Chapter Text
“Would you put that down?! You’re getting your coat all bloody and I’m not letting you in the car like that!” Cooper’s voice echoes in the stillness of the woodland, startling all but the child still hunched on the floor in front of him. Aiden remains kneeled on the forest floor, inspecting the mangled body of the rabbit as if Cooper’s voice was just another rustle in the wind. He turns the body on its back, his eyes raking over the exposed bloodied bones of its neck, paying no mind to the red fluid running down his hands and staining his jacket. After another moment of scrutinizing the corpse, he stands up and holds the animal’s stomach out for Cooper to see.
“Check this out! This one was pregnant! Look, see?”
“Put it down! You’re such a weird little shithead, you know that?” Cooper crosses his arms and backs away from the rabbit like he expected it to pounce at him, but Aiden follows, quickly diminishing the space between them.
“I think she wants a kiss, Cooper! C’mon, kiss it!” He cackles and holds the rabbit up to the older boy’s face, but his laughs are quickly cut off as Cooper swings the butt of his gun at Aiden’s head. He falls to the ground as pain explodes through the side of his head, and he brings his blood stained hand up to cradle his face.
“Ow! What the hell?!”
Cooper doesn’t respond and watches Aiden unintentionally smear the animal’s blood on his face with sheer revulsion, “You’re disgusting.”
Aiden kicks Cooper in response, which earns him another whack with the gun.
“QUIT IT!”
“Quit playing with corpses like a sick fuck! I told you to stop, but you never fucking listen!” Cooper raises the gun again, and the fear of getting hit again outweighs the little defiance Aiden had.
“Okay, okay! I’m sorry!” He holds his hands up, bracing for a blow, but nothing comes. Aiden peaks through the gap of his fingers, his gaze quickly finding the older boy looking down at him with an unreadable expression. His arms were crossed now, thankfully signifying he wasn’t going to land another blow on him. A tense silence passes through the two boys for a second too long before Cooper finally speaks again.
“Wipe your face off. We’re losing time,” and with that terse response, he walks off, leaving Aiden sitting in the dirt. Aiden watches Cooper storm off from the forest floor, his hand still mindlessly rubbing where Cooper had hit him. It eventually occurs to him that his hand was still covered in the rabbit’s blood, and he quickly jerks his hand away. Sure enough, his fingers were coated in the red liquid like a new layer of skin, and while the sight should have disgusted him, an eerie feeling of apathy takes its place in his mind. Aiden’s gaze shifts to the dead rabbit, the pool of deep red surrounding the animal a stark juxtaposition to the brown and green swirls of the forest ground. The rabbit’s unseeing gaze boars through Aiden, and he stares back just as hard. He doesn’t know how long he stays like that, but an echo from deeper in the forest- muffled but undoubtedly Cooper’s- drags him back to the present. He quickly gets to his feet and haphazardly wipes his hands on his jacket as he hoists his backpack over his shoulder. He runs after Cooper, leaving the rabbit to rot in the dirt.
By the time Aiden catches up to Cooper, he’s huffing from the run, but Cooper doesn’t even spare him a glance. A familiar feeling of shame engulfs him as Cooper keeps his back turned; Aiden’s lack of stamina compared to Cooper’s ever so present vigor was embarrassing, not to mention their difference in physical strength.
“What are we… What are you looking at?” Aiden huffs out. Cooper cocks his head forward towards something in the distance as he gets his rifle ready. A coyote was digging in the dirt with its snout buried under the covers of grass, completely oblivious to the gun trained on it. A beat of stillness passes before Cooper shoots, watching as the animal yelps and thrashes about as the bullet wedges itself in its shoulder. He can hear the faint sound of Aiden chuckling, and he can’t help but roll his eyes. God, the kid was weird.
Once the coyote’s thrashing ceases, Cooper slings the gun back on his shoulder and makes his way to it with Aiden silently trailing behind him. Orange rays of sunlight peek through the blankets of leaves, signalling that nightfall was soon to come.
“Alright, we’re going home after this, so let's get this over with,” Cooper announces as he kneels over the twitching animal.
“What?! Why?”
“You’re mom’s going to kill you and me if you’re not home soon, and I don’t need my parents finding out we were out here,” he holds his hand out expectantly for his knife, which Aiden obediently fishes from the bag and drops in his hand.
