts, he still loses, he still dreads the notes ordering him to the roof. He still goes, he still tries, he still listens to the notes. He may wish that instead of fighting Bro on the roof they could just eat dinner together like a parent and a child, that they could talk about their days and that Bro could just complain about work like on all the sitcoms that the little boy had watched.
But grateful he is and train he does, and punch he continues to do.
It's not eating dinner together and it's not a family sitcom, but's it's all he's ever known, and it's fine with him.
Puppets, they're in the ceiling and in Bro's room, constantly watching the thirteen year old boy. His brother loves the puppets, and the little boy loves the puppets, too. Of course he loves the puppets, just like he loves irony.
So he loves how ironic it really is that he hates the puppets, deep down. That he hates how they watch him and how they're always there.
Of course, the little boy would never word this out-loud, to the puppets or to his Bro or to any one of his friends that he talks to online. To everyone else he loves the puppets, the puppets are great. To himself he loves the puppets, the puppets are wonderful and beautiful and ironic, and Lil Cal is simply the best friend a guy can have. However, in the deep darks of the back of his mind? He knows that he hates the puppets, and that he hates the crawling feeling that he gets whenever he's around one of them.
But, alas, they're always there. The little boy deals with it, deals with the puppets watching him smuggle in food to hide in his closet because their fridge doesn't hold cheese slices anymore and because he was damn sick of those things after pretty much only eating them from the time that he was three to when he was nearly ten. Apple juice and whatever else he can get your hands on is much better.
The puppets rain down from the ceiling on the little boy and he gives up, remaining in the pile and remaining stoic on the outside. Another lesson from Bro, stoic at all times. It's the best of irony, it's the best way to be cool. And he's ironic andcool, so he remains stoic at all times, of course. His face doesn't twitch, and he continues to drive away any emotions that try and invade his mind. Stoic inside and out, it's what he continues to strive for, it's what he's coming so close to achieving. Sometimes he slips up, sometimes he feels a flutter of discomfort when he finds a smuppet lurking around a corner or Cal sitting in his room. Sometimes he feels dread work its way into his heart when he has to climb up to the roof for a shitty strife.
It's not a normal home and it's not a full fridge, but it's all he's ever known, and it's fine with him.
Sburb, dangerous and wild and full of things the little boy never dreamed of. Sburb, the place where the little boy, now sixteen, is on a meteor with some weird aliens and his apparently-sister, whose name is Rose.
The little boy, whose called Dave and isn't really so little anymore, won't ever admit it, but he's left in a constant state of confusion because of this. Not just the aliens, but the fact that he feels like he's always in one of those shitty sitcoms. As if this game wasn't already weird enough, now he's living with people who really don't understand a thing at all. They all eat dinner together, at a big table filled with food from the fridge which holds actual food, and they all talk about their day. They joke and chatter and laugh. They help each other out—the littlest things, too. Things they can do fine by themselves.
The little boy seals himself away into his room and decides to go along with the sitcom. He doesn't know what he's doing, but he hangs out with one of the aliens, Terezi, nonetheless. He builds a town of cans with her and The Mayor, who is something that the little boy can't quite identify.
And he's still always confused and he still doesn't understand what they're doing when they're all giggling together on the floor of the movie room about some stupid romcom that they're all teasing one of the aliens for liking, but he pretends that he'd not by keeping his hands in his pockets and his face stoic.
Eventually, though, he finds himself enjoying spending time in Can Town, genuinely. He finds himself enjoying the fact that there's food in the fridge and people here who, though annoying, he enjoys being around. Rose, who's kind of related to him and constantly tries to therapize the things about him that don't need to be therapized because she can't see the things that really do need fixing and who likes to knit and write and read books and who's no doubt in love with Kanaya, who's an alien and likes fashion and mothers everyone. And with Karkat, especially, even if he's loud and shouty and stupid, sometimes, and even if he has really bad taste in movies.
It makes the little boy cringe, sometimes, when he realizes how uncool and unironic he's being, when he forgets to be stoic and when he takes a moment to complain about something, when he asks Rose for her help with something to do with the alchemizer.
And the more he thinks about it, the more he watches the dumb movies, the more he listens to them talk, the more he realizes that he really shouldn't have been grateful. That he had no reason to be.
And it's not a normal family and it's not contentment, but it's all he's ever known, and for the first time in his own life….that's not fine with him.