Chapter Text
His mother left not long after he was born, so he’s told.
His father, not having planned on him any more than his mother, didn’t know what to do with him.
More days than not, from as early as he can remember, he spent with an older lady whom his dad paid to watch him. At least during the day at first.
He remembers her as kind, eyes full of a life her body could no longer keep up with. Children are heavy to hold, after all. Children are messy, and it takes a lot of bending to pick it up.
She was kind, but she was tired. There were too many times that he was hungry and she was asleep. Too many times that he had to learn to fix his own food, small, clumsy fingers making concoctions like tortillas and peanut butter.
When his father picked him up at night, he tucked himself into his bed at home, not so much as a “duerme bien” from the man.
One day, his dad didn’t come to get him at night. Or the night after. Or the one after that.
He was seven, then.
But he found his rhythm, found his friends at school.
Don learned how to make what he had work for him. His clever fingers and charismatic tongue and ability to blend into the background.
He could rely on those to get him out of trouble as quickly as he found it.
Then, when he was fifteen, he buried the woman who had been the closest thing he had to a parent. Who had given all the energy she had left from a hard life that had already worn her down.
Part of him was buried that day too. The small part that hoped the good you did in the universe somehow came back around. Because she, for all her kindness, died life-weary and impoverished with the cheapest headstone on the market.
Which, of course, meant Don was left with next to nothing.
Some of the older boys at school started to talk about some men that had jobs. Jobs that made money. More than the money he made scrounging around for parts in the junkyard for the town mechanic.
You ran packages. You didn’t ask questions. You got paid.
The town mechanic found he was better used turning a wrench than scavenging for parts, and he learned everything he could.
His rest of his life had been much the same. Turning wrenches. Running packages.
The stakes just got higher, and the packages changed.
Most recently, the packages had been people. From Earth to Alpha Centauri. And if he had some packages he’d delivered on the side, what was so wrong with that?
Because if the second thing he’d learned is how to use his hands, the third was to find opportunity and seize it.
The first thing Don West learned, the earliest lesson he could recall, was that he was alone when life boiled down to it. There were other people, sure. But they were all scavenging too, out for their own gain, which, nothing wrong with that, if you asked him.
His outlook was sure, and he never second-guessed it.
That was, until he crash landed on an alien planet and had either the immense misfortune or pleasure of meeting the Robinsons.
A girl with ferocious determination and pretty eyes broke his nose and popped it back into place. Rattled his world view and didn’t bother putting that one back at all.
Convinced him to do the “right” damn thing, going to space in a deathtrap.
Which landed him stranded on another planet with these people for seven months.
And nothing in his life has hurt and healed as much all in the same punch, because the Robinsons, for all their imperfections, they were genuinely for each other.
Much to his denial’s chagrin, they were genuinely for him too. Worst of all, he knew he would do anything for them too.
Which the weeks following their escape of the planet put to proof.
Now, as he stands, watching Judy, Penny, and Will rush to hug their parents for the first time in nearly a month, he feels the part of him that was buried start to reemerge more fiercely than before.
And so what if he fights to keep his eyes dry when all three of them turn and hug him at the same time?
It’s the only family he’s known in a long time. So excuse him if he holds on with everything he’s got.
Because the first thing Don West is learning now is love.