Chapter Text
It started with fear and blood and tears. Nightmares of heavy, calloused hands, grip too tight. Gleaming steel in dark rooms. Blinding lights, picking Nathaniel out of the darkness. He couldn’t remember ever waking up without his panicked eyes searching his surroundings for anything dangerous. Sometimes they even ripped him out of his bed by his hair to drag him wherever he was forced to go.
Ugly scars litter his freckled skin where no one else would ever see. Purple and yellowing bruises fill the blank spaces just hidden beneath the hem of his clothes. Exy had been a gift from his mum, a rare indulgence he had asked for. It didn't occur to him that it would also serve the purpose of giving a reason for the bruises to prying eyes. His only pretense of freedom is the court; it's the only place where he can sprint full-speed and not be accused of trying to escape; the only place where he isn't just his father's son. Nathaniel clings to those moments of freedom, where he is praised for his speed and agility instead of how well he can handle a knife. And he dreams of a day he could step onto the court and never leave, that dream fading a little more every time Coach ends practice.
Nathaniel remembers how crying out in pain for any reason was rewarded with more slices of Lola’s or Father’s knives before his own are pressed into his small, shaking hands until they didn’t even twitch anymore. They taught him how to cause the maximum amount of pain imaginable, and it sickens him to realize that was the easiest part. He would do as he was told if it would stop the punishments.
The pride that crept over him when he was awarded whispers of, “Good work, Junior,” terrified him.
It had started when he was two, Lola reminds him with scarlet lips that curl sadistically. Then, his uncoordinated shaky hands couldn’t even press the blade hard enough the gouge flesh more than a shallow scratch, but now they can carve intricate patterns with ease.
“Your skinning capabilities are quite remarkable for your age, Junior.”
Nathaniel supposes that is true, later on when the spark of pride and the thrill of his actions have subsided into familiar disgust. No, not disgust, but… he can’t name the hollow feeling behind his ribcage or the ice in his veins.
Mum often finds him curled into a tight ball in the corner of his bedroom after Lola’s lessons, skin pink from scrubbing himself clean of animal blood —and more recently, human— from his lessons with his father. Sometimes he misses the screams of the most recent animal Lola would have him working on over the pleading words of the person who ‘wronged’ his father. Torn between harming an innocent animal rather than a flawed human being. They thought Nathaniel, a child eight years of age, could help them. They were wrong. Nathaniel had cast a pleading gaze up at his father once and the scar from the knife he dragged diagonally across his torso had been encouragement enough to never make that mistake again.
Sometimes he likes the weight of the knives and the warmth of fresh blood and Father’s pleased words when he does a good job, but only when he’s there. Sometimes he feels closer to the monster his father wants him to be as he watches blood wash down the drain or as it is scraped from beneath his fingernails.
By the time Nathaniel is robotically vanishing into his room, as his father expects, his mind tries to figure out why he felt so far away from himself. Nathaniel swears he can recall watching himself do as his father tells him, each step of the way. Other times his father will stand with his shark-like smile carved into his face and tell him; ‘show me what you can do, Junior’. And he will. Because if he doesn’t, the same fate will fall to him.
“You will follow in my footsteps, Junior. Your future has already been mapped out and if you don’t, you will be on that slab, while I chop you to pieces.”
Nathaniel doesn’t want to follow in his footsteps, but he also doesn’t want that fate.
Mum tells him to do as he is told if he wants to survive, and takes him to little league practice as she promised. She is not as heavy-handed as his father, but the tugging of his curls and firm grips on his limbs and face tell him he has nowhere else to go. So Nathaniel drifts between exy practice, butcher lessons, and schoolwork, pretending he will have a good future, far away from here. Maybe even as a backliner on a real team one day, being called anything except Nathaniel or Abram, traveling all over the world just to play. Maybe something else. Anything else.
He holds on to that hope as tight as he can, so his father or Lola or even his mum won’t take it away.