Author's Note:
This is a fanfiction inspired by what began as a joke/incredibly out-there theory about Blaise Debeste being transgender. It also takes some inspiration from Road to Ruin, which is a worthwhile read: s/7578809/1/Road-to-Ruin
Although it certainly has a strange origin, I don't intend to make light of LGBT issues with this story. I'm not a transgender man, so I am in some regard writing out of my depth. Please feel free to let me know if I've erred in some way, as I recognize I'm not exactly a veteran when it comes to writing, let alone writing about such a sensitive topic.
With that out of the way, please enjoy my take on and attempt at portraying Blaise Debeste as a complex individual shaped by his history.
1958, Blanco, Texas
It was a quiet day.
Elena wasn't much for quiet days. Her father seemed obsessed with them; he constantly bemoaned his inability to find peace and quiet, and the closest thing she had ever seen to happiness from him was when he was finally given solace from the noise which permeated his workplace. Disturbing this silence at home was an unforgivable sin; a fact she had learned the hard way.
But to an energetic young girl, "peace and quiet" meant "nothing to do". She liked to read sometimes, but she had already pored over every single book they had, and her family didn't have the means to buy more. She lived pretty far from the nearest library, and even if it wasn't closed for construction right now, she wasn't interested in reading today. She wanted to go out, wanted to do something.
"Pop, I'm headin' out."
Her father let out a vague grunt that could be interpreted as approval. He was engrossed in the television yet again; some news about Cohdopian instability. Elena considered herself more well read than her peers and even she couldn't sit through a second of programs like these without wanting to fall asleep.
Throwing caution to the wind, the young Elena Ozturk fearlessly jumps into the domain of the scorching afternoon sun! Of course, this heat resistance was an attribute of hers she'd only learned second-hand. Her cousins from up North had come to visit recently and had a way harder time with the weather than she did, making her feel quite proud. Since then, she always tried to think of life in a similar way; with the hardships she experiences being stepping stones to make her stronger than someone who hasn't gone through them. It doesn't necessarily make her feel better, but it can be comforting to think of life as a series of lessons to be learned.
These were among the thoughts that ran through her head as she walked through the suburban streets. She hadn't departed with a goal in mind, but she'd inevitably ended up heading towards the park.
It was always The Park - nobody seemed to call it anything else. It surely had a real name, Elena thought, probably named after some president or past mayor or something, but nobody seemed willing to use it. Maybe that meant that The Park was it's real name? It didn't seem like a very helpful name, though. It would be like if her name was "That Person". She stifled laughter at the thought.
Arriving at the park, she then began to contemplate what exactly to do. Usually she'd find something to occupy her attention, an open swing or basketball left unattended, but she hadn't come with a particular plan in mind today.
Her thoughts were interrupted by a ball flying past her face at the speed of light, barely grazing her cheek, causing her to let out a loud noise in shock.
"Whoa, sorry about that.". A voice accompanied by footsteps rang out in her still slightly lightheaded mind. It belonged to one Clyde Athel, from the house adjacent to hers.
"Ahh, it's alright. What are you folks up to?"
"Just playin' some touch football. Couldya pass the ball back over the fence?" He gestured to the area it rested just beyond where Elena stood.
By this time, the rest of Clyde's posse had made their way over. Elena made a quick mental note of the amount of people. Seven. Uneven teams.
She ran over to the ball and picked it up. "You guys need another player?" She yelled over.
Clyde broke eye contact. "Uh, nah, we should be good."
Elena squinted, holding the ball against her torso. "Hrm. Are you sure? It seems like 4 to 3 would be pretty unfair."
He stammered out something that only slightly resembled words before giving an explanation, "I, uh, a-actually I was planning to sit out, since I'm not feeling too great today, so…"
"But you were the one who -"
"Look, if we don't want you to play, we don't want you to play, alright? Stop harassing Clyde!", one of his friends said, finally butting in.
Elena was taken off guard by that reaction. She was a little younger than them, sure, but even she would be better than nobody, right? "I'm sorry, but why are you…"
She trailed off, having fully grasped the fact that Clyde didn't object at all to that outburst. They weren't friends, sure, but she thought they were on good enough terms.
"Look it's just… this game has a lot of tackling, and it would be weird when you're…" Clyde continued to awkwardly crawl through some delicate explanations as those around him were quicker on the draw.
"You tryin' to say we're no better than a little girl?!"
"Why do you even care?! Go do something with your own friends!"
"Guys, calm down. She's clearly just confused."
"What's going on? Can we get back to the game already?!"
They weren't even being hostile to her specifically; that was the worst part. They just wanted her to leave.
