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At breakfast, a glassy-eyed little boy was placed before the sea of FEDRA military school kids at the front of the hall.
"Boys and girls," The commanding officer announced, projecting his voice across the hall and earning many rolled eyes and irritated sighs from the kids as their already short timeslot in the mess hall was cut even shorter by the arrival of another poor little orphan to join the roster. "We have a new student with us today."
From the sight of him, he looked like he'd just been plucked from the middle of a clicker ambush and forced to try and adjust to civil life again. His face was caked in dirt and what was probably blood, his hair was matted in the back and probably held a small forest's worth of tiny leaves and twigs, his clothes were filthy and ripped and Coral could spot what looked to be a starfish patch on his knee though she knew he'd be put in the same old grey sweatpants and shirt as the rest of them by the end of the day, and finally, he had the hollow look to him that most of the kids tended to come in with like all the joy had been gutted out of him and he'd been left a walking corpse.
Well. Sucked to be him, Coral decided, and dug into her breakfast.
"I heard they picked him up from outside." Mags — the girl Coral shared a dorm with — commented, gesturing vaguely with her fork towards the boy who was currently being coaxed into sitting down at the end of the table.
"What?" Coral frowned through a mouthful of food, "Like, outside outside?"
"Yeah! Sami said he was crawling through the gate with like, fifty infected chasing him!" Mags exclaimed. It was no surprise she was so invested in the story. There was little else of interest to talk about around here.
Coral rolled her eyes. "Yeah, well Sami's a fucking liar, I can tell you that. Plus, I've been out there. It's not like that."
"What's it like then?" The other girl questioned, "What do you think left him so... fucked up looking?"
Coral shrugged, "Hell if I know. Don't give a shit anyway."
And with that over and done with, Coral hoped to forget about the boy with the starfish patch, allowing him to blend in with the mass of other tragic little orphan kids and be on with her day, but unfortunately for her, it wasn't quite so easy.
The next time she crossed paths with the starfish boy was only later that day during drills. His matted hair had been messily chopped out, his old clothes were gone and he was now dressed in the same ill-fitting uniform as the rest of them, something that Coral expected would have let him blend in a bit more and ultimately help her forget him.
Instead, he stuck out like a sore thumb.
They started with laps of the hall, the usual mundanity, and Coral was more than happy to put on her headphones, turn on her Walkman, and listen to her music to pass the time.
However, she was momentarily startled when she nearly ran straight into the starfish boy who still hadn't budged. She frowned back at him in annoyance before sighing to herself and continuing on, trying to stay clear of him. Whatever. Not her problem.
A few other kids brushed into him as they passed, trying to urge him to move but he only stood there stock still, staring blankly at the air ahead of him like some creepy, lifeless doll.
It wasn't long before the drill sergeant stepped in, impatiently shoving the boy in the hopes he'd stumble to his senses and start running with the group. Instead, the boy crumpled and his face slammed against the floor.
Everyone collectively winced but they all knew to mind their business, trying not to draw the drill sergeant's attention as they ran past lest they be given doubles again.
When the boy still didn't move from where he'd been knocked down, Coral expected the sergeant to pull him to his feet and drag him off to the Captain's office, or even better, shove him straight in the hole.
Instead, the sergeant gave him a rough kick in the ribs with his steel-toed boots.
The rest of the kids slowed to an uncomfortable stop as they watched the scene unfold. Even while being beaten, the starfish boy gave no reaction other than a small whimper as he curled up on his side, giving up like a dying animal with no hope.
The first few kicks were a lesson, but when the drill sergeant pulled out his baton and smacked the boy over the head with it, Coral just found it cruel.
Before he could get a second hit in, Coral was between him and the boy.
"Okay! Okay! You can stop now! You've made your damn point!" She exclaimed, holding a hand up like talking down an over-aggressive bull.
"Ivers." He spat, giving her a look almost as foul as his mood. "Mind your business."
"Look, the kid's not even been here a day and you're already trying to beat him to death." The girl pointed out, "At least let him settle in first before you kill him. I think the Captains sick of cleaning up your half-dead kids, don't you?"
The sergeant's face twisted in an ugly scowl. "Out!" He barked, stabbing his baton out in the direction of the door.
Coral happily obliged, even if it probably meant an equal punishment of her own later, and she tugged the beat-up boy off the ground and half-dragged him to the infirmary.
Like an inanimate object, she positioned him to sit down on one of the rusted old chairs and went digging through the cabinets for some stuff to use. As per usual, the nurse seemed to have magically vanished (out for a cig probably) and Coral was left to tend to the boy's wounds all on her own.
Whatever, she'd fixed herself up enough times by now that it was practically second nature. She'd be done before she knew it and then she could send the weird starfish boy on his way and hopefully never see him again.
Half an hour later, she was done tending to his bleeding face and had done all she could for his bruised ribs.
