A new age of Divinity: Theomachy

Story of the damaged son

During the night, everyone was sleeping soundly... except for two. Well, to be fair, Hayden was trying to sleep, but he couldn't fit onto Gulltoppr with Eden and Kenneth on top of him and sleeping on the ground wasn't doing it for him. Their fire had gone out long ago and all that was left were warm logs. He turned over and found Beth asleep next to him, her seeming ease of sleeping on the ground made absolutely no sense to him. He rolled over and grunted as he pushed himself up to his knees and looked around. He could see everyone... Well, almost everyone. The more he looked around, he realized that Nate was gone. Hayden groaned, being the oldest, he decided to take initiative and just go and look for Nate himself. He went and looked through the woods, only to find Nate sitting by a Bifrost fire, the blue and purple flames giving off less heat and light than their normal one.
"Dallr, what the hell are you doing out here?" Hayden groaned as he walked over.
"I'm thinking," He replied while keeping his eyes fixed on his fire.
"What about?"
"Him..." Nate's voice was filled with an unsettling sense of resentment and hatred.
"What the hell is your damage?" Hayden asked while kneeling down next to him.
"You... huh... you're the first person to ever ask me that like that," Nate replied "If I'm gonna show you, you can't tell anyone. I don't need them thinking I need constant support."
He nodded and put his palm on Hayden's shoulder, then transported them both into his head in the forms of intangible, invisible spectators. They were in a bedroom with a very young looking Heimdallr and a woman that looked oddly familiar to John. He knew he had never seen her before but something about her face just looked incredibly familiar.
"Who's that?"
"That's my mom getting raw dogged by my dad," Nate sighed, neither of the two people in the bed even acknowledging their existence.
"Oh!"
"Yeah... but, you know how Gods suck?"
"Yeah?"
"Well..."
After about ten more seconds of watching Nate's mother having sex with Heimdallr, they faded to black. They reappeared and saw Heimdallr walking out the door while his mother was just standing there, absolutely horrified for some reason. Hayden walked around her to see whatever she was reading and his stomach dropped. Nate's mother, who's name turned out to be Jessica, had been diagnosed with cervical cancer. Hayden put his hand over his mouth, then looked back at Nate, who was just watching Heimdallr walk down the street.
"So..."
"Oh, trust me. This isn't even the worst part!" Nate exclaimed not even looking back at Hayden "Come on, lemme show you when the worst part started."
They faded to black again, then came back to sight as they saw Jessica at dinner with another man. He was tall, dark, and bald whereas Jessica was relatively short with pale skin and blonde hair. They seemed happy, but Hayden could tell that Nate was seething. His eyes remained the same, but from the way he was breathing and clenching his knuckles that he could tell this man was what he referred to as the worst part.
"Who is that?" Hayden asked while watching the man and Jessica laugh and talk over dinner.
"Her boyfriend... fucking... Brandon!" Nate snarled.
"Why do you hate him so much?" Hayden asked.
"For what he did to me..." Nate muttered under his breath "What you did to me!!" Nate let out a yell and swung a punch through Brandon, but him being a memory, he just fell through it.
Nate started yelling and swinging at Brandon and Hayden finally understood. He understood Nate's mindset and why he does the things that he does. He hides his past because he doesn't want to become anything like Brandon. He wanted to understand better, so he waited until Nate let the memories play. After about thirty seconds, Nate fell to the... wherever they were standing. He was on his hands and knees, whimpering and crying. This was the most vulnerable Hayden had ever seen Nate and it hurt him. Sure, he didn't like Nate very much, but with each memory, he began to understand him more and more.
"Alright, enough!" He yelled, not at Nate but at the memories, even if they wouldn't react "Just show me the next one, stop torturing him!" At that moment, they faded out and then into Nate's bedroom, seemingly when he was about three. "Alright, now what's up with this... one?" He tried to ask Nate, but then after a moment, he realized he wasn't there. "Wait, where are you?" He heard Nate's echoed yells and cries from the other memory and saw that he had traveled to the next one alone "Oh... okay, I guess it's a time limit thing, then. Fine, I can probably piece this one together."
He looked down at Nate, he looked so small and helpless, which made sense given that he looked to be about three years old. He heard two more angry voices shouting at each other in the distance, echoing voices, much like whenever Nate would send his voice into peoples' minds. He sat down on the bed next to the terrified toddler and listened as he heard Brandon and Jessica arguing.
"This never would've happened if you had just aborted that kid and let me give you one!"
"I was already half way through when I met you! I couldn't have given up a life like that!"
"Well, now that cancerous little brat is just taking up all your time while I have to make it seem like I like him!"
"Yeah... really working out there, asshole," Hayden snarled while trying to comfort three year old Nate, but he couldn't even touch him "Wait, cancerous... taking up your time... holy shit, what a cunt."
"Don't call him that! He's just a little boy. It's not his fault this happened."
"Oh, sure! It was just his whore of a mother who would fuck any poor schmuck who asked!"
"Oh, sure. Slut shame me for having half the amount of one night stands you do! I've seen all those texts you've had with at least five other women. Give me one reason not to walk out with my son right now."
"Cold hard cash. Now that I'm here, you can actually pay for your damn medical bills while I also have to provide everything for that tumor!"
Before he could hear more Hayden was transported into the next memory, which appeared to be... the worst one yet. Nate was only a little older, two or even three years at the very most. Jessica was on her death bed and holding her son's hand for what would likely be the last time. Brandon was there too, which was likely the only reason Nate wasn't crying. He was sniffling and had tears in his eyes, but Hayden could see that Brandon was glaring down at him. He had his hand on Nate's shoulder and was gripping it so hard that Hayden was surprised he didn't have chronic shoulder pain. He could see Jessica speaking, which was likely Nate's last memory of his mother's voice and he wanted to know what she was saying.
