So this is a little (ha) one shot I thought of while babysitting my two favorite boys in the world (Well, besides Benjamin and Adam, but one of them is called Ben, so it counts.) Oh, look at me, three updates in a week. It's just because I won't be here for a week, so I'm trying to make up for it with weird one-shots and a chapter of Pen Knife. Where was I? Oh, right. Enjoy!
Title: Shattered Pieces
Rating: PG13
Summary: She hasn't always been like this. A million thoughts go through Dawn's mind as she gives these strangers her baby. One shot. Again.
Disclaimer: These here characters ain't mine, y'all. Theys be belongin' to Josh Schwartz.
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Dawn hasn't always been like this.
Unable to do something as simple as care for your own child. Even animals can do it.
She used to be good at it. Taking Ryan and Trey to the park with their father, eating ice cream.
She used to protect them from bad things.
She was so proud of herself when a strange man tried to take Ryan with him, and she slapped the hell out of him and held Ryan tight against her heart.
She'd be happy when they smiled at her, and her heart would seize when they said they loved her.
When Trey was little, Dawn hadn't known what the hell she was doing, and she didn't know which diapers to choose and which baby food to buy.
She didn't know what was right, but she did know what was wrong.
She knew that she would never be like her parents.
That she would never let her children get hit and yelled at by their father, or anyone else.
David promised. She told him the day Trey was born that she wouldn't let him damage Trey like she'd been damaged. He promised.
A tiny little baby, fragile like Trey was, didn't deserve to be damaged.
Trey got bigger, and he wasn't fragile anymore.
David still kept his promise, and when he was infuriated with his job or angry because they had no money, and Trey would get in his way, and he'd clench his hands into fists, he'd calm himself down and think of his promise.
Of the baby that was on the way.
The day Ryan was born, Trey got jealous and broke Dawn's favorite necklace.
She grounded him and she yelled at him when she got home from the hospital, but she was much too happy with her new baby boy to care too much.
The day David snapped, Dawn's heart broke in two.
She never thought it would be Ryan that broke her husband.
Trey was eight and Ryan was four. David was drunk and angry, sitting at the table, thinking about how much money he'd lose because of his demotion.
Dawn always knew Ryan was a follower. The way he'd do anything Trey did, repeat anything Trey said, listen to every goddamn word Trey had to say.
She still remembered Trey whispering in Ryan's ear.
Ryan screaming bloody murder.
Trey, whispering.
Ryan screaming again, ten times louder than before.
David snapping his pencil in half and telling Ryan to shut the fuck up.
Giggle. Whisper. Scream.
Dawn had walked into the room to tell Ryan to be quiet just as David entered through the other door and punched Ryan in the face.
She remembered.
The sound of his own, worn fist meeting with Ryan's soft, baby skin for the first time, as she stood in shock.
The way Ryan fell in a broken heap on the ground.
Trey, his eyes wide at his hero. This hero who had just broken the spirit of his protege.
The realization of what her husband was actually doing came after the fifth punch.
Dawn held herself against the wall and clamped her hand to her mouth.
David, shaking from head to toe.
Ryan, her little boy. Her good, sweet little boy. Broken, on the ground.
Trey was beside his brother and his father, and he screamed at David to stop. He did. Dawn watched as her oldest chose between his mentor and his follower.
He knelt behind his brother and held him up, and he wrapped his arms around the fragile body, and Ryan looked at his father.
His pained blue eyes killed David.
Dawn remembered David as his face changed from pure, dark anger to complete remorse, and he squatted in front of the boys and let a gentle hand out.
And her boys, her good, sweet boys, they shrank in fear of their father.
Ryan was never quite the same after that, and not just mentally.
His cute little button nose that Dawn would spend hours running her finger down, misshapen and bent.
David never touched Ryan again.
Never laid a single hand on him ever again.
He vented his anger on Dawn, who took it all in stride.
As long as her baby boys weren't at the end of the fist, she was perfect. When the police took David away, Ryan sat on the bed and cried.
Dawn's heart broke again, leaving three, shattered pieces.
Ryan blaming himself for making his daddy a bad man.
Trey, wishing he had stopped those five blows that he thought had pushed his father over the edge, swearing he would never let anything like that happen to his brother ever again.
David, telling them that they should leave town. He wouldn't be with them anytime soon.
When they saw him the last time, David touched the glass wall when Ryan said goodbye. They were moving to Chino.
Dawn stared at her husbands' dark green eyes and saw him wish he had hugged Ryan. Wish he had touched his cheek or mussed his hair or lifted him into the air and made him fly.
