Chapter Text
The air conditioner was on a bit too high, making it just a little too cold for Roxy’s tastes, but as a dutiful best friend, she wasn’t going to make Dirk turn it down just for her. Instead, she wrapped herself in a blanket and took up her usual spot on the couch, remote in hand. She took her time flipping through channels to find something to watch as she listened to Dirk rambling on and on.
“I’m still thinking of a name for him,” Dirk was saying, chattering idly as he liked to do when Roxy was around (and truthfully, probably even when she wasn’t as well), jabbing an eraser moodily at the paper in front of him. Despite his blatant oversharing monologue, he had been guarding that particular piece of paper fiercely, not letting Roxy see what was on it.
“Name him dickbutt,” Roxy said absently. She chose not to see the dark look that was sent her way and instead settled her channel flipping to cartoons. Satisfied by her selection and ready to indulge her friend in his clear cry for attention, she crawled to the other side of the couch to peek over at the boy huddled beside it. He noticed her movement and tried to hurry to hide his papers before she saw.
He was too slow for her keen eyes, though. She had cat-like reflexes.
“Did you draw yourself as a robot?” she asked immediately, tone conveying that his was probably the best gift he could ever give her: the pinnacle of all teasing topics from now to forever. Dirk aggressively shoved the papers under the couch and refused to answer, crossing his arms. She reached out to paw at his head annoyingly, a large grin overtaking her face. “Dirk, are you designing your robo-sona?”
“No,” he burst out and then hid his face in his hands. “He’s an artificial intelligence and he’s going to be the best of his kind.”
“Name him Hal 9001,” Roxy said, stopping her harassment and beginning to pet his hair.
Dirk shook his head, both to upset her hand and also to deny her suggestion. He told her, “That’s not gonna work with copyright.”
“Can you even spell copyright?”
“Yes!”
Roxy laughed and went over the arm of the couch to tickle her friend until he begged for mercy.
Grinning and already plotting the upcoming movie marathon, Roxy ducked through a row of bushes and pushed aside a garbage can to get through the fence. She had… liberated… a few movies starring Dirk’s hero, Dane Strider, from a classmate’s house when they met to work on a project for Social Studies. She was sure that he’d have already seen them, but it would still be fun to watch them together. She could tease him for his hero-worship and he could tell her all kinds of fun trivia.
Caught up in her own pondering, she almost missed Dirk entirely.
He was slumped over the kitchen table, head buried in his arms. Roxy’s stomach flip-flopped uncomfortably when she took in the state of his salvaged clothes.
“Hey, Dirky,” she greeted quietly. She moved over to rub his slumped and defeated shoulders. For a moment, she had hope that she was just being irrational, but all too soon he was shrugging her hands off him.
“Hey, Rox,” he said, voice carefully flat. “What’s up, Hacker Supreme?”
Roxy’s lips curled into a ghost of a smile at the reminder of the lost bet. She hummed and leaned against the table, aiming for playful as she said, “Welllllllll I somehow came across some movies and I thought that I would share with my bestest best friend!”
“Thanks,” Dirk said, sounding like he meant it though his tone was still… well, dead. “But I’m kind of… tired tonight. Sorry.”
Roxy looked down at him and spied some bruising down the back of his hoodie.
“Yeah,” she said, feeling sick to her stomach. “Okay. Maybe next time, huh?”
There was a young girl down the personal healthcare aisle of the convenience store, unmonitored by parent or harried employee as she browsed the admittedly limited selection. In another aisle, a red faced woman shrieked at the employee behind the counter, distracting him more effectively than the girl could ever have. Quickly, the girl reached out and plucked an item off the shelf, pocketing it in one smooth motion.
Her bit of thievery complete, the girl moved over to the candy aisle and selected a pack of Skittles and some Reese Cups before trotting up to the counter. She placed her selections on the counter and beside them, a five dollar bill. The employee, relieved to have a calmer customer, rang her up quickly.
“Your change is three dollars,” he informed her, pulling the money from his register.
“Keep it,” she said and collected her candy, swiftly exiting before he could argue.
Her purple gaze, while haunting, was quickly forgotten when the squalling woman returned.
