[The Reading] Mama, we all live in silence...

[Akakios (DELETED 10882)]

‘He is just being ignorant’

‘He is deaf…’

‘Yeah, but he has that thing on his head. He just keeps turning it off.’

‘I suppose..’

People talk more when they think you can’t hear them, Akakios had learnt this at a young age. His mother had been the first person to teach him that people thought you were stupid just because you couldn’t hear them. She had liked to remind him of her disappointment at having a ‘retard’ for a son. It was around that same time that he learned to turn off his hearing aid.

Mama, we all go to hell…

Lips became easier to read the more he did it. The insults stung less when he couldn’t hear the venom behind their remarks. He even taught himself how to keep his face blank (thank you Spock). Life was just simpler if he just became the brick wall they thought he was.

Mama, we all go to hell…

For years that was his life. Day after day. Week after week. Insult after insult. Until he was as empty on the inside as he portrayed on the outside. His mother never noticed, even when his father left, she never stopped to ask if her ‘dense as two short planks’ son was alright. No. They just carried on the way they always did, in silence and insults.

‘I can’t deal with him any more Cathryn.’

She had never been able to deal with him.

‘I don’t know why you didn’t just get rid of him when he showed the signs of being…you know…that..’

‘That’ being deaf, because apparently being deaf meant that he was defective and should have been left on a hill like some sort of Spartan baby.

‘Well, they said that stupid implant would fix him.’

It had. He could hear every word she spat at him – he had just learnt not to show it. It didn’t matter to him if she was a cruel and heartless monster, she was his mother, and for some messed up reason he was a loyal son.

Mama, we're all gonna die…

---

“Mrs Ruth, your son needs an education more suited for his needs..”

This was always going to be the case. The school couldn’t ‘handle’ the troubled student who refused to turn on his hearing aid. None of them knew what to do with him, so they decided that he should be put in the ‘Special classes’ – it didn’t matter that the lessons were too easy, it didn’t even matter that he was wasting away before their very eyes – so long as they didn’t have to try and cope with the emotionless robot.

“Come on, he isn’t that bad. Shove him at the back of the classroom and ignore him.”

But of course, his mother would never live it down with her friends if her son was put in a special school. No, she wasn’t going to let him get out of this so easily. He would be forced to turn on his aid, forced to live in a world of noise that bombarded him and made his head ache. It was written all over her painted up face, she was going to make him conform even if it broke him.

“I really think he should be in a school that can deal with his more…special requirements, maybe one that can teach him sign?”

Yes, because he would clearly need a way of communicating with those that could hear. His thoughts on the matter didn’t matter. The fact that he didn’t -want- to communicate with him didn’t matter, he needed to.

“Then get him lessons. I am not moving his school – I’ll tell the papers you are kicking him out because he is ‘special’.”

He hated that word. He wasn’t special. He was DEAF.

Mama, we're all full of lies…

Being deaf wasn’t a sin. Just because he couldn’t hear didn’t make him stupid, it didn’t make him weak or different. There was nothing wrong with who he was.

“You know I can hear you, yes?”

Twelve years of silence broke.

Four sets of eyes zeroed in on him and he felt the side of his mouth twitch, it was only the one side, and it was barely more than a tug – but it was the first thing he had felt in a awful long time, it made the little light inside his chest pulse.

“What the heck, you have a voice?”

It wasn’t really that stupid of a question, not really. A lot of deaf people never found their voices, they didn’t need them after all – they spoke just as clearly with their hands as everyone else did with their tongue.

“Yes.”

He had struck them dumb. It was almost amusing. Here where four people who believed that he was the broken one because one part of him didn’t work the same way it did for them, and the moment he shows them that he has been ‘normal’ all along, they break.

“What is wrong with it, you sound like you have cotton wool in your mouth.”

Of course it would be his mother who found the ‘wrong’ thing about this development. But, he would not allow her this. He had been silent for too long, he had been living under her pressure for fifteen years, it was time to end this nightmare.

“Nothing is wrong with it.”

Slowly he stood, hands in fists and hazel eyes locked with dirty brown. She would hear him. She would understand that enough was enough. He was going to ruin her pretty picture world.

“Headmaster, put in my transfer papers to one of those specialist schools.”

“Ak…”

“I don’t need her permission. I want to learn.”

It took a minute, but eventually the grey head of the oldest man in the world gave a nod.

“Listen here, I am your moth…”

“No, you listen. I am going to go to that school, I am going to learn how to…live, and you and me will continue to ignore each other.”

He wasn’t going to back down. Not now, not ever. He narrowed his eyes until they were pinpricks, daring her to disagree with his statement.

.

.

.

.

“Alright.”

And there it was – he was free. At last, he was going to learn how to function in a world where nothing made sense and people wanted him in a nice little box.

He gave her a smile, and then he reached up and flicked off his hearing aid.

Silence had never been so peaceful.

[Akakios (DELETED 10882)]

Mother

Do you love me?
Do you see me?
Do you want me?

