Summery/AN: Written because I needed to. Kevin's mindset, but not exact thoughts in chapter 4 of Double Dork.

Bedtime Story

Once upon a time, I died. It was a quiet death, never even noticed by my closest family. Perhaps that is because that despite my cold skin, silent lungs, and empty chest, I still moved among them, eating, speaking, and existing.

My feet are leaden beneath me, even as my body is pushed to the limits, straining protesting muscles to their brink, complaining that they should be resting in eternal sleep. No one ever noticed, caught up in their own small deaths, a lost husband, daughter, sister, father. All that remains is a Mother, and the puppeted corpse of a son. And a falsehood.

"What do you care?" he asked me, voice like ice and eyes deadened in disappointment.

How can you care when your mouth is full of ash and your heart is a unmoving weight dragging at your chest?

Broken homes, so common now-a-days its practically a freak occurrence to have your birth parents for your whole childhood. It would be sad, if I could cried.

Empty truths, spoken so frequently that 'I love you's are thrown about as often as 'how are you's. It would be funny, if I could laugh.

Solemn steps, marching endlessly for that one existence, that one hope that It Will Be Better, that It Will Make Sense, even as your fellow soldiers fall beside you. It would mean something, if I had a voice.

Caring? What is caring in this world? In a world full of broken truths, solemn homes, and empty steps? How can you care when you cannot laugh or cry or scream and scream until your voice breaks and is silent?

Can you hear me? My chest is still, my lungs are cold, and my skin is empty. Only a hollow, vacant, shell of a boy remains. I lie upon a shelf among thousands of dolls, all slowly gone silent as their screams remained unheard.

My voice is broken.

Do you hear it?