Popping a Skittle in her mouth, Rose Lalonde examined the package of condoms she swiped that morning while her esteemed guardian, the brilliant and beloved Ruth Lalonde, slept the deep, sweet sleep of the overly intoxicated on the bed just beside her own. The two half sisters were visiting Los Angeles on business, as Ruth was spending the week attending a conference and presenting her research.
All it meant for Rose was being occasionally allowed to tag along, but mostly just waking her inebriated sister in time for social engagements.
Rose turned the small cardboard package over in her hands. It announced that it contained three condoms. Extra large, it proclaimed in a tacky orange font. Her nose furrowed in distaste, but she still peeled the cardboard open and extracted the promised three packages. She looked over them curiously, equal parts fascinated and repulsed. Growing up in an all woman household with only woman that dated other woman, Rose was given very little knowledge of what to expect from men.
At the tender age of 11, Rose was too curious and too clever. And besides, she had a vested interest in learning what to expect from… sex.
Swallowing hard, she looked over to Ruth, but her legal guardian remained drunkenly oblivious to her charge’s discontent. She snored into the pillow softly, a thankfully corked bottle of wine clutched in one of her hands, makeup smearing and soiling the pillowcase. Rose looked away, anger rising in her. Ruth would sleep until 3, at which point Rose would play the dutiful daughter and begin the long and arduous profess of waking her and prodding her into making herself presentable for dinner with some local noted academics. But until that time, Rose was on her own. As she always was.
Rose tore open one of the packets and extracted the condom inside, staring at it in revulsion. The handy instructions explained its application and use well enough, but she couldn’t imagine exactly how it would-
Ruth’s phone began to ring and Rose was up on her feet at once, racing to the bathroom to relieve herself of the breakfast of candy she’d had that morning. She retched until her stomach was empty, but the phone still rang and Ruth still snored.
Without bothering to clean herself up, Rose padded out of the bathroom to pick up the phone, staring at the caller ID with a face devoid of expression. Seeing her brother’s name on the display, she accepted the call and pressed the phone to her ear.
“Hello, Dane,” she greeted, ever the polite and dutiful sister. “I regret to inform you that Ruth is indisposed at the moment. May I take a message?”
“Blackout drunk, you mean,” he grumbled. “And training you to be the next Calliope, I guess. Anyway, I’m outside. Want to grab lunch with your favorite superstar brother?”
Rose looked to Ruth, who was snoring a bit louder at the increase in noise in the room and then to the condoms on her bed. She said, “My dear brother, there is absolutely nothing in this cruel, heartless world that I would enjoy more.”
When Dane Strider treated a girl to a meal, he did things right. That is to say, Rose was picked up in a beat up old Ford and driven to the second closest Burger King. Dane opted for the drive through, telling Rose that he didn’t want to be mobbed by the paparazzi for a McDouble. Rose, kindly, did not correct him. They got burgers and fries and Dane insisted upon asking for a set of cardboard crowns.
It was trashy.
It was the most fun Rose had in a long time.
Dane parked the car in the back of a Walmart parking lot while they ate, air conditioning on full blast, making Rose shiver a bit, but not enough for her to request he turn it off. She toyed with the positioning of her crown and checked how it looked in the side mirror, thinking of taking a picture and sending it to Rosa or Dave. Perhaps even Kanaya.
Or Ruth. To show the woman what went on while she was otherwise occupied.
“How is Dave?” she asked, interrupting her brother as he rambled on about his latest project.
“Eh… fine, I guess,” Dane answered, tone turning more somber as he scratched his five o’clock shadow thoughtfully. “He and Bro are doing the whole family counseling thing now. It’s going pretty well and I think things are going to be okay. We Skype each other almost every night.”
Rose made a thoughtful noise. Dane broke character and smiled at her a bit. “Maybe you can come spend the night at my place and crash the sick brotherly bonding session.”
“Oh, I’d love to,” she said, dragging a fry through the mound of ketchup on the now empty greasy burger paper. “But I do have to go back to the hotel to wake Ruth. She has a dinner engagement, after all and it wouldn’t be good for her career to miss it.”
“Just call Calliope,” Dane said dismissively, stoic face solidly back in place.
‘She’s back in New York. Ruth wanted it to be just us sisters for this trip. Said she wanted from quality sister bonding time and may have even mentioned a trip to pool.”