“My mom doesn’t give a shit about where I am! C’mon, can we stay out for a little longer?”
“No. I’m on thin ice, you know that,” he turns back to the coyote and begins skinning it, dragging the blade across the ankle of its hind leg.
“It’s not my fault you decided to bring me along to go poaching! I’ll tell her I was at the park or something, come on!”
“Yeah, as if she’d believe that. I’m serious, after this, we’re done.”
Aiden huffs and crosses his arms, not bothering or daring to argue with Cooper more than that. But, God, did he want to. The last place he wanted to be was at home, it was… suffocating there. Silence falls between them once again, the mind numbing stillness only broken by a mutter from Cooper.
“What the hell…?”
“What?” Aiden leans over Cooper’s shoulder to look at whatever’s got him so confused.
“Look at this,” Cooper holds the coyote’s leg back up and saws at the fur with enough gratuitous force to make Aiden cringe. But he doesn’t look away and watches as Cooper continues the violent motion, but even under the force of the blade, neither the fur nor skin give way.
“Huh…”
“Yeah, ‘huh,’” he drops the coyote’s leg and turns back to Aiden, “We sharpened these things before we left, right?”
“Yeah. Try my knife,” Aiden digs through the backpack again and hands his own knife to Cooper. He tries again, carefully dragging the blade around the animal's leg, but again, nothing cuts. He goes back to sawing at the skin, but no blood or flesh gets exposed under the blade’s force.
“Are you sure you sharpened them?”
“Yes! Even if I didn’t, it should have cut the thing by now!”
Cooper sighs and turns back to inspect the animal. There wasn’t even as much as a scratch on its leg. He tries its front leg, but again, the skin stays intact. The neck, the stomach, its sides, nothing gives.
“You know stuff about animals, don’t you?” he says as he turns his attention back to Aiden, “Why’s this happening?"
“I’m not a damn encyclopedia. Disease maybe? I don’t know.”
“What kind of ‘disease’ makes skin impenetrable?!”
“I don’t know!”
A beat of silence passes between the boys.
“Maybe it’s a mutant,” Aiden mutters to no one in particular. Cooper’s eyes suddenly rage with the same annoyance from earlier upon hearing the words.
“Didn’t I tell you to stop talking about that shit?” Aiden doesn’t miss the new edge in Cooper’s voice, a silent but clear warning to drop the topic.
“It could be! You give me a better explanation on why you can’t cut the damn thing!” The words are out of Aiden’s mouth before he realizes he’s saying them, but there’s an odd lack of regret, an absence Cooper will surely punish him for if he doesn’t oblige.
“And you give me a reason why a mutant would be out in the middle of nowhere miles away from any facility,” Cooper stands up and crosses his arms, easily dwarfing Aiden. The silent threat doesn’t go unnoticed, but God, Aiden hated how Cooper did that. It was bad enough he was a twig compared to the older boy, but it’s even worse that Cooper knew it. Any time they got into some stupid disagreement, he was always the one leaving with bruises and sores. It’s not like he could fight back anyway; he weighed practically nothing in comparison and had the muscle mass of a damn squirrel.
“It could have escaped or something, I don’t know. Mutants escape the MHRD all the time.”
“Yeah, who told you that, your schizo friends online? It’s not a mutant, quit believing every fucking thing you see on the internet. As a matter of fact- Quit looking at that stuff in general!”
“They don’t tell you when mutants escape, dipshit! Have you ever seen a company willingly come clean about a mistake they made? No.” Aiden didn’t know why Cooper was so against the idea of the MHRD silently fucking up; they hardly disclosed anything to the public anyway. Keeping the peace would be vital for a company like that, especially in recent times, even he could understand that.
“Do the police just stay silent when a convict escapes? No, so why would the MHRD? You know, you’re full of shit for someone who likes running his mouth so much.”
“What the hell would the public do?! That would just make everyone paranoid or hysterical or something!”
“Yeah, I see it’s already gotten to a few of us,” he shoots Aiden an irritated look, “You might as well start wearing a tinfoil hat while you’re at it.”
He grabs the two knives from beside the coyote and shoves them in Aiden’s hands as he walks off.
“We’re going.”
And with that, the conversation is over.
After a moment of hesitation, Aiden calls out, “What about the coyote?" He watches as Cooper’s figure gets smaller and smaller, and he doesn't even bother to turn around as he yells back, “It's useless. Come on!"
