Page 88 of The Beast's Broken Angel
I studied his profile in the clinical lighting, noting details I'd catalogued but never questioned. The wariness that never fullyleft his eyes, the way he positioned himself near doorways, the careful control that spoke of survival skills learned too young.
“Your parents?” I asked, though I suspected the answer would make me want to hunt down and torture people who were probably already dead.
“Mum,” he confirmed, still not meeting my eyes. “Dad buggered off when I was eleven. Mum turned to pills to cope, then stronger stuff when the pills stopped working. By thirteen, I was basically raising Isabelle and our younger brother Dean on my own.”
The casual revelation of such profound abandonment made something violent stir in my chest. Not at Noah, but at the circumstances that had forced a child to become a caretaker, to grow up too fast in ways that paralleled my own experience. The system that should have protected him had failed so completely that a child had been reduced to criminal survival.
“Dean?” I asked gently, noting this was the first time he'd mentioned another sibling.
“Overdosed at sixteen,” Noah said flatly, professional mask sliding into place to handle the pain. “Found him in our bathroom. I tried CPR for twenty minutes before the paramedics arrived, but...”
The silence that followed was thick with survivor’s guilt and the raw ache of failing to save someone you loved. I knew that pain all too well—my own losses carved by violence, not neglect, but the wound was just as deep.
The image of teenage Noah finding his brother's body, frantically performing CPR on someone already beyond saving, sent cold fury racing through my veins. Another failure of the system, another child destroyed by adult negligence.
“That's why you became a nurse,” I realized, pieces clickinginto place with crystalline clarity. “To save people you couldn't save before.”
“Partly,” Noah admitted, finally looking at me with eyes that held old grief like scar tissue. “Also because it was the only way to afford university. NHS bursary covered tuition if I committed to five years of service.”
“And you chose trauma care specifically?”
A bitter smile ghosted across his lips. “Because that's where people need saving most. Where seconds matter and skill can mean the difference between someone going home or going to the morgue.”
I reached out slowly, giving him time to pull away, and covered his hand with mine. The contact was simple but profound, scarred skin against unmarked, violence offering comfort to healing. Two survivors recognising the damage in each other.
“Tell me something else about yourself,” I said, thumb brushing across his pulse point where it fluttered beneath pale skin like a trapped bird. “Something no one else knows.”
Noah was quiet for a long moment, internal struggle visible in the tightness around his eyes, the careful calculation of how much truth he could afford to reveal.
“I used to steal,” he finally admitted, voice steady despite the weight of confession. “Food, mostly. Sometimes clothes or books. Got caught lifting groceries when I was fourteen and spent three days in juvenile detention before they released me back to Mum.”
The image of teenage Noah desperate enough to risk arrest for basic necessities made something lethal unfurl in my chest. The system that should have protected him had failed so completely that a child had been forced to crime just to survive, just to keep his siblings alive.
“What happened after that?”
“Social services got involved,” Noah continued, voice matter-of-fact despite the obvious trauma underlying the memory. “Threatened to split us up, put Isabelle and Dean in care if I couldn't prove stable home environment. So I got better at stealing. Never got caught again.”
“How long?” I asked, though I suspected the answer would make me want to hunt down every social worker who'd failed to protect three abandoned children.
“Until I was eighteen and could legally become their guardian,” Noah said with a shrug that didn't hide the years of sacrifice and terror. “Four years of walking the line between keeping us together and keeping us fed. Not exactly the wholesome background you'd expect from someone in healthcare.”
Four years. Four years of a child carrying adult responsibilities, making impossible choices between family and legality, survival and morality. The strength it would have taken, the compromises he'd been forced to make, painted a picture of resilience that rivalled anything I'd witnessed in my own violent world.
“It's exactly the background I'd expect,” I corrected firmly, meaning every word. “Someone who learned early that the system fails people, that sometimes you have to break rules to do what's right. That survival requires making impossible choices and living with the consequences.”
“Is that why you're telling me this?” Noah asked, searching my face with those perceptive eyes that saw too much, understood too clearly. “Because you recognize something familiar?”
“I'm telling you because I want you to know that I understand,” I replied with brutal honesty. “What it's like to be responsible for someone else's survival when you're barely surviving yourself. What it costs to make those choices, to carry that weight every day without breaking.”
Here we were, two children forced into adult responsibilitiesby circumstances beyond our control, shaped by violence and abandonment into something harder than the world around them. Different methods, same fundamental damage.
“And I want you to know that the man who stole food to keep his siblings alive is the same man who patches up enemies because it's the right thing to do,” I continued, leaning closer until our foreheads almost touched. “The same man who looks at someone like me and sees something worth saving.”
“You're not a monster,” Noah whispered, hands coming up to frame my face with devastating gentleness that I didn't deserve, would never deserve. “You're someone who had to become dangerous to survive. There's a difference.”
“Is there?” I asked, because the distinction had never been clear to me, the line between necessity and cruelty blurred beyond recognition. “When the methods are the same, when the body count is the same?”
“The difference is in why you do it,” Noah said firmly, conviction absolute in his voice. “And who you choose to protect with that danger. A monster destroys indiscriminately. You destroy to preserve what matters.”