“But she can’t be assed to not drown herself in the bottle,” he frowned, but his expression cleared quickly enough. “Well, it’s her loss. We can go back to the hotel for you to pick up some shit and wake her up and then go back to my place for some brother-slash-sister bonding time.”
“’Slash’?”
“I swear to God, Rose,” he groaned. “Don’t start that Freudian bullshit with me right now. Let’s go kidnap you.”
“Kidnap me?”
“With permission.”
“Ah, naturally.”
Dane was never one to skimp out on luxuries for himself, though his stubborn insistence on irony led to a distinct lack of taste in all aspects of his life. Rose was set up with a makeshift bed on Dane’s couch. The pillows were offensively orange and the plush duvet was glaringly red, but they were more comfortable than anything a hotel could offer.
The TV still played a selection of Dane’s earlier movies for background noise, but the man himself had already retired for the night after livery involving pizza and video games and a skype chat with her twin in Texas.
It was… nice… having someone around.
Ω: You will be returning soon.
TT: Yes I will.
Ω: I look forward to your homecoming. I have scheduled a personal lesson on etiquette in my office, first thing come Monday morning.
Ω: I trust you will find your way.
TT: But of course.
Rose’s best friend was a girl named Kanaya. She had startlingly green eyes and her black hair was cut in a cute bob. It was almost distressing how many times Rose would catch herself simply gazing at her friend, but it was easy enough to play off as admiration. Kanaya frequently wore her own fashion creations and they were always beautiful.
“And how was Los Angeles?” Kanaya asked curiously, looking at Rose over their trays laden with breakfast, freshly liberated from the clutches of the dead eyed lunch ladies. The cafeteria din was almost enough to drown out the quiet voice of the Maryam, but Rose never had a problem hearing her.
Rose finished the bite of her cereal she’d been working on and settled on, “Uneventful.”
No matter how close they were, Rose knew Kanaya held the other Lalonde sisters in such high esteem that she couldn’t imagine her believing Rose about the long, boring hours spent in the hotel as Ruth lay passed out just a few feet away. Or how Rose tried the wine and found it distinctly awful. Or the little bit of thievery.
“It must have been nice to get away from school, at least,” she said, oblivious to Rose’s thoughts. She favored the Lalonde with a smile that Rose returned at once.
The etiquette lession… was best left forgotten, Rose decided as she slunk out of the office and off towards her first class of the day.
Toeing the floor with a threadbare sock, Dave Strider revolved slowly in his desk chair as his computer slowly booted up. He’d only just arrived home from school before barricading himself in his room to begin his usual ritual of trying to pray his computer into functionality enough to talk to his best friends, not to mention his twin.
Despite the riches his older brother must be rolling in due to his status as a veritable fucking superstar, the Strider Texas household was… kind of shitty, if he was being honest (which he actively tried to resist, tried to guise everything in layers and layers of mislabeled irony). Everything was used until it was barely holding on. Duct tape was a signature of Strider Swag, Bro claimed. It was ironic, he said as he sewed up Dave’s ripped hoodie for the fourth time that week.
Dave would never say it to his face, but he thought Derek was full of it sometimes.
Ruth, having had one or two or three too many at some family event or another, explained that it was because back in her childhood, their family had struggled financially. Dave sat, uncomfortable but obedient, as she pet his hair between sips of her martini and cried very quietly while telling about his aunt, Ruth’s mother. In her life she had been a selfish shrew, she claimed. A selfish bitch that would spend all of the family’s money on herself rather than buy groceries.
Dave understood why his older siblings were driven to such thrifty lengths; he really did. But Dane was richer than God now, or so Dave understood through conversations in the family and by simply googling his older brother’s net worth. There was no reason they couldn’t enjoy the finer things in life every once in awhile.
Rose got new things.
Dave immediately felt guilty for the thought. He would take Bro and his strifes and pussyfooting around the boundaries of abuse and brotherly tussling over Ruth and her drunken benders any day. Bro never had to buy his affection.
Dave halted himself with a hand on his desk. His computer was ready for use and so his introspection was shelved and promptly put out of mind.
