Where the good days shun light, the bad days created shadows.

Dante had come home from his second job down at the gas station to find their small, cramped apartment in complete chaos. The smoke detector was shrilling, accompanied by a cloud of suffocating…well, smoke. The phone was ringing, over and over, a never ending mantra.

And Nero was there, in the middle of it all, curled up in the corner, crying.

Blue eyes widened, a curse escaping his lips as he rushed over to the small oven where the smoke was seeping through the cracks. He pulled the handle violently, waving both arms as an army of toxic burst into his face. The dials were shut off and the contents inside hastily pulled out—hi hands burning and healing quickly, before burning again—and thrown into the sink. Little black crusted gingerbread men littered down, looking overtly deformed and charred. He quickly mourned the loss and rushed over to grab the lone green broom hidden next to the fridge, jamming the handle against the top, breaking the smoke detector, slamming upwards until the shrilling finally died down and the entire thing shut off.

Nero quietly whimpered from the corner as the phone stopped ringing for a second, only to resume a moment later.

Something definitely wasn't right.

Nero?" He approached the boy slowly, cautiously, like a trapped animal that was disoriented. "Nero? Breathe, sweetie. Please." Well, the problem was that he was breathing too much—hyperventilating, actually. Dante gently wrapped his arms around him, murmuring quiet reassurance while still trying to figure this situation out. He ran his cold fingers through his long white hair, rubbing his scalp every couple seconds.

He looked up at his blue eyes, then looked over at the phone that just wouldn't stop ringing, conveying a thousand unspoken words in one glance. Dante squeezed Nero's hand for a moment, prying himself away to finally fix this mess and just answer the damn thing.

The voice on the other line was one he didn't think he could ever forget.

And it's one he never thought he'd hear again.

"How the fuck did you get this number?"

The man on the other end sounded close to a drunken rage, screaming incoherent explanatives into Dante's ear. "Let me talk to him! Let me talk to my son! How dare he—how dare he run off! I'm going to find the both of you, I swear on his mother's grave. Then I'm going to beat the shit out of you. And then I'm going to make sure he learns to stay put."

Dante was always the calm one in tough situations. He held a soothing demeanor that most people only dreamed of obtaining. He held his composure, tamed his temper, and learned how to ease tension off slowly.

But this—this was his selfish moment of weakness that could only be produced by love.

"If you ever come near him again or hurt him in any way—I'll kill you."

And somehow he meant it. Nobody would ever hurt his boy again. Not while he was still breathing. He wouldn't even let them try.

And they didn't. They never heard from Nero's father again.

But they changed their number—just in case.