A/N: Warning for themes of parental abuse and harm to animals.

Summary: An unhappy childhood. Spoilers for Rhombus of Ruin.

He'd never be able to tell you when he first found out that his parents didn't like him.

It seems like something he's always known. One of those things like how the sky is blue, the earth is round, gravity pulls everything to the planet's center, teeth are fascinating—and his parents want nothing to do with him. Maybe it's because of the "teeth" thing.

Odd things seem to happen when they're around him.

One day while he's playing with blocks on the floor, his mother mentions offhandedly that she's freezing cold; well that won't do, so he imagines her being warm, and the hem of her dress starts smoking. Every evening he knows exactly when to meet his father at the door just before the bell rings, no matter what time the man gets home from work. And as a punishment one time his mother puts one of his favorite stuffed toys on top of the refrigerator—not less than an hour later she returns to see him perched atop the fridge, playing happily with his stuffed manatee with no explanation as to how he had gotten up there other than a blank look and a confused "I jumped."

As soon as he's old enough they send him to a small school nearby. The teacher reports that he is usually a bright, quiet boy, though he has trouble sharing with the other students. He is especially keen to keep his stuffed toys to himself. His parents, who haven't known he's been taking those to school, ban him from doing it any longer, and the next few days he becomes even more withdrawn in class to the point where the teacher calls home again to claim that he never showed up at all.

Trying to explain that it's a mistake does no good. He knows for certain that he's been going to school all week, but his parents conclude that the school must stress him too much and so decide to educate him themselves. Their homeschooling consists of handing him thick medical and scientific journals to study while they go to work, leaving him alone at the house all day.

He hadn't much liked his fellow classmates. But it had been his first time seeing other children his own age. Vaguely he wonders, while flipping slowly through the dull pages of a medical paper on brain surgeries, if he ever will again.

He's always enjoyed keeping animals, and now he relies on them both for company and for entertainment. His parents don't allow any messy animals with fur in the house, but he's sometimes allowed to keep fish, which he enjoys immensely. They're beautiful little things—he particularly likes the bright blue and green ones. But they never last long before he finds them floating belly-up in their tank.

He buries each one outside by the fence, beside a little mossy stone.

One time he tries sneaking in a tiny little turtle. He'd found it at the lake and smuggles it inside in his pocket. It seems that if he listens to it closely he can even hear its thoughts. To him, it sounds like a girl, and so he names it after his mother (the only girl he's familiar with besides the cleaning lady, whose name he doesn't know). It looks cramped inside his old fishbowl and he reasons it needs a bigger body of water, so he sets it down on the floor while he fills up the bathtub. Minutes later he realizes the turtle is gone—there's a sickening crunch from downstairs, followed by a shriek.

His father storms in and bans him from dragging in any more animals from outside. He takes this a step further and never gets another pet again.

Sometimes he wishes he could play with the children next door. They're a large family, six children that he's seen, and they know he lives here. Sometimes they come over and knock on the windows, beckoning him outside, but his mother disallows it.

"Diseased," his parents call them with a collective shudder, and his mother continues, "Any time I see them they always know exactly what I'm thinking before even I do. It's unnatural."

The kids eventually stop trying to get him to come and play and the family disappears a few months later. Apparently they've moved away. He hadn't even learned their names.

His parents rarely talk directly to him. They seem… distant, almost afraid of him, though he isn't sure why. They never enforce it, but it's clear they prefer him to stay shut up in his own room, at which point they talk openly to each other about a great many things that they'd never say aloud when he's nearby. He becomes adept at moving silently and unnoticed around the house, finding hiding spots wherever available and eavesdropping just to feel like he's a part of their lives. He remains still and silent while listening in and is never caught once. Sometimes he finds he doesn't even need to hide. He simply sits in what should be plain sight and wills himself to be unseen, and so he is. He can sit right between them and not make a sound and they'll converse as if they aren't bothered by his presence.

It's a couple of years into his toddlerhood before he learns, not that he's able to move things by just thinking about it, because he's known it all his life, but that no one else can. He never sees his parents doing it. When he goes to school, the other children stare at him in awe and ask him to do it again and again, which he does—not just moving things, but conjuring up faint, glowing yellow hands and controlling them. It becomes a neat trick. Occasionally when he meets other kids in the park they edge away from him when he demonstrates it, or else try it themselves and run away crying in frustration when it doesn't work. There are complaints from other parents to his own, who fervently deny that their son has anything to do with such things. It must have been the other child. Eventually, trips to the park become more and more infrequent, and then stop altogether. He asks why. They tell him he's sickly and fresh air will do him more harm than good, and that the other children he'd met will only make him sicker.

