okay so i have not written fanfiction in years and the way i have gone with this and the writing style is probably totally different. but i cannot write the same way i did when i was thirteen, my brain works in a completely different way. so i'm sorry if this chapter is weird and i cannot promise more updates, considering my track record with this fic.

i hope you enjoy it anyway

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Right now, for him, everything felt great.

The night was dark and filled with a thousand stars that were not at all dimmed by the coloured lights hanging from all of the possible posts, doorframes, and slow moving pedestrians. The music was loud and all-encompassing with people singing and clapping along, it was the old kind of music that was played by the people that inhabited the rim, the kind of music that any person with an instrument and a basic knowledge of music could play along too, without even knowing the song. And the vibe was amazing, everybody singing and dancing, and they were all congratulating him.

It was his big day after all, his eighteenth birthday.

Gerard Marsden was so happy to have reached 18, to not have been beaten to death by his father or have killed himself in the dead of night when only the wind can listen to you cry. He was so happy but all the fanfare, all the celebration, all the random shouts of 'Happy Birthday, Ger' had him on edge.

He knew his father was a bad man. A little known fact in the small settlement he grew up in was that his mother didn't die in childbirth, she had actually died three days later when, drunk on anger and bitterness, his father had let his mother bleed to death in her own bedroom. Not that he really remembered his mother all that much as he was six years old when she died.

It was when he was eleven or twelve that he noticed that the way his father acted towards his little sister Celia was different to what normal parents acted towards their children, it wasn't until he was fifteen or sixteen that he realised the name for what his father was doing, grooming. He found that the looks his father sent towards his prepubescent sister could be limited to lusty glances by letting his father take out his frustrations on him. Sometimes it was beating him until bones broke and he couldn't move, sometimes it was worse, but he could withstand any punishment for his sister. Protecting her was his life's only goal, his sister was the only truly good thing in his life.

So although the party was fun he couldn't get the conversation, if that is what you would call it, he had with his father that morning out of his head.
'You're eighteen now, boy. So, legally, I dint have to let you scrounge off of me no more. Now I know the town is throwing a party in your honour but I want you to know, in the morning I expect all your stuff gone, and I expect to never see your good for nothing face ever again. Now as I'd like to think this is the last time I'll ever see your face and I want you to know, it's gonna be a relief that you're gone and won't get to bother me or your sister ever again' his father said, voice smug and face glistening with sweat, before swiftly walking into out into the deserted street outside of the house he had lived in his entire life.

So although he was trying to enjoy the party it was hard with the ever present fear that has been trapped in his lungs since his father's half-assed goodbye speech. He didn't want to lose his sister, she was the light of his life. And it was whilst scheming a way to take his sister with him that he realised he hadn't seen her in a while.

Celia Marsden was twelve years old but she knew not to stray too far from her brother, he was her protector and he got antsy when he couldn't see her, especially at big parties like this one. But she thought, with these circumstances, that her brother would understand her wandering off, she was going with her father after all. Her father was a wonderful man, he always paid attention to her and he got her presents when it wasn't even her birthday. And he was her father, what reason would she have to be scared of him.

As soon as Gerard realised he hadn't seen his sister in a while he set off to find her, fearing the worst. He knew as soon as he left, if he found no way to stop it, his sister would either fill his old shoes or be sold for profit to one of his father's sicker friends and either way his father would destroy her. He couldn't let that happen.

Pointed questions to the right people and straight up detective work brought Gerard to the house of Robert Warks, a relatively wealthy man who had a not so secret love of the underage and inflicting pain. So when he broke down the front door and found his father and Warks exchanging money he did what any respectable coward does through as many punches as he could land towards his father, grabbing his sister, and getting the hell out of the little rim planet that had been his home all his life.

He took his sister and he ran,

Changed his name

Changed the way he dressed

The way he acted

And changed vessels enough to confuse the most skilled tacker.

Somewhere along the line, after a whole lot of running, he ends up on the relative safety of Serenity, a place that could become his home.