Blood Ties

Title: Granite Lullabies 1/?
Summary: The past revealed
Impliments: None
Feedback: PLEASE!!!!
Warnings: Death

Notes: For those who asked, here is the pronunciation of the names:

Paulos -> Pol-us
Dimitri -> Di-mee-tree
Markeen -> Mar-keen
Eric -> This should be obvious
Arlis -> Again, obvious, LoL
Armand -> Ar-mond


Blood Ties


Granite Lullabies 3

He had been seven years old the day his mother came home from the hospital with a blue wrapped bundle in her arms. He remembered the somewhat distracted smile on his mother’s face when she asked him if he wanted to hold his new baby brother. Of course, he had eagerly agreed. He had been waiting for this moment for nine long months. He sat down on the floor of the living room and the so tiny body was placed in his lap.

He looked down into the sleepy face of the baby. And was captured. The abundant amount of fuzz on the top of his head was the same midnight black color of his own but showed signs of being curlier. Cloudy eyes of newborn baby blue looked at him, watched him. He wondered distantly what color they would be. One tiny, tiny hand curled around his finger.

“What’s his name, Mama?”

“Marius.” Armand didn’t know whether to laugh or wince at his mother’s rather unfortunate love of Anne Rice. He decided then and there to call the baby Marc instead. It was only a few moments later that she walked away, heading to the bedroom where his father waited with the drugs she had, mostly, stayed away from for the last few months.

“Don’t worry, Marc, I’ll watch over you. I’ll always be there for you.” And he had. From the very first day, it was abundantly clear that it was going to be Armand that took care of his little brother. Over the next few years, he did whatever it took.

It was Armand that changed his diapers. It was Armand that woke up in the middle of the night to take him to their mother to be breast fed, and later he made the bottles and rocked the baby back to sleep. It was Armand that saw he was dressed every day and that his clothes were washed when they were dirty. He even sold some of his toys to other kids on the street just so he could buy the needed formula when his parents had spent all the money on drugs and booze. When he had to attend school, he always worried, but their mother seemed to do well enough until her eldest son could arrive home and take over.

As Marc got older, it was his big brother that taught him how to walk and later to talk. His first word was not Mama, as it was for most infants, it was ‘Bubba’, which was as close as he could get to brother. The dark haired toddler was the center of Armand’s world. His bright eyes had turned out to be a deeper color than Armand’s, leaning more towards blue. Seeing them never stopped bringing a smile to the pre-teens face.

As they both got older, the violence in the house increased. But Armand made sure that as little of it as possible touched his little brother. If Marc accidentally broke something, Armand always made sure it was himself that was in the way of their father’s fists. Their mother was constantly trying to hide bruises, and the drugs were taking their toll on her body as well. When Marc was three years old, the consuming lifestyle she lived finally caught up with her, and their mother became so sick she was bed ridden most of the time.

It was during that summer that the beatings increased the most. Armand tried hard not to let their father realize just how much he protected little Marc. But he couldn’t be there all the time. A few weeks before he was to start back to school, Marc tripped and broke the glass of water he was carrying. When their father arrived, Armand made sure to say that he had been the one to do it, and had gladly suffered the belting that was given as punishment as he watched his little brother run upstairs to his room. When his father was done though, he lifted Armand’s head from the floor by his hair, where he lay almost unconscious. “You can’t protect him forever.”

Armand became afraid, and watched very carefully over the next few days, but nothing different seemed to happen. Marc received the occasional glancing blow no matter how hard his big brother tried to watch, but that was nothing different than usual. The first day of school, he ran home from the bus as fast as he could through the little townhouse subdivision they lived in. He was terrified of what might have happened while he was gone. But he found the blue-eyed toddler playing peacefully in the front yard under the somewhat dubious supervision of their exhausted mother.

It was soon after this that Armand started to notice the stranger. It had been just after dark the first weekend of school, and the boys were still playing outside, as Marc wasn’t ready to go to bed yet. The three year old was playing tag with him, and eagerly ran towards the street. Out of the corner of his eye, Armand had seen a dark haired man walking along the sidewalk. A car suddenly sped onto their street without any concern for incautious toddlers. The preteen felt a brief moment of helpless horror. And then the man was just THERE, grabbing the younger boy before he could run in front of the car.

Armand didn’t consider how this good fortune was possible for long, only running forward to take his little brother into his arms. Before he could get out more than a few words of thanks, his face was suddenly gripped in a surprisingly strong hand and tilted upwards. He had forgotten about the almost absentminded punch he had received earlier that day. His eye was probably three different colors by now. The stranger’s intent gaze moved to his arm where it was holding his brother, and the bruises from the hand that had grabbed him when he tried to avoid said punch.