He doesn't feel sick. He wonders if it has to do with the magic hands and decides to never show the trick to his parents.

That doesn't stop him from trying it himself, though. The silverware drawer opens with a rattle. He has to stand on tiptoes to see inside clearly. One by one spoons float out and twirl in the air. He finds, by concentrating on both ends of the spoon as if physically grabbing them with his hands, he can bend it in half right before his eyes.

He is stunned. A metal spoon and he'd bent it like folding paper. The spoon drops to the floor and he mentally grabs another one, trying it again—and again, and again, starting to laugh.

He's forgotten to be quiet. The click-clack, click-clack of high-heeled footsteps rush to the room and his mother lurches into the doorway, staring at him. Right hand held straight out, left hand hovering at his temple with fingers splayed, a spoon hovering in turn in midair at his eye level.

"My good silverware!" his mother shrieks. "What do you think you're doing to—to—What are you…" She trails off, finally noticing the floating spoon, and she sags weakly against the doorframe. "Cali…? What… what are you doing…?"

His heart is pounding like he's been caught doing something he shouldn't have been. Well, he probably shouldn't be bending the spoons, but wouldn't she think this is neat? She is talking to him!

He tries a smile. "Look, Mother," he says, and concentrates on the spoon again. "Look, look what I can do!"

Before both of their eyes, the spoon slowly bends in half and falls to the ground. He looks up at his mother's face, still trying to smile, hoping for a look of pleasant surprise—Look what I can do, isn't it neat? Can you do it, too?

Demon.

The word stuns him. It had been his mother's voice, but he hasn't seen her mouth move.

He can't. He can't be this. This isn't right. It's not possible, it's not natural!

He draws backwards, his back banging into the open silverware drawer. The tone of her non-voice is something he hasn't heard from her before. She'd been dismissive, yes; irritated, yes; but this? Is it anger? Fear? Both?

"Mom…?" his voice shakes. Don't be angry with me, I'm sorry! What did I do? He looks down at the ruined spoons, eyes wide. "Maybe I can bend them back?"

"Don't touch them!" his mother snaps. He whips his head up to look at her. Her face is bone white; at his gaze, her cheeks flush and her eyes narrow. She is mad at him. However, her voice changes from a shriek to something low and steady, struggling to remain calm. "Go to your room. Now. And stay there."

He doesn't need telling twice. Hands shaking, he leaves the counter and edges around her, watching her the whole time. She stares at him but doesn't meet his eyes, then turns to look back at the spoons.

Not possible. Not possible. I didn't think it was real. How do I explain this? When I tell his father—

It's that voice again, the voice he can hear but can't, emanating from his mother in waves. He claps his hands to his ears but can't shut it off, because it isn't in his ears, it's in his head, and he's never experienced anything like this before—

He rushes up the stairs into his room and slams the door closed, leaning against it and panting.

I knew it, I shouldn't have showed her, I should've kept it secret, she hates me now, they both hate me, I messed up all the spoons, I messed up my toys…

Are those his own thoughts? His own voice? How can he tell? How did he know what his mother was thinking?

His father will be coming home soon, he knows, he's coming home early today—how does he know that? Why does he know?

He has to know what they're saying. He has to find out what they want, what they'd never tell him themselves.

They don't talk to him anymore. They talk about him, when they don't think he can hear. But he can, always, whether they're saying things out loud or not. They don't like his way of making things float by just thinking about it, or being able to start fires the same way. He quickly stops showing off those things. They don't want to see it. He never, ever tells them about being able to hear thoughts. If that's really what it is. If there's one thing he knows, it's that people shouldn't be able to do that. But it seems that somehow they can just tell, and he remembers what they thought about the neighbors before they all disappeared.

From overheard conversations he learns that he's to be sent away to the hospital. Something about a "procedure," but he doesn't know what that word means. All he knows is that it's all because of the spoons.

His parents are scared of him. Parents shouldn't be scared of their kids.

He's scared of them, too, but mostly he's scared of himself.

Whatever a procedure is, maybe it'll end this.