Chapter Text
Theoretically, we could say it all started at the drug van. It was accurate, wasn’t it? It started when Flores awoke to the sound of engines and shouted orders. It, technically, started when she unzipped her tent and pulled herself out to see her father being handcuffed and pushed into a white car clearly marked L’Manburg Police Station .
The real story, though… Well, that’s much more complex . Because really, it started when Flores was four, or maybe five. Really, it had started when Flores discovered the drawer full of little sandwich bags in the kitchen of their tiny one-bedroom apartment. They were filled with something that looked like flour, or maybe sugar. She didn’t take any- they were all labeled with names, she couldn’t take something that belonged to someone else! Plus, it smelled funny, and Dad didn’t like snooping.
Flores was eight when she found out what those little baggies were—well, about as much as an eight year old could in the first place. She noticed a group of teenagers knocking on the door every few weeks, gaunt and pale, with sunken-in eyes and sharp cheekbones. Flores hoped she didn’t look like them when she was old like they were. Once, she overheard them talking to her father about something called “nose candy,” which she didn’t really understand. Candy was meant to be eaten, not pushed up your nose! (She’d tried that before; it didn’t end well.)
Flores was nine when she asked her dad about his job for the first time. It was for a school project, and he blanched at the question. He said he was a marketer, but gave no more specifics. She was still curious after that, but not curious enough to press. The kids at school were never nice to her. She loved foxes—drew them all over her worksheets in school—and knew everything about them and all the different breeds, from the pretty white arctic foxes to the gorgeous red ones she saw at night sometimes. But no one ever wanted to listen to her sometimes hour-long rants about them, and some especially rotten kids called her a furry. Her dad said it too, from time to time, no matter how much she told him to stop. That wasn’t it, though. Once, Flores ended up with a burn mark just below her eye from her father’s cigarettes. (He rolled his own, she knew, he’d been smoking since before she was born). Her clothes always stank of it, and kids whispered about her in the hallways at school. She never knew exactly what they said about her, but she knew it wasn’t good.The burn mark never healed. It stayed the same—a harsh, obvious, circular red mark—and eventually she gave up hounding her father to buy makeup so she could cover it. He said no anyway: on the good days he said something about not having enough money, and on his bad days, he made other burn marks on her hands, face, chest… anywhere he could reach. She never asked for anything after that.
Flores felt completely alone when she turned eleven. Her dad had disappeared the week prior, and so she sang happy birthday to herself alone at midnight, tears burning as they ran over her scarred cheeks. To add to that misery, the next day, Flores had to scrub blood off of her sheets. It never truly disappeared from the fabric, no matter how much she scrubbed, and she had to find the bag that (presumably) her mother had made for her for this time in her life to deal with the aforementioned blood. Her father wasn’t even there to help. She cried afterwards, a combination of the cramps pulling her body tight and the sheer wrong-ness, the unfairness, of it all.
When Flores was twelve, her father wordlessly dropped a duffel bag in her doorway. “Pack light,” he said gruffly, and then left her alone. She did as she was told without question—not like she had much. He pulled her out of school that day, and… they left. That was when Flores saw the van for the first time, and the two tents set up outside of it. For a few weeks, she tentatively asked when she’d get to go back to school, but the curt responses and angry eyes pushed her away. After that, she had to find her own new schedule, outside of school. It wasn’t like she had many friends, anyway.
Despite all of this—the new pains, the old pains, the neglect, the loneliness—Flores was, for all intents and purposes, a happy kid. She had earplugs to block out the gunshots at night, a raggedy little fox stuffed animal named Yogurt, and… well, not much else. BUT she planned to stay optimistic. Glass half full, yeah?
And yet—all good things (they had to be good, because if they weren’t, then they would be bad, and that couldn’t be) have to come to an end. And it did: a now thirteen-year-old Flores, with blind optimism and a sunny disposition that painfully contrasted the world she resided in, had her world rocked.
She unzipped the tent and, almost immediately, two strange men with guns came and put her in handcuffs- like in the movies. She kicked and screamed because it was too much, too close, bad bad bad bad bad - “DAD, HELP ME!” She screamed at the top of her lungs, clawing to get away from these strange people. But the strength of a malnourished teenage girl was nothing against these policemen. Her father, a few feet away, turned, and his eyes made lifeless contact with her own before he was roughly shoved into a car, head banging the top loudly. “DAD!” she called out desperately, knowing that the situation couldn’t get much worse.
A little more gently, a brown-haired female officer guided her away from the men and into another car, ignoring her pleads. Soon, she stopped struggling. The car started. Flores vaguely heard the words, “she’s just a kid. I don’t even think she knew,” from the woman.
“Knew what?” She piped up, curiosity taking over for a moment. She twisted anxiously in her seat. “Is this about his flour business?”
“Flower…?” The officer in the seat next to her (he was blond, she noticed, and had a large chain peeking out of his uniform) questioned with a frown. “This isn’t a game, kid.” He sounds mean, Flores thought, trying to scoot a few inches away.
“She’s not playing, Punz. She’s only thirteen. Get it together, dumb*ss.” Flores gasped at the language, and the officer- Punz , his name was, snorted.
“Kid’s never heard a curse word before, either, Hannah. So, kid-“
“ Flores .” Hannah corrected, chancing a glance away from the road back at Punz.
