Chapter Text
Matthew is hurting when he goes to visit Elena, hurting inside and out. He doesn't know why Momma made them leave home, but he's lonely and homesick and he wants to go back. He misses his bedroom, with the loose floorboard where he hid all his special treasures (the seashells Daddy brings home when he goes sailing, and the pretty rocks Matthew finds all by himself). He misses the smell of the house, the special smell that makes him feel safe and happy because it's home and nowhere else smells like that. He misses running all over the homestead, and knowing he's safe because Daddy's friends are everywhere. He misses Daddy too, most of all.
And his hand hurts too, where his finger used to be. Doctor White said it's going to be okay, but it still bleeds sometimes and it doesn't feel good. Matthew can’t stop feeling the hole where it used to be, like when his tooth fell out on his birthday and he kept sticking his tongue in the empty space. Except his finger won’t grow back.
At least he's visiting Elena, that makes him feel sort of a little bit better. Not that any of his visitors are bad, but Elena is especially nice. She's littler than him today (sometimes she's bigger and sometimes they're the same age, which hurts his head to think about), but she's still his friend. And she knows something is wrong as soon as he sits down next to her under the table.
"Matty," Elena says. No one else ever calls him Matty, but he likes when Elena does. She crawls over to him and gives him a hug that’s kind of nice. "What's wrong, Matty?" He sniffs and she touches his face where the tears haven't dried. "Why are you sad?"
Lots of reasons, but the one that comes falling out of his mouth is "I want my Daddy." Matthew hunches up his shoulders and wipes angrily at his face, getting snot all over the back of his sleeve. "Momma said he's a bad man but I don’t believe her and I wanna go home!"
"Daddys are good," Elena says, eyes wide and voice unusually sure. "Maybe your Momma was wrong?"
He shrugs and tries to breathe normal, but his breath keeps getting stuck in his throat so that his chest shudders and jerks. "She says we can't go home 'cuz it was Daddy's fault my finger's gone." He holds out his hand with the missing finger and Elena grabs it, frowning. "But I was bad and played with the bad things, so it's my fault."
"I don't think you're bad," Elena says. She kisses his missing finger, and Matthew is so surprised he actually giggles a little.
"What was that for?" he asks.
"One time I visited Jeanne, when she was big—" Elena holds her hands up high over her head. "And Jacob was visiting too, and we were racing. But I fell and hurt my knee, and I cried a lot but Jeanne said if you kiss owies they don't hurt as much." She pauses a second, then shakes her head. "Actually, I only cried a little , okay?"
Matthew shrugs uncertainly. "Still hurts," he mumbles. "Anyway, I don't care about the finger. I just want to be with daddy."
Elena gasps suddenly, and points at one of the grownups sitting at the table above them. "Matty! Your Daddy's here!"
"No he's not," Matthew says. "He's at home. And you live far away." He doesn't really understand where his visitors live, compared to him. But he knows deep down in his toes that they're all too far away to get to except by visiting.
"He is, he is! I promise!" Elena beams at him. "He helped me get away from the scary place, and I didn't want him to help at first because I didn’t think daddy would know where I was going—" she pauses, and Matthew waits patiently as she takes a deep breath. Then she continues. "But Daddy was already here! So it was okay, and your Daddy even let me take Kitty with us." She giggles as a little metal something flies up to rest on top of her head, and reaches up to pat it. "And Clay too."
"Daddy's really here?" Matthew asks, and Elena points again at the same pair of legs. Matthew beams at her, then scoots across the table to hug Daddy's legs. He knows he can't talk to Daddy when he's visiting, but this is good enough for now. Matthew is happy just to be able to hug Daddy, and hold on tight and not let go.
Elena chatters away happily, working her way messily through a breakfast that she seems to be enjoying a lot. She goes on and on about her Daddy ("And he's so silly, Matty, he didn't even know my name! Marcello told me my name when I was really little, when he was bigger and visiting—why didn't Daddy know it?"), which might have made Matthew jealous, for how she gets to see her Daddy right when Matthew’s losing his, except he knows she never got to see her Daddy when she was littler.
Finally, when he recognizes the feeling of a visit about to end, Matthew cuts off Elena's unending stream of chatter. "Hey," he says. "Hey, 'Lena. Can you do me a big huge giant favor?"
She shrugs. "Course."
"Take care of my Daddy?" Matthew says. "So he can be happy if I ever come home again someday?"
Elena nods, and hugs him again, and the feeling of her arms around him is the last thing Matthew knows before suddenly he's back with Momma, and everything is cold and sad again.
And his missing finger hurts.