For anyone who have read Bound to Change might notice I changed my mind. I will start on my Brooklyn. It will be third priority and will stand still for all the time it takes me to end Bound to Change, then it gets top priority. Which means I, priority-wise, have the stories lined as such; Bound to Change, Gun Education, and this one.

The idea behind this was that I saw the Brooklyn Tribute on YouTube with the song 'Left outside alone', by Lailachan. I got the idea without even really watching it, but the song and tribute is alright anyway. So, that's the story of the story, should we get on with the story? (Making sense, aren't we?)

Disclaimer: Don't own beyblade, don't own Brooklyn,don't own 'Left outside alone'.

Warning: No warnings ^^ Cheers! As always with my things, possible character-death, but... For once, haven't planned any. The rating might change, but then, it would go down a notch... But I have no pairings intended. Romance might come, but it will innocent and minimal. This story is not about love, but the lack of it.

Left outside alone

Six years

There is a house in the mountain, a house of wood. Or... It is not just a house. It is in the category between house and mansion, all made of wood. The mountain is covered in a white layer of thin, crystal snow; but a storm is on its way, and the lead-black clouds and wild winds are just right around the corner. Weird how something so black and dark will leave big piles of pure, white snow tomorrow morning, isn't it? The northern part of Norway is beautiful all year.

But something is more pure and something is more beautiful than the country itself. A little boy, sitting in the snow beside the door to the house, his hair orange and the eyes like the feather of the blue jay. He is a beauty, he really is, his body slender and features as perfect as only a small child can be... And he is about six years old. But without a coat on, he is shivering like a soaked kitten and about as wet. The snow have soaked the perfectly white clothes, making them look grayish where they have contact with the frozen water. And in the blue eyes, fear and tears lay.

"- - - -, I beg of you, let him go inside again! He'll freeze to death in the storm!" The mind of the child automatically blocks out the name of the man getting talked to. The woman's voice sounds concerned and fearful, but stubborn too. He can hear them through the doors and windows, though both are shut tight to prevent the icy breezes to wipe through the house. But they are loud, so loud that the voices reach him like a whisper in the cold air.

It is the parents of the child, the two talking. And yet, not. They aren't his parents. They are faults, imposters.

"He can just learn to behave!" the voice of the man with no name spits back in the singing language of Norway. The man sounds more than furious. "Nikoline, he cheats! You should know it, the kid has always done that!" His mom has a name. His dad don't. He allows her to have a name. But the man, on the other hand... He has no name.

Nikoline... She loves him. She loves him a lot. That's why he allows her to have a name. There is just one problem...

The six-year-old didn't love her back.

"Why. Can't you just realize. Your son. Is a genius?" Nikoline's voice is strong enough to cut through steel, but the man's determination is unbreakable. And both the little, six-year-old boy, who rightfully enough is sitting and dying in the cold, and his mother knows this. But Nikoline loves her husband as much as her child. That's the reason she won't leave, and take her child away from the man, despite that he often get angry and yell at the small boy. But don't mistake anything, though.

Cause the man loves his son too. In fact he do it a lot. But everything the child is go against his life, and his principles. And so, he is going to discipline the child into stop cheating when the kid solve the math that the man himself have trouble doing, or reads the lines of a brick-sized book without stumbling over the big words. The child is a wonder-child, a prodigy. Not only in the boring parts like reading, writing or solving mathematical problems, no. No matter what is thrown in the lap of the child, he learns it, and uses it, after getting the basics told. He plays the piano, he plays chess, he have all the constellation memorized and knows when they are visible and when they are not, he can tell you about physics and chemistry, atoms, metal, gas, acids, bases, salts, electricity, he knows everything about old Greek, Egyptian and Nordic mythologies, he knows the human brain inside out...

The list is long, and it is so long because the man, ever since he found his son was special when the kid was able to read without problems at the age of four, has thrown everything he could at the poor boy to finally find his limits. Those limits are yet to be seen. Why did the man do this? Because this man can't deal with perfection. Only imperfection is good enough to him, and it was soon after his son's fifth birthday the man lost it and changed his ways around the boy. A mixture of frustration in the realization that a six-year-old is cleverer than him and the perfection of his son got him to lie to himself about the kid. And the only way the man is able to teach the kid how not to cheat is through disciplining.

