Chapter Text
Julian frowned at the contents of his dumpster. Some of the bags had been torn open, their contents spread out as if a little creature had been rooting through them. He lowered the lid for a moment and examined it, then the other half-lid, but both seemed just as secure as normal. He tossed in the bags he’d brought, closed the dumpster, and went back into the bar.
“Tiffany!” he called, and she gave a distracted acknowledgement. “Keep an eye on the dumpster, I think we have pests.”
“Will do!”
It wasn’t every night that the trash bags ended up torn open and rifled through, but it was often enough to become a pattern. No matter how hard they looked, neither Julian or Tiffany could figure out how the animal was getting in. It couldn’t have been a homeless person—they’d been keeping an eye out on the paths that led to their little dead-end alley, and no one had ever slipped by on the same nights that the trash was disturbed.
Then Tiffany came back inside on a night when they were open later than normal for their Glaives, and her expression was tight.
“Julian,” she said. “It’s a kid.”
“What’s a kid?” he asked, busy with the account books.
“In the dumpster, eating our garbage.”
Julian’s hand stopped moving. He looked up, horrified. “What?”
“A hungry kid is eating our garbage.”
“A teenager?” he asked, because those lids were heavy.
Tiffany shook her head slightly, eyes wide with distress. “No. Like, six or seven.”
He stared. “That’s not possible.”
“I know.”
“…are you sure?”
She nodded. “I surprised him. He was in the dumpster. Ran off and scampered up a drainpipe with a sandwich in his mouth before I could stop him.”
“Oh.” Julian considered. “Well, shit.”
Response one was to call Child Protective Services.
That was the first thing Julian did, and Tiffany gave them a description of the kid: small, blond with bright blue eyes, and dressed in dirty oversized clothing. CPS sent a police officer over to look around, and the officer thanked them for the call and their time. Julian promised to call if they saw the kid again—or better yet, coax him inside for some food that hadn’t come out of a dumpster and then call.
CPS didn’t contact them over the next week and their dumpster remained untouched. Relieved, they assumed the kid had been found and either brought back to his family or taken under the Crown’s protection like every other guardianless child.
On day nine they discovered they were incorrect, as Julian found the dumpster once more disturbed (if a lot more subtly this time). When he called CPS, they informed him that not only had there been no sign of the kid, but they couldn’t find any family missing a child of his description.
Julian was at something of a loss for what to do. Clearly, the kid was so scared of adults that he didn’t want to be found. That had to be the case for no one to have caught even a glimpse of him.
Tiffany was near tears about the whole thing. “You didn’t see him,” she sniffled. “He was so little. And he must be so hungry if he’s eating out of a dumpster!”
This led to response two: attempt to earn his trust themselves.
First, they packed up perfectly good meals in sealed containers and ‘threw them out’ with the rest of the trash. On the third attempt at this, Tiffany ecstatically rushed inside to tell Julian that it had been eaten. She was slightly less ecstatic when she added that the rest of the trash had also been rifled through for discarded food. They agreed to pack a larger container the second time.
This larger offering was summarily rejected, completely ignored in favor of the food that actually had been discarded. Disheartened, they discussed why it had been ignored. Julian came to the conclusion that the kid, like a wary little chocobo, was suspicious when good food ‘happened’ to be tossed out twice. He might have thought it was a trap.
The offering was ignored three more times. Tiffany stopped pretending to ‘throw it away’ and instead just left it right on top of the dumpster with a note. This is for you. Please eat. This much more obvious offering was still ignored twice, but then eaten on the third time.
By about that point, their Glaives had started to pick up on the fact that something was going on.
“There’s been a kid eating out of our dumpster,” Julian explained. “I don’t know how, but CPS and the police haven’t even caught a glimpse of him. We’re trying to earn his trust.”
“Teenager?” Pelna asked.
“I wish. No, Tiffany’s the only one who’s seen him, but she said he’s really little, maybe six or seven.”
