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𝐆𝐑𝐈𝐄𝐅, 𝐇𝐄 𝐅𝐎𝐔𝐍𝐃, was often a dark soulless vacuum that could engulf a person wholly, consuming even the brightest parts of their soul. He's only known it once. The week that his father had been done. Lost in the desert, they'd said, most likely dead or if he wasn't, he would be eventually. Happy had brought them home early from school, and even then, before Happy had explained it to them, he could tell that something wasn't right. Perhaps it was the tense manner that his father's friend guarded himself or simply intuition. To this day, he could never quite explain the feeling, but he remembered the sensation of his heart seemingly collapsing on itself, with no hope of ever unbreaking.
His mother had worn her grief on her face. She'd been absolutely devasted in those few days. Aaron had heard his mother talk about her anxiety and her struggle with her mental illness, but he'd never come as close to seeing it as he did when his father was rumoured to be dead. He had seen the crumpled heartbroken empty stare on her face when Happy had opened her bedroom door to offer her something to eat. The expression, cold and empty with dark circles framing her eyes, was not one that he could easily forget.
Today, she wore an expression that was a pale replica of that one. Her face was the first thing he saw when he woke up. Her body was leaning against her father's and both of their eyes were fixed on him with a sunken expression. When they noticed him open his eyes, they both stir. His mother lifted her head off his father's shoulder, and she seemed to peer into his soul. She doesn't say anything.
He was consumed by guilt immediately. The look in her eyes. He was the reason for her grief. All because he was too selfish and too careless to think properly. All because he was chasing that moment when he reached the end of the bottle and the world around him faded to nothing, all of the pain that he'd been trying so hard to forget was numb and he was weightless. Not quite happy. He'd given up on happy a long time ago but not so sad either.
It didn't last long enough. Never did. Perhaps that's why he was so hellbent on being wasted half of the time. The thrill of chasing something so fleeting and out of sight, only for him to find it and end up as unhappy as he's been in the beginning. Perhaps a part of him was addicted to that pain because in some small corner of his mind, he thought he deserved it. Perhaps he was just as big a masochistic as his father was - what a fucking joke.