The man is denying the truth. But, luckily, he is not one to hit children. So the little boy with the white clothes and the blue eyes normally only gets snappy words from the man whenever it seems necessary. But today, the boy not only sneaked up on the loft, but in there he found the old violin the man had tried to learn to play back in the days without succeeding. And despite his short arms and the long bow, his curiosity got him to try it out, and trying it out got him to play it without problems. That's how this boy is.

But his dad is furious. "He's no genius! The only way anyone can do anything in this life is by working hard for it! How else do you think I got us into this house? I worked hard! But he cheats, he finds the easiest way to do everything! I don't want a son who is a wuss and can't take care of himself, and the only way my son wont be like that is if he stops doing it the easy way and begins working!" That is what the problem with the child's perfection comes. The man with no name and no son thinks working hard is the only way you can grow up. But what if all the things you do comes easy to you? The man has found one single thing his son can't do. His son can't do sports.

That is another thing that makes the man angry. Not that his son is unable to do sports, but the attitude the boy has about it. It's hard, because the kid have never run a meter in his life. It's so hard, that the child can't see the point. Cause the man is right. You only grow in the right way by meeting hardships, and since nothing until this point has brought the child trouble or pain, he has gotten lazy. Now that he has found something he can't do, he aren't interested in overcoming it. And no matter how much his day tries to tell him that he should get on that bike or play with that ball or anything, the child refuses. Cause this kid has never done training in his life.

You may wonder how the child can't have run a meter in his life? Their house lies in the middle of nowhere in the Norwegian wilderness. The only other children the kid meets is sons and daughters of his dad's business-partners, and when the child is lucky enough to meet someone at his age, he's bored. The other kid is boring, the other kid lacks curiosity, the other kid likes running around after nothing. And the kid can't even read or write. It isn't interested in music, it thinks chess is confusing, it thinks stars is stupid, it doesn't understand physics... Basically, they doesn't fit together.

The kid is already trapped in the loneliness he will know many years onward.

But Nikoline is different from the man. "Why do you have to be so hard on him?" Nikoline is very different. "Many parents would die to get a son like this!" Her son don't consider her family, but she's different. "Tell me how it is he's cheating!" She loves him. "He can't help it!" And she thinks of her son very differently. "He can't help being good at everything, that's just who he is!" She thinks he's little Gods gift to humanity, and that he'll do something big in life.

And she might be right.

But this little gift to humanity is freezing. The wind blows even worse now, and the shivers get worse as the little boy closes his eyes and forces the tears to fall. The kid is sad. Why he is sad, he does not know. Normally, he never feels sad, or happy. He knows the feelings, but do not normally use them. But this time, where he actually does feel sad, he does not know why he feels. Maybe he, deep down, cares more for his parents than he thinks. But they are not family. They'll never be family.

The old, tall trees of the forest creak, threatening to fall under the pressure of icy blows, and the lead-black clouds finally reach the big tree-house and sends cascades of tiny crystals down to the ground. The small boy don't move an inch, and the snow makes a serious attempt of covering him from the world in the only sheets that would be just as white as his clothes. Nikoline is right. If he stays here just a little longer, he'll freeze to death.

But at the same time as he doesn't want to stay out here, his wish of not being in the house is just as big. Though for the most time having the life everyone would dream of, the boy knows they aren't his family. They won't ever be family. And he don't want to know them. And as he sits out in the cold and clings to life while more and more snow pours down on him, he disconnects his mind with his body. He locks himself up in the darkness of his mind to flee from the pain of the cold.

Normally, he hates doing it. It hurts. And confusion... He sees images, from the future. Some that he can hold on to and make sense of. Some he can't. He knows he is different, different from every human on the planet. He just doesn't know why, or how, though it is easy to realize that his visions of the future is part of it. Another part of it is, of course, his unlimited ability to learn whatever he wants to learn. The six-year-old is scared of himself and his abilities, and he has no-one he trusts enough to get the fear poured out to.

The small, fine lips are turning blue. The storm is bad. Really bad. If he would just go in to the house with the persons without faces, he could get away from the cold, but the wishes are still equally important and none of them will get him convinced to do anything. But out of the darkness, a moose suddenly appeares. They never go this close to the house, which is good since the man is one to enjoy hunting animals, but this one still continues onward, all the way up to the walls of the house, ignoring the cold to get to the little, vulnerable boy.

