The Long Road Ch 30
Sep. 28th, 2012 07:38 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
lothinielflowermaidenWarning: Child abuse. See previous chapters for other warnings.
Chapter Thirty
It wasn't until two nights later that Norway was able to face telling them more of the incidents from his past. The day following the late night conversation, he had clearly been too upset from the previous night. For most of that day, he had stayed in his room, coming out only for meals and for long enough after each meal to reassure his family. But he had spoken even less than usual during that time.
The next day after dinner, he was finally ready to face the next part of the story.
Once again, the whole family was gathered in the living room, just like they were most evenings. During the course of that day, they had seen signs that Norway had been mentally preparing himself for something, and had guessed that he was going to continue the story. And that guess was proved correct.
A few moments had passed while Norway was still trying to gather the courage to speak, and when he did, he could not bring himself to look directly at any of them. "I can't remember how far we walked that day," he said. "I do remember that by the time we stopped, I had started crying again, and far kept making comments about how weak I was. But, once we got to where we stopped for the night, he pretty much just ignored me for most of the evening. He did give me dinner, but I was still too upset to eat." As he spoke, his memory went back to that first night, and how homesick he had been for the only family he had known up that point. "I don't think he spoke to me that whole evening, at least, I can't remember that he did."
The silence was almost as difficult for the boy as the words his father had said to him earlier. He wasn't used to silence. There were usually so many people around, and anyway, his brother talked a lot. He was used to that constant talk, and now this silence was oppressive to him. And the man—his father—still had that strange look in his eyes whenever he looked at the child.
Norway was still crying; he had barely stopped except for that brief time after the man had yelled at him. He tried to make as little noise as possible, though, to avoid drawing his father's attention. It was starting to get late, and he had never been in an unfamiliar place at night before.
After some time, the man got up from where he had been sitting. Coming to stand over the boy, he grabbed his arm and pulled the child to his feet. He did not even bother trying to be gentle. "I might as well show you to where you're supposed to sleep," he said. "You can't spend the night sitting here by the fire." He led the boy over to where a cloak had been spread out on the ground, as far away from the warmth of the fire as possible. "Now, this is where you are to stay, and I don't want to hear a sound out of you until morning. Is that clear?" There was something threatening in his tone.
Norway did not answer. He knew he had been asked a question, but he had also been told not to make a sound.
Scandia tightened his grip on the child's arm. "I asked you a question, and when I ask a question, then I expect to be answered. Do you understand?"
"Yes," Norway answered, barely above a whisper.
Scandia released him, and turned around to walk back to the fireside, leaving Norway alone.
Norway lay down on the bed that his father had provided him with. Away from the fire the night air was chill. But if he covered himself with the cloak, then there would be nothing to cushion the hard ground below. At last, he ended up wrapping the large cloak around himself.
From where he lay, his could see his father sitting by the fire, but the man was not watching him at the moment. Now, he was starting to miss his brothers even more than he had before. He had never been alone like this at night—at first he had been with the woman who had taken care of him, and then once he had been sent in with the other children, he always slept near his brothers. Now there was no one nearby except this man who seemed to hate him.
Norway could no longer contain the tears that he had been trying to hold back, but he tried to make as little noise as possible. His attempt at quiet was unsuccessful, as the next thing he knew that man was standing over him, and was clearly angry.
"I knew you were a pathetic weakling, but I thought you could at least follow a simple order. Now stop this crying, and go to sleep."
Norway tried to stop crying, but the anger in this man's voice only made him more afraid and that just made him cry harder. And that just made the main angrier."
"I really did try to stop crying, but I couldn't. And when I didn't stop, far . . . He reached down and grabbed my arm, pulling me to my feet. It hurt . . . he'd done that same thing earlier, plus the way he pulled me along while we were walking . . . Once I was on my feet, he shook me like he'd done before. He kept yelling about how weak I was . . . how no one wanted me, and how you were probably glad I was gone . . . I told him I wanted to go home . . . and he said that my home was with him now." Norway kept his gaze focused on the floor as he spoke, not wanting to see the effect that he knew his story was probably having on his family. "When I still didn't stop crying . . . he—he hit me. Not just once like earlier that day, but several times. And then, he just walked away back to the fire, like it had never happened. I remember lying on the hard ground after he walked away . . . and it hurt so much. There was nothing to cushion it anyway . . . and after what he did. I was still crying, from pain as much as homesickness, but thankfully father did not come back . . . I cried myself to sleep that night."
