Chapter 1: 0.1 – Prologue

After entering the apartment Noah called out for his dog.

"Cito!"

As Cito came running Lisa looked around and was very disappointed with her little brother's plain home.

"Would it kill you to get some pictures and a few carpets? After Christmas I still have a week until I have to go back to work and seeing this you really need help with your interior so it's less Patrick Bateman and more.... Jack Dawson." 

Noah petted Cito since he wouldn't see him for a long time as he answered his sister

"Wasn't he homeless?" 

"He was artistic and spontaneous, you should try to be more like that." 

He stopped petting his dog, thinking about what his sister said

"Did you just call me greedy and psychopathic?"

"...not you... your apartment..."

There was an awkward silence between them, completely unnoticed by the dog who was still happy to see his owner. After a few seconds both smiled and Noah began to laugh.

"Let's get Cito to the sitter, if we start driving now we will be at Mama's house before midnight".

___

After some small talk with Anna, Cito's dog sitter for the next few days, they left her house.

"She's cute, have you tried talking to her?"

"Pretty sure that's how I got her to take care of Cito".

She disapproved of the note of sarcasm in his voice

"Hilarious as always, you know what I mean".

"If you were to talk to her a little longer, you would find out I don't have some of her favourite bits for a Partner".

"You mean...?"

"Yes."

"... are you sure?"

"Yes!"

"I never would have guessed!"

"Why because she didn't have short hair and an Overall?"

Noah was about to burst out laughing again.

"Don't give me lip! I'm the one you learned it from"

"By defending myself from it"

"You always have to add unimportant details. The fact is it served you well"

Remembering all the times it benefited him and helped him make a bad situation worse he smiled.

"I guess it did"

After some back and forth Lisa started to get into some more serious Topics.

"Kathy will be at Mom's house with her husband"

"Did you get me a present I can give him?"

Out of her purse she pulled a gift slightly bigger than her hand and showed it to her brother

"I knew you would forget, it's a wallet, his looks like a dog's chewing toy, he should have bought a new one ages ago!"

"Why throw something away if it still works?"

"MEN", she uttered that word as if it was a slur, exasperated she added "always looking at things by how useful they are, you said the same thing he said."

He wanted to retort, but knew that a fight about men and women would just end in his loss like the last 37 times. Noah sighed and tried to change the topic.

"How is he?"

"Nice but quiet, I sometime forgot he sat next to us", Noah wanted to ask whether he was quiet by normal standards or by her standard but he didn't get a chance to interrupt her "you could have met him if you came to your BIG SISTER'S wedding"

He wanted to tell Lisa how he was in the midst of writing his bachelor thesis and that's why he didn't come, but you could not lie to his mother and sisters without them noticing.

"I need to buy her something expensive to make up for it"

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"Not just her"

'I know without you having to tell me' Noah thought, biting his tongue to not start another argument.

Lisa glared so intensely at his face that he could feel like a beam of light.

"Don't think something rude! It's disrespectful."

'It wasn't even disrespectful!' Noah screamed in his mind, gritting his teeth. He wasn't angry at what his sister did, to him it was amusing... most of the time and one gets used to it growing up with 3 of their sort. Empaths, while many claim to be one, the women in his family were the real deal. It is like a supernatural ability feeling the emotions of others, when he was young Noah thought he was one too, but when his sisters explained what their ability was like he realized what he learned was nothing supernatural but a survival skill to read his fathers moods better.

Lisa and Kathy were skilled, but his mother was... different, stronger you could say. For her it was taxing to feel other people's emotions, that's why she didn't go to places with a lot of people or where people were likely to have strong emotions. After 9/11 it took her weeks before she could walk outside without being overwhelmed by the anger and sadness slamming into her.

"Mom will be happy to see you again. Every Time I meet her she only wants to talk about you 'How is noah?', 'Is he eating right?' 'Does he still pick his nose' and so on. I can hardly talk about anything else."

"You told her I stopped?" Noah said trying to be light hearted, talking about his mother always made him tense.

"Yes and that you chew your nails now instead. When she found out you got promoted, she beamed with so much pride I thought I had a tan afterwards".

Asking himself how she could have a tan, since they were both black he kept on driving.

