Father of Mine Chapter 2: Quiet, a treasure planet fanfic

Father of Mine: Quiet

Notes: This bit will be of a more simplistic quality than the first; this is set before that first part and is marginally different in quality and whatnot.

Feedback: Even flames are better than nothing. .

Disclaimer: Still don't own 'em.

Set: Jim at the age of two, I believe.

Father of mine

Take me back to the day

When I was still your golden boy

Back before you went away…

-Everclear, 'Father of Mine'

Jim made it a game for himself, sitting on the bottom stair and being as quiet as he could be, mustering all of his reserves to keep voiceless and distinctly out of the way. Peering through the cracks between the slender curves of the bars holding the railing to the staircase, he clasped small hands around the two bars on either side of his head, following the familiar shape of his mother moving from table to table in her unending cycle of work and friendly chatting. She gave him comfort in that unique way mothers had, a protective person he could always trust to be there, and when he was sad, he knew she would hug him and tell him mother things.

Sometimes he tried to do things he knew she liked, such as carrying dishes or picking flowers, but those things made her groan almost angrily when he inevitably tripped or picked flowers he wasn't supposed to. There was one thing he knew she liked a lot, something he could always manage to do if he tried really hard and concentrated until his eyes crossed and he couldn't even sit up straight anymore. If her week had been rough and he knew part of it was because he had been too noisy or pestered her for answers to questions he didn't even understand in the first place, he made sure to be quiet for at least one day the next week.

He would choose someplace where no one could trip over him, like on the bottom stair or on his own bed, and sit quietly, not speaking nor racing about for however long he could manage it without needing to do something just to break the boredom. There were a few times when he was perfectly quiet, a little angel as one of the older women had commented once with a pinch of his cheek he hadn't liked at all, and even though he hated trying to be calm and restraining himself from doing fun things, he thought it was worthy. She would always smile at him at the end of the day and pull him into her lap to hug him with a ferocious bear hug, tickling his neck until his head lolled back as he laughed uncontrollably at the feathery texture, and she would laugh with him.

"I'm very proud of how good you were today," she would say in her serious, loving voice, wrinkling her fingers into his short brown hair and poking his nose with her forefinger to make him cross his eyes reflexively. "Sometimes you drive me nuts, Jim, but you're such a sweet boy. Maybe if you were quiet like this all the time, you'd never get into trouble?" It was a suggestion she always made and one he routinely ignored, finding it much easier to do what he wanted than what it seemed everyone else asked him to do.

But he had woke crying in the morning, remembering the most fleeting of images in his mind, a frightening thought that maybe his dad wasn't coming home ever, and that it was his fault. He had stayed in his bed, slowly shrinking under the covers, and holding his favorite toy to his chest as he rubbed at his face, not wanting to wake his mother up so early with not even the sun awake yet. With the impeccable logic of a child, he was certain that his father might not come home because he had been too noisy, and so he had decided to be quiet.

Maybe if he were quiet enough, his dad would come home on one of the massive ships that took him away, a tall figure he couldn't remember the face of and had blurry memories of the voice that must have been so important. After all, if being quiet made his mother feel better, then why wouldn't it work with his father? And if his father was staying out in the Etherium because he was being too much of a pest, then it made just as much sense that if he stayed quiet long enough, he would come home.

Everything in it made perfect sense to Jim, a chain of thoughts and proven facts that he could connect together to find the goal he was satisfied with, and he smiled, the gap in his teeth prominent as he tightened his grip, excited, around the bars. It occurred to him that if he was very quiet for the next few days, maybe his dad would come home even earlier, and he felt a sense of pride for working it all out on his own, without having to ask his mother for help. He stayed on the last step, pudgy bare feet sliding silently over the polished wood floor, arms hooked around the bars as he peeked through the wooden cylinders at those milling around and talking in the inn's vaulted room, and he rolled his lips in to hold them together in an attempt to keep himself silent. There was a mild rumbling in his tummy and he leaned back from the railing, smacking both of his palms on the wrinkled shirt covering it as if to hold the hunger pangs in and keep them perfectly noiseless.

