#(or in this case: pre-aai events that eventually lead to that au)

[aquilamage]

If you’d asked Detective Badd a week ago how much there was to know about nineteenth-century classical composition, he would’ve said no damn clue, and even less interest.

Apparently, there was a lot.

The kid had come in about a quarter to, the same boundless comfort and lack of awareness to the looks the other detectives gave him as always, and plopped himself down. Now, even the stragglers for the next shift are settling in, and he shows no signs of stopping any time soon.

So, having learned from Kay, he jumps in the moment the kid pauses for breath. “That’s nice” (from what he could tell, which is at least more than the times Faraday had gone off on some mechanical explanation rant (when all he’d asked was why he’d taken apart his old tv in the middle of the living room at 7am).) “But shouldn’t you...be getting home? Your father has to be expecting you for dinner.” He’s assuming a lot of things, but Debeste had never been one for patience.

For a second, there’s that confused little wrinkle of his nose. “Oh! No, Pops is really busy, so it’s just me!” A pause as he looks down, talking more to himself. “Well, since for lunch I….oh.” The frown disappears almost immediately as he crosses his arms, looking up. “I think it would be best for me to get going now.”

Alright then. Well, then he wouldn’t keep him, so he could go and do that at a reasonable hour. Nice...seeing you. At least that’s what he thinks. What Badd actually says is, “That’s...no good. How do you feel about noodles?”

He blinks. “What?” His free hand had been playing with the rounded edge of his baton, now bending it ever so slightly.

“There’s a stand...right around the block.” He gets up, collecting his things. “Let’s get you something to eat...now.”

The baton springs back to its normal shape. Otherwise, the kid stays frozen until Badd is practically out the door. “Okay!” he calls, and scampers after him.

It’s a clear night, a few stars visible through the light pollution. The temperature has dropped more than seasonable for March, but it’s still tolerable for a short walk. Especially since the kid can keep up with his natural stride – tagging about three-quarters behind him, but matching in pace. Badd always manages to forget that he’s so tall, might still be growing (and certainly hasn’t filled into his height yet).

He wonders how tall Kay is now. It’s been a few years since the last time Byrne’s sister brought her back for a visit, and even if she does send him pictures with heavy regularity, it’s not the same as measuring where she comes up against him.

(For example, the kid comes up past his shoulder, probably chin height when he stands up proper. It’s hard to tell exactly without measuring.)

Just as the stand comes into view, he checks over his shoulder. The kid is still there, watching him closely now. Everything else seems perfectly normal, but there’s a slight nagging feeling that something’s off. Without anything to go on for now, though, he shrugs it off. “Pick something out.” He gestures at the menu board.

The guy at the counter gives the kid a bit of a look as he continues staring down the options, mouthing out a few, and Badd shoots him a half glare that gets him to back off until they’re ready to order. He gets a basic vegetable ramen, and the kid orders something that Badd doesn’t know enough Japanese to recognize if it’s pronounced right (although he doesn’t falter saying it and the worker doesn’t correct him or react, so probably. Interesting).

As they’re standing there waiting, that creeping feeling that something is Off comes back, but looking around, everything appears perfectly normal. The shuffling bustle of the kitchen comes just above the buzz of the floodlight on top of the stand, which illuminates a circle of the little park around them, and the occasional car passing by.

The kid’s order comes up, and he cradles it in his hands all the way to the nearest bench. It’s strangely endearing.

A minute later his food is ready too. He sits down across from the kid, who’s staring down at his bowl in silence, and then it hits him that apart from getting his food, he hasn’t said a word since they left. This kid doesn’t do anything quiet.

“Something the matter?”

He immediately jumps, splashing broth on the table. “No! It’s fine! It’s really good.” Halfway through the last sentence, his voice gets soft. “Uh,” he’s put his baton down, but now he’s holding both chopsticks in both hands, and they’re not quite so bendy. “what did I do wrong?”

“...what?”

“I thought- You’re not upset?”

And here he thought he’d already witnessed the kid’s weirdest leap in logic. “No? What would I be upset about?”

He shrugs as though it was obvious. “Talking to someone alone means you need to yell at them, most of the time. Sometimes you yell at them in front of people. Why else would you invite me out here?”

There’s so many concerning parts to that that the number itself is concerning. Right now, though, there’s the fact that the kid doesn’t need splinters on top of everything else. “You haven’t eaten in a long time, so it’s not safe to be driving.” When the kid’s eyes continue to gather water, he sighs. “I’m not upset. You didn’t do anything wrong.”

“Oh.” A few tears fall, but he relaxes his grip to something normal.

They start eating in quiet, the kid thinking he’s sneaking glances. Soon enough, though, he pipes up with a continuation of what he’d been on about at the office (at least, Badd’s reasonably confident it is).

He swirls his noodles around the bowl. The kid’s last question echoes in his mind: why was he doing this? Not that he’d been lying, but what was his motivation for that reasoning? It wasn’t as if the kid was out of it or that much of a danger to himself; why spend more time with Debeste’s kid than he had to?

(Now, that wasn’t exactly fair. Despite his clear admiration for his father, the kid was more than that. He deserved better.)

…And maybe that’s it. Badd knows it’s not his place to comment – there’d been a number of nights where Byrne’s work kept him from dinner with Kay (mostly near the end, with a babysitter since the both of them were occupied), and seventeen was plenty old enough for a kid to be home by himself for an evening. Still, there’s something about it.

As the kid talks, he waves his chopsticks around. It adds an interesting layer of suspense, given that about one of every three times he gets distracted midway through bringing food up to his mouth.

“..Hey.”

He freezes up, prompting Badd to immediately follow up with his “I don’t mind the talking, but you should finish your food before it gets cold.”

“Okay.”