Pelna—and all the rest of the Glaives present, for that matter—looked suitably horrified. “Six? And no one can find him?”
“It’s possible he has a home but no food,” Julian said. “I mean, I doubt it, but it’s possible. That or he’s just so… wary and quiet that no one can get close.”
Pelna’s expression turned considering. “Do you want help?”
Julian sighed. “Not yet. I don’t want to leave a kid that young on his own like this, but I don’t want to scare him off either. Maybe in a week or two.”
Pelna nodded and let the matter drop.
Slowly, Julian and Tiffany started moving their food offerings closer and closer to the back door, until they were leaving it right on the step. They also started getting an idea of when the kid was coming by to raid their dumpster, which had rapidly turned from ‘once or twice a week’ to ‘almost every day.’ He seemed to favor either five in the morning or three in the afternoon, both times where the bar was quiet and Julian was nearly guaranteed to be either asleep or out on errands.
Julian asked around with the locals if they’d seen the kid, but no one ever had, which made his route to getting to the dumpster something of a mystery. Tiffany tried leaving other things along with the food—notes, new clothing, a stuffed chocobo, shoes—but none of it was ever taken or responded to. Julian tried staying up with the food and waiting for the kid, but he never saw or heard anything on those days. Either he had the worst luck, or the kid was so quiet and cautious that he crept up, saw Julian, and left without a sound.
Julian really didn’t want the Glaives to scare the kid, even if it was only a temporary fright. That was why he held off on asking for their help. But when he took the trash out one night and found smudged bloody footprints on the drainpipe Tiffany had seen the kid scamper up, suddenly the situation felt a lot more urgent than before.
It had been almost three months since that first sighting, and four since Julian had noticed their trash being rummaged through. The Glaives had a lot on their plate recently, what with Zack and Cloud appearing and Kunsel rapidly backsliding. He debated with himself, but ultimately it felt like there was no choice at all. The kid was either hurt or getting hurt. It was time to take more serious actions.
Response three was to ask for help in catching the little guy.
Rico volunteered first. Julian left out their usual offering of food by the door as he closed up at two in the morning and gave him a nervous look.
“You’re only going to have one chance,” he warned the Glaive. “Don’t scare him too much.”
“Don’t worry, Julian,” Rico soothed. “I’ve got this, I promise. Just go to bed and when you wake up, the kid will be safe.”
Julian gave him one more nervous look before he turned and went upstairs.
Rico stood by the back door for almost two hours, hand on the doorknob, before he finally heard something. It was four in the morning, about an hour earlier than he’d expected based on Julian’s briefing. He pressed a fraction closer to the door, careful not to make any noise as he listened intently.
Someone was climbing nimbly down from the roof, the metal of the drainpipe groaning just a little bit from their insubstantial weight. He heard light feet—bare, if he was right—touch down on the heavy metal covers of the dumpster, then the quietest catlike thump of someone jumping down. The kid knew how to soften a landing, that was for sure. He padded closer to the back door, almost too quiet for Rico to make out. His pleased little chuff, however, was easy to hear.
The lid of a leftover container popped open. As soon as he heard the first bite, Rico quickly opened the door.
The plan was this: take the kid by surprise and quickly talk to him while he was frozen. If he turned to bolt, grab his arm and stop him. Assure him he was fine, he was safe. Don’t let go. Do whatever it took to get the kid to calm down and earn the most tenuous, temporary threads of trust. It wasn’t ideal, but there was nothing else to do when the kid simply didn’t exist anywhere to negotiate with.
The plan did not include Rico opening the door, the word “Hey—” half-fallen from his lips, only to find the kid already running. By the time the container he’d dropped actually hit the ground, the kid already had one hand grasping the top of the dumpster.
You’re only going to have one chance, Julian had said. Rico cursed and lunged after the kid. They weren’t even going to have that if he didn’t move fast enough.
“Wait!”
