Hello! It is Wednesday and I am back with a new chapter. When I first created Eli, there were certain things that I knew about his past that I felt I wouldn't really tackle because of how raw it was. I stand corrected! I tackled something quite personal to his youth in this chapter. This chapter will deal with Eli's father, Achmed, finding personal musings in a diary of his son, leading him to wonder if his sexuality is something that must cause him fear. If that subject matter is something that upsets you, I would skip this one. For those reading, though, this is a vulnerable moment in his life where he begins to (sadly) know that he cannot be himself in his own home. I hope you enjoy regardless :)

Disclaimer: I own the story and the OCs mentioned!

"You mustn't assume the worst." A wife tried to console her husband by breezing past him, a spectre of attempted serenity in her white night clothes which billowed like the lace curtains in the summer wind. "You mustn't assume that your fear is reality."

Kathleen corrected herself after she uttered her initial words, seeking refuge on the end of the bed next to her husband, taking a moment before a hand was placed on his shoulder. She immediately noticed his perspective had wormed its way into the swirls of her mind. And it was because of this more than anything that her hand laid to rest on Achmed's shoulder.

Achmed continued breathing in a harrowed fashion, one hand clutching the pages which had brought him such distress and the other being raised to his lips, icy blue and trembling like he had been caught in one of the regions famous snow storms.

Consolation did not come easily to him. In fact, it did not come to him at all.

"I don't assume my fear is reality. I know that it is." He snapped in response to his wife, his words coming across like a blizzard in spite of the fact that they were whispered. Achmed didn't want anyone to hear his fears. He did not want to hear his own fears. "Of course it is."

He vehemently stressed to the woman trying to be a soothing presence, at last unable to clutch at the book between his fingers at all and allowing it to slide down the remainder of his lap. He avoided looking at it like an eclipse.

However, he did not feel the wonder at something that came once in a blue moon. Within his stomach, he felt like all of his insides were falling apart and his world was crashing down.

Kathleen did not offer any more words of anything after she was snapped towards, let alone words of comfort. Her touch slowly drifting away from the shoulder of her husband, she did not know what else she could say.

Her gaze fell down towards her own lap which was undecorated with the book that had agonised her husband so. Her lips twitched as though she wanted to say words, longing to. But they did not dare form. They did not dare displease Achmed. And they did not dare betray her mind and the times.

Her mouth knew it should not defend her son. And so it didn't.

"Of course he is." Achmed needed to hear the sound of his own voice instead of the silence when unlike he; Kathleen hadn't found the value of his own tones. "How could it not be so?" He continued, ridding himself of the company of the notebook with a frustrated shake of his legs. "The dancing. The gesticulations. The fact that he took more of an interest in high heels than his sister! Of course he is!"

Achmed believed that ridding himself of the presence of that blasted book and those godforsaken words would have eased the turmoil in his core but as moments passed, he got all the more riled up yet again. Not even a brushing of the lips with a trembling finger was able to bring his streaming down a level.

Taking a great risk, Kathleen exhaled out from taut lips and reached down to lift the diary up from off the floor, not feeling any great emotion at all when it was held between her hands. If emotions could have a price tag, she would have liked to browse at the selection.

The only thing she truly felt was that she knew it was wrong for Achmed to have snooped in their son's diary in the way that he had. A private and inward head shake for only her to know, the pad of her thumb lightly dug into the most offending page of all.

Her husband should have known better. But he didn't. And he should have known better than to assume. But he didn't. From the moment that their son had sparked too much joy for everything that brought him alive rather than the appropriate amount, Achmed had viewed it all with suspicion and contempt.

Kathleen finally voiced some of her opinion, the grip on the diary loosening and her thumb can't helping but trace along the sprawl of her son's handwriting, as if it was the Holy Grail and she was trying to protect it with her touch.

"If you didn't want him to love dancing so then you shouldn't have made him perform for all of your friends. And if you didn't want him to take an interest in his sister's life then you should not have made him a brother." She tried to tell Achmed as calmly as she could. However, her voice wavered like a leaf on the seafront that was close to being captured and sent to the bottom of the depths. "He's only a child. A child who is expressing himself."

It was not uncommon for this couple to not see eye to eye. In fact, their gazes were like identical ends of a magnet when it came to sharing the view of any of their children, especially their son.

Achmed could not believe that Kathleen thought this way. And somehow he could not believe he was disagreeing with her.

Standing up from the end of the bed as though he couldn't bare being near such a person who thought those views, he voiced his truth yet again.

