They Who Were Unlucky In Their Childhoods…
By Sister Grimm Erin and Neko Kuroban.
Author's Notes (Neko Kuroban): Set in the same universe as Sightless, but it is unnecessary to have prior knowledge of that fanfiction to read this one-shot. Rated for implications of sexual abuse and undercurrents of religious abuse. Please use your discretion, especially if you find such material offensive or triggering.
Luke Christopher Castellan is a cherubic-looking child when he arrives home from Greenwich Hospital, with white-gold hair and blue eyes. (His father watches from above, brows knit and a concerned frown etched across his features, having no clue of the fate to befall his newborn.)
The man his mother is married to opens the blanket brusquely. It is all wrong—he doesn't possess blonde hair and certainly not those blue eyes, piercing yet mischievous—yet it is no less than he suspected.
He meets his wife's eyes. Calanthe has always been a gorgeous temptation, and he had harbored his suspicions about her pregnancy, but this? Blatant, breathing evidence of her adultery, saddled on him for the better part of two decades? It was evident that the boy wasn't his. Everyone would know and see and laugh, know that all he has accomplished was for naught—because he was still screwed over by his wife, just as always.
Well, Geoffrey will be damned if he will accept this lying down. "God damn it, Calanthe." His words are a low, wintry hiss. "I gave you this house, I've earned this life for us, you have everything you wanted. What the hell more did you need?"
Tears well in her eyes, but his heart remains hardened against her. "A baby."
His face is hot, but his words are coldly furious and mocking. "Well, why didn't you say so?"
"You wouldn't listen," she informs him with all the haughty self-assurance of a twenty-two-year-old beauty queen, and she takes the baby from him to hold clumsily, uncertainly, to her breast. "I wanted someone to keep me company."
"Next time? Get a cat."
He wants to strangle the blue-eyed child, then and there, and to wash his hands of the matter. Instead, he turns on the heel of his expensive Italian leather shoes and stalks off to his car, radiating disapproval. He hesitates, just a moment, behind the steering wheel before pulling out of the driveway with a shrill squeal of tires, heading to the Meridan.
At least hollow-eyed strippers named Amber and Krystal and Candy are faithful to money.
When Luke enters school, he is five years old. His mother is dead. Suicide is what everyone says, what the papers claim, what the police rule, what the lawyer notarizes on the death certificate. In his heart, he suspects his stepfather, but he already knows better than to imagine he can make a difference.
In kindergarten, he is labeled with the diagnosis of dyslexic. He does not care, and, all through elementary school, he picks pockets out of curiosity rather than need, thrill-stealing as a kind of game, an escape from the cold man at home and the aching loneliness. He has one picture of his mother, which he carries with him constantly. He sees a therapist once every month or so. After his mother's apparent 'suicide', concerned adults have constantly looked at him as if he were about to try to follow that path. He's never quick sure which turned him into an atheist first—Catholic school or life itself.
He falls into a routine. He learns to keep his head down, to feed bullshit lies to adults, to be wary around strangers. By middle school, he is deemed a troubled kid, but Geoffrey Castellan's money keeps him from being thrown out for his antics. He sees monsters sometimes, but his fists have gotten quicker, and he dismisses them as psychobabble bullshit.
When he is eleven, his father marries again. She is a beautiful woman in that femme fatale way, like a woman out of film noir. She appears half her age, with dark brown hair and smoldering brown eyes, but he really does not care. Anyone who keeps the fascist distracted is fine with him.
Beyond that, he has no contact with her except for over the breakfast table. Her negligees, delicate confections of silk and lace, showcase her ample bosom. The matching sheer, filmy robes are perpetually half-tied when she descends the graceful curve of the staircase but soon find their easy way off her slender shoulders. She wears makeup and stilettos to breakfast but not to bed. Her name is Trinity Carmela Lombardi. He suspects her of having changed it. Despite her Old World mystique, there is a hard Jersey accent beneath her feigned European lilt.
She seems religious—at least, her crimson-painted nails are always fingering the cross that hangs from her neck on its delicate gold chain; it seems to be a nervous habit, the only betrayal of her constant cool—and tries to start conversation with him at times. Geoffrey never attends breakfasts, so their conversations are civil, coolly polite, and coldly impersonal…at first.
She asks him about school, but that leaves little room for discussion, as his grades are dismal, so she asks him about church.
The first time, he chokes on his drink. Why would Geoffrey marry anyone remotely interested in religion? As far as Luke could tell, the only God that the man requires is himself. Catholic school was pure chance; St. Aloysius was simply the school his one-time business partner had selected for his own son.
She reads to him from the Bible on occasion, manicured crimson nails, long and filed to sharp points, tracing along the inside of his arm and nearly leaving a scratch. He should have been alarmed by that, but no one ever touches him, so he dismisses it as nerves. Everything is good. For a while.
Her fingers gradually move farther down.
He draws the line at his waist, but Trinity definitely dislikes what she perceives as rebellion. She waits until she hears the shower water stop one night and barges in while he is dressing.
The next afternoon, he burns the Bible she had given him.
Two years later, his doctor, during a mandatory physical examination, puts the pieces together. The doctor makes concerned noises and mentions filing a report with CPS and something about foster care and how Luke should remove himself from the situation, but Luke, instead of surrendering to the storm raging within him, blushes and mumbles about a girlfriend just enough that the doctor nods like he understands.
That was the day he called Geoffrey out, stole anything of value of Trinity's—jewelry, cash, credit cards—that was in her sleek designer purse, and took a cab to Bradley International. It was the day before Christmas Eve and snowing softly in Connecticut, but he picked the first outgoing plane, not caring where it was headed. He ends up in Los Angeles, of all places. He promptly sheds his black wool pea coat; compared to snow and ice, he has no problem with the prospect of Christmas being seventy-five degrees and sunny.
At midnight, he sees a girl about his age, maybe a year or so younger, and he can tell from just a glance at her that she's running away.
Her body language is terse and closed, folded in on herself, and her long hair is so dark and thick it looks like motionless black water. She is seated at a table, shoulders hunched and drinking coffee, despite the late hour. There are three coffee cups gathered on her table, not counting the one curled loosely in both hands, but she seems to be staring into its depths rather than drinking the cooling liquid.
She looks up as he passes her by, and their eyes catch.
Electric blue meets sapphire.
On a whim, he buys her another cup of coffee, as well as his own, and touches her shoulder. She whirls around, ready with a scathing retort, but he offers her a charming smile and holds the coffee out as a peace offering. He introduces himself, watching as the tension and suspicion leaves her. She tells him that her name is Thalia and that she does not take open drinks, especially not from random strangers, but there is the hint of a smile at the corners of her mouth, and, just like that, he is captivated.
It is the first time the words fucking and beautiful were ever paired in his mind.
They still have never applied to anyone but her.
Author's Notes (Sister Grimm): Review for cookies, adoration, and replies! Questions welcome.