Chapter Text
Winn learned a lot of things from his dad before his not-as-permanent-as-Winn-would-have-liked incarceration when he was eleven.
When he was ten, he developed an obsession with tornadoes, and Winslow Schott had an obsession with giving his son everything he thought he wanted. So when a tornado came down to the ground in south Kansas, his dad hadn't told him to come back inside. He held his shoulder tightly, keeping him in their torn-up lawn chairs, and they watched as the sky turned green and the air hung still.
Then it went around them.
A stroke of luck, it was, until it wasn't. The wind shifted, and it started coming behind them. Winn never realized it until his dad shoved him forward, and they were sprinting down a hill to a muddy creek. They ducked underneath an overhanging tree root.
It went over them, shooting the water into the air.
Winn couldn't breathe. The oxygen was sucked out of the air as he clung to his father's shirt. He didn't think he'd ever been closer to him. The man only laughed as his son quaked with fear, his eyes dilated and his vision tunneling.
Winn's obsession with tornadoes ended after that.
His dad did that randomly, taking a hyper fixation of his and slowly making him hate it. But he got used to it. It was... normal.
Winslow Schott Sr. loved to spend time with his son, always bragging to his colleagues about how his miniature Schott was going to be in the news someday for something great. Well, that was when he was talking to people and not inanimate objects. He also did that a lot, but he had never not done it, so it was normal.
His father was a nice man. A great man, some would say. He built toys.
The obsession Winslow had had that never left him. He said Winn would find his permanent fixation one day. Winn doubted he could find something he loved as much as his father loved making toys. People just didn't find that kind of stuff.
By the time his eleventh birthday rolled around, he didn't have anything he loved. The only thing he wanted to do was watch his dad build toys. He told his father that all he wanted to do when he was older was be his professional toy tester.
Winn didn't need to go to college. His dad could teach him anything. His dad was amazing.
His chest swelled with joy when Winslow would ruffle his hand through Winn's hair, chuckling about how in the world there were two of the same people in the same room.
His father bought him a blue notebook that year, a little bigger than his hand, and said, "Now, Winn, if you're going to be my toy tester, you need to know what the toys do, and I can't be telling you twice how to operate them, so always! Take! Notes!"
His emphasis on the last three words made Winn grin.
By the time three weeks had passed, the notebook was half full of logs of all the toys, and Winn couldn't be happier.
The bad thing was his dad was getting angrier.
Winn didn't notice it at first, the way his father's hands would shake while putting the finishing touches on toys. His father wasn't an angry man, and, come to think of it, he wasn't sad either. He always had a bright smile.
Then he started talking to himself as if he had forgotten Winn was there, muttering about his boss, how he wasn't valued, and how he got no credit.
But everything was fine.
Winn didn't worry because his father wasn't an angry man.
The worst day of Winn Schott Jr.'s life happened four months after his eleventh birthday. It didn't even start normally. God, the most he could have gotten was a normal start to that horrific day, but no, Winn couldn't be given that.
His dad didn't yell. He never yelled. That morning, he chose to change that streak.
It was something so small and normal. He only asked him if he could come by the workshop after school. He asked every day. Winslow always said yes. It was as right as the sun rising every morning. Today, he said... no.
"What! Why?" Winn burst out, not thinking.
And that's when it happened. The harsh words flew out of his father's mouth, loud and authoritative. Winn prayed every day that he wouldn't have to hear them ringing in his head.
The second Winslow finished, his face changed, and a look of guilt passed over it.
"I'm sorry, Winn... I have some... stressful things happening. You should just come home after school and make popcorn, and I'll be back when I can, and we'll watch that movie you like."
And that was that.
His dad wasn't home yet. Winn was in front of the TV, the play button on Newsies '92 highlighted, ready to start. His fingers bounced on his leg. It was so quiet he could hear the ringing in his ears, seemingly growing louder with each second that stretched into minutes, and then those minutes became thirty, and he couldn't sit still anymore, throwing his legs above him so he was reading the words on the TV upside down, blood rushing to the young boy's head.
More waiting...
Winn's gut twinged. He might be young, but he wasn't stupid. His dad should be home.
They lived close to the road, so it wasn't weird that he heard sirens. Honestly, it would be weird if he didn't hear sirens, but his stomach turned. Something didn't feel right, and his dad still wasn't back yet.
He threw the remote against the couch, standing up in frustration. It bounced off the couch and landed on the ground, the back slip holding the batteries in flipping off and flying across the wooden floor.
Winn walked over to pick it up, and after that... he didn't know what happened.
The sirens had grown louder, louder than usual. He hadn't noticed until it felt like his ears would burst.
Then the door flew open, and half a dozen men and women filtered in, guns raised, shouts echoing through the house.
Someone grabbed him roughly and dragged him outside, shouting something at him about his dad and a bomb, something involving his dad's boss.
A woman with dark red hair and glasses shoved the person shouting at him away and crouched in front of him, holding his hands as she said something he had tried to forget for years.
"I promise everything is going to be okay."
"Where's my dad?!" he cried, tears streaming down his cheeks, hot and red.
She wrapped her arms around him, and he fought in her grip because this is how it happened in the movies. This is when the nice lady, who was also a cop, told the main character that their parents had died on their way to that conference that wasn't actually a conference but a secret mission for the classified government subdivision they worked for.
"You can see him after the trial, sweetie."
Winn wasn't stupid, but obviously, this lady was. His dad and a trial?! Those two words didn't go together. He almost laughed, but Winn could also read people, courtesy of his detective obsession when he was nine, and she wasn't joking.
But that didn't make sense because what could his dad have done? He must have been framed!
"He hasn't done anything wrong! When is he coming home?!" he shouted, shooting straight up, the blanket that had somehow ended up on his shoulders sliding to the ground.
"He murdered half a dozen people, honey. He's not coming home."
But that didn't make sense. People murdered people when they were angry...
And his father was never angry... right?