The kid was fast, climbing the drainpipe in just a few athletic jumps. If Rico had been any normal person, he wouldn’t have been able to catch up. Fortunately, though, he had some tricks up his sleeve, even if he really didn’t want to scare the kid by using them. He warped, reaching the rooftop at the same moment the kid did.
“Wait, wait, hold on kiddo—”
The kid gasped sharply, stumbling backward. Rico couldn’t see much beneath his too-large black hood except pale lips and stray bits of wheat-blond hair. The sleeves billowed on his slight frame, but they caught around bulky shapes at his wrist and forearm, almost like thick bracelets.
Or manacles.
“It’s okay,” he said, his unoccupied hand held out placatingly. “You’re okay. I’m not going to hurt you. I’m sorry I scared you.”
They were on equal footing up here on the roof, locked in a stalemate. It was the perfect time to negotiate. There was no way the kid could make it back down before Rico caught him. The kid had to know that.
The kid did not know that. He turned and sprinted for the edge.
“Wait!” Rico took off after him, stomach dropping when the kid didn’t slow down. “NO!”
The kid was going to jump. He was going to jump out of desperation to escape but even Rico wouldn’t have made it across that gap without warping, and this was a little boy, he would break his legs or worse. Rico sped up, planning three steps ahead, and threw his weapon down toward the street before he could even see it, then warped to follow its path. He could catch the dumb kid if he was fast enough.
Several things happened. As his weapon flew past, the kid made a high noise of alarm. A shield of magic shimmered into place around him, but Rico was mid-warp before he even realized what he saw. He landed hard on the street, head whipping around to look up for the kid as he fell.
But the kid did not fall. Magic still shimmering around him, he leaped across the gap like he’d been born with wings and landed, impossibly, on the other side.
If Rico had been even an inch less well-trained than he was, he wouldn’t have had the presence of mind to quickly warp after the kid. But he was, and he did, and the gap between when the kid hit the roof and when Rico got there was short enough that he should have been able to catch up.
Should. When he got there, though, the kid had vanished into thin air. It didn’t matter where Rico looked, there was just no sign of him. He searched the surrounding streets and roofs for almost an hour before he gave up, running a hand through his sweaty hair.
“...shit,” he said. “Nyx is gonna have to tell the king about this.”
Cloud had the worst fucking luck. He really did. And he didn’t know why he was dumb enough to assume that wouldn’t catch up to him in this weird place where summons ruled as gods and only royals wielded magic.
He’d crash-landed here a few months ago, tired and apathetic after finally freeing himself from Sephiroth’s darkness—
(You belong to me! Sephiroth howled in terrified fury, tearing chunks out of Cloud’s soul with ethereal claws. Mine, my Perfect Storm! You are mine!
No, Cloud whispered, his hands finding purchase in the source of the great darkness that had once threatened to consume him. I don’t belong to anyone.
He pulled, and the demon came apart.)
—and thought he was, for once in his life, essentially untouchable. No one would be interested in him as long as he wasn’t stupid. Even if they were, no one could catch him except those self-same royals, who were few in number and busy with a war besides. He’d allowed his world to narrow down to sleeping, scavenging, and watching the strange lives of these people from his lofty hiding places.
His favorite place to get food and watch the locals was a little bar in one of the poorer areas. He’d been stupidly caught by the waitress who worked there, but she’d taken pity on him and started leaving real food, among other offerings he ignored. Because of that, he’d grown foolishly comfortable with eating while crouched on their doorstep. Obviously they’d told someone about him and wanted to intervene— the owner himself had waited with the food a few times, and Cloud had seen some police officers looking around—but all of that was laughably easy to avoid. He’d felt untouchable.
Stupid.
He curled up in his favorite hiding space, a tiny gap between a stairwell door and a rooftop AC unit that was always nice and warm, and caught his breath. He’d done magic in front of someone who could warp. One of the royals’ soldiers, if he wasn’t mistaken. The exact kind of person who could shatter his little bubble of peace and safety.