"He is no child." He argued, taking himself over to the window in the hopes that the lace of the curtains would come alive in the summer breeze and encompass him, offering him the respite that his wife could not. "And he expresses himself in all the wrong ways. Not as a man. But as a-"

His body facing the window which looked down on the valleys of their home town which rested beneath a twinkling, clear sky, Achmed's head turned back to Kathleen. With a jolting and shaking motion, he made his point and did not dare finish his sentences.

It was not because he was against using such a word to describe anybody, least of all his son. Achmed simply could not bare the greatest fear – no, intuition of his – becoming wholeheartedly reality.

Even though he was no longer joining her on the bed, Kathleen sunk further down against the mattress as though his hefty presence was causing her to sink. Her shoulders practically melted into her upper arms, her lips becoming the straight lines of the road which drove away from their home in Johto.

There was no getting through to Achmed when he didn't want to be accessed. If he thought a certain way about their son then it brought unrest to her heart. But she was powerless to change his mind. She could only build that boy of theirs up in moments of privacy between them both and as best as she could.

He would soon enough be brought crashing out. It seemed as though Achmed had only one solution simmering through him. He had grown tired of speculation. He needed answers. Even if that meant the end to their family of five.

"I'm going to confront him and ask what in God's name he's hinting had with all of this drivel." Achmed made his mind up, separating himself from everything the open window had to offer him and walked over to his wife, snatching the offending diary from her thoughtful clutch. "He best have a straight answer for me."

Horror filled the eyes of Achmed's wife, the whites of them watering as if she had been hit with a blustery breeze. Her initial instinct was not to disagree with him yet again. Her heart was being torn apart at the idea of protecting one love of her life and disobeying the other.

"But he will be asleep right now. You mustn't wake him." She tried to reason with him and with all of her small but mighty strength she attempted to supress the true emotions of her heart.

As if their fifteen year old son was still just a baby, she could not bare the idea of him being snatched from dreamland and woken up when he was feeling the benefits of catching some z's.

Opposing this notion entirely, their son's carefree and relaxed sprit had always irked Achmed so.

"Well then he had best wake up and give me the best answer he can muster." Thundered Achmed in return and with that, not another word was spoken between the couple on that night. The diary was clutched in the firm grasp of the man even though he could feel the pads of his fingers crawling, as though the very fear he had for his son was causing him to grow contaminated.

All Kathleen could do was be left behind and pray for the best when her husband fled their room, feeling in equal measures the relief of his lack of presence as well as the heaviness that he would soon be inflicted on Eli.

She lacked a deity to look up to, she always had done. But it was moments in such as those that she looked to someone – anyone – to watch over the whole house and beg that things would turn out the way that they needed to.

It was hard to accept that fate led it to be a path of pain that was the one that seemingly needed to be taken. But it was what it was. And it needed to be swallowed.

Eli was not asleep when his father at least managed to do somewhat of the right thing by knocking on his son's door before barging in. He was not asleep but he was engaging in an activity that brought him all the more innermost peace than visiting a land of dream.

Feeling the pressure of his headphones as it was connected to a cassette tape hanging on for dear life in the inside of his pocket, his fingers tinkled away on the ivories, poised digits playing along to the song in his ears to utter perfection.

Or that's what he thought. When he was one with the music and he was hearing soundless words of encouragement through the vibratos of their vocals, his ease on the piano felt nothing but faultless to him. When he was doing what he loved most alongside invisible people that he loved most, he was taken to a whole other realm.

It was just him and the people he wanted to be alongside. Well, person, mostly. He was just he and the person who was like a deity to him and that same figure who he wanted to be exactly like.

Eli still had a smile etching across his youthful face as his fingers continued playing along to the piano ballad when his father had grown restless with knocking and speaking his son's name and waiting for the tune to come to a halt. The sparkle in his eyes between close lids was still present when Achmed barged into his room.

However, everything was eventually ripped away from him when he marched right over to his fifteen year old son and didn't bother tapping him on the shoulder, instead, ripping the headphones straight off his ears.

He was stopped from travelling further into another dimension.

"Elijah?" Achmed at least gave his son a couple more chances to acknowledge him before the headphones were fully ripped away from his being. But not for much longer. "Elijah?!" he hissed, his pinkie finger wrapping around the plastic head piece of the headphones, somehow that single digit possessing enough strength to rip the veil of serenity from his son's world. "Speak to me."

Eli positively jolted like he had been punished by an electric chair. But then somehow he regained his composure and presented himself in a collected manner, catching his headphones at the last minute before they were sent crashing down to the floor of his bedroom.

He hung them back around his neck like they were a decorative scarf, inwardly already knowing and glad that he could still hear the distant vocals of his friends travelling from the ear pieces that were no longer wrapped around his head.

