Circle of Steel
Response to the "Song!Fic" Prompt at DS_Flashfic
On cold nights, curled up in bed, he would look back and wonder how differently his life would have gone
if he had been born into a different family. He wasn't picky, he would have taken just about anything.
Because his real family, not the one the province had placed him with when he was four but his real
family, was a vague memory at best.
He had snapshot images of his mother's face, sad and haggard. A bottle on the kitchen table. Her voice,
saying things he had been too young to understand. And there had been the day when he was eleven that a
man who claimed to be his father had shown up at the door, ranting about his right to visitation. He had
been a small child, and the shouting had frightened him.
Shouting always frightened him. So he had hidden in his room. The man had never come around again, and the
Grants, who he was living with at the time, hadn't wanted to talk about it. They told him he was better
off not knowing, and he believed them.
On those cold nights, sleep never came. He would toss and turn in bed, snatches of music and light and
imagery flickering across his mind as half-remembered things tried to surface. It was always worse in the
winter, near his birthday that no one celebrated. Snow held bad memories. That was one reason he liked
Chicago. The longer summer months meant he could forget, for a while. No one knew, and no one cared, that
he was an orphan without the dignity of dead parents.
When the sun comes up, even in winter, he leaves the memories behind as he pulls on his uniform. It is who
he is, now. His family. One that no one can take away. Renfield Turnbull walks the streets to the Canadian
Consulate, savoring the morning light, and swears to himself he will never to gamble with his future. This
is enough. It has to be.
~ Finis ~
Lyrics to
the song behind the ficlet, "Circle of Steel" by Gordon Lightfoot.
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