Outcast ✧ Phan

Four

ad·just·ment
noun
the process of adapting or becoming used to a new situation.

Its been a little while since the slap. Six months, to be exact. Dan's mum did come home, though he never found out where she went, and she ended up screaming and arguing with his dad all night. He stopped listening to them, though. He was too afraid what he would hear after he noticed the fight was about him. Dan had cried himself to sleep, praying things would get better.

Inevitably, they didn't. Everything just seemed to get worse and worse after that.

His dad started hitting him more, but he never told anybody, no, he didn't dare. Not even Louise. Sometimes the hits left marks, all below the neck at least, so nobody would notice.

Dan knows they've been arguing more at night, when they thought Dan was asleep, each fight worse than the last. Sometimes they threw things, sometimes they broke things. Sometimes there was blood, sometimes there wasn't. They never really made up, just woke up the next day and acted like it never happened, for his sake he guessed.

Mum doesn't tuck him in anymore. She still loves him, he knows, she tells him everyday. Dad doesn't even look at him without it being sour and cold. Does he still love Dan? Dan didn't think so.

Dan saw marks on his mum's wrists one night. They were like cat scratches, only cleaner. Looked fresh, too. They didn't own a cat, but he still didn't ask where they came from. Instead, he scribbled it down in his question book.

There were a lot of questions in the book now. Most answered, some not. The majority he had to come up with answers on his own for, or asked somebody, but now, thanks to his recent discovery of the internet and their computer, it was a lot easier.

Dan was sitting in his room, playing with his stuffed toys, moving them and making them dance all around the room while he sat on the bed. He noticed it was quiet tonight, no fighting, and decided to Google some of the unanswered questions, starting with the one he'd been thinking about most.

So he crawled out of bed, creeping down the hall to the computer room and closed the door behind him, locking it, just in case. His parents didn't know he used their computer at night. He only did on nights they didn't argue, though. Those nights were happy nights, good nights. He yawned, and checked the time.

1:24am

He was tired, and it was late, but on nights like these, where it was quiet and his parents slept soundly, he never hesitated to take to the opportunity.

He leaned back in the chair a little, chewing on the inside of his cheek. How would he word it?

Dan decided to stay simple, typing out, very slowly, Powers

A lot came up. Too much for Dan to even look at tonight, let alone read. Link after link after link, connecting him to everything to do with his search, be it mentioning the word or about the word. He had to try and read as much as possible, though, because he didn't know when his next chance would come to use the computer.

So he did.

He looked through page after page, scanning for something, anything, that could be even remotely related to him.

Invisibility?
Flying?
Visions?
Mind reading?

No, none of these were even possible, let alone able to be linked to him and his parents arguments. The list continued on and on, a new "power" introduced into his brain with every click and scroll.

After reading for what seemed like hours, he was ready to call it quits. Then his eyes caught on a long word.

Tel..
Tele...
Telekin...
Telekinisis..

It took him a minute to sound it out properly, but when he did, and read its description, he almost couldn't believe it.

Was this not normal? He asked himself, rereading the paragraph. To him, this was just as natural as breathing or walking. Even so, the more he sat and thought about it, the more it made sense: why he couldn't use it outside of his house, why his dad hated him for it, everything, it all lead down to the fact that he was a freak.

His entire life he'd been normal, in the light like everybody else. He never knew how different he really was, how could he? He never knew why his dad hated him, called him a freak, hit him all the time. Now he did and, god, he really wished he didn't.

In that moment, Dan Howell was cut into the dark, his entire world now pitch black, and he had no clue where he was going, or if his eyes would ever adjust.

A/N - ty for ten reads already, ily all