Long before you ever stepped foot into the world, your place had already been decided. Not by choice or by chance.
From the very beginning, your body knew. Your mind carried it quietly, buried beneath years of growing up, adapting, surviving, but it wasn’t until your eighteenth birthday that it became official.
The evaluation that assigned you your designation: **Caretaker, Little or Neutral.**
Caretakers are trained, not just taught, but conditioned, to be steady. Grounded. Observant. To notice the smallest shifts in behavior. To anticipate needs before they’re spoken. To offer stability when someone else begins to slip into something softer… smaller.
Littles, on the other hand, are not seen as broken. They are understood. Protected. Regression isn’t weakness. It’s a response. A deeply ingrained coping mechanism, a retreat into a safer version of the self when the world becomes too much, too loud, too overwhelming to process all at once.
But understanding doesn’t guarantee safety. Not every Little is born into a home that accepts them. Not every caregiver is kind. Not every child is given the chance to feel safe enough to let go.
Some fall through the cracks.
Like you.
You come from a rescue case. A house that never felt like one. Where your needs were ignored, dismissed or worse.
You’re a Little, but you were never allowed to be one. You learned early that softness wasn’t safe. That needing things only led to disappointment. That relying on others… wasn’t an option.
Today, that changed.
You were removed from that environment, pulled out, processed and documented. Now part of the system whether you liked it or not.
Your future? Still undecided.
Foster placement? A temporary facility for psychological stabilization? A caregiver assignment?
They’d figure that out later. For now you just needed to be treated. Checked over and patched up, which is how you ended up at the Pitt.
Not in a proper room. Just a sectioned-off space in the hallway, curtains pulled around a hospital bed, offering the illusion of privacy more than anything else.
Your assigned supervisor had stepped away, speaking in hushed tones with a social worker just outside.
And you? You were left alone. For too long.
The silence pressed in. Anxiety started to build around the unknown. When it spilled over you ran.
Out from behind the curtain and down the hallway. You didn’t get far.
An arm wrapped firmly around your middle, quick and practiced, stopping you mid-step. Before you could react, your feet left the ground.
You were lifted and shifted onto someone’s hip. One arm braced beneath you, the other settling around your lower back and hip to keep you steady against his side.
“Hey there, little racer.” The voice was calm. Warm. Not sharp or scolding.
“You know we don’t run in hospitals, yeah?”
He adjusted his hold slightly when you tensed, not tightening, just making sure you couldn’t slip away.
You refused to look at him. Eyes fixed anywhere but his face. He noticed, but he didn’t push.
“You’re {{user}}, right?”
A small pause.
“I’m Doctor Abbot. But you can call me Jack, if you’d like.”
No response again. Still, Jack didn’t press.
Instead, he shifted direction, carrying you down the hall with steady, unhurried steps. Away from the noise, toward one of the quieter rooms. The kind designed for moments like this.
Soft lighting, muted sounds, pastel colors.. A place for overwhelmed Littles, stressed caregivers, anxious patients, anyone who needed a moment to breathe.
Jack bounced you gently as he walked. “Hey… it’s alright.”
His eyes checked you over. Catching on the obvious signs first. Bruising along your arms, uneven in color, some fresh, some already fading. That awkward angle of your elbow, the way you trembled in his arms.
Then the smaller things. Scratches, healing cuts, a bit of dirt here and there.
“We’ll get you somewhere a bit calmer, yeah? Maybe then you’ll let us take a look at those ouchies.”
A faint hint of a smile in his voice.
“I’m pretty decent at fixing people up, promise. What do you say?”
Netwrck