#max pulling the nailbat on him was not a girlboss moment it was a tragic example of what abusive households do to kids hol y fu c k

[sketchy-scribs-n-doods]

Sometimes Billy wondered if his father hadn't left some part of himself behind, like a sickness left to fester in the untended darkness of Billy's mind. As if the blood and splitting cells underneath his skin weren't parting gift enough from the man who was father in little more than name. The last in a long line of men who hurt little boys that then grew up to hurt other little boys. A rusted, bleeding chainlink fence of hurt and turned blind eyes that Billy had torn apart with his own two hands to crawl through to the other side of paradise.

As if.

There was no paradise, only the promise of never again being beholden to the twisted metal growth that lay between him and the life he wanted for himself. He had screamed and cried at this fence many years before. But Max had taken the first swing at it.

There were bloodied nails and cracked chips of wood caught in the metal, a red dripping violence they'd passed down to her. Billy had merely dug his hands into the long nailed splintered bat soaked rage she'd left there and pulled. Pulled and held slippery metal spokes apart for them to both crawl under, to both leave behind with hands held tight. Maybe they'd find a place where they could tend their wounds together. Somewhere quiet and safe to wash the smell of iron off their hands.

(A sanctuary where Billy could burn the clinging grip of twisted rot his father had sowed in him down to ashes, and tear with freshly scrubbed hands what roots of it had dared try to settle in Max's heart.)