“Bro,” Dave called, poking his head in the living room to find his guardian playing, of all things, Tony Hawk’s Underground. He was promptly distracted from his original point, “Goddamn, old man, you have no taste.”
“Shut the fuck up,” Derek said casually, flinging his character into the concrete ground headfirst, which would have probably killed him instantly in real life. He tossed the controller on the seat next to him and twisted to look over the back of the futon. “What did you need, man?”
“Oh, you need to sign this,” Dave remembered, brandishing a piece of paper at his oldest brother. Hoping to head off any actual discussion, he hurried to add, “It’s just a permission slip for the zoo next week.”
“Can I ask them to just toss you in with the animals?” Derek asked, defying all of Dave’s fragile hopes and beginning to read the permission slip. He asked, “Is this gonna be safe?”
“If a toddler can avoid death at the zoo, so can I,” Dave grumbled.
“With your classmates,” he clarified, fixing an intense stare on his little brother. “Will you be safe?”
“Never-fucking-mind,” Dave said, snatching the paper and darting back for his room even though Derek called for him to return.
Roxy’s room was small. Tucked away in the basement, sharing a wall with the laundry room and the thumping washing machine, Roxy was largely forgotten by her foster family, which suited her just fine. She was used to hordes of other children just like her - unwanted by the parents that bore them. Some were lucky enough that they were just temporarily taken away - or unlucky depending on the circumstances.
The concrete floor was always cold, but Roxy was in luck. Cute pairs of socks were laughably easy to shoplift, what with all of the sales associates focused on the bigger, more expensive items. Sometimes she felt guilty about the stuff she took, but she had no other means to get the things she needed.
The place was lit by only one small window at ground level. It was actually broken and didn’t close right, but Roxy could stuff a pillowcase in the crack and be happy as a clam kept in subpar conditions, but determined to make the best of things.
She also had a miner's hat, but that was sneakily liberated from her foster father’s work station. She liked wearing it and pulling the sheets over her head to read at night. Her favorite book was Lessons in the Dark Arts by Rosa Lalonde. She remembered picking up the book at a local garage sale years ago because the author had the same last name as her (and she was a she!). She spirited the book away and was lost to a world of fantasy and heroines for a whole week before she finished it.
After that, she made it a goal to collect the rest of Rosa Lalonde’s works. It was slow going, but she even had some poetry magazines where the author got her start! They were the pride of her collection, right beside her prized battered first edition of Complacency of the Learned. All of the collection was lovingly contained in a trash bag, which was largely how she transported her things from foster home to foster home.
A few homes ago, an older boy burned her copy of A Hero’s Downfall while she could only watch, crying. She was lucky this time; her collection was only under threat from her foster parents, but they were more than happy to drink themselves into a stupor in the living room, television blaring some sitcom or another.
Which invariably led to trouble, as Roxy was not a girl to be contained. While they lay in the deep sleep of the well and truly drunk, their foster daughter scurried around the house and collected what she needed. Sometimes it was as simple as a pen. Sometimes it was a half empty bottle of vodka.
Tonight, it was the latter. She selected one that was closer to empty than full and retrieved the full bottle from the kitchen to replace it. The perfect crime, she reasoned. They would never miss a few sips with a whole other bottle to exploit.
But the ever daring Roxy wasn’t done yet, instead choosing to climb the stairs, thinking of raiding the medicine cabinet. Her foster mom had some kind of prescription for painkillers and Roxy could make a little bit of money swiping a few and selling them. It’s not like the woman ever even remembered the pills through the numb haze of alcohol.
She was in luck and palmed a good half of the bottle before starting back towards the stairs, mentally patting herself on the back. She was a ninja. A cat burgler in the night.
And then the doorbell rang.
Roxy’s foster parents weren’t the type to put in much effort or, to be quite honest, any effort at all. When their doorbell died, they paid a friend of a friend $10 and a promise of a bottle of gin to fix it. It worked in the loosest of definitions, but unfortunately it sounded less like a charming bell and more like the unholy shrieks of the damned, only louder somehow.
Startled, Roxy dropped the bottle she’d been carrying and clasped her hands to her ears, only just managing to keep a hold on the pills she’d swiped. The bottle thumped down a few stairs before gaining enough momentum to hurtle the last few and crash to the floor, shattering on impact. Roxy mouthed a curse, bravery and confidence fleeing with her voice. She turned to look at the hallway behind her but there was no other way downstairs.