Cloud let his head fall into his hands, despairing at his own stupidity. Maybe… maybe the soldier wouldn’t say anything? Maybe he’d somehow missed Cloud’s use of his materia and abilities?
…oh, who was he kidding. His luck was the worst.
The smart thing to do would be to pack up and leave. Just go. Get out of the city, head into the wilderness. His mind automatically started making a plan, plotting a route, tallying up what supplies he would need, but…
But. Just thinking about it made him want to melt with exhaustion. All he wanted to do was sleep, and watch people run around in their peaceful oblivious routines, and eat mediocre dumpster food, and not think. That was all he wanted, after everything he’d been through. Maybe it was all he could even do right now.
He propped his chin over his knees with a trembling sigh and tucked his hands into his jacket. Maybe… maybe if he just… didn’t move much, they would give up looking for him. He still had enhanced senses. No one could sneak up on him. And he was small and quiet and fast compared to normal humans. He didn’t technically need to eat for a few weeks, especially if he wasn’t moving around much.
He could just sit and wait them out. Eventually any furor he’d stirred up would die down. As long as he never went to that bar again, he could go back to creeping around and dumpster diving in peace.
…right?
The kid had to be found ASAP, not only because he was a tiny little kid who ate from dumpsters and ran away from adults thanks to reflexes so deep they must have been rooted in his spine, but also because no one could even begin to guess what the fuck he was.
He couldn’t be a Lucis Caelum or a Nox Fleuret—except that maybe he could, because they already knew Niflheim was working on cloning and genetic manipulation. He couldn’t be another from Gaia, because Zack, Cloud, and Kunsel had all arrived in roughly the same place, namely the Citadel—except that maybe he could, because there was no guarantee they had to arrive in the same location, and certainly no guarantee he might not have arrived so quietly that he could have slipped away without being noticed.
And there was, of course, no guarantee he wasn’t something else entirely.
Above all that, though, he was a child, and he needed to be found and brought somewhere safe.
Unfortunately, there was just no sign of him. Not anywhere, not even with the resources the king allotted to the search. The closest they got to a lead was Prompto mentioning to his father a strange encounter he’d had with a kid in a dumpster some weeks ago and not too far away. He and Noctis had followed a cat, only to find a six-year-old in a too-large hoodie sitting in a dumpster and eating day-old takeout.
“Get your own dumpster,” he’d said.
With a little bit of coaxing, they’d managed to get him to accept some fresh food that Prompto had run off to buy. He’d taken it, thanked them, and then scaled a drainpipe one-handed and vanished onto the rooftops.
Clearly the kid liked to be high up, where people often didn’t think to look. They changed their search strategy and uncovered one small nest of blankets, high on the roof of an all-but abandoned warehouse. The kid was not in it, and they didn’t find anything else.
The only thing they could do was keep looking.
Cloud was annoyed.
Real fucking annoyed, and only getting more annoyed by the day.
They would not stop looking. He kept having to get up and relocate himself, when all he wanted to do was stay where he was and let his mind be blank as he waited to be forgotten. But they wouldn’t let him! And they seemed to have figured out that he liked the rooftops, because they just kept finding him—or, almost finding him.
They couldn’t keep it up forever. But equally, he couldn’t keep it up forever. He was tired and hungry and pissed that he’d been dumb enough to grow comfortable with that bar owner’s kindness. His chest hurt. He just wanted to be left alone.
He wanted to go home. The home that didn’t exist anymore, specifically: Seventh Heaven, with his family and friends and booze that actually did something to a SOLDIER. Now he didn’t even have that. He’d have to drink a whole bar to get drunk… or maybe a little less, considering his age and size. No adult would agree to it.
The bar owner who’d snitched would deserve losing his top stock, just once.
Just once….
