Chapter Text
Henry used to have the brightest, most mischievous, most energetic spirit as a child. Growing up though, the energy died, and life just seemed Horrid.
Henry used to enjoy pulling pranks, and making fun of Peter, and being the star of every show solely because he was a little troublemaker. Being misbehaved was fun, and people were drawn to him because of it, so he never stopped. Especially after Peter was there and was decided to be the golden child. Being good was Peter's thing, so being bad had to be Henry's.
But then his parents started to really favouritise Peter, and Henry was bad no matter what he did. Perfection was coined Peter's thing, and horridness was coined Henry's, even if he was being on his best behaviour.
His parents began to really hate Henry. Sometimes he was sat doing nothing at all and he'd still get shouted at for being bad. Or he'd be blamed for something he wasn't even there for, so he literally couldn't have done it. Or if he really hadn't done something, but was accused of it, he would have no credibility, so they wouldn't believe him.
Henry started to properly notice the way his parents treated him far worse than they treated Peter when he was seven. Peter had accidentally spilled paint over the kitchen floor, and he owned up to it even though he was scared. And he was hugged and told it'd be okay, and then his dad cleaned it all up.
Henry got paint on the table, just a few lines that went over his paper, and he was locked in his room for the evening, missing lunch and dinner.
His mum used to drink a lot more after work, getting stressed out, not talking as much with his dad. It wasn't all the time, but more than normal, and it made her get worse with Henry. He vividly remembered the time he broke a plate after she'd had a long day at work, and she threw some of the broken pieces at him.
She threw it at him.
It cut his eyebrow, narrowly missing his eye, and he almost cried then and there.
She was terrifying when drunk.
He remembered the way she shouted at him, telling him that he was a waste of space, a disappointment, such a useless child that couldn't do anything right. It left a sour taste in his mouth, something stuck in his throat that wouldn't go away. And a pain in his chest, worse than the pain in his eyebrow.
The cut was deep enough to need stitches, which she did all on her own. It hurt, the feeling of skin being tugged together, especially because she had done it. His own mother threw something at him, something that cut his skin and made him need stitches. He couldn't hold back the tears then, which angered her more.
And the scar stayed, hair never growing back over it.
People thought it was edgy or cool, but Henry was always haunted by it.
It was the first time she hurt him physically.
He didn't forget what she said that night either.
His mum told everyone he ran into a table and cut his eyebrow. But Henry knew the truth, and it had to stay with him. He wasn't allowed to say anything.
A couple months later, when Henry was eight, she first punched him in the mouth, the delicate skin on his lip getting caught in his teeth. He remembered putting his hand up to his mouth after, blood staining the sleeves of his pyjamas. He found himself spitting out blood in the sink, a gross metallic taste left on his tongue.
His mum put ice in his hands and left him alone.
He was lucky that it didn't bruise, the swelling going away by the time school started again, but he knew it happened. He knew it happened, and it hurt him. His mum had physically hurt him, this time with her own hands.
She'd been more aggressive lately, shoving him sometimes, pushing him out of the way when his voice was too annoying to hear, or yanking his hair or his ear when he needed to stop doing what he was doing. Sometimes she held his wrists too tightly when dragging him to his room, really hurting him, sometimes enough to leave light bruises.
But this was intentional, deliberate, with her own fist, and it hurt him.
It really fucking hurt.
Once she'd left him alone, he couldn't hold back the tears.
He found himself sobbing, the ice that covered his mouth silencing him a little bit. He'd learnt not to cry when people were mean to him, because crying was uncool and babyish, but the meaner his family became, the more he forced himself not to feel things that could be used against him. Especially because he didn't want to be told stop crying or I'll give you something to cry about.
He really couldn't believe what his mum did.
Peter asked him why he was talking funny, and like with the eyebrow stitch, Henry had to lie. He wanted to tell his little brother, even though they weren't very close at all, just to tell someone, because it was making his chest ache to keep it to himself, but he couldn't. Because he was afraid.
After that, it kept happening.
It wasn't every day, or even every week. But when she had a bad week, or Henry had pissed her off, he would feel it. Either she'd punch his mouth again, because that never bruised somehow, or he'd hit him really hard in the chest, the stomach, his back or his arms. Sometimes she kicked him really hard in the legs, and he'd find it really painful to exert himself.
When he was nine, she hit him with a belt.
It felt like he'd stopped breathing.
He didn't understand why she got his dad's belt out, didn't understand why she seemed so cruelly pleased, and then he'd stopped paying attention for a second too long and the belt cracked the delicate skin of his back open. He remembered screaming, screaming so loudly, because it was a pain he'd never felt before.
It felt like white hot fire burning his skin, alighting every single nerve with flames that could never die down.
He remembered how she put a hand over his mouth after that and shouted at him, telling him that she'd hit him over the mouth if he ever dared to make such a loud noise again. And he was genuinely terrified, terrified because he didn't know how to not scream when it hurt that badly.
