Language of Life

by 21stCenturyFairyTale

D.B Russell on whole was a good dad, unless you ask Benji. Benji Russell could argue that he wasn't because of a series of unfortunate events in his early life that shaped his future. Though as a grow up can he change the effect that his past has or leave it behind him and rebuild the family he walked away from.

1. Prologue

"Some nights I stay up cashing in my bad luck, some nights I call it a draw"

It's impossible to realise what it is like to live in the shadow of a brilliant man or the shadow of your younger brother. Constantly being overlooked and undervalued by the people around you. Daniel Benjamin "Benji" Russell had lived his whole teenage life this way, in the shadows of his sporty, talented younger brother. All his life he felt second best to Charlie and like compared to Charlie he was never truly good enough in his father's eyes. He felt that in his family he was just blended into the background of their everyday life. Being one of 4 he always felt like they had no time for him, it was always Charlie's basketball, or Maya's debate or Lucie's dance that they never noticed that Benji was even there. In the end it took Benji trying to take his own life for them to truly take note of what was going on with their eldest son, to take note to the fact that he wasn't okay. After 16 years they really noticed that he was more than just "gifted" like they were told years before. 16 years to realise that the son no one noticed had an IQ in the 170's and that he felt that he was an outcast within his own family because to him the social signals made no sense, that while everyone else took it for granted he struggled. 16 years to figure out their son was suffering from Asperger syndrome.
It was too little to late though. From that day Benji decided that his relationship with his parents would end the day he graduated from high school. He graduated a year early and moved to New York to study at Columbia, never looking back at the life he left. He no longer needed to lie in someone else's shadow, he could finally be the person he had always wanted and tried to be. He was finally his own person and not just Charlie's brother or D.B's son, he was finally just Benji. He was finally himself. 7 years later he was Dr Benji Russell, Doctor of Applied Linguistics, speaker of 12 languages and husband to New York State Prosecutor Peter Davis and father to Eli John Russell-Davis, age 3. He had the life he never thought he would have and he was beyond happy for the first time in his life.