You wake up to a tiny child sleeping huddled quietly at your side, tear tracks fresh on his grimy face. Your body is sore and tired and when you lift a hand, the limb is skinny and pale and translucent. The thin mattress you’re laid on does not keep the cold from your suddenly thin and bruised back.
You know you died. You know you’ve woken up again. You know this isn’t your body or your life or even your city.
When the previous owner’s memories hit you, you know the previous occupant of this body is supposed to be dead. But you’re here now.
You know three things: you’re Catherine Todd, the child next to you is Jason Todd, and the rent is due in two weeks.
Pretty sure my prompt did get eaten! Which has happened to me before so it’s all good. I’m pretty sure it was something along the lines of; Neil is a badass and the foxes (including the freshmen) learn more about his past. Thank you so much!! Also another prompt that could be cool would be the foxes going back in time for some reason(rip in the universe or something scientific) and meet young mean neil on the run. Anyways take your time and if these prompts don’t call to you feel free to ignore!
I have a smol obsession with the idea of Aaron going back in time. This is not the first and certainly won't be the last time I write something to that effect :)
Hope you like!
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To say that Aaron woke up with a headache would be similar to describing that guy from Final Destination who got impaled by a bunch of logs as having gotten "a few splinters". His head felt like it was fucking splitting in two, pounding like his brain was trying to make a break for it.
Jesus fuck, had he been drinking last night? Was this a hangover? It must be, because he couldn't remember a damn thing and to be perfectly fucking honest he couldn't be bothered to try all that hard to do so - he was spending too much energy being in agony.
Groaning, Aaron gripped his head, pressing the heels of his palms into his temples. Applying pressure to the tender areas almost hurt more, but it also helped in that weird way it helps when you really dig in to a bad knot during a massage. "Ugh... fuck fuck fuck..." he hissed as he tried rubbed at his temples.
The scrape of footsteps suddenly very loud beside his ears made him flinch - and also made him realize that he was flat on his back. His awareness snowballed from there - it was cold and he was on the ground outside, chipped pavement digging into his back and the back of his head. Something nearby smelled like a dead rat in an easy bake oven, and every few seconds small icy droplets hit his face like maybe it was starting to rain.
"That's a really stupid place to take a nap." The voice was almost familiar, but Aaron couldn't place how or why and he wasn't sure he was up to opening his eyes.
"Fuck off," he growled instead, gritting his teeth and moving his hands to press against his eyes.
"Rude." Something nudged his shoulder. Aaron ignored it, but it came again, then again, and again.
With a groan, Aaron pulled his hands away from his face and opened his eyes, glaring up at the annoyance. "Will you knock it the fuck off?!"
The kid standing above him couldn't be older than ten. Even from the awkward viewpoint, Aaron could tell that the boy was a fucking pipsqueak. He was scrawny and short, wearing a baggy old sweatshirt that looked about six sizes too big on him. His hair was blond with dark roots of an indiscernible color, and was long enough to really fucking need a comb - as it was a complete mess, falling around his face, sticking up around his ears, halfway shading his eyes...
Eyes that were the kind of blue that caused wounds.
Aaron blinked. He frowned. He closed his eyes tightly then opened them again - but the eyes were the same. And there was something in the stubborn set of the kid's mouth that was familiar, too. He instantly thought of Neil, but his brother-in-law was a self-proclaimed Andrewsexual so he somehow doubted that he had a scrappy little lovechild lurking in the shadowed corners of...
Wait, where the fuck even was he?
Aaron looked around, finally registering that he was in some kind of dark alley. The sounds of a city were buzzing in the near distance - maybe a few blocks away. Wherever he was now was more residential, and it was late enough that most people were in their homes instead of out and about. Great. Exactly what he needed. The pounding in his head was finally starting to subside, though, and he would take what he could get. Slowly, he pushed himself up to a sitting position - the kid standing above him stepping quickly back to put space between them. There was a very familiar wariness in his eyes, in the tension of his thin shoulders, and in the way he balanced his weight on the balls of his feet - ready to run - that had Aaron forcibly swallowing down the paternal instinct he honestly didn't think he had the capacity for until the twins were born.
