tw: abuse, emotional abuse
"You aren't my daughter anymore," he roared into the young girls face. The first time she had lost control was terrifying. She had never lived in the monster world with her own knowledge. Her father had gained control of his powers after her mother left when discovering what he really was. Adelina was too young to understand.
Ever since she left, Adelina's father tried to beat the monster out of her. Every morning, she would only get breakfast after reciting the rules her father forced into her for as long as she could speak. Every smack of cane against skin was a reminder of how horrible she was, how she would never amount to anything, and that nobody would ever love her, except her father. By the end of each day, her back would bleed with the marks of the cane she was beaten with, and she would cry herself to sleep.
To a young, raven haired shapeshifter, love was beating to the point of understanding. Love was screaming over breakfast, and love was not caring. About yourself or others. Adelina did not want to be loved, she decided, if that's what love truly was. If love was her father, she did not want love. She did not want a family to take care of her. She wanted to get out. She wanted to feel the sun against her skin, feel cool rain run down her cheeks, feel snowflakes against her tongue. Not love... whatever that was.
It was the first time she shifted, without meaning to. When her father was beating her, she wished to fly away, and wings started sprouting from her back. But, because of how weak she was, she couldn't fully shift. Her father left her in the basement that night, with no food and only the damp, dirty water that trickled from the leaky ceiling. She cried herself to sleep again that night, and she vowed that, in the morning, she would never let herself get hurt by anyone again.
The morning of her 17th birthday, she awoke in a sweat of panic and terror. She had just had another dream about her father on her past birthdays. Every year on her birthday, she would get one whack for how many years she was turning. As she shot up in her bed, she looked around with a terrified, helpless expression, her back aching. It was days like these that the scars felt prominent, days like these she didn't want to leave bed, because she was so jumpy that she never knew what could happen. She also happened to know she would have to leave eventually. If not for classes, then for the party Quinn had promised, despite her protests.
Today was also the day she knew she would have to tell Quinn about everything, because otherwise her unwarranted flinching would make him feel bad. Just another birthday.
***NINE YEARS AGO***
"Wake up, Addie! It's your birthday, darling!" The young girl flinched, hearing her father's voice ring through the basement. She knew what a birthday meant for her. Though she sometimes still woke up in the morning with the hopes that things had changed. Adelina looked around, frantic to find a place to hide herself, because her father had started to notice when she was pretending to be asleep, so that was no longer an option. Just as she thought she might be able to slide her way under a shelf, she knew she had been seen, because she heard the familiar clatter of wood against old pavement.
Instead, she turned back and looked up at him, forcing a smile onto her face as a plate of food was dropped in front of her. It wasn't much, but more than most other days, there were blueberries in her oatmeal today, and her roll actually smelled like something other than rot and mold. 'Today will be a good day,' she thought to herself, 'today, I will count the things that are good. Instead of the bad today, I will find the good things on my birthday.'
***END FLASHBACK***
Late into the night, she laid on her bed, with tears running down her face, the only sounds in her dorm room were the sobs echoing in the emptiness. She had only stayed at the party for a small amount of time. There were too many people, it was too loud, and she just didn't want to be around anyone. She was hoping that, by the time anyone noticed, it would be late enough that nobody would bother her. She also knew Quinn wouldn't let her spend her birthday alone, she had just expected it before her crying. Not during. But she also knew when she heard the door open that she couldn't stop herself. So she let him come in, and she let him hold her, and she cried. And for that night, nobody talked about the scars, or the tears on her birthday. They just sat.