The boy doesn't wake from his trance-like state when it bows down and curls up around him, providing him with its own body-warmth. Animals trust him, and he assumes it is because he isn't human. At least, the six-year-old's fantasy tells him that he isn't human. What he then is, he don't know, but the animals likes what he is. And he likes the animals, and so, the thought of not being human, and not fitting in anywhere because he isn't human doesn't scare him, cause he do fit in. He fits with the animals. The animals accept him for what he is.

And now, an old female moose decide to keep him alive while his parents still shouts at each other, the woman crying wildly in fear of losing her only child, while the man still is too angry to see the logic of saving the kid from the cold.

In the chaos of the future the boy finally finds something that interests him, something he has been looking for ever since he let himself get embraced by the dark parts of his mind. He can't control the visions he gets, but to keep his sanity, he ignores most of them. It won't matter if he didn't, cause he doesn't have the ability to understand any of the pictures or scenes anyway. They spring past his mental eyes with the speed of light. Yet he found what he was looking for.

"Dad..." The word slips past the blue lips as the he leans closer to the big animal, the corners of his lips turning slightly upwards. He still doesn't wake up. Cause he's safe now. He has caught the image of the future that will be the light of his life forever. And the image comforts him. As if it is already here, as if it comforts him and holds it wings above him to protect him already now. The king, even having a helmet-like crown to proof its royalty.

His mental eyes keeps a hold of a mythical creature with hooves, wings, horns on its chest and a great, white mane on a head of a cat. The image is frozen, giving the boy a good look on the beast. It is a fusion of two creatures of the old, Greek mythology, the centaur and the chimera in the form of a winged lion, with the chimera as a substitute for the centaurs human body.

Despite a hostile and dangerous appearance, the child no longer fear, and the young boy falls asleep into the fur of the moose. The creature is his light. The creature is his safe. The creature will become so much more to him...

"Espen?" Nikoline's voice scares the moose. The creature stands up, causing the boy to fall into the snow. The storm is there still. You can't see anything else than snow. The boy hears Nikoline come closer, and he look up at the moose, which stands over him and look at him with confusion. There is only one thing he can do to get it away. And that is explaining to the creature it has to leave him to get away from the man and into safety.

"The man in the house is a hunter." You can't call a man dad. Not when he isn't your dad. It would be wrong. Especially when you have another Dad. "If he sees you, he'll shoot you. I hate when he does that. He's not nice. But you have to go. Do you understand?" The moose tilts its head to the right, looking at him thoughtfully. Then, it turns its gaze to the giant wooden house before slipping it back to him. "Thanks for saving me," the boy adds, and then the moose takes down its head, staring into his blue eyes for a few seconds. Then it runs off, only just out of view when Nikoline finally reaches her son. The door opens. She stands there.

"Espen?" The boy reacts to his name by looking up. Nikoline has a name. But she doesn't have a face. He doesn't allow her to have a face. She loves him, so she has a name. But she doesn't have a face. Where her face is supposed to be, darkness is. Her lips is black. So is the nose. Even the eyes. But not her brown hair. It's only the face. She has no face. He doesn't allow her to have a face. "Are you alright?"

She takes her arm around him, not caring that the storm soaks her in second. She takes him up from the ground, making him move his stiff, cold limps. She takes him inside, getting him out of the cold. She takes him to a bath, warming him up again. She takes him to the kitchen, getting his stomach full. She takes him to his bedroom, covering him in blankets. She takes him in her arms, letting him fall asleep there.

He's a lucky kid. The experience of getting trapped in the cold is a one-timer. He will never experience it again. The woman holding him love him. Everything is right. Even his dad loves him. Like some men, his dad can have a temper. Like some men, his dad has principles. But he still loves his son. Even though he don't like the perfection.

Nikoline strokes his hair, the orange strands so wet they look nearly black-red. She smiles sadly, knowing she might be supposed to call the police and tell them that her husband had thrown their kid outside in the storm. But she knows he hasn't done it on purpose, and if he do anything like that again, she will not hesitate to tell. Buthe wants her son to have the best life possible, and that the man is strict to the boy might just help. Cause though she didn't want to admit it, she agreed with him. You wouldn't grow right if you didn't feel the hardships.

Seven years

Don't you love when you grow older? Espen may do a little. Birthday. He is excited... to some degree. It is like a teenager's birthday, the worst steam of joy has already blown in the previous years. But he is only six... or seven, it is now. Only a little kid. And yet, this child doesn't see joy in his birthday anymore.

