"Thirteen, myth and light"
by the Spike

Disclaimers: Ethan is Joss's, I'm just... you know... noodling.

Summary: an improv story. Ethan's schooldays.

Warnings: underage and non-con and horror, Rated X

Acknowledgments: te and deb, Lobe 1 and Lobe 2.

Thirteen years old and already different enough that the other boys keep their distance.

Likes it best of all when they jump him, hands pinch and skitter to get a grip, catch in his
shirt; heads knock, feet tangle in his feet and his blue and yellow Braelorn tie gets yanked
so tight around his throat. Likes that *right* up. Funny how they stopped that. He smiles
the smile that even makes the headmaster look away.

Used to be the other way round, that was. Wasn't it? Used to be him that couldn't meet eyes.
That cowered all the time. Begged and whined. 'Cept that never stopped 'em, did it. Just made
'em harder-handed. Sharper-toothed. He could see what they wanted -- what everyone wanted.
Same smell, same look in his ma's eyes when she was snapping the back of a rat. Yeh.

Woulda got to that too, that day they caught him just after dark down near the train tracks. That
would have been the day maybe, beat him so bad he could smell his own blood on the air, could
feel himself floating loose inside his scrawny little skin like a handful of old, broken bone. Julian Fry'd
had a rock in his hand. And that rock... So old, glint of old red light when Julian raised it for what he
knew was death.

And everything had stopped.

There'd been a tug, a tearing inside him, painless and sweet like an old paper sack splitting open
and he'd heard a voice like rock grinding rock:

"Child of mine," the voice had said inside Ethan's ringing head. "Command me."

"Yes..." No hesitation. No surprise. He'd heard 'Demon-child' flung his way for so long he'd simply
taken it as truth. Hell? Damnation? His soul at stake? He had to fucking give it the grin. He wasn't
sure he actually had one to begin with but if it was anything of light, of God, of the myth of
goodness, they could fucking have it back. And this. Command.

"I want..." and he'd had no words for it but he could *think* it and oh yes, Chaos understood. And
oh it was lovely to watch them drown in their own terror and stink and hear their screams and
screams. And better still to find them back at school the next day, remembering nothing *clearly*
but looking at him so... puzzled-like. Whisper as he passed, and still follow him but at a distance. It
had been fun for a while to hunt them then, himself as prey, throw himself cringing down on their
mercy, and when it was denied, rise up and fall on them again.

But now they had stopped even that. And that was okay, he had a whole lifetime to spend thinking
of other ways to thank them for their gift. And the will to do just that. And Chaos for his guide.

*