I am new, And i am shit at english. That's my 3rd language. I am totally newbie 😅..
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The last thing Johan Liebert knew was the sound of the gunshot—a clean, definitive end to a tedious story. He had expected nothingness.
The first thing James Howlett knew was the dog's dying whimper.
Consciousness slammed into him, a violent, sensory assault. The scratch of wool against his skin. The cloying sweetness of his mother's perfume. The iron-rich stink of blood. And a pain, bright and searing, deep in his hands—a feeling of bones breaking from the inside out.
He opened his eyes.
The world was a blur of polished wood and panicked movement. A crystal decanter lay shattered on the floor. A tall, rigid man—John Howlett, Father—stood as a barricade. A woman—Elizabeth, Mother—clutched the doorframe, her face a mask of horror.
On the Persian rug, the Irish setter, its flank a ruin of red. Standing over it, a boy with a cruel mouth—Dog Logan, Brother.
Memories that were not his own flooded the void where Johan's consciousness had taken root. A taunt. A kick. A surge of protective rage from James, so pure it was paralyzing. Then, the impossible: bone, slick and white, punching through the skin of his own knuckles.
A thought, calm and alien, cut through the ghost of the boy's terror: The vessel is flawed. It responds with… exposed weaponry.
Shouts. "Thomas, get out! Take your brute and get off my land!"
He was led away, his small hand in Elizabeth's trembling one. He did not look back. His focus was inward, on the fascinating warmth knitting the skin of his hands back together, on the thousand new scents and sounds assaulting him. This was not an end. It was a laboratory.
They put him to bed in a room that felt like a museum of a dead boy's life. Wooden soldiers. A porcelain doll. Elizabeth wept over him.
"My poor James," she whispered. "My brave boy."
He remained silent. Brave. The boy had been weak. He was not the boy. When the door closed, he rose and walked to the mirror.
A child's face stared back. Pale. Fine-boned. But the eyes… the eyes were a still, dark water that reflected nothing. They were the first thing that felt truly like his own.
James Howlett. A name to wear. A skin to inhabit.
The stolen memories shifted, revealing their structures. He saw the tension between John Howlett's rigid honor and Thomas Logan's brutish resentment. He saw Elizabeth's profound weakness, a melancholy that seeped into the very walls of the house. The details were the blurred, simple perceptions of a child, and he accepted them as such. He was not here to unravel mysteries, but to observe and adapt.
Alone, he held his hands before his face. He focused on the feeling that had preceded the tearing pain. The pressure. The urge.
He clenched his fists, tight. He felt the bones in his arms shift, a deep, internal strain. A sharp, white tip of bone began to push against the skin of his knuckle. It was excruciating, and utterly compelling. He let it come, just a millimeter, feeling the precise, controlled violation of his own body. The sharpness of it.
Then, with a force of will that was entirely his own, he pushed it back. The bone slid inward, the skin sealing over it without a mark. He repeated the process, testing the control, learning the mechanics of his new weapon. He was learning to keep it sheathed. The urge to fully unleash them, to feel their length and weight, was a dull throb in his blood, but his will was a cage of ice. It would not be permitted. Not yet.
His new senses were a constant, low hum. He could hear the tense, muffled argument from downstairs between John and Elizabeth.
"—traumatized the boy, John! He'll never be the same!" Elizabeth's voice, frayed.
"He's a Howlett. He'll recover," John's reply, gruff, but with an undercurrent of something else. Worry?
James listened, parsing the tones. He could smell the faint scent of John's whiskey, the salt of Elizabeth's tears from two rooms away. It was all data. The world was so much louder, so much more vivid. He practiced filtering it, focusing on one thread of sound, one isolated scent, suppressing the overwhelming flood until it became a manageable stream of information.
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Downstairs, John Howlett poured a finger of whiskey, his hand steady. He stared into the glass, not seeing it, seeing instead his son's face. The terror, yes. The tears. But for a moment, in the very center of the chaos, he had seen something else. His son's face had been… still. His eyes, for a fleeting second, had not been wide with fear, but narrow, focused. Assessing.
He shook his head, draining the glass. It was the shock. The boy had been through a trauma. James was gentle. He took after his mother. He was no fighter. The idea that he had seen a cold, assessing intelligence in his son's eyes was the fancy of a stressed mind.
Later, John came upstairs, his footsteps heavy on the creaking wood. He entered the room without knocking. James was in bed, the covers pulled to his chin, feigning a fitful sleep. He could smell the whiskey on his father, the scent of old leather and anxiety.
John stood over the bed for a long moment. James could feel his gaze. He made his breathing slow and even, his eyelids flutter slightly with the believable pattern of dream. He was a perfect replica of a sleeping, traumatized child.
John's large, calloused hand came down and rested gently on his forehead, a rough, awkward gesture of affection. The touch was alien. Johan, within, observed it with clinical detachment. Paternal concern. A need for reassurance that his lineage is intact.
"You're safe now, son," John murmured, his voice low. "No one will hurt you again."
The lie was so palpable it was almost amusing. The world was made of hurt. This man was just too blind to see it.
John stood there for another minute, a silent, worried sentinel, before leaving, closing the door softly behind him.
The moment the door clicked shut, the performance ended. James's eyes opened, clear and dry in the moonlight. He had passed inspection. The mask was secure.
He spent the rest of the night in silent vigilance, testing the limits of his hearing, tracing the scents that drifted through the manor, mastering the strange, animal keenness of his senses. The bone claws remained sheathed, a secret power thrumming under his skin, a patient promise of violence.
He was the perfect son, the recovering boy. He was a ghost in a machine of flesh and bone, learning its levers and pulleys. The world thought it had witnessed a tragedy. They had no idea what had truly been born in the blood on their drawing-room rug. They saw a boy, shaken but safe.
They saw nothing at all.
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(Tell me how was that.fk, it takes 2 hours to write this😅😅😅)