"Did you not hear me knocking?" Achmed questioned, though there really was not point to come getting these words across. If Eli had heard, then he would have replied. He had enough respect – or rather unease – for his father to not purposefully ignore him.

Bringing his fingers slowly away from the keys of his piano in spite of the fact that they had stopped actually playing a good few moments ago, Eli stretched them out in order to relax, sinking further back against his chair for good measure, too.

Then, his shake of the head came as well as an answer, his youthful curls fresh after his bed-time shower bouncing and grooving on the top of his head.

"I didn't. I was doing homework." Eli was highly trained enough to make sure that his acknowledged his father with eyesight as well as words. After he looked right at him, trying to muster an easy going smile, he broke the distance back away from the back of the chair and a movement of the wrist did some of the talking. "If you'll excuse me, I'll get right back to it."

Fortunately avoiding another bout of stress, Achmed was at least somewhat pleased that Eli reached for a school work book that was resting where music would usually be laid out on a piano as well as for one of the pens that were meticulously ordered just in his reach. Naturally, he did not show this for a second, though.

At least Eli was not going to blag his way and make out that what he had been doing before was for the purpose of school, Achmed thought to himself. But then he feared otherwise when his son began to write in that precise, swirly penmanship of his, words that did not appear to be related to any subject at his school at all.

"And you expect me to believe that the splendid boarding school in Unova I pay for you to attend has you writing this sort of drivel, do you?" he questioned, managing to resist his hand touching onto his own face and craning closer to his fifteen year old son.

A beat was missed. A beat was missed where I'm told that Eli's gaze dropped briefly to the floor, rolling his pen in between some of his fingers before figuring out what sort of response he should create.

He knew disagreeing with his father was a recipe for disaster.

"I'm not there to question their educational methods, sir. I am required to simply follow along." He answered and with that, the black ink pen stopped between rolled between forefinger and thumb and grew poised, ready to decorate swirly sprawl across a lined page.

Eli was not the type of teenage boy who followed instructions let alone rules all that well. Achmed knew this more than anyone because he was displeased with it more than anyone. Instead of feeling like he had a son who was innovative and thought outside of the box and would go far with the musings of his mind, he was disgusted.

There was a time and a place for people who thought differently. The time was never. And the place was behind bars.

Achmed would have usually felt his inner being twitching with some sort of almost pleasant emotion that his often airy-fairy son was thinking of his educational prospects and in turn, the future. However, there was still one thing tugging at the back of his mind. And it was this niggling notion that caused him to tug his son's seat back with his hand before he could dive into the realm of homework for good.

"I'm glad to see you're allowing yourself to benefit from the school at last, Elijah." He told his son in what was as close to praise as one could receive from the man that was Achmed. His hand didn't falter on the back of his chair. "I wish to speak with you presently, however. And I expect you to sit over there on your bed so you aren't distracted by any of your usual, frivolous nonsense."

Achmed's hand gripping tighter around the wood of his son's chair, Eli missed a beat again as he knew that it could be argued that the position in which his father expected of him was far more detrimental.

He knew that from sitting down on the end of his own bed, he could see far more of the faces on the posters of his chosen room décor and this was highly likely to bring him to a level of distraction that Achmed simply despised.

But of course, disagreeing with his father was something that he just did not do if he wanted to have a pleasant night sleep. So never mind how slowly and inwardly begrudgingly Eli left his seat, he obeyed the expectation for him.

"Yes, Father…" he mumbled the words as his bottom left the warm refuge that had been sat upon for quite a few hours and moved to press down on the edge of his bed, immediately enveloped by the sensation of faultlessly ironed duvet covers beneath him.

For such a huge source of turmoil for him and for something taking up a large space in the back of his mind like a looming black hole, Achmed had somehow managed to keep his son's offending diary concealed from him and hidden behind his back in all moments leading up to this one.

But then, it was revealed from the company of his spine like a child being reunited by family that it never knew it possessed. Eli felt himself sinking further down against the bed when he caught a glimpse of his own property but he was soon enough forced to focus on words of his parent instead.

"I want you to explain to me what on earth all of this writing is and what on earth it means." Achmed voiced his expectations yet again, trying to compose his secret inflation of his heart rate as he held the notebook between both hands, feeling that uncomfortable feeling slithering along his digits yet again. "And your response had better be a valid one."

The diary was then tossed through the air and towards its owner and caught in a perfect catch. For one, single moment, Eli watched it coming towards him in slow motion and felt his stomach lurch and not because he feared the ridiculing of if he had clumsily let it drop to the floor.

Holding it then in his own clutch and experiencing tingling spreading through his own fingers but in an entirely different way, Eli pondered his father's expectation and knew that the initial response of his that sprung to mind was not the one that was asked of him.

