Currently Re-watching The Depp V. Heard Case And Realizing I Could Easily Write Pages And Pages Of Why

Currently re-watching the Depp v. Heard case and realizing I could easily write pages and pages of why I think what I think, and about male victims of domestic violence and abuse, and how we're not morally prepared to deal with them.

please write your rant about male domestic abuse victims

Okay, I'll do this but fair warning, I might include some kind of parallels to the Depp vs Heard trial(s) because my mind functions better if I have some kind of real-life or fictional literature to support me through the development of my thoughts, so if you believe Amber Heard for some reason, you might not like what I have to say. Also, please if you're gonna comment, be gentle and polite, I'm always open to new (well-based) points of view and I promise I'm open to an honest conversation with anyone who is kind <3

Observation: I will use Domestic Violence (DV) as a broad term throughout this but know that I refer mostly to Intimate Partner Violence (IPV) here. The difference between the two is that DV can happen between members of the same nuclear family (between brothers, partners, or child and parents) while IPV happens only between romantic partners.

The reason I don't use DV especially is because abuse against boys (by parents, sisters, etc.) also falls under this category and then it's a whole other discussion about the socialization of children and teenagers, the social minority they represent and how that's a whole new discussion (that I'd be happy to extend in another post actually if there are any other people interested).

To begin with, we have to understand some things: we don't have exact data about male victims of domestic abuse, not only because it's severely under-reported but also because many reports are not even filed because the lines for escaping domestic violence (police, shelters, phone lines, etcetera.) attend only women and girls, or demonstrate a clear bias towards those victims. Plus, as it happens with women as well, abuse doesn't present just physically, but also emotionally and psychologically.

However, just to give you all an idea, in the UK, for example, it's estimated that almost 20% of domestic violence reports were from men in the last two years (2022-23), according to ManKind Initiative. In the US, according to The Tech Report, almost 45% of men believe they were victims of abusive relationships in their lives. In Australia, according to the Australian Bureau of Statistics, 38% of victims of violence in the country were men, 64% being DV-related.

Now, there is a reason for this, and this is called patriarchy. Patriarchy is the concept of one of the pillars of how our society is built, and it means the subjugation of one binary gender (female) by another binary gender (male) - although this definition is more for this essay's purpose than accurate for an academic study for example. It's important to note that gender violence presents itself against women institutionally (through proper institutions, such as the legal system, for example, or a company's hierarchy) and structurally (it's in the roots of our society culturally and thus, infecting everything else).

According to The Patriarchs, journalist Angela Saini's latest book, the Patriarchy is something tricky to explore even for our earlier academics, such as Engels, for example, because it presents itself in many different ways. For example, it changes its characterization according to culture, environmental needs, History, and other factors. Still, the important thing is that it has various different aspects in the areas it's present.

What I want to explore goes a little bit further: I want to understand how the oppression of women affects men because, unlike many other kinds of oppression, gender-related violence affects their enforcers (men) as well as their victims (women). Now, I am not saying this violence is equal to each other: violence against women permeates our societies' very core, it's ingrained in our institutions, in our culture. But on an interpersonal level, gender violence affects men and women both.

Men are pressured into "being a man" (a white person doesn't have to prove they're white in the same sense or with the same intensity as a man has to prove his man-ness), they're molded to become people in disconnection to their own emotions, they're encouraged to be violent or at least not to be "emotional", to the point of not even noticing when they're suffering some kind of violence or from a mental disorder, for example.

This plays a significant role in how we view abuse when perpetrated by women against men but it's not all we need to observe when talking about male DV victims.

Another matter I'd like to point out is the way we view feminine violence: in the Introduction of her best-seller, Lady Killers, Tori Telfer talks about how violence committed by women is often put under one of three categories: the mysticism, the sexualization, or the banalization. That is, socially, we have a habit of thinking about violence perpetrated by women as either mythological, sexy, or just plain silly, and therefore dumb and/or laughable.

