Disclaimer: I own nothing.
I'll admit, I have no idea what this is. I just needed to write an angsty fic, and this was the result. Rated M to be safe. No sexual stuff, but a lot of triggering topics. Please be safe, and do not read if this will trigger you.
WARNINGS: CHILD ABUSE, OC CHARACTER DEATH, DEPRESSION, MAJOR CHARACTER DEATH
Title: Living in A Terrible Nightmare
"And I'm living in a terrible nightmare, living in a terrible nightmare." –"Nightmare" by Arshad
Leo Dooley knew what it was like to be living a nightmare. To succumb to sleep simply to escape the nightmares that had been haunting him long after he dragged himself out of bed in the morning. To spend an hour crying in his room until he had no more tears left to shed. To be on the verge of having a mental breakdown but no one is there to save you.
"You little brat, get back here!"
Leo shuddered as the flashback engulfed him, lurching him into the past like he was nothing more than a lightweight, so easy to drag into the past and push back to the present when the past agreed to temporarily let him go.
His father, eyes blazing with rage, looming over his cowering child, who had just been discovered to be hiding in a small coat closet, gripping his teddy bear to his chest.
"You worthless child!" he slurred, the beer bottle in his hand making the thing that was fueling his temper obvious. "I-I thought I told you to have the dishes done by the time I got home!"
"But Daddy," six year old Leo whimpered. "I couldn't reach the sink! I'm sorry."
"Get a step stool, climb onto the counter. I knew you weren't the brightest crayon in the box, but I didn't know you were completely dumb," his father growled before striking him across the face. "I will not have a stupid son."
His father grabbed him up the upper arm and dragged him into the office, throwing Leo on the floor, ignoring his son's yelp of pain.
His father threw a bunch of heavy books on the floor with loud thuds and downright thunderous booms. Leo jumped at the loud noises, fearing a book might be thrown at him next, and scooted into the corner, wrapping his arms around his knees.
"You are not leaving this room until every one of these books is read," his father snarled before slamming the door and locking it behind him.
Leo picked up one of the thick books and stared at the title.
The History Of America
The book was thicker than Leo's head with font almost too small for him to see; a lot of the words were big and confusing and the Dictionary and Thesaurus became his companions as he attempted to read the history book, which was a humongous jump from The Cat In The Hat.
An hour later, his father returned, looking even angrier than before when he saw what page Leo was on in the first book.
"You haven't even finished the first chapter!" his father roared.
"It's too hard, Daddy," Leo whined.
"I don't care if it's too hard. Try harder," his father ordered before ripping off his belt and beginning to beat Leo with it while his only child wailed.
Leo inhaled sharply as he was roughly pulled back into the present, and his fingers tightened around the steering wheel as he drove the car in the middle of night, trying and failing to clear his head.
"It's not fun when you're the smart kid," he'd told Adam, Bree, and Chase on their first day of school.
He tried not to think of his dad's constant lessons and how Leo had gotten to be so smart.
Another flashback threatened to consume him, and Leo didn't notice the car speed up as panic engulfed him because he had a feeling he knew what the next flashback was going to be about.
"Leo!" Julia giggled. Julia was the same age as Leo, six, and they had been friends since they were babies. They were closer than friends, closer than siblings, closer than family. They were soul mates, and everyone knew it.
"Yeah, Julia?" Leo asked as they stood beside the pool, waiting for their parents to finish getting dressed so they could start swimming.
"Could you go get the sunscreen? Mama keeps telling me to put it on," Julia pouted. She always hated sunscreen; the sticky, cold sensation of it on her skin, even if it was about to be washed off by pool water, was just a nuisance to her.
"Okay!" Leo exclaimed before running into the dressing rooms to get the sunscreen.
Leo rifled through the beach bag for a few minutes before pulling out a yellow bottle of sunscreen; he quickly returned to the pool area to give it to Julia.
"Julia?" he called before he slowed to a halt when he noticed his best friend lying face down in the pool, unmoving.
"Julia!" Leo screamed before leaping into the deep end of the pool where Julia was. It didn't even occur to him that he couldn't swim.