As he had recounted the story of the first beating he had received from his father, Norway's eyes had once again filled with tears, tears that spilled over when he told how he had cried himself to sleep.
Not for the first time since recovering these memories at the end of the dream, Norway wished that all of this had just stayed buried. He hadn't exactly been happy when he couldn't remember most of his childhood, as he had been able to remember enough for it to hurt, but at least there hadn't been so many memories. And he had never really talked about any of this before, and he was afraid of the looks he would see on the faces of his family if he looked at them. He was afraid that he would look and see that they felt ashamed of him for having been so weak, or, possibly worse, that they pitied him.
He felt a gentle touch on his hand, and after a few moments he looked over at Finland, who was sitting next to him on the couch. He could not bring himself to look at the others yet.
"You don't have anything to be ashamed of, Norja. You were a child and you had been taken away from everything that was familiar to you. Your father was the one who was in the wrong—he shouldn't have punished you for being upset. If he had been any kind of decent parent, he would have known that."
Of course, no one had thought that Scandia was any kind of decent parent to begin with, not with everything they knew about him. It had been bad enough when the only thing really known about him was that he had abandoned his children with their uncle. Now that some of the things he had done to Norway were known, it was impossible for anyone in the family to see anything positive about Scandia. And they all knew the worst part of the story was coming.
Norway still was not ready to look at any of the other members of his family. He knew that they were all nearby, but this was only the second time he had talked about his past in front of them. Everything that they had learned previously, they had learned from having witnessed it or from something that Scandia had said.
At that moment, Norway just wanted to go to his room and lock himself in where he would not have to face them, where he would not have to see them start to be ashamed of him. But, drawing on every bit of inner strength he possessed, he forced himself to continue, in the hope that getting everything out in the open really would make it easier to face.
"For the first several days, it was just like that first night. Nothing that I did ever measured up to what far wanted from me. I couldn't understand some of what he said to me back then, but I understood enough to know that he hated me . . . And I knew he hated it whenever I cried, so I would try to hide it from him, but he always know . . . Sometimes he just yelled at me, but other times . . . he would hit me. Even if he didn't actually hit me, he would grab my arm or shoulder, tight enough to leave a bruise." Norway did not say so, but he remembered that in those days he had always had bruises somewhere. He had never had time to fully heal in between the beatings. The bruises might start to fade, but them something would set Scandia off, and he would just end up receiving a new set of bruises over the healing ones. His mind started to drift back to some of the specific times, but he knew that if he recounted the story of every time his father had hit him, he would never finish everything he needed to tell.
"It took him a few days to start talking about how my mother's death was my fault," Norway continued. "He had mentioned it a few times . . . but, eventually he started bringing it up every time he got angry . . . I can't remember if he actually said anything back then about how I should have died with her—the first time I clearly remember him saying that was later—but I could tell that he thought that. He said that everyone hated me for causing her death . . . and that no one had wanted me. . . And after hearing that so much, I started to believe it. After all, no one had stopped from taking me . . . and he had said that I was going to be sent away. And, then, the things that he did changed again." Once again, he paused, trying to decide how much of the next part he could actually bring himself to talk about.
It had finally reached the point where the way his father treated him was beginning to feel normal. The time before that was beginning to seem like a distant dream, although he still missed his brothers a lot. And he still cried himself to sleep most nights, even though doing so frequently led to another beating from his father.
He had been with his father several weeks, maybe even a couple of months, when things took a new turn. It was nighttime, which was when the worst incidents generally tended to happen. He had been sent to bed, which was still the same as it had been the first night he had spent with his father. Actually, it was worse now as the nights were growing colder. Norway had already learned that he did not feel cold the same way humans did, but it was still hard for him to keep warm enough at night with only that cloak to wrap up in. And now that the bruises from the times his father hit him never had time to heal, it had gotten even more difficult to get comfortable on the hard ground.