She was trapped.
“What the hell is that racket?” her foster father, a truly heinous participant in the human race, half yelled. “Joanne, get your ass up and get the door.”
“I’m going ,” she snapped, slurring her words. Roxy crouched at the top of the stairs, staring down with huge eyes and hoping fruitlessly that they wouldn’t notice the glass. “What the hell is that glass from?”
“What glass?”
Roxy clenched her eyes shut as her foster mother rounded the corner. She was spotted instantly.
“Tim, come get your little bitch of a daughter,” Joanne yelled, instantly incensed. The thump of his work boots were recognizable even over the shrieking of the doorbell. They clumped up the stairs and Roxy could do nothing but clench her eyes closed harder and tighten her fists. She was going down for the booze, but there was no way she was going down for the pills.
He grabbed her and yanked her up by her elbow, forcing her to stand on tiptoes to stand at all. He started bellowing abuse and dragging her down the stairs while her foster mother opened the door and demanded, “What do you want?”
“Let me go,” Roxy was half-yelling, trying to find any escape so that she might not end tonight in an emergency room.
“You little conniving sneak,” he was growling.
“My name is Claire Pentri,” the visitor was saying. “I’m with social services. I’ll be removing Roxy from your custody tonight.”
“Let go of her, Tim!” Joanne yelled without looking back at the two of them. Tim dropped Roxy’s arm and overbalancing made her tumblr forwards into a coffee table. Roxy caught herself instinctively, scattering the pills across the surface, but it went ignored as they adults stood as still as statues, clearly in a silent war of wills. If anyone were to ask Roxy, she would have put money (that she didn’t have) on the social worker. Though she was shorter than either of Roxy’s (former?) foster parents, she stood with a conviction and had a fire in her eyes that could not be denied.
Roxy looked at the social worker and thought quickly. Her presence meant one thing: rehoming. And Roxy couldn’t let that happen.
She pushed herself up from the floor and darted back towards the kitchen and through the backdoor, shouts of her name following her into the evening. She ducked between houses and ran as fast as she could. She swallowed back tears at the thought of leaving behind her collection of Rosa Lalonde’s works and her cute socks and her stolen miner’s hat.
It took roughly five minutes for Roxy to get to her destination. It was a nice house, well maintained by the landscapers most of the neighborhood used. To the untrained eye, it was virtually indistinguishable from any other house, but Roxy knew better. It was the empty house. Bills all paid remotely, no car in the driveway or any real signs of life. Only one person lived in the empty house and he happened to be Roxy’s best friend.
She moved around to the fenced in back yard and let herself in the sliding door, calling out for the only inhabitant, “Dirk?”
There was no immediate answer. Roxy walked in enough to flip on the lights and then hurried to closed the blinds over the door. She called again, “Dirk, you better be in here!”
“I’m here,” he said, emerging from the living room. He blinked at the lights and squinted at her. “You shouldn’t be out so late.”
“Sorry for crashing your bachelor pad party,” she said, a tad sarcastically. “But I guess I live here now!”
“What?” he asked. He thought for a second while Roxy just put her face in her hands and crouched down, overwhelmed. “Roxy, what?”
“A social worker just… showed up!” she burst out, gesticulating wildly.
“Isn’t that their job?” Dirk asked dryly. “I mean, I’m guessing here from what you’ve told me since we both know that no social worker ever comes knocking on my door.”
“She showed up while Tim was dragging me back down to the basement,” Roxy clarified. She fell back onto her bottom and sat, legs crossing comfortably. She avoided Dirk’s squinting orange eyes and admitted, “They caught me swiping a bottle of their good stuff. And when I say good stuff I mean mediocre at best. And when I say bottle I mean it was like two big swigs at best . Stop looking at me like that.”
“I’m not looking at you any way,” Dirk argued. After a moment, he came to sit beside her on the tile floor, close but not touching her. “So… welcome home?”
“Thanks,” Roxy said, staring straight ahead. “It means a lot.”
