#jgcu

Ever since he had learnt about them in school he had been interested in them. His teacher had lent him a book on them and David had first learnt the world ‘palaeontologist’, deciding swiftly that that was what he wanted to be when he grew up.

His father usually tried to find ‘unrealistic’ dinosaurs for him. 

Multicoloured dinosaurs that would line up on his desk, looking at the child with cartoonish faces that David loved.

His dad thought that his love of dinosaurs was too grown up for a child of five. The way that he could recite every fact from that book his teacher had leant him worried his dad. 

Sure, David was smart. But no kid should be that smart.

No kid should be as mature as David had had to be. 

Five year old David stood from the sofa as he heard another crash from the room next door. He peaked his head around the corner as he always did when it got to this point in his parents fights.

His father was red faced as he stood above David’s mother.

His wonderful, friendly, loving, supportive father. 

David almost couldn’t recognise him. 

To David his father had two sides - the side that he saw and the side that his mother brought out.

He couldn’t understand why his father reacted as he did towards his mother. David’s mother was sweet and caring and so, so concerned with his father. She would do anything to make sure that his father kept happy.

David rushed back to the sofa when he heard his mother begin to scream, he hid himself under the couch cushions willing himself away.

By the time the screaming and smashing had stopped the dinosaur had left deep marks in David’s hands.

///

The purple dinosaur was the only one Loki had left from his childhood collection. It was the last one he ever got from his dad. The last time things were ‘normal’ for his family.

Loki lent over and placed it gently on his bedside table, stood up on the nightstand. It was chipped and dirty with age but still filled Loki’s heart with some sort of longing when he looked at it.

He refused to acknowledge the watery in his eyes and he pulled the next item from the box.

///

“I’m not doing this because I don’t love you - I’m doing this because I have to love myself,” five year old David struggled to make sense of his mothers words.

She took his little hands in hers as he lay under his bed, his mind fogged in confusion from sleep, having been shaken awake by his mum at three in the morning.

“Mummy?” He mumbled, allowing her to pull him back out from under his bed, into the room. His mum picked him up and set him so he was sat on top of the mattress. 

She crouched in front of him and David rubbed his eyes tiredly.

“I’m sorry, sweetheart, but I have to do this,” she told him, her eyes filled with worry and apology. 

“Are you going on an adventure?” David wondered if the bruises on his mothers face hurt when she smiled at him then. 

“Yeah, sweetheart, I’m going on an adventure,” she agreed, squeezing his hands.

“Can I come with you? I’m really good on adventures - Danny always lets me be his second in command,” David’s mothers lips pressed to his forehead.

“You’re always going to be my first in command,” his mum whispered. “But this is an adventure I have to go on alone. I’m sorry, sweetheart.”

“Are you coming back?”  

“Probably not,” her voice was no more than a croak and David felt tears fill his eyes.

“Don’t be sad, Mummy!” He begged when he saw her cry.

“I’m just going to miss my little man,” she whispered, bringing her son in for a tight hug. “But it’ll be better with me gone - Daddy will be less mad all the time,” she promised him.

“What if I go?” David offered. “Maybe Daddy will want you around more if I go?” 

“You sweet boy,” his mum sniffled into his shoulder. “You sweet, lovely boy,” she repeated, shaking her head. “Your daddy and me both love you and neither of us want you to go anywhere, okay?”

“I don’t want you to go,” he pleaded.

“I have to,” his mum released him and her right hand went to her ring finger on her left hand.

She twisted on her engagement ring, prising it off of her hand and pressing it into his small one.

“I have to do something for me.”

///

That was the last time that Loki had seen his mother. 

Now the engagement ring hung from a chain. It was a little rusted but out of all the items in his shoebox of memories it was in the best condition. 

After he had been taken to the boys home, Loki had put the ring on a chain to hang around his neck for fear of it being stolen otherwise. It was the one thing that he couldn’t imaging loosing. The one thing he had never even considered trading whilst her was there.

