AN: I am no english native speaker and the story is not betaread. I do my best.
Windows
A little snowflake made its journey down to earth, happily dancing through the light of a street lamp before settling down on the bench nearby. It was not the only occupant of the bench though, for on the cold, wet wood sat a boy.
A boy on a bench might not seem very peculiar, but a boy on a bench near midnight in the frosty winter wind and only clad in his sleeping shorts and a t-shirt was something very peculiar indeed.
Now one might ask why the boy sat where he sat and why he wasn´t dressed any warmer. One might guess that he had been sleepwalking, but that was not the case.
Before settling down on the bench the boy, whose name was Pietro, had been walking through the streets of a good neighborhood in New York. The houses there were big and the gardens very well tended. Pietro however had not come there for the houses or the gardens. He had come for the windows - the bright windows with the happy people behind it. The windows that had warmth leaking thought them straight into his heart. He smiled and imagined it was him on the other side of the windows.
In the past, it had been him and Wanda, his sister, watching windows together and letting their eyes eat from the dinner tables to fill their empty tummies. These windows though were far away. Not only by time also by place. They had not been in New York, not even in America, but somewhere on the other side of the world. Pietro didn´t know the names of all the places they had been in, because he had not been able to read back then. He and Wanda had first learnt their letters, when their father, Magneto, came to take them with him to America. That had been 4 years ago and when he and Wanda first came to America it had seemed to them that they finally were on the other side of the windows. But soon enough they had learned better. And they had lost each other, parted by the man who had promised them heaven.
No, it had never truly been them on the other side of the windows. It had always been just silly dreams. And with reality came back loneliness and anger. That was always the moment that he turned around to walk back to the foster home he was living in.
It was a long way back to the Browns house and the nearer he came the lower his pace got. He dreaded going back there.
That was, why he had stopped at the bench. He did not mind the cold outside, even though he was trembling and his hands and feet were hurting. However outside at least he was in control of the pain he suffered. It was his choice to sit there. It was his choice to not put on any more clothes.
A police car stopped in front of the bench. "Look Henry", a male voice said, "It´s the strange boy again."
They pulled him to his feet, placed him into their car and drove him back to his foster home. A man opened the door and thanked the police for bringing back his troubled charge.
Pietro didn´t say a word. He walked to his room and closed the door.
The boy didn´t stay much longer at Mr. and Mrs. Browns place. Instead he lived for a few months at the orphanage again, where his father had left him nearly 2 years before.
New foster homes came. Some were alright. Pietro even liked it there. But he never stayed long.
Mr. Stevens, his 4th foster dad, once explained it to his wife this way: "Dear, we wanted to help a poor child and we did our best, but Pietro... he is different. He is lost. No one can help him anymore."
They had not known that Pietro had been listening at the door. Mrs. Stevens even had cried a little when they brought him back to the orphanage. Pietro did not cry. He never did anymore, but he did look out the window when they drove away. "Liking someone is just not safe." he concluded.
Time passed by. And in his 15th year Pietro stood in front of a window again, staring inside. Snowflakes were whirling all around him once more and the wind was biting cold, but he did not care. He just stood there for a long time.
Suddenly he felt a hand on his shoulder. "Piet, what are you doing?" asked a familiar voice and Pietro looked up to see Lance, shivering behind him. "Come on in, will you? You´ll freeze your ass of if you stay out here any longer."
Pietro looked up at his friend, his eyes big with wonder and filled with sadness at the same time. "There she is, Lance - inside."
Lance, who had never been very comfortable with emotional moments, just scoffed. "Of course she is inside, dumbass. It´s minus 20 degrees out here! Every sane person is inside!"
Pietro´s eyes turned back to the window. Back to Wanda. There she was. He could see her. And still... he could not reach her.
The End