---

As they finish eating, it’s fully dark out. Even that doesn’t put any damper on the kid’s mood, though, practically a spring in his step. “Thanks for the food. It was tasteful.”

“Taste...ful?”

He spins around on the pathway. “Yeah, it was really good!”

Ah. His sigh comes out as a steady cloud of breath. “You’re welcome.”

Instead of moving again, he waves his hand. “I’ll see you later. Not tomorrow or the next couple, but...what’s the day after that?”

Badd tries to do the math with what day he thinks the kid means. “The fifteenth?”

A frown as he stares upward. “What day?”

“Friday.” It would be nice if they could have this conversation while they were walking. The residual warmth from the food is mostly faded, and they’re not even standing by the kitchen. Bringing it up now might throw the kid off-track, though. At least it seems like he’s got enough layers on.

“Then maybe on Friday.” With a smile, the hand with the baton goes to his shoulder, and he bows his head. “See you!”

Badd shakes his head. “That’s nice, but unless you...parked somewhere else, we’re still going the same direction.”

The kid’s baton smacks him int the face, and it’s all he can do not to reach out and- ...well, he doesn’t know what, exactly. “O-Of course!” And with a sharp turn, he starts back on the path.

--

By the time Badd gets in his car, his face and arms are numb from waiting and watching until the kid’s car pulled out of sight. Why he bothered, he doesn’t know – the precinct lot is reasonably safe (there’s more people loyal to his father than aren’t, or at least in some way held by his influence, and someone who wasn’t would plan something better than that) – but it feels right to do. If it was Kay...

He shakes his head. Kay’s a hundred miles away and not going to be around for ages, if ever. This kid is not the same, and he needs to get that through his head before it gets him in trouble.

[aquilamage]

i'm a little bit curious as to how aai2-4 plays out in the badd au

>:3 oh yes Forgotten is a big big dramatic thing for this au (not that it isn’t in canon but you know). Right now most of the major plot elements follow canon, it’s more about the nuances of them and the emotions focused on and some extra scenes.

First of all, let’s lay some groundwork. The basic premise of this au is that Badd doesn’t end up in jail after the end of aai so he’s around to affect aai2 (and also has met/interacted with Sebastian pre-games), and that Kay and Sebastian were friends as kids but haven’t been in contact since she moved away post-Reminiscence.

and then the rest under cut for length and spoilers

Pre-Forgotten stuff that’s important for context: Kay realizes who Sebastian is but he hasn’t figured it out yet despite her trying a bit to talk with him. Badd has been interacting with Kay and Sebastian and knows about the game events from them but neither kid knows he’s been around the other because they’ve never all been in the same room at the same time. Sebastian is obviously attaching himself to Badd because an adult who treats him nice?!?!? and meanwhile Badd is grudgingly fond of this kid and wants to help him but knowing his father he doesn’t know what he can do. Meanwhile with Badd and Kay, they’re obviously very happy to be in each other’s lives again, but there’s also building tension about Kay’s whole “second yatagarasu” thing.

So the Forgotten section of the au kicks off with Kay and Badd having a kind of explosive argument about that whole thing. Later that evening, she sneaks out of the house for the meeting that leads into her kidnapping. Badd realizes that she’s left later on and is worried sick, but it’s still not until she gets dropped at Miles’s office that Kay is located again, and obviously Badd’s relief quickly turns into even more anxiety and upset when he finds out about the whole amnesia thing. And it’s this that spurs him to be involved with the game events because he’s certainly not leaving her alone in this state.

I haven’t gotten around to replaying this case yet so I don’t have too much of a breakdown of how things go, but

when Sebastian shows up there’s instantly a Thing about why is he with them he thought Badd was on his side, and he expresses that pretty readily (there have been some near-misses of him mentioning Badd before, most likely during Inherited, prevented by Justine’s intervention because given her whole thing she’s very nervous about bastard man getting suspicious because they’re interacting with Badd). That’s some feelings of anxiety, resentment, and betrayal that are consistently building

eventually Sebastian recognizes Kay and that also adds to his conflicting feelings about the ongoing events because wait that’s his friend. (unnecessarygayfeelings had this idea of him going to talk to her while she’s arrested that leads to him trying to help her with her memories despite still accusing her that I want to implement but we’ll see)

so much extra tension when bastard man shows up with stuff between him and Badd from a) Badd’s extra protectiveness with Kay and the fact that bastard man is definitely taunting him about arresting her and such, b) Badd suspected from just knowing him before and how Sebastian talks about his father that he was a shit parent, but the reality is even worse, c) there’s also just historical buildup tension that would be there anyway between them. I don’t think it would realistically happen but emotionally I want Badd to get to punch bastard man

oh Sebastian’s father definitely uses Sebastian’s extra tension and the connection between him and Badd and him and Kay to mess with him even more, an excuse to push him even harder on making him go with what he wants

The Grades Thing. Sebastian runs off like in canon and while Badd is very torn because he wants to stay and protect Kay, she has other people now so he makes the hard choice to go after Sebastian. Badd talks to him and actually does manage to help calm him a bit, but with Kay in the back of his mind he makes the mistake of saying something to Sebastian about going back to her. Sebastian, still being in an incredibly vulnerable state and nursing the betrayal of Badd going against him this whole time, gets upset, yells something about Badd caring more about her, and runs off

at the end Badd’s probably the one to give Kay the promise notebook because Family stuff. Once she’s reoriented herself a little, Kay, remembering that Badd went after Sebastian and with the context of remembering him and caring now, asks where he went. Badd: .....fuck

so yeah there’s obviously a lot more going on but I think that covers the big stuff! Thank you for your interest, it makes me so happy to see!! and if you wanna  know more or need clarification on anything just ask ^-^