Growing up, (F/N) learned very quickly that the best way to keep his mother happy was to be quiet. If she was asleep, he should be quiet. If she was awake, he should be quiet. If she had friends over, he should be in his room before they arrived, in his room until after they left, and most importantly, he should be quiet. When he wasn't quiet, his mother got angry. And when she got angry, he got hurt.

He woke her up with his frightened screams the last time he'd had a nightmare. Half asleep and her hair a mess, she stumbled into his room and threw a bowl at his head. Another time, when he was four, he'd tripped and sprained his ankle. Slapping him until he stopped crying, his mother locked him in his room for three days with no food or water. And the last time she had a friend over, he accidentally sneezed. After her friend left, she dragged him by the hair out into the middle of the living room and kicked him around the house until she got tired and went to bed. So, after five years, (F/N) learned to be quiet.

But being quiet all the time was boring, and it got very lonely. When he was quiet, his mother didn't beat him, but she also didn't do anything else with him either. She was always too tired to talk to him and too busy to play with him. But he noticed that when she beat him, she would always apologize a few days later.

"I'm sorry I'm so hard on you." She would say. "But I'm just trying to teach you. The world is going to hurt you, so you have to be strong. Just be strong and fight through the pain, honey. You can do that, can't you? You can be big and strong for mommy? That's my brave little man."

She would ruffle his hair and hug him close, and then they would cuddle on his bed, and she would tell him stories until he fell asleep. He cherished those moments when she would hold him. When she was gentle and kind. Sometimes he would be loud on purpose, taking the pain and the bruises just for those few hours when she held him close, and he didn't have to pretend to be strong.

He was six years old when he began to feel detached. The noises he heard every night had slithered in through his ears and buried themselves deep within his brain. He wasn't sure what they meant, not entirely. But his instincts knew there was something about the breathless grunts and euphoric moaning that stole the light from his eyes.

By the age of seven, he started taking notice of the friends his mother had over. Though he was never allowed to see them, he could tell by their voices that they were all men. They always visited in the evening and, oddly he noticed, their visits were always in increments of thirty minutes. After one guest left, another would enter just some fifteen minutes later. They made strange noises, too. Noises that kept (F/N) up at night. Noises that sometimes crept their way into his dreams and caused him to startle awake.

As he paid more attention to his mother's friends, he began to recognize some of them. One gentleman with a grainy voice always visited on Wednesday nights. Another who had the same knock and one who didn't bother knocking at all. The one that stood out the most however, was a man with a subtle southern drawl.

Aside from his accent, (F/N) also recognized him by the sound of his shoes and the way they clopped against the wooden plank floorboards. The scent of brandy and cigar smoke leaked under his bedroom door and filled his nostrils, and it lingered in the house for several hours after the man had left. What really made him stand out though, was that the length of his stays was sporadic. Whereas all her other friends were kept to a strict schedule, this gentleman seemed to leave whenever he pleased, and the nights he visited were free of any other guests.

"One of these days, I'm gonna take y'away from this place." The man would say. "Just you wait, Tess. We'll leave it all behind and I'll show yuh all the world has tuh offer."

Every time he came to the house, he brought with him the same promise. That the next night they saw each other would be the night they finally ran away. Then one day the man saw (F/N). Just a hint of his (E/C) eye peeking through the crack in his bedroom door. And very suddenly his visits ended, leaving Tess with nothing more than broken promises and shattered dreams. She beat him mercilessly that night.

As an apology for the bruises she'd left on him, three weeks later Tess took her son out to enjoy lunch in the fields just outside the Kingdom. Long stretches of flat plainlands where wild grass grew tall, separated Vale from the lush forests and towering mountains that were painted against an endless backdrop of blue. In was in this world between the realms of man and beast that (F/N)'s life changed forever.

The young boy clung nervously to his mother's hand as they trekked further from the safety of the Kingdom and its huntsmen. He, as all children had, had grown up hearing bedtime stories of the creatures of Grimm; monstrous creatures that preyed on little children who didn't listen to their parents and who dwelled in the dark forests beyond the Kingdom's walls.

"It's okay, darling." Tess told him sweetly. "The Grimm are more afraid of you than you are of them. So long as you can show them how brave and strong you are, they won't hurt you. You can do that, can't you?"

He nodded. Something in those words held a power over him. They filled him with courage and bravery. Or perhaps, more accurately, they forced courage and bravery upon him.

Tess ruffled her son's hair. "That's my brave little man."

A flinch, imperceptibly small, even to him, shook through (F/N)'s body at the sight of his mother's hand reaching for him. But at the affectionate gesture, he smiled and leaned into the warm touch, hungry for more when it was over.

It was a few hours past midday when they found a nice place to sit, near the slope's beginning of a mountain base about a two hours walk from the Kingdom, where the grass wasn't quite as tall but the ground was still soft and comfortable. Tess smoothed out an old blanket she had been carrying under her arm to use as a picnic cloth and placed the wicker basket she had brought in the middle of it.

The next few hours were the best of (F/N)'s life. His mother allowed him to sit in her lap as they enjoyed their lunch, and afterwards she stroked his hair and read to him from his favorite storybook. The warmth of the sun's setting rays bathed over him, and the gentle stroking of his hair made his eyelids grow heavy until he finally drifted off to sleep.

A fierce gust of wind roused him from his dreams of his mother holding him in his bed, and when he opened his eyes, he was met with a starlit sky.

"Mommy?" He called into the darkness. His voice reverberated through the empty field and his echo was the only reply. "Mommy?"

But his mother was nowhere to be seen. The blanket and basket were gone, and all remnants of their picnic had disappeared. Panic gripped at his chest and forced his breaths out in short rapid gasps. Tears of fear and abandonment began pooling in his eyes, and as he looked around for his mother, he saw two red dots piercing through the black of night.

Over his own panicked breathing he heard their ragged growls. Their hot breath misted in the cool air of the night as hungry slobber fell from their salivating jowls. The two red dots became four, then six. (F/N) tried to run, but his legs wouldn't move. Eventually they gave out completely and he was left defenseless, cowering in the grass as the creatures of Grimm slowly stalked towards him in the dark.

Then suddenly a flash of light broke through the blackness of the night, and the field around him was burning.