Telfer's examples throughout the book are great and I recommend the book for more insight, but to me, three cases stick out to follow as examples:

How the first woman serial killer we have Historical records of, Elizabeth Ridgeway, was killed for being a witch (mysticism);

How Nannie Doss, an old lady who fit all the 50s housewife stereotypes and killed men with poison in her cakes, had her intelligence belittled by people trying to paint her as insane despite many psychiatrical reports of her being exceptionally clever, how she was labeled by the media as "Arsenic Nannie" (banalization)

And finally, how women who perpetrate violence are often sexualized, such as Raya and Sakina, from the beginning of 20th-century Egypt, who were tied closely to the criminal underworld of their neighborhood and who actually developed a method of killing four people with little blood and avoiding messes; or Lizzie Halliday, who was labeled "the worst woman on earth" with clear implications of her ugliness; or at last, Erzsébet Báthory, known more popularly as Countess Dracula despite having been a lot crueler than the name leads you to believe; they were all sexualized one way or another, their crimes fitting their appearances rather than their acts.

What I mean to point out by that is that feminine violence is something we as a society have a tendency to downplay to a dangerous level. Part of that is a result of downplaying violence as a whole, doesn't matter the perpetrator, but a big part of it is because we see violence as a men's trait. Culturally, violence is a characteristic we attribute to men while women are "even-tempered", motherly, nurturing, and delicate.

Those are the traits of femininity. Violence is not something we easily attribute to women, while men can be only violent, domineering, "warriors".

Now, intimate partner violence (IPV) against males and perpetrated by women is significantly overlooked and under-researched. Hell, there was a real and huge doubt whether men could be r*ped at the beginning of the 2000s, and even now there are people who still don't see how men can be sexually abused.

What we do know about IPV is that, according to this article, women and men have roughly the same rate of occurrences of physical abuse against their partners, and in most of the non-reciprocal violent relationships, women were mostly the perpetrators, although it is true that the more violent abuse occurrences are mostly perpetrated by men:

"Archer Reference Archer5 attempted to resolve two competing hypotheses about partner violence, either that it involves a considerable degree of mutual combat or that it generally involves male perpetrators and female victims. His meta-analysis of 82 studies of gender differences in physical aggression between heterosexual partners showed that men were more likely to inflict an injury; 62% of those injured by a partner were women, but men still accounted for a substantial minority of those injured. However, women were slightly more likely than men to use one or more act of physical aggression and to use such acts more frequently. Younger aged couples showed more female-perpetrated aggression."

Again, that's not to say that violence committed against women in our patriarchal society is in any way equivalent to what men suffer as victims of IPV because that's not true. Violence against women is in every corner of our culture, it's in the roots of our society, and violence against men is not as institutional or structural as acts of violence perpetrated against men.

But I have to criticize how we view (or maybe it's best to say how little we view, or even consider) male victims of DV when we're talking about the matter because not only we are then perpetrating patriarchal beliefs that continue to harm us, we're also portraying women as being inherently and perpetually victims of violence, always in a place of perceived inferiority (although I need to point out there is nothing inferior about suffering violence) while men fall under the category of always the perpetrators of that violence.

That's undeniably harmful because it generates a dangerous generalization in individual cases, such as Johnny Depp, for example. Many of the people I saw defending Heard seemed to not comprehend that only because Johnny Depp was in a place of societal power in relation to AH (because he was, as an older, richer man) that wasn't enough of a reason to believe he was guilty of what she accused him of. Just because generally we might rightly point out a systemic oppression of women by men, it doesn't mean that we should apply those principles to individual cases, especially when we don't have access to concrete evidence and in high-profile cases such as Depp v Heard.

Now, after all of that, I need to point out a personal opinion of mine and bear in mind I don't have anything to base myself here so feel free to criticize it if you disagree (just remember to be nice, please): all of these facts make me ask myself how many of those cases of IPV were labeled as "mutual" (because there's actually a pretty fierce discussion on the matter of whether or not mutual abuse exists from what I could find, and mostly of academic research seem to understand that mutual abuse does exist) are actually mutual and not - in case of heterosexual relationships - emotional manipulation on the perpetrator's side.

And that leads me to ask myself how many of the false reports made by women against their male partners (which are the minority of reported DV cases, let's be clear here) were labeled as mutual because the men "fought back"? How many men who were victims of emotional manipulation didn't stay in those relationships or settle cases because of the threat of their female partners reporting them back from abuse as well?