He hadn’t worn it since coming to university, so desperate to leave his whole past behind but now, in the safety of his home, in the knowledge that he had two people who wouldn’t leave him, he slipped the chain back around his neck.

The ring came to rest next to the thudding of his heart.

///

David waited at least an extra hour before coming out of hiding.

He waited for so long after the commotion and the gun shot before he even considered leaving his safe cave that his legs were beyond numb. He toppled straight back down to the ground when he tried to stand up.

He hadn’t realised he was shaking until he reached his hands out in front of him to try and support himself.

David closed his eyes and breathed deeply.

He crawled towards the door to his bedroom and pushed it open.

He hadn’t known what was going on when his dad had burst into his room, his eyes wide with fear as he pushed David into his wardrobe, piling shirts and jumpers on top of him in an effort to hide him. He had never heard his father so scared as when he implored his son to stay quiet and not come out unless he was sure it was safe.

It was the first time in a while that David had been told that he was loved.

It was also the first time ever that David saw his father cry.

That was how he knew that it was serious, whatever was going on. David’s seven year old mind was so fixed on his fathers tears that he couldn’t even think of making a noise. 

His father was in the living room. 

Him and David were still there fifteen minutes later when the emergency services came, answering David’s phone call faster than normal when they realised how young the child was on the other end.

David was sat cross legged by his fathers dead body, sobbing.

///

The police had allowed Loki to keep the shirt. 

They caught the men who had broken in only a few days after Loki had called the police and, after they had been properly identified and the legal process had been seen through, they had given Loki his fathers shirt.

Loki wasn’t sure why he had wanted to keep it. Perhaps because he had something to remember his mother by and he wanted something to remind him of his father - and of the sacrifice his father had made to keep Loki safe.

If he hadn’t gone and shut Loki into his wardrobe then he could have escaped with his life.

Now, Loki unfolded the shirt out of the shoebox and held it up. Blood stained it and it was almost completely shredded from the bullet wounds that had riddled his fathers body. 

That had been the day he became set on becoming a detective.

///

David hated his grandparents house. 

He hated the smell of cabbage that permeated the air around him.

He wanted his mum.

When the police had told him that they were going to track down a guardian for him that was who he had assumed they meant. He thought the long two years of separation from his mother would be over and that they would be reunited again.

David couldn’t hide his disappointment when it was his grandparents that turned up at the station to pick him up.

He wondered if, perhaps, his mum would be at their house. His grandparents were on his mums side so when she had disappeared that night he had assumed that was where she had gone to.

But his grandparents refused to tell him anything about his mother.

If they knew where she was, they weren’t giving any hints.

His granny ran a bath for him when they got to his grandparents house. 

“Home sweet home,” his granny had declared.

There was nothing sweet or homely about it. He wanted his real home.

David sat in the bath water, thinking of the events of the day.

Was this going to be his life now? Living with his grandparents? Surrounded by the scent of cabbage and bad memories?

He had cried when he first got to his grandparents house and found that his mother was nowhere in sight. His Granddad had told him that it was better than living in a boys home.

David climbed out of the bath and wrapped himself in the towel he had left out for himself and left the bathroom to the room that he had been told would be his for the foreseeable future. 

His tears began again when he saw the soft teddy bear that had been left on his bed for him by his grandparents.

Didn’t they know that nothing could be fixed anymore with a teddy?

///

The bears fur was matted and one of its eyes had fallen out at some point during his time at the boys home in Conyers but Loki didn’t care.

His grandparents had been good guardians and eventually he had gotten used to the smell of cabbage and even now, six years after he had left that place behind, it comforted him in a strange way.

But he still fucking hated cabbage.

His Granny had died first. She had a heart attack when Loki was ten and it had broken his Granddad. Loki had had to start looking after himself much more - he did the cooking and the cleaning and made sure that his Granddad got to his doctors appointments.

Loki wasn’t ashamed to admit that most of the care he took of his Granddad was for purely selfish reasons. He knew that if his Granddad was to die then he would be put in the local boys home. 