But it was the one that was true to him. And with apprehension catching at the back of his throat, the fifteen year old boy took his first chance by voicing exactly this.

"This is my journal." He told his father blankly though of course, he had already admitted to reading it. He knew exactly what it was. "This is my writing. This is just for me. I don't think you should have been reading it, do you?"

Continually blank were Eli's words and this quality laced his expression, holding his property back in his hands and trying to conceal his shaking digits holding onto it.

Achmed believed everything that his son was oozing was petulance. And immediately, he snapped at him, leaving Eli to thank his lucky stars that his father was not still in possessing of his black book or it would have been smacked across his head.

"Explain yourself to me!" he thundered. He had shown no qualms about waking his son up if he had been dozing in his bed and in that moment he seemingly did not care about waking anybody else up.

Eli fought to not allow his often wide eyed and expressive features to not show anything other than blankness. His heart privately racing right between his lungs at the idea of his father pawing through his innermost musings, he again took a very fateful chance by speaking his mind.

He closed his diary between his two hands, his thumb poking in between some of the pages so he could feel the comfort of what was written without his father peering down at any more of his adoring sprawl.

"I just did." He murmured, forgoing the word "sir" for another occasion and those wide eyes of his somehow finding the courage to look right at his father. A shrug of his shoulders and his curls wavering, he added. "It's my journal. And it's for me."

Achmed wanted to scoff. Achmed wanted to scoff at the sheer idea of his son having something that was just for him. He could not be trusted to have something that was for him and him alone. His tastes were not refined. His world view was hardly developed. He did not know what he should feel, yet alone what he should think.

Scoffing would have been the kinder option. Instead, due to the uncontrollable frustration that Eli had an outlet that was not known by Achmed until that moment; he lunged forward and snatched the diary back off his son even though the last thing he wanted was to be contaminated by the uncleanliness of what resided inside.

"It's your writing, is it not?!" Achmed stormed like a hurricane for the second time before a summer breeze washed through the entire house, encouraging him to cool down. Disdain of the things that his son wrote about slithered from the palm of his hand towards his pulsating wrist. "Is it your writing? Is it your words?"

Somehow more than when he had raised his voice at him and even more than the chilling breeze that swept through the house, Eli found himself freezing at the core when Achmed made himself continue more calmly; more reasonably.

Swallowing the dryness that encapsulated his throat there and then, Eli hesitated answering with what intuition told him. From the get go, though he hid it with answering lightly back, he knew that he was done for. He knew that his father would not stop until he got answers of the truth. And when the truth was revealed, that was going to be it for him.

He could not let that be it for him, he thought to himself. But he could not lie. How he was going to play that one was an utter mystery to him.

"It's my writing from my pen, yes…" Eli hesitantly answered after Achmed continually looked at him, all the more haunted by the fact that his father's gaze then appeared sorrowful rather than filled with rage. He appeared like a little boy who had been denied a lollipop at the sweet shop. "But it's not my words. They're lyrics. From songs. I could not write magic such as that myself."

In that moment, Eli obscured from his view the innocently sorrowful demeanour from his father and spread apart the pages of his book with that thumb of his that had been residing there, in order to adoringly bask his eye sight on everything that he had written.

Ignoring everything on the outside, he focused on the feeling on the inside as his touch traced along the magic. He practically swelled inside, that warmth and that light that he felt radiating through his core, being shown on his face as admiration, pride and yes, love.

Achmed could read situations well enough to catch each and every trait that was being displayed on the features of his fifteen year old son as he gazed upon the words of his own diary. Needless to say, it was the last word and the last feeling that jolted into a reaction yet again.

It seemed that gone was the rage; gone was the frustration. All that was left was a sad little boy that felt dismayed inside the exterior of a father who was like a hammer in his household.

"But what does it mean?" Achmed attempted to lure answers out of his son who was refraining from looking at him. Then when he finally gave him a hesitant glance that was the briefest as could be, he could immediately read that his son would be prepared to divulge him in answers that the heroes of his offered in interviews. "Why do you write them…?"

To counteract the warmth, it was Eli's turn to feel as though he had been caught in a blizzard when Achmed chose to sit down next to him on the bed and reach across; turning the pages for himself while the book remained in the teenage boy's hold.

He felt icy and violated, like he was being touched in ways that he felt uncomfortable with. And Eli knew that it was far more than just his father pawing through words that he had so dotingly and so wholeheartedly put his mind, heart and soul into transcribing.

His father's voice was softer and more hushed. But in an instant, he knew it would turn again. He knew answers were attempting to be drawn from him. And he had to be careful not to give them up under the guise of Achmed trying to actually connect with him.