Typically, Coral hated when she got stuck patching up the younger kids, sick of their whining and squealing and complaining. However, she almost forgot the boy in front of him was even a boy in the first place as he didn't move an inch the entire time, not even flinching when she poured disinfectant directly into his wounds.
He sure as hell was out of it, alright. Whatever had fucked him up had fucked him up real good.
After that was over and done with, Coral (again) hoped that would be the end of their interactions for preferably the rest of their lives! And again, Coral's hopes were ignored!
For the rest of the day, and also for the next few, in fact, starfish boy followed her around like a lost puppy, standing directly behind her in the line for meals, following her around the halls, and even sitting against the wall outside the Captain's office while she received her seventh lecture of the week.
It appeared he'd latched onto her like a baby duckling finding a new mother, and she couldn't be more irritated about it.
She hated it. She hated him. She hated that the universe was still trying to torture her like this after she'd already had to endure so much. She hated that he looked so much like Ronan. She hated that she could picture him turning around and biting her just as easily or that out of the corner of her eye, she could see the bloody bullet hole in his head.
The other kids didn't make it any easier either, teasing her as she passed them in the halls, commenting on her new 'pet' who didn't so much as blink at the words he certainly was not registering. Lucky him.
She gave them all glares in exchange and told herself she'd go choke them in their sleep later or something to make herself feel better.
But in the meantime, there was little she could do about her insistent little duckling.
By day four of this routine, she'd managed to tune him out and had been going about her day as normally as she could with a little seven-year-old glued to her side. However, things changed at dinner.
Coral tried to keep to herself, staring down at her food as she ate and slowly tuning out Mags' ramblings beside her. But it was a bit harder to tune out the giggles a few seats over.
Coral observed simply out of curiosity, trying to piece together what the group of younger boys were laughing about. Eventually, she noticed one of them snatch a bit of food off the starfish boy's tray and scoff it themselves.
Coral could have left it. She could have ignored it. It wasn't her problem (for once).
But she knew what it was like to sit there, humiliated and alone as the older kids stole from you, utterly powerless to do anything about it other than cry over an empty stomach late that night.
And the boy was still so zoned out that she doubted he even noticed what was happening. He'd go to bed hungry and still be too damn out of it to care.
She'd bet if he remained an easy target and the other kids kept stealing from him, he'd eventually starve.
Cutting Mags off, Coral got to her feet with her tray and slammed it down on the table beside the starfish boy, causing the other boys to jump and turn their attention to her.
Very slowly, she sat down and began to eat, keeping her intense gaze solely on them. A few of the boys tried to stand their ground, staring back with confident smirks, but even they eventually faltered and looked elsewhere.
They seemed to have gathered that starfish boy wasn't so much of an easy target now and fucked off elsewhere to bother some other unfortunate soul.
Coral considered leaving too but when she saw the boy beside her, sitting motionless, still with an almost full plate, she gave him a nudge and watched to make sure he ate.
And so began their new mealtime routine. Coral planted herself in the seat beside him for every meal and used her reputation and intense glares to scare off any vultures hoping to swoop in and steal the boy's food. It was just to make sure he didn't starve, she reasoned. She didn't like the boy but she didn't want him to die. Once he came out of his shell a bit more, she'd back off again like she'd planned. Definitely.
But as the weeks went on, the boy got no better and Coral found herself only becoming a bigger and bigger part of his life. She kept an eye on him at meals, tugged him along after her in drills, took the blame for him whenever he got in trouble.
In one week alone, his zoning out had gotten him the cane at least once a day until his hands had been too bloody and painful to do anything. He'd already been punished as much as he possibly could have been but still, he was not spared.
So Coral stepped in, took the blame for 'having distracted him' and took his lashes for him, even if her palms stung horribly for the rest of the week.
The infirmary had become like a second home. It felt like every day she was sitting him down, wiping the blood off him, and bandaging him up while he watched silently. At least he was actually watching now.
Slowly but surely, the initial trauma of whatever had happened to him began to wear off and he actually started to seem like a real human being rather than just a doll she'd been defending for the past few weeks. He needed less nudging to get running in training and he could find his own way back to his room without needing to be escorted now. He still hadn't spoken and he still spent half the day staring into space but it was progress, she supposed.
One step closer to ridding herself of him.
In training, they were given BB guns. Coral was very happy.
On the rare occasion they were given BBs for training, Coral was instantly in a better mood because who didn't get excited over shooting rats with fake guns? It was at least more interesting than running laps of the hall.
She got herself to the front of the line so she could shoot first and thanks to years of a carefully built reputation, nobody fought her for it. Beating up kids in the hallway sure had its perks.
However, that day she didn't even get a single shot in.
One shot from one of the older boys was all it took to snap the starfish boy out of his weeks-long daze and send him hysterical. He burst into tears and stumbled back like he was being attacked, tumbling to the floor and nearly knocking over the boy behind him in line.