That particular night, he was still sore from what had happened the night before when he had done something to anger his father. He felt almost like there wasn't a spot anywhere on his body that wasn't bruised. He kept shifted trying to find a position to sleep in that didn't hurt so much, and was trying to hold back tears. He knew that crying would probably only anger his father and likely bring on another beating. But he just hurt so much and he was missing his brothers and the way things had been before his father had shown up—and at last he could no longer hold back the tears.
It did not take long for his crying to attract his father's attention. He heard the footsteps as his father walked towards him and he braced himself for another beating. He was not prepared for what actually happened. Just like every other time, his father grabbed his arm and pulled him to his feet, but then nothing happened for a few moments. At last, Scandia led the boy over to the fire. There was a different look in his eyes than usual, and it made Norway uncomfortable.
He was pulled down to sit at the fireside next to his father, and a few moments later, Scandia started running his hand through the boy's hair. He was saying something as he did so, but it took a few moments for Norway to be able to focus on the words through the fear he felt at this change in his father's behavior.
"Well, you've certainly proved that you're nothing more than a little weakling, so there's not much point in trying to make anything out of you. So I'll have to find other ways in which you can be useful." As he spoke those words, his fingers found the particular spot in the boy's hair that he had been searching for—the stray curl.
Norway wasn't sure what he felt at that moment. A strange sensation that he had never felt before came over him when that spot in his hair was touched, and he wasn't sure that he liked it. It made him feel uncomfortable, and he was even more confused about what his father was doing to him. He tried to pull away, but his father kept a tight grip on his with one hand, as he kept stroking the haircurl with the other.
"I didn't know what he was doing . . ." Norway had backed up against the arm of the couch, and curled into himself as much as he could as he recounted that particular memory. "I didn't understand the way it made me feel, or why . . . And then, when he was done, he said that was the only use I could possibly have. That the only thing I was good for was being something for him to use . . . And he made more comments about Mother's death being my fault . . . And he said that the fact that I let him do that proved that I really was nothing but a weakling . . . But I didn't even know what he was doing . . ." He was unable to kept talking, as he was overcome by the tears he had been trying to contain the whole time he had been talking.
It took a few moments for the rest of the family to react after they had heard that part of Norway's story. Hearing about the physical and emotional abuse had been difficult enough for all of them, and they had all known that eventually the abuse would take this turn. But they had all been hoping that Norway would at least be a little older before that happened.
They all wanted to be able to do something to comfort Norway, to take away some of the pain that they knew the memory had brought him, but there was nothing they could do. Norway did not seem to be aware of their presence, and they knew that touching him was a bad idea.
And also, they were all thinking that now they knew why Norway had reacted so strongly to recovering the memory of what had happened in January—because that was the same way that the abuse had started to take that particular turn.
Norway was still aware of his family's presence, although only barely, and he had noticed that they had not responded to what he had just revealed. And, with the memories still fresh in his mind he believed that there was only one possible interpretation for that. He had finally managed to reveal something that would drive them away, and make them hate him or think less of him.
He slowly forced himself to get to his feet, and then took a couple of steps towards his room before stopping to look back towards his family. His vision was blurred by tears, so he could make out the expressions on their faces as they looked at him. He only saw that none of them were trying to stop him from leaving the room, and he took that as a sign that they didn't care.
He knew that he was on the edge of breaking down, and he did not want to do so in front of his family. Telling that one memory had brought several years of memories to the front of his mind where they threatened to overwhelm him.
Feeling that he was about to lose control at any moment, he turned and practically ran out of the living room to the room that had been made into a bedroom for him. He wanted to lock the door behind him, but the lock had been disabled after he had admitted to having thought about killing himself.
He walked across the room to the bed, and curled up on it much the way he had been on the couch. And then, he allowed himself to lose control and surrender the memories and the tears that threatened.