"Because they were written for me…" Eli explained and inside of his mind that was often so decorated with and echoed each and every lyric that the miraculous band which he idolised so had bestowed upon the world, he vowed that this would be the only answer he would offer. "That's how it feels."

In Eli's mind, it took a lot for his father to break. After all, he was a businessman and a family man in every aspect; strong and stoic and with a firm, rational head upon his shoulders. However, when it came to that fifteen year old young man, he could crumble.

No, not because he melted under the sunken yet inquisitive orbs and that smile that wasn't freely given away yet encompassed all when it finally was sent to fly. Eli was everything that was wrong with the boys of the day, Achmed believed. And he was dismayed that he had raised yet another statistic.

In some ways, Eli preferred when his voice rose up against him. At least then he could gauge for good what he was thinking. When he didn't know what he was thinking, he would always hurriedly add more words and end up saying things that he wanted to keep for himself.

That moment there was no exception.

"They want more for themselves than just the one thing and just the one life and just the one ambition." There was a tiny part of him that wanted his father to understand. Not understand him. But to understand them. Aflame cheeks contrasted the ghostly white pages. "I feel the same way…"

Disappointment coursed through Achmed's veins and it caused his head to shake though he didn't leave from sitting on the bed next to his son. It goes without saying that this was not a display of affection, more a point of authority and suffocation.

He did not hesitate from getting his own point across, unlike how Eli felt. If unconditional love and support did not mould the teenager into the man that he needed to be, he hoped that disdain and disappointment may do the trick.

"You have one life and one shot and you're lucky enough to get even that with the way that you turn your back on what really matters." Achmed tried to shatter his son's dreams in order to bring him a success that he approved of. He didn't understand how a baby that was the light of his life had turned into someone so unfeasible. "You have brought me nothing but despair since you got into that band and you focused more on yourself than them…"

A shake of the head was then accompanied by the momentary burying of a head within hands. That was all Eli could be certain of, though, because he prevented his vision from seeing anymore, instead choosing to focus his eyes and his hearts calling to the faces of the people on the posters surrounding his room.

Though wetness threatened to decorate his naturally wide eyes, he attempted to blink them back. But he could not ignore the devastated slow thudding of his heart and the lump that constricted his throat more and more with each silent yet all-encompassing drum beat inside of him.

Of course Eli focused on the members of that band and especially their front man when knowing them all helped him know himself. Listening to their voices whether it was through a song or through an interview made his lonely world a whole lot less lonesome.

He should have known that something that brought his father great anger was going to bring him nothing but unbridled joy. He wished more than anything that he could tell him the light and the purpose which he had felt stumbling across one of their biggest performances on the radio all those years ago, and how their kindness and their talented and reached out to him and won his heart.

But his happiness would only despair his father more. So all he could do was defend his friends rather than the admiration that he felt for them all.

"I can guarantee you that if you listened to them more than just a casual passing from radio station to radio station then you would become addicted to the feeling of being one of their champions, too…" Eli began in a mundane voice which he planned to do. But he did not plan the shaky adrenaline which took over his being next. And this naturally fuelled words he did not intend to say. "If you could see what I see… Feel what I feel. You would be inspired to write down every one of their lyrics too. If you could allow yourself to feel the support, magic and love radiating from each of them but especially-"

Achmed did not allow his son to say anymore. He remained present on the bed and next to him. But his thoughts and his fear for what he knew these words to truly be and truly mean sent his mind thrashing everywhere.

He grabbed hold of Eli's wrist as he continually held onto that diary of his but he did not have the strength to hurt him due to how much he had become like a leaf right before it dropped down dead in the winter.

"I do not like where these words are heading, Elijah…" Achmed confessed to his son in return to what seemed to be like a confession from Eli. A sweaty palm unhooked from his wrist. It was again used to pluck at his lip for some semblance of composure. "Do not bring this upon me. Do not tell me that these immoral people have truly led you down a corrupt path. Especially-"

A rushing of air escaping from the parted lips of Eli stopped Achmed from finishing his sentence and saying any names in particular. And as if that exhalation of breath had blown him away from sharing close proximity with his son, he stood up and ran a trembling hand over his shiny head.

"Father…" Eli breathed out another time although he did this to distract himself from the combination of a thudding heart as well as lungs that were feeling as though they were going to collapse on the inside of him.

In truth, he had not a single idea of what he was going to say. His unintentional yet very poignant confession had gone down in this way. So imagine an actual one, and a complete telling of truth.

It didn't bare thinking about.

At the best of times, the lack of hair upon Achmed's head made him an unapproachable sort of person to have as a father but it times of conflict and distress, it only made matters worse. As he stood up off the bed and brought trembling digits to an equally anxious lower lip, Eli could see his heart rate thudding underneath his bald skull and it made him know that he could not be the one to utter more words.