"I… I just…" Elena was frozen in place. She hated when this happened. When she was placed into an uncomfortable situation, she'd lock up instead of risking making a wrong move. It made her look pathetic, and she hated it, and she hated the way people looked at her. She dropped the ball and, wanting to avoid freezing up, started to move to run, to pretend she was somewhere else. There wasn't really a plan beyond that; she wasn't thinking straight.
"Is there a problem here?"
A noticeably more gruff voice put her breakdown on hold.
This interloper stopped all the preteen miscreants in their tracks. He towered over them, and while nothing fancy by an adult's standards, that cap and work vest must have felt like a three-piece suit to them. He had the aura of someone who could beat all of them up, but wouldn't. Someone who shaves regularly, but decided not to bother yesterday. Not a delinquent, but someone you'd be better off avoiding the bad side of.
But more importantly than any of that, not a single person here could misunderstand the meaning of that sentence in this situation when it was coming from the mouth of Sivas Ozturk.
"This riffraff giving you trouble, El?" He turned his gaze downward to his little sister, wearing an expression that was neutral, even angry, but still contained some underlying warmth.
"O-Uh-Oh n-no, I just..."
While she tried to come up with a way to respond to this, Clyde had already switched his rambling to be about how he was getting tired of this game anyway, and they should find something else to do. The two were left alone with the seemingly forfeited football.
"This yours?" Sivas asked, looking confused at the ball.
"...No".
"Well, it's somebody's." He chucked it back into the park.
"...Thank you." Elena finally managed to say something she wanted to say.
Sivas smiled. "For what?"
Elena built herself back up, and was able to speak normally again. "What are you doing here, Siv? I thought you still had work." Calling Sivas by his full name or by "brother" seemed ridiculously stuffy and informal, while calling him "bro" had gotten her a scolding, so she had settled on this abbreviation.
"I did, but some moron let the pump leak. Boss apparently cares just enough about us and his customers to not want us to burst into flames."
Elena laughed. Sivas never minced words with her, never treated her like a child or a burden who needed to be coddled. It was becoming more and more infrequent as he grew up, but she cherished the moments she was able to just have a conversation with him.
"So… I'll betcha a hundred bucks Dad doesn't buy that. Thinks I've taken to being lazy in some overly convoluted way."
"I'm not gonna fight you on that.", Elena answered, in an exchange that had become routine. Sivas had a habit of making meaningless bets with others; it was little more than a conversational piece, given that the person he was talking to usually knew he didn't have that kind of disposable income to call his own.
"But man… maybe if he had a modicum of talent I wouldn't have to be the only person who had to walk home today." It was phrased just like any of his other quips, but the tone in his voice betrayed the fact that Sivas's mood soured when he said this.
"Well… I'm glad you weren't driving today, at least." Elena tried to find a bright side.
Sivas brightened up, although Elena wondered if this was only for her sake. "Heck, you're right. I wouldn't want to leave a lady in distress." He ruffled her hair playfully. "Why don't we make like a tree and go somewhere else?"
Elena loved sweets. But she had only been able to have some a select few times. Her father was always telling her about the importance of her figure, while her mother, back when she was home more often, considered such things a waste of money. Sivas knew this, which was the biggest reason why he had taken his sister to an ice cream parlor even when it was the middle of the afternoon.
"If the old man's gonna think I skipped out on work regardless, might as well use what I got today for myself, right?". He still got full pay for today: something about unions. Elena thought he could probably just show dad the money to prove he was working today, but with some guilt she kept quiet.
"So Charlie, he's complainin' as always, that's nothing new, but his dame, well, she shows up right that second, says she heard everything, and BAM! Right in the kisser." Sivas seemed to enjoy talking about the trivial idiosyncrasies and inconveniences of his life to a complete outsider. He'd probably be a pretty shoddy parent, but he thought he was at least pretty good at keeping people entertained. Even though this was no different from plenty of other conversations, Elena was completely enthralled.
"I swear, he should just break up with her already. She's crazy. I'm sure the only thing holdin' him back is her being a good lay-". He stopped in his tracks. Even he had some standards for what a kid should be hearing.
"...Hey Siv, what do you mean by-"
"ANYWAY! What about you? How are things going at school? We haven't had a chance to catch up in a while." He changed the topic in a manner which he thought was seamless. Probably.
It surprised both of them how much they had to talk about. Elena would talk about her classes, about the secrets she'd been told without asking about some girls in her grade, Sivas would mention a story about their older brother screwing up on Valentine's Day, the two would get into an argument about how "February" was pronounced, Sivas would go up to the cashier to resolve it, Sivas would return to the table sulking having been defeated, so on and so forth. The sun was visibly starting to set by the time the two realized they should probably get going, and they continued their conversation for quite some time on the walk back home.
