The first time it happened, nobody even noticed. Sebastian had been five. He and his mother had taken a TGV to Nice to visit a friend who had just had a beautiful baby girl. Gabriella had left her little Sebastian to play in the backyard while she cooed over the darling petite bèbè and sipped red wine on the patio. It had only been twenty minutes when she felt something brush by her leg and looked down to see Sebastian on his hands and knees underneath the table.

"Oh, Bassy. What are you doing?" She smiled and the little brunet looked up at her with large, innocent eyes.

"Mama!" He crooned in his high little voice.

"What is it, sweetheart?" She asked. Sebastian crawled over to the baby's little swinging carriage and sat down, sticking his fingers in his mouth.

"Mama!" He repeated again.

Gabriella cracked a smile and picked him up, setting her little boy in her lap and cuddling him. "Oh, you want to be my little baby?" She received babyish cooing in response and giggled, kissing his cheek. "Okay, mon poussin." She smiled. "You will be my little baby."

The next time, it was not so cute. Sebastian was in fourth grade. Gabriella had just finished preparing lunch for Sebastian and peeked out the window when she heard the familiar laughter and chatter of the grade school students heading home for lunch time. Usually, Sebastian was leading the pack. The boy was so confident and arrogant, making their stomach hurts with his jokes. Gabriella smiled. She was so proud of her son, a model student with the affections of every girl in his class.

The children passed by and when she didn't her son amongst the crowd, she frowned in concern. Where was Sebastian? He always came home on time, especially on Wednesday when she made his favorite bouillabaisse. Her questions were answered when the phone rang. A call from the school asking her to come down and get Sebastian.

She was there in five minutes and was surprised to find a small group of teachers waiting for her at the entrance. "What's wrong? Is Sebastian okay?" She asked, wringing her hands anxiously. The teachers exchanged looks and her heart skipped a beat.

"Sebastian is fine, Madame Smythe. He is waiting for you in the nurses office." Sebastian's own school teacher replied. "He had…um, an accident during recess." She whispered.

Gabriella's eyes widened in surprise, taken aback by the statement. That couldn't be. Sebastian's potty training record was impeccable, and anyway, he was nine. She silently got over her initial shock as she followed the woman to the nurses office only to find Sebastian curled up on one of the infirmary beds. His face was red and tearstained with eyes that darted back and forth nervously. He was also wearing a pair of gray sweat pants that he had definitely not gone to school in that morning.

"Sebastian?" She asked, her voice laced with concern for her son.

Sebastian's head lifted and his eyes widened. "Mama!" He cried out. He got to his knees and crawled over to her, making grabby hands for her. "Maaa-ma!"

"Sebastian, what happened?" Gabriella asked as she pulled the boy into her arms. She received gibberish in reply and looked at the teacher in question.

"He's been doing that ever since he came in here. It's like he forgot how to talk." The nurse piped up.

"Madame, I think it would be best if Sebastian went home for the rest of the day. I'm worried about him." The teacher frowned.

"Wha…what happened to him?" Gabriella demanded to know as she stroked his hair.

"He was out on the playground and suddenly he just fell over. He couldn't get back up and he curled into a ball. We tried to talk to him but he wouldn't respond and then he soiled himself." She replied. "Has this happened before?"

"No, not that I know of." Gabriella frowned. "Somebody must have upset him." She gathered Sebastian in her arms and accepted the bag of soiled clothes from the nurse before leading her babbling son out of the school, down the street and into their home where the bouillabaisse had gone cold.

The Smythe family moved to America a month after Sebastian's thirteenth birthday. It had been sudden, and Gabriella had not been too happy about leaving her country, though her husband was more than ready to go back to the states. The company he worked for had just opened up a branch in Ohio and they were relocating him once more.

To say that Sebastian didn't fit in was an understatement. The boy knew very little conversational English and had immediately been targeted as the freak. While girls found his French charming and romantic, the boys thought it was queer and soon enough, the girls did too.

"'Ello, Say-bahs-tee-ahn!" Boys shouted at him. "Where eez yooor boyeee frand?"

"Fermez les bouches!" Sebastian would snarl back, and after a few weeks of ESL lessons, it simply became "shut up!"

Of course, with bullying came stress and anxiety. Sebastian's little episodes became more and more frequent at an alarming rate and after a trip to the nearest Walgreens to pick up a back of adult diapers, Gabriella and Steven knew something was very wrong with their son.

Sebastian started missing school five or six days a month. During these periods, Gabriella stayed at home with her son who could only communicate through a small handful of French words. She changed his diapers and fed him. Child safeties were put on table corners and cupboard doors. Covers were stuck in outlets and sharp objects were put up high. Gabriella sat on the carpet in the living room and played with her son for hours, rolling balls back and forth or building up blocks just so that he could knock them over. Steven had little to do with Sebastian during these episodes, choosing to retreat straight to his office for the rest of the night while Gabriella spooned apple sauce into her thirteen year old's mouth.

Sebastian was diagnosed with Disassociative Identity Disorder six months after his fourteenth birthday. By then, there had been many in-school episodes that had resulted in rumors being spread. The boy was missing so much school that he wouldn't be able to graduate, but in April of his freshman year, Gabriella and Steven pulled him out of school and hired an in home tutor. Without the constant anxiety caused by bullying and social pressure, Sebastian's episodes depleted over the summer until they had vanished completely.

That is, until they decided to send him to boarding school.