"I know you, Elijah…" Achmed suddenly began again and Eli couldn't stop himself from outwardly flinching. As well as this, his eyes turned to puddles. But he fiercely made a point of not blinking and he got away with his second gesture because of how often he could be found articulating a steady stare. "I know what this means." His son didn't allow himself to feel the constricting fear of a change of words and intention. "Do not allow this to be…"

When Eli focused on the silhouette of his father looming over him that he didn't dare look directly at like the sun in the middle of a hot day, he knew how much his father did know him. But it wasn't due to taking the time to lovingly study each and every quirky action of him and arrive at a place of understanding from the hours of accepting focus.

It was because he saw the worst in him. It was because he saw what he feared. And Eli had become both of these things.

Eli dreamed of a day where maybe one day he could tell people who he truly was and to still have arms wrapped around him when he returned from school and a freshly made bed to collapse onto when the sun went down.

However, in that moment he knew that that notion was far from reality. He had to accept his reality for what it was. He had to accept his daydreams for what they were. Just dreams. And he had to be the person that his father needed him to be. And not the disappointment that his true self could be labelled as. Among other things.

Eli felt as though he would never have a whole heart again when he ignored everything that Achmed had said about his heroes and he had said about himself. He forced a smile and he mimicked bravery that quirked up his lips. He tried to look as though it was the most natural thing in the world to possess ease.

How much longer could be put on a façade?

"Father… You mustn't fret." Eli began, coming to the realisation that actions were going to be his best friend in that scenario and so he decided to rid himself of the diary for the night. He reached across his bed and laid it to rest in his drawer. "I have people who show me who I want to be and who I don't want to be, doesn't everyone…?" It was Achmed's turn not to blink. "I'll try to do better. I'll try to focus on my own path rather than others."

Eli conceded and although Achmed was hearing the words that he had wanted to hear, there was an undeniable part in the back of his mind that knew they were too good to be true. It was this that caused his bald head to shake and with vulnerable, somewhat tear-stained eyes, utter the name of his son all over again.

"Elijah…" he breathed out, the throbbing heartbeat in his head slowing down yet becoming all the more noticeable to his son. And if he wasn't going to add more words to his sentences before then he definitely felt compelled too in that moment.

Eli swallowed, his smile filled with nausea but Achmed told himself it was sincerity.

"What's a family without trust…?" he spoke Achmed's motto for his family back to him and then he even embellished it with some words that he needed with his whole broken heart to lead to the end of the conversation and their time together in his bedroom. "And what's a young man without sleep?"

Achmed was a reasonable man, he told himself. Although there were siren noises ringing in his ears that his son was pulling the wool over his eyes, he knew that if he was to bleat those words back to everybody else day in day out, then he needed to believe them himself when they were spoken back to him.

And so, just one of Eli's many wishes was granted on that night. Hesitantly, Achmed nodded his head. And after stiffly ruffling his stoic fingers through his son's curls, he headed off for the night. He knew that Eli was not telling him the whole truth. But in that moment, he just needed to believe him. Because otherwise, his whole world would collapse. And he was not ready for that to happen.

Apparently Eli was ready for that to happen. There was almost a masochistic streak arising in Eli on that night when right before his father stepped over the threshold of his room, he asked a question that's answer would shatter his world. Yet somehow see it for the way he always knew it was the way it was too.

"Out of curiosity, what would happen if I had confessed to what you suspected…?" Eli wondered, somehow knowing his father well enough to know that this would go over his shiny head.

Achmed stiffened before his hand rose towards his own face, instead of caressing his lip, that time his touch roaming along the facial hair which resided there. At the best of times, it resembled a bristle that longed to sweep away everything he believed to be a flaw within his fifteen year old son.

Eli could see him shudder even if he didn't outwardly express it.

"Then all trust would be gone for good…" Achmed's eloquent voice spoke, and immediately a nod of the head erupted from the fifteen year old boy. What came next would be a lot harder to move his skull in time to. "And I would cease to have a son."

And with that, a nod of the head was gesticulated from Achmed too and he intended to have the last word. Eli tried to hold his gesture back because how could he nod to words such as those? How could he nod to a confession of his own from his father, telling him that he had no future with his family if that was the path that he chose?

But in truth, even if it was becoming harder and harder to do, he was an expert in keeping his true wants and his true needs to himself. And it was this expertise in maintaining a façade that betrayed him and nodded his head.

He went against all actions of love towards himself and uttered with a queasy smile.

"Well I hope you feel fortunate to have a son to carry on the family name, then…" Eli questioned as much as he stated. But he never got an answer. He was never sure whether Achmed heard or not because in the split second that followed, he left his eye sight and the door was slammed behind him.