Roxy took advantage of Dirk’s bathroom to shower off all the debris and bad thoughts of the day, taking care with her feet. She had to sit on the edge of the tub and wash them as they were covered in dirt and blood from some particularly thorny landscaping and hellishly sharp rocks. It took her nearly an hour and when she was done she threw on an old pair of Dirk’s threadbare shorts. He had approximately three shirts to choose from and she couldn’t guarantee any were clean, so she chose to go without.
Dirk was gay and she figured she didn’t have enough in the chestal region to have to cover up anyway.
She rejoined him in his bedroom, feeling oddly opposed to claiming the other bedroom even though she would have to get used to the thought eventually if she were to live here. Dirk was sitting on his bed, scribbling in a notebook, but he looked up and frowned as soon as she entered.
“You don’t like my shirts?” he asked.
“Nudism is in this season,” she said. “Get with the times, DiStri.”
“No thanks,” he grumbled and went back to his scribbling. Roxy moseyed over to take a look.
“Oh, sweet! Is that another robot design?” she asked, perking up immediately. She was a fan of tinkering though Dirk stubbornly corrected her when she called it that. It was robotic engineering and it was very serious business. Roxy rolled her eyes at the very thought.
“Yeah,” he said, but he didn’t elaborate. Roxy sat beside him and began playing with his hair and he, in all of his magnanimity, let her. They lost themselves in a comfortable silence until Roxy couldn’t bear it anymore.
“Do you mind having me here?” she asked, wrapping her arms around him from behind and resting her cheek on his shoulder.
“Of course not,” he said. “I’d rather you live here than be taken away. Where would they even move you? Probably too far away. It’s better this way.”
“Yeah,” Roxy agreed, though she thought that maybe the next set of foster parents might be better. She would have to leave Dirk and that was unacceptable. What would he do without her? She turned her head and buried her face into his neck, trying to quiet her thoughts.
“That tickles,” he said after a moment. “Get off.”
Roxy clenched her eyes shut for a moment, grimacing, before forcing a smile to her face and trilling, “Never ever ever! I love you that much!”
The doorbell rang.
It wasn’t an entirely uncommon happening, as no domicile was without visitors, though the empty house only ever got the sort that came in the afternoon and asked to spread religion to the masses. But it was solidly night and even the more dedicated of religious peons were at home, probably going to bed for an early morning of Bible thumping.
Roxy sat up, heart hammering in her chest. Dirk sat up beside her, the two having fallen asleep on his bed while chatting about the latest postings on the Rosa Lalonde fan forum they both frequented. Dirk asserted that, being her brother, Dane Strider would make the best director for any film adaptations and they argued the point well past a reasonable point.
“Ignore it,” Dirk said, unconcerned and misunderstanding Roxy's panic. “They’ll go away.”
“Not if they think I’m here,” she said. “They’ll think there are adults here holding me hostage or... or... something.”
She looked at Dirk and thought. If they both fled then she wasn’t sure where they’d go. Sure, they knew a few of the neighborhood kids, but all of them were in rough places. They had no one else to harbor them.
“Do you trust me?” she asked him.
“Yeah, of course,” he answered. “Duh, Roxy.”
Roxy nodded, not trusting her own voice. She rolled out of bed and grabbed a shirt at random and pulled it on, nose wrinkling in disgust at the oil stains. She told Dirk to wait where he was and trotted downstairs to the front door, pulling it open bravely though she was terrified of the outcome.
“Can I help you?” she asked, sounding more confident than she was. There were two police officers standing before her.
“Roxy Lalonde?” one of them asked.
“Speaking,” she said.
“We’re here to take you home, the one that asked after her said kindly while her partner peered into the darkened house behind her. “Come along now.”
“I don’t have a home now,” Roxy informed her. “The social worker said so. And I’m not going to a new one because I’m not leaving Dirk.”
“Who’s Dirk?”
Roxy swallowed hard and said, “Just the little boy that was abandoned in this house years ago. He’s my best friend, so we’re going to live here now unless we both go to the same foster home. You can tell the social worker I said that.”
As quick as any of the stray cats she cared for, Roxy stepped back and slammed the door on them. She waited there and listened with a hammering heart as they discussed getting the social worker out there to talk to her, not wanting to deal with her “crazy little girl nonsense”. She sat with her back against the door and pulled her knees to her chest, terrified.