They were going to catch up to him. He didn’t have it in him to keep running. Even if they were just the Shinra Science Department 2.0 (and he didn’t think they were, based on his observations), he wanted to get it over with. No more suspense. Just unthinking pain or unthinking… whatever the hell else there could be besides pain. It would probably just be different pain. That was his luck.
But first—
Oh, first he was going to get shitfaced and give that guy a piece of his mind.
Julian didn’t expect much when he returned from his errands in order to start getting ready to open for the night, but he did expect a few things—namely, for the bar to be the same way he’d left it.
He did not expect to find a six-year-old sitting cross-leg on his counter, full bottles to one side and a growing collection of empty ones on his other. He also did not expect that six-year-old to glare at him before he raised the bottle in his hand and took another long drink.
The grocery bags dropped from Julian’s hands as he lunged forward, intent on getting the drink out of the kid’s grasp before he could poison himself and die. His hands met empty air as the kid rolled backwards, landing on his feet with a solid THUD, and then zipped off to cram himself into the mysteriously-empty top shelf above the bar.
“Yyyyou snitched!” he hiccuped, bottle dangling from his hand as he glared down. “‘S all your fault!”
Julian reeled as he took everything in. He glanced at the collection of empty bottles and his heart dropped like a stone. “Did you… did you drink any of this?” he asked, pointing.
The kid stuck his tongue out. “All of it ‘n you deserve it for snitching!”
“Oh—oh, oh, I—” He fumbled for his cellphone, trying to think straight. “Okay, we’re—we’re gonna call the paramedics and you’re going to be okay—”
“BOOOOO!” the kid howled. “‘M barely even drunk!” As if to demonstrate, he took another long drink. “‘S can’t kill me.” He drooped suddenly, forehead thunking down. “Not allowed to die.”
He didn’t sound like he was dying. As Julian’s mind caught up to him, he realized that something wasn’t adding up. In the time it would take to drink all of that, and considering Julian hadn’t been gone for more than an hour, the kid would have been seizing on the floor. Even an adult would have been inches from death. But the kid had climbed right up onto his top shelf without a problem.
“Did you… pour out my stock?” he asked.
The kid looked up again long enough to glare, and his eyes weren’t nearly hazy enough to belong to someone who’d drunk themselves to the edge of death. “Yes,” he said. “Into my mouth.”
“...okay.” Julian changed his mind and hit a different number than poison control and emergency services. He put the phone to his ear and waited. “Okay. You wanna give me that whiskey, kid? I think you’ve had enough.”
The disgusted glare he got was truly memorable. “No. Hate you. Snitch.”
The other end of the line connected. “Julian?”
“Which of your Glaives is closest to my bar?” he asked without preamble.
“Kowalski,” Nyx said immediately. “I’ll direct him your way. What do you need?”
“I found the kid,” Julian said, but it almost wasn’t necessary since the kid wailed “YOU'RE SNITCHING RIGHT NOW!” more than loud enough for Nyx to hear.
There was a pause. “Kowalski is on his way. How did you find the kid?”
Julian watched the kid down the last of the whiskey and slam the bottle onto the shelf by his head. “He broke in and got drunk.”
“What!”
“And poured out about half of my top shelf. I’m pretty sure this is revenge for, quote, ‘snitching.’” He leaned against the bar, uneasy with how little he was able to do. The kid had outrun Rico and dodged two week’s worth of searches directed by the kingdom’s elite. Julian wouldn’t stand a chance of forcing him to stay.
“…we’ll make sure you get compensation.”
“That is not what I’m worried about here!”
“Yeah, but you might worry about it later.”
Julian sighed. “I’m going to focus on the kid. Do you want to stay on the line?”
“Yes. Don’t hang up until Kowalski gets there.”
“Sure.” The kid was rhythmically thumping his forehead down against the shelf, muttering to himself. “Hey, what’s your name kid?”
“Fuck you, you traitoooooooor.”
