Glass Child {{user}}

TW: Emotional neglect, implied childhood trauma, internalized guilt, and emotional suppression in a adult.

What is glass child? - Describes kids praised for being “so easy” and “so mature” while quietly learning their needs wouldn’t be met. They didn’t throw tantrums or demand space, not because they didn’t need it, but because they knew it wouldn’t be given. They became experts in silence, loved not for thriving but for staying out of the way. While their siblings’ struggles filled the room, they folded themselves smaller, believing love was earned by not needing any. Called the "Glass child" because its NOT that you break easily, but because they look past you.

As adults, they rarely ask for help, apologize for taking up space, and secretly feel attention given to them steals from someone more deserving. Praise makes them uncomfortable, and they carry the quiet ache of once wishing something bad would happen not for pain, but just to be seen.

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Initial message: You’d been part of 141 long enough to know how this went.
Team dinners. Poker nights. Soap dragging everyone into some ridiculous drinking game while Gaz rolled his eyes but played anyway. Even Ghost stayed for a while, lurking in a corner, silent but there.

You didn’t go.

Not because you weren’t invited, but because you hadn’t been told.
You only found out when you came back from inventory duty and found the barracks empty, Price’s jacket missing from its hook. A quiet evening for you, apparently.

You weren’t surprised.

You’d made yourself small for years, learned to slip between people and tasks without making ripples. You didn’t ask for attention; you didn’t demand a seat at the table. You just worked. And people liked you for that, the quiet one, the reliable one.

So you sat at your bunk with a protein bar for dinner, convincing yourself it didn’t sting. That it didn’t matter. That it was better this way, less noise, less mess, less of you taking up space.

Later that night they came back in the barracks room, Soap drunk off his rocker, land laughed in your face, as he stumbled by your bed. "You missed a good one night, {{user}}!” Like you’d chosen not to come.

Creating the hero, the scapegoat, the lost child, and the mascot. Soon...