After a moment she spotted a flash of movement in the darkness. She said, “Trust me.”
Dirk came and sat next to her. He held her hand.
“Just trust me,” she said again. “I’ve got this.”
The social worker appeared on the doorstep of the empty house within the hour, clearly called from her home. In a pair of pajama pants and a slightly tattered t shirt for a charity drive, she strode up the sidewalk and exchanged greetings with the police officers.
“I hadn’t hoped you would find her quite so quick,” she said before knocking. One of the officers pointed out the doorbell, but the woman laughed them off.
“We don’t have to do this,” Dirk implored even as Roxy stood. “We could go out the back. Nepeta would put us up for a bit, I bet.”
“You can if you want,” Roxy said, nerves making her sharper than she’d usually like. “I know you don’t like people, but if you want to be with me, you’re going to have to deal with them at least until I turn 18. Now, excuse me.”
Dirk moved, scurrying off into the dark somewhere. Roxy took a moment to breathe, hoping almost beyond hope that he hadn’t escaped the house altogether, and then opened the door. Sure enough, it was the same woman from before.
“Hello, Roxy,” she smiled. “My name is Ms. Pentri. I hear you have a couple demands before I can place you with another family.”
“I have to take Dirk,” she said. “I’m all he has and he’s my best friend.”
“She keeps saying that,” the officer that refused to talk directly to Roxy before said. “We haven’t seen anyone else.”
“He’s in here,” Roxy said. “He just doesn’t like assholes .”
“You’ve got an awful mouth for a little girl.”
“You’ve got a perfect attitude for an asshole ,” she bit back.
“Alright,” Ms. Pentri said firmly and graced her charge with a smile. “I’ll go in to meet him, hmm? Get the whole story. I just want to help you, Roxy.”
“Leave the cops out here,” she said, eyeing them warily.
“Of course,” the woman agreed easily. Roxy took a breath and stepped back to allow the social worker into the darkened house, closing the door behind them. Roxy finally hit the lights and then went to make sure the curtains were drawn. “This looks like a lovely home.”
“I had to teach Dirk to clean it,” Roxy said, figuring honesty was the best policy at this point. In for a penny, in for a pound, after all. “He was dropped off here and abandoned years ago, but the bills are still paid, I guess? Nothing gets shut off, anyway... It’s so weird, but it works? Or it works now. Dirk was really bad off when I found him.”
“He’s been living here alone?” Ms. Pentri clarified. Roxy nodded and took a seat on the couch. She fidgeted until Ms. Pentri joined her on the couch with a kind, encouraging smile. Roxy felt like she could trust the woman, but she’d been betrayed enough times to be made wary of even the kindest of souls.
“I found some paperwork when I cleaned up,” Roxy said. “He’s a foster kid like me, but no one ever checks on him. He says all he remembers is being brought home and ditched, but his memory is kiiiiinda iffy.”
“How long ago?” she wanted to know. This was unheard of - no child should have been forgotten to the point Roxy was describing.
“Long enough,” Dirk said, startling the woman.
“That’s Dirk,” Roxy said quickly, turning to look towards the kitchen door. He was staring into the room flatly, practicing the dumb deadpan he picked up from his superstar hero Dane whats-his-name. His fingers were white where they clutched at the doorway, betraying his anxiety. “He doesn’t know how to act like a real boy yet because he’s still like… twenty five percent wooden puppet. Which makes me the blue fairy, which is cool because you know, magic. And she’s pretty.”
“That’s Roxy,” Dirk mocked. His eyes slid over to her and his gaze warmed against his will. “She doesn’t know how to act like a real girl because all she wants to be is a wizard.”
“Hell yes,” she said. “Wizards are kickass.”
“Children,” Ms. Pentri said, somehow managing to call the both of them to order easily.
“I can’t go without Dirk,” Roxy insisted, getting up to go stand by him. Dirk hesitantly took her hand and she smiled reassuringly at him.
“I can’t promise to find someplace for the two of you together tonight,” Ms. Pentri cautioned. “Most people that take short term placements will only take in one at a time. But I promise the both of you that I’ll find you a home where you can be together.”