Everyone had heard horror stories about what it was like there and there was no way that Loki would be taken there without a fight.

But after his Granddad was diagnosed with terminal cancer when Loki was eleven he became resigned to his fate. About a month before his Granddad died, he was told the truth about his mother.

She had returned briefly to live with his grandparents, as Loki had suspected had happened but had swiftly disappeared again only to be found a few months later dead in a hotel room.

Loki was twelve when his Granddad lost his battle.

///

“You want the book?” The boy’s face was morphed into confusion. His eyes glanced down at the tattered classic in his hands before raising back up to meet Loki’s eyes.

“Yeah.” 

Loki’s jaw was clenched and his eyes were cold and unwavering as he looked at the new kid who had entered into the boys home only a few weeks ago.

“You want the book?” The kid repeated incredulously.

“Need me to fucking write it down for you?”

“No - no, sorry I just...” the younger boy collected himself, trying to hide his fear and Loki almost felt bad for a moment until he remembered what his first few weeks had been like at the boys home. “What’ll you give me?” 

Loki was almost proud of the kid and he allowed a slight smirk to grace his face and he nodded at the boy.

“What’dya want?” 

“Your leather jacket,” he declared and Loki scoffed.

“Piss off,” he rolled his eyes. “You know it’s not worth that,” the boy visibly deflated and Loki sighed, taking pity on him. “You get my desert tonight - and I’ll tell Anthony to lay off,” he offered, knowing that Anthony had been giving the new boy shit ever since he had arrived.

He looked up hopefully and held out the book. Loki took it from him, nodding.

“If he bothers you again, let me know,” Loki told him before turning away and stalking out of the room.

He knew that most of the other boys in the home were scared of him and the ones who weren’t were those who had been around for as long as he had. 

He had been at the boys home for four years. And what was devastating was the knowledge that he would be there for the remaining two years until he turned eighteen and could leave for university and then, hopefully, the police force.

When he had saw the new boy with his book Loki had known he would have traded almost anything to have it. Few people in the home owned anything other than a couple of changes of clothes and their school books. Anything they did own would be traded for something else - extra desert or a particular clothing item usually.

Loki had lost all of his dinosaur collection within the first week of his arrival at the boys home for a pair of shoes after his had been stolen. Well, all of his collection other than the final addition: the purple dinosaur.

Great Expectations was his parents favourite book. When he was much younger, before everything went pear shaped in their relationship, his parents would tell him how it was that classic which brought them together - they had both wanted a copy of it and had gone into a bookstore at the same time and reached for it.

They had ended up reading it together after his father had asked his mother out on a date and that was the start of their relationship.

Loki himself had never actually read it but had always wanted to - but he had no money with which to buy himself a copy after he had been taken into the boys home and had never had the chance to read it.

To have a copy of it in his hands now, nine years after he had last seen either of his parents, it felt so much that, in holding Pip’s story, he was also holding that of his parents.

///

Loki didn’t realise he was crying until his tears began to drop onto the well-loved book.

He wiped it away hastily, worried about it harming the pages that he too had grown to love but he didn’t stop himself from crying.

For what felt like the first time the full weight of what he had been through hit him. It was talking to his roommates about how he had wound up in the boys home that had sparked his need to dive into his little shoebox of memories.

Loki wasn’t sure if he would ever be able to go into details about his past. What his father had been like towards his mother and what his mother could sometimes be like towards him. The details of his fathers death. The facts he had dug up on his mothers suicide when he turned eighteen and was able to find such information out. 

The full truth of his life at the boys home weighed heavy on his mind and he knew it would scar him forever.

“Hey, David,” Loki looked up towards the doorframe. David and Jake were looking at him with eyes filled with concern. “Are you okay?” Jake asked.

Loki dropped his eyes down at the book, the teddy, the shirt, he felt the ring lying on his chest, and finally he looked at the little purple dinosaur.

Loki looked back to his roommates, a watery smile on his face and he nodded, the weight lifting from him.