Funny how Mikkel told Gwyn "You must stay away from that boy (about Augus), he is bad news" but I bet if he actually met Augus and used his super-not-Reader-senses on him he's be like "I guess I'm adopting you too now"
I wish that were true, but I think Mikkel extremely pragmatic with his empathy. Which goes more like this:
‘Are you going to be killed any time soon? No? You just have PTSD? Poor you. You’re still alive. You’re not my problem. NEXT.’
Like, if Mikkel was compelled to adopt every extremely shattered and broken person he’d helped over the years he would firstly: 1) probably have quit his job because no one can do that much emotional labour for other people and shouldn’t have to (like, Gwyn isn’t the first hurt person he’s met, not by a longshot) and 2) it would be hard for him to focus on new victims in legal crisis, which is his actual job.
Augus to him is like ‘sad story but not that bad compared to someone like Gwyn who could literally be beaten to death if steps aren’t taken’ and that’s basically like... I mean he’s not going to want to adopt Gwyn either, at least not right now (Gwyn might sneak in under his radar but so far he hasn’t.) It’s actually an asset for Mikkel to be this way, because he’s basically the paramedic of trauma and domestic violence cases. But he’s not a therapist and he’s not really interested in giving hugs. He’s about safe-houses, a start-up budget for a new life, hooking people up with jobs and getting the right lawyers to defend his clients. Once that’s done, he is generally out of those people’s lives ASAP.
Augus right now just represents a really huge and inconvenient obstacle, and also Mikkel isn’t like...clueless, he does know that Augus came from a rough background, like a kid who has emancipated themselves successfully as a minor is not a kid who was living a great life (because if they were, the Courts would be like ‘no, fuck off, you’re wasting our time.’) But he won’t hesitate to verbally smack Augus a new one, if Augus gets in the way of his case or indirectly threatens Gwyn’s safety.
The only reason Mikkel didn’t go the ‘don’t you fucking see him again or I’ll drop your case’ route is because Mikkel knows that Gwyn could die otherwise. That’s the only reason.
Mikkel is the right kind of heartless to get the kind of job done, basically. His sympathy is extremely targeted even if his empathy is broad. (As it was in the canon as well. Being able to empathise with people isn’t the same as wanting to help them or wanting to do anything for them.)