All his family has assembled, and he sits with his seventeen cousins at the kids' table. The majority, meaning eleven of the kids in the seats, are male, and he is the second youngest. The boy is small of his age, and that means he is even smaller than the only one he is older than. And since he is so good at everything, most of his cousins have the same problem with him as his father. It is summer, the weather is hot and the mountain full of flowers and insects, but the summer-time is coming to an end. It's august, two weeks after his actual birthday date, and it is a Sunday. He has birthday the fourth of august, in the end of summer, when everything gets ready for the cold and dark winter.

Trying to act as if the many cousins actually interests him, Espen is a part of his own party without feeling as the center. The others ignore him. He is the little genius in the family. The others hate him. They don't have names. But they are allowed to have faces. He allows them to have faces.

The kids will stay at the table all evening. Why? Because in this house, there is nothing telling you that a kid lives there. There are no toys, no video-games, no cartoon-channels on the TV, nothing. The boy doesn't find any interest in these things. They just don't satisfy him. He feels no need to use toys – he has books. He feels no need to use video-games – he has a whole loft to explore. He don't need the cartoons – the adult movies are far more interesting and clever for him. He especially enjoys the horror-movies. The monsters aren't terrifying. He laughs at the monsters. Dad protects him. He often wakes up in the night to watch movies behind Nikoline's and the man's back.

The cousins knew this already before they came. The freakish prodigy-member of their family don't have or do fun things. One reason why they don't like to go to that home in the middle of nowhere. Another is that they are scared of him. It's not that he can everything. That's scary too, but it's not it. It's that aura he has formed around him ever since he was four. They agree with his fantasy. He is not human. What he then is, they don't know. They don't speak of it. But he is not human.

Suddenly, the birthday-boy disappears from his seat. The boy may not run around, but he is still an outdoor-person. So he sneaks up to the adults' table, trying to get Nikoline's attention. Only she and the man doesn't have faces. His aunts and uncles and grandparents have faces. And they have names. But they still aren't family. They are strangers.

"Where do your little wonder go to school?" one of the people at the adult-table asks pleasantly. A little too pleasantly. He is jealous. Do he want a boy like that too? For some reason, the little boy thinks the man is wrong. He don't want a boy like this too. "You live pretty far away from everything, so I'm just curious. Is there even a school hard enough for him so far out in the wilderness?" He tries to hide his jealousy. He doesn't succeed. He is no longer allowed to have a name.

"We have a private teacher for him." Nikoline is the one to answer first. She is proud of her little boy. He's so good at everything. She don't ever want to lose him. "We have found the teacher specially for him, to keep his abilities up. We wouldn't want him to lose interest, though his curiosity keeps that away. But people changes, and it is pretty normal for a boy in his age to have such an interest in the things around him, but you don't see teenagers seek out things like he does, do you? I just hope the teenage-years doesn't get an effect on him. I want him just as he is now."

"He isn't interested in anything," the man says. He is angry. He wants his son to change. He thinks opposite of his wife. "Only as long as he can find something that doesn't take too much of his effort, he wants to learn. If something is difficult, he just lays back on his lawn and stare up in the sky a little more and ignores you. There is something wrong with that kid." There has been a special add, only reserved for this man. Sometimes, he doesn't have a voice. Sometimes, the boy doesn't allow him to have a voice.

"Well, he is unbelievably clever for his age, so it wouldn't surprise anyone..." The person speaking, one of the boys aunts, stops as she sees him standing there. For a second, she wonders if he has been there for a long time, but decides it might not be important. So she turns her gaze to Nikoline, whom is the one the kid is staring at.

"What is it, Espen?" Nikoline asks, and though he can't see her face, he can hear her smile in her voice. He just watches her a little, the black hole in her body where the eyes are, before taking a breath to get air to say his words.

"May I go outside?" he asked, he wide, blue eyes filled with hope as he watches the mother that isn't his. She seems to go through the options, deciding between giving him go outside and play, or denying him this and keep him near her, so that she can make sure he is safe. Finally she decides. And she decides good. This is the reason he lets her have a name. She is always kind. She's not his mother, as she claims, but she is kind. She deserves her name.

