echolls_cursed | Things that can't be changed.

Logan can remember the first time he really cried. Not in pain or because he wasn't getting his way, but really cried. He was nine and sitting on his bed, staring blankly at the TV on his dresser. His bedroom door didn't lock, so he'd jammed a chair under the handle in hopes that it would maybe keep his father out... but he wouldn't hold his breath. He doubted a small chair stood much of a chance against his father's temper.

He had time though, at least an hour before his dad was due home, and even then he'd likely go out with his cast mates, get a drink or five. His mother was downstairs talking to the maid, complaining about something, Logan didn't know what, and he was alone.

Some stupid cartoon character was whacking another with a shovel, and Logan stared until his eyes went funny, until everything was a blue and orange coloured blur. That was when the first tear fell.

It wasn't any one thing on his mind, no particular thought or event in his life that had brought him to tears. No, it was more a feeling of... hopelessness. There was no escape from his life, no place to go, no friend's home to hide out at... Hell, he didn't even have a lock on his door. There were no dark corners to hide in, he was exposed no matter where he went. His father would find him no matter what he did, and it would likely be that way for all his life.

The tears were streaming now, running down his cheeks to his neck. Sometimes they'd sneak under the collar of his shirt, soaking into the folds of fabric as they traveled down his chest. He was careful not to make a sound though, nothing but soft hitches of breath that barely reached his own ears, but his throat burned anyway, as if he'd been screaming and sobbing for hours.

He jumped a bit when he heard the door shut downstairs, and again when he heard his father calling out cheerfully to his mother. Quickly, he rubbed the damp spots on his cheeks, blinking the rest of the tears away and checking himself in the mirror to make sure his face wasn't red. He hesitated when he looked at the chair, wondering if he should leave it, or if it was too risky. After all, it sounded like Aaron was in a good mood, no reason to risk putting him in a bad one.

His father's voice traveled up the stairs, telling him to come down for dinner in that same pleasant tone he'd used before, and Logan forced a smile onto his face and moved the chair, before heading downstairs to be the best little actor he could be.

--- --- ---

Logan remembers the floor in the upstairs bathroom, not the one in Neptune, no, the one before that. His childhood home, when Dad was b-list at best and the money was only just starting to really flow.

It was marble and his mother loved it, leaving it bare for all to see with the exception of two round bathmats. The mats were cream and thick, and looking back Logan's pretty sure a decorator picked them out. He remembers them too, how soft they were and how thick they were, a heavy contrast to the cold and unforgiving marble.

But the bathmats, for all they were lush and beautiful, couldn't catch all of a six-year-old Logan when he fell face first to the floor. When he was shoved to the floor. Tossed to the floor. Dropped to the floor. A bathmat would stain when his father spilled his drink or dropped his cigarette, and a bathmat couldn't speak up to take the blame when it ended up ruined, couldn't tell Aaron Echolls that it wasn't Logan's fault.

No, all a bathmat could do, atop a cold marble floor, was lay there looking pretty.

Logan remembers his father, the way his hands were strong, but never callused. Apparently that was important, because Logan's grandfather's hands had been callused. "Workers hands," his dad would quote, speech slightly slurred as he started on his last drink of the night, words muffled by his cigar. His father never had workers hands, and Logan had never been sure if that was good or bad.

They were large hands though, much larger then Logan's own, and his mother used to say Logan's would be that way one day too. Logan's mother's hands were small though, small like Logan's own, a dainty pedicured contrast to his fathers.

But dainty hands couldn't do very much, least of all stop Aaron's when they were reaching for Logan. They couldn't keep a little boy out of trouble. Keep a little boy from getting in the way. Keep a little boy safe. So one day they just stopped trying.

No, all a pair of dainty pedicured hands could do was hold a drink or unscrew the lid off a prescription bottle while the rest of her body tried to ignore the crying and the begging of the little boy upstairs.