And amongst those people, how many men did actually something that could be considered violent against their partner (talking now about emotional and psychological abuse, excluding the physical aspect for now) in an act of self-defense or instinctual nastiness as a defense mechanism against something that hurt them?

Having been a reactive victim in an emotionally abusive relationship myself, I can say with some ease that I said things that I know for sure truly hurt my abuser, I know I said things in the last days of our relationship that I would never say to other people if I wasn't so defensive right out the beginning of our latest interactions. But I refuse to fall into the trap of believing myself to be an equally abusive part of that relationship because I also know I did the work to try and better our relationship, I know because my other relationships are healthy and close and emotionally vulnerable and the whole circus.

So what I do have to ask myself is that in those IPV cases in heterosexual relationships where our first reaction is to classify them as mutual abuse or something like that... what do we expect from our male victims of IPV? What does the perfect male victim of IPV look like? Is it reasonable for us to expect men not to defend themselves at all because they're generally stronger than women?

Of course, I'm not advocating here that any kind of violence against your partner is okay because they're abusing you to any gender - self-defense has explicit rules to be applied for that exact reason. I'm simply pointing out that maybe we're diving into dangerous territory, or being overly zealous, considering mutual abuse at the maximum, or not believing men at all on the other side of the spectrum, when we're presented with a heterosexual case of IPV where the female was clearly or almost undoubtedly violent throughout the relationship.

That's the many reasons I can think to question people when they are presented with a case of DV of a woman committing abuse against their male partner. Because as much as women are socially oppressed, our biases in regard to gender affect our views of both men and women and can be really dangerous when generally applied to individual cases.

So yeah, I'm not thrilled with our critical skills when it comes to male victims of abuse, loves.

Not at all.

(if you're gonna answer, remember to be nice!)

I just realized how this "the villain is just misunderstood" thing we have going on is heading dangerously to "I condone fascists because they have a tragic backstory and are hot" and I'm getting more and more turned off every time I think about it

All Angels from Heaven Above - Chapter 1

Summary - find more chapters, read the synopsis, and trigger warnings here!

Buy the whole book through this link!

The walls of Lethe Academy carried its ghosts the same way blood stained the walls of Jerusalem: just because it was impossible to see them, it didn’t mean they weren’t there. But, just like any dark past, they’d always come back to haunt innocent generations, which were ignorant of the crimes committed before their existence in the world. 

So, when all the papers in the city of Agraés published that Death had visited the Academy, none of their elders were surprised; but the young ones, anxious to hold the world in their hands and naively believing apt to do such inconceivable feat, watched it all with attentive and morbid curiosity, very little moved by the death of one of them.

Not that it mattered now that she was already dead, though Adra Anoixi while walking through the dark wooden floor of the store, her steps producing a hollow sound on the floor while her black dress rustled against the surface. She faced the three girls, as dazzling as goddesses, who waited for her in front of the counter, facing the entry. All of them wore the most expensive dresses money could buy and had their hair done in a way Adra would never use on a day-to-day basis.

Or to a funeral, like the one they were going to.

“Here it is,” she gave them the incense as it was asked.

The girls looked at Adra for a second longer than necessary before one of them — the taller one, with black dark skin — took the incense from her hand with a last look of contempt. 

Without any more words or thanks, they left the store, imperious as just demons could be, leaving her payment on the counter to not have to touch her. Adra looked to the ceiling with an impatient sigh.

“I should’ve given them the fake incense” she murmured to herself, remembering the terrible smell of that specific product. “It’d be deserved if they whisk away everyone with that stink.

But since the death at the Academy, the sales were low. The city hadn’t been receiving as many travelers as it used to every week and that was worrisome: if the tourists started to avoid the city because of superstition, a lot of stores would be forced to close.

If Witches & Daughters were one of them, that would break her mother’s heart. And that wasn’t acceptable, not when the store was a gift from her father, Kia’s only love.

