#the death is heavily implied but not explictly stated

[goatbi]

Things You Break

It's difficult, Lady Scott realizes very quickly, trying to raise a child that could accidentally kill you if he hugged you wrong.

Wayne is a very sweet boy, energetic, with bright eyes and a brighter smile, giggling and kicking and clinging to her fingers. The scars fade rather quickly once she gets so many of them, and Wayne eventually learns he can't hold so tight to his mother's hands. It takes some time, some work, but it's worth it the first time they walk through a store and Wayne manages to only dislocate two of her fingers.

She wonders often how to teach him gentleness, when the way she was taught was to run into things herself, the natural consequence of pains being enough to deter her. Wayne, however, takes a tumble down the stairs, and gets back up with nary a hair out of place. There are things she cannot teach him, she knows, things that he will have to figure out the hard way, but the hard way here... Lady Scott can't allow her gentle boy to do something that could end a life.

Her boy is still young. Still learning with simple things. He breaks many of his toys, and a solution presents itself to her.

When Wayne comes up to her again with a broken toy car, tears in his eyes, she takes it carefully and sits with him on the living room floor, showing him the little broken toy and the way the pieces don't fit back together properly anymore.

"You can't always fix the things you break." She tells him. "Sometimes, they are broken that way forever now." He sniffles, staring at the car that was his favorite, trying to imagine a world without it. He's barely four, and thus it's the worst world his brain can come up with.

"Some things can be replaced." She had brought another car with her for this, pulling it from the inside of her house coat pocket. "But they're not the same anymore, are they?"

Wayne shakes his head sadly, sitting on the floor and not leaving a dent this time. She brushes a hand through his hair, and he leans into it, just barely, enough that he doesn't hurt her.

"So you have to be careful, Wayne. You don't mean to, I know, but you're special. You can break things a lot easier than other kids."

He's quiet, but nods slightly, and very gingerly takes the other car form her hand, while she keeps the broken pieces of the other. He's still upset, and she knows the lesson won't stick the first time, but... he's always been good with rewards.

"I'll look for a new one, just like this." She says, and watches his eyes light up. "But you have to make sure that you don't break that one for a month. I'll keep track, but you have to be careful." Wayne nods wildly, keeping his hand loose around the car.

"I, I'll be careful mama!" He crows, and flies up and out of the room back upstairs, back to his toys, and Lady Scott stands, keeping the pieces to pass off to a worker in the house, so they can search for the same kind.

It takes him nearly a full year to keep a car unbroken for the full month. But he does it eventually, and Lady Scott hopes this lesson is enough, that it will be the thing to stick.

But gentleness was easy, in comparison to kindness.

The other alien in his class, the young blue boy who carried a fish and dressed in prison garb, she knew the other kids didn't like him. He was too obviously alien, while her Wayne was more... superhuman, than alien. Wayne knew what he really was, as the pod was one of the few things he couldn't actually break.

But he tries to break this little boy. She tries, at home, to talk to him about it, but nothing gets through to him, he keeps going on about how he was weird, a freak, that he shouldn't be in his school.

Lady Scott ponders pulling Wayne out, home-schooling him, but then the blue boy sets off a paint bomb in the school and it gets all but shut down anyways, when her son carries it off from the foundations into their backyard. He puts it somewhere else when she asks him to, when everyone else has gone home.

When he gets back from that, Lady Scott tries again. Again, and again, she will teach her boy kindness, gentleness, anything to keep him safe. But Wayne says the other kid was weird, that he got up a lot quicker than other kids when he lost himself. Lady Scott takes this opportunity.

It stings, but she does what she must for her son.

So he grows, grows into a teen, one who knows how to be gentle, knows how to be kind about half the time with strangers and kids at school, and barely breaks anyone's bones anymore. She teaches him the same lesson again and again, the things you break cannot always be fixed, and Wayne learns to count other people in that. Eventually.

----

Wayne learns what his mother's hand scars are from when he's sixteen. He's known he's not the most careful sometimes, but his strength gets away from him. He doesn't break anyone's bones, not for nearly two years now, and the dislocations have been relegated down to just staff. He's rather proud of himself.

But the burning of shame of knowing all the thin needle surgery scars all over his mother's hands are from him? It hurts. It makes the back of his throat taste like bile and burning, and he can't bring himself to touch anything, anyone, for nearly six months.

He keeps her lessons in mind when he can stomach it again, careful barely there touches that are even then still sometimes too much. It hurts, so much, to know he can't hug anyone properly, can't handle anything without them trying to shatter under his hands, but he does what he has to.

The pod he came in, however, is safe. He hasn't ever been able to leave a scratch on it, not for years, and here he can let go just a bit.

He dents the door in the summer between his sophomore and junior year. His mother decides to tuck it away in her closet, and Wayne doesn't see it again.

Years along, he'll float even when it looks like he's standing, so he doesn't dent the floor from walking too hard, he'll hover hand every hug and pat, he barely touches anything, because nothing survives him, nothing gets by unbroken.

But... Megamind does. Wayne pulls his punches, oh of course he does, he can't afford to not, but not nearly as much as he has to with the human villains. He bounces back so much easier than anyone else Wayne has ever fought, and it's...

Well it's not freeing, but it's nice.

He can fight, like he's actually challenged, their battles are fun, for awhile. Megamind bounces back every time with something different, something new, and Wayne can let go, just a bit, a single button on a too tight shirt, and it's so. nice.

Until.

There's a crack, and bile in Wayne's throat, blood on his hands-

You can't always fix the things you break.