13 Interlude Of A Worried Mother Part 2

There were two possibilities that Andria could come up with as she waited in bed for her son's return.

The first was that Tristan had, for some reason, decided to venture out into the night for a bit of fresh air, or perhaps even for a spot of exercise.

While he certainly wasn't the most athletic person in the community, Tristan had always liked to keep moving, and going on runs had always been his way to calm down if something was nagging at him in the past.

She knew that Tristan wasn't happy, especially not when he was attending the weekend school, and she was well aware that exercising was his way of working through those negative feelings.

On a Friday night with school just around the corner? That was prime time for Tristan to want to go out on a run to clear his thoughts.

In all honesty, she liked that Tristan would go out to exercise to feel better about himself. A lot of the kids who felt the pent up aggression and emotions that the world offered these days would take it out on the people around them. Tristan's passtime was much more healthy in comparison.

She just hated that this was the environment that her son had to do it in.

In this world, a young boy in his mid-teens was an easy target for attack no matter how strong they were. A mugging, perhaps even worse. Those thoughts that were designated under the blanked term of 'worse' in Andria's head were thoughts that she couldn't dwell on for long without feeling physically sick.

Nevertheless, if he had gone out at midnight and hadn't come back by two in the morning, then it meant that something had almost definitely happened.

She got out of bed and glanced out of the window once again. The moonlight and swaying torches of the guards revealed nothing.

The second possibility really wasn't much better than the first.

The knowledge that Tristan was being bullied by those at his school was something that Andria had gained three months earlier.

After the weekend school had come to an end three boys had lured Tristan somehow down to the waste river, a polluted and disgusting stretch of water a short way from the camp, before being pushed into the murky waters.

It was one of the rare occasions that she actually had something good to say about the heroes. Someone walking nearby had seen what had happened, a plainclothes officer, and used their Crafter Tech radio to call for help. A flying hero had come down from the tower at the centre of the community, scooped her son up, and took him straight to the medical block to be looked over. While there, and under the drugs that they had used to sedate him, Tristan had revealed that he had been bullied, but not by who. The only reason that she knew it was more than one person was because he had said "bullies" and not "bully".

Tristan hadn't mentioned any of it, neither the river nor the bullying overall, since it had happened. If Andria mentioned it or pushed the subject, he only tensed up and pulled further away from her. She had resigned herself to letting her son reveal the details in his own time. But three months later, and no more information had been revealed.

It wasn't like there was anything Andria could do about it, either. There was only one school in the community and no other communities within safe walking distance. Besides, even if there were other communities out there, they wouldn't likely take them in. Everyone was just about struggling to get by, no matter where they were.

The school had said that they would look out to make sure that nothing like the river incident happened again, but when students outnumbered teachers so vastly and they were as overworked as they were, there was no way that they could ever hope to live up to those promises.

With all of that in mind, when Tristan snuck out in the middle of the night, she couldn't help but wonder if the bullies had lured him out with some kind of blackmail or threat.

She only ever found out about the river, but it was a situation that was so bad and so dangerous that she couldn't believe that the boys who had caused the situation hadn't done anything else in the past.

She could imagine that the children who were tormenting her son, egging each other on as they came up with new ways to hurt him or humiliate him, had done many things over the years.

Of course, Tristan had never said anything about it out loud, but whatever had happened had been enough to drive away Tristan's closest friend of four years, Elliot. He had just walked out of Tristan's life entirely, it seemed.

Andria was helpless. Helpless to find him now, and helpless to give him aid with his troubles at school. All she could do was wait and pray, with her heart in her throat, that the guards wouldn't come knocking on the door to tell her that they had found her son, dead or injured at the hands of one of the gangs or unaffiliated villains that used the night as their shield against the heroes of the community.

She all but jumped out of her skin when the muffled whoosh of the front door opening and closing knocked her out of her thoughts.

She felt a rush of relief, followed by a tidal wave of fear. If she went downstairs now, would she find Tristan injured? Would she just make things worse by confronting him about his late-night escapades?

No. She would stay in bed. Content in the fact that Tristan was now home. She wouldn't confront him about any of it, because she couldn't bear the thought of losing her son as well as her husband.

Not at any cost.