Broken Wings

Chapter Eleven: The Past of Oliver and Adrian

In the quiet recesses of their minds, both Oliver and Adrian carried the weight of memories that marred their childhoods—two lives impacted by the same tyrant, a father whose cruelty reigned without limit. 

While the world outside their family homes glimmered with laughter, the boys existed under an oppressive cloud of fear and expectations.

Oliver Black had always been the favored son, even as he quietly absorbed the lessons of manipulation, charm, and cunning from his father. 

To him, love felt conditional, and success demanded a performance. Beneath the polished exterior, doubts wormed their way into his heart, fueled by the harsh words that echoed in the shadows of each room.

"Only the strong will survive, Oliver," his father would often roar, his voice seizing the air and chilling it into jagged shards.

 "Weakness is an affliction. You must stand taller, outshine everyone, or be trampled beneath their feet. You are destined for greatness, but that greatness doesn't come from kindness."

In the fraught atmosphere of their home, Adrian had observed his father's thunderous temper and the intense scrutiny he applied to every perceived weakness. 

Adrian had grown to understand the depths of his father's failures—his bitter alcoholism, his own unfulfilled dreams that spiraled into resentment, clouding the lives of his wife and children.

 And though Oliver's family dynamics seemed like an illusion of ownership, it was in the depths of Adrian's experience that he felt the fatal cracks of vulnerability—unlike Oliver, he could not squeeze power from the darkness.

As boys, they formed an intricate bond—one that danced between competition and camaraderie. 

They navigated their father's eruptions, both into a fragile brotherhood forged in shared pain.

 When the yelling began, Adrian would retreat into himself, while Oliver took on a new facade—an ever-careful smile disguising his fear. 

Adrian would often find solace in drawing—sketching their experiences, pouring words onto paper, creating a world where they could escape their reality. 

But when he let Oliver in, whenever Oliver flicked through his sketches, Adrian would feel a twinge of discomfort.

"Why do you waste your time with that?" Oliver had asked one winter night, flickering candlelight dancing over the pages in the dusty attic. "You need to toughen up. This won't get you anywhere. You don't want to end up like... well..." He drifted off, knowing full well who Adrian was trying to escape.

"I just want to express what we feel, Oliver," Adrian had insisted, rubbing a hand over his sketches, ink smudging the tips of his fingers. "There's more to life than just survival. There's a beauty in it, too."

"Beauty doesn't keep you warm at night," Oliver shot back—words like daggers, but Adrian could hear the small tremor in his voice, the crack in the facade. "This is what's important. You want Dad to respect you, don't you?"

At home, respect came at the end of a fist, the harsh crack of a belt, and the echoes of disappointment. 

With each day that passed, the boys were bound tighter in their own language of survival—yet their paths diverged in troubling ways.

 Adrian found solace in whispers of hope, art, and the solace of a blank page—while Oliver learned to conceal emotion beneath a veneer of triumph at any cost.

The years passed, the shadows deepened, and life outside their homes wore a different mask. They entered high school; Oliver's name danced across hallways, while Adrian faded into the background, a lost note in a symphony of chaos.