And if it was real, then that was his father lying before him.

And if that was his father, then the thing dressed like his mother could only be his mother.

He screamed, then. He screamed.

He screamed even when other people came to his house. He screamed when they picked him up. He screamed when they took him away. He screamed when they drove him to the hospital and put him in a room with smiling zoo animals painted on the walls. He screamed when they tried to hold him. He screamed when they tried to quiet him. He screamed when they injected something in his arm.

He only stopped screaming when he felt something shatter in his throat. Shatter, like a plate on the floor.

He didn’t talk for a long time after that. Not because he didn’t want to or because it hurt to, but because he didn’t have anything to say. His world had changed, the shape unrecognizable, and he watched it warily, waiting for it to be drenched in red paint.

One day he asked his social worker, Georgia, for the ketchup, only because he didn’t have any, not because of any dire need. But she’d smiled at him so wide that he thought maybe he should try talking more. At least with her.

And he did.

He still spent much of his life mute. It was easier. If you didn’t speak, people left you alone. Yeah, they thought he was weird, and it probably didn’t help that he was the son of that guy who had murdered his wife. It definitely didn’t help that he was so big. But it didn’t matter. He had nothing to say to anyone.

That changed one day. He was outside, wandering the neighborhood of his current foster home. He didn’t think that it was anything more than it was. Patty and Bert were good, as far as fosters went, but they were fosters, and he thought Bert did it for the money. But they didn’t raise hand or voice to him, and they were just fine without him talking, so it was as good as it’d been.

But everything changed.

Because of Helmholtz Watson. And the little boy with all the words. The little boy demanding friendship and promising books about brave new worlds and a brother named Bear and a partner named Otter in a place known as the Green Monstrosity.

And for the first time since his mother had been covered in paint on the floor, he found himself curious. He found himself talking. He found himself answering questions.

He found himself hopeful.

And it grew. It grew and grew until he had a family once again, and one day, he sat in an audience and watched the boy who had become his brother announce to the world that he was gay and proud to be, and didn’t it start then? Didn’t something tickle in the back of his mind as his jaw dropped, as he heard his family around him gasp? Didn’t he think it was inevitable? That from the beginning, it was all so inevitable?