chapter two- The Golden Child

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or, the backstory of a very lonely boy.

//tw!! guns, character death, vomiting/sickness, panic attack.//

The Golden Child had been born on a cool, rainy day in April.

He was two months premature and small, but just as beautiful as the sun itself, as his mother described it.

His blue eyes glistened with all the light in the world, like the stars were set in his irises.

He was so, so small, small enough that even the doctors were worried he wouldn't make it to a year old, much less two.

But Tommy persevered.

He fought twice as hard as any and achieved seventeen times the goal.

Despite all of his physical ailments, he fought to live.

Tommy had been told he wouldn't make it, and so he did.

That was a lot of Tommy's personality though- if you told him he wouldn't be able to do something, he'd do it and succeed.

Then, he'd laugh in your face because you were wrong- unless, of course, you were his parents.

That's why, when the doctors told him at age seven that he'd need a hearing aid, he took it as a challenge. He refused to use one until he could barely hear out of his left ear without it.

He did his best to listen to everything his brothers and father said, but it just didn't seem to work anymore halfway to his eighth birthday; and on the day before said birthday, he got his first ever hearing aid.

And then he went home, laid in bed, and cried.

It wasn't some 'pity me' child's cry either- it was a scared cry.

He knew he wasn't going to be able to hear, like mommy, and it scared him.

But despite all this, he persevered, just as he always did.

He learned how to use BSL from his mum, learned how to communicate in a regulated tone from his dad and brothers.

By age eleven, he could communicate normally.

It still frustrated him that he wasn't 'normal' anymore, though.

The kids at school made fun of him.

His brothers wouldn't play with him the same way anymore.

His father spoke differently to him, in softer tones.

His mother started to baby him more- and god damnit, he wasn't a baby.

Tommy was thirteen when his brothers left home for college.

When they left, the house was quiet.

Lonely.

You could hear a pin drop in the next room.

He spent most of his days worrying himself with school or things in the garden, picking apples or strawberries.

For three years, things were silent.

For three years, he never spoke a word at home.

For three years, Tommy felt completely alone.
      
That is, until, the plague broke through. Then, things got worse.

Early one morning, Tommy woke to find that his father wasn't in the kitchen to watch him make breakfast. He walked upstairs to see his mother fast asleep, as usual, and a note on his father's bedside table.
      

"Tommy,
The world has fallen apart. I have too. Please, keep your mother safe. I love you.
        Dad."

Tommy stared at the note in shock, and then looked at his sleeping, unsuspecting mother.

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