“Flores,” he begrudgingly corrected, “your daddy sells flowers? Is he a florest?” The tone was mocking, Flores could tell. Like the kids from school, all those months ago. She rolled her eyes and reached up to adjust her ears- oh, no.
“My- my ears!” She cried, shaking her hands together and making the chains jingle. “They’re gone!”
“Huh?” Punz grabbed the flailing limbs with ease and pushed them against the door. “Hey, kid, get it together.” His tone was harsh now, like it burned, and Flores keened loudly, knocking her head into the driver’s seat headrest. “Woah- Hannah, drive faster, damnit!” The man shouted, his grip on Flores tightening. The touch made her shriek and she slammed her head backwards, and then-
Blissful, blissful silence.
Flores opened her eyes and stared upward at… where was she? The ceiling was cinder block, and so was the wall behind her. The front and sides weren’t barred, strangely. Memories from before—how long ago, she didn’t know—bombarded her. Waking up, Dad, the cops. She let out a strangled breath, trying to stay calm.It wasn’t what she expected for… well, she assumed this was a jail cell. Why was she in jail? She didn’t do anything wrong. Did they really put people in jail for camping? And why did that officer- why did he think she said flowers ? It was flour . She guessed she could see the confusion, but why was he upset about it? Flores’s mind spiraled, and all she wanted after a few quiet hours was someone to talk to, or at least to be near.
Her wish was answered. Over the next few days, other officers in uniforms like Hannah and Punz came to see her. They brought her, still in handcuffs, to lawyers in fancy suits and sharp faces. They asked her questions that she answered honestly, even if panic bloomed in her chest when they looked unimpressed and even angry. She tried to explain that everything she told them was as much as she knew, that there was nothing else she could say, but many of them just shook their heads disappointedly and she ended up back in the cell. A few times, Flores heard fancy words like “plausible deniability,” and most of the lawyers said she had nothing to do with her father’s crime. Some people even told her about charges for her father, like possession of illegal drugs and drug trafficking. She asked what that meant, and a nice lawyer lady named Stacy said that it meant he was selling and transporting drugs on a large scale—part of something called “Pogtopia.” The word sounded familiar, like she’d heard it mentioned offhand once or twice. She told Stacy that, was asked if she had heard anything else. She told Stacy more, about the “nose candy” six years ago, and how teenagers would come to their house every few weeks. Stacy looked worried, and thanked Flores. It was the first time she’d been shown even basic kindness in weeks. Thinking that was a good sign, she asked hopefully if she would be able to see her father soon, but Stacy said it didn’t look promising.
Flores cried in the cell that night. It had never felt emptier.
On the fifth day in the cell, Hannah reappeared and brought her to a different room, one she hadn’t been to before, with hanging artwork and nice looking furniture. This room had an older man in it sitting on a couch, with long blond hair and a kind face. He had a black sweatshirt on, with the words “The Crow Father” in the font that Flores recognized from the movie The Godfather. She chuckled at it and explained when he asked why she was laughing. He seemed delighted that she knew what that movie was,and was pleasant enough to talk to. Better than the police and the lawyers, at least.
“You’re not a lawyer, are you?” She asked, pulling her knees into her chest from her sitting position on the opposite side of the couch.
“No, I’m not,” he agreed. “My name is Phil Craft, and I’m a social worker. Do you know what that is?”
“Yeah,” Flores said, though truthfully, she didn’t. “Well… no, not really,” she admitted after a second. Flores was never particularly good at lying.
“That’s okay,” he said softly. “A social worker is someone who works for the state’s foster and adoption system. We help kids get placed in homes with families, and help families with the adoption process.”
“But I have a dad,” Flores interrupted, irritation slipping into her tone. “He’s just fine. I want to see him.”
“Flores…” Mr Craft began gently, “your father is facing a sentence for life in prison.” She stopped breathing. “Not only was he arrested for drug charges, but neglect and tax evasion and a bunch of other things alongside that. I sincerely doubt he’ll see a life without bars again.”
Flores made the same keening sound from the car, pressing her hands to her ears. No, no, no. For a heart stopping second she felt strong arms wrapping around her and went to fight against them, but then the pressure wasn’t uncomfortable, and it helped calm her down. She could slip out if she wanted to, but the weight was calming and pressed in the right spots, so her heart stopped beating so loudly and fluttering oddly. She leaned into the soft, affectionate touch of the man, and suddenly the world didn’t seem so scary anymore. She mumbled an apology into his chest and felt it expand when he sighed. “You’re okay, kiddo. Can I keep talking or do you just want to sit?”
“Do I have to get out if you keep talking?” She asked, pressing further into his side, desperate for the affection and attention she so often craved but couldn’t get.
“No, not if you don’t want to.” He answered easily, and she hummed in affirmation. “Yeah? Okay, well… we already established that you can’t live with your father, so the only option—for the most part, since you have no other immediate family—is foster care until you either age out of the system or get adopted. I called a friend of mine, Eret King, and they’re open to an emergency foster, which is what your case is. Is that okay?”
“Mhm.” She hummed again, exhaustion slipping into her bones now that everything was finally coming together. She didn’t really process what he said, but knew whatever it was would be better than the cell.
“Are you okay with going there now?”
Another nod, and she slouched out of his lap and back onto the couch. When Phil slowly got to his feet and took his cane (he had one of them, she had just noticed) to help support a leg he seemed to not be able to put much weight on, she ignored the urge to sleep and followed behind him.
Maybe it will be better.