Trey didn't say goodbye.
And Dawn knew that even though David hit her and called her names, he was her children's father, and she loved him for that.
Alcohol and drugs took their toll, and Dawn didn't see anything in her boys anymore.
No tug at her heart when they said they loved her, or when they waved at her.
Thomas was the first one that hit her. Trey called him a son of a bitch for it, and Thomas punched him hard in the jaw and then kicked him in the ribs and spat on him.
Ryan kicked him in the shin, and Dawn had never seen a fourteen year old as protective of his brother as Trey was of Ryan when Thomas tried to hit him.
Michael, he had a thing for boys. Little boys with blonde hair and blue eyes.
That was the first time that Dawn saw the Atwood anger in her Trey. The way he pummeled him and called him names and wrapped his hands around his neck and squeezed until Dawn pulled him off.
When she looked at Ryan, sitting in the corner, his jacket halfway unzipped, his hair going in different directions, pants low on his hips, fear in his eyes, she realized that she was a terrible mother.
She knew she had let this happen, because she heard Michael say something about Ryan once, but she never thought he'd do anything about it.
And she heard Ryan scream, and she opened the door and told Michael to stop, but she didn't help him.
And her heart broke again, leaving but shattered pieces in her body.
Lawrence, he was different.
He managed to earn both Trey and Ryan's respect and trust. They were devastated when he and Dawn broke up.
Lawrence gave Ryan a phone book, and when Dawn asked to look at it, he grudgingly passed it to her and she saw the lone number in it.
She knew that he memorized that number, and that he would never forget it. Just in case.
Joseph. Joseph was the motherfucker who almost killed her baby.
She had just kicked Trey out of her house. He was sixteen and Ryan twelve.
Ryan was picking a fight with her stupid, no good fuck-up of a boyfriend, and Dawn wanted to stop it but she couldn't. Not when she was as high as she was that morning.
Ryan was a blur, Joseph was too. Joey, she remembered. She used to call him Joey. He was a blur. Everything was blurred.
Ryan was blurred when she saw him on the ground. When she saw the boots. The hard boots.
Trey was blurred when he came in with a Christmas present for his little brother. He had missed Christmas Eve dinner the night before and told his mother that he was going to make it up to Ryan.
But everything became quite clear when the boot connected loudly with Ryan's head. When the present, so carelessly wrapped, fell on the ground.
She had never been so happy to hear sirens. When they took that bastard away.
She couldn't take care of Ryan afterwards, so she left him to Trey, whom she invited back into her home, if only for a few weeks.
Until Ryan recovered.
Trey taught him the way of life that he was learning. How with brains and muscle you could do anything on the streets.
He became Ryan's mentor once more, and Ryan followed him around and did anything he wanted.
Smoked. Did drugs. Stole a car.
When Ryan stood in her home, asking her where he would go, she didn't let her heart break. Her heart had been broken too many times, and she didn't think he would ever hurt her anymore than he already had.
Because of how much she failed him.
In any case, she stands here now, telling a perfect stranger that she's a terrible mother. She knows it's true.
As she starts turning around to leave, she sees him, blue sweat pants, white shirt, his hair messy like it is whenever he wakes up.
He's standing in front of a beautiful pool house, and his eyes meet hers and she thinks that she's never seen him look quite as innocent as he does now.
Not when he would play on the swings and ask her to push him higher. Not when he screamed like a pig because he thought nothing would happen to him. Not when he giggled and smiled at his father right before he punched his plump, innocent cheek.
She wants to reach out and run her fingers down his broken nose to see if it's somehow been mended.
And she thinks that these people, these perfect strangers, have helped her sweet baby boy to be what he never could be. And if leaving him here breaks her heart, she doesn't care, because it'll be worth it just to mend his.
She waves goodbye and he does too, and her heart breaks. And the pieces are so small that she doesn't think she'd be able to see them if she tried.
And she doesn't care.
She doesn't care, because one day, she thinks, she'll run into him and he'll be a good man. A happy man. And he'll have a family, and he'll lift his child into the air and kiss his wife, and he'll take care of his family, like she never could.
And she thinks that if she can see him one day, just like that, then maybe it'll mend her broken heart.
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Being a little more sympathetic towards Dawn, and even though I really hate her and can't excuse what she did to poor Ryan (yes, I know. It's fiction.) It just sort of came out. If you pay close attention, I'm not being all that nice to her, but since it's in her perspective, things that might be seen as evil if told from Ryan's perspective will seem more, how shall I say this? Kind. Soft. That made no sense, but anyways. Tell me what you think.