The Way We Love - A Walty Fanfiction

Chapter 6

Henry pov

Home should be where you feel safe. Like the hug of a mother should feel wholesome or the smile of a father should warm you.

Parents love their children. Of course they do. They choose to bring a new life into the world. The mother carried her child nine months in her womb, loving and waiting to have their little wonder in the world. The father looked at her and thought how lucky they are to finally have their own little luck.

They decorated their baby's room, what colours should they use? Will their child like it? How can they make it even more comfortable? The mothers birthday came around and the father gave her a present. Its a little shirt for their child. She laughed and put her hands on her belly, feeling their child kick. It's exciting. It's new. And it's what they always wanted.

Their wedding day comes. She had to get a new dress, because her belly is growing so fast, but she doesn't care. It's her child what she carried, they can take as much space as they want. She walked down the aisle seeing her future husband, thinking how lucky she is. And he stared at her, at her and their future child, bursting out of happiness.

And then the day comes. There he comes. She had known that it was a boy. They had joked about it. And now here he was. She thought how lucky she was. She was exhausted but her only thought was that this was her son. Her child that she will protect and love. She promised to keep him safe and warm, to never let him go. He was what she always wanted, what she had dreamed of. The father is next to them, tears in his eyes, he kissed his wife's forehead telling how proud he is, he tells his son how much he loves him. That he will take him on adeventures, build with him, play with him.

There was nothing both of them wanted more than their son.

Their son.

That wasn't Henry's story.

He wished it was. Oh, how he wished he had that love.

Days had passed since the incident in the lake and Henry sat in the quiet corner of Walter's garden. It was already dark. He could hear insects around him and a light breeze brushed over his face. It smelled like it would rain soon, but Henry didn't mind.

He had thought a lot. A lot about family. A lot about what Walter had said.

Walter didn't want Henry to tell Greta and Henry didn't, but he wanted to.

Greta cared for Walter, Henry could see it. He saw it in the way she smiled at Walter, in the way she checked up on him making sure he wouldn't notice, he saw it in the way she hid her sadness when she was around her husband trying to make it easier for Walter.

Greta was a mother. A mother of a son that she loved. Henry knew that she would do anything for Walter, that her heart was full of love for him.

Henry could see that, because he never saw it in his mother.

He knew what it was like to look at his parents and see nothing. A pure blankness, like the child in front of them was someone they didn't know.

Henry knew the opposite of a mothers love. He knew how it felt, how it hurt.

How it broke him.

He knew that when he looked at Greta that this was something he never had, that this love was what he wished for.

Breathe, Henry thought, just keep breathing.

But there was so much. Memories of his mother looking at him, his father walking away and him standing in the hallway not knowing where to go.

Where do you go if you don't have a home?

He had a house, but it wasn't his home.

So where to go?

To his mother? Her orange hair was always greasy, her eyes tired when she looked at Henry. There was nothing in her eyes. She seemed dead, like a walking corpse. There wasn't love in her anymore. Nothing she could give Henry. Nothing she wanted to give him.

To his father? He was loud, loud and big. He was the hate. He told Henry what he thought of him. A nothing, a mistake, someone who shouldn't exist. Not now or in anytime. He knew how to hurt his son where to push and pull to break him.

It was easy to hurt Henry, if he hadn't any love.

"What are you still doing out here?"

He hadn't heard the steps, but the voice told him who it was.

Greta sat herself next to him on the bench. She had a blanket around her shoulders, it had gotten cold. Her hands laid in her lap playing with her ring.

"I'm just thinking", Henry answered.

He heard Greta shifting next to him and then she had put her blanket around both of their shoulders.

"We can think together."

Greta smelled like a mother would smell. She smelled like honey and cinnamon. Henry could lean against her and feel safe, feel warm.

Henry's head laid against her shoulder, she had put an arm around him.

She held him. Like a mother should.

Like his mother should have.

"I don't want to be alone anymore."

It had just gotten out. Henry had said it quietly almost so quiet that Greta couldn't hear him, but she did. She was a mother she could feel when a child didn't feel well.

"Darling.."

The tears were just coming. Quiet and slow. No one would have noticed, but a mother would.

Greta noticed.

"You're not alone", she whispered back.

"You're always welcome here, Henry", He listened to her words, taking them in hoping they would heal something, "I have known you since you were born. I have known your parents and I know that they didn't.. that you deserved so much better."

He could feel how his bruises were warmed. Words. Words could do much damage, but as much damage as they could cause they could heal something.

Gretas words, a mothers words, healed something. Though it was slow it surely did.

"You're not a burden to us.. to me. And you.. you're my son, Henry."

Family isn't given, family is chosen.

And in that moment Henry knew that he had been chosen and that he chose, that whoever he was blood related with couldn't take that choice from him. That they couldn't take away who he chose as a family.

Henry had chosen the first summer he had visited Walter, what he didn't know was that Greta had chosen him too. That the moment she had seen him, and the way his parents treated him, she had chosen to take care of him.

Henry wasn't a choice for his parents. Everytime they looked at him they realised what a mistake it had been. Maybe that's how it would always be, them hating what was made out of one night full of love.

The clouds burst open and it started to rain. They kept sitting in the garden.

A chosen mother and a chosen son.