Leo crashed into the water and paddled to Julia, pulling her upright and staring at her blue face.
"Julia?" he whimpered.
"Leo?" his mom said as she appeared.
Leo didn't even hear her; he was too focused on Julia's blue lips, not releasing or inhaling any oxygen.
"Julia!" he screamed.
Someone jumped into the pool- Julia's older sister- and both of the children were pulled to the side of the pool.
Julia's sister gave her CPR, but it was already too late.
Leo's best friend, honorary sister, his platonic soul mate… was dead.
He remembered watching that shark movie with Adam and Chase. He hadn't necessarily been afraid of the shark, but seeing the water… it triggered a flashback of that day over and over again.
"You know what else is missing? Your manhood," Adam had said.
If only his brothers knew the whole story…
Leo couldn't stop himself from falling into the past once again, and he felt tears begin to trickle down his face.
"Daddy!" seven year old Leo wailed as the belt thwacked against his bleeding and scarred back again and again. "Please stop!"
"Stop begging, you pathetic waste of space," his father spat. "I asked that woman for one thing," he added, referring to Leo's mother. "A strong, brave, smart son. A child I could be proud of. And instead, I got you."
The belt fell against his back once again, but this time, Leo's sobs were interrupted by the door creaking open.
"Harold, what is all the commotion- Leo!" his mom, home from work, cried when she saw her husband holding a belt, dripping with blood, and her son curled into a ball on the floor with injuries littering his form.
"Tasha, this isn't what it looks like," Harold said, nervously. Leo remembered vaguely wondering why his dad was so nervous; all bad boys get punished, so why was he so worried about being caught disciplining Leo? Beating your kids was normal, right? He remembered his dad telling him not to tell, and for the first time since the hitting began, he started to wonder if this punishment was bad for some reason.
Tasha glared at her husband with such intensity, Leo whimpered, having never seen his mother so angry in his life. His mom picked him up and carried him to the car, leaving her husband behind.
"Mommy, why are we leaving?" Leo asked as his mom drove the car out of the driveway and began to drive down the street.
"Because your daddy hurt you, Leo," Tasha replied, unsure of how to explain child abuse to her young son, who was a victim (she'd always hated that word because it meant something terrible had happened to someone, and because she hadn't paid attention, her son was now a victim of a horrible act) of abuse.
"But I was a bad boy," Leo pointed out, struggling to comprehend what his daddy had done wrong. Leo was stupid and cowardly and pathetic and worthless, so he deserved to get hit…
Right?
"He was just punishing me," Leo continued.
His mom sniffled, and Leo wondered why she was crying.
"Leo… no matter what you do, no matter how much trouble you get into… your daddy should never hit you. Ever. Understand?" Tasha asked.
Leo nodded (even though he wasn't sure if he entirely understood).
They stayed with Grandma Rose for a little while before they had something called a trial. Leo only vaguely understood what that meant, but one thing he did know was that if the judge found his dad guilty, his dad would go to jail.
He remembered answering a bunch of questions, trying to answer them truthfully like Mommy told him to and trying not to look at his father, and seeing some photographs of his injuries. The deep scarring and painful welts on his back. The dark contusions all over his stomach, chest, and legs. The cigarette burns on his arms. He remembered his medical history coming up with all the broken bones Daddy gave him, the ones he told Mommy were caused by accidents.
But the thing he remembers most of all is the harsh banging of the gavel and the judge declaring his father guilty.
Harold Cooper was sentenced to a minimum of ten years without parole. Tasha and Leo moved to Mission Creek, changed their last name to Dooley (his mom's maiden name), and years later, Tasha met Donald Davenport.
Leo wiped the tears from his eyes as he thought back on the way he'd fearfully trembled when he first met Donald Davenport, afraid this man would hit him just like his dad did.
But he also remembered the kind smile the man gave him, the polite hand shake, and the gentle voice he spoke in to Leo, his mom, to everyone. He was the exact opposite of Leo's dad, and that's why Leo loved him.
"Now that's a husband!" Leo had said, and he still meant it, even if there were more than a few bumps in the road when it came to his new family.