Knowing better than to offer reassurances or ask if the kid was alright, Aaron instead asked, "You know what time it is?"
It was slight, but Aaron could see the boy relax at the question. It was a reasonable thing for someone to ask who had just woken up in an alley. After a two-second hesitation, the kid pushed up the sleeve of his sweatshirt to check the watch wound about his thin wrist. It was chunky plastic, the kind he remembered from when he was a kid that would like up if you pressed the two side buttons at the same time. The kid didn't make it light up, though, he just glanced at it quickly and said, "Just past midnight."
Fuck. Midnight? Katelyn was probably worried sick. The last thing he remembered... fuck okay. He had taken the girls to school in the morning on his way to work. He'd gotten to the clinic just as it started to rain. That storm, it was fucking intense - it knocked the power out and he'd gone to reset the breaker. He'd opened the breaker box and then... nothing.
Then he woke up here with this kid kicking his shoulder.
Speaking of...
Aaron draped an arm over his knee and frowned up at the kid. "The hell are you doing running around after midnight? You're like, what, eight?"
The boy visibly bristled. "I'm eleven and a half."
Aaron lifted his hands in mock surrender. "Oh, sorry - my mistake. You're right, that's definitely old enough to be wandering around the city after midnight kicking random people in alleyways. Eleven would have been too young, but eleven and a half?" He let out a low whistle and instantly regretted it, his head still too tender to handle the sharpness of the sound.
"Fuck you," spat the eleven-and-a-half-year-old with an impressive amount of venom.
"Wow," Aaron drawled. "Kids these days. No respect for their elders."
The kid snorted. "Whatever." Then he turned to go and a sudden, strange panic surged in Aaron's chest. As if... if he let this kid just walk away something really bad was going to happen.
The pain in his head vanished like the popping of a balloon and the shock of cold water. Sudden clarity surged through him, though he couldn't have said where it came from or what it meant. All he knew was that he needed to get this kid to stay.
Swallowing down his own urgency so he didn't spook the boy, Aaron said, "What were you doing, anyway? You don't strike me as an idiot and you've got to know it's not that smart to kick strangers, especially once that are bigger than you."
The kid stopped. Then he turned back around and crossed his arms - it was a combative posture but to Aaron it seemed almost protective, like he was hugging himself.
"You don't know that," he said.
Aaron frowned. "Know what?"
"You don't know that I'm not an idiot. Could be. You don't know me."
No, he didn't, he couldn't - but Aaron somehow felt like he did.
"Well, I'm Aaron." He stayed where he was but held out a hand. The boy just stared at it until Aaron dropped it again. Okay, too soon, got it.
"Congratulations," the boy deadpanned with such on-point scathing mockery that Aaron grinned. Apparently this was the wrong reaction (though Aaron wasn't sure at this point if there was such a thing as a right reaction with this kid), because the boy instantly took a step back, narrowing his eyes suspiciously.
"Thanks. I think it's a pretty big deal, too. You gonna share your name, or what?"
And there - there - was something. Because at the mention of a name, the boy flashed through so many fucking emotions Aaron might as well call him Robert Plutchik. An uneasy twist pulled in his gut and he once again thought of Neil. Those eyes, that bite, and a reaction like that to the request for a name...? No, Aaron was just reading too much into it. That was impossible.
"Or if not your name, what should I call you? I can't just keep calling you 'kid' in my head, that's weird and kind of creepy."
The boy blinked, then snorted - and for an instant he wore a small, crooked little smile that was an exact replica of Neil's. And with that smile, Aaron saw the other features of his face line up too. And... fuck, he didn't know how - but he knew for fucking certain that he was looking at an eleven-and-a-half year old Neil Josten. Or, well, whatever his name was at the time.
"Um... Kendrick."
