Matt Holt Drabble
I’m inspired and it’s Matt Holt Week so here you go enjoy <3
Day 4: Free Day
Graceless
Matt was ten years old when his dad bought him his first telescope. He had been begging and pleading for one after his best friend had gotten one at Christmas. Matt could still remember looking through the telescope at the moon in utter awe and shock for the first time. But, as it was, Mat’s family was struggling too much to get him one.
NASA was facing budget cuts, his dad’s job was on the line, and every nickel and dime had to be saved in case of a ‘rainy day’, or as Mat worried, the day his father might be forced to leave his dream job. Mat didn’t expect to get a telescope anytime soon. So when it came around to February 28th, young Matt was surprised when he was viciously shaken awake by his then five-year-old, little sister Katie.
Her eyes were bright with excitement as she giggled, “Matty! Matty! Go downstairs, downstairs! It’s your berf-day! It’s a surp-wise!”
Matt reached haphazardly for the glasses on his bedstead, and rushed down the carpeted stairs of his childhood home, Katie following hot on his footsteps.
At the bottom of the starts, his eyes grew wide at the sight. In the middle of their homey, little living room was a large, sleek telescope with a big, light green ribbon tied fancy around the barrel (Green was his favorite color). His father, much younger and still carrying his sandy blonde hair, sat crossed-legged on the plush, white sofa. He looked up at him over the Sunday paper with a knowing smile and a gleam in his hazel eyes, hidden behind his dark frames.
“Oh, hey kiddo,” he took a long sip of his coffee and sighed, setting it back down on their coffee table, “Found this just sittiin’ here this mornin’. Must’ve been some of those aliens from the last X-Files episode, huh-oof!”
Before his father could even finish his joking rambling, Matt had already ran up and hugged him tight around the chest. He buried his head into his dad’s chest as his dad patted him on the back, chuckling. Matt could smell the black coffee and minty toothpaste on his dad’s breath, the over laying sent of metal on his clothes from probably working earlier in the lab.
“Thanks dad,” he said, looking up at him through his own frames with admiration, having nothing but endless pride for the incredible dad that Sam Holt was in that moment.
Sam smiled down, warm and comforting.
“Of course, son,” then he looked up with a childish wonderment the betrayed the wrinkles of his eyes, “Now! Let’s get this thing to your room and I’ll show yeah how to work it!”
Matt faintly remembers Katie’s excited giggles and hoorays, his mother’s soft voice telling his dad not to strain himself, before it goes black.
“Number 2-3-2! I said get up, you filthy pest!”
A sudden jab into the left side of his gut shook Mat from his slumber, leaving him gasping for breath, and trying to remember his surroundings.
Then he did remember, and he wished he hadn’t. The cold, metal flooring beneath his head, the continuous buzzing the ship that he was convinced they made louder during sleeping hours just to drive them to insanity; he looked over at all of the nine other prisoners he shared the cell with, each looking on with a different expression: fear, worry, sadness. He looked up to where a Galra solider towered above him, the end of a gun barrel staring him down.
“You’re up next, 2-3-2! Hurry, I ain’t losing my position here cause of some lazy prison rat.”
Matt pulled himself off the ground, ignoring the stabbing pain in his side and pounding migraine, probably from the sharp blow he got to the head in the last round. He stumbled out of the prison cell down the halls, where thousands and thousands of prisoners lied in all directions. Each had a family, had a home. At least, at one time they did. Some probably had their families killed, others, their entire planet destroyed.
Matt could still save his, though.
As he got to the waiting room, the two Galra soldiers undressed him and put him into the warrior gear they now gave him, after he won his second round. They handed him his spear, the weapon he had stolen from another boy who he fought in this same arena. That boy had to have around his age. He will never forget the way they pulled his limp body out, dragging against the arena floor.
He would never let himself forget.
“You’re on,” The Galra solider that took him from the cell said, “Make a good show for the commanders, we have a special guest watching tonight. The prince. He might give you a prize if you give him some entertainment.”
Matt didn’t say anything back, but looked at himself in the reflection of the metal doors in front of him. His hair was so long now, a small scar showed from underneath his armor on his neck, though it hid the majority of the ones scattered on his chest and back.
Fuck the prince. He was going to get in, and get out. Like normal. He would kill, but for no one except his sister’s bright eyes, his father’s warm smile, and his mother’s comforting voice. Those were the only things that mattered now.
The metal doors parted, the screams from the arena poured into the room in a rush, the bright lights blinding him.
Matt stepped forward.
So the title I got from a song I listened to while writing this called Graceless by The National. A beautiful song and reminds me a ton of Matt and probably his thoughts during this imprisonment. I like to think that Shiro inspired Matt to get stronger and eventually tried to fight to get out of imprisonment and back home. Really hope we get to see this boy alive and happy in Season 3. Love you, Matt <3
