The Power of Red
His first love was a red balloon. It was a tragic sort of young love; doomed to die by uncaring hands. But six-month-olds don't realize that when he's happily crawling after the only toy he's ever loved against a background of fat red hearts painted on the nursery wall.
Hank's footfall behind him came too quickly - he fell with a yelp, breaching the red skin of his brother's dear friend.
Dean howled, experiencing the first rupture of his young life.
***
His father tried to toughen his skin. "Watch the balloon go pop, Dean! See, now that wasn't hard..."
But to Dean it was like being dipped in a wading pool of broken glass. Every pop ripped his heart, every stomp made his soul ache.
Cowering, he clasped his ears, trying to make the noise go away...
****
Triana gave him red balloons sometime during his recovery from testicular torsion surgery. It was her father's idea, she said, with a fond roll of her eyes; like she would give him a gift she clearly found so lame.
Dean hoarded them away, though they soon lost their helium filler and drifted in peace to Earth, failed extraterrestrial invaders assimilated. When Brock left and even when he came back, Dean kept the red rubber vessels, batting them across the floor as he lay in his 'special bed', dreaming of Triana, hoping to keep her.
***
At a hundred, he sat out on the roof of the compound, listening to fireworks pop over the canyon. Children played out in the artificial forest now, the one he planted when Triana died, trying to pull each other down from the branches, gravitating mangos in the process.
He had done what he had set out to do; the children were free of the feudal donjons of their father. Their father's father, even their father's-father's-father. They could be who they really needed to be, go where they were wanted, find themselves and their places in the real world.
Dean had made it halfway-out, excising his father's demons but not his own. The bigger goal was to protect his own children. He and Triana had raised them right, he knew that now.
The balcony was lined with helium-filled balloons, tied to the railing, straining up against the bounds of the iron rail.
Untying the string with his scientist's fingers, he laughed once, and let the red balloon go.