He found himself biting down on his hand, hard enough to leave deep teeth marks, in order to stay quiet. It hurt him so badly, even though he still had clothes on, especially when she went over the same spot twice. She'd hit his shoulder blades, his back, and his upper arm, and every single time his clothes touched the marks, he felt the same burning pain all over again.
He was nine.
He couldn't even remember what he did.
All he could remember was the white hot pain, and the stabbing feeling in his chest that came from the realisation that his mum must've truly hated him. If she could hurt him like that, just because she wanted to, then she must've truly hated him. And that same night, he watched her lovingly kiss Peter on the forehead as he hid the marks she made.
The only small comfort he got was her coming back into his room to clean up the marks she made, telling him to not get them infected or she'd do it ten times worse. She taught him how to do it, and told him not to forget, because she wasn't going to always clean them for him.
Sick and twisted enough to hurt him, and to not even consistently clean it for him.
Even though she hurt him, and made him feel terrible, the moments where she did clean the marks felt so loving. It was the only act of care he got from her, even though she treated it like her job, because it basically was. She knew how to clean up injuries, and she did it to Henry the same way she did it to her patients at the hospital.
It felt like love to Henry, because he was begging for scraps.
To his mum, it was just like doing her job.
As the years went by, the abuse worsened. The first time she ever hit him with the actual belt buckle, he knew he'd never complain about anything else she did anymore. It wasn't often that she used the belt buckle, but when she did, it made him burn and bleed and break down, because it hurt in a way that he couldn't explain.
She stopped caring about the gentleness, and trying to not make marks that'd stay. It was obvious that Henry wasn't going to snitch on her, or get himself caught, so she stopped being as careful. Her anger was more explosive, less controlled, and it affected him more and more. The abuse was so normal to him now.
But it still hurt.
He was so used to suppressing his emotions in his home, because it wasn't safe to show them, that he got angry in school way more. He snapped at the littlest of things, because at least no one in school could hit him with a belt. And when he was in pain and couldn't share it with anyone, it meant that he'd be more angry and irritable.
He was labelled the angry troublemaker kid. Because no one understood why he acted out or couldn't control his temper.
So, after having a really horrible day at school, his emotions all over the place, his mum would usually make it worse.
He had done nothing, genuinely nothing, and everyone was on his case. His teachers were being snarky, and his friends were being annoying, and Ralph wasn't in school, and Peter was still complaining about the low grade (he missed one thing in a spelling test) he got, and he was going to lose his mind.
And then his mum belted him with the buckle.
Just because she could.
Because her bad day made violence okay, even though he was meant to sit quietly and accept how horrible life felt.
So Henry found himself crying in the bathroom. He was bad at controlling his emotions when they were too much, so in his solitude, he broke down. He broke down, digging his palms into his nails the way he normally did when he was distressed, but it wasn't enough. He needed something to quiet his mind, distract him from how overwhelmed he was.
He tried digging his nails into his thighs, scratching deeply, but it wasn't enough.
And then something silver caught his eye, the way the silver belt buckle caught his skin.
Henry got up, and picked up his dad's razor. He held the cold metal in his hands, digging his fingertips into the sharp edge, wondering..
Wondering.
Henry put the blade down, and then he felt the marks on his back rub against his clothing again, reminding him of why he was so overwhelmed in the first place. So he picked the blade back up, and rolled up his sleeves. There was a welt on his right forearm from the belt already, but that didn't really matter to him.
He looked at his left wrist, and found himself neatly making a line on his delicate skin, testing the waters. The crimson spilled over his porcelain skin, the sharp sting making him feel a different type of pain. It wasn't one that spread over and burned, instead hurting in a controlled way, in only one place, exactly where he'd done it.
He felt better, relieved, and it was in his control.
Henry liked it.
He couldn't believe it, eleven years old with a blade in his hand, and a cut that he did to himself, all on his own, with no one else making him do it. He chose to do it. He was hurting, but it was him that did it, in his control. It didn't hurt the way it hurt when his mum hurt him, the way it hurt when other people made him mad and made him feel insane for having unstable emotions.
It was relieving.
Exhilarating.
Like a rush.
Like the blood that pooled out in little beads was all the pain he went through, and it was leaving him. Cleansing himself of the overwhelming pain and suffering, the unstable emotions that he could hardly control, hardly decipher.
Henry put the blade down, and walked out of the bathroom feeling safer.
When he woke up in pain the morning after, a cruel nightmare disturbing his sleep, he found himself in the bathroom again. This time, he took the razor to his room. His dad could find another one.
This one was his now.
He was so used to wearing long sleeves to cover up bruises that no one would even realise the new addition to his secrets. His mum would never know, and nor would anyone else. Because it was his secret to keep, his relief, and he'd be damned if someone took it from him.
Henry made a mistake that night in the bathroom.
Once he'd picked up the blade, he would never put it down for good again.