Despite the lack of humans visiting Witches & Daughters, demons were interested enough in her to buy some cheap trinkets that humans made the mistake of thinking were magic. If they did it for mockery or because they believed the same as humans, it didn’t matter to her. What did matter was that the store would survive another month's savings from debts and debt collectors.

Many hours passed until the bell above the door rang again with the presence of other people in the dusty store, full of dried herbs, crystals, and other natural products. Happy to have something to do, Adra got up from the small chair behind the counter and raised her eyes to her new client.

The man in front of her wasn’t older than Adra herself and watched her with his black eyes full of glow — like a star —, there was a silver earring in his right ear and his brownish lips were curved in an arrogant smile. A demon, but not any demon: Adra could feel his power making her shiver, even two meters away from him. 

Powerful and handsome as Death: that was a dangerous combination, especially when talking about a fallen angel.

Adra was immediately suspicious and curious, and that made her frown: it wasn’t common for such a powerful demon to enter her store and Adra didn’t like what it could mean.

“It was way too easy to find you, miss Anoixi,” he said, his voice calm as a breeze.

Every single one of Adra’s instincts were alert at his words, the coldness in his expression. Carefully, she slipped her hand to the slit of her dress, just below the carpet, feeling the dagger’s hilt her father had given her.

“I wasn’t hiding,” Adra said, raising her chin proudly. “So, I’d imagine that finding me wouldn’t be a problem.”

She was, after all, one of the best witches in Agráes and people would look for her often, but never a powerful demon like that one in front of her. The shadows whispered to Adra as if feeling her uneasy with the demon’s power, even though he didn’t seem menacing.

“How can I help you?” Adra asked then, her voice professional, but the warning in them was unmistakable.

She didn’t think he’d do something bad, but being alert near demons was already an instinct for a long time now, especially those ridiculously handsome.

Her words made the corner of his lips tremble up as if he was finding all that quite funny for reasons Adra could only imagine, his dark eyes shining mysteriously.

Adra didn’t smile back, even though the amusement was taunting the corner of her own lips too.

The demon wore a dark gray overcoat, black social pants, shirt, and shoes — Lethe Academy’s uniform, she easily recognized. He walked to the counter, watching Adra carefully before saying anything else.

She didn’t move, uneasy under his scrutiny, but didn’t recoil from the slow and interested eyes of the demon, choosing to hold the dagger tighter instead, just in case. Finally, he smiled, still politely, and said:

"I am looking for you, Adra."

She didn’t ask how he knew her name. Most demons knew her because of her father, as was expected, but the fact that he had that little bit of advantage over her bothered Adra.

Despite her grip on the hidden dagger, Adra trusted that the demon wouldn’t dare to attack her. She knew that, in a power match, she couldn’t defeat him, but demons knew witches didn’t fight with their powers only. So Adra just arched an eyebrow while calmly asking:

“And what do you want?”

“Damian Kolasi” the demon introduced himself and held out his hand. Adra looked at it for a couple of seconds before shaking it.

Fortunately, her free hand got to keep holding the dagger.

“And do you know how to answer a direct question, Damian Kolasi?” Adra asked slowly.

The man laughed lowly and Adra was forced to suppress a shiver so he couldn’t notice the impact he had on her. The demon, however, looked at her like he knew exactly his effect.

“I want to make a deal with you.”

Absently, he walked away from her, examining the store. Damian gripped and shook a jar full of eyes. All of them false, of course — the eyes. Despite the gossip going around between the humans, no witch had the need to use anything but their own minds to yield their powers.

Adra watched him, expressionless, while he roamed through the place, picking up random products and crouching down to get a look at what interested him. She wouldn’t admit it, but she was disappointed. That demon looked dangerous enough to be interesting, but it looked like Adra was wrong.

“Any witch with common sense knows she shouldn’t make deals with demons, mister Kolasi,” she said, her voice stable and unperturbed. “So, your answer is no.”

“I don’t want... favors, Adra,” said Damian, and there was an edge of tension in his voice, something dark and gloomy that made Adra shiver. “I want you to join Lethe Academy as a student. The first witch student. I think you heard that there’s a place available.”

