Gortash Week Day 6 - Dealer's choice/AU (childhood)
She doesnβt know for sure that the boy living in her house is her son. She birthed him, sure, remembers that as well as anything. But if she hadnβt been there for it, she wouldnβtβve picked this boy out as hers. Heβs not like them. Not like her, not like his father. Not like anyone around the place, really.
When he was a baby, he was always screaming. Shrieking and fussing about some thing or another. And he was ravenous. Always grabbing her breast when he was smaller, never content to leave her be. Once he was old enough to eat solids, he would cram any piece of food he could get his greedy little hands onto into his hungry maw without so much as a by your leave. Like a bottomless pit, he was. And never grateful for any of it, either, the little snot. He stole, too, once he was big enough to reach the counters. How many times had she whacked his wandering hands with a spoon while cooking? Too many to count. And sometimes sheβd catch him wolfing down some piece of food out in the alley behind the house she knew he couldnβt have stolen from her kitchen. Sheβd punish him for it, of course, give him a few good licks and lock him in the house, but he always got back out again eventually.
He was eerie, the boy that was supposed to be her son. Something lurked behind those dark eyes that spooked her. He just watched, watched them all unceasingly. At least when he wasnβt absorbed in one of those books of his. Sheβd certainly never taught him to read something like that, pages upon pages of dense little text and words near longer than her forearm. Sheβd taught him proper useful stuff, easy sums and enough reading to get by. Heβd taken to it like a fish to water. And he just loved to flaunt it. Doing sums in his head, divisions even, without even counting on his fingers. Heβd wait just long enough, long enough for it to be clear that she was struggling, counting on her fingers, before he'd announce the answer in that lackadaisical tone of his. He had no respect, that boy. Heβd wormed his way into doing the storeβs books and as soon as he had squirmed his way in, heβd started making demands, like he had the right. βGet a different leather supplier, Fatherβ this, and βWe havenβt got the money for that this monthβ that. Insolent boy! What right had he to tell his parents β they who fed him and clothed him and kept a roof over his head β what they ought to do? What would a child even know about money? And no matter how often they told him to shut it, the boy insisted on clinging to the purse strings tight as a miserβs fist.
And he lied, she knew he did. She couldnβt prove it, but she knew. A mother always knows. Sheβd found some complicated little toy stuffed under his bed, something she knew she certainly hadnβt bought him. She didnβt see the point in such fiddly mechanical bits of junk for children. When sheβd confronted him about it, told him he couldnβt be stealing things like that, the boyβd had the very nerve to insist that heβd made it himself. Sometimes a bit of punishment would get him squealing, get him to admitting the nasty things heβd done. But just to spite her, the wretch had refused to admit his lies. Heβd curled his stringy body around the thing as though to protect it and not spoken a word, barely even let out a whimper. Even when sheβd got her hands on the thing, even then heβd refused to give up the lie. Sheβd had no choice but to smash it. She couldnβt have something like that in the house where the guard might find it and know it was stolen. Then heβd begged. Then heβd screamed. But even then, he had refused to tell her the truth. Heβd had the nerve to fake tears for the dammed piece of junk, as though heβd cared about the damn thing. And when sheβd told him to stop with the crocodile tears, heβd had the audacity to pretend to be afraid of her, cowering there with his hands over his head like heβd thought she would beat him. Sheβd seen the gleam in his eye though. She knew it was all some petty childβs manipulation. The lies never stopped with that whelp.
Her husband has debts, she knows this. She doesnβt trust the boy, not at all, and she checks and double checks every bit of work he does on the books. She knows theyβre deep, deep in the hole and only getting deeper with every month that passes. She also knows that there isnβt a way out, not for people like them. And then a woman arrives. She arrives at their shop one day, a day when Enver is out of her hair and off on the streets doing things only the gods know about. Sheβs short, with long, beautiful dark hair, hair like sheβd had before her husband and that boy had turned her grey before her time. βI bring the solution to all your problems,β the woman had said without prompting.
And oh, she had. She really, really had.
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