Patton was back in his house finally. His eyes wandered around the room that was covered in bookshelves which towered over him. Each bookshelf was filled with scientific notebooks, books about the sciences, and at the very end of it a massive collection of every comic book you could ever want. Then he realized this was his old house when he lived with his dad and this was the library that Patton's father studied in.

Patton felt a pain in his heart after noticing a man hunched over a desk doing something with a pencil in hand which had the lamp that was lighting up the room. Patton made his way over to the desk until he was staring right up at the man. He tugged on his pants trying to get his attention. "Just a moment there Patty dad's working on something. I'll play with you soon."

"Dad I had a nightmare.. Can I stay here?"

"Yeah sure." Patton's father stood up from his desk and reached up on his toes to get a box up from the shelf above his desk. He set it down on his lap and searched through it until he found the thing he was looking for. "Right here read this. These always helped me escape those nightmares." His hand descended down with a book titled The Many Adventures of The Outstanding Lightning Bug. In a corner of it there was an A designed to look like someone made it by running in its shape. "Pick out some other boxes if you wanna read more." His father would add before going back to his work. Patton opened up the book to the starting page and started his reading. 

The city had always been full of crime. Each alleyway would have some kind of darkness brewing in. Some of these darknesses were so thick even the police couldn't handle them. Soon though the city of Chicago would gain someone that could truly lessen this darkness someone named Lightning Bug. 

This was just the introductory blurb to the book and already Patton had been hooked. Sure at the time he couldn't understand every word and he didn't know what a Chicago was until much later, but that night he had read more comic books than he had anytime later in his life. He memorized all of their names, origins, and various impactful stories that would affect his child brain in ways that would shape him into becoming who he would be now. 

Stolen content warning: this tale belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences elsewhere.

Several months after that night Patton would continue this trend, spending many nights reading comic books while his father would be occupied with late night work. The days when he didn't he'd sit there and read along with him. Somedays they wouldn't even read at all, instead they'd talk and discuss the topics. Those conversations were more his father telling him the knowledge and Patton happily absorbing it into his mind.

While these bright nights would go on for Patton very dark days would follow a year later. His parents' relationship had been deteriorating for a while with their loving gazes shifting into just simple gazes until they couldn't even stare at each other anymore. Patton didn't notice it from how young he was at the time but there was this disturbing silence that would follow the house if his parents were ever in the room together. Another couple months later, his parents had divorced in secret and had been fighting over custody of Patton.

These secrets were revealed to Patton all at once. First his mom told him that they would be living with grandma for a while away from daddy. After a few weeks of this Patton started asking questions about why dad wasn't with them to which his mother for the first few days would say, "He's running a little late." but by the next week she'd just pretend he didn't ask. Then he stopped asking.

A police officer came into his grandmother's house one morning and informed everyone in the house of his father's passing. He said that there was no suspicion of foul play just that he had drunk too much one night and drove off the rode and crashed into a tree but didn't go into detail about it knowing how a child would be affected. After that day Patton would shut himself in his room with comics in his arms. He didn't even read them he just held them staining some pages with his tears.

Feeling the comics close to his heart and the tears flooding his eyes Patton finally woke up from this dream just to look around to see a crater where he fell.