A rude way of saying that one of the students died, no doubt. Adra raised an eyebrow to him, but the demon just crouched to analyze the crow’s feathers in one of the lower shelves, without realizing his own lack of empathy.

Meanwhile, Adra’s mind was like a scorching cauldron about to overflow. The Lethe Academy had never had a witch among its students, since all the vacancies were destined to legitimate children of demons. 

As she was possibly the only witch who was the legit daughter of a demon, maybe she could enter, but it would have consequences for her father, so Adra never asked this of him, even when her fascination for the school was evident every time she got near it.

The fact that that unknown demon had entered her store and simply handed her oldest dream to Adra could only be some fucked up kind of prank.

“What do you want in return?” she asked this time, knowing very well how tricky the words of a demon could be. 

Damian smiled at her as if pleased with her question and got up from where he had crouched to look at the crow’s feathers, walking towards her again.

“I knew you’d be more intelligent than your friends,” he said and Adra rolled her eyes.

She filled in the information that Damian had already spoken to other witched about that ridiculous idea, however. It’d be useful to ask about that to her coven later. For now, she had to deal with a demon.

“Answer my question.”

“I already told you,” he said quietly, trying to judge her skills in detecting his bullshit. “I want to help you to become the first witch student in Lethe Academy.”

“I heard you the first time,” Adra said, raising her chin. “But I want to know why you want me at the Academy. I’m not stupid enough to think it doesn’t come with a price.”

“You’re the first witch I found that thought about indulging me,” Damian said with a satisfied smile.

“That’s because no other witch is interested in going to that place,” she said in an explanation tone of voice, but impatient nonetheless: “Far too many demons.”

“You don’t like us, do you?” he didn’t expect an answer so Adra didn’t give him one. The hate between their species was obvious and had good motives to exist, and yet, there he was, searching for a witch to help him in whatever it was he wanted help with. Even so, it was intriguing and Adra couldn’t deny to herself the shadow of curiosity present at the back of her mind. Damian analyzed her again and clicked his tongue. “I wonder what’s different about you.”

That was a dangerous question and the way he tilted his head to the side, looking at her, intrigued, was even more so.

“What do you want in exchange for the available place?” Adra asked again, tired of walking in circles with that annoying man.

“I need a witch to do a job for me,” said the demon with a dangerous smile forming on his face while his dark eyes made Adra want to recoil because of their intensity. She stood stubbornly still. “You see, I have a hunch about the murder of my... colleague.”

“You don’t know if it was murder,” Adra said, frowning.

All the papers had said was that the cause of death was a mystery and no one could say for certain if it was murder, suicide, or just an accident. No other detail. It was that, among other things, that made people so nervous about that situation.

“Oh, but I know,” he said, walking toward her again with that damned smile on his face. 

Adra had her dagger in his neck before Damian Kolasi could lean over the counter and the demon froze. She would rather go to prison for his murder than allow him to do something to her, thought Adra, alert to his every move.

Instead of being annoyed, however, Damian Kolasi laughed, looking even more amused by Adra. He looked at her like a cat would at a bird whose efforts to escape its claws were useless, even when she was the one holding the blade.

“Oh, you really are sweet, aren’t you?” he asked as if there was not a dagger about to slit his throat.

“I wouldn’t say that about someone who could kill me,” she said and he smiled, gloomy.

Adra frowned, allowing Damian Kolasi to lean over to her a bit, leveling their eyes, his face near enough that she could see the cracks of his lips.

“You’re so dangerous, candy” he smiled as the sweetest of the poisons when he said that as if he was satisfied with that. “Anyway, there is no motive for violence, I’m not going to attack you.”

Adra didn’t lower her dagger. She knew better than to trust a demon.

“How can you know that was a murder?”

He looked at her, incredulous.

“Do you really think that a completely healthy, right-handed young adult would stab herself in the ribs with her left hand, even in an accident?” Asked Damian as if Adra was stupid and she hissed at him, her shadows gathering around her, reacting to her feelings before she could control them. 

Damian’s black eyes followed that power, showing a little bit of preoccupation for the very first time.

And admiration.