When Norway became aware of his surroundings again, he was still on the bed, but someone had tucked him under the covers. A lamp on the dresser had been left on, and the door to the room was open, but he was the only one in the room.
The memories had receded enough for the time being that he did not feel like he was going to be overcome by them, but he did feel worn out from talking about what little of those memories he had managed to talk about and from all the crying he had done. Despite some curiosity about how much time had passed and whether or not his family was still in the living room, he did not feel like getting out of bed. The softness of the bed and the warmth of the covers were a pleasant contrast to his memories of that single cloak on the hard ground. Of course, that "bed" had been in improvement over the nights that had come later—the nights when he had been forced to share his father's bed.
With that one thought the memories threatened to return. Desperately he tried to find something that could force them back before he got swept under again.
His eyes fell on the open door, and he wondered why it had been left open, and for that matter why the lamp had been left on. Did his family really think he was so weak that he could not handle waking up in the dark? Had they left the door open to further take away what privacy he had left—he already wasn't allowed to lock the door. Were they going to forbid him to close it now, too? Or maybe, he had been taken in by lies earlier, and someone in the house was planning to come into the room to take advantage of him. Maybe the door had been left open to make it easier to get to him.
Norway could not stop the soft cry that escaped him at that thought. For a moment he lay there, terrified that someone may have heard, but no one came into the room. Slowly, he forced himself to relax, to remember that his family was trying to help him. Eventually he relaxed enough that he was able to fall asleep, although his sleep remained troubled by memories that flitted in and out of his subconscious.
When morning came, he was just relieved that he had managed to avoid waking anyone up by screaming in the middle of the night.
That morning, he was unable to force himself to eat much more than a few bites of his breakfast. He felt the same way he had felt when he had been in the hospital in January—like he would be sick if he forced himself to eat anything. Those few bites were the most of he was able to force down, despite the concern that his family had not even bothered hiding. He felt completely drained from the night before, and still felt like he could break down again at any moment. It was a relief when breakfast was over and enough time had passed that he could escape to his room again.
"Are you sure he's not getting sick again? He was finally starting to get better."
The rest of the family was in the living room, trying to figure out just to what extent this new change in Norway's condition was something they needed to worry about. They were all very worried by how little breakfast he had eaten that morning that morning, and they could see how close to breaking he was. There had been too many close calls over the past several months, and they were all scared of losing him.
"I don't know. This could just be because of how upset he got last night, but if he's still not eating tomorrow it might be a good idea to take him to the doctor."
That was the main issue that they were all worried about, that Norway might stop eating again. He had almost died from that already, and none of them could stand the thought of going through that worry again.
"Will he be alright, though?"
"He should still be alright eventually. It might actually be a good sign that he's not repressing anything this time."
But none of them were really convinced.
Norway spent most of the day in his room, emerging only for meals where he would manage to choke down a couple of bites just to try to ease his family's concern. He wasn't feeling any better than he had that morning, and he had spent most of the day curled up on top of his bed, alternately crying and completely losing himself in the memories.
After dinner that night, he still joined his family in the living room, as he was given very little choice in the matter. He still felt sick, the same he had all day, and he felt too emotionally drained to face telling them the next part of what had happened with his father. It was bad enough that those memories kept playing over and over again in his mind. He just could not bear to speak of them out loud when he could barely deal with them in his mind. The thought he had heard a few days ago, that it might be easier to deal with things if he talked about them, was more or less forgotten.
As soon as they would let him, he once again retreated to his room, where he once again surrendered to the memories that threatened to drown him. During the night, he once again woke up to find the door open and a light left on, but this time the light was outside his room.
Author's notes:
If I didn't explain this last chapter the italicized scenes are flashbacks that basically show the incident that is being recounted. There is probably a little more detail in the flashback scenes than in what the rest of the family is actually being told.
There are two more chapters after this one, and an epilogue. A new chapter will be posted every other Friday, and then the epilogue should be posted on October 30th. I will explain more about that when I post chapter thirty-two. I will also explain more about the plans I have for other stories that will be linked to this one.
I would like to thank my reviewer from the last chapter.
As always, please review. It means a lot to me to know that people are following this story.
