He is twelve. His dad is in jail for the second time.

It was supposed to be okay, now. He’d started drinking again and he’d driven drunk but he couldn’t drink in jail and he was being let out and it was all supposed to be okay, now. His mom and dad had finally gotten back together the way he’d hoped ever since he was little and yeah his dad had driven drunk that one time but he was getting out of jail and it was all going to be okay and then he robbed someone so he could afford something stronger than alcohol and now he’s in jail halfway all the way across the state.

Joshua lives with his mom, now.

His stepmom sells the family dog and throws out all his old stuffed animals.

He admits he’s sad about the first and pretends he doesn’t care about the second.

He isn’t doing well in his classes, anymore. You can’t read through math class, you won’t understand what algorithms you’re supposed to be using. He can brute force the answers, but it’s slow. He reads through math anyway. He fails a few tests, and barely passes half his classes. He writes a loving, multi-page report on the history of the Civil War and his teacher says he could do so much if he would just apply himself.

He knows.

He is thirteen when he realizes that everyone else is insane. They believe all sorts of random things, and most of them don’t make any sense. They all just- believe whatever their parents told them. Whatever their friends do. How come none of them ever get it right?

They’re stupid.  He’s better.

God doesn't exist. He's not going to get to go to heaven, when he dies. He tries to cope with that and mostly can't.

But he's smarter. That's- consolation, right? That he's smarter than everyone else?

Not really.

He's still thirteen. He stops reading in class. He does some of his homework. Most of it, really. When he slips up his teacher tells him he can do better and doesn’t let him go to recess until he does his work. He’s grateful. He's turned things around, finally! He's doing well in his classes! He gets into the highschool for smart kids. The one you need good grades and test scores to get into.

His dad gets clean and ends up sleeping on the floor of his bedroom for the summer. He’s clean again, for now. It’s like they’re camping. Things are okay.

He is fourteen when he realizes he is insane, too. It’s more than a little mortifying. He spent a whole year being infuriatingly smug about it all. And he wasn’t even actually any better! He was such a jerk. He wants to crawl into a hole and hide from everyone forever.

He gets into a few fights with his mom. She was supposed to be smart and stop him from being so embarrassingly stupid! He listened to her and- and it's not her fault at all. It's his.

He's sorry. He loves her.

He skips class, sometimes. But not too often. He’s only allowed to miss twenty of each class in a year. He misses exactly twenty of most of them. Twenty-two of one, he miscounted.

Nothing bad happens to him. They just- don’t notice? Are they not keeping track?

He doesn't smile much, anymore.

He's fifteen. He stops hanging out with the few almost-friends he made in his first year.

He skips more class. A lot more class. It's supposed to just be twenty, this year, at first. But some mornings it's really hard to leave the apartment.

Once he misses enough, it gets harder to go. He keeps imagining the disappointed expression on his teachers faces.

He knows. He knows he could do so much better. He just- can't, for some reason. He's not sure how the people who can do it.

When he goes to sleep at night, sometimes he wishes he wouldn't wake up. He's pretty sure that's not normal. It seems like the obvious way to feel, though. Boring school he's forced to go to and then, if he sticks it out, more of the same, forever. His life never something good, something bright. Not even ever something okay.

The suicide attempt is impulsive. It's four in the morning on a Tuesday in April and he doesn't think he can keep doing this. Not if he doesn't have anything to look forward to. He's never met another person like him, never even seen them in film, he's alone. And even if he's not, he's too afraid to ever let anyone in. Life is going to be an unending lonely procession through days he'd rather not live. Why go on?

He's afraid, though. He doesn't want to die.

He pulls the cloth from around his neck quickly enough.

He goes to school anyway, the day after. Why not, he couldn't sleep, he's up in time.

On the way to school, he passes under a tree he's walked under a thousand times, by now. The leaves are just coming in. It's shaped just a little bit irregularly. The golden glow of the morning sun shines down on him through the leaves. 

It's beautiful. So beautiful. 

How did he never notice it?

This. This is why he should live. Why he should stick around. 

He's had a hundred moments like this, hasn't he? And he can have more. He will have more.

This is what makes it all worth it. Even if there's nothing more, even if his life is never good on a large scale, he can have this. This and a hundred thousand other things like it.

That's worth it. 

It's not easy, pulling himself out of the hole he's been in. He can't quite do it. He still misses a lot of his classes. He still spends more time feeling numb than anything else.

But when he goes to school, he looks up at that tree, sees the light through the leaves, and knows life is worth it.

He is sixteen when he realizes his entire understanding of the world is wrong for the second time.

There have been other times he's realized he was wrong. There have not been other times like this, not since he realized he didn't believe in God and never had.

He's been looking away. He realizes it suddenly in a rush. He's done it again. He realized the supernatural didn't exist and then he realized that even the conspiracy theory he thought had some merit was as foolish as the rest and ever afterwards every time he encountered a conspiracy on the internet he dismissed it out of hand. Especially if it alleged the supernatural.

It didn't make sense. All the smartest people and all the evidence all pointed in one direction. But it didn't, not really. He just- turned away. Like exactly the version of himself he didn't want to be. He's spent the past two years slowly working on the project of being less insane and apparently it's only now, after all that time, that he can see. 

Truth, truth, always truth. That's what he told himself. That's what he's been telling himself. He felt it. He meant it. But not enough. 

He's never going to look away from reality again-

Light shimmers across his body, silvery and golden at the same time. It leaves behind armour. Silver plate wraps his body and protects him from anything that might try to harm him. He shines. 

A saber forms in his right hand, lightly curved, the guard golden filigreed scrolling vines. It's beautiful. Something about it reminds him of the light through his tree.

Well. Now he knows he was right.

He stands up from the crouch he was in when he transformed. Something in the back of his mind notes that the saber is clearly out of the 18th or 19th century and his armor looks centuries older but he doesn't care. Somehow, he's exactly who he's always wanted to be. He's taller. His shoulders are broader. There's another way he can be he can feel it, but right now this feels right.

He takes a deep breath and gives the saber a little flick, careful not to cut anything with it. It feels like part of his arm.

He's not looking straight at something. That other way he can be- ah.

Of course.

It's not a coincidence he loves that his hair is long. It's not a coincidence that he dreamed, when he was small, of being a girl, sometimes. It's not a coincidence that he loves the fact that he's beautiful. 

She shifts, letting one of the ways she can be flow over her. Her body changes, shoulders narrowing and hips broadening. Her armour shifts to match it.

This is right, too. Too. 

She never realized. She thought it was just one. She wasn't uncomfortable in her normal form. Liked it, even. She liked looking in the mirror, it made her feel- safer. That didn't fit with what other people said being trans felt like.

But she's never been much like most other people, has she?