Adra frowned — it was the first time a demon that wasn’t her dad looked like he was awed by what she could do. The shadows retreated, reacting with confusion to Adra’s control and shock. No one had seen her power without fearing it, not even other witches, because unlike them, Adra controlled them as easily as she breathed.

“And how do you know all that?” she asked.

“Oh, I found the body,” he said as if it wasn’t a big thing while shaking his hand to dismiss further explanations. “Criminalistics classes did the rest.”

Adra’s grip on the dagger relaxed a bit. Lethe Academy for Demonic Arts trull offered criminalistics classes, just like anatomy and necromancy lessons, each one depending on the year one was. It made sense that, if Damian Kolasi had found the body, he’d know all that. It would also make sense, however, if he was the murderer.

“And why, exactly, do you want me to enter in the place of your colleague?” she asked again, watching while the smile crept back to Damian’s perfect face.

“I have a hunch.”

“A hunch,” she repeated.

“I think the murderer at Lethe Academy is just at the beginning and you’re the only one that can help me to catch them, candy,” said Damian.

With a quick move, he took Adra’s dagger from her, twisting her wrist slightly before nailing the blade to the wood of the counter with a yellowish paper and backing away from her, smiling before pulling the doorknob.

“Meet me at this address in a week at six pm if you want to know more about it, Adra Anoixi. I’ll be waiting.”

Damian Kolasi laughed when Adra threw the dagger at him, missing by a few centimeters before he closed the door behind him.

She watched as he walked away through the street as if he had just had a nice afternoon tea, incredulous with the nerve of him. Then she circled the counter to catch her dagger from the doorframe.

When she turned, a simple letter had appeared at the side of Damian Kolasi’s address. Adra groaned when she recognized the letter’s handwriting.

Go to Chapter 2

To Decadent Poets - Chapter 6

Summary - find more chapters, read the synopsis, and trigger warnings here!

The man, the beast and the insect, at its shadow Live, away from hunger and fatigue: In its branches take shelter the ditties And the loves of the mockingbird. — Olavo Bilac, Old Trees

Although he was used to a comfortable life, Chris wasn’t prepared for Taigh Hill: that wasn’t any mansion, it was a manor. Just the entry hall could encapsulate his entire house with space to spare, and he didn’t even talk about the decoration.

If anyone told Chris a king had lived there, he wouldn’t hesitate to believe it. The stairs to the second and third floors, which began across the hall, formed the shape of a tree, splitting into branches to reach each side of the two floors up. In the middle of the first store, a huge tapestry that had a story sewn into it was laid on the wall above a fireplace.

The housekeeper, however, didn’t allow any of them to take in their initial surprise, walking towards the stairs as if the place was nothing at all. For her, who took care of the place every day and all day long, it might not be, but fuck, Chris thought while the three of them jogged side by side to keep up with the rigid woman while still trying to take in everything, wishing they had a thousand eyes just so they could see it all.

There was a huge chandelier hanging from the high ceiling of the entry hall and the sounds spread, sounded, echoed throughout the place, especially because Miss Turner couldn’t stop talking, the echoes heightening the annoying tone of her voice. Chris was an inch away from telling her off when the echoes faded away and they entered a closeted corridor.

“You mustn’t make much noise because Mister Elliott’s wife has regular migraines and, if you do make noise, you’ll go to bed without dinner,” said Miss Turner severely without turning, as if she was sure she’d be heard, it didn’t matter by who. Chris considered some old people really sounded like that, shrugging to his thoughts while exchanging an exasperated look with Oliver. The boy smirked a bit, sarcastic, just like Chris had seen a couple of times during their trip together. “Oh, and I was warned that Mister Elliott’s eldest, Miss Ellen, doesn’t want you going inside her saloon. I ask that you respect it.”

“She has a saloon?” Chris asked the only one of the three there who seemed akin to breaking a couple of rules. Of course, he was the only one who could question them: he was somewhat akin to family, after all.

“Yes, she has, Mister Evans,” said the housekeeper, turning a bit, her voice polite. “It was a request from Miss Ellen herself to her father and uncle she matured.”

