Ethan was used to pain.

In his short seven years alive, he’d experienced quite a lot of it - both physical and emotional, so the idea of pain didn’t really frighten him anymore. At least, he never thought it would. It was always a different story when the pain was actually inflicted - and it was no help that his mother seemed particularly good at beating the ever-loving shit out of him when he least expected it.

Like today.

Ethan was fairly enthusiastic about his day at school. The math test had been an absolute piece of cake, chicken fried steak was served for lunch (his was government - subsidized) and he missed the bus, which meant he got to walk home in a little bubble of solitude.

But when he got home, his entire world turned on its head. He thought that his mother might still be at work, but she wasn’t - he found that out the hard way. The moment he opened the door, she hit him in the stomach with such force that he immediately dropped to his knees. The lunch that he had so savored only a few hours ago immediately threatened to come up as he struggled to catch his breath.

The pain was so immediate, so violent, that he didn’t even have time to cry out. Ethan had been caught completely unaware, which was what his mother had intended. As much as she loved inflicting agony on him, she relished it all the more when he was surprised.

“You little shit.” He dimly registered her incensed tone as he tried, simultaneously, to draw breath and to keep his lunch down. “Did you think I wouldn’t notice you weren’t on the goddamned bus?”

Ethan couldn’t answer her just then. Even if he wanted to, he wouldn’t have been able. He could barely speak at all - just a pattern of pained wheezes that whistled raggedly past his lips. “Mommy...I…”

“Don’t give me your fucking excuses.” Alicia Weathers slammed the door behind her son so hard the windows rattled, missing his head by bare centimeters.

Unlike him, she’d had a particularly bad day.

For Alicia, it seemed like every day since Ethan had come into her life was a bad day. Her husband, the man she loved more than anything else in the entire cosmos - the only one who stuck by her when her parents had all but abandoned her - had left just a few days after the child was born. It was obvious, he told her with no small amount of derision, that she loved the little shit more than she loved him.

The statement had sapped any remaining love that Alicia might have had for her child - and, in truth, there hadn’t been very much to begin with. Alicia was a young woman with the misfortune of having drug-addicted, abusive parents that threw her out at the age of fifteen. Despite her hatred for her parents, she slowly slipped into their exact shoes, and by the age of nineteen, was married to a man equally as ornery and abusive as both her parents had been. At twenty, she thought that the solution to her problems might be a baby.

How very wrong she had been. For Alicia, Ethan was just an addition to her many troubles, and she made sure that he knew it every day of his young life. The only reason why she hadn’t given the little brat up for adoption was because the state gave her money for him as long as she was making minimum wage - and she couldn’t pass that up.

“Take this.” She shoved the bucket and sponge that she held at him. “And clean the fucking bathroom. It’s a sty.”

Ethan knew better than to remind his mother that he’d cleaned the bathroom just the previous day. He had no idea what she did in there, but whatever it was, it decimated the gleaming space within hours of his scrubbing. Not that he could ever get the bathroom too clean. The toilet leaked, and there were little bugs everywhere that he didn’t know how to get rid of.

“Can I have my friends over afterwards?” It still hurt to breathe, but he somehow managed the question anyway. When his friends were over, his mother usually didn’t hit him so much. Probably because she worried about what one little boy or another would say if given the chance. It was the one foolproof way he knew to avoid his mother’s violence - if only for a little while.

Alicia’s face screwed up in confusion. Though her first impulse was to deny the little shit, if his friends came over that meant she wouldn’t have to deal with him for a while. She was always down for a little alone time. Alicia’s favorite time of the day was when it was just her, the needle, and nirvana.

And when snotty little boys were far away.

“Fine.” She scowled at him. “But don’t come up to my room. Don’t come anywhere near my room.”

“I won’t,” Ethan promised swiftly, before his boon could be rescinded. “I promise I won't.”

But Alicia didn’t hear him. She was already too absorbed in the prospect of her next high, already starting up the narrow, rickety staircase toward the only bedroom on the second floor. They lived in an old, one bedroom townhouse, and Ethan made his bedroom in a corner of the living room downstairs. He didn’t mind. There was more space there, and less chance of his mother rolling over in the middle of the night to beat him for waking her up.

Ethan hurried to the bathroom to clean as fast as he could. As always, the place was a mess, and he tried not to think about what exactly he was touching as he cleaned it. Even worse was the memory of a time his mother had invited some man he didn’t know into the house and the man held his head down into the dank toilet water for calling him a creepy jerk.

It had tasted horrible - and he had thrown up for the next few hours. The man, thankfully, had never come back.

It took the small boy about half an hour to clean up his mother’s mess.  He dumped most of what he found in the garbage and did his best to wipe clean all the surfaces he could reach. After dumping out the dirty water, he rushed for the telephone to call his friends over. As he stood on his toes to reach the kitchen counter, he winced at the sharp pain that lanced through him where his mother hit him in the stomach.

