Work Text:
It was the last day of school before summer vacation; 2 months at home.
His favorite teacher had presented him with a reward for outstanding student this past year. Truly, Edward knew it was because he was polite and quiet in the rowdy class. Ed cradled the colorful square in his hands and twisted and turned the boxes the entire way as he walked home from school, determined to understand the algorithm.
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“So you’re an idiot and a thief?”
Edward bit his lip at the accusation, eyes roaming between his father’s and the toy siting on the dining room table between them. The family had just finished eating. His mother rose silently and picked up the plates before walking into the kitchen, her face a blank mask. Edward felt torn at her silence, her betrayal. The situation was always the same; Ed’s father’s unpredictable outbursts predictably caused by something Edward would say, do, or not do. Then, afterwards, the countdown would begin for his mother to berate him for getting his father’s temper up. ”You just love to cause trouble for me.” He was the trouble maker not his father. He was the corner stone of the anger triangle and the fact made him want to curl inside himself and die to make their lives easier.
“I’ll take the silence as a ‘yes,’”
“No!” Edward shouted without meaning to. “ I-I mean. It really… I-It really was a reward for…“the boy’s words fell to a whisper as his father stood to remove his belt.
“Take that thing and go to your room. I’ll get the truth out of you,” his voice detached and disappointed.
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Once Edward got to his small bedroom he sunk to his knees in front of his mirrored closet door and bowed his head in submission as he waited for his father to ascend the stairs. In times past he would hide under his bed or sometimes even inside the closet before the mirror was incorporated into his punishment.
‘It’s just part of the game,’ Ed rationalized, ‘all games have rules and all rules, when followed, make you the winner.’
His body curls forward as he takes the first few blows of the belt across his back, crying and groaning with each lash. One time at school he overheard a class clown gloating how his momma ‘beat his ass red’ with a belt and didn’t feel a thing, though the last part Edward was sure to be a lie. The conversation stuck with him and he thought of it often because it was conflicting information to his own ideology. It actually angered him to some degree. ’You’re supposed to be hit all over. Anyone can easily lay on their stomach if their buttocks hurts but you can’t feel the repercussions of your punishment if just one spot is struck. //Idiot//’
“Look how weak you are. You’re 16 years old and you’re still not a man. You never will be. All you are capable of being is a cheater and a thief and an idiot,” Ed’s father scolded, mouth moving as quickly as his wrist.
//He’s right.//
The belt licked across the sides of his ribcage, neck and shoulders, across his tailbone as well as the meat of his ass. The mirror was foggy with his tears and breath and Edward felt his skin tingling freezing cold.
Without realizing it, Edward took his shaking hands and turned on his knees to lift the puzzle cube up to his father. An offering. A sacrifice. Anything. Just take it away.
His fingers went white hot numb.
The force of the belt across them sent the plastic cube bouncing into the air before landing on the thin carpeting with a thud, a few corner blocks sailing across the room from the impacts.
Without missing a beat his father scooped up the Rubix Cube and hurled it at Edward with all of his strength, striking him across the nose and breaking his glasses.
“Get back in position!” his father yelled, taking a fistful of brown hair and whipping Ed around. The pain in his head over rode the carpet burn on his knees and the bleeding welts on his body.
The world went white and noiseless and when his near-sighted vision came back the high pitched hum of pure silence remained. He slumped forward on shaking knees as he locked eyes with his reflection.
//I’ll keep you safe. Just come//
Suddenly everything was the same but not. He felt lean arms holding him close, hugging him from behind.
Edward breathed raggedly against the mirror and saw his room in reverse, he on the floor but instead of his father standing behind him he saw a clone of himself. Other-him slumped to his knees and enveloped him-him in a hug.
Reality fizzled in and out – Ed’s forehead was still pressed onto the glass but as he stared into his own eyes he could see himself hugging himself in that other world.
The pair of them held each other close as they watched through the mirror, a single set of brown eyes staring back at himself as he vomited into his lap.