"Pa, I'm home." Sivas opened the door and made a hand flapping motion to Elena, as if to say 'get out of here before things get ugly'. Elena wasn't quick enough to react, though. Santo Ozturk, still sitting in the same spot she last saw him, sprung to life.
"You're what?" he belted out.
Sivas ran through an explanation he had clearly prepared in advance, but it was no use. It was clear their father would be launching into one of his legendary sermons about how hard it was in the old country and how much they were taking for granted and just what they can shove where if they think they'd be ANYWHERE without the hard work of blah blah blah. Santo wasn't the type of parent who frequently beat his kids, but sometimes it felt like that would be more merciful. At least it would be over quickly.
"Bottle…" Elena whispered.
"What?!" Santo snapped, pausing mid-rant and suddenly recognizing the existence of a third person in the room.
"Nothing, I…" Truth be told, she didn't have a purpose in mind when saying what she said. It was a random thought that slipped out verbally. Her father was holding a bottle, but the way he was doing so struck her as odd. He gripped it upside down, like a baseball bat.
"And YOU. I'll go easy on ya, since you're just a kid n'all, but how can you just go an let this guy... corruptin' you like that? What, you wanna end up a cold-hearted BITCH like yer m- mother and leave me the whole day and ye just…" He trailed off. "...I dun' mean that, I jus' mean…"
Ultimately, he decided to abandon that sentence. "Go...Go to your room."
"Pops, he was just trying to-"
"NOW!" He yelled, making his already harsh tone from just a second ago sound like a whisper. This was non-negotiable. Sivas gave her a pat on the shoulder and it was clear to her that staying would only make things worse for everyone. She trudged upstairs and lay in bed.
And Elena cried.
And she got upset at herself for crying, and gritted her teeth, unable to stop the flow of tears. Anyone who saw her expression would be uncertain if she was furious or in despair, and she didn't know for sure herself. She didn't know what it was about. Maybe it was about everything today. Maybe it was about everything, ever.
She laid there, alone, waiting for the sound downstairs that reverberated through these cheap floors to end.
She heard footsteps leading upstairs and stopping, probably in the one other bedroom on this floor, that which belonged to her brother.
Elena wiped her eyes with her sleeves and creaked open the door. Making as little noise as possible, she peered into the living room to find her father absent. He was doubtlessly slumped over unconscious in his bed, even though he had been screaming his head off just moments ago. At least he'd managed to make it back to his room this time.
In a well rehearsed routine, she took a roundabout path that avoided all the spots where the floor would creak. She grabbed some paper from the second shelf from the bottom in the living room, and grabbed a gallon of water from the corner. Finally, she pulled over a stool to reach the highest shelf on the far right in the kitchen, and grabbed the lighter that was inside, before leaving the house through the backdoor.
From here, Elena could see into the windows of the house "behind" hers. There was no fence, no clear separation between where one property began and the other ended. Other houses had fences in their backyards. Not hers. In a world where so many things were meticulously demarcated and argued over, no legal authority had ever bothered to make this space clear. It was in a minor suburb, and never argued over. A problem that isn't vocally complained about isn't considered a problem. Elena sighed.
She sat in front of the firepit and stared up at the stars for a brief moment, wondering what she'd do tomorrow. But the moment passed, and she began her own secret ritual.
She'd started doing this only a few months ago, and not that often. She starts by burning some paper. The incredible sensation of seeing something crumble, disappear in a bright flash. She crumples some paper up and uses them as tinder to start a small fire. Sometimes there'd be some unique object within view; a leaf or pinecone that had fallen from her neighbor's tree. She'd pick it up, inspect it, and then watch it burn. Otherwise, she'd just stare into the fire, feeding it with scraps of paper until she exhausts her supply. Of course, she knew what fire was; that was what the water was for. She figured that made things safe enough.
This was her respite. A process of healing. It wasn't something provided to her or thrust upon her by her father, or her mother, or Sivas, or her teachers. This was hers. She taught herself how to do it.
Tomorrow was a school day. Tomorrow she'd have no choice but to stay in one place for the whole day, and one room for most of that day. Tomorrow she'd spend her only free time sitting next to the closest people she had to "friends", who she only chose to spend time with because they spent the least time gossiping about asinine rumors and talking about a bunch of boring nonsense. Tomorrow she'd come home to a house with nobody in it except for maybe her Dad, and occupy herself quietly with some realm of fantasy. Tomorrow was when the world took control, as it always does.
But tonight belongs to me.
The flame sways in the wind and recedes towards the wood, then re-forms itself, growing back into the same unshaken inferno.