AN:.. Yeah I started another fic while still working on the ones I have. Though I am hoping to all hell and back that this is short. It's a short Character piece about Black Manta- who's real name is David. (No last name though.) It's slightly crossed over with my other fic: Fishing: The Batman Method.
Triggers: Child abuse/neglect/non-con situations/racism and ect.
Due to the time period he lived in, a lot of things have never actually been mentioned or covered. I'm going to kind of cover that. To see what made this once good kid living in a hellish situation turn into a monster.
There are things within this world that shape us to become the people we will be. Some things only make us stronger. While some make us weak. And for others, it simply turns into madness and rage.
David is only five at the time, when his story begins in a rundown apartment where no sane person alive would be living. The slums of this neighborhood were something that only hell could think of, but for David, a little black boy growing up in the 1960s, it was home. He walks around mostly without too many clothes because he simply outgrew his old ones. They hurt and pinch uncomfortably when he wore them- if he did at all.
He glances at his mother, who's head was hanging off the couch and only reaches for her for a moment before stopping himself.
His mother was sick. She had often yelled at him for even bothering her. He doesn't really know what to do, to be honest and turns to walk away. Outside, he hears the world moving and carrying on and he knows that it would be pointless to get help here.
No one comes when he cries out at being hit. So why would they come now?
Instead, he takes the one thing that was his own- a torn ratty ball of cloth that had a vague outline of a starfish- and walks out of the door without his shoes or shirt.
It was the first thing he's decided for himself to do when he got hungry enough to do it.
Later on, some well-meaning white lady comes across him. Her friends wrinkle their noses at him, muttering words he doesn't fully understand yet. She's speaking something. He only tilts his head up, frowning a little. Half afraid to speak to her. If he did...
"Come on now, boy." She said, "There's a place for people like you. Even your kind don't deserve to be treated like this."
David has no other choice but to follow her. It wasn't like he had many options.
At ten, he has come to fully regret that choice. He lives in a foster home filled with children from various other homes that were either as bad or worse off. He's not sure what will happen to him now. He knows for sure that he'll never be adopted at all because he's 'too old' and black. No one likes either of those combinations. Especially the black part.
He hates that. He hates having to hear things about his people in such a negative way. Sometimes he dreams about everyone that wasn't black dying some bad way, but later he changes his mind when he hears about someone else- not black- doing something nice for his race.
He's obsessed with the news, listening for scrapes of things about progress or anything. But it's mostly about Vietman and things.
He's still not too clear as to why that occurs. He mostly hears these things while at the Barber shop where he worked part time sweeping up the hair after school.
He always stays there late because he never wants to go back to the place he had to call 'home'. It was cramped, the roof leaked, and fights were too numerous for him to read. Not to mention that the 'boss' was really the foster family's own son, Mickey.
Bastard.
Just because this was his family, he thinks he could treat the rest of them like dirt.
But they could never hit back. Not unless they want their Forster Father to back hand them and toss them out on the streets. That's what happened to Tina and John. They were tossed out like that because they stood up for themselves.
David hates the fact that he can't do that.