"Nate... my sweetheart... I gave my life... and put it into you..." She weakly said "I... love you... I pray... you meet... your father-" She flatlined and her hand went limp while her dead face still smiled at Nate.
As Nate began to cry while holding his head to his mother's hand, Hayden was pulled into another memory... only this time it was much different. He could hear echoes of Nate's cries constantly all around him and he saw a seeming slideshow of all the abuse he had been through. Brandon would slam him against walls, lock him away in a closet, and verbally abuse him over anything he could think of. Nate's eyes still didn't have the glow, but now that he looked older, probably around six, his fear and sadness had turned into anger. He assumed that whatever friends he had at whatever school he would go to had told him how this kind of thing was not normal. Every slide, Nate's eyes revealed hatred and malice toward Brandon, something he knew would explode one day... and then... he found that day.
The memory slideshow faded away and he was left in darkness, only having enough time to say "What now?"
He faded back into view only to see Nate get backhand slapped across the face and berated for a bad grade. Hayden looked at the grade and saw that it was a C-. That was the lowest Nate tended to get in his classes from what he had seen, but the highest was normally a straight B. At this point, he really did just want to cause Nate any pain he could for... simply being born. The grade wasn't even that bad, but Brandon just wanted to hurt him.
"You're fucking hopeless! I can't believe I got left with you!" He yelled as he walked away.
"I can't believe I'm stuck with you," Nate retorted as he got up off his knees and took his hand off of his cheek.
"What did you say?" Brandon turned around.
"Don't you ever get tired of bullying me for something I can't help? Plus, what have you ever done for me?"
"I let you live in this damn house, you ungrateful brat!"
"Call me ungrateful when I've got something to be grateful for-" Brandon suddenly grabbed him and swung him up against the wall, so hard that it caused Nate's head to dent the wall where it impacted.
"I have given you everything you have!" Brandon yelled "You have me to be grateful for!"
"Wow, you've got a God Complex, don't you?" Nate asked, his divinity beginning to manifest and his inherent sass coming in "Even for the son of a God."
"What the hell are you on about?"
"I doubt mom ever talked about him much, seeing as how he gave her the illnesses she had." Nate put a hand on his shoulder, his eyes beginning to take on their signature glow "But he came to me in a dream... or maybe just at night, on one of the nights you locked me away."
Nate suddenly grabbed him by the throat and pushed his thumbs into Brandon's Adam's Apple. He coughed and gagged as he let Nate go, who fell on his side on the tile floor. Brandon glared up at him and walked toward Nate, only for him to slap him across the face like Brandon had done to him so many times.
"Try again," Nate snarled, then before Brandon could even move, Nate thrust punched him twice in the solar plexus, then uppercut him in the throat.
"Was that supposed to hurt? You're delusional," Brandon mocked him.
"It'll start to." Nate suddenly used his index and middle finger to gouge out Brandon's eyes.
"Aurgh! You son of a whore!" Brandon yelled as he held his eyes, but then he heard Nate turn off all the lights "What the...?"
"Dad told me how much of an illusion your control over me really is," Nate said in the darkness while Brandon was blinded two fold.
Brandon swung at the voice, but went for his own head height instead of Nate's. His hand soared over Nate's head and he punched Brandon in the stomach. He swung his leg and tripped him, causing Brandon to fall head first into a coffee table. Nate grabbed him by the back of his shirt, threw him onto his back, and stomped on his stomach. Brandon coughed and gasped from the stomp, but then noticed that his eyes felt fine again, but he still couldn't see Nate.
"Where... are you!?" He exclaimed.
Nate turned on the lights and said "Here."
"Oh, that was a mistake."
He stepped towards Nate and swung, but he just grabbed his wrist, and replied "So are you."
Nate twisted his wrist, breaking it, then heel kicked Brandon in the groin. He fell backwards against the adjacent wall and Nate grabbed him by the ears. He pulled him down and slammed his head into his knee, then slammed his head against the door.
"Please... stop!" Brandon begged.
"Oh... so you're gonna beg me to stop, huh?" Nate asked, then he backhanded him across the face "You want the pain to end?" Nate stood to Brandon's side and kicked him in the side of the head to knock him down "You never listened when I begged." Nate pulled his fist back and slammed it down into Brandon's temple "So why would I listen to you?" Nate watched as he fell onto his side, then began to kick him over and over in the stomach and ribs, unsatisfied until he heard at least one of them break "You want the pain to end?" Nate asked as he lowered himself down "I can make that happen." Nate brought his foot up and the moment he stomped down onto Brandon's face, the memory cut out.
"Jesus, Dallr," Hayden groaned "I mean he deserved it... but wow..." The next memory faded into view "Oh mother of christ!"
Nate was sitting in a bloody living room, his knuckles' bleeding had clearly stopped long ago. It was clear he had just ruthlessly beaten Brandon down as long as he could until he got bored. He was wondering where the body was because even now, Nate seemed like the merciless type, he wouldn't have left him alive.
"Oh, god damn it! What the fuck!!!" Nate had hung him from the ceiling light with his own pants that Brandon had been wearing "Jesus, this dude is sick... or was sick? How the hell did, oh." The police burst through the door and stopped when they saw the blood, the boy, and the pantsless man that had been hanged "So... did they?" When Nate turned toward them and they saw his eyes, most were terrified as they were glowing a bloody red... but then one woman stepped forward.
The memory faded away and he woke up to find Nate passed out next to the ground. He hoped he wasn't still trapped in that one memory, but right now, he just needed to get some sleep. He told himself that he and Nate would possibly discuss it in the morning, but he had given Nate his word that he would not tell anyone.