And yeah, that solidified it.
"Like the goalie?"
The boy's, Neil's, eyes widened. Big and round and bright as diamond moons. "You know exy?!"
Aaron coughed around a laugh and nodded. He adjusted how he was sitting, crossing his legs to get more comfortable. If he stood up he thought he might spook the kid - Neil - again, so he would just stay put until he figured out what the fuck to do. "Yeah, you could say that. I played backliner for a bit, and my brother--" He stopped himself. If he said that his brother was a pro, Neil was going to want to know what team he played for, and somehow he didn't see that going over well. Either this was some kind of fucked up fever dream or he had gone back in time - and Aaron hated himself a little bit for leaning more toward time travel. This all just felt too fucking weird for a dream.
"My brother played goalie. So of course I know Kendrick."
"Goalies are so cool. I used to play backliner. Sort of. Well, I did, for a little bit. But I can't play anymore. Don't play anymore." He made a face and shrugged his shoulders. "Doesn't matter. I think goalies are way cool. Because they're all standing there and then BAM suddenly they're RIGHT THERE and WHAM the ball goes flying across the court. I would hate to be a goalie though, because they have to stand there. And I want to play on a really good team and goalies on really good teams probably get really bored. But I like being a backliner. I get to protect the goalie and fuck up the strikers. All strikers are arrogant shitheads."
He said this with the confidence of a man who knew what he was talking about - all eleven-and-a-half years of him. And really, with what Aaron knew about Neil's past, he figured the kid kind of did. Also, inside he was fucking singing because Little Neil just called Big Neil an arrogant shithead and that was some kind of exquisite justice if he said so himself.
So Aaron, of course, nodded sagely. "You are absolutely right."
Neil grinned - the crooked smile bigger and broader this time. And.. fuck, that just wasn't fair. It wasn't fair, that Aaron now had this image in his head of Neil as a grinning little kid. It was weird, and felt intrusive, and it was also so... so fucking sad. Before he could figure out what to do about that feeling, though, Neil's smile melted away like it had never been there at all, and he shifted his weight anxiously.
"Um, anyway. I should get going. Pretty stupid to be running around in the middle of the night , poking random guys to see if they're dead, y'know?"
Aaron snorted and shook his head. Then, before Neil could finish turning away and before Aaron could think too hard on the impulse, he said, "Wait, hold on." Then he dug around in his pocket, pulling out a crumpled receipt and a pen. After scribbling to make sure it worked, he wrote down Wymack's number. He knew for a fact that his old coach had had the same phone number since the nineties - so it was the only one he could think to give, and if anyone would be able to do something... it was Coach. That done, he held out the paper.
Neil eyed him warily, but curiosity won out and he stepped just close enough to snatch it. He looked at the number and frowned. "David Wymack? This isn't real. You couldn't have his number." That narrowed blue gaze dug into him with suspicion and Aaron had to force himself not to flinch (which was fucking ridiculous, by the way - because Neil was like three feet tall).
Instead, he shrugged. "Call it and find out."
Neil rolled his eyes, but he shoved the paper into his pocket. As he finally turned around to walk away, Aaron called out to him one more time, "Hey, and kid?" Neil paused, but didn't turn around. "It may not seem like it, but you've got a choice, okay? And remember it's okay to fight for yourself. It's okay to want to live, instead of just survive."
Neil's small body went so still, so stiff, that Aaron thought the addition of a breath might shatter him. Then without saying anything in response, Neil bolted - disappearing around the corner in five rapid slaps of sole to pavement.
Instinct had Aaron pushing to his feet as if to follow - but the moment he got vertical, the world went dark.
"You don't have to carry me," he protested and tried to lean away, even if he kept his arms around the older boy's neck. But the only answer he got was a chuckle, and tanned hands pulling on his legs so he got closer to Lutz's back again.
And, even if his ankle was throbbing dully, and birds sang around them in the trees, Aaron had trouble focusing on anything else than the one carrying him back to camp.