He sounded genuinely betrayed, which made Julian feel just the tiniest bit guilty. Apparently they had won his trust a little, and then broken it by asking the Glaives to get him off the street. “Look, I’m sorry, kid. I just want you to be somewhere safe where you can eat nice fresh food all day instead of scouring my dumpster.”
The kid’s head popped up. His pupils were blown wide, making it hard to see the color of his irises, but Julian thought it was either blue or green. “Safe like—“ he hiccuped, “—like a lab or barracks or a jail cell? I’d r-rather eat from dumpsters forever!“
Julian’s stomach dropped. He heard Nyx make a noise on the other end of the line. “What? No! Safe like a home with parents who care about you!”
Kid stuck his tongue out and blew a raspberry. “Nnnnnnnnnot gonna happen. Don’t need it. Hate you.” He fumbled around the shelf below him and grabbed at another bottle. This time Julian did get there quick enough to stop him, and moved all the other bottles in range away while he was at it.
“No, no more alcohol,” he said firmly. “You’ll poison yourself.”
“Pfft,” said the kid, rolling sullenly onto his back so he wouldn’t have to look at Julian. “Can’t poison me n’less it’s on a knife.”
For his own sake, Julian decided not to think about that statement too deeply. “Where’ve you been all this time, kid?”
“Moving because of you,” he said testily. “Hate all of you. I j-just wanted to sleep! I wasn’t even doing anything to you!” He sniffled and choked, clumsily rubbing his arms across his eyes. “I’m tired.”
Oh. Poor kid. “Yeah, I bet you’re tired,” he said softly. “It’s gonna be okay. You don’t have to keep running, you’re safe.”
“No ‘m not,” the kid said, miserable. “S’not how it works. But I don’t care an-anymore. Tired.”
And Julian had stupidly though it couldn’t get any worse. “Aw, kid…’
“Whatever.” He sniffled again. “Hate you.”
“Yeah, I know.”
He leaned against the counter, phone held to his ear, and listened to the kid quietly sniffling and rubbing at his face until Kowalski came running through the ajar front doors. The Glaive made a little relieved noise in the back of his throat when he spotted the kid.
“He’s here,” Julian told Nyx as he waved. “I’ll call back if anything goes wrong.”
“Thanks. I’ll update you once things are settled.”
“Got it.” He hung up as Kowalski rounded the bar counter to stand next to him underneath the kid.
“Hate you all,” the kid muttered.
“That’s alright,” said Kowalski. “I don’t blame you. Wanna come down from there, kiddo?”
“No. Fuck you.”
Kowalski snorted a laugh. “That’s not a very nice thing to say, half-pint.”
“I’m not nice. If I was nice I’d be dead.”
Julian watched the Glaive’s expression drop a little bit. “What makes you say that?” He grabbed one of the stools on the bar that the kid hadn’t kicked off to make room for sitting and drinking.
The kid blew another raspberry and didn’t answer.
Kowalski hopped up onto the stool’s supports so that he was more-or-less eye level with the little boy, who was glaring at the ceiling as occasional tears dripped down his temple and disappeared into his hood. The Glaive tapped his fingers on the shelf next to the kid’s head to gauge his reaction. There wasn’t one.
“When was the last time you ate?” he asked, and touched the kid’s shoulder.
Finally, the glare turned on him and intensified. “One bite right before—“ he hiccuped, “—before I was snitched on. And chased up the fucking r-roof.”
That was almost two weeks ago. Kowalski took a breath. “Okay,” he said calmly, finally daring to grasp his actual target: the kid’s narrow wrist. He pressed his thumb down and ball-parked the pulse. It was unnaturally and alarmingly slow. “Let’s go get you some food, then, half-pint.” And medical attention. So much medical attention.
The kid’s expression dropped into apathetic misery. “Hate you.”
“That’s okay.” It was like picking up a ragdoll instead of a willful, angry, scared little boy. The kid just sort of flopped against his shoulder as he set him one one hip and stepped down. “You’re okay. No one’s going to hurt you.”
The kid didn’t say anything.