Looking helplessly at the various delicious foods laid out in front of the cheerfully loud customers, Jim forlornly sank his shoulders, curling his toes in and watching his mother, harried but still smiling pleasantly, swerve around, between tables with steaming, laden plates and bowls. He wanted to stay wholly quiet, perfectly out of the way, but he wrinkled his nose from the effort of ignoring his hunger. He wanted to eat, too, and he wanted to be good enough that his dad would come home, and he tried to ignore the first though he could see with ravenous eyes pastries and meats. Thusly torn, Jim began the one thing he had the least control of, ripping apart as he needed to eat but would need to speak to get the food, and he tried to keep his lips together as the first tear peeled down his cheek.

"Jim," his mother started in a distracted tone, turning from accepting the collection of silver coins a rotund being was handing her with one of his many tentacles, and she moved to look for him anywhere around her ankles or legs. Growing alarmed when she could not find him anywhere about her person or anywhere in the main floor's expanse itself, she twisted sharply, fingers tightening imperceptibly around a crumb-dusted tray, and finally spied him crouched on the lower steps. "Oh, Jim, you scared me," she half-scolded, her tone more relieved than upset, and she noticed upon closer inspection that her beloved toddler was crying. "Jim!" she said again, this time with surprise and alarm as she hastily set the tray on an abandoned table that needed to be run over with a damp cloth. Hurrying as best she could in the swishing confines of a skirt and tightly knotted apron, she fingered a loose strand of dark hair tumbling from her cap behind the protruding curve of her ear.

He stared at her with immeasurably sad, big green eyes, short brown hair mussed into a disheveled appearance by rambunctious boyhood behavior earlier, and she clamped her hands on either side of his face, scraping away tears with her palms and studying his face anxiously. As she knelt on the floor before him to see him the better, her eyes lit on his thinned lips and she slapped her hands down on her knees, saying with growing exasperation mingled with a hint of anger, "James Pleiades Hawkins, what do you have in your mouth?" Jim's returning look was more than a bit startled, eyebrows lowering to wrinkle together as he let her clasp his tiny wrists in her hands, and then he shook his head in argument of her words, still sniffling as his wet cheeks glittered under the flickering solar lights.

"Don't give me that," she warned, lifting her hands to pry gently at his closed mouth, fingertips pushing against the sun-tanned skin, and he shook his head again, trying to pull back before she ruined his protective measure. "Jim, I need to see what you have in your mouth. What if it's something dangerous? Remember when you swallowed that floon berry? Do you remember how sick you were?" At his blank expression, completely devoid of recognition or any faint response that might prove he had memory of that unpleasant circumstance, she sighed wearily and caught his jaw in her hands when he tried to move away, her fingers prodding gently into his cheeks, forcing them up and causing his lips to purse unwillingly. "Jim, stop it," she order sternly, taking advantage of the loosened clamping of lips to pull his jaw open, narrowing her eyes to see what, if anything, was caught on his tongue, in his teeth, or halfway down his throat.

After a moment's careful questing, she leaned back, a little guilty and amused under his deeply reproving glare, small arms crossing over his chest and mouth twisting downward into a childish frown. "Nothin' in mouth, Mama," he scowled, adding plaintively, "Why make talk? Didn't wanna. Wanna stay quiet, like this." He made an elaborate shh sound, sticking his finger up in front of his pursing lips, the warm air expelled forcefully and with the frankness of a small child, which was undoubtedly fitting.

"Oh," she replied in single syllable shame, and she leaned to kiss his forehead in sincere repentance, earning a laugh from him. "That's very nice of you, Jim, but you scared me," she said, making her tone gentle and loving at once, lifting a clean corner of her apron to rub at his glistening face. He raised his chin, contorting his face and grimacing cutely as she scrubbed teasingly at the curving swells of his still chubby face, and he stuck his tongue out in disgust of the cleanly activity. "Don't do that, or your face will stick like that," she played and, thinking on it, he stuck his tongue out even further, crossing his eyes as well. "Jim!" She laughed and grabbed him, twirling him off the stairs and onto her before he could tumble to the floor, sliding herself and landing on the floor, knees bending up. "Now, why were you being quiet, silly?"

