Northern Downpour - Pannacotta Fugo X Reader

Northern Downpour Part 1

Backstory

My life was far from pleasant. Even though I was born into one of Verona's most prestigious families. Everyone knew our name and knew how 'perfect' our family was, but it wasn't like that at all. The pristine reputation and image we held burrowed itself into my parents' brains - they would do just about anything to keep it that way. You would hold secrets with your life, you could never speak one utterance out of term, and if you did - you'd be lucky to be breathing the next day. So I learned to bury all of my emotions beneath my surface, I had to be perfect.

Etiquette was of the upmost importance to my well being - as my mother said - and that was the sad truth. I was one of many children, some of whom, I never got to meet as they would simply disappear. And so did I, I disappeared as if I'd never walked this earth - I wasn't even a speck of dust.

All of that was because one single doctor identified an 'imperfection' within me - a hidden disability that affected my joints - Ehlers-Danlos Syndrome. It could have been easy to conceal it, especially for someone of my social standing - but my mother couldn't bare having a daughter that had been tarnished by imperfection. So to her and the rest of my family; I ceased to exist.

Living on the streets of Verona alone was more than difficult, especially for a young girl, a young, impressionable girl who could easily be coerced into anything. And so I was. A man - just like any other - had offered me a place to stay for the night, and maybe some food - but only if I behaved. However, his request was nothing more than rhetorical - I was defenceless, I couldn't have said no to him if I tried.

Alcohol, I remember that stench on his breath so distinctly - the whole atmosphere around him reeked of it. Inside of me, my heart quivered - but I couldn't show him that. I thought I knew that being vulnerable got you nowhere.

His hands were coarse and unwelcoming - I wanted desperately to writhe myself from within his grip, but I didn't. He was a blatantly dangerous man who could have easily overpowered my 10-year old body, so I never dared to put up a fight. Not even when we arrived at his so called 'shelter' for me, but it wasn't a shelter at all. Faces of around 80 malnourished and decrepit teenagers, children and even toddlers stared at me blankly - each one of their eyes hollow, devoid of life. All of them were huddled around a fire, the only source of light. That flickering light illuminated the room of lost souls - tattered clothes and eyes cascading with tears, yet the room was deadly silent. My new home.

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For the next 4 years, coarse hands and breaths reeking of alcohol were all I knew, their hands roaming around in places that made me want to scream. I couldn't scream. I couldn't let out a peep, only out of fear. What they would say to me would haunt my dreams - but they didn't know that - I was the child who was always calm and perfectly complacent - the child who never objected anything - the child who would follow any order given to her.

However, there was something boiling inside of me, something so insurmountable that I couldn't ignore. A wrath like sort of rage. I wanted, no needed to snap their necks like twigs for everything they had done to me, and every other child in my company. And over those years, the faces of those children never stayed the same. A child would be there one day, and extinct the next - I was one of the lucky ones. By the end of those 4 years, I would have been one of the oldest of the 'children' there - as they so affectionately called us. It broke my heart everyday - seeing the children - the infants particularly, they willed for happiness, each one of us did. It never came.

Perhaps, I had had enough. And that very night as those same coarse hands raked over my skin - I snapped, completely and utterly snapped. Pushing those hands away from me, I screamed, screamed and screamed until my voice grew hoarse, as thunderbolts battered the environment surrounding us, letting the ground reverberate around me. No one came running toward me, no one came to check if I was fine - but that was normal.