When Magnus Bane was ten years old, he found his mother hanging from the ceiling with a rope around her neck.
He screamed.
The next few weeks passed by in a blur. He vaguely remembered attending a funeral and being hugged so tightly he almost choked by people with tears streaking their faces that he had never met. They offered their condolences and told him that he was so brave to be holding up so well in such a difficult time. In his own opinion, he wasn't holding holding up well at all. He cried quite a lot at night and didn't do much during the day other than stare at either the wall or ceiling and poke at food that their neighbours brought by. He didn't reply to them, and they didn't seem to notice. They were busy moaning on and on about his mother who they never really knew at all, and the only other person who really knew her was his father who refused to give a speech. He sat beside Magnus in the pew of the house of a man Magus didn't believe in, staring ahead with glassy eyes as if he weren't actually seeing anything at all.
After that, he could remember things with alarming clarity. He remembered how his father shouted and shrieked at him, shattering any picture frame that displayed his smiling face from it. This went on for weeks, and day by day it got worse. Magnus fought at first. He screamed back at him and thrashed around whenever his father grabbed at him, blunt nails digging into his skin. But then, little by little, he stopped. His father was easily twice his size. He could fight back all he wanted, and all that would happen is he'd end up worse off than if he just took it quietly.
His father blamed him for the death of his mother, said she hung herself out of shame for the fact that Magnus was ever born. He spat out abusive words and tore him down in a way that beating him never could. I wish you were never born turned into I should have broke your neck before you could ruin our lives.
Magnus was eleven when he was almost drowned in the bathtub.
He had stumbled in through their front door after the bus ride from his school to find his father sitting in one of their wooden dining chairs, eyes cast downwards to stare at the ground. He was unusually silent as Magnus set down his things near the doorway, but he wasn't for long. He seized Magnus by the collar of his school uniform with a wordless cry, yanking on it so hard that he almost fell to the ground and would have if not for the fact that his father was holding up. He dragged Magnus across the house and down the hallway, legs dragging the floor as he struggled to regain his footing and slammed him into the bathroom door, splitting his lip open. The coppery taste of blood soon filled his mouth as he tried to blink away the stars swimming in his vision. He was still pressed with his cheek against the door as he heard the sound of the bath water running.
His body was limp, and when his father stopped pressing him against the door he collapsed in a heap on the ground, trying to shake away the blur to his vision with no success. The few minutes that passed, despite people saying that moments like these seemed to last hours or days or years, felt like seconds. The moment felt too brief and the last breaths were too fleeting. Before he had time to think, his head was submerged in the water of the bathtub, dark hair floating and splayed out. He could feel his father's hand holding him down by the back of his neck. He tried to hold his breath as he thrashed around. He kicked at his father, feeling dull pricks of pain as he slapped Magnus across the face.
He gasped for air, only to get a mouthful of water and the coppery taste of blood on his tongue. The edges of what little he could see in the water were turning to black as he tried to pull himself up and out of the water, but the strength and willingness to fight that he had before was almost gone.
Then, the darkness that had begun to fill his vision turned into blinding, white light that seemed to come from every direction. Maybe, he thought, this was what came with death. Bright light and numbness. It was peaceful enough, maybe boring after an eternity or so of it. Those thoughts were quickly yanked away when he noticed blurry figures in front of him, what sounded like distant shouting, and a sharp pain in his chest as if he had been stabbed repeatedly with needles.
"Magnus!" He tried to identify the source of the voice but failed to. "Magnus, are you okay?" They were unfamiliar, but it sounded as if they were panicking. He inclined his head in the direction was coming from and opened his mouth to say something before the world became, once again, dark and silent.
New foster homes were horrible in general even if the family was okay. Magnus had to adjust to a new family with different rules, expectations, and habits than his last one. He had to figure out if they were going to try to drag him along to church. He had to remember to let them know that he had a shellfish allergy before they tried to cook shrimp stir fry or something equally horrifying. He had to worry about whether they would be okay at all, or if they'd be bitter, homophobic, or even just in the program for the check they got every month that they put a roof over Magnus' head and kept him from dropping dead.
So when he ceased to have a social worker breathing down his neck in favor of transferring him off to the next foster home a city away with his bag that held the sparse belongings he carried from home to home, he wasn't exactly thrilled. He hated his social worker, but at least he knew her.