If he had of heard, then it was hard to know whether he would be enraged by the notion that he knew he was being lied to – or he would go on to weep over the fact that he really would end up without a son.

One person that absolutely wept was Eli. That night he buried his head under his pillow and under the watchful eye of all of the people that he loved so, liquid escaped from his eyes and drenched the cotton and he knew he had betrayed them. He knew he had betrayed himself and his needs. But what else could he do?

He was stuck. He would always be stuck. That was how he felt. But that's the furthest thing from the real truth even if it was the truth that the fifteen year old Eli felt.

You see, as I tell you this story, that now man still buries his head under his pillow but he does it under vastly different circumstances. However, that is for another moment in time. That is for another story.

In the meantime, we have just one more titbit. And all of it is part of the album of Eli's life.

The memories for that same man following that night and crying himself until he finally succumbed to dreamland were hazy. There were moments in between that he couldn't deny. The end of the band that he felt that he knew because of the devastating loss of the lead performer. Him finally having enough of lying and being ready to accept the consequences no matter the cost.

The consequences being losing his family and his home. Going from foster placement to foster placement. War. The kind with weapons as well as the one inside himself. Sometimes there were only flashes of memories.

Studying in Kanto. His cousin meeting the love of his life. Babies being made. Becoming an uncle. Gaining recognition of his own. Becoming further away from that fifteen year old kid he had once been.

And then the moment that our current story takes us to.

Eli did not know the reason why he had got on a plane from Unova back to Johto with the only thing on his mind being seeing his father yet again. He didn't hope for reconciliation, far from it. He knew that wasn't on the cards with everything that he had done and been way back when he was a teenager and in the years following that.

He supposed that he at least owed it to his father to check on him. He was an old man then. Eli's mother was no longer a figure on the earth and was only in his mind and in his heart. He had lost contact with his sister's many page turns of a calendar ago. All he had was himself.

Perhaps there was a part of him that knew Achmed was the same. So for this he just needed to try. Just once.

For a rare occasion, as Eli in his black hoodie veil wandered to the location where he knew that long estranged father of his was still living, no music of his heroes played in his ears and their voices did not lend a soundtrack to that moment of his life.

They had captured many other moments for themselves, Eli knew it. Oddly, this one was just for himself and the sounds of night time in Johto that it had to offer. Though in truth, he focused more on what was to offer visually the closer that he crept to what had once been a family home.

His hands sought refuge further and further into his pockets as he passed the great wall that was just a few metres from his home in which people who didn't think his family – or his "kind" – were welcome and so wrote horrible words in spray painted letters across.

The residue of those callous comments was still there and though they were in actuality invisible, Eli could still see them as clear as day and in the middle of the night.

You would have thought that nobody had heard of a family from Ammon settling in Johto before, he mused to himself.

All the memories of growing up and frolicking there rolled off like water off a ducks back as Eli made his way up the path leading to what had once been a home but was then just a house. He tried not to feel all that much other than duty. But inside his hammering heart, with each pound, it was reminding him that he would come face to face with his father.

Eli did not know why he was doing that. His answer had been that he had a duty to people who had once been his family. Nevertheless, that answer didn't settle right in his stomach. He hadn't known the real reason when he stepped on the plane. And he knew it even less when he was on the porch.

Still, his bottom teeth appeared briefly before they disappeared again, biting on his bottom lip and then sucking on his top lip. Eli didn't think he was being brave. He didn't know what it was. He felt nothing. So he felt that it was nothing.

To reveal him more, a hand ran into and under the black veil of his hood and exposed his straightened quiff as well as shaved sides of the haircut that he had possessed for years. It wasn't bravery that he showed off more of himself as he stood on the porch. In fact, it might have been stupidly.

A sandpaper-like mouth and a heart that longed to pound harder and equally longed to stop pounding altogether, the balled fist of Eli reached out and he knocked. That sound took him back. But he didn't not allow himself to go any further back.

Duty was the reason that he was there, nothing else more. Maybe curiosity. But that seemed less mature. His father had always wanted him to be that. It was ironic how he had gained those qualities without him drumming them into it.

To accompany a drum of a knocking, a silence was heard and then a barking from inside was set free. It was when the first syllable could be heard that it dawned on Eli that it was the middle of the night. And for such an old man that his father must have been, it was a nightmare to be disturbed at this hour.

