title: the gift - Warren's mother
author: newtypeshadow
fandom: Sky High
notes: a short writing exercise: "Warren didn't know what to make of the gift."
Warren does not know what to make of the gift. It was his father's, he knows. The same flames he has tattooed on his wrists decorate the white square on the cover of the leather-bound book.
"It was his," his mother says.
"I know."
A diary or plan book or book of recipes, it doesn't matter because this was his father's and the police didn't find it, and now it is Warren's and he's afraid of what he'll learn.
"Open it," his mother says, turning to leave. He does, slowly, and a picture falls out. It flutters to the floor, twisting like fire in the still air. His mother stops, picks it up. "You were seven," she says, and hands it to him. In it he is smiling, the puppy the police accidentally shot six years later wriggling in his skinny arms. His mother leaves his bedroom, closes the door.
Warren stares at the man in the picture, large strong hand on the little boy's shoulder; the man whose eyes are dark; whose smile is wide and bright and good. It is not the face of a murderer that stares back into his selfsame eyes. It is his father, and that will never change.