Everyone watched in varying degrees of confusion and horror as the little boy sobbed his little heart out, fisting his hands in his hair and screaming like a maniac.
Coral couldn't explain herself or why she even did it but on pure instinct alone, she dropped the gun and ran over to the boy, scooping him up into her arms and desperately trying to calm him.
She was allowed a few seconds to at least try before the two of them were hauled to their feet and dragged away to the hole, — a dark, grimy room in the basement they used for solitary confinement — given a generous five-hour sentence and left alone.
Coral was more than used to this treatment, with more offences of insubordination on her record than she had fingers to count them on. The hole was basically her second home at this point. Though, she'd never been put in with another person before but she supposed she never really had gotten in trouble with someone before and FEDRA probably suspected him to be too out of it to provide her much company, more likely to drive her crazy with his crying than anything else.
And well, they weren't entirely wrong. All the boy seemed to be doing was sitting there, rocking back and forth while he wailed for his mama.
Well, it was the most talkative she'd ever seen him, that was for sure.
Well, with nothing much else to do, she sat down to comfort him, placing a steady hand on his back and whispering reassurances to him, though this sparked a completely different reaction to what she had expected as he only seemed to get more upset.
"She's not infected! She's not infected!" He shouted at some horrible threat only he could see, "Please don't shoot her! Please!"
Plenty of kids came in with various levels of trauma, being put in the same dorm as a new kid was pretty much a guarantee of a restless night filled with plenty of delirious screaming and crying. But this sort of reaction you only ever really saw from kids who came in from the outside. Kids like her.
When Coral had first stumbled her way to the QZ and been taken in by the FEDRA school, she'd been much like him. She didn't even remember the first few months of her stay, the only sign they'd even happened were the scars on her hands and back. She'd woken the entire hallway up with her screams practically every night and she'd sat in the corner and cried at the sight of a gun.
The outside world did that to you. The horrors that were out there made the rough environment FEDRA school look like a playground and Coral would take military training over going back out there any day of the week.
And if this boy's experience out there had been anything like her own, she didn't think she'd be able to leave him to piece his life back together the way she'd had to. Not when she knew how much of a gruelling task it was.
"It's okay," She said softly to the boy, "You're okay now. You don't have to go back out there ever again. I've got you now."
In the end, the only way she was able to calm him down was by sitting him in her lap and singing to him. Gradually, his sobs wore away into tired whimpers and he leaned into her chest, practically melting in her arms when she held him close.
By the end of their sentence, he'd fallen asleep and she carried him back to his room on her back, gently setting him down in bed, tucking him in, and lingering for a moment to brush his hair out of his face before she pulled herself away and tried to go on with her day.
That night, she was awoken by the loud creak of her door. Coral sighed, assuming it was either the warden back to whine at her and Mags again for giggling too loud earlier or maybe even one of her many enemies trying to take her out in her sleep.
Instead, when she looked up, she found a tiny figure in her doorway.
She gave the starfish boy a small eye-roll before beckoning him over. He wasted no time scurrying over and slipping under the covers beside her and for the first time in weeks, he actually looked semi-aware of what was happening around him.
So much for ridding herself of him, she supposed.
"What's got you up so late?" She asked, careful of her volume so she wouldn't wake Mags across the room.
"Nightmare." The boy whispered and she realised it was the first time she had heard him speak to her, minus the hysterical screaming earlier.
"Yeah, I get them too." She sighed, "They do get better after a while, at least somewhat. They get easier to manage."
He rested his head in the crook of her neck and when she brought a hand up to brush through his hair, she felt weeks worth of tension melt off of him.
"What's your name?" She asked quietly, realising she couldn't exactly refer to him as starfish boy forever.
"Mizzen." He said. She smiled. It felt almost too coincidental how much he reminded her of Dad and the days when they used to fish together. Maybe it was a sign?
"Coral." She replied. "Our names almost match. Isn't that cool?"
That actually managed to get a small smile from him. It was the first she'd seen since he'd gotten here.
"Does that make you my friend now?" He asked.
"Yeah, I think it does. If that's okay with you, that is?"
He nodded. "I like that..."
She was struck with a bittersweet feeling. This is why she'd tried to avoid him, the resemblance was so uncanny she could hardly look at him without thinking of her brother and that brought back some horrible memories, alright.
But though it was bitter, it was also sweet, and there amongst the bad memories were the good ones too. Days at the beach before the outbreak, the jokes Ronan had read from his favourite joke book to try and cheer them all up, nights they'd curled up together in the forest, finding comfort in their conversation.
Maybe the bitter was worth it for the sweet.
Maybe she didn't have to push him away.
"Goodnight, Coral." He mumbled and she could tell he was already half asleep.
Maybe it was alright to try again.
"Goodnight, Starfish."