There was a clear hierarchy visible in the seating of Oakgate private school's cafeteria. Closest to the main lunch lines were the upperclassmen, and farther from those decreased in popularity and influence until, at the other end, were the social outcasts and misanthropes.
At the very end of the farthest table sat a scrawny figure with a book open on the table in place of a tray. Every student wore the same khakis, white polo and navy sweater, but this boy with his nose in a book stood out among them: undersized, ten years old in a room of teenagers. Also setting him apart were his glasses. Eyewear was not uncommon, of course, but this boy's lenses had a dark tint that hid his eyes from view.
A shadow fell over the open page of the book. Only a subtle tension forming in his shoulders gave any hint that the boy was aware of the broad-built seventeen-year-old hovering over him. The teen seized the boy's shoulder and hauled him around, until the skinny blond was forced to look him in the face.
The teen grinned tauntingly. "How's my little buddy Albert today?"
"What do you want, Keith?" Albert jerked his shoulder out of the teenager's grasp and glared from behind his tinted glasses.
The affable smile left Keith's face, and he lashed out to grab a fistful of Albert's hair. "You're a rude little shit, aren't you? Can't I just say hello?" He smirked at the boy's feeble attempt to dislodge him. By then, the altercation had attracted the attention of the students around them, and a chorus of gasps and snickers rippled around them.
With his free hand, Keith reached down and plucked the glasses off Albert's face. "You know, I've always wondered about these dorky little glasses of yours. What makes you so special, huh?" At first, Albert kept his eyes squeezed closed and clutched at Keith's wrist.
When he did open his eyes, it became clear why Albert wore tinted glasses. His irises, colored blue so pale it was nearly white, each had symmetrical gaps in them that gave his eyes the illusion of having pupils shaped like keyholes. Keith nearly did a double-take at the sight, then sneered at the boy. "You are some kinda freak."
Keith let him go, and Albert drew back against the table, rubbing his scalp. He glared sullenly at his tormentor; he knew that he had no hope of retrieving his glasses himself, and he was loath to go through the "proper" channel and get a teacher. So that only left one option.
A few days prior, Albert had overheard a school counselor speaking over the phone about Keith, probably to the teen's parents. He had known then that what he heard would become useful. Now it was time to cash in that secret.
"So you like beating up little kids, right Keith? Where did you learn that, your father? You're smart enough for mimicry, I suppose." Albert narrowed his eyes in satisfaction at the look of shock and outrage that stamped itself on the older student's face. "Oh, looks like I hit a nerve. Are you gonna go drown your troubles in cheap beer, like Daddy?"
The next thing Albert knew, he had been hoisted up by his collar close to Keith's snarling face, and pain erupted across his nose and cheek. A second blow had barely landed on the arch of his cheekbone before a pair of teachers waded in and pried him out of Keith's grasp.
Despite the throbbing pain, Albert managed a smirk. The discomfort was worth knowing that Keith would be punished severely for attacking him without any known provocation. Certainly, no one could say that Albert had struck the first physical blow, and that was as far as any of the staff of Oakgate cared to inquire.
His moment of triumph was ruined when, after Keith had been hustled away, one of the teachers who had broken them up held out Albert's glasses. The frame was badly bent, and both lenses were cracked through. He held the ruined glasses while the teacher escorted him to the school nurse's office. Along the way, he began to feel his heartbeat acutely across his face, and between the bruises and his photosensitive eyes, a headache bloomed behind his sinuses.
The nurse bustled in and took his face. He attempted to wince away when she probed his nose and shone a pen-light into each eye but she held him firm by the chin and tutted.
"It's a shame about your glasses, son, but you look fine. Nothing broken, no concussion, just a bone bruise. Does your head hurt?"
"Yes," Albert said curtly. It was a struggle not to make a sharp comment in response to her rather obvious question.
Sympathetically, the nurse added, "I'm sorry for you. Since your glasses are all bent up, there's no point sending you back to class, so I'll go call your folks. Sit tight until I get back."
Once the door was shut, Albert folded over and cradled his aching head in his hands. The overhead lights irritated his eyes at the best of times, which was why his glasses bore a polarized, tinted film.
To distract himself from the drilling pain, Albert considered what would happen next. It would take several days for him to get new lenses for his glasses, at least, so he would likely miss the rest of the week of classes. For most of them, this was no hardship. English, U.S. History, and Pre-Calculus were easy and boring. He regretted that he would miss Chemistry and Biology. Those, at least, were interesting, even if they were also easy. And of course, his classmates would give him no end of grief once he got back. No one else got to miss class without penalty "just" because their glasses were broken.
It was hardly Albert's intention. He was terribly near-sighed without the corrective lenses, which compounded on the splitting headaches he developed from long exposure to light. It was impossible for him to learn in class without those glasses.
It was a pathetic state of affairs. Albert hated his dependency on those glasses.
Well, he consoled himself, at least he could still study at home. He could teach himself just as well with the textbook, and his quiet, darkened bedroom was a considerably more pleasant environment. He could go back to school next week already caught up – ahead, even – and all would be well. The teachers would continue to favor him, and that was all he cared about. His fellow students could go take a walk off a cliff, for all he cared.
A short while later, the nurse returned. As soon as he heard the door open, Albert straightened into a normal sitting position and folded his hands on his lap. The headache flared angrily at the movement and light, but he pushed past it.
"Your mother is on her way, hon," the nurse reported. "Do you want some Tylenol before you leave?"
Albert almost shook his head, but quickly thought better and replied with a simple, "No thank you."
The nurse bustled about her business, and Albert summoned all his willpower not to clutch at his face again. He managed to maintain composure until the door opened again, a seeming eternity later. It had been only fifteen minutes in reality, but when a dull ache flared across his face with every heartbeat, as well as needles of light drilling into his eyes, it felt like forever.
