A/N: Finally. My muse got distracted, so I just kinda made myself write, and here's the result.
Dentelle Noir: I am so, so, so flattered. 'Wilderness' is so good and... wow. I'm amazed that an author as good as you would write so many reviews.
Karina: Thanks for the grammar .' I'm 3/4 Dane, but I can't speak the language. So it's so appreciated
Flona: Still appreciate the feedback.
Manga: Thanks! Reviews don't only make the world go round but they also make us want to write more.
/ The little boy liked dirt. A lot. It smelled good and felt good underneath his hands and when he got to go to the park he liked it a lot. That was why he was so happy, because his mama had taken him to the park so he was playing in the grass and getting absolutely filthy. The day was pretty and the sky was blue and it was just barely spring.
He patted dark mud into a cake. An acorn cap and a leaf when to make it pretty and all in all he was very proud. He decided to be a baker. That way he'd be able to eat chocolate all day and make cakes. That sounded fun, and he could bring mama a torte everyday. Mama loved tortes.
The little boy decided to give mama his mud cake. She'd admire it and make a fuss over him then give him a bath. Baths were warm and he got to play with his bath toys. Maybe he'd even get a bubble bath for making such a good cake. He stood up and looked over at the bench she usually sat at. A frown crossed his face. Mama always sat there with a book and her purse. But now she wasn't. That wasn't what was supposed to happen.
His nose started to prickle like it always did before he cried. But he didn't want to cry, he just wanted to go home and have a bath. So he sniffed and started to toddle off to find his mama, leaving his cake on the seat in case she came back.
She wasn't at the drink vendor's cart and she wasn't at the bridge or in the rose garden. She wasn't even at the bathrooms, because he'd asked a lady to check for her and the lady said she wasn't there. Trowa started to walk back to their bench and he was really sad that he couldn't find her. He wanted to cry and throw a tantrum but he didn't want to, and he had to find mama first.
He finally found her when he was walking back to the bench. She was sitting on the ground and crying and he wasn't sure why. But he'd found her so now she could take him home and give him a bath. "Mama? I made you a cake out of mud."
Her hands were still wet and salty from her tears when she grabbed him and held him close. It wasn't comfortable for him because she was holding him real close like he was a teddy bear but he liked to cry with his teddy bear too, so he understood. And that was when he saw the smokestack tall and solemn in the sky. Mama didn't like the new metal factory even though Trowa thought it was super neat.
Mama cried about a lot of things. The factory, whenever she saw someone with a shaved head, when someone moved to quick around her and especially when Trowa asked if he had a grandma like the kids in the radio shows. When he was littler he'd cry with her, but by now he was a big boy and he knew she wouldn't get up for a long long time if he cried too. He just needed to get her to get up and then they'd walk home and he would try to do all the things that made her laugh and maybe by the time they were home she'd be okay enough to give him a bath. /
/The lights were all turned off when Trowa entered the apartment. He groaned. This was not a good sign.
He set his bag of groceries down on the counter and put away the milk, so that it wouldn't sour. Then he went around the suite and turned on all of their radios, filling the rooms with the soft sounds of a Saint-Caens flute concerto. Absentmindedly Trowa admired the flute player's tone. The air stream had to be incredibly smooth to be so steady and he felt such jealousy well within his heart.
Every lamp in the house was then turned on, helping the gloom with their rosy colored lampshades. He went to his mother's bathroom door which was securely locked and rapped the door three times, then twice. She finally emerged, eyes red from crying. Her voice wavered, "I was scared that they'd taken you too."
"I had gone to the store Mama, we drank all of the milk this morning, remember?" He said gently, leading her back into the bathroom and sat her down onto the cream yellow chair which as there for this exact purpose. He ran the water in the sink and set a washcloth under the stream. She asked timidly, "Reginald? Are you mad with me?"
The water was cool to the touch as he wrang out the washcloth. He ran it over her eyes gently, his voice calm, "Mama, I'm not Reginald. He's been dead for 20 years. I'm Trowa, your son."
"Oh." Her voice as airy. She didn't know what she was saying. She often mixed him up with her brother, but he understood because from pictures he knew they looked very similar. None the less, she usually was lucid enough to tell the difference.
When he finished washing her face he opened the medicine cabinet and pulled out a bottle. He poured a bit onto a spoon and she obediently opened her mouth and drank it all. Trowa helped her to her feet and eased her into bed, taking off her shoes and pulling the covers over her. She slept deeply from the medicine and wouldn't wake screaming from nightmares. It made her groggy for a few days after, but the night before last she'd spent the whole time baking cookies and he'd had to stay awake and keep an eye on her. He was still tired from that and needed a night of quiet.
Somewhere in the back of his mind he knew that this wasn't the normal life for a 12 year old boy. Somewhere he knew that it was unfair that he couldn't go to school with the other little boys and had to be home schooled. But his Mama needed him, so that didn't matter. He just shut off the lights and radio and swiftly fell asleep in his bed./
/His mother had met Frank in one of her stays at the hospital. She'd been diagnosed with bipolar disorder and post traumatic stress disorder and she needed to go to her psychologist twice a week. Frank was a nurse working there and he fell for her. She was beautiful, her hair the same russet blonde as Trowa's and her figure was still slim after all of the years. He was handsome and broad shouldered and he understood what she was going through. When she heard he was Jewish also, she accepted a date from him and they fell in love.
Frank liked Trowa, a rarity in the men who'd chased his mother. He appreciated what Trowa had done for her and when he married Mitzi, he talked her into letting her son attend high school. So when he was 14 he entered school. His reading skills weren't quite up to par and neither was his grasp on history (his mother's teaching had been to biased) but his math was found to be incredibly high.
His life had always had one big focus point; his mother. When Frank had entered the picture he'd taken care of everything Trowa had been doing. So when the teachers found his savant like ability in math, that then became his focus. He threw himself into math and science with an almost religious fervor because it was something to do. Because he wasn't defined by who he was, he felt, he was defined by how was getting there./
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Quatre loved sports. He loved track and field, he loved swimming, he loved baseball and he loved wrestling. Sports that were all about speed and wit instead of brawn, he excelled at. He'd entered the restaurant that morning with that mindset. But that night, that had all shattered.
His legs couldn't be saved. The doctors amputated from his mid thigh down and Quatre kept thinking that he could feel his toes, whether they were there or not. The doctors were kind and understanding and gave him plenty of morphine, but he kept thinking that if they'd really cared for him they should have just let him die when he was under the anesthesia.