He looked up from where he was cast awkwardly, lifting his head and somehow scrambling off to crouch on the floor by her, and he said, seriously, "Quiet Jim is good Jim." He placed his finger in front of his lips again and gave her a soulful look, slowly pulling his hand down to fumble his fingers together and over one another. "Think if really quiet, Daddy come home 'gain," he explained, and he continued hastily, "but Mama make talk, so now Daddy not come. Hafta be quiet 'gain, make Daddy home."

Realization struck and she made a soft, understanding noise, her own face cresting into a saddened existence, and she carefully stood, crouching herself to lean her head down and glance into his own lowered eyes. "Jim, Daddy didn't leave because of you," she spoke gently, "he loves us very, very much." Jim slowly raised his eyes, chin clasped to his collar, and she cupped his cheek in her palm, soothingly speaking in loving tones, "You know that, Jim. He has to go to the Etherium so he can help earn money."

The concept of money still made little sense to him, an abstract and bizarre thought he put little faith or interest in, but he knew his mother earned enough money to do the things she was always fretting over, something he had learned by watching and listening to frustrated mumblings on occasion. "Mama get money," he reproached, finding the fallacy in her speech.

"Yes," she agreed, brushing her hands along her apron in a dismissive gesture, to rid it of what few crumbs still clung tenaciously to the cotton cloth, "I do make enough money running the inn. But your father was raised to think it was always a man's job to earn the money, and because I already ran the inn when I met him, he had to find some other way." It wasn't a whole truth, but her oddly perceptive child was yet too young to fully catch the weakness of her argument, and it was enough to satisfy him for the moment's passage.

"But Daddy come home," he reminded her, anxiously, and she smiled, nodding in an exaggerated fashion to further calm him.

"Daddy will always come home," she promised, bending a little and propping her hands on her knees as one of the customers in the inn mused aloud where the keeper had disappeared to. "I promise that Daddy will never, ever leave you, Jim."

"Cross your heart," he demanded, leaning to hug her around her knees stubbornly until she would surrender to his order, and he gave her his sincerest pouting glower, which only served to backfire, though she played along to it, stilling her smile.

"Cross my heart, hope I die," she intoned from memory, and she carefully unhooked his arms from her legs. "Now, Jim, would you like something to eat?"

"Yes!" he nodded frantically, holding his arms up, sleeves sliding just a little down the skin of his arms, and she scooped him up with practiced ease. "Wanna eat lots an' lots," he continued, wrapping one of his arms behind her neck and waggling the fingers of his other to better convey his want for food. "But make extra, 'case Daddy come home 'day," Jim made sure to add, smiling cherubically when she turned to look at him with a peculiar expression on her face.

"Of course, Jim," she said, protecting the illusion that kept him dreaming. "After all, who can say if Daddy won't come home today? And if he doesn't, maybe he will tomorrow."

"Tomorrow," he repeated with some difficulty, stressing each syllable with a childlike grasp for knowing what it meant. After a quick moment, he nodded solemnly and raised his arm from her neck, holding both of his hands in the air as she set him delicately into a chair with raised side-rails near the bar, knowing fully well that her son was more than capable of leaping out of a chair if it had no sides. "Keep quiet, Daddy get home soon?" he asked, craning around to stare hopefully at her.

"Missus Hawkins, if you don't mind," one of the seated women suggested with a prick of irritation in her voice, and the haggled brunette turned from her son to flash a patient smile.

"Just a moment, Miss Hornfire," she called, and she returned her attention to her son. "Jim, he didn't leave because of you," she clarified gently. "I just told you why." He nodded, but he did not understand, and she hurried to gather her tray again, sweeping over the floor, skirt flaring slightly with each step as she moved to aid the woman waiting amidst a faint hint of impatience.

End Notes: Feedback is always appreciated, especially as I obviously need some critical help. ^-^;