This isn't canon, but I've had this idea for awhile. I just had to write it. -C
Philip used to be a calm child. His parents would comment that he's almost too good. He would never get in trouble. He just wrote poems in the back of the class, shy and withdrawn. He was content to be forgotten.
Then, he turns nine. His baby sister is born, and he's not the center of attention. That life has been stolen away from him. His poems don't seem to compare to her baby gurgling, and his little games can't be measured against her trying to talk.
So, he starts acting out. The teachers notice the abrupt change, email his parents. Philip stands firm though, getting reckless and shameless. Why wouldn't he?
It starts becoming the norm. He never gets into fights though. Fights seem below Philip...
It's in sixth grade that a fight finally finds him. A boy picks up his journal, reads his poems to the entire class. Philip blushes and runs away crying, not able to keep up the façade.
The boy confronts him. Calls him a baby. A wuss. A girl.
Philip punches him in the eye, completing willing to leave a mark.
He doesn't know how the boy moves the fast, how the boy gets the weapon.
All Philip realizes, five seconds too late, is that he found a bat. The bat cracks against his ribs, making him collapse. It's right across his ribs. And...And it hurts so much. His eyes water, and suddenly he's on the ground, and what happened?
The boy is screaming, wailing, and Philip blacks out...
But he doesn't?
Because there's a man screaming in the background while he presses his hand against his bloody wound. One hand is still wound like there's supposed to be a gun there. He can picture it. Smoking, aimed at the sky. And the boy's face, no, the man's face after he shoots him. At seven, of course. Not ten. Seven.
Then, the man is in front of him. Black ponytail, olive skin, and definitely his father. Except not. This is his pops. Philip knows this. That's why he chokes out "Pa."
He's so desperate, and words are flooding out of his mouth for no reason, and it doesn't make sense. He wasn't in a fight, or a duel, and he wasn't holding his head up high but...
He wants his pa to understand. He wants him to hug him. He wants to be kept safe. He wants to be cuddled. Or something!
Then, he blacks out again.
And he's back in the real world, back in the world where he's in sixth grade and not nineteen. Not graduating from college. His vision is spotty, his chest is achy, but not quite like it just was. There's a sickly trail of crimson running down his chin, connecting at the bottom to make a middle drip. It's hard for him to breathe, but he doesn't quite get it.
"What's going on?" He struggles to say. What happened? What is he missing? Why is Philip so confused? Why is there blood everywhere? Where is his pops? His pa?
They act like they don't understand him. They tell him to calm down, and they rub his head like he's a dog. The boy who hit him, who Philip is suddenly a lot less mad at because he's not Eacker which is a huge improvement, is sobbing and blubbering which makes no sense. Philip dimly thinks that he wanted to hit Philip with a baseball bat. It's not the other way around.