After the situation with his dad, Leo started to hear a voice inside his head, telling him he was worthless and useless and dumb, the words his dad always said to him.
Leo remembered collapsing from exhaustion as he fought to exercise, become athletic, build muscle, so that his dad, not to mention The Voice, could no longer call him weak.
Leo remembered getting really sick after he pulled a few all nighters to study and become smart, so that his dad and The Voice could no longer call him stupid.
Leo remembered standing up to bullies and getting pummeled, so his dad and The Voice could no longer call him a coward.
Leo remembered the day he threw out his nightlight and stopped crawling into bed with his mom, which he'd been doing for the past few months, ever since they left his dad. He knew it was too soon, but he forced himself to sleep in his dark room all alone, despite the nightmares of his father that haunted him, so that his dad and The Voice could no longer call him pathetic.
But most of all… Leo remembers breaking down after all of this and his mom holding him in her arms, whispering soothing words as he cried because he finally accepted it…
He would never be good enough for his father or even for himself.
"Mom, I think the little voice inside my head is back," he had said, almost as a joke to conceal the deeply rooted fear that the Voice had indeed returned.
"Stop!" Leo ordered his brain. "Please stop!"
But his brain refused as he was yanked into another flashback, this one from only a few years ago.
"Oh my goodness, Leo will not stop going on about Marcus," Chase groaned as they walked in after school.
Leo, who had to go home early for a doctor's appointment, froze right before walking into the living room and listed intently.
"Yeah, he's totally convinced that Marcus is evil," Adam snorted. "Yeah, right! Marcus wouldn't hurt a fly."
"He's just jealous that we hang out with Marcus more than him," Bree pointed out.
Leo slowly began to back down the hall before disappearing into his room and leaning against the door. He sank to the ground and wrapped his arms around his knees as tears filled his eyes.
So that was what his siblings thought of him. That he was jealous. Not that he was just trying to look for them. No. They thought he was jealous.
His siblings never knew Leo had heard them, but Leo had and now he could never un-hear that conversation.
Leo felt his lungs shake with every near hysterical breath he inhaled and exhaled. He was hyperventilating.
His hand was wrapped around Taylor's, and he could see the look of pain on her face, but he didn't stop. He kept going and pushing her until it was too much.
With a loud thud, an unconscious Taylor was thrown backwards and landed on the floor.
All Leo could do was watch in horror and fear and worry… but most of all, in shame.
He had put someone else at risk simply because he wanted to prove to his siblings and everyone at the Academy that he was more than the weakling, more than barely bionic, more than everything his father called him.
But his father had been right about him all along: he was pathetic.
Taylor was blind because of him. Leo couldn't stand the thought of facing her after he did that to her, so he packed his bags and left.
He'd been okay for a while when he returned home. It was just him and his mom, and he'd been able to forget… at least for a little while.
But then the man that started this terrible nightmare returned.
A knock sounded at the door, and Leo turned off the TV and opened it.
An all too familiar man was standing on the other side, and Leo felt his heart skip a beat.
"Wow," his father said. "I never thought I'd see the day my scrawny little son was almost as tall as me."
"Dad?" Leo murmured, horrified.
His father shrugged. "The ten years are up. I've been released. May I see your mother?"
Leo recognized the barely concealed anger in his father's eyes. His father blamed Tasha for throwing him in prison, even though he was the one that broke the law. Leo had been physically and mentally hurt by this man, and he was the one that started this terrible living nightmare, the one Leo couldn't seem to escape. He was not going to let this man do that to his mother, too.
"No," Leo said, flatly.
Harold raised an eyebrow. "You're standing up to me? Have I really only been gone ten years?"
Leo stepped onto the porch and closed the door behind him to avoid his mother hearing their conversation, and he leaned closer to the man who used to be his father.
"You beat me. You abused me. You traumatized me, and for ten years, you continued to torture me, even from a jail cell. You are NOT going to lay a finger on my mother. You will not speak to her. You will not look at her. You will stay far away from her. If not, you will see just how strong I've gotten since you went to jail," Leo hissed, pushed his father with his bionic arm. As much as he wanted to hurl the man half way across the world, he was better than that, so he just gave the shove enough strength for his father's back to connect painfully with the porch railing. "Now get the hell off my doorstep before I do something I regret."