"Who in God's name is it?" A tone of voice ripped through the desolate house and Eli's being also, though he encouraged his mind to step back and willed no part of him to react to the words that he heard. He kid himself so hard and so long that he hadn't heard a single sound at all, that Achmed from inside erupted again. "If you're one of those pesky kids who-"

Yes, Eli had once been a pesky kid but he was not that same entity in that moment. He had gone through events enough for a lifetime. He had experienced loss and a curse in which made him half the man he had once been. But he had found love and courage which made him into a whole new person.

He still had the wounds from his childhood and his teenage years; there was no doubt about this. But his wounds were no longer the same. They were present and they were deep. But they were no allowed to be felt.

"I'm not a kid." He replied from the other end of the door, his balled fist still gracing the glazed glass of it even though he had long since stopped knocking. He was reminded of the voice that he had once had. He forced his adult voice to speak over the remnants in his brain. "It's… It's your son."

Eli couldn't quite describe it but he felt that Achmed had not been bleating from the core of his house but was much closer than he had envisioned. And then when he found the bravery to move his spare hand to lift the flap of the letterbox just an inch, he knew he could see the silhouetted movement of slippers inside the home.

He hadn't ever been close with his father. He hadn't been so close to him in years. If he quietened his mind that longed to race and his heart that didn't know what it wanted to do, he could have sworn that he heard him breathing.

But then again, maybe it was just grumbling.

That silence was brief but it was agonising. If his father had the same fate as his mother, then Achmed was unlikely to have remembered him at all. Unlike his mother, though, maybe he could have been reminded by the sound of a voice. Or a speech pattern instead.

Maybe Achmed did remember. Maybe his heart did. Either way, his mind did not wish to betray himself. The flap of the letterbox closed shut with a slap before Eli could get wounded further.

"I don't have a son." The reply came and then the presence which had been there and the footsteps which had shuffled, shuffled away and went back into the core of the house, where all of the memories had once been made.

Eli was left standing the doorsteps with his own memories. The memories that his father had left him feeling like he was an orphan even with his towering presence looming there. A bottom lip was bitten into and then a top lip was sucked upon before it evened out.

As if this was the response he was expecting, Eli nodded his head and then his hair and his face too became concealed by his black hoodie yet again. He had fulfilled his duty, so for that he could hold his head up high.

And not that he knew it, but he had been granted closure and that could make him crane his neck even higher towards the stars where his heroes resided.

Before Eli walked away, his vocal chords sounded some words back for his father. Or rather, back towards Achmed. Their ties had finally been cut.

"Well, then I guess I don't have a father. So we're even…" he spoke to himself as much as he spoke to whoever was listening. And with that, he turned his back on whatever was left there for him. And he turned his back on all the pain that he had faced while living inside that house.

He didn't know it but the words had indeed been heard by Achmed but what he felt, well, that would never be known by Eli and it wouldn't be known by me, either.

All I knew is that Eli walked away from the constricting ties of the family that he had been born into. And walked towards the one that he was destined to find.

That wasn't the words that he had been hoping to hear. It wasn't nearly the next best thing either. Eli would continually feel like he was unable to be his true self for quite the while longer. Eli wouldn't find his happy ending for the next little while. That is the truth.

That is the ending of our story here. No, it isn't happy. But sometimes it has to be that way. After all, not all endings are satisfactory. Maybe even the middles are a whole lot better, in some cases.

Certainly in Eli's case, the never-ending middles taught him everything that he needed to know. And it was that which led to his happy ending. His ending wasn't neatly tied up in a little bow. It was all torn and chewed upon and flung from side to side so many times. But it was his life.

And one day, he would treasure it just as much as he did his heroes tales. What he didn't realise was that while they were lending the soundtrack to his life, his life was lending meaning to everything that they produced.

There was never one without the other. There was never the inspiration without the inspired. There was never the story teller without the listener. And there was never art without pain. They both bled into each other like paints on a palette, longing to be combined.

And in the end, it was all of these things which led to the full picture of Eli's life. He wouldn't be a hidden fifteen year old forever. He broke free. Because he wanted to break free. And he did. He had someone to show him how. And then he did that for others.

His own show would go on. For always.

The End.

There you go! Thanks so much for reading and I hope you enjoyed :) So yes, the introduction of Eli's parents, Achmed and Kathleen. It's funny how sometimes it is a challenge to write new characters but for me, they flowed pretty easily. And Achmed's dynamic with Eli too. It saddens me that he went through this in his youth and how different it was compared to his future husband, Justin's. A sign of the times though, unfortunately. This chapter really does show the love that Eli has for a band and one rockstar in particular, who he will go on to impersonate in the future as an adult. I've never mentioned any names of who he is, I don't think? But I think you can guess. In a nice coincidence, it would have been that man's 75th birthday on September 5th :) Thanks again for reading and I will be back again next Wednesday so see you then!

Amy signing out :P