It still hurt. But he was used to this kind of pain.

**

Despite being small for his age, and constantly unkempt, Ethan was popular in his first-grade class. He had an easy way with other kids that the teachers admired, never got into fights, and was, without question, one of the brightest children in the year - if not in the entire school. 

It was, perhaps, his intelligence, that kept him from running away. Even as hopelessly unfair and unpredictable as his life was, even at age seven, he knew that getting beatings with a roof over his head was better than being homeless without the beatings. 

After he called four of his closest friends to invite them over, he quickly tidied up the area designated as his “room.” A corner of the living room held a child-sized mattress covered in a thin blanket, a few piles of clothing, and piles upon piles of books - most of them centric upon math and science. Math was Ethan’s favorite subject; and although suggestions from his teachers to bump him up a few grades had almost sent his mother into conniptions, they certainly didn’t mind lending him a few upper level books.

Ethan had finished all the books currently on loan and would have to remind himself to ask for more. He was excited to see his friends, and even more excited at the prospect of teaching them something new. One of Ethan’s favorite things to do was to teach what he knew to his friends. They told him that things like algebra and negative numbers were too hard and didn’t make sense, but to Ethan they were easy.

And that made him feel good.

While Ethan was busy trying to decide what new math theory he was going to teach his friends, Alicia was preparing herself for her daily slice of heaven. She had her syringe in hand, and was just tying up her arm when she realized that she left what remained of her stash in the downstairs bathroom - where her brat of a son was cleaning.

With a low curse, she left her syringe on the dresser and hurried downstairs. When she got to the bathroom, however, the stash wasn’t there.

Alicia didn’t panic immediately. Rather, the terror crept up on her in slow increments as she searched the bathroom, tearing apart what Ethan had so meticulously cleaned. By the time she pawed through every nook and cranny, Alicia was blinded by fury and fear.

What the hell had that little shit done with her stash!? She’d paid almost a thousand dollars for it! It was supposed to last her the rest of the month! If he’d done something to it, heaven help her, she was going to kill the little bastard. Correct her seven-year-old mistake in a single, deadly gesture.

Of course, she wasn’t thinking straight. When the junkie took over, she never did. Alicia had done some pretty awful things in junkie mode, all of which came back to haunt her when she recovered. But that wasn’t on her mind now. All she could think about was her stash and the little mistake who had taken it from her.

She stormed into the living room to find her son pouring over a book, completely absorbed in its contents. In that wild, inexplicable moment, Alicia saw him clearly. She saw her child, nothing like her - brilliant, handsome, and resourceful, who had stood up to her bullying since he could barely stand by himself. He was destined to be more than she ever would and she hated him for it.

When she went for him, Alicia’s intent was deadly.

When his mother slammed him against the wall, Ethan felt something inside him break with a sickening crack that took his breath away. And then the pain - oh the pain. Like something was poking him from the inside, struggling to get out.

The pain was like nothing he’d ever felt before. He screamed - he couldn’t help it. The sensation was so sudden and intense that Ethan could do nothing but scream.

Which only enraged his mother further. “Where did you put it, you little shit?” she demanded, striking him across the face so hard that he was shocked into silence. “Where’d you put my stuff? If you threw it away, I swear to God-”

“I don’t know, Mommy!” Ethan managed, reduced to hysteria as the pain consumed him. “I don’t know what you’re talking about!”

“Yes, you do, you little worm!” Now Alicia’s fingers wrapped around his slender neck, choking off his breath bit by bit. “Tell me where you put it! Where, you little shit!?”

Even if Ethan had known what she was talking about, he wouldn’t have been able to answer her. He could barely breathe as things stood. He hurt all over, and he could taste something warm and coppery in his mouth.

If Alicia Weathers hadn’t been so wrapped up in trying to murder her son, she might have noticed that the friends Ethan called had arrived and were gaping, open-mouthed, at her from the doorway. She also didn’t notice that one of the boys had chosen to tell his mother how Ethan was always hungry and wore tattered clothes, and that the woman was in tow with a homemade lasagna for Ethan and his family.

Elizabeth Warden was the kind of mother that Alicia was not and, at the sight of the younger girl trying to kill her son, she leapt into action, racing for Alicia and yanking her off Ethan - but the younger woman was far stronger, and soon turned her attentions on Elizabeth herself.

At the sight of his mother struggling with Ethan’s, David Warden immediately called nine-one-one.

Ethan and David’s mother ended up in the hospital - she with multiple lacerations to her face and he with a few broken ribs, bruised lungs, and a mighty concussion. When Ethan came to, it wasn’t to his mother’s face, but the face of a stranger. A kind blonde woman with glasses and a sweet smile who told him she was sorry, but he wasn’t going to be able to see his mother anymore.

Ethan cried, but it wasn’t because he was sad. It was because, when the blonde lady held him, he felt safer than he had in all his years with his mother; and though he was only seven years old, he knew that was not the way things were supposed to be.