His father smiled. "You think you're such a tough guy now? I'll admit, you've gotten much stronger, but I'm free now, and I know more than anyone else that you are still pathetic, worthless Leo. You are nothing, and I am everything. Everything I wanted you to be, and you turned out to be the disappointment of a lifetime. Just know this, Leo: you are a twig that I could snap with one finger. I'm sure those scars on your back can tell you that, and you wouldn't want to make me angry, would you?"
With a smirk, his father punched him straight in the face before he walked away, leaving his son to nurse a rapidly swelling eye and bloody nose.
The minute his dad's car was out of sight, Leo grabbed the car keys off of the hook immediately inside the door, hopped in the car, and started driving. He didn't know where he was driving. He was just driving away.
That was a few hours ago, and Leo could feel the dried blood caking on his upper lip while his black eye continued to throb.
Taylor was hurt. His dad was out of jail and had threatened him. His siblings and stepdad were angry at him for what he did to Taylor. His mom was constantly busy. He was all alone.
Abused, ignored, neglected, hurt, scared… that was Leo. Worthless, pathetic, cowardly, stupid… in Leo's eyes and his dad's eyes, that's what he was.
His dad was right once again: he was nothing.
Leo was so wrapped up in his own problems that he didn't notice the stop sign until he rolled right through it.
A car crashed directly into his, and Leo barely had time to cry out before his head smacked against the opposite door, his seat belt straining to hold him in place as the horrible crash occurred.
Leo was floating and his problems were fading away, one by one, until they were completely gone. Forever.
His funeral was supposed to be a small one. Only his family, Janelle, and a couple of friends. But it turned into a huge funeral as people continued to show up. People from Mission Creek High School. People from the Bionic Academy. People from the neighborhood. You can imagine their shock when Principal Perry made an appearance and actually started to cry when she saw her former student lying in the casket.
In the front row, his family sat- his mother on the end of the row of chairs with Donald next to her, followed by Adam, Bree, Chase, and Douglas. Tasha was sobbing, and while Donald tried to comfort his wife, he could barely speak through his own tears as they prepared to bury his step son- his sixteen year old step son. Adam seemed to be in a state of shock; he was staring blankly at nothing while the occasional tear slipped down here face, going unnoticed by the boy, stunned by this tragedy. Bree wasn't exactly a pretty crier, but she wasn't all snot bubbles and hysterical sobbing either. She lingered somewhere in the middle with tears falling down her blotchy face, although no sounds fell from her lips as she gazed at the casket that held her little brother. Chase was surprisingly the worst of them all; he was close to Leo, yes, but you didn't see Chase cry very often, even after tragedies, but in that moment, it almost looked like he was broken. His eyes were fragments of glass, shattered by the impact of the death of his brother, filled with fat tears that cascaded down his cheeks and dropped onto his shirt and pants and hands as he sobbed, nearly hysterical in that moment. Douglas tried his best to help Chase, but Douglas and Leo had been very close before Leo died, and so Douglas found himself shedding more tears during the few days they had known that Leo was no longer with them than he had in many, many years.
Douglas could already feel himself falling into the abyss of grief and pulling away from everyone, just as he did when he turned evil. This wasn't the evil man he used to be returning; no, he had a new monster to fight. A monster called grief that threatened to swallow him while he clung to the ledge, dangling over a seemingly endless abyss, just out of reach of help. He was already withdrawing from the family he had found, and he feared that there was a chance he would pull away and pull away until he found himself alone… just like before Adam, Bree, and Chase. The loneliness that had started the change within him that eventually turned him into the bad person he used to be. He couldn't let go of that ledge, for fear of becoming that man again, but it was becoming harder and harder for the crumbling ledge to support his weight.
For Douglas, the hardest part was not letting go… Holding on was proving to be the harder challenge.
Chase didn't feel any one emotion. He felt it all at once: The grief, the depression, the fear, the pain, the sorrow, and everything in between. His baby brother was gone. There was an unspoken rule in the Davenport family. Siblings protect each other. But while they all protected one another, they often found themselves protecting the sibling directly below them in age more than the others. Adam protected Bree; Bree protected Chase; and Chase protected Leo. But Leo was gone, and Chase had failed as big brother.
