Algid (#TronnorAU)

Chapter 36: The old building on Genevieve Street

It had never been this silent before.

Connor still remembered vividly the first year he had been part of the foster system, like it had just only been yesterday, even if it had been almost ten years since then. No matter how hard he tried, it was impossible to erase the memories that brought back that time of his life.

He remembered how it was late January, right after his parents had died and Dustin had disappeared, leaving him all on his own on the doorstep of the hospital that fateful night. When they found him, the doctors tried their best to calm him down, but he wouldn't stop crying. Eventually, he had fallen asleep from the exhaustion, and when he came to, he was greeted by a man he had never seen before in his entire life. He had a sad smile plastered on his face, an almost full silver head and brown colored eyes. Connor remembered not liking him; he wore a tie, a brown jacket on top and shiny shoes. He had never trusted men with shiny shoes, because his dad said that those were the ones that worked for the people with money, and most of the time, those weren't good people. This man was just another faceless creature to him, someone who had come to give his condolences for the death of people he didn't know, and who tried to give solution to a problem which didn't have one.

The man greeted Connor, but his words were distant. He kept talking and talking, but Connor wasn't paying attention to a single word he said. He couldn't care any less.

-"Where's Dustin?"—Connor asked abruptly, as soon as he opened his eyes, quickly after judging the man before him at that very second—"Where is my brother?"

-"Dustin ran off, Connor."

The man kept talking, and even introduced himself, but Connor didn't listen to a single bit of it. Instead, he clutched on to the silver wristwatch he had on his fist, the one he picked up after Dustin discarded it the night before.

That was the moment when he promised himself he would never let it go. Not until he came face to face with Dustin again.

The man was a social worker, or something of the sort, that much Connor did get. However, he wasn't interested enough to listen to whatever he was explaining; all he got from the senseless chatter and fake sympathy was that he was being taken away, to some place where they would be able to keep an eye on him. Something about a new home, or at least for a while. Something about needing to get him an assigned social worker to help out on his case, and about how this was only going to be temporary.

Connor didn't care.

It had never been so silent before.

The entire way he was inside the car with that man, accompanied by two other people, he didn't know where he was going, and he didn't ask. He kept watching the trees and the street lights go by, and soon enough they were in the highway. He saw the signs that read they were now leaving Minnesota. At one point some of the other passengers dozed off, but not Connor. He kept wide awake with both eyes open. It snowed the entire way, until they came across a sign, in which Connor read they were entering some other state, but he couldn't find in him to care enough to remember the name.

They finally reached a big city with giant buildings Connor had never seen before. He didn't know there could be buildings that tall anywhere in the world. He tried asking why they were so tall, and why they were so many, and why there weren't any buildings that tall at home. But the sole thought of his home not being so anymore, and that lingering resentment that laid on the bottom of his throat to that brother who had ran off into the unknown of the night, made Connor realize he couldn't speak. And so he stayed quiet, all the way through the large city inside that tiny compact car, where nobody spoke a word other than the man with the shiny shoes, the one he didn't trust one bit.