He watched American dream houses with white picket fences from the car window, perfectly manicured flower beds becoming a blur. His social worker turned the corner onto a long driveway where he could see carefully trimmed rose bushes lining the sides of the house and a welcome mat by the front door. It was the house in every sitcom ever aired. There were even the required perfect neighbours next door from the looks of it. He could see two teenage boys lying beside each other, seemingly having a serious conversation, in the equally perfect yard of one house. The other house had the cliche plastic swing set for children in the front yard surrounded by weeds that children mistook for flowers.
"I've got it," he said before she could move to help him as he grabbed his bag and shrugged on his jacket, chin tilted high as he stepped out of the car. She trailed close behind, a clipboard with papers haphazardly clipped to it. Out of the house came a couple with wide smiles on their faces, rushing over to meet Magnus once he was halfway to the front door.
"You must be Magnus!" the woman with greying roots exclaimed, smile wide and eyes bright as she approached him. Her arms were outstretched as if she expected him to throw himself at her in tears, sobbing about how he had never felt so loved as he did after this one sentence he heard from her.
He hated these sorts of families.
She had his file before now even though he could spot his social worker (Maria was her name) hand over a file filled with papers about anything and everything she knew about Magnus, including his allergies and the story of how his father was currently residing in the Otisville Correctional Facility and all the details they had as to why.
He hated his file. Even the photo of him included in it was terrible, but they always caught him with a camera at the worst possible times.
"That would be me," he confirmed, trying to politely step away from her and her far too personal way of greeting him.
She finally let go of him to clasp her hands together and look him over as if she couldn't believe that he was there, right in front of her. She acted like he was much more than a teenager who had moved on from to many home and had found no one willing to sign his adoption papers. "I'm Cynthia, and this is my husband Mark," she said, pointing over to where her husband was speaking in a hushed voice as he signed papers that were stuck to the clipboard. "We're so happy that you're finally here. How about I bring you inside to see your room?" She didn't wait for an answer before she was walking back up the driveway to the front door of the house.
Seeing as he could either be polite and follow her or stay where he was with Mark, he decided that going to see his room was a very nice idea indeed.
The house was neat and looked like it had come straight out of a Home & Garden magazine, and he could even spot a few copies of it on the counter in the kitchen. He didn't stick around to observe it all for long before she was walking up the stairs and leading him upstairs and into a nice sized bedroom with a window with a view of the house next door and a window seat. The room was relatively bare besides a twin sized bed, dresser, and a slightly beat up looking vanity in the corner.
Cynthia placed a hand on his shoulder, looking up at him with a sad smile. "I know it isn't much, but we thought we would let you decorate it however you wanted. We didn't know what you liked."
It was a nice gesture truly, and even Magnus had a heart. He opened his mouth to say thank you when his social worker came barging into the room, her heels clicking against the wooden floors. "Magnus, all of the papers have been signed, so I'm leaving now. You know how to contact me if necessary." She turned to Cynthia, a perfectly plastic smile on her face as she passed over what looked like a business card. "Mrs. Ashby, if you ever need anything, don't hesitate to call." She gave Magnus a sharp look before she turned around to make her way down the staircase.
Silence fell for maybe a minute, maybe two, before she spoke up, "I'll leave you to unpack and get settled in. Mark can take you into town tomorrow if you'd like to pick up some new clothes and a few things for your room. You know, to make it your own." She let out an almost inaudible sigh as she looked around the room, smiling once again at him.
"That would be nice," he replied politely, taking a seat on the edge of the bed. "Thank you, Cynthia."
She nodded and walked to the doorway. "Tell us if you need anything," she told him and once he nodded she was off down the stairs, shutting the door behind her.
Magnus sat in silence before he groaned loudly and fell back on the bed, his legs hanging off the side. Homes with nice foster parents were always the worst. He felt like he owed them to not screw up which he would inevitably do. It wasn't that he thought he was a screw up or anything. He just had a tendency to do screwed up things and make nice people want to get far away from him, and, yeah, it sucked. He was used to it though.
He let himself fall to the ground and opened his bag to unpack his things in yet another new place to call home.