There would be no more projects. No more laughs between the brothers. No more quiet evenings spent together, not talking but not wanting to be alone. There would be no more hugs after successful missions, embraces to ensure that the other was alive and well. Chase's brother, his best friend… was gone. And he wasn't coming back.
In that moment, Chase felt like he would never be happy again.
Bree had succumbed to the ocean of misery long ago. When Tasha called the Academy in tears to tell them the news, Bree couldn't believe it. For the first few days, she walked around in a daze, not quite gone but not truly there either. She felt numb… but then it crashed over her. Leo was gone. Her brother was gone. And the more Bree thought about it, the more she realized that she couldn't remember when she last told Leo she was proud of him. She was proud of that brave, loyal boy- no, man- he had become. She couldn't remember telling Leo she was glad he was her brother. She couldn't remember the last time she hugged him just because. She couldn't remember the last time she was there for him when something went wrong. Where was she when Taylor went blind? Where was she when Leo lost his arm and was undoubtedly experiencing phantom pains in his new bionic limb? Where was she all the times when Leo was scared or lonely? Where was she when Leo needed her?
When was the last time she even told Leo she loved him?
Adam was in shock, much like Bree had been, but he hadn't come out of it quite yet. He couldn't believe Leo was gone. To Adam, Leo was always a constant, someone that would follow you around and bug you nonstop but someone would always be there for you, through the good times and the bad. Leo was always there. When Adam laughed, when Adam cried. When Adam was hurt, when he was unharmed. When Adam was sick, when he was healthy. When Adam was confident, when he was scared. Leo was there for him through it all. In an ever changing world, in an ever changing, chaotic life, Leo was Adam's constant, the one thing- the one person- Adam could count on to always be there.
To Adam, a world without Leo was unfathomable.
Donald used to be close to Leo. They would invent together, work together, plan together. Leo had truly brought the family together. He had helped Donald to see that Adam, Bree, and Chase were more than just science experiments. He'd been the reason Donald could truly forgive Douglas because of Donald was being honest… until Douglas saved Leo's arm after the confrontation with Krane, Donald hadn't truly let go of his anger at his brother. But Douglas had saved Leo's arm, maybe even Leo's life, and nothing was more important to Donald than his family. Tasha, Adam, Bree, Chase, and Leo. Douglas had saved Leo, and Donald could finally forgive the man he had been angry at for so long. Leo had changed him for the better, changed him from a distant scientist to a loving father, changed him from an angry man to a forgiving brother, changed him from a coward, saving Adam, Bree, and Chase from a life of being used as weapons, only to lock them away for nearly fifteen years, to a brave hero that was willing to do anything to protect his family.
If Leo had made Donald into the man he was today… who would Donald be without Leo?
Tasha loved her baby boy more than anything on this earth. She left her first husband without a second thought the minute she saw him hurting Leo. She gave up a comfortable life for the life of a single mom barely getting by as she worked two jobs while raising her abused, traumatized son. And she would do it all again because Tasha loved her son more than anything else, and a world without him was a bleak and dull world that Tasha never wanted to see… never thought she'd have to see. Children are supposed to outlive their parents. Children are not supposed to die young. Children are supposed to live long lives, marry someone they love and have children of their own, succeed in whatever career, whatever life the choose… they're not supposed to be only sixteen years old when they're buried six feet under the ground. When Tasha was pregnant with Leo, Tasha's mother had told her that children are blessings. Children are blessings, and they should never be taken for granted.
Because with children… you never know when they'll be taken from you, and the worst part of the tragedy that is the death of a child is that you never see it coming.
Leo Dooley was the only one that was happy as he played and danced and laughed in Heaven with his dearest Julia, the honorary sister, the best friend, he'd lost so many years ago. He knew his friends and family would miss him, and that saddened him, but he would see them again someday. Hopefully not someday soon, but he would see them again someday.
It's ironic that the only way Leo could escape his nightmare was to fall into an eternal sleep.