Coming Home // Sidemen AU (Minizerk)

Josh

Things don't always work out the way we want them to. And people don't always become the people they set out to be. No one starts out their life with the intention to harm others, or themselves, or become someone so far removed from their original self that they no longer know who they are anymore.

When a child is born, the parents hope this child will achieve all they never could, and more. A baby is precious. Innocent. The perfect human. But like all things, they change with time.

At just before midnight, on the 4th September 1992, a mother is screaming in a London hospital. She is giving birth. Her baby has come unexpectedly a week early and she is cursing the living daylights out of everyone present. The father stands by and awaits anxiously for his child to enter the world.

Both parents are young, only just in their twenties, and this child will be their first born. They are already over the honeymoon period in their marriage and don't live in a very good neighbourhood, but they are hoping this child will be start of something better for them.

After a lot more screaming and encouragement the baby finally decided it's time to be born. A son. They have a son. Hazel eyes and dark hair. At that moment, there is nothing more perfect in the world to them.

They call him Josh.

The couple take him home the day after and for a few months they are a happy little family. But things never stay the same for long. The mother is diagnosed with depression when Josh is six months old. As she declines the father begins to get ambitious, greedy even, for more success and money, more than the pitiful amount he is currently earning.

Josh is a year old when the arguments start, the screams that he hears at night that also make him cry. He is two when his mum tries to take her life for the first time, too young to understand why his mum won't respond to his worried calls. He is three when his dad starts to consume more alcohol than food, all he knows is his mum doesn't even bother arguing with the man any more. He his four when his dad first hits him, the black eye staying for over a week.

At this point the little boy's life doesn't look like it's heading in a very happy direction, but you never know what's just around the corner.

He's five when he meets the first of his best friends, and things start looking a little brighter.