As she nods him permission to go out to his real friends, a smile widens on the small boy's face, and he nods his head right back in thanks. But happiness is short-lived. Especially for him. "But ask your cousins if they want to go with you." A concerned mother trying to get her son to socialize. A bullied son suffering under his mother's worrying decisions. But he doesn't let that destroy his happiness. No. No, he gets outside. He wants outside. His cousins don't.

Going back to the children-table, he turns their attention to him. He doesn't like their eyes. The eyes are bad. The eyes agrees with his fantasy. He is no human. "Do... D-do y-you wa-want to g-go outside w-with me?" he stutters, his voice weak and shaking. He fears his cousins. He fears them a lot. He doesn't know why. Only the picture of Dad erases that fear. His cousins are bad. They look at him with bad eyes. He doesn't like their eyes.

"Why should we want to go outside with a freak?" one of the older spat, hate even more clear in his voice than his eyes. The boy don't know his name. They don't have names. They aren't allowed to have names. He doesn't allow it.

"Yeah, why should we? You would just sent a flock of birds after us! As if I want birds in my hair! Go away with you, you thing!" A girl. She had a name once. She was nice once. Now she likes her brother more than the small boy. And they don't like the small boy. So she doesn't like the small boy. And so, he stopped allowing her to have a name.

After a few more comments, the boy looks down in the ground. "Okay." It was what he wanted. To be alone. Alone and outside. He got was he wanted. But he also got words. He didn't like words. It's not like he doesn't know it. It's not like he doesn't know that he isn't human. Or that he doesn't know he isn't a living thing at all. But it still hurt to be told. He didn't like hurt. Why words hurt, he would ask his Dad when they met. He wanted to meet Dad soon.

The small boy went outside. He liked nature. In the winter, nature didn't die. Nor did it sleep. Other factors just come into play. The boy doesn't know what season he likes the most. Every day of the year is a day for the nature. In the summer, interesting birds from the south comes to him. In the winter, the all-year-around-birds feeds by his hand. In the spring, the foxes and deers have cubs and calves. In the autumn, the cubs goes for themselves and the calves have grown up... He has just decided. He likes autumn the best. The young animals are curious and new to the world. They have yet to find their place. So they find a place beside him, in the middle of the forest.

With him, animals have peace. The animals that normally prey each other lays down with him, sleeps with him, letting hunts be hunts as he keeps the hunger away from them all. Especially the young ones like this. In the autumn. When it begins to get hard for them to find food. They still haven't found their place in the worlds. They are like him.

The boy lies down, not caring that the white clothes touches the grass. Not caring that it gets dirty. Sometimes, Nikoline says he shouldn't do that, but it has been some time since the last she said that. He thinks it is because she has stopped caring about how he looks. He thinks he means a little bit less to her now than before. Before, she wanted him to look nice, but didn't keep him company. Didn't try to socialize. Now, she doesn't even tell him that he has to look good.

The truth is that she found out he feels good when he lies in the grass, surrounded by the insects and animals he loves, and then, she doesn't care if he gets dirty. The true reason behind leaving him alone before is because she has found out he seeks solitude, and though she is not sure that it is healthy for such a young child, she keeps with that. But that is truth he will never hear. And she will never be his mother. She isn't his mom. Dad knows who his mom is.

As he lies in the grass, he dreams away from the party. The world. He dreams he is ruling the skies with the birds at his side, every bird in the world, from the largest eagle to the smallest hummingbird. He dreams he is diving in the ocean, living with the steaming fish and jumps with the dolphins. He loves this. He loves his dreans.

And it is while he dreams he realizes one thing. In his dreams, he gets one of the visions he understand. He sees his Dad with the swings in the foreground and giant buildings in the background. There aren't such giant buildings in Norway. Where is his Dad? He had to find him...

And it was that moment a little boy decided to leave his family to seek out a creature of myths.

Alright, I'm freaking DYING, MAN, this writing-style is KILLING ME! It will change when he gets nine years old, okay? I hope I didn't scare you away, but the reason why I write like this is... Well, I will let your mind play with that. I wrote this because it is extremely hard to find any good Brooklyn-fics, and Brooklyn is such a special character and one of my faves, so... I just... had to do this.

Anyway, I hope you enjoyed reading more than I enjoyed writing, cause as said... I'm not very happy about writing it. It is... so... slowish when you write it (hopefully not when you read it). And I would like to hear what you think about the thoughts he has about things and wtf it is with no-names and faceless folks.

Enjoy in joy and bye, it is going to take a loooong while before next update!