Nicholas Vasil Jr
I cried out.
I cried until I could cry no more. For the betrayal I suffered. For the pain inside of me. I cried.
Nobody loves me. I just want to die.
Maybe I have died?
I dream.
I dream of space, and crystals. Of light and darkness. Of massive beings and the emptiness of space. Of chaos. In that chaos I see a celestial object heading straight toward me.
It projects the pure concept of ...something. I don't know what. I can't understand the pure emotion emanating from it. In the Vasil family feeling emotions is not a good thing. It attracts attention.
Speaking of attention. While I'm waiting for death by planetoid I notice something else here with me. A soul. I gaze into it's eyes and it gazes back. There's a feeling of familiarity between us. Like we've known each other our whole lives, which is impossible of course. I don't even know my mother that well, how could I know this stranger?
I look back up and notice another falling star heading towards my companion. Looks like we're both going to die. Oh well.
"Why are they stopping though?" I ask myself before I feelit.
QUERY
DESTINATION COUNTERQUERY
DESTINATION
MERGING
AGREEMENT
The massive crystals begin merging together. I feel terror briefly. What are those Eldrich Horrors?
I look down to the other soul here with me before I see it coming straight toward me. At quite the velocity.
I close my eyes right before it hits me, then feel death itself claiming me bit by bit. Non-existence is the only thing in my future. I despair more than ever.
I don't want to die. Mom, why did you do this to me? How could you. I trusted you.
I don't want to die Mom.
Won't you hold me for the first time in my life before I die?
I just want to know what it's like to be loved. Even if it's a lie.
I jerked awake when a foot met my ribs. Then I groaned. Goddamit that hurt.
"Congratulations Junior. Looks like you're going to be good for something for once in your life. I was worried that you'd be useless and I'd just have to let your sister keep you as a plaything," I heard a voice say to me. A feminine one. I think I recognized it, but I didn't know from where.
What? Who is Junior? I think that's supposed to be me. I opened my eyes and saw he. A woman with hair dyed red in her forties. I-I recognized her as my mother. I didn't know how that was possible. How could this cruel woman ever be my mother?
I yelped and quickly got up when I got another kick from my mother.
"Don't just sit here moron, now we need to find out what powers you got. Come with me. Now!" Then she turned around with a scowl on her face and left the roon through the steel blast door. The whole room I was in looked like inside of a big safe.
I decided to follow my mother. I didn't know what was happening, but I wanted to. I desperately wanted to understand.
Then I felt the understanding come to me. I was Nicholas Vasil Junior. I was the child of Margaret and Nicholas Vasil. I had an older brother and sister as well as a younger sister.
Today was my 16th birthday, and dear old dad decided it was time to see if I would get powers if he hurt me badly enough. I didn't. Then he got my mother to do it. Now that was someone that could hurt a person. She knew my every failing, my every hope and dream and tore them down with words like an expert in torture. Jack Slash would be proud.
It wasn't even her power, she was actually the healer of the family. She was just that good in cutting people down. She had years of practice.
Apparently it worked because I passed out, and I heard from my siblings that this is when I'll get "accepted into the family" and "if I'll endure it I'll have everything I ever wanted". Yeah right. Like I could be bribed into loving these people. After all these years of hating them. That was simply impossible.
"Now listen up. You see that dummy over there? That's your test #1. Try doing your thing and we'll see how it works. If it doesn't, then we'll look into other options." She pointed her at the other side of the room, and I saw him standing there. The dummy.
It was my brother. Shaking in fear. His pants were stained a dark color on the inside.
He was an artist. All he ever wanted was to draw. In fact he was good at it. The best. He drew 10 to 12 hours a day, every day. The only reason the others left him alone was because he drew portraits so well. And now they were going to use him for target practice? Why? Because he wasn't a Parahuman.
"No. No, don't make me." I whispered.
"You'll do as I say or I'll tell your father. You don't want to displease father do you?"
No, no I didn't. To even attract the notice of Heartbreaker was almost a fate worse than death. My life was relatively stable only because I got so good at being invisible, unimportant and below notice. Looks like that was over now.
That's when I flipped.
I just got so angry. At my father, at my mother, at life in general.
I only remember my mother's body twisting, changing shape, her screams piercing the air with it's inhumanity, then exploding in a shower of pink sludge of skin and meat before I blacked out.
When I awoke for the third time that day I was among rubble.
It was the only thing remaining from Heartbreakers base. Bodies were everywhere. My step-mothers as well as my half-siblings. I did the only thing my instincts told me to. I ran. It was just good advice.
Eventually, months later I found myself sitting on a bench somewhere in a park I didn't know the name of. I was always bad at maps, and memorizing street names and routes and so on, but at least I had the decency to remember the name of the city I was in.
Brockton Bay.
Only two days after my trigger I managed to figure out what happened.
Somehow, when I triggered I acquired a confusing set of memories. It was like I dreamt not one dream, but an entire lifetime. It was a complete story, in vivid detail, but it was about quite an ordinary guy. I would've dismissed it as yet another dream I've had, but I found myself knowing a new language, and on top of that I could hardly recall some things I knew from this life.
I didn't know exactly what was going on, but I was determined to find out. If a cape was messing with me then it was quite a strange time to mess up my head. It was an even stranger method of mindrape. Give me a life's worth of memories, I mean c'mon what's that supposed to accomplish?
Anyway, after my escape I decided to find my half-brother Jean-Paul, who managed to escape from Heartbreaker way before I did. I suppose I could try make it on my own, and I would've probably succeeded, but after that day nothing was ever the same. I wanted desperately to connect with someone.
I was looking for familiar bond that I never got to experience. That's something that neither power nor money can buy you, and if I had a chance then I would grasp it with both of my hands.
And if it turned out that Jean was not someone that could give me what I wanted, only then I would decide that I truly have nothing chaining me to this world anymore. I would be sad for a while, but I would live, always asking myself how it's like for other people.
How it feels to have that familiar bond with someone. Truly, that was something I wanted most in life, and now that I was free from my father. Free to decide for myself, I would take this chance, even if it was astronomically low.
Two hours have passed with me sitting on that bench, almost claiming it as my own for life, when a person approached me. The sun was shining in such a way that it blinded me and I had to squint just to make out anything about the guy.
"You look like you could use some food," he said.
Now a paranoid person (also known as the average citizen of Brockton Bay) might wonder what this is about. Sure I wasn't very clean, but for a homeless person I took good care of myself. Good enough to pass off as just a punk that doesn't like to wash instead of a hobo, at least. If that guy was good enough to spot a starving teenager and recognize his status then kudos to him.
If I was a native I would know better than to accept any offers at all. I just went along with it.
"Sure. Are you offering?"
Turns out that yes, he was offering.
What a nice guy.