Akakios was haunted by the questions of his childhood, every time he looked at her picture he couldn’t help but feel them pressing on his mind. She had been the one person who was meant to be there, she was meant to be the one protecting him from the pain of the world – yet she never got that memo.

Deidra had spent most of her son’s life putting him down. She didn’t seen the point in having a defective sprog, and when he became a man she found him even more revolting. There was nothing about her that was maternal, but still she kept him. She gave up her youth to raise him, even after her husband got up and left them alone, she worked hard to put food on his plate – Akakios understood all of that, so he stayed loyal to the demon he called a mother.

‘Bugger off you ,little freak…’

He stopped talking to her, after all she didn’t want to talk to him and had no interest in his life outside of the fact he wasn’t dead yet.

‘Go watch your crappy shows…’

He stopped seeking her out, after all she didn’t want him near her. Eventually he even found someone else to seek comfort from, and they were the mother he heard in his mind even when his own was screaming about how useless he was.

“Now, you be sure and dress warmly on those other planes of existence.” -BEVERLY CRUSHER, Star Trek: The Next Generation, "Journey's End"

---

Father

Why did you leave me?
What did I do wrong?
Will you ever come home?

It has been a long time since he had thought about his father, and even longer since he had looked at the pictures of the man who looked so much like him. He couldn’t cope with the fact that his strong defender had up and left as if he meant nothing.

Benedict had been the perfect father for the first two years of his sons life, but then it all changed. The fights began when Akakios turned three, the day he was put in for the implant. Benedict hadn’t wanted his son to get the implant, what was the point, the kid was already broken, it was better to learn to deal with it. By year five of his sons life Benedict decided he had had enough, he packed what little he had in the house and walked away.

‘I’ll find your when I want you…’

He never wanted him, it took another fourteen years for Akakios to come to terms with the fact that the man who was meant to teach him how to be a man, had ran away from his responsibility’s as a father.

‘……’

Years of life without a father stopped mattering after awhile, he found someone better to guide him down the path of what a true man should be.

“It is possible to commit no mistakes and still lose. That is not a weakness; that is life.” -JEAN-LUC PICARD, Star Trek: The Next Generation, "Peak Performance"

---

School Bully

Does this make you better?
Does this make you strong?
Am I really that broken?

Many years have passed since the taunts in the playground, so many years, yet the words have still stuck in his mind. No matter how much distance he puts between him and his past it still comes back to kick him when he is down. Every single name, every single punch, every single tear. He remembers it all, but now he uses it as fuel.

Over the years there were many different faces, and each had their own unique way of making his life a living hell. He has forgotten their names, but he would never forget their lips or their eyes – even now he can point them out in the year books that rest on the table between him and the TV. They ruined what was meant to be the best time of his life, he didn’t blame them of course, he was always to blame – no, he didn’t blame them, but he did blame the teachers who stood by and watched him being ripped apart to the point where he just switched off completely and refused to turn on his hearing aid.

‘Freak!’

Eventually he learned that he wasn’t a freak, eventually. It had taken years of utter silence before he realised that there was nothing wrong with not wanting to be part of the noise polluted world.

‘Retard!’

The letter he had laying next to the year books proved that he was anything but a ‘retard’. While they were all working dead end jobs he was going to university and was going to become an anthropologist.

His best friend had taught him to value himself.

“Yet, for all you say, where are the words "duty," "honor" and "loyalty"? Without which a warrior is nothing!” – WORF, Star Trek: The Next Generation, “Heart of Glory”

---

First Love, First Broken Heart:

Did this really happen?
Is this all I meant to you?
Did your words mean so little?

Seventeen was the age that his heart froze in his chest. It had started out so well, they were deeply in love, perfectly happy and there had been nothing that could have torn them apart. He was free from his painful family, free from the insults that tormented him. Slowly he had put his hearing aid on and walked back into the world – but then one day it all changed.

Joseph had been the one person he believed would never abandon him. They had met one day during detention and it had been perfect, both of them had been shy at first but then they smiled and lit the room up with their devotion. Everyone who saw them said that they were made for each other, and Akakios had given everything to the relationship – what a pity that Joseph hadn’t. They were together for four glorious years until…

‘It’s not you, it’s me…’

Of course. There was no way that Akakios was meant to be happy, that wasn’t his path in life. No, he was meant to suffer each and every time he thought things were finally working out for him.

‘I’m just not happy…’

He also wasn’t faithful. Akakios hadn’t been blind, he had seen the looks that Joseph threw to their neighbour and the looks he got in return.

Oh well, love wasn’t logical anyway.

“In critical moments, men sometimes see exactly what they wish to see.” – SPOCK Star Trek, “The Tholian Web”

---

Many people made him who he was, they all had a hand in breaking him apart. After each time he had been destroyed by their hands he had built himself back up. There really had only been one constant good in his life and that was his beloved shows.

| Live long and prosper |