WHAT: Eleven takes Yue to Halloween at the Barns, he gets tired and breaks down WHERE: Halloween at the Barns WHEN: Backdated to October 27th WARNINGS: Small children swearing, references to child abuse STATUS: Complete
The last week had, possibly, been the best week of Yue’s life. It wasn’t just the magic, or Syd’s giant dog, or the little snowman that followed him around (Yue had, after a couple of days, discovered that its name was Hanakuso, and he’d laughed pretty hard, even if he did think calling it ‘snot’ was a little mean. Hana was a nice nickname though). It wasn’t the candy and the costumes and the pastries.
Everyone was so nice to him. People had been nice to him at home too, sometimes. His teachers usually were, except when he got frustrated and lost his temper. And his mom was usually pretty nice to him, especially when his dad wasn’t home. People were nice back home, but here, people went out of their way to be nice to him. Complete strangers would take him out for treats and candy, and check up on him and play with him.
The large black bruise that he’d had under his eye when he’d first arrived was fading now, and the cut above his eye had nearly healed, and Yue… did not want to go home.
He knew he had to go home, and that the longer he was gone the worse trouble he’d be in, but Vallo was the best place in the whole world, and he didn’t want to leave.
He didn’t have to worry about that right now though. Right now, he was practically floating on a cloud. He’d spent the whole day eating candy, and getting his face painted (monsterous!), and painting pumpkins and he’d won a stuffed ghost, which he held tightly in his arms, in a custom designing contest.
He’d wanted to stay up all night, to see everything the night events had to offer, except he’d barely gotten on the Baba Yaga ride when he’d immediately fallen asleep, cheek on El’s shoulder, smearing green facepaint on her shirt.
There was a moment of confusion when he was shaken awake at the end of the ride, and then he pouted. “Did I miss it? Can we go again? I’ll stay awake this time, I promise!”
Eleven was in no way passing up this opportunity. Katou had mellowed down a lot after the years, finally finding a sense of home and belonging in Vallo. They had remained close - still one of her best friends - but she could recall the first rocky year of their friendship. How he had opened up to her about a lot of things; his father, his sexuality, his rage. That was a Katou she knew all too well.
This one - Yue - wasn’t. He was innocent and not entirely broken. Over the years, her experience with children had only increased between babysitting gigs and teaching a crowd of telekinetically gifted children. She was confident she could handle him at this age, and it was giving her a little bit of baby fever and Mike was going to be tackled when she got back.
“I think it’s time for you to go to bed,” she chuckled, adjusting his weight in her arms. El was in the process of exiting the event after having said her goodbyes, a tiny Katou snoozing against her. “I can read you a Halloween story? I bought you a book - it’s in my purse.”
Yue pouted. “But we didn’t even get to see the bone tree!” he complained; he’d heard that it was supposed to be really spooky, and he’d wanted to see it. He wanted to see all of this. They didn’t do Halloween celebrations back home, and seeing them in movies wasn’t at all the same as seeing them in real life.
It was tempting to give in. El wasn’t going to get a chance like this again, not that she was aware of anyway - and his face was really hard to say no to. But. “You are tired,” she told him softly, stroking a hand up and down his back. “Maybe we can stop by tomorrow and see if they still have some stuff up? I can always ask Matthew and Ronan. You need to rest. Halloween is not over yet.”
They had the whole weekend to do things, and she had no issues in making sure they were experienced. Tonight, though, they were done.
Yue should have gone along with her, he knew. Some part of him knew that it would be better to go to sleep and come back and see everything fresh. But he didn’t know how long he’d be here – Syd had said he might only be here for a little while, and what if he couldn’t come back tomorrow? What if no one let him, or what if he was sent back home to Japan… He could already feel the tears stinging at his eyes.
He struggled forcefully out of El’s grasp. “You’re just a bitch,” he yelled. He didn’t need her anyway! He could go see the bonetree on his own. He ran for the corn maze, though he didn’t make it much further than the entrance and around the corner before he had to stop. He was crying too hard to do much more than sit in a corner of the maze, knees curled up to his chest. It wasn’t fair.
That was… not the reaction Eleven had expected, no. Having that said to her from such a little person was alarming, but she wasn’t mad - she had a decent picture of what his childhood had been like at home. She had also been a child that lashed out, although instead of words it was telekinetic force and snapping necks.
She didn’t restrain him, didn’t fight to keep a tight lock on him. What she did do was follow him since he was her responsibility, and the last thing she wanted was for him to get lost in a place that was very unfamiliar to him.
It did not take long for her to find him.
Eleven did not speak up. She did not scold, she did not open her mouth to utter encouraging words. She gave those looking in their direction a weak smile and a wave (letting them know she had this) before sitting next to him, quietly.
Sometimes, you just had to cry it out.
Yue tensed when Eleven approached, curling into himself more when she sat down, because even if he didn’t always know what would get him in trouble, he knew causing a scene like this in public was almost guaranteed to. Except Eleven didn’t yell at him, or hit him, or promise that when they got home there’d be consequences and that they’d the longer he went on, the worse they’d be, and, after a couple moments he looked up from where he’d been burying his face in his arms and looked at Eleven, the sobs quieting into hiccups.
He hugged his knees tighter. “I don’t wanna go home,” he said, almost too quiet to hear.
This was a lot harder than El anticipated it to be. Her heart broke for him, and she had to take a deep breath to steady herself.
“I don’t think you will,” she told him after a minute. “I think you will wake up at your house where Sydney is. You will remember your life, all the good and the bad, and you’ll know you survived it in your own way. You will be surrounded by people who love you. You have friends, and a lot of the time, friends become your family. More family than your own flesh and blood ever could be.”
She was hesitant to touch him. Katou had ripped himself from her arms and bolted, and he was vulnerable and scared - she didn’t want to escalate that. But she did offer him a hand to hold, if he wanted it. “You will make your own home one day, and it’ll be one you want to go back to every day.”
It didn’t sound real, not really. Yue still had hope, someday, that someday he’d stop messing up, that he’d be what his father wanted him to be, and that someday his father would hold his arms open to him and they’d be a happy family, but it was harder to picture after being here for just over a week. He screwed up here too, and no one had yelled at him, or called him names, or beat him. He knew his father loved him, his mother had told him as much, and it had been his father who had named him Yue, only one character difference from his sister, Sae, but sometimes it was hard to feel it, especially now.
He looked at El’s hand, and then ignored it, instead ducking under her arm to tuck himself up against her side. “Do you promise?” he asked, and then grimaced, because he wasn’t a baby, he knew that promises didn’t count for much. But maybe, for now, a promise would be enough.
Eleven wasn’t going to turn that gesture down. Her arm draped over him tightly, and she held him against her side as if she was prepared to shield him from the blows of life. She wished she could.
“I promise,” she told him, her confidence unwavering. “Friends don’t lie, you know.” El had said that with a small, nostalgic smile too. At her age she knew that life was complicated, and friends could very well love you but lie from time to time. As a kid, however, the statement was an easy rule to abide by. “We can sit here until you are ready to go.”
Maybe she’d luck out and he’d fall back asleep with how tired he was. If he didn’t, that was fine - she didn’t holding him to her while they waited.