Scully's Boy
a Sonny Fan Fiction
by Rene and scullysboy
Chapter One
Leaving Home, Not By Choice
by Rene
Copyright December, 2001
The big man grabbed the boy by the shoulders as he had so many times before and sent him crashing into the wall. His head and shoulders hit first, but this time instead of waiting for the next blow, he let the anger take over, and he attacked. Downstairs and next door, neighbors turned up their TVs and raised their voices. They had heard the sounds and the cries for too many years to react any other way. Besides the big guy was a cop, so what were they going to do, report him to his buddies? There was no point, so they buried their heads in the sand as they had so many times before.
The teenaged boy was not very tall, maybe five foot six, and slight, but muscular. At sixteen he hadn't reached his full growth, but he was bigger than he had been, and years of street and playground fights had given him the moves and the punches to finally take on his stepfather. Deke was drunk as usual, and mean as usual, and brutally violent as usual, but this time the boy wasn't surrendering, he was fighting back with all the anger built up over eight years of pain and fear, with the need to react for once, the need to be free of the trap his mother had put him in by marrying this monster.
He felt a blow on his chest and another in his ribs, but he got in a few punches, and then he came out swinging, hitting Deke in the face, the chest, his big gut full of beer. He was wrapped in a red hot blaze of rage and all sound was blocked, Deke's screams, his mother's sobbing of his name over and over. He only knew she was doing this, because at one point he looked up and saw her mouth open and tears running down her face. He heard nothing, and he didn't want to hear anything except the beating of his own heart as he hit the monster over and over and over again. Suddenly the big drunken cop was lying on the floor unconscious, and as he realized this, the teenager stopped hitting him, and took a deep breath. As the intensity of his feelings diminished, he took inventory of his own injuries. This was a very familiar practice, and today he was pleased by the results. His chest hurt a little, he'd be bruised, but his collar bone and breast bone were OK. His back and shoulders hurt a lot, but this wasn't unusual, between being knocked into walls and old injuries, he expected his back and shoulders to be bruised, and to ache. It was rare when they didn't. His ribs felt bruised, but not broken and he knew the difference well. He felt a welt growing on his cheekbone and realized he would probably have a black eye and a bruised face, but that wasn't a problem either. All and all he had come out of this pretty good, and he was pleased, because ole Deke lying on the floor wasn't looking too good at all. His nose was bloodied, maybe broken, his eyes blacked, and the kid knew that lots of other bruises were sprouting all over the man's body. That made him feel even more pleased, right up until he looked at his mother.
Adella was still crying, but she was talking to him too, and now he could hear what she was saying. "You have to leave, my son. Leave for good. You can't live here anymore, not after this!" Her Spanish accent, always more pronounced when she was upset, was very strong. "If you're here when he comes to, he'll kill you, or arrest you and then find a way to either put you away for a long time or kill you." "Not if I kill him first," said her son in a cold voice, and his deep brown eyes looked towards the bedroom where his stepfather kept his gun. "Then they'll arrest you, and you'll go to jail, and I'll be left without a husband or a son. Besides you promised me not to kill him no matter what. This is the only way. This way I'll know that you're alive, and he's alive, and I can stay alive too." She was scared but sure that this was the only option. "Mama, if I leave he'll hurt you," said the boy. "Not when I tell him I made you leave. That will make him think I chose him over you, and he'll be happy about that. It's not the truth, Miguelito, I love you, but this is how it has to be." In the state she was in, his mother had slipped and called him the pet name she had used for his first five years, and never after that. The boy nodded. She was right. This was how it had to be. His mother handed him a laundry bag and he packed a few things, jeans, a pair of school uniform pants, a few shirts, underwear, his three sweaters, and his dress shoes. He grabbed the copy of Huckleberry Finn he had stolen from the public library after he was late returning it three times, and didn't have the money to pay the fine. The hawk nosed, thin lipped librarian had taken his library card until he paid the fine, so he had stolen his favorite book. He took a flashlight from his drawer, his brush and comb, toothbrush and toothpaste, a razor, soap and a washcloth, and threw them into the bag. His mother gave him another laundry bag. He looked at her quizzically. "A blanket and a pillow," she said, "I don't know where you'll sleep, but at least I'll know you're warm." She kissed him goodbye, the tears still on her face. She hugged him trying not to hurt his bruised ribs or shoulders, although at this point he didn't even feel the injuries.
"Bye Mama," he said quietly, showing no emotion except with his eyes. Sonny Corinthos, sixteen years old, one month into his junior year in high school, was out on the street, on his own without a home. Life had been pretty awful in that home, but being homeless wasn't going to be a walk in the park either.