Beautiful Chaos

You Keep Making me Pay for Your Crimes

Several years later Lewis was about to get caught for robbing a bank after he was careless with his plan and framed Leonard. He was in juvie for two years. That's where he met his partner and best friend, Mick Rory.

It was the first day Leonard arrived, he was fourteen and the smallest kid in there by far. Some teen boys wanted to make sure that he knew that, so they jumped him and didn't hold back. He fought back or at least tried to, but he was no match for the much stronger guys that had ganged up on him, and it was clear no officers were aware of him being in the secluded area getting beat up since no adult ever came to help him.

One of them had a shiv and he was almost certain he wasn't going to survive the fight and then Mick stepped in...they didn't mess with him ever again after that. Mick's been standing by him ever since like the older brother that he never had. Mick was unlike anyone else he'd ever known and Len knew from that first day that they'd be good friends.

And they were, besides them getting into a couple arguments about Mick's obsession with fire and his tendency to be irritable that they'd had in the past, his addiction hadn't particularly been a problem before, but one day he got distracted while on a heist nearly getting them both caught. When Leonard confronted him about this Mick denied it being a problem at all. Leonard told him off and recruited new guys to work with.

Back to when Len was incarcerated and sent to juvy...Eventually his dad finally bailed him out, a couple of years had gone by, but he was just as angry at his father and it wasn't because he had to go to prison, it was the fact that his father knowingly blamed his own son for a crime he himself committed.

Len knew he had broken the law too and more times than he could count. He also knew that someday his wrongdoings were probably going to catch up with him. But this was different, his own dad threw him under the bus and into juvy to save his own self, at least that was what he thought before he finally put all the pieces together.

When he was in the juvy the prosecutors discovered his other crimes after seeing his record wasn't exactly clean and they were without a doubt convinced that Leonard was really the one responsible.

The first week his father visited once, but he refused even going to see him, he couldn't stand to. Then four days later Lewis came back and Leonard decided he would try and hear him out. He should've known better than to expect a reasonable excuse from him, not that he would've accepted it since there was no excuse in the world that would be able to rightfully justify what he did.

Before the whole juvy incident Lewis had recently stopped being the horrible man he once was, at least that's what he told his kids not that either of them forgave him. He stopped drinking and started acting like how he should've a long time ago. But then of course somewhere along the lines he slipped up.

His father told him that if Len told anyone about how he was the one who robbed it he would also get taken in and wouldn't be able to bail him out and that they'd both be stuck there until their sentences finished since Leonard would still have other crimes to pay for.

"I saw you on the news last night...they mentioned how you've been linked to other crimes like shoplifting and breaking and entering, even how you match people's descriptions of the young teen boy they've seen on the cameras at the places you've stolen from. They've put the pieces together and they now know that you have a history of robbing in general, but just that nobody expected a fourteen year old to rob a bank singlehandedly."

"That's because I didn't!" He shouted angrily.

"Yes, I know...listen, I'd been drinking that day and I wasn't thinking straight-" Lewis tried to explain.

"What happened to the "I'm sober" bullshit? And you weren't thinking straight? You waltzed into a bank with a gun and a mask, attempted to steal who knows how much money and then you got caught. That's the story I'm supposed to believe right? You know what's crazy about that? You say you weren't thinking straight, but you were still able to act like a perfect witness and tell the police my full name. You even bought the exact same outfit, gun, and mask that's in my drawer so that when they searched my room they would find that all three of those had my fingerprints on them. This was planned ahead of time. But you wanna know something crazier? The fact that you came here hoping I'd forgive you. You lied to the police and as you can see it all worked out for you, but I'm never letting you manipulate me again, this is what I get for listening to someone like you." Leonard knew all the information because his grandfather had called him earlier.