The man’s green eyes blazed with fury, and for a moment Armand was terrified, but immediately realized that the anger wasn’t directed at him. He didn’t say another word, but carefully pulled himself away and lead Marc resignedly into the house with another nod of thanks. He looked back through the doorway once, before closing it, and found the dark haired stranger still standing there, looking at the townhouse speculatively.

Armand had put the incident out of his mind by the next day, but it wasn’t the last time that he saw the man. The stranger became a regularly seen sight on their street in the evening. There had even been at least two occasions when Armand had avoided a beating simply by the timely appearance of the man on the street. The boy got the odd sense that the man was looking out for them.

Almost two months passed this way, and then it was the end of September and time for Marc’s fourth birthday. “Tomowow is my birfday, isn’t it Brudder?”

“That’s right, Marc, tomorrow is your birthday. And it’s a Friday so we can stay up late to celebrate.” Armand looked down at the toddler with a patient smile. “Do you remember how old you’re going to be?”

The little boy looked at his hand for a moment before pushing his thumb to his palm and holding the other fingers up. “Dis’ many!”

“But how many is that?”

Marc looked at his hand again, as if it would tell him the answer. After a moments thought he held it up again and said, “Faw.”

Laughing at his adorable little boy voice, Armand replied, “Four, that’s right.”
“How many are you, Brudder?”

“Remember, we had my birthday back in May, just before school got out, and I turned eleven.”

“I ‘member! I ‘member! But aren’t you sposed to have cake at a birfday?” He asked innocently. “We didn’t haf no cake at yours.” The boy considered for a minute before asking, “Will we haf cake at MY birfday? And prezents? Will I haf prezents too?”

Armand looked away for a moment, so his smile wouldn’t betray him. His own birthday had been basically forgotten, with no cake and only a token gift of three dollars and instruction to go buy himself something from the dollar store. He was determined that Marc’s birthday was going to be better. He had been helping some of the kids at school with their homework, sometimes just doing it himself, and he had saved up the change he earned from it for a month or so. He had found the cutest stuffed bear with blue angle wings at a corner store that he had bought just the other day. And yesterday he had bought a miniature cake, just big enough for the two of them, from the grocery store that was covered in bright yellow frosting, which was Marc’s favorite color.

“Well, you’ll just have to wait and see what the birthday fairy will bring,” he finally answered.

That night, Armand tucked his little brother into bed. As he had done every night since the child had been put into his arms, he sang him a lullaby, and with each word, he yet again vowed his love and protection. As he looked at the now peacefully sleeping face, he frowned at the bruise on one delicate cheek. It was far from the first one. Brushing back midnight strands, he placed a kiss on the forehead revealed, and headed into his own room.

The next day went as it normally did, but Armand could hardly wait to get home. He knew Marc was going to be so happy with the little bear, as his last one had finally needed to be thrown away a couple months ago when it fell apart from frequent hugs and being dragged everywhere. As the bus went placidly on its way, he heard sirens in the distance. Two police cars and an ambulance passed the bus at high speeds, either on their way to or from an emergency. Armand felt a since of dread overtake him.

The bus finally reached his stop, and Armand exited it, almost reluctantly. Something was wrong. He began walking towards his home. Before he realized it he had broken into a jog. He rounded the final corner onto their street. Flashing red and blue lights gained his attention quickly. For a moment, he stopped completely. He tried to tell himself that it was the house next door to them, but he knew better. He never noticed the bookbag falling to the ground as he started to run.

Everything around seemed silent. He was focused so strongly on the crowd of people gathered near their lawn that everything else faded out. Distantly he thought he could hear someone screaming wordlessly. The gawkers that always seemed to gather after such events seemed to part before him like water. He ducked under the yellow police tape, his only thought to get into the house. Two more steps before he was brought to a sudden stop.

The officer that had grabbed him around the waist was trying to tell him something, but Armand just couldn’t seem to make sense of it. All he knew was that he had to get to his brother. Marc needed him, and Armand had promised to always be there. He fought with everything he had to escape until another policeman finally had to help hold onto him.

The black haired boy screamed and fought, focused on the door way to his home and everything that it held. A paramedic began to make his way through, guiding the gurney towards the waiting ambulance. A sheet completely covered its all too tiny burden, blood staining it at head and waist. Even covered, the toddlers legs lay at an obviously unnatural angle.

The entire, unbelievable scene swam in Armand’s vision as his eyes overflowed with the first of many, many tears. He screamed again, the only coherent thing he had said yet, and he filled it with all the pain, passion, despair and rage that an eleven year old boy should never have to feel.

“MAAARRRC!!!!!!!”