In almost the same instant as the door opening, Sandra Carter was across the room with Albert clutched against her generous bosom. "Oh Albert, your poor face!"
Albert had learned to take Sandra's melodramatic – in his opinion, anyway – reactions in stride. It was a struggle with such a headache, but he resigned himself to being smothered by her maternal concern. Soon she released him and he straightened with as much aplomb as he could muster. "I'm fine, Sandra. Can we please go home now?"
"Yes, of course. Let's get you checked out." She helped the skinny ten-year-old off the exam table and ushered him out the door.
Next to thin, blond Albert, Sandra was a strong contrast; buxom and curvaceous, with a mane of curly brown hair to frame her heart-shaped face. She was not overly heavy, but had a comforting softness to her. She and her husband Thomas, blocky with a farm-grown tan, were two of a kind, and both very obviously not Albert's blood relatives.
He had come under their care five years ago, after an incident the police and Child Services reported as a horrendous car accident that killed both his biological parents. Albert had been in the vehicle as well, but thanks to his mother's actions, came away alive. His memories a short period before and after the event were blurry at best, and he did not recall the accident at all. This, according to the doctors that Sandra had spoken to, was not entirely uncommon for the kind of trauma Albert had experienced.
Getting the boy accustomed to his foster parents had been a long, arduous process. It had taken them months to convince Albert that he should not call them Mr. and Mrs. Carter; Sandra had given up on getting him to call them Mom and Dad.
At least, after a while, he had settled into life. He was as comfortable around them as Sandra supposed he ever would be; while he was never forthcoming with his feelings or thoughts with them, well, neither was he with anyone else. She had never met such a closed individual before, child or adult.
The Oakgate front office was spare and professional. Sandra left Albert at the row of chairs that made up the waiting area, and approached the secretary at the desk. The office had already heard about the altercation – Keith was on his way to in-school suspension at that very moment – so it was a simple task to get Albert checked out for the day.
When Sandra turned back to collect her charge and return home, she saw that Albert had his head down and eyes shut – the first indication of pain she'd seen from him, despite the bruise already blossoming under his eye.
She stepped over to him and squeezed his shoulder soothingly. "Come on, sweetie."
Albert eased upright and trailed after her out the door.
"Where's Albert?" Thomas asked, bemused, when he entered the kitchen after changing out of his work clothes.
"In his room," Sandra replied. She told her husband of the day's events, and watched his brows knit together.
"Poor kid. I outta teach him how to throw a punch."
Sandra couldn't help but snort. "What makes you think that would help? He's not the aggressive type. You know that."
"Still, the boy needs to defend himself from bullies." Thom plunked down in his chair at the kitchen table, and looked ready to continue his case, when the subject of the conversation sidled into the room.
Unable to stop himself, Thom gave a low wolf-whistle and said, "That's quite the shiner you've got there, Al." Sandra lightly cuffed him on the shoulder.
"Thanks." The sourness in the boy's voice was unmistakable, and it brought a smirk to Thom's face.
"Don't be like that, son. C'mere."
Resignedly, Albert approached his foster father. Thomas raised a hand and cupped Albert's cheek, turning it to get a better look at the bruise. Albert submitted to the inspection silently, and Thom tried not to be unnerved by the steady, dull stare of those strange eyes. It was impossible to read the kid, and that sometimes gave Thomas the creeps. Not that he would ever admit it to anyone.
"You'll be all right. Want me to give you a few boxing tips, eh? Surprise the next big lug who thinks he can rough you up?"
Albert pulled himself from Thom's grasp. "No, thank you. It's better to avoid fights. I'm not big enough to make a difference," he replied, deadpanned. This was a truth Albert had accepted the moment he'd been accepted into Oakgate.
The decision to send ten-year-old Albert to a private high school had been a difficult one for the Carters. Previously, he had been in the nearest public school with others of his age, and his grades suffered badly. He was surly and resentful – never aggressive or mean, but still unpleasant. Then, one particularly observant school counsellor gave a very simple diagnosis: boredom. It was clear to all who met Albert that he was exceptionally smart, and the counsellor deduced that he was so far ahead, intellectually, of his age group that the public school environment was doing him more harm than good.
For a while, the Carters had Albert homeschooled; this was a turning point in Albert's young life. He sped through the homeschool work for a while, and once he caught up with the high school level, the Carters enrolled him at Oakgate. Albert had been reluctant to stop homeschooling, but the Carter were adamant that he get out of the house and socialize with other young people.
Now, Sandra was beginning to think that perhaps Oakgate was not the best place for him. His grades were stellar, as they had been since accelerating him beyond his age group, but she had begun to notice signs that he was being bullied. No physical violence up to that point, but there were plenty of other ways to inflict pain.
Albert retrieved a glass of milk from the refrigerator and disappeared back upstairs. Sandra watched him go and held back a sigh until she heard his door close.
"I worry about him."
Thom pulled her into his lap. "We're doing all we can for him, love. He's not a bad kid, at heart. He's just got more problems than most boys his age."
AN: hey look, i'm back again to disappoint people with my lack of ability to update! yay!
this has been bouncing around in my head for a while, and i finally decided to stop hoarding it. like all my other stuff, it may never update again, though i do have a direction for it and drafts of at least two other chapters somewhere on my hard drive. unless or until those see the light of day, enjoy my pathetic attempt to write a young Wesker.
in case you were wondering, yes, this is supposed to be a biography of his life up until about the mansion. and it's in the same headcanon of mine as Guidance and Faithful. eventually i'll edit those to make them fit a little better. mostly re: those freaky eyes.
questions, comments, feedback, or general affirmation that i'm a terrible writer who should burn all my work are welcome and encouraged. and please, do try to leave sighed reviews so i can reply to them properly.