Although Chris thought the idea of giving a saloon to a nineteen-year-old girl was ridiculous, he didn’t say anything, shrinking back to the horizontal line, which was formed by him, Oliver, and Noah Kurtz, not realizing his shoulder brushing the second’s for a moment.

When Noah seemed to shrink, however, Chris looked at him. The boy, however, didn’t look back, making it clear as day he had no interest in speaking with Chris. The boy, for once, just shrugged internally and stopped so as not to bum pinto Miss Turner. She, on the other hand, had stopped in front of the fourth door to the right in the corridor.

“Your room is here. Mister Elijah wanted to put you in separate rooms but Mister Elliott thought it’d be best if you were sleeping in the same room so you could socialize and not being stuck in your own worlds.”

The woman obviously respected the two men she was speaking about and that made Chris feel a little less apprehensive about the godfather he never met and his family. If their employees liked them, that was enough to say they were likable enough. The housekeeper let them pass by her and scan the room while she kept speaking:

“Dinner will be ready at six pm and I’ll come get you when the time has come for you to go downstair today. For now, I’d suggest you use your time correctly and unpack or go explore the garden before it’s dark. And don’t forget to be quiet around the library!”

“Why do we have to...” but Chris didn’t have the chance to make his question, once the housekeeper closed the door behind her as she left before he could speak. The red-haired boy frowned, then whistled. “Is it me, or she doesn’t seem to like us very much?”

He was left to laugh alone and, when he turned to know the reason why at least Oliver didn’t comment, he found the boy turned to the bed he’d chosen, the one nearest the window. Meanwhile, Noah put his bag on the bed nearest to the door, leaving Chris with the bed by the wall. Even weirded out by the silence, Chris resigned himself to unpacking just like Miss Turner had suggested.

The beds in the room he’d share with the Other two boys could accommodate him and the others, plus at least more nine people put side by side. Chris didn’t doubt they could sleep the three of them in the same one with space to spare. It seemed the bed of a king, just like everything about that manor seemed to reek of royalty. There were even curtains on the beds: they were golden, just like the sheets and the blankets.

Chris wanted to say something to break the ice he felt around the two boys behind him but, before he could think of something, Noah left the room leaving his suitcase on the bed without unpacking it or saying anything.

“Kinda rude,” Chris commented quietly, raising an eyebrow at Oliver, who was still in the same position, silent as a crypt. Weirded out by this behavior, Chris went to his friend, brushing his shoulder gently with his own. “Hey, is there a problem? You can talk to me if you want.”

“It’s nothing, it’s just…” Oliver said, no doubt trying to lie because it was obvious there was something wrong. The boy sighed mourningfully, and said: “I miss my dad.”

There was more about it Oliver wasn’t telling him but Chris didn’t pressure him for more information. He couldn’t forget that, as much as it didn’t seem like it, he had met the other boy just some hours ago and there were limits Chris didn’t really know whether he could cross or not.

Therefore, all he did was sigh while sitting in his bed and smiled at his joined hands and separated knees.

“I also miss my mom.” Chris scrunched his nose at the reminder of Maxwell but didn’t say anything out loud. Instead, Chris talked about Jane and how amazing she was. Oliver looked over at him for the moment Chris began to describe his mother, his blank eyes making him look more German than ever but the boy still took a seat by his side, listening silently: “My mom loves to paint. She’s great and has always dreamed of being a painter but she gave up this dream when she married my dad, considering my grandpa wanted her to stay home to take care of me. My dad… I’ve never seen him agreeing with my grandpa but he also doesn’t disagree with him. My mom has the prettiest, softest hair I’ve ever seen and she smells like rosemary.”

Chris closed his eyes to imagine Jeane by his side, smiling at him the way just a mother could do. Looking at him the same way she smiled when Chris was younger and his biggest worry was whether or not she had made ginger biscuits.

Oliver stayed quiet for a long time after that, allowing Chris to recover from the onslaught of feelings after he talked about Jeane. He gulped, swallowing down the tears.

“My mother’s name was Liora,” the blond boy said in a murmur, so low it seemed like a whisper, his eyes staring at something Chris couldn’t see. Then, hesitating, as if he feared Chris was going to start yelling at him or something, Oliver added: “She was taken by the Führer before we left Germany.”

