Thomas could hear the fight downstairs beginning to escalate. The woman's husband was at it again, he had come home drunk from the pub an hour ago and nothing she did would please him. Thomas knew how it would go, how it always went. He was in his bedroom, he had pulled a snack from his floorboard hiding place and was nibbling on his crackers while he listened for signs that the fight was going to make its way upstairs.
The other children were likely asleep already. They could sleep perfectly, without concern for the danger below. The husband never bothered with them. No, that was only Thomas. Why they couldn't take some of it instead of always him, he didn't know. None of his attempts to turn the husband's attention to them ever worked. Something always seemed to stop him when he tried.
Thomas sat up straight when he heard the first drunken footstep on the stairs. Here he comes. The second footstep followed the first eventually, he seemed to be struggling with the stairs more than usual tonight. There was an even louder thunk as he presumably slammed his fist against the wall on his way up. Thomas flinched, wondering which part of his body would soon replace the wall. He glanced at his left arm, which still bore the bruises from his last encounter. He stared at the barely faded, black and blue stains on his arm as he heard the footsteps growing nearer.
Enough of this, he thought, I don't need this. I can have whatever I want, and what I want… what I want is an end to this.
He stood up and made his way out of the bedroom. The husband had not quite made it to the top of the stairs, Thomas could only just see the top of his head as he tried to stumble forward. Thoman turned disdainfully, and walked a little ways down the hall to the door that led to the fire escape he had clambered up earlier. He opened the door slightly and glanced out. The fire escape had a skinny landing before the stairs started descending, the landing and staircase protected by a thin safety railing.
A loud footstep and a drunken groan announced the husband's final arrival to the top of the stairs. Thomas calmly turned and faced him, his face expressionless.
The husband seemed drunker than usual tonight, wobbling on his feet and leaning on the wall as he turned his malevolent gaze up to meet Thomas' eyes.
"What are you staring at boy? Why can't you ever do anything useful, all you do is sit and stare. I've had it with you this time, I tell you."
The man drunkenly lurched forward, but Thomas didn't move. He just watched as the husband stumbled closer, mumbling to himself all the while.
"Good for nothing… teach you to talk back… my house…"
Thomas just watched him. Any moment now… there it was.
The husband was right in front of him, and his right arm pulled back to take the swing Thomas had been waiting for. The fist fell, but Thomas deftly stepped to the side, pulling the door to the fire escape open as he did so. The weight of the punch pulled the husband forward, his inebriation throwing him even further off balance as he stumbled through the door and onto the fire escape landing. He fell against the railing, feet struggling to find purchase on the metal grates. Thomas saw his opportunity, reached out with skinny, bruised arms, and pushed.
The man barely screamed as he went over the rails, tumbling to the ground three stories below. Thomas stepped out on the fire escape, but before he could lean out and see what had become of the husband below, he heard a pained cry behind him.
"Peter!" the man's wife was on the staircase, staring in horror at the scene that had just played out before her, "Peter… what have you done?"
Thomas' vision started to shimmer, and he shook slightly. He was losing himself again, he could feel it - why did that name still have such a hold on him? It had never done him any good. But it pulled him back, and Thomas felt himself slide away.
The woman on the stairs screamed again and ran to the fire escape to look at the broken man below. She turned back to look at him, horror and pain on her face.
"Peter…"
Peter Newkirk looked back at his mother, her horrified face staring at him. His sister Mavis poked her head out of her room to see what all the noise was about, clutching her copy of The Velveteen Rabbit that he had found in his room months ago and given to her. He looked at them both quizzically.
"Mum?" he asked, as the sounds of other screams started coming from the ground below the window, "What's wrong?"
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Thomas gave his limbs a quick stretch, trying to shake off the aches of the run his body had just been put through. He had never liked to have to do anything physical, and was grateful to only need to deal with the aftermath. One of the perks of learning to control when he manifested himself, he could pick and choose what he did or did not need to be awake for.
"Now," he said to himself with a sly grin, "To business."
And he started down the tunnels. It was time to deliver a message.
When he had nearly reached the ladder that he knew would lead him back up to the barracks up, something caught his eye. Thomas paused to glance in the mirror that the men here used occasionally when preparing to go undercover, and grinned in delight at his own reflection.
His reflection scowled back at him, and his grin deepened.
"Hello Peter," Thomas said calmly.
"What've you done you twister?" the reflection hissed at him.
"What you couldn't," Thomas stated matter of factly, "Don't you know by now that I am here to protect you from yourself? These people you entangle yourself with Peter, first your pathetic excuse for a father, now this Hogan. They would use you up and throw you away if I didn't step in to save you from yourself."
"What're you on about? Colonel Hogan hasn't done anything to me."
"Is that right?" Thomas scoffed, "He was the one who sent you out that night. He was the one who told you it would be safe. He left you in that cell so those Gestapo pigs could have their way with you."
"You idiot. He saved me from that cell. And ending up there in the first place is the risk of the bloody job!"
"Exactly," Thomas said in a quiet, dangerous voice, "He will put you there again. That's why I'm going to get rid of him. Just like I got rid of your father."
"I won't let you," growled Newkirk.
"Is that so," Thomas leaned into the mirror until his nose practically touched it, "And exactly what do you plan on doing to stop me from going in there?"
He rapped sharply on the mirror.
"We both know you have never been able to resist me Peter. I will do this for us, and whether you know it now or not, you will be grateful after."
Thomas turned from the mirror and began to pull himself up the ladder, ignoring the increasingly vulgar curses his other self screamed at him inside his head.
Note: Now I can state that this story is in response to challenge #62 - The Alpha, Omega, Armega Challenge:
You can either a) write an original character with split personality disorder (with no more than two or three splits, and the character can't know about them), or b) give one of the canon characters a split personality, but the dual mind can only be triggered after some huge traumatic experience. Whether the character is OC or canon, the split cannot start with the trauma. The character has to have had some problems with their dual self in the past, but hasn't had to deal with their alter ego(s) for some time, so the trauma in a sense wakes a sleeping dragon.