Aiden looks back at the dead coyote, watching as its legs twitch. He wonders if it was just muscle spasms or if the animal had still been aware of what was happening to it while they were trying to cut it open. His mind wanders; what would it be like, the agony and helplessness of being forced to sit through their torture, the fear of not knowing if it would survive for another breath as a copper bullet digs its way into your lungs. What did it feel like?
As much as the thought fights for his attention, in a moment of clarity, he pushes it away to the back of his mind. His eyes rack over the animal one last time as he shoves the knives back into the bag. But for a second, he swears its eyes meet his. Not like the rabbit where death had claimed its sight, no, the coyote was staring at him. He stands there frozen for a second, waiting for its eyes to glaze over, but it doesn't come. The sight roots him in place with fear as he watches the coyote stare at him with an unwavering gaze.
“Aiden!" Cooper's voice rings through the trees, and like a dog, Aiden runs to him without hesitation. Cooper was a few yards away, standing next to a tree impatiently. He doesn't even wait for Aiden to fully catch up before he begins walking away again, but Aiden couldn't care less, he just wanted to be as far away from the coyote as possible.
Aiden shadows behind Cooper as he leads them through the woodland. How Cooper knew where to go, Aiden had no idea. It all looked the same; trees that twisted and winded into an obscure mix of naked branches and thick trunks tangled in ivy.
After fifteen minutes or so, the trail finally comes into view, and after another ten, they’re back at the park. The sun is almost completely gone by now, and shadows engulf the park enough to hide Cooper's gun. The second they reach his car, he sets the firearm in the back and makes his way to the diver’s seat. Aiden does the same, throwing the backpack in the back of the car and hops in the passenger side. The street lights and buildings become a blur of color as Cooper starts the car
“Do I have to go home?” Aiden mutters as he watches the other cars pass by. He can feel the exact moment Cooper’s gaze lands on him, but he intentionally avoids meeting it.
“What’s up with you and going home? I told you, we’ll come back tomorrow.”
“Why can’t I go to your house?” Aiden leans his head back against the car seat and glances at Cooper.
“I don’t feel like coming up with an excuse for what we were doing all day,” Cooper looks away from the road and straight at Aiden, pinning him with his gaze, “Why don’t you want to go home so badly?”
Even though Cooper’s tone was far from friendly, he doesn’t miss the hint of concern that seeps through the apathetic attitude. To be honest, Aiden didn’t know why he didn’t want to go home. The only reason he could think of was because of how quiet it was there, but that hardly explained his averseness to getting dropped off. Not wanting to sound like an idiot, Aiden just shrugs in response and completely ignores Cooper’s lingering gaze. The car is silent for a moment or two before he finally responds with a simple “alright.”
The rest of the car ride goes by in relative silence, but Aiden doesn’t mind. At some point, his mind had drifted back to the coyote, how its eyes were somehow trained straight on him when it should have been dead. Surely that was a mutant; no normal coyote could survive a bullet to the heart. The thought filled him with something close to excitement; he had seen a real mutant. He suddenly felt the urge to go back, to see the mutant again, to kill it.
“Aiden.”
“Huh?” He looks away from the window and up at Cooper. He realizes that the car had come to a full stop, and it occurs to him that he had zoned out for quite a while. Cooper cocks his head to his door, signifying that he was home. A groan escapes him but he climbs out of the car anyway.
“Make sure your mom doesn’t see your hands,” Cooper says.
“Yeah, yeah, I won’t,” Aiden mutters bitterly and shuts the car door. He can still feel Cooper’s gaze on him as he walks to the front door all the way until he turns the knob. Unlocked, just like he left it. His mother is nowhere to be seen when he steps inside, and he doesn’t bother covering his blood stained hands as he climbs up the stairs to his room. His mother’s room door was closed shut, just like when he left. The only sound in the house is the creek of his door as he shuts it, but silence quickly claims the hollow house once again. For the next two hours or so, Aiden tries his best to entertain himself; showering, doing his laundry, playing on his computer, but eventually, the boredom and the suffocating silence catch up to him. He glances at his clock. Three hours had passed. Aiden stares down the red digits of the clock in speculation, and with a huff, he gets to his feet and begins gathering a few of his things.
Maybe Cooper would let him crash at his place for the night.