"This time you thought something stupid. Anyways she waited really long for you to visit her and finally you can't use "being busy" as an excuse".

"Yeah, I should have come home sooner, it took me way too long to grow up", sadness and doubt filled him as he thought about what happened and whether his mother would be happy to see him again. Lisa picked it up and looked straight at him trying to make eye contact while he was staring at the road.

"Noah nobody thinks that what you did was wrong, you should know that we told you so, more than we can count", she touched his shoulder comforting him "we should have done something about dad sooner. We should have protected you, you should be angry at us not yourself".

These were the moments where he hated his family's ability, when they looked into him and told him how he should feel.

The truth is he never blamed his mother or older sisters for not doing something against their abusive father, they were just as afraid of him as he was, he could tell without being an empath. And them trying to bear the guilt and shame for something he did, made him feel guilty, not his action on that day.

Lisa sighed in exasperation "Mother thought that by staying away from you, you would blame her for what happened and not be burdened. It sounds stupid but she didn't know what to do."

He understood where she came from, trying to protect him, but he never felt ashamed for what happened to his father, only for the look she gave him afterwards. On his 15th birthday, for the first time in his life, Noah was glad he was a normal person, because he was terrified to know what exactly his mother thought of him, knowing what he felt as he stood in their doorway covered in blood.

Noah snickered in derision thinking that almost a decade of uncertainty for both him and his mother could have been avoided by just sitting down and talking. Knowing that what you fear is true is better than living with this anxiety in the back of your mind every day. 

And he thought he was good at communicating.

"I will talk with Mama when we get there. We acted like children for way too long" he smiled and turned his head looking at his sister expecting her to tell him he's still a child, but whatever warm feeling he had vanished, looking at Lisa's terrified face while staring ahead.

Noah's head snapped back, facing the road looking for what was wrong, seeing nothing, just a single... car. It was 200 meters away and the face of the driver was still a blur. However he felt it too not as strong as his sister but he know, that car was bad fucking news. 

As it came closer Noah drove further to the side of the road, leaving the incoming car as much space as possible. He drove on gravel on the side of the road and also slowly started to break. They both held their breath as the car came closer.

At 30 meters he could see the other man's face. He looked completely average with brown hair, brown eyes, stubbles and glasses. Nothing about him drew your attention, but for someone like Noah, who always tried to read the moods of others around him, something about the driver made him wary.

'This guy… something’s wrong with him' he realized, he saw this look one other time throughout his life, he wanted to help, but he didn't know how. 'You seem like something is wrong, wanna talk?' didn't quite roll off the tongue as one might think. He heard what happened a few weeks later. Maybe he could have done something.

He had no idea why something he thought forgotten suddenly shot through his mind until the man looked at him. Noah reached his arm over his sister trying to somehow brace her for the impact.

The man jerked the steering wheel to the left before Noah could shout a warning.

____

Noah woke up hanging upside down, the first thing he did was look for Lisa. She was still next to him in her seat, as the ringing in his ear subsided and he could hear her groans.

"Lisa?"

She didn't answer, just looked at him, from her reaction he could tell whatever she saw was bad.

'Maybe she's just overreacting, women am i right?' He tried to chuckle but the attempt hurt too much. He wanted to free himself but couldn’t feel his legs

"Can you move?"

She nodded, her eyes still dazed.

"I will release you seatbelt try to get out and call for help"

He reached up and started counting

"You-"

"3 2 1"

While dropping she was able to get her harm under herself but it still looked like quite the impact. Lisa crawled out and tried to stand up, her first try failed. As she sat back down and looked for her phone she realized it was inside her bag. 'Where is it?' as she started to panic something came flying at her, hitting her right in the head stopping her train of thought. It was a smartphone, it was cracked and not hers but it worked.

As he heard his sister calling emergency services, he tried to chuckle again, satisfied with his aim even while hanging upside down. It hurt even worse than the first time. Everytime he tried to take a breath he felt how the air was fighting with the blood in his trachea. 

'Couldn't I have died on impact instead of drowning in my own blood? This just seems unnecessarily cruel' He tried to chuckle a third time, this time he didn't feel pain but there was also no chuckle.

'Miracles only happen once, huh?'

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