I cannot write fanfiction to save my life but just-
empath Reynie AU
That is all.
these hollow bones
@cronch-goes-the-weasel
Read on AO3 here
Reynie Muldoon has always been a little bit odd according to the others in the orphanage. He reads instead of sitting in front of the telly, and enjoys tea over sweets, and has an uncanny way of knowing exactly what anyone is feeling at any moment in time.
The children call it being nosy, and this isn’t true in the slightest. The caretakers call it perceptiveness, and Reynie is indeed a very perceptive little boy, but that isn’t it either. Miss Perumal calls it being empathetic, calls it being kind, and she is perhaps the closest of them all.
He thinks.
Reynie isn’t quite sure what to call the emotions that linger around people, all the days of their lives. They’re not quite colours and they’re not quite shapes, but perhaps something in between. There’s an emphasis to them, and most of the time he can just watch the way the emotions dance around the people who carry them, but sometimes he can’t. Sometimes the emotions seem to curl up into the hollows of his bones, the hollows of his chest, and there’s nothing he can quite do about it.
In an orphanage full of isolation and children’s particular brands of cruelty, this is both a blessing and a curse. He wonders if it is harder or easier to bear bullying and snide comments when you know exactly how much your peers are aching underneath their anger.