Disclaimer: I own no one, I just name the nameless. No profit is being made from this.

Author Notes: I know I had vanished for a while, but my computer just died and then I got sick, so it's taken a long time to get everything going again. Luckily I have been working on a few stories during that time and this is one of them. This one is a little different, told from first person. This one strays into dark territory, please consider this your warning and enjoy!

Replaced

I can remember a time when my eldest son hadn't replaced me in my kid's lives. A time when we lived fairly happily, my job paid me well enough that my wife could stay home and take care of our boys. Then I lost it, and the fighting began. I could not find a new job right away, at least not one that could afford us the lifestyle that we were use to. I could see it was affecting our children, but I was too caught up in the problems with work and my wife to take to much notice.

Then she left. Just packed her bags and told me she was staying with her sister for a while. I think I knew somewhere deep down that she was leaving for good. I loved my wife, but she was never really cut out to be a mother. She would often get completely overwhelmed by the needs of our kids and they knew a lot of babysitters growing up. I got a new job and while the hours were long, I stayed away longer than I should have. Home only had memories of her and fighting, and damn it if my kids just don't look so much like her.

So I left them in my oldest son's hands. I watched my carefree fun loving son grow up far to fast because I couldn't handle being a single dad. I unknowing, or maybe if I'm honest I knew where in the back of my mind, I was forcing the same thing on my son. Geoff never complained, he took what was being thrown at him and he adjusted the best he could. I think he feels guilty about what happened with Skylar. His mother and I always knew Skylar would probably end up in a home. He had always been prone to violent fits, but the other kids had rarely been witness to them. Geoff handled them as well as he could, far better than most sixteen year olds. When the time came, I was contacted by a social worker and I gave my consent almost unthinkingly. I knew I could not help my son the way a professional would. Deep down, I'm sure Geoff knows that too.

I never really knew how much I had been replaced until I took a few days off. I told Geoff to go and visit some friends, to get out of the house for a while. I may not have been around as much as I should have been, but I could still see my eldest had lost weight and was far to pale. So I sent him out with his friend from that show. JD or something like that, they were going to go to a party with some of the other kids and he was going to stay the night over there. I was glad he was getting out of the house for a while. It was then I realized how he had pretty much taken over my job as the patriarch of the family.

It started with Cory telling me that Eli wouldn't eat the hotdogs I made because it wasn't the way Geoff made them. The skin had to be taken off before the hotdog was boiled or he wouldn't eat it. I didn't use the right amount of cheese in the macaroni either. No matter what I did, Geoff did it differently, better. Cory had always been our brightest child, our most observant one. While he tried to keep it from his voice and face I could hear the traces of bitterness in his voice. He was angry with me for what I had done, what I had forced them to become. I tried not to be irritated because it really was my own fault.

I couldn't explain Toby's homework. My explanations were too hard to understand, he said he couldn't follow them. I asked him how he usually figured his homework out and I was not surprised when he told me that Geoff helped him. Of course he did, I had asked how he explained it. I have to admit it was a rather clever idea. To relate everything to what Toby liked, explain it in a way that would relate to that subject, in this case Baseball. Once I understood that I could explain things easier, but it still did not hold a candle to Geoff.

Putting Eli to bed proved to be harder than it use to be. The monster check alone took a good half an hour. Finally he requested to sleep with the dust buster just in case. I wondered what exactly the monster checks usually consisted of, but for lack of anything better, I gave him the dust buster. He fell asleep clutching the dust buster to his chest.

It wasn't until all the kids were in bed and I was alone in the living room that I felt the full impact of what I had done. I could not begrudge my sons any of this because I had failed them as a father. I had shoved all my responsibilities onto my sixteen year old and the younger ones simply adapted to his way of doing things. I was too wrapped up in my own hurt to think that my kids were hurting too, and I was being selfish and leaving them to fend for themselves. A part of me tried to convince myself that I stayed away so much because we needed the money. It was true, we did need all the overtime I could work, but leaving before the kids were awake and coming home when only Geoff was still up and leaving no time in between didn't make for a good father at all.

I wish I could promise that I would change, and that things would be different. I would be home more, I wouldn't accept so many business trips and I wouldn't stay so late and go in so early. I know though, deep down in my heart, I'll let this pattern continue. I'll go to work and stay away and make the money we need to live comfortably. I'll block out the fact that I'm forcing my sixteen year old to be a father far before his time and I'm making my other kids grow up far to fast.

I've already failed my kids in so many ways, what's a few more right?