Pictures of You

Chapter One: Daniel James Howell

AN: Hello, so welcome to the fic. The first two chapters are just lil introductions to the lads, after that the chapters get a bit more meaty. To my knowledge there is nothing to be warned about in this chapter, but there are some potentially upsetting themes in future chapters that I'll warn about. So yeah, i don't have a schedule or anything, I have the first four chapters written, so I'll just upload them right off the bat. Updates after that are likely to be slow, but i do intend to finish this at some point so bare with. Okay, I'll stop rambling, enjoy.

Dan, for as long as he could remember, worked for The Family. Since he was a child he would go to The Estate for one reason or another. By age 3 he was sent to pick apples with the other Littles, slaving away under the relentless sun with his friends. If Dan was telling the truth, he enjoyed this job. He liked the sun and he liked messing about with his friends. They couldn't do much messing around though because they were constantly under the watchful eye of the Observers.

Chris and Pj made the hard days work bearable, and at the end of the day they would get to shelter under the shade the orchard provided, eating bruised apples and babbling away at one another about one thing or another. The Family didn't get sent anything that wasn't absolutely perfect, this was good for the Littles because they would be allowed to eat apples that in their eyes were perfectly edible.

At this stage in Dan's life The Family were not tyrants, they were just people that he knew of and made him pick apples. He had no liberal political opinions about them and certainly harboured no hatred towards them.

To say they were like gods would be an exaggeration, but they induced a similar feeling in Dan that Gods did, an almost fear. He was told that they existed and that they lived in the very grounds he worked on every day, but to Dan they just didn't seem real. He'd never seen them in person, he had never even seen a photo of them, only paintings. This made them seem all the more imaginary, as if they had been fabricated by some lonely man trying to bring the people inside his head to life for the rest of the world to meet.

When Dan had told his mother this she laughed and almost spat out bitterly "Oh honey, The Family is very real indeed" and turned around to continue stirring the stew that was bubbling away on the stove, mumbling something about how the lonely man should have stayed lonely.

As Dan got older he indeed discovered the realness of The Family and he too wished that the lonely man had stayed lonely. As he got older he was given more responsibilities on The Estate, leaving the happy world of apple picking behind him, replacing it with a far more bleak existence. Dan was allowed to attend school for three hours a day to obtain a basic education, once the Littles had learnt how to read and write they were sent to The Estate for full time labour. Dan cherished every hour he spent in school, not wanting to leave the comfort of the bare walls and be forced on to a bus that took him to The Estate.

He yearned for knowledge and an education, trying his hardest to make it seem like he struggled with his reading and writing just so that he could stay in school longer. The teacher knew this, but was sympathetic towards Dan and played along, giving him extra books to take home and read on an evening. He was a teacher, why would he not want to help a child who was eager to learn?

Dan loved sitting up on an evening under his duvet with a torch, expanding his vocabulary more and more with every turn of the page, it made him feel like he was worth so much more than clearing tables and washing up.

But when Dan turned six he was forced out of school and onto The Estate full time. To this day, that was still the saddest day of Dan's life. He would often think of that day, the way it felt like his sole reason to exist was being taken away from him, the way he cried. He sobbed at the teacher, begging him to let him stay. Just one more year he begged, over and over again, please just one more year. For a brief moment Dan thought that the teacher would let him stay. For a moment the teachers eyes betrayed him, Dan could see that he wanted to say yes, that it was taking all his will power not to drop the act and drag Dan into a hug to comfort the sobbing Little that he had grown to care for over the past 2 years. But the teacher didn't drag Dan into a hug, he didn't let him stay, he just apologised and wished Dan a happy life, telling him not to worry about all the books that he had at home and that they were Dan's now. Dan left the school complex for the last time and boarded the bus, completely numb.

That was the day that Dan Howell stopped feeling alive.

As the years passed by Dan grew more distant from the world. He spent most of his time in his head, pretending to be anywhere but The Estate. Day dreaming became his favourite past time, even though it would often gain him a beating from the Observers because they thought he wasn't doing his work correctly. The only reason Dan was still alive was because of his ability to go to another world completely. A world where he had had a happy childhood and hadn't been forced to work for a family of evil dictators.

Dan now lived on The Estate in the servants quarters which meant every aspect of his life was a living hell, he could no longer see his family or friends and had to dedicate at least 18 hours of his day to serving within the household. This left him with very little time to himself and meant that he was always sleep deprived.

His life was a sorry cycle of working, sleeping, working, sleeping. Every day was exactly the same and Dan just wanted everything to go away.