For the Moment

“Damn it, damn it, damn it!”

“Children shouldn’t talk that way.”

“Shut up!”

A few of the people in the circus turned to look at their latest addition, a father and son pair, or at least, they thought it was a father-son pair. It was hard to tell sometimes whether the dark-haired clown was really the boy’s father. If he was, he certainly hadn’t taught his son proper manners.

“What’s happened this time?”

The dark-haired man, Mana, looked up. “Oh, good morning, Raine.”

The woman raised an eyebrow. She was very pretty, with goldenrod-colored hair and bright green eyes. She was in charge of the circus’s behind-the-scenes things as well as the tightrope walker. “What’s happened this time?” she repeated, her hands on her hips.

“Nothing,” the younger clown, Allen, muttered.

“That was quite a bit of cussing for ‘nothing,’” Raine pointed out. “Did you hurt yourself?”

“No.” Allen rubbed his wrist and winced.

“Did you hurt your wrist?”

“Go play mom somewhere else!” Allen snapped. He stood and ran off, presumably to Karos, the circus’s resident magician.

Raine watched Allen run off. “Well, he's being a little...”

“You don’t have to say it.” Mana stood. “I already know.”

“He's being bratty.”

“I said you didn’t have to say it.”

“Just calling it how I see it.” Raine shook her head. “You need to do something about that boy. Allen’s getting out of hand.”

Mana sighed. He’d heard this refrain from half the circus already. “What did he do this time?”

“Nothing since this morning.”

“I’ll go get him,” Mana said before walking in his ‘son’s’ direction.

Being a father was tough. Mana knew that even before he’d picked up Allen, but he hadn’t realized just how tough it would be. Allen was used to a life on his own, to being ignored or beaten if he was noticed. The boy wasn’t used to attention or kindness, and because of that, he acted exactly as he had before Mana had taken him under his wing.

Still, I think she’s being a little harsh on him, Mana thought as he looked for his now infamous son. He found him exactly where he thought he would, sitting with Karos and trying to figure out how the magician did all his tricks.

“You know it ruins the magic when you know how he does it,” Mana said, watching as Karos “magically” lifted Allen’s card from the top of the deck for what was probably the third time. Thankfully, the magician was patient enough to do the tricks hundreds of times.

“He’ll never figure it out,” Karos said brightly. He, unlike the rest of the circus, loved Allen’s company. He’d had a rough life before becoming a semi-permanent member of the circus and understood Allen in many ways that Mana and the others could not.

“You just put the card in the other way so you can find it easy,” Allen said.

“Okay, so he figured it out.” Karos chuckled and started shuffling for a different trick. “That one wasn’t that tough. This one’s a lot tougher.”

“Sorry, but I have to borrow your audience,” Mana interrupted.

“Your son, your rules.” The magician pocketed his deck of cards and ambled off, much to Allen’s disappointment.

“Allen, is something bothering you?” Mana sat down where Karos had just been.

“No.” Mana could tell by the boy’s tone that something was indeed bothering him.

“Are you not feeling well?”

“No.”

He was getting colder. Mana tried again. “Are you mad because you did your handstand wrong?”

“No.” That was part of it, but not the heart of the matter.

“Did somebody say something to you?”

Allen turned his head away so he wouldn’t have to look Mana in the eye. He didn’t answer this time. Mana had guessed right.

“Is it about what happened the other day?”

“No.” Mana could tell by Allen’s voice that he’d hit the mark.

When they’d come three days ago, Raine had asked Mana why he hadn’t mentioned he had a son before. Allen had somehow taken the simple question as an insult and shouted that Mana wasn’t his father before running off. It had taken Mana a good hour to find his hiding place, which had been behind Karos’s trunk of magic tricks.

“Do you hate me?” Mana asked seriously.

Allen stared at him, bewildered. “What?”

“Do you hate me so much that you can’t think of me as your father?”

“Oh.” Allen hugged his knees close to him and rested his chin on them. “Grown ups are stupid. They only care ‘bout themselves and hate people who’re different then them.” He lifted his hand, the one that was deformed, and stared at the mitten Mana had given him to cover it with. “They don’t get nothing.”

Mana chuckled. “So it’s not that you hate me, it’s that you hate all adults.”

“It’s ‘cause they’re stupid.”

Mana ruffled Allen’s hair. “Not everyone knows everything, Allen. Even I’m still learning. You have to give people a chance.”

Allen pursed his lips. The expression looked so out-of-place on such a young face. “No one ever gave me a chance,” he muttered.

“I asked you to come with me and be my assistant,” Mana pointed out. “Doesn’t that count?”

“You’re just weird.” But Allen did smile.

Mana smiled back. “So what’s this thing you have against mothers and fathers anyway?” He wanted to understand Allen. It wasn’t like he was a mind reader. He couldn’t tell what Allen was thinking or wanted if the boy didn’t tell him.

Allen frowned again. “They all looked so happy,” he said so quietly that Mana had to strain to hear. “Whenever they came, they all looked so happy. They’d all hold hands or one would be carrying their kid or somethin’ like that.”

Mana had gotten pretty good at understanding what Allen meant by his mysterious they. They could mean anyone, from the people he’d done odd jobs for to the people who came to the circus to the few people who’d taken pity on him and given him a shilling or two. All Mana had to do to know which they he meant was listen to how he talked about them. This time, they meant the people who went to the circus he once worked at, families in particular.

“So you don’t like parents because you were jealous of the children who had them,” Mana mumbled to himself.

“I wasn’t jealous!” Allen snapped. Mana knew the boy didn’t know what the word meant, but that didn’t matter. Allen was the type to deny everything, especially things he didn’t know.

“Of course you aren’t.” Mana stood with a groan. I’m not getting old, he thought to himself defiantly. It’s just the cold. I’m always like this when it’s cold. He offered a hand to help Allen up.

Allen stared at Mana a moment, a little surprised by the gesture. He reached to take Mana’s hand but stopped mid-reach as if he had to run something through his mind. Mana waited patiently. Allen wasn’t used to kindness, after all.

When Allen had thought out every possible scenario and decided that Mana couldn’t possibly be cruel enough to turn such a gesture into any one of them, Allen took his hand and let Mana lead him inside.

“Has the dynamic duo stopped fighting for the moment?” Raine asked sarcastically when she saw them.

“For the moment,” Mana agreed.

If you want to add this to your favorites (hint hint) and leave a review (double hint hint) on fanfiction.net, the URL is http://www.fanfiction.net/s/4936586/1/For_the_Moment