The happiness and the joy, the eternal unquestioning love

It can all be turned to scorn.

The Beautiful creation, the sad and scared soul,

Only too aware of the truth that on that day, was born.

Every Rose has its Thorn.

"A child should never have to sleep under his bed."

These words…this thought that I overheard just outside of my classroom, it plagued my mind as I heard my mother yell.

I winced, the familiar thwack of my father slapping my mother echoed in our bare house, my black, feathered wings shielded me as I hid behind them and fear began to cloud my mind.

This was a regular occurrence in my house. My father was a drunk, and my mother was too weak to stand up to him.

Even the school figured it wasn't their business. Signal Academy was the only safe haven I had from the abuse, but even they didn't want to get involved.

I quivered as I heard the door to my room swing open and squeal as if it were letting me know that my father had entered my room. "Get out here, boy!" He exclaimed, dropping to his knees to look under my bed.

My heart dropped as I saw his hand reach under my bed, and I cried out when I felt his rough hand grab my arm and squeezed tight enough to leave marks and jerk me out from under my haven of safety.

"You little shit…" My father slurred, barely able to keep himself straight as he glared at me, his face only slightly obscured by the slight shadows. Off to my side, I saw his clenched hand as it rose. "You ruined my life…" He seethed.

My heart began to pound, I knew what was coming. I couldn't run from it, I couldn't hide.

I clenched my eyes shut and I heard the whoosh of his hand as it passed through the air.

I cried out, my arms shot from my sides and pushed him away as I felt a rush of energy.

Seconds later, I heard a body hit the wall, and a groan. I opened my eyes to see my father, knocked out on the floor besides my door, and a spot of blood on the wall above him.

I almost fell to my knees, my heart fluttered in a mixture of fear and excitement.

As I looked up, I caught the eye of my mother, who was willing to let her husband beat her son.

That mixture of fear and excitement turned to anger and resentment. For five years, my mother stood by and watched as my father beat me without saying a word.

No pleas for him to stop, begging for him to change, not even so much as a single movement to stop him.

She was just as bad as he was.

That was the moment I realized that it would never change. That I would never know the kindness that my peers had known if I stayed.

That was the moment I made up my mind. At the frail age of ten, I got up and ran out of the still-open door that my father had stumbled through a few moments ago.

My mother tried to stop me, she called my name but I ignored her pleas, tears streaking down my face as I ran towards my only other bastion of safety. Signal Academy.

I have no idea how long I ran for.

It felt like hours, my lungs burned, and my legs were weak.

But none of that mattered the moment I heard the distinct snarl of a beowolf.

Here I was, a scared, terrified kid, probably a mile or so outside of the protection of his village.

I was alone, nothing but a neon sign that read "Free food right here" to the creatures of Grimm right now.

Snarling growls filled the darkness around me, filled my heart with dread and regret for the choice that I had made.

That dread soon manifested in a physical form as a beowolf leapt from the shadows, its teeth aimed for my throat, prepared to be soaked in my blood and gore.

I couldn't move. My fear held me in place and cemented my feet to the ground. I could do nothing but close my eyes.

But death never came.

The pain I had expected, never came.

Instead, I cracked my eyes open, only to be blinded with a pure, white light.

The Grimm around me snarled and yelped, some of them closest to the light turned to dust, while others froze and turned to stone.

Then the light faded, but my vision was left clouded by the light.

"Ray!" I heard in front of me, the voice of my Signal Academy teacher cutting through the sudden silence like a beacon of hope. "What are you doing out here?" She asked.

"I-I-I…" I couldn't get my words out. I just broke down into tears and clung to my teacher's comforting white and red cloak. I felt her arms wrap around me, and her hand caress the back of my head.

After a few minutes, she knelt and pulled me away by my shoulders and wiped my tears away as my eyes adjusted to the darkness once more.

"Your dad…did he beat you again?"

"H-He tried…" I gasped out through sobs. "I-I think my semblance came and…I pushed him against the wall a-and just ran."

My teacher, Summer, sighed.

"Come on," She said and rose to her feet, her hand outstretched as a gesture of kindness. "I'm on my way home, you can stay with me." Her words were calm, firm, and they brought with them a sense of relief.

I took her hand, her offer of safety. And I gripped onto it with my life, because I was afraid that it would be stripped from me. That my father would appear and drag me away, and beat me again.

I don't know how far we walked. Only that by the time we got to her house, I was exhausted, my legs burned, my feet ached, but I didn't complain once.

The pain was worth it. Anything to get away from the barely-human cowards who raised me.

The next day, Summer woke me up and took me to Vale, where she brought me to a building complex with the words "Vale's Department of Child Protection Services" affixed to its front.

There, I met an investigator who asked me about my father, he asked me to show the fresh bruise on my arm, and I showed him the old and recent bruises that dotted my torso, some of them so bad that they had begun to turn a deep purple.

I told him the truth.

I told him my father had done it, that he'd beat me for almost everything I did. I told him that my mother let him do it, that she'd watch and do nothing to stop it. I told him that he beat her too, and she has even worse bruises. Bruises that she tries to cover up.

Bruises that sometimes fade through the makeup.

Before I left that day, I broke down into tears and begged him to let me stay with Summer. I begged him to not make me go back to those monsters, who I can't even call parents, because a parent would never do that to their child.

When he told me that he wouldn't just let me stay there, he'd do everything in his power to keep me there, I couldn't help but burst into more tears and thank him over and over again.

When we left that day, I had already decided.

The two trash-heaps that I had escaped from may have given me life, but they weren't my parents. Summer, however, was. She was the only one who gave me safety, who even bothered to report what happened.

She was the only one to ever give me a home that I wasn't afraid to come back to.

Over the months, she would prove that time and time again, she would not let anyone harm me ever again. She would be the thorn that protected the rose.

Then she gave me a man to call my father, and two girls to call my sisters.

Not even two years after Taiyang, Yang and Ruby entered my life, Summer left on a mission, and never came back.

The day I was told she wasn't coming back, I realized, I didn't just want a protector. I wanted to grow out of the weakness that kept me from fighting back.

And I did.

When I enrolled in Signal, I wanted to make my father proud. I wanted to show him that I wasn't a weak, little, kid, so that he would stop beating me.

When I graduated Signal, I realized that it wasn't pride that I was after. I wanted to learn how to defend those who couldn't defend themselves.

The day after I graduated, Taiyang took Yang and I to make our own weapons.

That day, under his guidance, I crafted my very own Thorn.

It was a fifteen-shot Hand-Cannon with a black body and gold petals that flourished out and wrapped around the barrel, and blood red thorns that dotted the sides.

When I was finished, I wrote a simple message into the back of the chamber that would hold the ammunition cylinder. A message that I would be sure to see whenever I opened the chamber to reload.

"Every Rose has its Thorn."