It was only a little chocolate; Wikus had no idea what damage it would do, and the little guy had seemed so excited over it. He had tasted it himself first, even so—just in case, as with dogs, it might be poison to Poleepkwas—and nothing had happened to him. It had tasted wonderful and so much different than it had on a human tongue, but the last time he'd had the stuff was more than a year ago, and there were many things, sensations, he could not quite properly recall from being human.
At any rate, he believed the treat to be safe, and had gone through a great deal of trouble to get it...but the youngling had died less than twelve hours after eating the bar. The little guy had no parent to mourn his loss; his sire had been killed in a skirmish with MNU agents three months before over the matter of a stolen set of tires. Bald tires that had actually been discarded but not yet brought inside the walls of District 10.
The child was left alone to hide and fend for himself among the ever increasing, ever desperate and ever duller population of the prawns and Wikus had come across him cowering under a mound of trash while he hunted for decent aluminum with which to make the small junk-sculptures that managed still to find their way to his wife's doorstep. What could he do? The kid looked so much like Oliver. Wikus offered him a can of cat food and took him in to his own tiny tent home to look after him.
It eased somewhat the loneliness that he had suffered since Christopher's departure, since his separation from humanity. The other prawns tended to avoid him—he was somewhat infamous, and if they respected what he had done, he was still not truly one of them and they were wary of getting too close. He was still wanted by MNU, and he had no identification number, no papers. He was wholly an illegal, and no one wanted to get involved in his situation. It didn't help that he had a speech impediment, either.
His mouthparts had not quite formed properly during his transformation—likely due to a broken jaw he'd suffered during his third week—and he could not form the Poleepkwa "words" properly. Thankfully, he found that the prawns had surprisingly animated faces when one learned to look properly, and he used his expressions to communicate as well as he could, along with the few clicks he could make and the "signing" he could perform with his tentacles and antennae. It seemed enough to get by on, to get what he needed to live. And the youngling seemed to understand him easily enough.
For three months, they shared a quiet and pleasant companionship. Wikus taught the little guy where he could best come and go though the District's defenses, where to get the cheapest food, find the best trash-treasures, and acquire the cleanest water. He was able to make toys for the boy in the same manner he fashioned roses, birds, trees, and pinwheels for his wife. Wikus communicated as well as he could in his stuttering language how they would all be free in just two more years when Christopher returned for all of them, and he decided to name the young one Jacobus—he had had an uncle with that name, and he could actually nearly pronounce the pet form "Coos". The former human had even gone through the difficult and costly trouble (he'd spent six weeks acquiring an arc gun and a few other scavenged bits of tech) of securing a nearly-legitimate identification for the boy so that he would not have too much trouble if he ran into any officials.
But none of it mattered now. If Wikus had ever doubted that Prawns could cry, those doubts were washed away with the brackish tears that gathered in the folds of soft tissue around his eyes.
Coos had been running junk-flowers to Wikus' old house for him for a couple of weeks, since Wikus had shown him where he once lived, and to reward the boy, he had bought a whole, new, clean and unopened bar of chocolate. It was very expensive, and hard to get. The little guy had trilled and hopped around excitedly, taken the bar to the back of the white tent and his "room" to play with his toys and enjoy the treat while Wikus went out to scavenge and learn what news he could of the outside world.
When he returned with his finds and a pan of slaughter slop for the youngling's dinner...well.
Wikus wanted nothing more than to die, just then, as he cradled the little body in his arms. He didn't know what he should do—did prawns bury their dead, or burn them? Surely they didn't eat them...he couldn't believe that, after the way Christopher had reacted to his dead comrades inside the MNU labs. He had absolutely no idea and that made him feel a bit ill—he determined that he would ask someone, and for now, he tucked Coos' little body up into his bed with his favorite toy—a tin, plastic and cloth prawn mech suit—and dried his eyes on the back of his arm before turning to gather up some cans of cat food into his ratty knapsack to trade for information, and for help.