Chris knew “Führer” was a word they used to refer to Hitler. So the magnitude of it all hit him like a punch, comprehension making his heart beat painfully, cutting his airways. He couldn’t help but look at Oliver with pity, although he knew that was certainly not the desired reaction. It was just that Chris couldn’t help it: it was like Oliver’s pain had spread to him, because, after all, wasn’t it his own as well in a certain way?

All of those crimes committed against the Jews, the black people, Romanis, different peoples… wasn’t it his pain as well? They were humans. They were people, they could’ve been people he passed by on his way to school, they could be his professor, his friend’s parents, and relatives, they could’ve been his relatives. It could’ve been him.

Chris saw the pain as his duty. He had to feel the pain for all of the families destroyed by Hitler and by the war that was happening. He had to feel pain because it was the least, he could do if it really mattered for him.

But Chris didn’t say any of that. He didn’t ramble about how concentration camps or did a monologue stating the obvious — all human beings should be respected. No, Oliver knew all of that, he didn’t need anyone to talk his ear off about it. He needed to be heard, or his privacy respected, whichever he preferred.

“Do you want to talk about her?” Chris asked then, as delicately as he could even though he could still feel his disgust for Hitler leaving his tongue heavy and sticky, making it hard to swallow.

In his nape, there was a shiver being born. Oliver kept silent for longer this time; his lips half-open in almost words.

“No,” he finally exhaled, getting more comfortable in Chris’ bed, his back straight. “I was just worried because it’s my first time away from my dad since they took her and I don’t want him to… spiral because of it again.”

The worry in Oliver’s tone was palpable and, for a moment, Chris felt a bit envious about his relationship with his dad. He wanted Max to care enough about him and Jeane to actually mourn if something happened to them. He wanted his father to care.

Admitting that even to himself was like a Punch to his stomach. Chris knew trying not to care would be useless someday but until then, making these mistakes wouldn’t be allowed. He shouldn’t have to beg to have his Father in his life, he shouldn’t have to beg for anyone’s love. Love was something to be freely given, selflessly and happily given. Love was something to be offered, not something to be stolen.

After all, that was the reason why Chris thought it was ridiculous when one of his friends said he’d stolen a girl’s heart. It was ridiculous because they really thought that trying and trying and trying the same way everytime would give them a different outcome. If a girl wasn’t interested in giving him a chance, Chris just moved on to the next girl to interest him: it wasn’t so hard to hear a no after you got used to it.

Anyhow, he was digressing, Chris realized when Oliver shook his hand in front of his face, catching his attention back.

“Did I daydream for a bit?” Chris asked, embarrassed, and Oliver chuckled.

“For quite some time, actually,” he just said.

“I’m sorry”, said Chris with a sigh, turning in the bed to look straight at his friend. “I didn’t know what to say and ended up thinking about my own dad.”

“It’s okay, I can’t expect people to know what to say to something like that.” Oliver smiled, clearly embarrassed and a bit worried. “What did you think of Miss Turner?”

“I think she looks like a Woman from the last century, but who knows? She could surprise us.” Chris answered and shrugged as he laid on the bed, supporting his head with his fingers crossed under it, looking at the ceiling.

“She seems a bit nicer than those women.” Oliver also shrugged but didn’t lay down: he preferred to stay seated on the soft mattress. “What about the other boy... Noah?”

“He’s... quiet.” Chris shrugged again. “I still don’t know what to think of him, actually. I didn’t have the time to get to know him.”

Oliver made no comments, nor did he disagree about anything in regards to Noah. The two boys stayed quiet for a while, the silence of people that had nothing to talk about. So, to break the ice, or maybe to get some alone time, Oliver got up and said:

“I should write to my dad and tell him we arrived and it all went well. I promised him I would.

“Hm, I need to write to my mom as well, although I didn’t promise anything,” Chris said, closing his eyes as the Journey began to take a toll on him. He could feel his body getting heavier and his mind slower. — I’ll just sleep for a bit. Wake me up in an hour, please.

He didn’t even hear Oliver’s agreement before he was out.

Chapter 7 - Coming Soon...

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