It is February 4th 1806 and Liza O'Malley is screaming. She has been screaming, on and off, for a long time now, but it is over soon. He is born Jack O'Malley, and all he sees is colour. None of it makes any sense to him yet, and the world is so large and loud and wrong, so he screams and cries, but someone lifts him up and then he is surrounded by warm arms and calm colour and he is not so scared anymore.
It is 1808, Jack is two years old and he loves his mother. People never question why children love their mothers, and Jack does not have the words to explain, but if he did, and if they had, he would have told them that he loves her because she loves him. She loves him even when she is tired, or angry, or sad, and he sees that as easily as he sees her hands when she holds his, or her face when she sings him to sleep.
Jack is three years old and people say it seems so arbitrary who he likes. The friendly, smiling shop owner who often wins the hearts of children easily makes Jack hide behind his mother in fear, but the old and grumpy widower who never says more than three words to anyone gets a wave and a smile every day. If anyone tries to ask him, he only says that the colours told him, which is no kind of answer at all.
Jack is four and there is a monster in his room. It is so bright and colourful and it screams so loudly, but his father takes a look around and tells him there is nothing there. 'Go to sleep, Jack,' he says, 'the monster must have left already,' but Jack tries to tell him that it's still right there and why can't he hear it? And he pesters them until they let him sleep in their bed. He sees that they are angry and tired so he does not wake them again even when they fall asleep, but he stays awake because the monster is still screaming.
It is 1812 and Jack O'Malley is the strangest child his teacher has ever met. He never looks her in the eye, instead he keeps his eyes somewhere above her head at all times, yet he reads her better than anyone else ever has. He talks about colours, but it is blindingly obvious that he sees the world in shades of grey. His parents tell her there is most likely something wrong with his eyes. He never gets along much with the other children, and the more time he spends in the classroom, the more he is plagued by headaches. Soon he spends more time out of school than in it.
He is ten years old and he never lies, not ever. If he speaks at all, he tells the whole, unadulterated truth, no matter how rude or insensitive it is. They get angry and they ask him 'why?' and he doesn't understand, because no one can lie to him, no one can hide from him and he finds their attempts pathetic. Because Jack O'Malley sees the world from a different point of view and there are no one to tell him how to deal with it from his side, how to communicate. They all speak the same language but hear different words, and he tells the truth the same way he sees everyone else tell it, but he is the only one they ever get angry with.
It is the summer of 1819, Jack has just become a teenager and he has already given up on ever getting friends. He stays indoors, away from people. He is antisocial, cross and secretly freaking out because why is he the only one who doesn't have a soul? He has learned long time ago not to ask those questions out loud, but he is young, scared and friendless. It has been a long time since his father last looked at him with positive feelings, and though his mother still does, she is so tired these days. And then she gets worse.
He is sixteen when she draws her last breath. The last two years have been intolerably long for him, watching her dwindle away and knowing that so many people blame him for the stress she was under, but it is over now. He stays for the funeral, though he has to leave halfway through, overwhelmed by the compounded mourning of the guests, infuriated by the ones who only pretend. He stops himself from giving out punches like candy only because he knows it would have disappointed her. The next morning he is on the road, without a word or a note left behind. He never learned to write anyway. He leaves his hometown behind, refusing to admit to himself that he is hoping to find some place to fit in.
By the time he is nineteen, he has learned how to lie. It is too little too late to help with his attitude problems and trust issues, but he has and it serves him well. He never goes by 'Jack' anymore these days. It is another social norm he has been able to pick up. A person is on first name basis if they are close to you, and O'Malley has no intentions of ever being close to anyone.
It is 1827, he is twenty-one and he has left England behind long ago, hoping it would make things better, but humans never change. He sits in the corner of a bar nursing a single glass of beer and waiting for a card game to start up somewhere, maybe he can make something of the sparse coins he has left. A woman sits down next to him. He can barely understand her words, but her meaning is clear enough. She is drunk, she wants something and her spirit is a painful, overflowing mess. It hurts him to look at her and she is still sober enough to notice his disinterest and leave. The bartender muses that he must have some real beauty waiting for him somewhere if he turns down girls like that, but Mal just tells him that the outsides don't interest him and he's yet to meet someone who's pretty on the inside.
He is twenty-five and the last three days he has been penniless in a countryside where practically no one speaks a language he understands and half the people he meets are soldiers, he has slept next to nothing and eaten even less, and just when things were almost looking up, he was shot. Yet he is stitched up and wakes to a man with a soul unlike anything he has ever seen. He keeps waiting for the other shoe to drop, but it never does and all his senses are shouting at him that yes, this man is exactly as wonderful a person as he appears to be, and somehow that makes it all worth it. So Mal looks over at his travelling companion and he does not smile, but a weigh he has never noticed seems to slide off his shoulders, and he does not smile, but maybe he will, someday, maybe now things might, possibly, just maybe, be okay?
He is twenty-eight, the world is still large and loud and wrong and he is sitting on a busy street in a city he hates in a country he left, but at his side is a cheerful, German violinist and he is surrounded by warm music and calm serenity, and all he sees is colour.