Outcast ✧ Phan

Ten

shat·tered
adjective
broken into many pieces.

trigger warning: nearing the end there's a pretty big trigger, stay safe loves.

There are two types of broken people. One is the cracked kind of broken, who are torn down bit by bit, cracked over time until their remains are only that: bits.
Then, there are people that are shattered, who, like a window, are destroyed all at once down to shards and pieces you can't even see.
The difference between the two? One is easily fixed, and the other isn't.

Dan Howell is very close to shattering.

Its been a week since the day he showed Louise his powers. They haven't spoke once in that time.
He's tried multiple times to get to her, to apologize for scaring her and possibly beg to be forgiven, but she always runs when he heads anywhere near in her direction.

People have noticed, too. How one day they were inseparable best friends, then the next sworn enemies of the sorts. Dan's asked about it on a daily basis.

"Where's Louise?"

"Is she okay?"

"Are you two still friends?"

"Why aren't you two talking anymore?"

He always brushed them away, mumbling something like "I'm fine." or "we're fine."

They pretend to believe him.

He wasn't exactly sure if Louise had told anybody about what happened, about his powers. Nobody has swept him away to some kind of lab yet, so that's a good sign. Maybe she didn't tell anybody, or maybe she did, and they just didn't believe her. He wasn't sure he wanted to know, either.

"Time to pack up, kids. Have a wonderful day, see you all tomorrow!" The teacher chirped, and Dan grabbed his Sonic The Hedgehog bookbag. He'd gotten it last year after a kid teased him about his Pooh bear one, calling it childish.

He quickly made way out of the room, eyes open for any sign of Louise's blonde curls, but he couldn't see overhead all the taller kids trudging down the hall. Dan wished he was taller.

After about a minute of jumping around to look and getting rude comments from some fifth graders he'd bumped into, he decided to give up.

Dan was a little late going outside to wait to be picked up, but it was okay, because his mum wasn't there yet. He took his usual place on a bench, wondering if Dad was home or off trying to find a job. He'd been doing that a lot the past few days. Its been kinda nice with him not being there, but every time he came home, still jobless, he was always in a fouler mood. He couldn't hurt Dan since mum was constantly around now, but Dan knew that when the next chance opened up, it would be taken, and that it would surely be the worst yet.

After around ten minutes passing of Dan sitting and watching other kids hop into their own cars, he started to get worried. Mum was never this late, and the group of remaining kids waiting was getting thinner and thinner. Soon, he was the only one left, and he had a really bad feeling starting to settle in his stomach.

He was so busy thinking of all the awful things that could have happened, he didn't notice the monitor walking up to him and talking until she was snapping her fingers in his face impatiently.

"What?" Dan blinked, shamefully realizing she asked him a question. She sighed, annoyance visible. He shrunk into the bench guiltily.

"I said, do you know if you're mum or dad is supposed to be coming to get you or not?"

"My mum always comes and gets me."
He replied, worry returning and overtaking the shame immediately.

Dan shook his head to a few more of her questions, ones like "is she ever this late?" and "do you know a phone number to call?" and "do you remember her telling you to get on a bus today?"